This is a rush transcript from "On the Record," August 27, 2010. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.

JAMIE COLBY, FOX NEWS GUEST HOST: Well, listen carefully to Republican Senator Orrin Hatch. He is determined to get parts of the health care law repealed, and he says his idea is now gaining traction. He went "On the Record" with Greta.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

GRETA VAN SUSTEREN, FOX NEWS HOST: Senator, nice to see you, sir.

SEN. ORRIN HATCH, R-UTAH: Nice to talk to you, Greta. How are you?

VAN SUSTEREN: I'm very well. So Senator, you have -- you've introduced a bill, the American Job Protection Act, and I understand now you have secured some support, the United States Chamber of Commerce, National Federation of Independent Business and the National Association of Wholesalers and the National Retail Federation. What is this statute that they are now endorsing?

HATCH: Well, what that does is it does way with the employer mandate. As you know, they're going to impose mandates in health care on employers that are going to be -- cost an arm and a leg. And the employers are now starting to rebel about it because they're -- these are going to amount to at least a $52 billion increase in taxes, plus all kinds of other onerous regulations and burdens. So that's why people aren't hiring today, in a great sense, because they -- they basically just don't know what's going to happen in the future. They're very uncertain. They're very upset about it. And to be honest with you, that employer mandate has been changing as we sit here.

VAN SUSTEREN: What do you mean it's changing?

HATCH: Well, it was supposed to be just a mandate that you had to give insurance to your employees. It was supposed to save money over the long run. Now we find it's well over $300 billion in additional costs. Plus there'll be about a $52 billion increase in taxation. Plus, there are a lot of businesses that do have insurance, but they're now being told the insurance that they have isn't as good as it should be, or it isn't the way the government wants it to be.

Small businesses are just frantic about this because a lot of small businesses are refusing to hire over the 50-employee limit because they get pushed into having to have this employer mandate, which is -- which can be very expensive and very problematic for the businesses involved.

VAN SUSTEREN: All right, now, the employer mandate -- just so that we get this sort of sorted out -- is different from the individual mandate. And the employer mandate...

HATCH: Right.

VAN SUSTEREN: ... says they have to buy -- they have to buy insurance for -- if they have more than 50 employees.

HATCH: Right.

VAN SUSTEREN: If you -- if you work for a company that has more than 50 employees and that there is this employer mandate, have you then met your individual mandate?

HATCH: No, not necessarily, because -- I think you would probably get by with that. But keep in mind, people are very upset right now. There's so much uncertainty that that's why people aren't hiring. They know this is a $2.6 trillion health care bill if you extrapolate it over a full 10 years. On And Top of that, they know that the policies that they have, because of all the government paperwork and the mandates that they are imposing upon business -- the costs are going up dramatically, even so. And so this has -- this has caused a lot of uncertainty in the business world, and that's one of the reasons why, you know, banks aren't lending and corporations aren't hiring. Small businesses are not expanding. All of that has to change or we're not going to be able to pull out of this recession the way we should.

So the employer mandate really is a very, very bad approach towards health care. Then you add to that the individual mandate. Look, if the government can impose upon an individual that they have to buy an insurance policy that they don't want to buy, based upon what they claim to be a governmental right under the commerce clause, Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution, then the government -- if they can force to you buy something you don't want to buy, then the government can do anything to you. And you know, they might even say some day, Well, we want to save General Motors, so you got buy Chevy or you got to buy this particular model. I mean, that sounds bizarre, but that's the type of thinking that goes into the individual mandate, as well.

VAN SUSTEREN: Well, I guess the thing that's sort of disheartening is that -- I mean, if you take your -- your colleague, United States senator, Senator Baucus was just quoted in The Flathead (ph) Beacon, which was then quoted in The Hill newspaper, and he's one of the chief authors of the health care bill -- and on Tuesday, at a forum in Montana, he was quoted as saying, when he was asked if he had read the health care bill, he was an author of it -- he was quoted as saying, "I don't think you want me to waste my time to read every page of the health care bill. You know what? It's statutory language. We have hired experts."

Now, that's the quote in the newspaper. You know, so it's sort of like -- you know, it's a little bit distressing (INAUDIBLE) Did anybody read this health care -- I mean, who's -- who's sponsoring it, who's -- who's pushed it through to pass it -- what are we supposed to think as Americans when we hear that?

HATCH: Well, we read it, I'll tell you, in our office. I had two or three of our top people plus myself reading that health care bill. And I got to tell you, it's a mishmash of all kinds of onerous burdens and expenses imposed upon business. I mean, it is -- it is one of the most colossally awful pieces of legislation I have ever seen.

It is going to cost $2.6 trillion, and in the end, it's not going to do the job. One of the features of that bill is that -- and of course, one of big arguments was they had to get the 32 million people who don't have health care health insurance. So how did they do that? They pushed 16 million people into Medicaid.

Now, the states are up in arms because the states have to pay their share Medicaid. Well, they said (INAUDIBLE) the federal government in this bill will pick it up for a couple years. Well, what happens at the end of that? The states are frantic, too. I think Utah would be paying well over $100 million more for these people that they pushed into Medicaid.

It's a really, really lousy, bad bill, and everybody knows it. And 60 percent of the American people are opposed to it.

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