2020 Democrats push competing health care legislation proposals

close

Video

2020 Democrats push competing health care proposals

Elizabeth Warren unveils her $52 trillion Medicare for all plan; reaction and analysis from the 'Special Report' All-Stars.

This is a rush transcript from "Special Report," November 1, 2019. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. ELIZABETH WARREN, D-MASS., PRESIDENTAIL CANDIDATE: I have a plan that shows how we can have Medicare for all without raising taxes one cent on middle-class families. That puts $11 trillion back in the hands of people all across this country, and it's all fully paid for by asking the top one percent and giant corporations to pay a fair share.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BRET BAIER, HOST: They told me there would be no math, but there is a lot of math today in this Medicare for all plan. Elizabeth Warren coming out with this plan, and the cost projections are quite something, $20.5 trillion in new government spending over 10 years, a total cost of $52 trillion over 10 years.

Former Vice President Biden weighing in, saying "The mathematical gymnastics in this plan are all geared towards hiding a simple truth from voters. It's impossible to pay for Medicare for all without middle-class tax increases. To accomplish this sleight of hand, her proposal dramatically understates its cost, overstates its savings, inflates the revenue, and pretends that an employer payroll tax increase is something else." Other than that, it's fine.

Let's bring in our panel, Jonathan Swan, national political reporter for "Axios," Mollie Hemingway, senior editor at "The Federalist," and Jonah Goldberg, editor in chief of "The Dispatch." Jonah, this seems like the key battle as we head towards the final weeks before the Iowa caucuses in February.

JONAH GOLDBERG, CONTRIBUTOR: Yes. And it's preposterous. This health care plan, the bizarre thing, it's sort of like that scene in "Jerry Maguire" when he gets into all the trouble because he actually writes down what he's actually thinking. This thing is a pinata you can hit from any angle, but just the sheer scale of the money is mindboggling.

I know you said no math, but for some perspective, one million seconds is about 11 days -- 52 trillion seconds is 1,648,000 years. It is a staggering amount of money, and to pretend that that it won't require raising tax on the middle class, to pretend that her plan is some sort of serious thing rather than just sort of a facade of something serious is an incredible insult to voters and to the journalistic class.

BAIER: The national debt, Mollie, is at $22 trillion and climbing. This is $52 trillion.

MOLLIE HEMINGWAY, SENIOR EDITOR, "THE FEDERALIST": Right. And Jonah's right, the math is mindboggling. Even if she were to rob literally every bank in the country, she would only have a third of the amount of the money she needs. That's the dishonest part about what she's doing. But there is an honest part about it, which is that Democrats do want government run health care. It was not long ago that we were told that Obamacare meant that you could keep your doctor and you could keep your health plan and this wasn't the camel's nose on the way to single payer health care, to government run health care. That wasn't true. Democrats do want this, and she is being a little more honest about how much she wants it relative to other people.

BAIER: Here is Speaker Pelosi on Medicare for all.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

PELOSI: I'm not a big fan of Medicare for all. I welcome the debate. I think that we should have health care for all. I think that the affordable care benefit is better than the Medicare benefit. It is expensive. Who pays is very important. What are the benefits that come in there?

KUDLOW: This would have a devastating, catastrophic effect.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BAIER: Jonathan, your thoughts?

JONATHAN SWAN, NATIONAL POLITICS REPORTER, "AXIOS": So the most interesting thing about this plan are the politics. This has got no chance, zero, of getting through. If you did a continuum of Elizabeth Warren's policies from basically impossible to she can do through executive action, this is right on the impossible side of the scale.

You just saw the Speaker of the House, avowedly a liberal, Nancy Pelosi, puts herself forward as the tribune of progressivism in the House, pouring cold water all over the plan. Do you think Chuck Schumer in the Senate represents the financial sector and has a lot of business people who -- important donors to him, do you think he's going to endorse this plan?

And do you think if Elizabeth Warren does win the presidency, which she could -- she's got a very decent chance and people have to take her very seriously -- do you think that even if they flip the Senate to Democrats that a Chuck Schumer led Democratic Senate with people like Joe Manchin from West Virginia are going to support this plan?

So it's never going to happen. The most interesting thing about it is Warren and Bernie Sanders -- I think Ezra Klein wrote this, and I agree with him. They're basically saying forget this idea of compromise. Forget this idea of trying to work with the insurance companies and do things in a sort of collaborative way. They want to bulldoze over the corporations and everyone else and get this through.

BAIER: Jonah, Beto O'Rourke steps down. It's hard to believe that Andrew Yang, John Delaney are still in the race, but Beto O'Rourke, after all his vaunted P.R. at the beginning of this campaign is out.

GOLDBERG: It would take a heart of stone not to laugh. The basic problem with Beto was that he more than anybody else believed his press coverage when he was running against Ted Cruz, when the national press really, really wanted to see Ted Cruz to lose. And so he actually believed he was this messianic, Robert F. Kennedy figure. And every time it was proven to him that he wasn't, he tripled and quadrupled down on his rapid onset woke dementia and went even crazier to the left. And it got no traction because he really wasn't a particularly serious candidate.

BAIER: President Trump obviously weighed in on this as well, saying maybe he wasn't made for it after all. Panel, stand by. We'll take a trip down Candidate Casino on the other side of the break, plus Winners and Losers as the Friday lightning round continues. We'll take a break now and come back to the casino.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BAIER: All right, we're going down the road to the Candidate Casino. Back with the panel. We'll start with Jonathan. You've got $100 in chips. You have to make bets. You have to.

SWAN: Why, Bret? What are you doing to me?

OK, $50 on Warren, $25 on Buttigieg, and $25 on Bernie. Nothing on Biden.

BAIER: Pretty clean. Pretty clean. Wow, no Biden. OK, Mollie.

HEMINGWAY: I continue to be pretty bullish on Elizabeth Warren. She gets $30 of my chips. Bernie Sanders has come back from a heart attack with strong numbers both in terms of voters and donors, so he gets $15. The moderates each get $10, Buttigieg, Biden, and Klobuchar, and I continue to think that given the weakness of the pool, someone not yet running still has a strong chance.

BAIER: It's still that $25 chip out there. OK, Jonah?

GOLDBERG: So I have the exact same thing I picked the last time I was here -- Biden $30, Warren $30, Klobuchar $5, Booker $5, and like Mollie, $25 on someone not yet in the race because this field is not good.

BAIER: Who is that?

SWAN: It's obviously Hillary. Why don't you just say Hillary?

GOLDBERG: There's a market demand for someone better.

SWAN: Why don't you just say Hillary?

BAIER: Mike Bloomberg? Who is that?

GOLDBERG: Oprah.

BAIER: Oprah, OK.

Let me as you this. The October jobs report, the economy adds 128,000 jobs, unemployment ticked up slightly, but it is a great jobs report. The market loved it today. If you look at the economic changes since the president took office, GDP growth down a bit, unemployment rate down significant, consumer confidence up, hourly earnings up. You look at this picture, Jonathan, the White House has to look at it pretty positively as they start heading into the final weeks before the Iowa caucuses on the Democratic side.

SWAN: The White House thinks they've had their best week in recent memory, and it's hard not to agree with that. You can just line it up. He announced that they have killed the world's most wanted terrorist. You just put those economic figures out there. The impeachment hearing, I thought that vote was -- if nothing else comes out, this is now set up to be a party-line impeachment, which is the Democrats' worst nightmare. If Republicans stick together the way they did there with that signal to the Senate, Tim Morrison's testimony was a helpful -- from the White House's perspective -- a helpful counterweight to Colonel Vindman's. And then you line all that up together, things are actually looking pretty good for them.

BAIER: Yes, I agree, a good week.

OK, Winners and Losers. Star with Mollie, winner first, loser.

HEMINGWAY: Winner is the Washington Nationals. The National League's best team won the World Series. It was wonderful. It was a great series, went down to game seven. I loved that no home team won a single game. And the loser of the week is the ISIS terrorist who was killed, Baghdadi. He had been sought for a long time, and whenever you kill the number one there is always another number one to come in after, but it was a very important death to achieve.

BAIER: Nationals will be at the White House on Monday. Jonah, winners and loser.

GOLDBERG: So my winner is the best boy in the country. His declassified name by the president is Conan.

SWAN: Are you allowed to say that on air?

GOLDBERG: I got clearance from higher-ups here. I can name him.

BAIER: He goes by "good dog."

GOLDBERG: He's a great dog.

And the loser of the week, I was going to go with Katie Hill, but on the drive over I heard about Beto. And so if we have to contain it in a single seven-day period, this is it for Beto.

BAIER: All right, Jonathan, winner and loser?

SWAN: Pete Buttigieg is my winner. He is rising in the polls. He's looking more and more like the moderate alternative to Biden, and I expect that donors will start to migrate over. He had a very good Iowa poll.

And my loser is Joe Biden. He is slipping in the polls. But there is a figure in this latest "New York Times," it's when you go inside the poll that it's really concerning. Only two percent, two percent of respondents under the age of 45 say they currently plan to caucus for Biden. That is a big, big demographic problem for him.

BAIER: Not only that, he didn't receive a single Jonathan Swan chip.

SWAN: That might mean he could win. That's probably the best thing going for him, I'd say.

(LAUGHTER)

BAIER: All right, panel, thank you. Have a great weekend.

When we come back, "Notable Quotables."

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BAIER: Finally tonight, it's Friday. You know what that means. It means "Notable Quotables."

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Get out. When the evacuation order is given, don't wait one minute.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I stood on a hill with a dozen firemen who literally stopped flames about 100 yards from President and Mrs. Reagan's grave site.

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT: Baghdadi was vicious and violent, and he died in a vicious and violent way, as a coward running and crying.

KELLYANNE CONWAY, COUNSELOR TO PRESIDENT TRUMP: I would ask "The Washington Post," close your eyes and pretend that al-Baghdadi worked in the Trump White House, and then go rewrite your obituary. I bet you wouldn't be as kind.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I would walk before I would get on a 737 Max. I would walk.

SEN. TED CRUZ, R-TX: Mr. Muilenburg, how in the hell did nobody bring this to your attention?

PELOSI: It's a sad day because nobody comes to Congress to impeach a president of the United States, no one.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: If you took Speaker Pelosi and turned her upside-down and shook her, then Chairman Schiff would fall right out of her pocket, hit the floor.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Here's my challenge to Mr. Schiff. You want to be Ken Starr? Be Ken Starr. Come to the Judiciary Committee, be the first witness, and take every question asked of you.

(APPLAUSE)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The mistakes I made and the people I've hurt that led to this moment will haunt me for the rest of my life.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It's very spooky to some people in the White House.

(MUSIC)

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BAIER: One week covering Washington.

This weekend, tune in to "FOX News Sunday" where Chris Wallace will interview counselor to the president, Kellyanne Conway. I'll also be on Chris's panel for "FOX News Sunday." You can check your local listings for airtime.

And tomorrow marks the final day of a two-week, 12-city book tour. As I told you earlier this week, my new book, "Three Days at the Brink, FDR's Daring Gamble to Win World War II," debuted at number three on "The New York Times" bestseller list for combined print and e-books. Thank you for that.

Saturday, I'll be at the Dallas, at the Highland Park United Methodist Church at 11:00 a.m. The reason we're there is because it's a temporary home for Interabang books which lost their store to a tornado last week here in Dallas, really levelled the store. The staff worked around the clock to try to keep up with the orders and all of the in and out and basically a virtual store. Fortunately, no one was hurt. This book signing will go on thanks to the folks at the church, at the Highland Park United Methodist Church. Thank you very much for that effort.

And thank you for inviting us into your home. That is it for this "Special Report," fair, balanced, and still unafraid. I'll be back in the D.C. studio Monday, back with the panel sitting there next to me. "The Story" hosted by Martha MacCallum starts right now, with some extra time to spare, Martha.

Content and Programming Copyright 2019 Fox News Network, LLC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Copyright 2019 ASC Services II Media, LLC. All materials herein are protected by United States copyright law and may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, displayed, published or broadcast without the prior written permission of ASC Services II Media, LLC. You may not alter or remove any trademark, copyright or other notice from copies of the content.