Health Care Reform on Life Support

Tuesday, December 08, 2009
Fox News

Dick Morris

This is a rush transcript from "Hannity," December 7, 2009. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.

SEAN HANNITY, HOST: President Barack Obama took a break from his normal weekend golf routine on Saturday to attend a rare meeting with Senate Democrats on Capitol Hill, but it appears the closed door pep rally was not enough to win over members of his own party on the issue of federal funding for abortion.

And that brings us to our headline tonight, "Life Support." Now in a move that has outraged his fellow Democrats, Ben Nelson has filed an amendment to the Senate health care bill that would prohibit taxpayer dollars from funding abortions.

Now Pennsylvania Democrat Bob Casey and eight Republicans co-sponsored the measure which was modeled after the Stupak Amendment in the House. Now a vote on this proposal could take place as early as tomorrow.

Democrats claim that they will be able to defeat the anti-abortion amendment but doing so could reportedly cost them Ben Nelson's vote on the final legislation. You talk about a meltdown.

Joining us now is the author of The New York Times bestseller "Catastrophe", a great Christmas gift, by the way, Fox News contributor, the one and only, Dick Morris.

Dick, good to see you. Could abortion be what kills this?

DICK MORRIS, "CATASTROPHE" AUTHOR: Well, eventually, yes. Not right now. The Democrats are going to somehow or other pass this in the Senate. The problem is, the goal is to make them pass a bill that can't pass the House. And then to get the constituency so inflamed over it the compromise becomes impossible.

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HANNITY: Yes.

MORRIS: And that's the context of this vote tomorrow. Because if the anti-abortion constituencies go completely berserk over this bill because the Stupak Amendment fails in the Senate, then you really have a chance that some of these conservatives might have a hard time supporting it.
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Look, this bill will be defeated, in my judgment, if it is in the conference committee where the liberals will be unable to give up on things like public option, the conservatives will not give up on things like abortion.

HANNITY: Wait a second. Stop one second. Why do you think in conference? Blanche Lincoln is going to go for this. Ben Nelson is going to go for this. Mary Landrieu is going to go for this, you know, all the — Evan Bayh will go for this?

MORRIS: We have a good chance at each of those votes . What is most likely going to happen is that Reid will give them anything they want in the Senate bill, give them anything, because he knows he'll gut it in conference.

HANNITY: A few hundred million dollars?

MORRIS: Not money, that he 's already tried.

HANNITY: Yes.

MORRIS: I'm talking about changing the provisions, no public option, a trigger, all kinds of stuff to make it good for them. Knowing that he'll gut that stuff in the conference committee. But if Reid passes a bill in the Senate that can't pass the House, all that's happening is Obama is postponing the day of reckoning.

And while he's doing that, the sand is running out on this thing. We have an add-up on my site, DickMorris.com, where we have Katie talking to Obamacare and Katie is a kid in her 20s and she says, what's this about $1,000 fine if I can't — if I don't have health insurance? And he says, well, it's good for you, it will teach you responsibility.

And then she says, and what about 12 percent of my income I have to pay? And the guy says, shared sacrifice. And then Katie says, and what's this jail stuff? And the guy says, consider it tough love.

Now that ad eroded about 30 points of under 30 vote support in the three states we've run it.

HANNITY: Pretty amazing.

MORRIS: You have the young people running out on this bill in droves.

HANNITY: And so are the old people because Medicare.

MORRIS: Old people have been against it from the summer.

HANNITY: Almost from the get-go. All right, let me ask you, there are some conservatives that are really unhappy with the way the Republicans are managing this bill in the Senate. The headline, our friend, Eric Erickson at Red State, you know, Senate Republicans fiddle while America burns.

In other words, they feel like by going through this amendment process and not just outright opposing this thing, that they're making a strategic error, you agree with that?

MORRIS: No. No. I think it was very important to put Nelson of Florida, Florida, on the record voting against eliminating the Medicare cuts.

HANNITY: Yes.

MORRIS: When the senator from Florida votes for $500 billion of Medicare cuts, you know that he's signing his own death warrant. And if there was a general bill, he could say oh, I opposed that provision. But when McCain said, OK, Nelson, are you for this or against it? And the senator from Florida endorses half a trillion of cuts in Medicare.

HANNITY: Smart move.

MORRIS: Yes.

HANNITY: All right. Now we're going to get into it in a second and Karl Rove is going to join us, and we're going to talk about Harry Reid compares Obamacare critics to slavery, although I'll save that for Karl. But now we've got this Copenhagen issue. Now in light of this big massive Climate Gate fraud and all these e-mails that evolved, you know, even with all of that — you've got all the world socialists and globalists meeting in Copenhagen.

Here's the question, are all the conspiracy theorists that were are saying they want a one-world government and they want to tax a rich country like America, does it turn out that they're right?

MORRIS: Yes, you know, I mean I'm waiting for the black helicopters. I mean.

HANNITY: But you're saying they're right?

MORRIS: No, there's substance to it. Let me give you a statistic that I just unearthed that's dangerous to talk to me when my wife and I are writing a new book but I'm researching it. Everybody said the Kyoto accords, 1991 or 1993, were an impossible target to set, we could never reach them.

Well, under Kyoto, the United States has to lower its carbon emissions from 6,000 to 4,700. You know where they're at now? 5,400. We're halfway to meeting the Kyoto without — no government, free market, no taxes, no cap-and-trade, and that's the worst news the environmentalists have ever had because they want to use this as an excuse to regulate, and here with the free market, we're about to reach the goals.

HANNITY: Let me ask you a question about Democratic corruption. Like for example, we have Max Baucus over the weekend, you know — by the way, folks, he nominated his girlfriend to be a U.S. attorney in his home state. Of course only on the merits.

MORRIS: Yes, right.

HANNITY: That's what he says. But there's been a lot of Democratic corruption. Corruption hurt the Republicans in 2006.

MORRIS: Yes.

HANNITY: A lot of people would point at the Mark Foley scandal and say, you know, that was a defining moment.

MORRIS: Yes.

HANNITY: You know, one congressman with $100,000 in his freezer, and we can go through the whole list of Democrats, we've discussed all of them.

MORRIS: Yes.

HANNITY: Is corruption for the Democratic Party — when you look at their low poll numbers, generic ballot, right track, wrong track — has the Democratic Party lost their moral base?

MORRIS: Oh yes, I think they're well in the process of doing it. And it relates, also, to the difference in the way these things are punished. Wolfowitz, the president's nominee to head the World Bank was forced to resign because he recommended his girlfriend for a job in the State Department.

Baucus recommends his girlfriend for a U.S. attorney position and nothing happens. Who is the head of the Ways and Means Committee now? Charlie Rangel. He's writing our tax code. He forgot to declare a house in the Caribbean. It slipped his mind that he had four apartments. And he's only allowed to have one under the rent law.

HANNITY: Dick.

MORRIS: All slipped his mind. He's writing our tax code. So that you have these guys who never get punished. Chris Dodd is carrying the health care bill, one free house too many.

HANNITY: A friend of Angelo. By the way, he's got houses, we're talking about here and in Ireland.

MORRIS: For which he doesn't pay for. He has.

HANNITY: That was a good deal.

MORRIS: The person — we said in "Catastrophe" the guy who paid for the house in Ireland got $57 million in stimulus money.

HANNITY: Unbelievable. You really think that you can get to 10 — I'll ask Karl Rove about this. You think that 10 senators can lose?

MORRIS: Yes.

HANNITY: Democratic senators.

MORRIS: I think you have low-hanging fruit, Dodd, Specter, Burris, Colorado, Arkansas, and Nevada. And Delaware. Seven low-hanging fruit.

HANNITY: Then you got California.

MORRIS: Then you have Gillibrand who is vulnerable, there just needs to be an opponent. Dorgan who is vulnerable. Just have to get Hoeven to run for that they could walk into the Senate. And then you have Boxer, Murray and Widen out on the coast. And the possibility that Lou Dobbs who used to work for some TV station.

HANNITY: New Jersey.

MORRIS: . might run against Menendez.

HANNITY: Can Dobbs win?

MORRIS: Well, for the first time I'm backing him for a higher ratings.

(LAUGHTER)

HANNITY: I'm going to tell him you said that. All right, Dick Morris, appreciate you being here.

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