July 17 (Bloomberg) -- The Senate can still pass a health-
care overhaul with some Republican support by August even with
the “wacky” cost estimates by the Congressional Budget Office,
Senator Charles Schumer said.
Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus thinks his
panel can draft a bill by July 21 or 22, Schumer, the No. 3
Democrat in the Senate, said in an interview with Bloomberg
Television’s “Political Capital with Al Hunt,” airing today.
“Our preference far and away is for a bipartisan bill,”
he said. “If we can’t come to a bipartisan agreement, the
Finance Committee will report out a Democratic bill.”
Schumer, of New York, said the CBO’s assessment that
health-care costs would rise doesn’t take into account savings
from preventive care and efficiencies in the system.
“CBO’s scoring is a little bit wacky,” Schumer said of
the nonpartisan agency’s estimates. “They are not quite fair
because they don’t measure the cost savings down the road, just
the immediate spending.”
Still, he said, lawmakers would have “to live by” the
CBO’s calculations, “and so we’re going to have to be tougher
on costs and I think in the Senate we will be.”
Schumer rejected calls by the CBO and Baucus to cap the
amount of employer-provided health insurance that’s excluded
from taxes.
Middle Class
“To really get revenues out of that, you have to go deeply
down into the middle class,” Schumer, 58, said.
Most Democrats and Republicans oppose it and President
Barack Obama “is strongly against it,” Schumer said.
Schumer said Obama’s use of an August deadline for drafting
health-care overhaul legislation is “very, very important” for
maintaining momentum for the president’s top domestic priority.
“Working under a deadline on something difficult helps get
something done, and we spent a lot of time on this,” Schumer
said. “It’s not that we started two weeks ago, we started
three, four months ago.”
He said lawmakers can meet the deadline and still address
concerns from senators such as Olympia Snowe, a senior
Republican on the finance panel and a participant in compromise
talks, who has urged patience.
Obama met with Democratic leaders at the White House July
13 to press both chambers to pass health-care overhaul, his top
domestic priority, before lawmakers leave Washington for their
August recess. The House is on track to meet the deadline, but
eight hours of talks yesterday by Baucus’s committee came up
short of an accord.
Insurer Fees
Schumer said he is working on a mechanism to prevent
insurers from passing on to consumers as much as $100 billion in
fees that he’s proposing to help offset the costs of health-care
legislation.
“We think it’s doable,” he said, adding that the nation’s
top insurers have experienced soaring profits in recent years.
Turning to the U.S. economy, Schumer praised Federal
Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke and said he wouldn’t be
displeased to see him reappointed to another term. He said
Bernanke has the confidence of the economic community.
“He’s steady, he’s calm, he’s knowledgeable,” Schumer
said.
On another financial matter, he said the administration
needs to establish a “lifeline” to small businesses that may
be affected as CIT Group Inc., the 101-year-old commercial
lender, faces bankruptcy. Government regulators declined this
week to rescue the company.
CIT Fallout
“‘It’s not whether CIT goes under or not,” Schumer said.
Thousands of small businesses “are blameless and
depend on CIT.”
He said he isn’t sure whether he agrees with the
Obama administration’s decision not to give CIT financial aid.
CIT, which finances about 1 million businesses from Dunkin’
Brands Inc. to Eddie Bauer Holdings Inc., is in talks with
potential lenders after it didn’t get government help.
“I don’t know the details inside so I could say yes
or no,” he said. “CIT is hardly blameless. They had a great
business, you know. They funded lots of small businesses, made a
profit, and then sometime I guess 2004, 2005, started going into
subprimes like everyone else.”
Schumer also reiterated that Judge Sonia Sotomayor will
easily win Senate approval to a seat on the U.S. Supreme
Court, with roughly half of the Senate’s 40 Republicans
joining Democrats in her favor.
Chief Justice John Roberts received 78 votes when he was
confirmed in 2005, and Schumer said Sotomayor will probably see
a similar level of support after her confirmation hearings
before the Senate Judiciary Committee this week.
Americans watching the televised hearings “liked her very
much,” Schumer said. “There are lots of Republicans who don’t
agree with her specifically,” he said, who “are going to say
maybe we should vote for her.”
To contact the reporter on this story:
Laura Litvan in Washington at
llitvan@bloomberg.net .