By John Fredericks / Staff

One thing is certain about Georgia’s senior U.S. Senator Saxby Chambliss (R): he is is a man of his convictions, not likely to be swayed by political winds, opinion polls, or populist agendas. Agree with him or not, he is the closest thing Senate Republicans have to a true statesman. He has taken several unpopular stands that seriously jeopardized his re-election bid in 2008.

As a result, he vaulted to the epicenter of several of the most dramatic events affecting the nation in the last two years. First, he supported George W. Bush’s ill-fated illegal immigration plan, and got booed off the stage at the 2007 Georgia GOP convention in Savannah. Next, he backed Bush’s TARP bank-bailout plan last summer, and was vilified by conservatives on talk radio for months, forcing him into a bitter run-off election battle with Democrat Jim Martin in December. Finally, he became the last man standing for Senate Republicans to stop Democrats from amassing a 60-vote filibuster majority after the last November’s election, and had the eyes of the nation following his four-week run-off campaign like a reality show. Since then, the Democrats picked up two more seats -– comedian turned candidate Al Franken (D) eventually defeated incumbent Norm Coleman (R) in the Minnesota courts and turncoat PA. Senator Arlen Spector (was R, now D) switched parties to avoid a sure primary defeat at the hands of a conservative opponent.

In an interview with the Beacon on Friday, Chambliss was candid in both his assessment of President Obama’s Wednesday night health care speech and the prospects for passage or compromise.

On the President’s speech, Chambliss said, tacitly, “I don’t think that speech was his best moment.”

“It’s past time that the president detailed clearly the type of health care reforms he envisions. The American people, to whom this debate is highly personal, deserve nothing less,” Chambliss, stated. “We can’t afford to get this wrong. We can’t afford arbitrary deadlines. We need meaningful reform, not reform for reform’s sake.”

Chambliss maintained that a better approach would involve “cutting costs by encouraging individuals to live healthier lifestyles and discouraging junk lawsuits and the practice of defensive medicine that drives up medical bills. We also need insurance reform, so that Americans with pre-existing conditions won’t be penalized, and so those who change or lose their jobs will be able to take their health insurance with them.“

“Most importantly, we shouldn’t be raiding seniors’ Medicare to pay for billions of dollars in new government spending,” he added. “Americans need and deserve greater access to health insurance. But we need to fix what’s not working in a way that doesn’t raise taxes or increase costs for the millions of families who like their present coverage.”

Q AND A WITH SENATOR CHAMBLISS ON HEALTH CARE REFORM

Q: Senator, do you ultimately see a compromise coming out of the Senate that you would support as a conservative?

Chambliss: John, if I had to say right now, I would say no. This is based on the fact that the Democrats haven’t been willing to make real concessions on issues that I think are critically important, such as tort reform.
I think we need meaningful competition in the marketplace that will help drive the cost of healthcare down and also drive health insurance costs down, like being able to sell health insurance across state lines.
Things like incentives for individuals for preventive healthcare…those types of issues that are a major cause of health care issues here in America have to be aggressively addressed.

Q:  What has been the Democrat’s reaction to your recommendations?

Chambliss: The Democrats have not shown any indication of wanting to accept these types of measures on this bill. So if I had to say right now, I would say no, they are not willing to compromise. However, I am still very hopeful because this is an opportunity to really make major changes in the healthcare industry which would be positive.

Q: So what is the Chambliss plan?

Chambliss: Delivery of services is one issue, then you have the issue of how you pay for it. There are going to be some added costs even under conservative supported plans. But as I told the President when I was at the White House a couple months ago, when he asked me if I would support a tax increase to pay for his plan, I said, ‘Mr. President I don’t believe I can or imagine that I ever will. And so my answer is to you an unequivocal no.’ I told him there are ways to do it without raising taxes.

He talked about tax credits in his speech: that sounds good but I want to see it on paper. The plan that I have supported does include tax credits for individuals and whether you have an income or not we can give tax credits to people to allow them to buy insurance policies. This can be paid for without raising taxes.

Q: So how did President Obama react to you, when you said you couldn’t support a tax increase unequivocally?

Chambliss: He said, “That’s what I thought.” And I said, ‘Well Mr. President, you need to consider our proposals and allow tax credits and tax deductions.’ At that point and time he had not been willing to do so, now he apparently is giving some consideration to tax credits, but I don’t know what he’s talking about so we will have to see.

Q: President Obama has never mentioned a tax increase in any speech or press release or anything he’s put out to the public or the media to pay for his health proposals, so why would he mention that to the senior senator from Georgia?

Chambliss: Unless that’s what he ultimately intends to do [raise taxes to pay for the plan], you’re right. And you know, they kind of hide the tax increases, by calling them fees on the insurance companies or proposing to take $550 billion out of Medicare savings and using that to pay for the plan.

Q: How can Medicare sustain cuts like that?

Chambliss: It can’t. Medicare is going broke in 2017. The bipartisan commission in March of this year has told us that. We have been told that we are going to be spending more money than we take in, so how are we going to take an additional $550 billion out of Medicare? This is how: he will either have to raise taxes or cut benefits. So there are a lot of hidden tax increases in there, too, John, that they are not being upfront about.

Q: If you had your way, how would this whole debate play out?

Chambliss: I think what makes the most sense, is to let this whole thing play out in increments. Let’s take the things that we do agree on and let’s make sure we put in measures that will cover the uninsured out there today and build in the proper incentives to reduce costs. There are approximately 14 million people out of 47 million today who are considered uninsured, but have insurance available to them through Medicare or through some S-chip program in their respective states. We have a number of individuals, young, healthy individuals, who have insurance available to them through their employers but they choose not to take it.

First, we need to educate those people and have them freely choose to sign up for the available coverage.

Second, we need to provide incentives to people that have health insurance available to them to go out and get the coverage. We need to make sure that we can cover preexisting conditions.

Once this is done, the number of truly uninsurable Americans drops to eight million, a much more manageable number.

Editor’s Note: Don’t miss Sen. Johnny Isakson (R-GA) on The Beacon’s North Fulton News show Sunday at 11:30 a.m. on WGKA-Radio 920 AM.