Interview with a Congressman: Mario Diaz-Balart (R-FL)

On Wednesday, I had the opportunity to interview two Congressmen – Tom McClintock and Congressman Mario Diaz-Balart of Florida.  Diaz-Balart is a good deal more moderate than Tom McClintock in some areas, but he is firmly against this health care bill and seems to trend more toward fiscal conservatism and free markets than against.  Perhaps because of his ties to Cuba – his aunt was Fidel Castro’s first wife.

I asked him – should the health care bill pass – would a future majority GOP Congress be able to unravel it:

Laura Curtis: Right, OK. Well if it does pass, just imagine that if that if that does unfortunately happen it’s not going to take effect until 2013.  So if and obviously it’s a big if the GOP could take Congress back by the 2010 and 2012 elections is there anything that could be done at that point to unravel it?

Congressman Diaz-Balart: One of the concerns that many of us have here in Congress is the fact that a lot of this might be irreversible.  Why do I say that?  Because whatever they are able to pass they did have 60 votes on the side.  It would require 60 votes to unravel.

And that’s you know that’s a very high difficult threshold to reach, number one.  Number two is I’m convinced that one of the reasons ((inaudible)) for this government, what they call a public option which is a nicer word for saying a government controlled healthcare system, is that once you have you know thousands or millions of people in this entitlement program how do you get rid of it?

You know Speaker Pelosi she needs to be willing to sacrifice a huge number of her House members in order to get that part of the bill done.  I think it’s because she believes that this is irreversible and I don’t know if it’s totally irreversible.  But it’s clearly very difficult, if not impossible, to reverse which is why the battle is now

He makes a good point – a few decades ago some entitlements were created as a basic social safety net.  Since then, those entitlements have grown exponentially in both scope of services and price.  People cling tenaciously to what they think they are owed by society at large, and if healthcare becomes an entitlement, there is unlikely to be much political will in the future to give it up.  At least until the wheels come off, as they are doing in the UK and Canada.

I asked him about a source of frustration for many conservatives – why hasn’t the GOP been more vocal about the alternatives for health care reform?

There are a number of alternatives, dozens and dozens of alternatives. Some are really comprehensive, others are more of a part-by-part piecemeal approach but there are dozens of alternatives out there, by the way, that don’t raise taxes.

That would not create new entitlements, that would not burden our children and our grand children with additional debt and deficits.  That would actually keep and improve the quality of the healthcare.

It would actually give portability that would allow people to purchase health insurance across state lines ((inaudible)) that would allow for associations and groups to get together to increase their purchasing power, et cetera, et cetera.  I mean there are a number of these alternatives.

Unfortunately the so-called mainstream media refuses to even acknowledge that they exist.  As if the only bills that have been filed were the Pelosi and these alternatives.  Well that’s not true, you’re absolutely, there are a number of alternatives.  You know why that coverage isn’t out there you know you’d have to ask the mainstream media.

However, they are there.  We’ve been talking about those alternatives.  They’ve been filed for a long, long time.  It is true that and again you know I’m not in the business of usually defending the mainstream media but let me try to attempt it here.  It is true that Speaker Pelosi has not allowed these alternatives to get a hearing, to be discussed, debated in committee.

So in that sense they have not been able to move forward because Speaker Pelosi who controls the agenda has refused to allow it to happen.  But they’re out there and we’ve been talking about them and even though the mainstream media and those refuse to acknowledge that they’re out there the American people are much wiser than some would like to give them credit for.

Since we spoke, the GOP has rolled out quite a bit of information, with a particular focus on alternative media.  It’s as though something in the GOP collective brain finally “clicked” and they’ve realized that if they want a fair shot at getting their message out, they’re going to have to make an end run around the old media.  These interviews are nothing approaching what I would call journalism – but I do not feel they are any more biased than the travesties conducted by Katie Couric and the rest of the “respectable” press.   What they do, I also do not call journalism.  The difference is, bloggers freely admit our biases and invite readers to take them into account.

Additionally, it is starting to look as though the GOP is getting the message on fiscal conservatism, and that is very welcome news.

You can read the transcript here.