questions in the minds of the american people. i think the combination of the insurance industry on the outside and majority of the republicans on the inside proved to be too much to overcome. thank you, all, very much. [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2017] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] have a writtenll statement. i listen to the majority leader and i think he announced what many of us have known for some time. whenss starting back congress and gephardt and senator mitchell went down to the white house several weeks ago to tell them their plan was dead. so, i do not know what happened. , crested not have the votes for democrats did not have the votes for it. senator mitchell blames publicans for everything except crash intone that the white house. and that may come yet. in any event, i've said weeks

ago that i was prepared to sit down with the leadership and work out a bill. that was rejected. i do not think it comes as any surprise to anyone in the media or the american people that health care for this year is behind us. it is a matter of time. and there must've been for five members who had last-minute bills that they would've liked to have worked on these last few much but there is just not time to do that. i do not think any plan that anyone tries to cobble together -- i think the majority leader realize that can plus, we only have 10 days before adjournment. i think the democrats have been looking at numbers around the country. some are inches to get home. and suddenly reelection has surpassed any other party -- some are anxious to get home. i think there may be some who are certainly disappointed with the health care debate. i think a lot went right in the past year. i know there has been a lot of

handwringing in the liberal press and the white house of what went wrong. right for a change. that is how democracy works or you tell the american what is in a product and they decide whether or not they're going to buy in. 86-14.tate fair, 86%, said to not do anything this year. we are fairly reasonable people in the midwest, and these are ranchers and farmers on working people who came to the state fair. the american people asked us to slow down. now we will have maybe another test on november 8. maybe the american people will give us further guidance and all of these elections across the country. i think the main thing american people are concerned about, a bill that calls for more government control. they do not want it. what they want is a bill that preserves quality choice and jobs and addresses the issue of cost. and i do not think these last-minute blame games will

advance the debate. there will not be any debate. and i do not think they will sell with the american people. i think many americans are thankful for republican, and in some cases democrats, stood up and asked tough questions. that the administered and could not answer. the liberals could not answer, talking about choice and quality of protection against what could've been an overdose of government control. fact, it was overwhelming consensus on the part of the american people to put on the brakes. saw democracy we in action. that is the way it's supposed to work. all of the talk about gridlock longilibusters, wasn't too ago we had the 1990 two elections. the democrats had a majority. they do not have to bring up any president bush's economic stimulus package. and no one deemed that gridlock. that was just the end of the year and we could not do everything.

my view is we are prepared to, as we have been in the past, i do not think any bill had as much support as the bill packwood plan in the senate. democrats never headphones for their plan, any plan. and whether it is a mainstream plan order own plan, the clinton or the initial plans or any variations-- there is a better understanding and maybe after the election we can come back and it will be on the top of the agenda as i said last week on the senate floor. when congress reconvenes, regardless of what the numbers may be in the senate. i'd be happy to answer questions. your own shifty view away from universal coverage, which are described on the floor, how much was that affected by a presidential ambition? sen. mitchell: dole: i do not see any

problem with anybody having coverage. i have said that it's recently as yesterday in new hampshire. but i think many of us shift. i was for the individual mandate. so were other senators. i think we had four or five votes for individual man tates on the finance committee. you come back and say, we can't do that my view is, i don't object to everybody having coverage, it's what is it going to cost, how are you going to get there? >> you say the american people aren't buying it. opinion polls say 70% to 0% of the american people did want universal coverage. sen. dole: but when you ask the other question, how much are you willing to pay? my own view is we never had in a lot of the press the substance. it was always process. is there going to be a filibuster? are the band-aids going to pass?

those are the only two things i remember that have been -- some did a lot of in depth stories but a lot of it has been process. i think the american people are more concerned absubstance. we're prepared as we have been, not this year, it's over. as senator mitchell just said, i think he's known that for some time. i think we stayed here a couple of weeks in august knowing that nothing was going to happen. but we'll see what happens next year. hopefully there'll be a change in management here and we'll be able to put together a good package. >> did you hear senator packwood say we killed health reform, we have to make sure our fingerprints are not on it and do you think that's true? that the republicans killed health reform? sen. dole: he'll be up here in a minute. >> do you think republicans killed health reform this year? sen. dole: no. we listened to the american people. there are not enough republicans to kill anything around here.

we do the best we can. we're one of the, you know, we're not protected under the endangered species act but we're looking to expand and protect minorities like our. my view is the american people, the majority of the american people, democrats, republicans, independent, said not this year. we don't want all this government, we don't want everything else. we're not going to be defensive about that we responded to the american people. it's all right for others to come up here and blame the republicans, that'll probably be pursued by some in the media, but we responded to the american people. bob packwood will be here in a minute. we think we responded to what they wanted. what they didn't want was a big, ig bureaucracy, budgets, mandates on small plose, i think we were fairly successful, including some democrats who joined us. there was never a time in this

debate when any democrat bill had a majority, let alone 60 votes. they never had 50 votes. >> senator mitchell said it's without precedent in the senate for there to be fill bust thornse procedural question of going to conference on a bill already passed in the senate. do you think he's accurate? and why -- if so, why are you breaking this precedent? sen. dole: we break precedent every day around here. we don't standstill. if we were in control we'd write a campaign finance bill that helped our party. let's be honest about it. you're not going to buy onto that spin the democrats are putting on. they've written a campaign finance bill to help perpetuate democratic control. it doesn't take any rocket scientist to figure that out. we'd to the same. we want to wait until next year. i still think the answer is i said in a senate speech, on campaign reform, it's never

going to happen if you've got one party in charge, republican or democratic party, you need a bipartisan, this is one time where you need a bipartisan commission and then you work out somewhere where you have to vote it up or down. i'd be prepared to work on that basis for real reform. but this isn't real reform. >> it is voted up or down. they voted a version up. sen. dole: then he added public financing and other things the american people aren't prepared to do. >> in the debate this year, we when from, the president has a mandate, people drifted to a subsidy approach. sen. dole: even ours was very expensive. >> that's what i want to ask you. did you back away from your bill because it's too costly, when you come back next year, would you support a subsidy approach or at this point are you down to just a sort of insurance market reform approach to health care? sen. dole: down or up?

>> well, down. i mean you can play games. the word -- you know where clinton is do you think that there will be support after the election for some subsidy approach or is this -- has this year taught you that any subsidy approach at this point is too costly and people won't buy it? sen. dole: let's wait until after the election to see what happens, plus there are a lot of changes happening on their own without congress interveengs. but for those in the media who bought on to the clinton health care plan, it's a bitter defeat and disappointment for "the new york times" and others. but you'll get over it. there'll be others. >> the lobbying and gift bill and the compliance bill that came out of governmental affairs last week have you had a chance to review those? sen. dole: not really. >> do they have a chance to pass? sen. dole: i don't know. i talked to senator mitchell, he's given me a list of things he'd like to finish this year.

obviously obviously the appropriations bills. beyond that, the only other there's is gas, opposition billing up to superfund just as there was to telecommunications. i think as democrats look at polls around the country, many want to go home. some want to stay here because it feels safer here but others want to go home. and we're prepared for them to go today. we can't go today but soon. >> when you first started talking about the idea of a summit, you said one of the reasons was a summit -- a summit with the four leaders, you said one of the reasons that you thought about that was that four or five members could filibuster and obstruct any significant debate. since it was republicans on health care that were doing that at the time a lot of us figured that's who you were talking

about. did you ever feel constrained by your more conservative colleagues from pushing what you y studied. prepared to go, but he said it would be to monarchical. i didn't suggest we'd go in there, the four of us, without consulting our colleagues. that was not even considered by the democrats. and -- >> i'm not asking about the summit idea. in a larger sense did you feel constrained as minority leader from -- by your more conservative colleagues who were the ones going out and threatening filibusters from actually negotiating? sen. dole: it takes 41 to filibuster effectively. >> there was a lot of talk by

democrats that members had aed health care plans for themselves that was better than what people had. do you think most people ought to get the kind of health insurance that you get? sen. dole: we provided in our bill that you could buy into the federal plan. >> that bill isn't going anywhere. sen. dole: but we offered it. >> when does the partisan bickering end? when the bush administration finished, george mitchell stood in the way of a lot of things president bush wanted to do. now you seem to be standing in the way of some of the things mitchell would like to get done. when does it end? if you take over next time, they'll stand in front of you. when does it ever end, when do you come together? sen. dole: i don't know where i'm -- what i'm standing in the way of. is there something i'm standing in the way of?

>> campaign reform or -- sen. dole: that's not campaign reform. >> california desert. sen. dole: i voted for cloture. >> why are we going through this 30-hour nonsense? >> you indicated the lobbying form and gift ban and the -- and the congressional compliance bill also might be blocked. sen. dole: i don't know anybody blocking those things. i don't know if you had a meeting up here. i just got to town, got to leave again. >> but you've been sort of ambivalent and equivocative about whether you're going to allow them to come up. sen. dole: we always tie to be ambivalent. >> why? when we first came in here you said you should listen to voters and they said they want lobbying reform and congressional

compliance. sen. dole: i think maybe they have. i told senator mitch olen friday, what we would try to do is work at an agreement with him. we trust each other, we know we have to bring this session to a close. you don't always get everything you want. those, i think that's on the list. both of those things. we have to figure out when we can get a time agreement. everybody knows it takes just one or two senators now to block most anything. >> on your list? sen. dole: i don't totally agree with them but i'm not going to block with those. >> george mitchell made a big teal that republicans were the ones who killed health care reform. do you think this will have any negative fallout whatsoever in the elections? sen. dole: i'm reminded of a peace i saw in "the washington post" last week that talked about congressional coverage. 62% of the time republics are pbs as negative, republicans are

on -- democrats are on as positive. we have a problem about how it's portrayed. i'm going to read that book, it sounds like it should be a bestseller among republicans. but my view is it's not going to sell. i didn't know there was a whip check. i didn't make a whip check on cloture. i don't think they made a whip check on my side of the aisle. whether they had 60 votes on my side of the aisle, i don't know. they couldn't come together. the they couldn't agree. a lot of people running around the last few days with bills they can't get agreement on. my view is, for all the right reasons the health care bill didn't make it. the right reasons being the american people said slow down, let's get it right. we didn't get it right. >> for a solid week, senator coverdell and others saying the american people didn't know what was in the bill. it was too big, too heavy,

nobody knows what's in it. now you're saying the american people know what's in it and you listen to them. which is it? sen. dole: two things. if you walk into a drugstore and you read the label and don't understand the product you're not going to buy it. so a lot of people don't understand it, they voted no the people who did understand it thought it was too complicated. i think you've got two categories. and some people who understood it were for it but not very many. even people who might have benefited were afraid of the federal government. so i think senator coverdell and others who had the lead role in sort of the daily meetings understood precisely where they were coming from. >> about the issue of subsidies again, most health care providers believe there's going to be a track at health care preduck, slowing the growth of medicare and medicaid. clearly people like senator harkin want the savings to go to subsidize insurance for kid or

expand health care coverage. there's going to be a pool of money going for expanding coverage or -- which are are you for? sen. dole: i think i'll wait and see what he has in mind. these last minute, it's like a four-slice toaster, they're popping up all over the place. everybody has a last-minute health care plan. >> what about ideas to make it easier for states to enact their own reforms, how do you feel about that? sen. dole: the republican governors and the governors' association, we're trying to work with the governors to make it easier for them. there are a lot of concerns they had. let me turn it over, i don't know has packwood arrived? >> c-span, where history unfolds daily. in 1979, c-span was created as a public service by america's cable television companies. and is brought to you today by your cable or satellite

provider. >> just six miles from the chico state university campus is the university's farm. come with us as we learn more about the history of agriculture here in the area and how the farm is helping students get hands on experience. agriculture in california in general is extremely important. there's -- it's the number one industry in california yet and we're the number one state in the nation in terms of agriculture. there's 23 c.s.u. campuses, only four have agriculture. chico represents the northern part of the state but we draw students from all over california to get experience in agriculture itself. chico, the region, started primarily when the gold rush, 1850's. and the first people here after