Clyburn speaks on Haiti, health care

EDITOR'S NOTE: U.S. House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn, D-S.C., is leading the House's response to the Haitian earthquake and is part of the Democratic leadership team trying to plot Congress' next steps with health care reform. He spoke Thursday with reporter Robert Behre of The Post and Courier.

P&C: What is your role in the House helping the situation in Haiti?

Clyburn: "Yesterday we passed legislation here to allow individuals to deduct on their 2009 taxes any contributions they make to Haiti relief between now and Feb. 28. ... We will be looking at other legislation next week."

P&C: What are your thoughts on the United States' role in Haiti long-term, after this humanitarian crisis passes?

Clyburn: "We ought to forgive every dime of the debt that they owe. ... That to me would be huge. Secondly, I think that there needs to be a real serious effort to meet the obligations we've got under good-neighbor policies that we often talk about but don't always live by. There are a lot of things we can do to help them stand their country back up. The judicial system needs to be worked on. The infrastructure needs to be stood back up. There's just a lot of stuff."

P&C: What are your greatest concerns about the Haitian situation going forward?

Clyburn: "I'm hopeful that going forward, people will take a hard look at the history of this effort and then really take a hard look at the interrelationships that exist between Haiti and the United States of America. ... The first settler of Chicago was a Haitian. ... Most people know that Haiti has been penalized over the years by other nations, by France, especially for the slave revolt that took place down there. They were punished very forcibly up until a few years ago."

P&C: Is that attitude changing?

Clyburn: "I sense some people, for the first time, are owning up to the fact that our history in Haiti is not anything to be proud of and this is a good opportunity for us to shed the weight of all of that and move forward."

P&C: How would you describe the impact of Tuesday's election of Republican Senate candidate Scott Brown in Massachusetts as far as passing a health care bill?

Clyburn: "If you're asking me whether or not it got my attention, yes it did. Whether or not it surprised me, no it didn't. I have been saying for a long time that our whole pursuit of health care reform has gotten too legislative-centered. ... People are not clear what we're doing."

P&C: What are you hearing from the House Democrats' conservative Blue Dog caucus?

Clyburn: "I think it was summed up in a meeting yesterday that said we're damned if we do and we're damned if we don't, but I think we're more damned if we don't."

P&C: What do you expect to happen next?

Clyburn: "I expect for us to get a bill done and sequenced in such a way that the House and Senate members would be comfortable in voting for it. I've said from Day One that the magic number for health care reform (in the U.S. Senate) was not 60, but 50. ... I've also said I didn't think we would get everything we want in this bill, but we need to lay a good solid foundation."

P&C: What changes, if any, to the health care bill do you expect will occur because of Tuesday's election?

Clyburn: "There are a lot of things in the Senate-passed plan that are totally unacceptable to the House. This Nelson amendment (giving Nebraska special Medicaid money), that's totally unacceptable to the House. We don't need (S.C. Attorney General) Henry McMaster to tell us that. ... Every state is going to be treated the same way if House members are going to vote for it. House members have a real serious problems with taxing these so-called 'Cadillac plans.' ... People are very upset with that sort of thing, (including) a $300 million carve-out for Louisiana. All these things are very insulting to the House because the House didn't do any of that. They didn't put any kind of special stuff in there for anybody, so that's why they're going to be very hard-nosed about this."

P&C: How will the fate of health care reform affect the rest of the president's agenda?

Clyburn: "We don't know. We'll just have to see where we go from here. I do feel we are going to get a bill passed, and we'll do it from simple majority rule instead of a super majority rule."