Former Speak of the House Newt Gingrich tells The Brody File that he believes Democrats are going to try and pass a radical healthcare bill that will only need the votes of 50 Senate Democrats and then use Vice-President Joe Biden as the tie-breaking vote.
(Constitutional alert: the Vice-President is also the President of the Senate and is the tie-breaking vote.)
Gingrich explains below. Watch the clip and read the transcription.
Brody: What do you think is eventually going to happen in this healthcare situation? It’s going to go to conference right and then what happens?
Gingrich: "I don’t know. I think that the Socialist wing of the Democratic Party is going to do everything it can to get big government and to get a very radical health bill and that means that people like Henry Waxman and Nancy Pelosi are going to be in the conference trying to push this bill as far to the left as possible.
I think they’re going to adopt a 50 vote plus Biden strategy where they try to figure out what is the most radical bill they can get 50 Democrats to vote for, give up 10 and then have Biden be the deciding vote.
They would rather have a narrow margin and get a genuinely socialist bill than have a big margin and get a practical or moderate bill and I think anybody who thinks that the Senate is not going to get rolled by the President and Speaker Pelosi is just kidding themselves."
Brody: You think this public option would be in some sort of final bill?
Gingrich: They’ll be some form. I mean it may be you don’t get to it until 2014 or you don’t do this or you don’t do that but then frankly they’re going to do everything they can to rig the game to make sure you get to it so it’s not very comforting.
The one big problem they may have is that most of this bill doesn’t go into effect until 2013 and that says to me that one of the major positions of 2012 will be repeal the bill and I think you’ll see a very strong effort to repeal the bill probably starting in the campaign of 2010."
Watch more of my interview with Gingrich here:
Newt Gingrich: Radical Democrats Would Rather Have No Healthcare Reform Than Pro-Life Provision in Bill
Newt Gingrich and George Washington
Newt Gingrich Talks About his Catholicism
Newt Gingrich Says Obama Administration Worse than Nixon Administration on Believability