Fiscal Responsibility Summit

Leaders from Divided We Fail participated in President Obama’s Fiscal Responsibility Summit on Monday, February 23rd. Bill Novelli (AARP), John Castellani (Business Roundtable), and Andy Stern (SEIU) told the President and his team how critical it is to move forward with health care reform now.

The following are selected highlights from the question and answer session at the closing of the Fiscal Responsibility Summit.

Bill Novelli, AARP

THE PRESIDENT:  Good.  Speaking of bright people with large constituencies -- Bill Novelli.  Where's Bill?  Is he still here?  There you are.

I know you participated in the health care panel.  Bill, your thoughts on Medicare and the interest of your membership in getting an equitable solution to what is an unsustainable situation.

MR. NOVELLI:  The whole entitlement thing is as you characterized it.  We have a real sustainability problem.  But I think you put the right frame on this, Mr. President, by saying that the path to sustainability is health care reform.  And our group I think had tremendously good ideas.  Most of the policy ideas that we all know and share were on the table today.

There's a lot of hard policy work that's going to have to go on, but I think we have some momentum.  But I think one of the things that also came out of the session was, we need to engage the American people.  Yes, we have to think of them as patients,  we have to think of them as insured or uninsured -- but we also have to think of them as taxpayers and as voters who need to understand what the tradeoffs are, what they might lose, what they might gain.  We can all do that, but nobody could do it as well as you can.  You've got the bully pulpit to really carry your message to the public.

THE PRESIDENT:  I appreciate that.  This is the only area where we had done a little prejudging of what needs to be done.  We have scheduled a health care summit next week.  It's not that I've got summititis here -- (laughter) -- but rather, it's actually exactly the point that you're making, Bill, which is everybody here understands a lot of the tradeoffs involved in health care and that there are no perfect solutions.

But in the sound bite, political culture that we got, it's very hard to communicate that.  And we think that it's very important to have some forums -- and I talked about this during -- way back in the primary campaign, that there is a process that the public can listen to about what these tradeoffs are, because I think that some of us get on our high horse and say we've got the answer to health care.  Well, it turns out that, you know, there are costs involved on the front end even if the benefits accrue in the out years.  There are situations in terms of people, if they've got health insurance, sort of liking what they've got now, they just want it for cheaper.  There are issues in terms of providers and them feeling like they're getting squeezed.

And so making sure that all that stuff is surfaced in public and we're educating the public on some of these issues can be very important if we're going to make progress because -- you know, some of these things will ultimately involve some tough decisions and some tough votes.

Watch video of these remarks.

John Castellani, Business Roundtable

MR. CASTELLANI:  Yes.  I was in the health care discussion.  And the one thing that we all agreed on was that it is absolutely imperative for both fiscal reasons, as well as personal reasons and competitive reasons, to move forward on health care.  We simply cannot afford as a nation, and we certainly cannot afford as businesses to maintain the status quo, because it is unsustainable.

And I think as Bill pointed out, and has certainly been pointed out by the people that were participating in it all -- the Senators and members -- there are a lot of good ideas out there.  The time is now to put those good ideas down on a piece of legislation and move forward so we have something that delivers quality health care to everybody in this country in a way that everybody can afford.

Watch video of these remarks.

Andy Stern, SEIU

THE PRESIDENT:  Business leadership I think is going to be critical.  Andy Stern is sitting right to next to you.  Andy, you've been working on this front for a long time.  You got some thoughts?

MR. STERN:  I mean, I just want to say that I am sitting next to John, because he and I and Bill Novelli and others really have built a relationship over a long period of time, because we don't see this as a Democratic problem or a Republican problem -- it's just an American problem.  And it's time to solve it.  And (inaudible) and I and business and labor and others can come together outside the Congress, it really is time for the Congress to get this job done, because the American people need it.

Watch video of these remarks.