Thom Hartmann: And greetings my friends, patriots, lovers of democracy, truth and justice, believers in peace, freedom and the American way. Thom Hartmann here with you. Back in our home studio here in Portland, Oregon.

And a lot coming up today. In our 3rd hour, Tim Carpenter is going to drop by, he is the president of Progressive Democrats of America. We’re going to be talking about the progressive movement in the United States. Where’s it at and what kind of power does it have, if any. How does all this playing out, you know what’s going on. We hear a lot about the tea party, let’s hear about the other side too.

In our 2nd hour we’re going to be asking the question why are the grand bourgeois, the, basically the upper middle class, mad as hell and threatening to leave America? Interesting op ed in the Washington Post the other day from a fellow making over a quarter million dollars a year, but not a really, really rich guy. And it raises a lot of actually very interesting I think frankly on both sides of the issue, a lot of interesting issues, and we’ll get to that. A pile of news. President Obama of course today on the front page of the Financial Times, walking to church. We predicted this two weeks ago. Is he a Muslim? No.

Okay, and in the meanwhile, all over the blogosphere and in much of the media, congressman Steve King is being praised and reviled for apparently having said that he wants to shut down government. Congressman Steve King, the republican from Iowa is on the line with us. Congressman, welcome back to the program.

Steve King: Well thanks, Thom, it’s good to be back. The praised and reviled Steve King is finally back on your program.

Thom Hartmann: Well apparently, is this true that you asked John Boehner for a blood oath that he would shut down government if you guys were not successful in killing off healthcare?

Steve King: Well no, that would be, what, I did happen to see that pop up on a, let me just say a left wing blog, and I wondered, how was it I…

Thom Hartmann: Yeah it’s over at Think Progress.

Steve King: It was what?

Thom Hartmann: It’s at ThinkProgress.org I think is the main, yeah.

Steve King: Oh okay well yeah, close enough. And but the way I recall phrasing that, and I’m not going back and review the tape, is that if, I mean I stand on this side, I want to shut off all funding that would go to implement Obamacare. It’s entirely constitutional to do that, that’s how the Vietnam war was ended.

Thom Hartmann: Well Congress has the power of the purse, they can fund or shut off anything they damn well please. But this is what baffles me. No lifetime limits on health coverage, no rescissions, in other words the insurance company can’t say, "oh you just got cancer, we’re going to cancel your policy". No prevention of services, extensions of dependent coverage, no discrimination based on salary, no pre existing condition exclusions. In other words, oh you had you had something when you were 14 years old, we’re not going to cover you now. The medical loss ratios have to be 80%. In other words the health insurance companies can only take 20% and put it in the pockets of their CEOs. Medicare, by the way, operates on 3% overhead. Guaranteed issue, guaranteed renewal, no discrimination based on your health status. What the hell is wrong with all that, why are you, I don’t get it.

Steve King: Well Thom you lost me there for a little bit because you didn’t’ give me a chance to answer…

Thom Hartmann: I just gave you a list of what Obamacare is.

Steve King: But I didn’t get a chance to answer the first question you know, did I call for Boehner to shut down the government, and no. In fact, Boehner can’t shut down, well I guess he could shut down the government if we agreed with him. But the first step would be we would put the rider on the appropriate bills that would prohibit the funding from being used to implement Obamacare but we would fund the government. And then under those scenarios, it’d be the president that would shut down the government, if he vetoed a bill because it didn’t include in it funding to implement Obamacare. That would be the president…

Thom Hartmann: Well if you guys don’t get the senate, that bill won’t get through the senate.

Steve King: If the house says its not going to be funded, it’s not going to be funded. That’s how it would be. But it wouldn’t be Boehner shutting down the government, but I’m just asking…

Thom Hartmann: But it wouldn’t be Obama either because it wouldn’t make it to the president’s desk for a veto.

Steve King: Well I have a different imagination when it comes to what can happen here in November and the majorities in the senate.

Thom Hartmann: You may be right!

Steve King: And we know which direction the current is going, we just don’t know how big, how high the water mark is going to get and so…

Thom Hartmann: But to these larger issues, Congressman King, you know, yes it’s entirely possible. Republicans might take the house, they might take the house and the senate but do you really think that telling Americans that the health insurance companies can go back to cutting you off when you get cancer, that they can chop your kid's healthcare off, you know, when they get sick. That that’s actually a selling point for the Republican Party? I don’t get that.

Steve King: You know I don’t think, Thom, that you’ve mentioned anything that isn’t available in the healthcare market in some of the states today. What you’re talking about is setting up federal mandates to control everybody’s policy from the federal government level which is …

Thom Hartmann: Well these are federal mandates to protect the people from predatory corporations. What’s wrong with that other than that the predatory corporations are funding a lot of republican and several democratic candidacies?

Steve King: Well, I don’t notice them funding mine but what’s wrong with the state setting those standards rather than the federal government setting those standards? I mean they’re closer to these corporations than…

Thom Hartmann: The states have been incompetent in doing it. It’s the same reason why it took the federal government to step in, in the 1960s, after almost 100 years of waiting for the states to implement the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments to the constitution and Jim Crow laws.

Steve King: You know, Thom, you will not get an argument from me on that one. I am glad that that happened, finally, that the federal government did step in and those were glorious times when the government functioned the way that it should. So I’m completely in support of that. But I would say that this is a different scenario.

What the Obamacare does is it takes away the liberty of the people in this country, and it violates the constitution in about four different places, and we are better off voting with our feet and moving from state to state than we are to have the federal government in control of our healthcare. It’s the most sovereign thing we have is our skin and everything inside it and that’s what’s being nationalized by Obamacare.

And by the way, the 10% first time ever sales tax on the outside of people’s skin if they go into the tanning salon is the first federal sales tax and that’s levied against people if they want to go in and try to look, and try to get a little bit of a tan.

Thom Hartmann: Yeah the John Boehner tax.

Steve King: Well and…

Thom Hartmann: But Congressman King, you just raised a really interesting point if I may? You just pointed out that the most important thing is our skin and the stuff inside it, right? If we as a society have all agreed that our houses are a pretty big deal and we’re all going to collectively fund an institution that is going to care for our house if it catches on fire, called the fire department. Isn’t it even more important that we fund an institution that protects our bodies if it catches on fire, I mean metaphorically, gets cancer, gets heart attack something like that, some kind of a national healthcare system? Why is our house more important than our body?

Steve King: Yeah I hadn’t thought about that in terms of the fire department. But I was thinking if I want to set up my own water tower and my own sprinkler system at my house I could do that. But…

Thom Hartmann: Well you can, there’s nothing that prevents that.

Steve King: And the tax for the fire department is substantially cheaper than the imposition of a health insurance policy on you. And by the way, the policy that gets set up, it’s not a national fire department. It’s not a national fire department, firemen’s union that goes on here. This is a national healthcare policy and it affects the research and development, it affects the cost, it requires people to buy premiums and pay for a policy that will take away the choices of the kind of policy that they want today. There are 1300 health insurance companies in America, 100 thousand health insurance policy varieties and we know that number of companies will shrink dramatically and the numbers of varieties of policies will shrink dramatically. And by the way we’re punishing young people at entry level wages to see sometimes doubling and tripling of their premiums to pay for the premiums of people who are at the peak earning capacity of their lifetime.

Thom Hartmann: Much of that is arguable. And I’m sure you would acknowledge that, I’m hoping that you would acknowledge that.

Steve King: I do. In fact I was trying to incite an argument.

Thom Hartmann: And I don’t think either one of us want to get in the weeds here. And we really, and we just have a minute left, Congressman Steve King. But I mean this as a sincere question. If we’re going to collectively pay to make sure that our houses don’t catch on fire, why shouldn’t we collectively pay to make sure our bodies don’t die? Every other industrialized country in the world has done this, except us. What’s, you know why is it liberty in the United States to have the right to die, and it’s not in the rest of the world?

Steve King: Well because what it does is it takes away personal responsibility. And it, and here’s the thing about…

Thom Hartmann: Well so do fire departments, don’t they?

Steve King: Now that is a different scenario and I’ve described that different scenario. But I want to make this point that Americans are a vigorous people. We got the vitality from every donor civilization on the planet that’s sent legal immigrants here to America. We are unique people, we’re self reliant, we’re independent, and we’re proud of it and we should be. That’s the framework of our constitution.

Thom Hartmann: Agreed on all points.

Steve King: And we would lose a significant measure of that vigor if we turn ourselves into the health insurance program, healthcare program. We’d become sheep, we don’t make those decisions ourselves, we rely on the government and that saps our vitality. That’s actually my number one concern about this bill.

Thom Hartmann: Yeah. I understand. I think it would actually double our vitality because as a guy who has started five small businesses in the last 30 years and done pretty well doing it, I always had to take a risk having no health insurance. And if I had a national health insurance policy, I think we would have a lot more entrepreneurs. But we can defer on this. Your point is well made. Congressman Steve King. SteveKing.house.gov. thank you.

Steve King: Thank you, Thom.

Transcribed by Suzanne Roberts, Portland Psychology Clinic.