Transcript: Sens. Chris Dodd and Lindsey Graham

STEPHANOPOULOS: Let me bring it Senator Graham in on this. Republicans seem to be digging in, Senator Graham, on a couple of big issues. On the issues of taxes to pay for health care, on the issue of a public health insurance plan. But let me show you this "New York Times" poll that's just out this morning showing 72 percent, 72 percent of the public supports a government health insurance plan and 57 percent of the public is willing to pay more taxes for universal health care. They seem to be ready for the kind of change that Republicans are fighting.

GRAHAM: Well, it's just not Republicans, George. The reason you're not going to have a government run health care pass the Senate is because it would be devastating for this country. The last thing in the world I think Democrats and Republicans are going to do at the end of the day is create a government run health care system where you've got a bureaucrat standing in between the patient and the doctor. We've tried this model -- people have tried this model in other countries. The first thing that happens -- you have to wait for your care. And in socialized health care models, people have to wait longer to get care and the government begins to cut back on what's available because of the cost explosion.

The CBO estimates were a death blow to a government run health care plan. The finance committee has abandoned that. We do need to deal with inflation in health care, private and public inflation, but we're not going to go down to the government owning health care road in America and I think that's the story of this week. There's been a bipartisan rejection of that.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Well, you call it a death blow. Let me just press that point. Are you saying now that Republicans just as we saw in the stimulus where I think only three Republicans voted for the president's stimulus package -- if there's a government run health insurance plan, are Republicans going to vote on that against this package?

GRAHAM: I don't think it's just going to be Republicans. You've got Senator Conrad talking about a co-op. You've got other Democrats running away from the government-run health care where the bureaucrat stands between the doctor and the patient. I think this idea is unnerving to the members of the Senate and will be to the public when they understand what it means, that you'll wait longer to get treated and you'll get health care the government decides for you, not that of your doctor. So yes, I think this idea needs to go away and replace it with something maybe like Kent Conrad's proposal.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Now Senator Dodd, I think that Senator Graham talked about the public there. We just saw that hole. But his read of the Senate seems pretty accurate right now. You have not only Republicans but several of your Democratic colleagues, including the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, Senator Baucus saying the public option isn't going to fly in their committee. They want something bipartisan and that can't include this public health insurance option.

DODD: Well, again, I'm delighted to hear Lindsey talk about the possibility of having something like a co-op and non-profits. I happen to support a public option, I don't think you can bring down costs without it. If there isn't some competition out there to drive down the overall cost -- costs have gone up 86 percent since '96, 1996. Forty-five percent might stay the loan, increase in health care cost. The American average working family can't afford this. A family of four now it's $12,000. We're being told in 20 years, it could be half the gross income of a family spent on health care premiums. That is just unacceptable.

Now how we get those costs down -- use a lot of these buzz words. No one I know is for socialized medicine. We're going to develop a U.S. plan, not a Canadian or a U.K. plan, one that meets our needs in our country. It's designed for Americans, by Americans, that isn't socialized medicine. But you've got to drive down these costs. We need quality, accessible health care in bringing down those costs are absolutely critical, or we're going to bankrupt the country. It's unsustainable. That's why we're at the table.

STEPHANOPOULOS: OK gentlemen, we're going to have you both back if this makes it through the process this summer, but Senator Dodd, before I let you go, real quickly, I see that Senator Kennedy is doing an ad for you up in Connecticut, starting today. How is he doing?

DODD: He is doing pretty well. I talked to him the other day, had a good conversation with him. In fact, the day we started the mark up in the health committee on health care, he's been a champion of that for four decades. And he stays very engaged, very involved, knows everything that's going on. And is anxious to be back, and no one's more anxious for him to come back than I am.

STEPHANOPOULOS: I'll bet. Senators, thank you both very much.

GRAHAM: Thank you very much.

STEPHANOPOULOS: We're going to go straight to the roundtable.

STEPHANOPOULOS: And as everyone takes their seats, take a look at these tipping points from history. Is Iran now facing a similar moment?

(VIDEO CLIP)

STEPHANOPOULOS: And with that, let me bring in the roundtable. I'm joined, as always, by George Will. The executive editor of the New York Times, Bill Keller, just back from a week in Iran. Bob Reich of the American Prospect in Berkeley. Sam Donaldson and Cokie Roberts.

And George, let's start with that question suggested by those clips right there. Is this the tipping point in Iran?

GEORGE WILL, ABC NEWS: It will never be the same there. And the legitimacy of the regime, such as it was, is much diminished.

Whether or not that's a good thing is another matter. The president is being roundly criticized for insufficient rhetorical support for what's going on over there. It seems to me foolish criticism. The people on the streets know full well what the American attitude toward that regime is, and they don't need that reinforced.

Furthermore, there's an American memory of encouraging things like the Hungarian revolution in 1956, with rhetoric about rolling back communism. We had balloons flown in and dropped medals with the Statue of Liberty on it and leaflets. Came to crunch, there was nothing we could do about it.

STEPHANOPOULOS: And, Bill, you, as I said, spent much of the last week in Iran. Could you get a sense from the people you were able to talk to how much they wanted the United States involved? First of all. And also, give us some sense of the scale of the protests. You know, there's this debate here over how much of the election was stolen, over how many people these opposition protesters actually represent.

BILL KELLER, NEW YORK TIMES EXEC. EDITOR: Well, Iranian public opinion is a hard thing to measure, but it's not just Tehran and it's not just a sort of effete group of university students and professors. It's definitely more widespread than that.

The thing you would see over and over again as you sort of round a corner, and there would be a group of young men, mostly, throwing rocks or wheeling a kind of burning dumpster out into traffic, and then the riot police would come after them.

And then came the really interesting part, which is all of the traffic backed up for blocks and blocks in all directions, would start honking in support of the guys throwing the rocks, not in support of the police.

You had working-class families waving V's out the window, little kids with green ribbons tied around their fingers. So the support is clearly -- you know, Ahmadinejad talks about the unity of the Islamic people of Iran, but the people clearly are a lot more complicated than that.

STEPHANOPOULOS: And your columnist, Roger Cohen, writes this morning about even some of the security forces not seeming all that eager to carry out their responsibilities.

KELLER: I think that's right, although they have these Basiji, who are kind of the authorized militia, who are utterly ruthless. I got to see them in action a little bit in Esfahan, where I went for a day, a place that doesn't really get any press coverage, and it was a kind of a glimpse of what we might be in store for in Tehran if the window closes.

STEPHANOPOULOS: And, Cokie, we've also seen a remarkable aspect of this velvet revolution, if it is one, is the power of the women in Iran.

COKIE ROBERTS, ABC NEWS: Right. And being very brave. I mean, when you talk about this special force, they've been vicious against the women, just in everyday life, much less in this situation. And so, to have women being brave out there and saying, you know, this is the change that we have to see -- now, you know, Iran's interesting this way because there is a huge class of highly-educated women, who, many of them who have left, and a lot of people here are supporting this revolution because of -- or if it is a revolution -- because of the role of women and the oppression of women.

STEPHANOPOULOS: And, Sam, you covered Ronald Reagan. Of course, we heard Senator Graham talking about Ronald Reagan's tardy response to what was happening in the Philippines, when Marcos tried to steal an election, but then that very forceful speech he gave at the Berlin wall. Is President Obama being Reagan-esque enough?

SAM DONALDSON, ABC NEWS: I think President Obama is about on the right track.

You know, the difference between the illustrations that you showed of revolution in our times and Iran is they were secular revolutions. Iran is not. When you talk about regime change, or you're talking about, well, Mousavi, we think the election was stolen, rather than Ahmadinejad, or you are talking about Khamenei and the mullahs -- that's a Muslim country. And I think for the foreseeable future, certainly in our lifetime, it's going to remain that.

So for us to say somehow we can help change it in a democratic sense, is not possible. ROBERTS: But he has to stay on top of it a little better, I think. Because Khamenei was, I think, undermined himself.

STEPHANOPOULOS: The supreme leader of Iran.

ROBERTS: The supreme leader, the ayatollah, undermined himself, in the speech that he gave on Friday supporting Ahmadinejad. And the fact that people continued to protest after that speech is very telling. And I think, you know, the president saying that there really wasn't that much difference between Ahmadinejad and Mousavi, is, you know -- might have been true then, but it might be different now, because the people do have an effect, and -- the people in the streets.

And I'd be very curious, but you didn't answer the second part of George's question, about what are the people saying about America's role? Are they saying we should be doing more?

KELLER: Well, first of all, there was clearly an Obama influence in the campaign, at least in the trappings, the symbols and so on.

STEPHANOPOULOS: "Yes, we can," was the slogan of Ahmadinejad, right?

KELLER: Right, and change. Change was all over the place.

KELLER: And yes, they would -- people were crying out for a little bit of moral support. Where that leads and what they would want beyond just attention and recognition, I think they feel that the outside world acknowledging what's going on there and not letting it slip from our view, empowers them. More than that, I didn't hear anybody ask it.

REICH: I think regardless of what happens there, George, even if the powers of oppression are victorious, Iran is not going to be the same. And there is going to be an opening for the United States, that was not there before. I was very interested that the supreme leader, the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, actually last Friday, made Britain the enemy, not the United States.

ROBERTS: Right.

REICH: That was telling. Also, I don't think any of us should underestimate the power of Obama's Cairo speech a couple of weeks ago. It had an electrifying effect across the Middle East, particularly among the young.

DONALDSON: That speech, which set a new tone. We're going to have to deal with whatever regime emerges in Iran. If we say Mousavi would be better, I think that's probably true, for Iran. But we're going to have to deal with Ahmadinejad, if, in fact, he remains president. And I think to say that somehow, we've got to crack down, in the George W. Bush-type style is wrong.

WILL: The reason we care about Iran is that they have a decades- long program, nearing fruition, of achieving a nuclear weapon. And there's no reasons to believe that Mr. Mousavi is opposed to a nuclear Iran and lots of reasons to believe that he's for it.

DONALDSON: And that's why we have to deal with whoever emerges.

STEPHANOPOULOS: And the question would be, Bill, let me bring this back to you, because there's two other things going on. One is a power struggle, not only in the streets, but also at the top levels of Iranian society. You have the former president, Rafsanjani, probably the wealthiest man in Iran, seemingly to take on the supreme leader here. And we find out just this morning that his daughter has been detained. How much power does Rafsanjani have to actually -- does he actually have the power to pose some kind a real threat to Khamenei?