In the accomplishment yesterday, we talked to a young senator that wants to be the leader what is the secret to passing something bipartisan and pulling off something even modest . Its no secret if you dont know each other you dont know the areas of agreement and number two, dont try to do something comprehensive, go a step at a time and go where you want to go and number three, you have a lot of patience. Therefore, keep your word. If you do that, you get a result. I know shes part of the democratic leadership, so we do not agree on a lot that she could do all those things i just mentioned the first one is about the people that you mentioned yesterday. If the Republican Party and the housesenate pass this bill and signed it into law, is this a win for republicans and is it something that trump gets to say that he is forced a deal were going in the november election they sa say the only passed the insurer bailout . The conservative victory requires the result. Its been eight years we have 50 votes to repeal obamacare and we lost them all. We got snow results. There are three or four results better than this compromise. One is the catastrophic plan for the first time for people of all ages for the catastrophe that doesnt turn into a financial catastrophe and more importantly the change in the affordability guard rail gives more states opportunities like the alaska waiver and open oklahoma and New Hampshire waver all of these are different ways of doing things and as i said earlier the single biggest objection is to move back to the states and encourage contacts on Health Insurance and streamlines the results in a compromised agreement that conservatives have achieved in eight years despite all the votes and the speeches. Thats what i would say to the people that ask me about it. Do you think if this passes, the president could say that this is a deal he influenced . If this passes, how much of an impact does trump have and is it something that he can se say he owned and is responsible for . The president engineered the bipartisan agreement by calling me and asking me to work with senator murray to do it. I talked with him three times in the last ten days including 30 minutes ago. So, he has it out there as an option. If he decides in the end to make it part of something that he signs, then of course it will be something he supports when he gets there. I think hes been pretty shrewd giving himself an option to give three or four conservative wins on the way to try to get the block grants again. As senator alexander and not speaking for the entire caucus you said this is a bridge to whatever comes next what is your ideal version of what comes next . Bill cassidy does a good job with his bill. He has time to improve it between now and the time he comes up but it is pretty fundamental. It allows the states to make more decisions about a variety of policies as a goal of having more prices and choices step to mistakes or people are not hurt and we had a few conservative wins in the meantime in step three is whatever we can agree to in a longterm change. It wont take effect until 2021 or 22. What are we going to do in the meantime, i think that the agreement is an option and i hope it is one that the congress will adopt. Is that something you can work on . Theres other issues that can be considered like the employer mandate is about to kick in and a lot of the employers are about to get charged a lot of money to repeal that retroactively that would cost money. There is bipartisan support for changing the 30 to 40 hour workweek standard in the Affordable Care act, so theres smaller things that could be changed in step two or three. When you get things like the block grant proposal or the senate or house bill there is a fundamental difference between republicans and democrats. Democrats like decisions made here and republicans like decisions made in the states and that is likely to be considered a purpose in. Did you have anything . Is it sustainable to have this debate every time the president changes or do you eventually have to decide on something both parties can live with . It is best to do something durable. One of the advantages of no child left behind as nobody is trying to repeal it every here because we were told and the consensus. It was the most important open congress and it probably was very contentious and harder to do. We need to eventually get to that on health care it is just hard to do and i think the smart thing to do is to take step one, recognized the win when you see it and make sure people are not hurt. People would like to see us get results and as i said, i will have to say this a lot i guess is that you dont get a conservative victory unless you get a result and you do not getting results in thgeta resuls you get 60 votes. Thewe might be able to get more grants, but we will not get the results because the most important ones require 60 votes. Theres been a fantastic tour of the landscape. As you make progress on your project, would you be willing to come back in six months and update us on how things are going . As we say goodbye, tell us who the amateurs are. Tim kane and me. He has seven harmonicas, one for each key that he knows and i have to change every time we perform at the resume and roots festival in tennessee at the state line. A couple months ago we had a pretty good time at the birthplace of Country Music so we called ourselves honestly the amateurs which is an accurate description. [laughter] is it like to thank delta dental for making this possible and Kaitlyn Owings and my colleagues for their great coverage and those that are so fantastic thank you cspan and the viewers for joining us and all of you for coming out so early and senator alexander thank you for a fantastic conversation. [applause] thank you for joining us. [applause] [inaudible conversations] epidemic. The discussion was hosted by the washington post