Rep. Steve Scalise relives the day that changed his life

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Rep. Steve Scalise relives the day that changed his life

House majority whip describes in detail on 'Life, Liberty & Levin' what happened the day he was shot at a congressional baseball practice.

This is a rush transcript from "Life, Liberty & Levin," December 9, 2018. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.

MARK LEVIN, HOST: Hello, America. I'm Mark Levin this is "Life Liberty & Levin." We have a great guest, Steve Scalise, how are you, sir?

HOUSE MAJORITY WHIP STEVE SCALISE, R-LA.: Mark, I'm doing great. Good to be with you.

LEVIN: Majority Whip soon to be Minority Whip, unfortunately. I want to cover two areas with you. One is obviously what happened to you. The American people are intensely interested in this and really united around you when you were almost mortally wounded and also some policy questions. What happened in the Republican Congress, in the House, what's going happen in the Democrat House and how being in the minority, how you think you're going deal with it.

But first you have a new book in "Back In The Game: One Gunman, Countless Heroes In The Fight For My Life," we know the basic story, but let me ask you a question. This guy fires off around, bullets how big?

SCALISE: 762 caliber.

LEVIN: A big bullet.

SCALISE: Big bullet.

LEVIN: Okay, you're a hit. Walk us through that - the moment you were hit? What you thought? If you felt it. What was going through your mind? Were you conscious and so forth?

SCALISE: Well, initially I was stunned because we're on a baseball field. You're not thinking about gunfire, but as soon as I was hit, I went down and my legs gave out and I could hear more gunfire, so I knew what was going on, but you're still trying to process everything.

And so the first thing I'm thinking, I never saw the shooter but I could hear where the fire was coming from, it was around third base and I'm playing second.

So I started just crawling away. I start crawling to the outfield to get away from ...

LEVIN: Are you in pain then?

SCALISE: ... the gunfire. I'm in an almost like a numbness and I'm not feeling the true pain that I probably should have felt because knowing what that bullet did, the massive internal damage, I didn't quite feel all of that. I'm just kind of in a numbness trying to get away.

So I crawled probably about 20 feet and then my arms gave out. In fact, in the book, we have a picture of a blood trail that somebody took that shows you how far I crawled before ultimately, my arms gave out and then at that moment, I just started to pray. The first thing that came to mind, I said, "I'm just going to pray and put it in God's hands."

And believe me God performed miracles that day, but uh he gave me an unbelievable sense of calm. Once I started praying it was almost like everything around me just kind of went into a background noise and I'm just in a one-on-one conversation with God at that point.

LEVIN: You found peace?

SCALISE: True peace.

LEVIN: How did you get from the baseball field to the transport to get you to the hospital and were you conscious during most of that?

SCALISE: Well, right after the shooter went down, you know, to me, it seemed like an hour. It was maybe a matter of seven minutes that the whole shootout happened and as soon as the shooter went down, Brad Wenstrup, a colleague of mine from Ohio. He's a doctor, but he's also - he was a combat surgeon in Iraq and he was watching me the whole time and he immediately came over and looked at where the damage was, put a tourniquet on it to stop the bleeding.

And my trauma surgeon told me later I wouldn't have made it to the hospital if not for that, for what Brad did, and then there was a few minutes of everybody -- colleagues of mine kind of coming around attending to me and then an ambulance finally got there and they transferred me initially to an ambulance.

That's kind of when I started to go out to kind of fade out and then, at some point, the ambulance is leaving, sees a helicopter coming and it's 7:30 in the morning in Northern Virginia as you know, I would have never made it to George Washington Hospital, which is where they're going to take me. I would have bled out.

So then they go to where the helicopter is landing on the ball field and sure enough, the helicopter had come to transport me away and they put me on that helicopter and four minutes later, I'm in the emergency room over at MedStar Hospital.

And again, I kind of was out and unconscious by the time I got on the helicopter, but I was starting to fade prior to that wondering am I even going to make it.

LEVIN: How many operations have you gone through?

SCALISE: I've going through nine - nine different major surgeries. Luckily, all of them are over and successful of putting everything back together, but it was a lot, you know, initially just the - going in to try to figure out, opening me up to try to figure out where all the damage was and I had massive internal bleeding.

I actually showed up at the hospital with a zero blood pressure, which rarely does anybody make it out from that and then they had to put about 20 pints of blood in me. The human body takes about nine pints of blood, so I lost a lot of blood and then even as they were putting more in, I was - so many arteries that were shredded, so they finally sewed up each one individually and got me to a point where they could close me up again. And then over the next few months, they had to put me back together.

LEVIN: What is the first thing you remember when you did come to? Do you remember that?

SCALISE: Yes, you know when I came to, it was three days later. I didn't know for all I knew, it was maybe a few hours later and I had no idea how bad off I was.

I remember when I came to that I was shot and the first thing I did was ask for my wife and Jennifer, of course she had flown in that night, but she was there and so she sees me and I've got tubes in in my throat and I've got all kind of other things hooked up to me, so I couldn't even talk.

And so I'm trying to make some verbal signals to her and luckily, she knew what I was motioning and initially what I wanted to find out was Dave and Crystal, my two capital police security detail officers that were there with me that morning. I knew both of them were shot in the shootout.

And you talk about real heroes and look, Mark, I identify in the book a lot of miracles that happened, but also the heroes that played a role in saving me and no bigger heroes than David Bailey and Crystal Griner who both risked their life, were shot at during the shootout and kept going after the shooter until they took him down.

And I didn't know if they made it because I knew they were hit and when Jennifer told me they were both okay, it was just a huge sense of relief.

LEVIN: Were you a man of faith before as well as after?

SCALISE: Yes, I didn't express it a lot. You know, every night when I go to sleep, I always had a habit of praying to God, you know, I just talk to him about the things that happened. Thank him for the things that happened that we're good. You know, there might be something you want or something you're trying to achieve down the road and so you know, I'd pray for those things.

But I'd also try to remember to pray and thank him for the things that he did that were good that day and it kind of - so always a constant reminder that every day in life, something good happens and bad happens. Don't just focus on the negative and so I'd always say a quiet private prayer.

But you know, I said some real heavy prayers that that day on the ball field and he delivered.

LEVIN: Do you still go through a lot of physical therapy, I imagine?

SCALISE: I do. I still go a few days a week. It's primarily to build up the strength in my left leg. The bullet went in here and did a lot of internal damage, but especially the nerves and muscles on the left side of my leg, you know, took the most kind of the most damage and so I'm still building those muscles back.

I'm down to one crutch. I initially was on a scooter to get around and then was able to go onto two crutches and built enough strength up to go down now to one crutch and my next goal is to finally be able to walk again without crutches.

LEVIN: Do you feel like you have a renewed purpose? Because you are a man who shouldn't even be here. I mean a bullet that big cutting through your body like that into all those organs in a place where it's very difficult to get to a hospital. Do you feel like you have a renewed purpose, a renewed life?

SCALISE: You know, I know how close I was, Mark, to not being here. You know my trauma surgeon a few - about two months after the shooting, I was still in the hospital and you know, well enough to where I was on the road to recovery, but still had a lot of damage and I asked him just how bad it was and he walked me through and he said really that first night, he said there were at least two different times that first night where he wasn't sure I was going make it.

So I know I'm lucky to be alive. If anything, it puts a real renewed focus on what's important in life. You know, all of us have things that we do every day and you know, you're following somebody else's schedule on certain things and then there's the things you really want to do and I've tried to remove some of the clutter in my life and focus on the things that really matter to me, which is you know, my faith and my family and the things I love doing.

And I love this job. I love being able to serve and then fight for them --

LEVIN: I mean, you were almost assassinated.

SCALISE: Yes.

LEVIN: You were a political target. You were on a list. This killer - would-be killer was a radical. He came to Washington with his list. He came to shoot all you guys and yet, when you were shot, the nation, I'm sure you know now, everybody was stunned and then a week goes by, two weeks go by, a year goes by and we're at it again, at each other's throats.

Things are said. Things are said about the President, things are said that you really wonder with the tone. I'm not saying aggressive political debate, but when you're calling somebody Hitler and a racist and Nazis and stuff like that, isn't that playing with fire?

SCALISE: Yes, I do think that rhetoric needs to calm down and you know, we all ought to be able to disagree with each other and you know, where we have a political debate, you ought to fight for the things you believe in because they're critically important.

You ought to respect that somebody else that's having a different viewpoint, it doesn't mean that they're evil or that they have ulterior motives, it's just maybe they just see the world differently, but you shouldn't try to make those differences personal. And I do think we've gotten to a point where it's definitely ratcheted up to a point where I think we need to try to calm it down.

LEVIN: You know, it seems to me when somebody calls somebody Hitler, well, we know what Hitler was or a racist. In other words, it's not you know, I disagree with this guy, as you point out this guy, he is way too the right or something, but you're using characterizations that you intend to be provocative after this assassination attempt on you, that this is utterly and completely irresponsible to me.

And I am just telling you, Congressman, I turn on the TV, I see this all the time. You see it, too, right?

SCALISE: Yes, you know and I mean, like you said, I mean when you're using something that radioactive - I mean, Hitler is a man who literally killed millions of Jews based on the fact that he wanted to annihilate them off on the face of the earth.

I mean, that is as pure of evil as you can get and nobody should be compared to him, but at the same time, you see that they almost seem to try to desensitize it as if you disagree, it's okay to call somebody something that evil these days and we ought to be standing up against that and saying, "Hold on a second." Look, if we disagree let's it at least be honest about why we disagree and try to win the argument.

Margaret Thatcher said you know, first win the debate then when the vote, which means if you're losing the debate, you don't go and threaten the other person physically or try to call them a racist or a Nazi, you try to maybe make a better argument and these days, it almost seems like the cop- out is, just go say something so vitriolic that you try to shut down the debate.

And you see this on a lot of college campuses, too, where they literally don't want conservative viewpoints if you're - you know, try going to Berkeley as a conservative.

I mean, is that really what you're supposed to be about? Shouldn't you try to say, "Look, go educate yourself." Let's hear all viewpoints and have enough confidence in your argument that you're going to win the day, but if you're so afraid of the other side's argument that you want to call them names to the point where you shut them down. I think you've already lost.

LEVIN: Did Bernie Sanders every call you or ever bump into you in the Capitol building? Give you a pat on the shoulder or anything like that?

SCALISE: He reached out to my office and I think we may have spoken in those kind of first few days when I was in a fog, but he did reach out.

LEVIN: Okay, so you guys --

SCALISE: And I don't hold him or you know, responsible because you know, clearly what this guy did was deranged and you know, there's no justification for it.

LEVIN: I mean let me ask you this, you're going be in the minority now. Let me talk a little bit about when like now, you're in the majority, but it's a lame-duck session. It's a lame duck session, but things can still get done, right?

SCALISE: Yes.

LEVIN: Are they going to get done? The border wall?

SCALISE: We are in a battle right now over proper funding of the border wall. I was just in a meeting with President Trump a few days ago. Clearly, this has been a big priority of his. It's a big priority of mine. I'd like to see us get this done and we're in a fight with the other side, but at the same time when you look at this caravan coming across, you have in this caravan of people who have said we're going to ignore your laws and just storm across the border.

There are over six hundred already known criminal convicts in the caravan when you look at some of the things they do to try to use women as human shields; again, it shows you what kind of people are really responsible for the caravan, but it's incredibly important that we secure our border and I applaud President Trump for being willing to do it because look, every single day this doesn't get mainstream media coverage and it should.

Every single day in this country, at least ten known terrorists are captured trying to cross into America through our border. Why are we trying to secure the border? To keep America safe and it's not that everybody that comes here wants to seek the American dream. There's a legal way to do that and President Trump has said, even if you want to seek asylum, seek it the legal way.

But if you're trying to break our laws and come over here when the President's saying we're going to secure the border, there's a reason he's fighting to keep this country safe because there really are bad people that try to come here.

LEVIN: When we come back, I am going to ask you two follow ups on that. Number one, if there are 10 terrorists captured every day, now why wouldn't the Democratic Party want to do more to help secure that southern border and number two, is the problem only in the Democrats or are there problems among the Republicans, too, to get this sort of thing done? When we come back.

Ladies and gentlemen, don't forget most weeknights, you can watch me on Levin TV, Levin TV. Go to crtv.com/mark to sign up crtv.com/mark or give us a call at 844-LEVIN-TV, 844-LEVIN-TV. We'll be right back.

Congressman Steve Scalise, so you've mentioned that 10 captures a day of potential terrorists on the southern border. Well, why wouldn't that compel the Democratic Party to be a little bit more supportive of building physical barriers on that southern border where we think we can build them?

SCALISE: And it's a good question, but it shows you there is a different mindset on the left. I mean, they truly believe in open borders. You know, this whole idea that just people want to come in, let them come on in and again, you can look at real numbers to know, there is a legal way to come here.

By the way, Mark, we are the most generous nation in the world. Anybody that thinks we don't let people into our country, we let a million people into our country legally every single year, by far the most generous in the world. We have nothing to be ashamed of. No country is close to us.

And by the way, those other countries have their own border protection. So good luck trying to walk into their country illegally. So what we say is, there's a way to come here legally. We ought to reform by the way. There are some parts of that legal system that are very broken, but at the same time, we do know that there are bad people who are trying to come here and it's well documented.

And so if you want to come here legally, there's a legal way to come here and there are people by the way that have been waiting years. Ten, fifteen years in some cases to come to America, so what does it say if you're okay with letting somebody jump ahead of them in line, what are you telling those people that have done it the right way? That have played by the rules?

LEVIN: But when you all talk about the law and the rules, like they're not particularly interested in the law and the rules and they must think that it helps the Democratic Party, and in fact it appears to help the Democratic Party. You have red states going purple, purple states going blue because the Democrats would not be supporting open borders that they thought Republicans were pouring over the border. So that's a difficult mentality to deal with.

But isn't there a problem even within your Republican caucus? I mean, don't you have a dozen, two dozen, three dozen Republicans who really are not necessarily that supportive of securing the border or at least securing in a way that matters?

SCALISE: Well, you know, we don't have a consensus completely about how to properly secure the border. Most of our members have voted in one way or another to secure the border which includes building the wall. The difference is that you just have no support, not one Democrat.

We brought two different bills on the House floor in the last few months to secure the border. We had over 220 Republicans who voted yes, not one Democrat voted yes and so clearly, the mentality on the other side is not to support securing the border. A lot of people talk tough, but when it comes time to actually vote to secure the border, they're not there and even Americans who aren't maybe where you and I are on immigration law would still say, at a minimum secure the border.

You know, what you do with different aspects of immigration policy is one thing, but securing America's border is critical to our national security. Not one Democrat was willing to vote yes.

LEVIN; But here's the problem. You've got Republicans out there. You've got the conservative base out there. You've got other people at this. Okay, we gave the Republicans the House. We know what the Democrats are. We know they don't support securing the border even though they did ten years ago. Now, they've decided it's not in their best interest.

The Republicans can't cobble together the numbers that they need to send the bill to the Senate. True?

SCALISE: Well, not one particular bill. We haven't coalesced around that and frankly, we've been working with the President on the best way to do it that he would support because you know the President has looked at it a number of different ways on this. The President wants to see the border properly secured and they get the $25 billion, it's not just $5 billion this year we're fighting for, you know and President Trump's made it clear at least give me the $5 billion this year to start building the wall out further.

It's a long term project and it costs more money over the next four or five years, but at least let's start with you know, with this. And by the way, when Pelosi had a super majority in the House and Senate when they passed Obamacare, they could have done anything they wanted and they did. They didn't try to go and fix immigration policy.

So when they right now try to use the left and use immigration and say, "Oh look, you know, the Republicans don't care about you." They didn't care when they had everything. We've actually tried to solve this problem and not one Democrat stepped up to vote with us.

When Pelosi controlled everything last time, she didn't bring a bill to the floor, not good or bad. We've at least brought bills to the floor.

LEVIN: I just think in diners, in pubs, at kitchen tables all over the country, they're not thinking about a Pelosi did or didn't do. They're saying, "Okay, we sent the Republicans and they got a majority and we've got a Republican House, Republicans Senate, Republican President." We spend billions and billions of dollars, massive debt and we can't cobble together $5 billion to try and secure that southern border. I think -yes.

SCALISE: Mark, let me say this because first of all, we did put at least one and a half billion in place; surely not the $5 billion, there is some wall that's being built, but on top of that, we work very closely with this President to finally start rebuilding our military after what President Obama did to literally degrade it to the point where last year, we lost more men and women in training deaths than in combat by more than a three- to-one margin.

We also by the way got regulations under control. The Obama era regulations were crushing not just the middle class they were killing manufacturing in America. We've completely reversed that working with this President and getting bills to his desk that he signed.

The tax cut bill, not one Democrat voted with us, but yet we got a bill not since Ronald Reagan in 1986 have we had a tax reform bill get all the way to the President's desk and this one was incredibly historic. Cut taxes at every single level, made our country competitive again and we're reaping the rewards, and by the way the Federal government this year took in more money to the Treasury with those tax cuts for those people that would say tax cuts equal deficits, we took in more money this year than we ever have before.

Obviously, we've got to get control over the mandatory side of spending, but we've gotten our economy back on track. We're finally seeing economic growth and we've rebuilt our military while getting regulations under control. Those are important things. There are definitely things that we haven't done and it's fair criticism to say, "Okay, you didn't do this on immigration, on Obamacare you didn't repeal and replace it."

We in the House passed the bill with one vote to spare to do it, it failed by one vote in the Senate. Fair criticism to say those things didn't get done, so there's more work left to do.

But clearly, when you look at what we've done in the house working with this President incredibly historic things for our economy and our military. There's still more work to be done, but watch what Pelosi does when she's speaker and I think then people will recognize what the difference is.

LEVIN: When we return, I want to ask you about spending. It seems to be out of control. The debt is massive. It's getting bigger and bigger and in that context, I want to ask you if the House has a good relationship - working relationship with the Senate Republicans and Mitch McConnell.

He's announced over and over again that they will not shut down the government. Now, I was around during the Reagan administration. He shut it down six times. Several years ago, on my radio show, Paul Ryan said they really - when we talk about a government shutdown, we're talking about 17% of the government, the vast majority of the government doesn't shut down. Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Border Patrol, military, Federal Police, untouched and on and on and on.

Is this a PR problem? Because it would seem every time the government is quote-unquote, shut down Republicans do okay and we just had a midterm election, so there's no election tomorrow and is the border wall a big enough issue to fight over this. We'll be right back.

LAUREN GREEN, CORRESPONDENT, FOX NEWS: Live from "America's News Headquarters," I'm Lauren green. The White House facing more staffing issues as Vice President Pence's Chief of Staff calls it quits. Nick Ayers tweeted Sunday that he will be stepping down from his position and leaving the Trump White House at the end of the year. This coming just day a day after the President announced that his Chief of Staff, John Kelly would be stepping down. White House sources telling Fox News on Saturday that Ayers was the President's top choice to replace Kelly.

Rescue efforts are underway in West Virginia for four people reported missing in an underground coal mine. An abandoned ATV was found outside the entrance of a mine near the town of Clear Creek. The mine has been an inactive for at least two years according to the state's Mine Safety Office. I'm Lauren Green. Now back to "Life, Liberty & Levin."

LEVIN: Government shutdown, Schumer says, look when the government shuts down that's on the President of United States. The President of the United States says, "Look, I've been asking for this wall money, $5 billion now, every year I've been President and then I'm stuck with this attack that I'm not holding up my promise and this year I'm really going put it to you."

Government shutdown, no government shutdown and whose fault is it?

SCALISE: Well the President has made it clear that he wants $5 billion for the next year to secure the border. It includes wall funding, but it also includes a lot of other things that the President has been asking for more technology to make more effective use of our Border Patrol agents to give them more of the tools they need to be safe in carrying out that mission.

Look, we just saw with this caravan, they were trying to attack and in some cases attacking our Border Patrol agents, throwing rocks, throwing other things at our Border Patrol agents and at law enforcement. And so the threat is real and the need to secure our nation - our nation's borders is real.

If Chuck Schumer wants to shut down the government because he doesn't want to secure America's border, that's a fight that he's going to lose and he's lost one of these shutdowns before, so you know, at the end of the day, we need to secure our border and the American people again regardless of where you stand on immigration policy, most Americans believe we ought to secure the border.

LEVIN: Does the House Republican leadership get along okay with the Senate Republican leadership? I expect you to say, "Yes, it's swell." But is it really swell?

SCALISE: You know, we have different approaches to how we do things. We have different rules you know, and I've been critical in the past of the 60-vote rule in the Senate especially on appropriations bills. You know and they'll say, "Well, that Senate policy, that Senate business," you know, the thing is we've got so many bills that we've sent over to the Senate that we passed with a majority vote and by the way a lot of those were tough votes to pass because not one Democrat would vote with us and we still got it done.

And when not one of those bills can get it through the Senate because of that rule, it really makes it hard for us to follow through on the things we want to see done, but at the end of the day, those are the rules we've got to work with and so we still can work together to get big things done and a classic example of that is the tax cut bill.

LEVIN: Now you said, we've had more tax income than ever before in American history with the tax cut, but we're spending more and borrowing more than ever in American history, and people look at this and they say, "We're not even making really any progress. It's barely been talked about," even Republicans on Capitol Hill.

We hear the Senate say, "We have a great bill. We're going to get it passed on the President's desk." Now last year when that happened, it was a massive spending bill but he wanted to protect the Defense Department, which has been as you said, was eviscerated under Obama.

The president shouldn't really be given that choice, should he? Either fund defense or massive new debt? Where is this coming from?

SCALISE: Yes, Mark, no President and no Congress should be in a position of saying, "Do you properly fund defense or do you balance the Federal budget?" It's a false choice and in fact, one of the very few constitutional responsibilities we have as members of Congress is to fund our national defense.

And you've highlighted this so many times so well over the years on what the Constitution is really all about. If you look at what's driving our debt, we spend probably 90% of our time talking about the discretionary side of budget, which includes defense. If you eliminated the whole Department of Defense, you'd still have a deficit, so don't act like that's the problem in Washington.

Two thirds of our spending in Washington is what's called mandatory spending, things that we don't even vote on. It's Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security and Obamacare.

And think about this, in one bill, in one bill that we passed to the Senate last year, with only a 51-vote requirement to repeal and replace Obamacare, we repealed Obamacare, got rid of that, actually put in place reforms to lower premiums, put you in charge your healthcare, protected people with pre-existing conditions. We did all of that and we turned Medicaid, which is one of the most broken forms of healthcare. We turned Medicaid over to the states to run and we put Medicaid on a budget.

We didn't cut Medicaid spending like Democrats would say, we just slowed the growth. So only in Washington, you know, if you were going to get an 8% increase and you get a 3% increase, you've still got an increase and they call it a cut. Just that alone would have saved over $800 billion and improved healthcare outcomes for families all across the country.

Oh and by the way, Medicare, if we do nothing, if we don't touch it, it's set to go bankrupt in eight years. I think that would be irresponsible to let it go bust. We have a plan by the way to save Medicare from bankruptcy. Democrats don't even want to talk about that, but if you just look at the healthcare bill alone, two of the big four mandatory spending programs in one fell swoop, we could have dramatically reformed and helped us get to a balanced Federal budget.

LEVIN: You have a plan on Medicare. You guys are going to vote on it before you leave town?

SCALISE: I'm not sure if there's going to be a vote on that. I think what we need to do is have a public discussion. We haven't really engaged the American people on what the problem is. I mean when I go home, I talk to senior groups in New Orleans and the first thing I say is, "How many of you know Medicare goes bankrupt in eight years?" Mark, half the people in the room are scared to even talk about it because they think that they know it's bad. They know it is going bust.

They just think the solution would negatively impact them and when I say, "First of all, our plan doesn't even make any changes to Medicare for you, except that it won't go bust on your watch." Well, immediately they're okay to having this conversation.

Young people by the way don't believe it's going to be there for them. So if they're going to have to make some changes to how a 30-year-old will have to, you know, make plans so that they can still have some kind of healthcare plan for them when they retire, they're open to that discussion, too.

We need to first -- we can't just assume everybody knows what the problem is. We have to have this discussion and then go talk about what our solution is because the Democrats don't want to make any changes. They want to let it go bust and scare and frighten seniors. That's all they want - and seniors are tired of being scared on this issue.

LEVIN: So you're saying and correctly, because I know the trustees put out this report every year for Medicare, Social Security and so forth that Medicare goes bust in eight years.

SCALISE: And it's bipartisan.

LEVIN: It's bipartisan.

SCALISE: It's not like, you know, this is just what the Republicans said, both Obama's actuaries and Trump's actuaries on Medicare acknowledge, it goes bust- oh and by the way, the Democrats plan of what they call "Medicare for all."

LEVIN: I was just - Medicare for all will bankrupt health insurance --

SCALISE: Think about this. It bankrupts Medicare even faster because they dump - you take a plan that's right now insolvent. It should be shored up. We need to save it from bankruptcy. Again, we have a plan to save it from bankruptcy. They put $200 million more people on a plan that's going bankrupt, so it goes bankrupt faster.

Seniors don't want that and oh by the way, the Democrats plan also eliminates private health insurance that you get through your company, which by the way most people who get private health insurance get it through their employer and they like that health care.

LEVIN: Are you ready to block it? We'll be right back

Steve Scalise, let's talk about the Democrats for a minute. You're going to be in the minority, it's not a massive majority the Democrats will have, but big enough. The committees are represented mostly by one coast or the other coast, San Francisco is well represented. New York City is well represented. Baltimore and so forth. We have a big center of the country that really isn't represented by a lot of these Chairmen of these various committees.

And they've made it abundantly clear that they have is their purpose to expand the welfare state, to drive up the debt fairly, to drive up spending further and to drive this President from office? Is the Republican caucus ready to really duke it out?

SCALISE: We're ready to go to battle and look, this is a battle for the direction of our country and for this President to be able to continue following through on his promises. I think one of the best things about the Trump presidency is that he's actually doing the things he promised he would do during a campaign. That's refreshing.

It's also the reason that they hate what he's doing because he's going after the, you know the leftist mentality that they put in place under Barack Obama and so when you look at what their agenda is, they weren't real clear in a lot of those swing districts, Mark. There's only three districts that they flipped that Hillary Clinton won, so the bulk of the Republicans that gave Pelosi the majority were places where Donald Trump actually won when he was on the ballot.

And so it's going to be a real delicate balance for them. Their very first vote as a member of Congress is going to be for Nancy Pelosi as Speaker and many of them promised that they wouldn't do it.

So eyes are going to be real clearly focused on that very first vote. Did you break your bond to your constituents on day one, but even on day two and three and four, when she's bringing radical bill after radical bill to abolish ICE. They want to get rid of our Interior Border Patrol agents. This open border mentality, Medicare-for-all where they eliminate private health insurance and help bankrupt Medicare.

And then let alone all this personal stuff where they want to keep going after the President and ultimately go to impeachment. As they go down that kind of leftist agenda, that's not where Middle America is. That's not where a lot of those seats that they flip from Republican to Democrat are.

LEVIN: Are you guys ready to organize on these committees and battle them inch for inch, territory, territory, territory.

SCALISE: We absolutely need to. Look, I was there on the Energy and Commerce Committee. I've just gotten on the committee as a new member of Congress in 2009 when they started moving through Obamacare. Go look at the popularity of Obamacare at the beginning when it was introduced, it was very popular and then ultimately, we exposed so many different pieces of that bill that were going to destroy your relationship with your doctor. They were going to jack up the cost of healthcare. We laid it all out. It wasn't a mystery.

And we did that in committee where the work is actually going to be done, on the House floor, where you've got to do battle to the point where when the bill passed, it was unpopular with the American people and it's remained unpopular because it's bad law.

But ultimately, we've got to have that kind of same mentality to go and battle them. Again, in the marketplace of ideas, show why their ideas are bad and why we have better ideas.

LEVIN: I just feel in the committees, they seem to strategize together, they seem to be organized, they can be very obnoxious when they want to and so forth, very - they obstruct.

I'm not saying Republicans should do the same thing, but I just hope they're prepared to organize within each and every one of these committees because the Democrats in the minority seem to know what to do with the minority, sometimes the Republicans and the minority don't seem to know what to do in the minority. That would be something that would concern me, so there's at least thought or talk ...

SCALISE: Well, it's been in - remember this, it's been eight years since we've been in the minority. Over 70% of our conference, Republican House members never served in the minority.

So for a lot of people, this is going to be their first experience and I hope they don't like this experience. I'm not going to like it because I've seen what it's like when Nancy Pelosi is speaker and the kind of agenda she moves through.

The difference is now, we have a President working with us to help highlight just how radical their agenda is going to be and we've got to do a better job, Mark of explaining to the American people what we stand for and contrast the difference.

LEVIN: Oh that's right. Don't forget folks. Most weeknights, you can watch Levin TV, Levin TV. Just go to crtv.com/mark and sign up right there, join our wonderful group there. That's crtv.com/mark, our conservative community, please join us or give us a call at 844-LEVIN-TV, 844-LEVIN-TV. We'll be right back.

Steve Scalise, I mean we got hit pretty good, the House in the midterm election and what was the message? Was there united message that the House Republicans were running on because honestly, I'm not sure.

SCALISE: You know, I think going in, it was clearly the economy that was the main focus because the economy is still doing really well. The thing is that that wasn't enough, you know and frankly the Democrats did a good job of going out and lying, I would argue and you know, in fact they were lying about the fact that we were trying to take away pre-existing condition coverage, but that's where they went. They tried to put people on defense and they had a lot of money behind that, too.

They heavily outraised us. Their base was very motivated. I'll say this, when the President got engaged, we actually did really well in terms of bringing our base to a higher level of turnout, too, and typically on an off-year election, doesn't do so well on turnout, we saw very high - high percentage turnout this time around, but ultimately, I do think that our message wasn't sharp enough, it wasn't just enough to be for the economy.

I think we should have gotten into a more direct back-and-forth on healthcare because what they said wasn't true, but if you're not out there pushing back, then the myth becomes the fact.

LEVIN: Interestingly, in some of these districts, relatively Republican districts, maybe marginal where you had candidates running away from the President. Many of them got blown out, didn't they?

SCALISE: Well, you know, if you look at - I'll just use the Senate since some of the House races, you know can go back and forth. If you look where the President went to flip Democrat seats to Republican, you know Missouri is a real good example. If you look at what happened in --

LEVIN: Indiana.

SCALISE:. Indiana and North Dakota, I mean, you had a lot of opportunities for South Dakota where the President directly got engaged and ultimately flipped the seat from Democrat to Republican and helped increase turnout at the same time, even in Texas.

You know, he and Ted Cruz didn't necessarily get along with each other during the Republican primaries, but they sure came together and Senator Cruz voted for Kavanaugh and helped the President get his judge nominees through and so the President came down and helped support Ted Cruz.

You look in Florida, Ron deSantis, a colleague of mine wouldn't be governor today if not for the direct involvement over and over of President Trump going down to Florida and also helping Rick Scott along the way.

LEVIN: So what does this tell you?

SCALISE: You know, I still think when the President gets directly involved, he is incredibly popular, you would you would see - I was in Houston doing some events the day after President Trump came to Houston to do a rally for some of our members down there that were having tough races. They filled the Toyota Center. I mean, there were probably 15,000 people in the arena and another 15,000 outside knowing they couldn't get in, but just wanted to be there, which tells you the enthusiasm for this President has never been higher.

I do think when it comes to 2020 and it's President Trump on the ballot against whatever far-left radical they nominate out of their 20 to 30- person primary, President Trump is going to do incredibly well because we've got a great economy. I think it's going to keep getting better and then ultimately, you're going to have a contrast that couldn't be clearer just like President Trump against Hillary Clinton, I think it's going to be a very similar situation in two years.

LEVIN: When we come back the big question.

By the way, really good book, "Back in the Game." I strongly encourage people to get this book, but Congressman, your prediction. Do you think the Democrats are going to overreach and will the Republicans be prepared to take advantage of that?

SCALISE: In both fronts, yes, I don't think there's a doubt Nancy Pelosi, her conference will be further to the left in January than when she was speaker back from to 2006 to 2010. You can just see how far left they've moved in that short of a period of time and so I think, there's no way that she avoids overreaching and again, we have to make that sharp contrast with President Trump on the ballot in 2020, I think he gets reelected and we take the House back.

LEVIN: And isn't your group more conservative now? You've lost a number of these so-called rhinos and wouldn't she also be laying out there, perhaps three dozen Democrats, who went in relatively Republican districts?

SCALISE: Yes, there are a lot of opportunities that we're going to have to show the differences and we need to do that. We need to be ready, too, and I think we will be. We have to recruit really, really good candidates. You can't just run against somebody who's bad. You've got to put up a really strong candidate and I think we'll have a lot of people willing to step up and be a part of retaking the House and working with this president again to keep putting real conservative reforms in place that will be long- lasting to turn this country around.

LEVIN: So you're telling the viewers, the Republicans are ready and they're ready even in the minority?

SCALISE: Yes, and you know what, if your Republican incumbent was beat by a Democrat and you want to be a part of getting this country back on track, reach out. Reach out to me. Reach out to our team. We need really good people to run for Congress and to go and fight to get this country back on track.

LEVIN: Great pleasure. God bless you, my friend.

SCALISE: My pleasure. Thanks.

LEVIN: See you next time on "Life Liberty & Levin."

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