State Treasurer and Independent candidate for governor, Tim Cahill, sat down with the Journal for an interview, discussing issues in his campaign and issues that he highlighted in a recent event hosted by the Suffolk Law Rappaport Center.

Cahill, a lifelong Democrat until 2009, changed his political affiliation to Independent before he began running for governor with what many perceive as a Republican platform. “I’ve been trying to contrast in my head your difference from Charlie Baker’s in terms of ideology. You both seem to be fairly moderate socially. You both seem to be fiscally conservative, interested in efficiency in government,” said Kevin Marshall, a Suffolk Law student.

Cahill responded by saying that he preferred to separate ideology from action. “Charlie Baker was the state financial officer for the state back in the 90s. He oversaw the Big Dig, which we are paying for today. As the A&F (administration and finance) secretary, you are the governor’s chief budget writer. You are the governor’s CFO, which makes you practically the CFO of the entire state, because the governor’s office oversees 70 percent of spending.”

Baker took the Big Dig money from the taxpayers to the Mass. Turnpike Authority, which worked in the 1990’s, but “became broke because of what Charlie Baker and Gov. Weld did and the way that they did it.”

Cahill left the Democratic Party and chose not to enter the Republican Party because “both parties seem to be focused more on what’s good for their party and what’s good for their base and not what’s good for the American people and the people of Mass.”

He said that he has always been a fiscal conservative and that the Democratic Party was no longer the party of the middle class. He also accused the party of practicing class warfare and trying to use the private sector as a scapegoat, when there was plenty of blame to go around.

“We were the part of the little guy, but of the little guy that wants to work and is not looking for a handout and I feel that that’s been missing,” said Cahill.

He voted for John McCain in 2008 because he “was better suited and had a better philosophy,” and that Obama had many of the same people in his campaign as Governor Patrick, whom he blasted both in the Journal interview and the Suffolk Law event for exercising excessive spending, which he believes contributed to fiscal crisis.

Cahill claims that his attempts to warn the Governor and other lawmakers about the fiscal crisis before it happened were ignored.

He noted that as treasurer he has no control over state spending that the Treasury’s operating budget has gone down 20 percent since he took office.

Cahill came out against the National Health Care Bill that was recently signed into law. He argued that the health care reform in Mass. passed in 2006 “would have bankrupted the state if the federal government hadn’t been extraordinarily generous in subsidizing the cost of providing access to an additional 400,000 people.”

He went on to say that the federal government would not be able to sustain health care subsidies for all fifty states. “Free health care is not free. This national health care plan is not going to cut the deficit. We have facts here in Mass. that can show that it won’t become cheaper, that prices are not going to magically come down. They haven’t here in Mass. I don’t know how people think it’s going to happen nationally.”

The bill was not a victory for the American people, according to Cahill, but a victory for President Obama. “That’s what’s being written in the newspaper today. That’s how the spin is coming out, and at the end of the day, if it works to bring insurance premiums down, if it works to bring the cost of hospitalization down, I’ll be very, very happy to eat my words.”

Instead, Cahill would like to see a plan that both fosters more competition by allowing people to purchase insurance across state lines and has malpractice insurance reform. “It’s so easy to sue doctors. They have to practice defensive medicine, which is driving a lot of doctors out of business.”

In the past week, the Cahill campaign has come under fire for accepting campaign contributions from contributors contracted with the state pension fund. “Some of [the controversy] has been generated by the media,” he said, noting that there is a higher percentage from business involved with the pension fund that did not contribute to his campaign, and many of those who did were involved with the pension fund prior to his tenure as treasurer.

Cahill said he was pleased to convey his message to college students who are getting their “first exposure to politics.”