Democrats Defect, Back GOP Obamacare Fix; Search for Man who Fell from Plane; Batkid to the Rescue
JIM SCIUTTO, CNN ANCHOR: Happening now: House Democrats defect and back a Republican fix for Obamacare. One their leaders say should dismantle the troubled program. Also, a mystery off Florida. A man falls from a plane and disappears. And Batkid to the rescue at city hall. Thousands of volunteers come together to make the wish of a young cancer patient come true. Wolf Blitzer is on assignment today. I'm Jim Sciutto. And you're in THE SITUATION ROOM.</s>SCIUTTO: If you could be a fly on the wall for one meeting today here in Washington, the one to pick just wrapped up at the White House. President Obama sitting down with the heads of some of the nation's largest health insurance companies. He's asking them to take part in a controversial and high priced fix to an Obamacare flaw that's caused millions of people to have their policies canceled. The president now wants those plans extended for a year. But on Capitol Hill, House Republicans want them reinstated permanently, potentially fatal blow to Obamacare, and one that some Democrats crossed the aisle today to vote for. CNN's chief congressional correspondent Dana Bash is there today. Dana, how big a blow for the president today?</s>DANA BASH, CNN CHIEF CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, look, the prospect of losing this vote in a big way is exactly what drove the Democratic leaders here earlier in the week to plead with Obama officials for the president to come up with some kind of fix to this canceled policy problem. So, the fact that the president did offer a mea culpa yesterday, he offered his own plan, certainly helps soften the blow but it still stung.</s>BASH (voice-over): Thirty-nine House Democrats, one-fifth of the caucus, defected and voted for a Republican bill allowing people to keep canceled health policies. Democrat Ron Barber in a tough re-election campaign next year was one of them.</s>REP. RON BARBER (D), ARIZONA: I had been home meeting with constituents. This has been a topic of concern and conversation. So, I wanted to vote yes to let my constituents know I heard what they had to say.</s>BASH: That despite warnings from Democratic leaders that the GOP bill would dismantle Obamacare by not only allowing consumers to keep canceled policies but also letting people sign up for new policies that do not meet new benefit requirements.</s>REP. NANCY PELOSI (D-CA), MINORITY LEADER: That idea that it was helping consumers was sort of the Trojan horse whose underbelly is poisonous with -- in terms of the health and well-being of the American people.</s>BASH (on camera): Your leadership says that your vote would undercut the entire Obamacare law.</s>BARBER: Well, I don't see it that way. I mean, I think any fix that we can make, particularly when a problem arises, is good for the people back home. And truth of the matter is, look, I'm accountable to the people who sent me here.</s>BASH (voice-over): The prospect of this GOP vote is the main reason the president came out a day earlier with his own plan to reinstate canceled insurance policies. Democratic sources admit without that, many more Democrats would have defected. But the GOP bill still got significant bipartisan support, and Republicans were eager to pour salt on the president's political wounds.</s>REP. FRED UPTON (R), MICHIGAN: "Ask not what your country can do for you, "the only thing we have to fear," "tear down this wall." And our current president will be no different. "If you like your health care plan, you can keep it, period."</s>BASH: The president has issued a veto threat but it probably won't get that far because in the Senate, there are certainly a number of Senate Democrats who also want to have a legislative fix, want the show their constituents back home that they are part of the problem just like some of their colleagues in the House did. But so far, Democratic leaders who run the Senate, Jim, are saying that they will hold off on having a vote and give the president's plan a little bit more time to work.</s>SCIUTTO: All right. Dana Bash, right in the middle of it as always. Let's get more now with CNN chief political analyst Gloria Borger, and CNN senior political analyst, Ron Brownstein, the editorial director of "The National Journal." So, the president came out with an attempt at a fix yesterday with the stakes nothing short of saving his signature legislative program. Did he succeed? Is he closer to that?</s>RON BROWNSTEIN, THE NATIONAL JOURNAL: No, I think the president is walking an incredible tightrope because on the one hand, he has to be seen, he wants to be seen as being responsive to the concern about people who are losing their existing policies, but he can't be too responsive to it --</s>GLORIA BORGER, CNN CHIEF POLITICAL ANALYST: Right.</s>BROWNSTEIN: -- because ultimately, the way the individual market works now largely segregates out the sick, those who are in it tend to be healthy. They are exactly the people he needs to come in to the new plans to provide a balanced risk pool that will allow it to succeed going forward. If large numbers of them are allowed to stay in their current plans outside of the system, he is putting off problems today but compounding them a year from now when rates could go up and further that downward spiral.</s>BORGER: You know, I was talking to a senior administration official yesterday who said to me we do understand that we are undermining our own program, but we have no choice and we have to do it administratively and for as short a time as possible. You know, this Upton bill would have undermined it completely. It's another way of undoing Obamacare.</s>SCIUTTO: Ron, you have written about how the stakes for the party as a whole, the very message can government fix things?</s>BROWNSTEIN: Right.</s>SCIUTTO: Can government help? So, you are talking about not just in 2014 but longer term for --</s>BROWNSTEIN: Absolutely. Look, the Democrats have long viewed health care reform, the guarantee of universal health care, as their best way of demonstrating to skeptical voters, particularly in the white middle class, that government can in fact provide them tangible benefits. And after decades of running, they are the dog that caught the bus. They now have the program. They need to show that it can work. Instead, in the initial rollout at least, they still ultimately have time to reverse this, but in the initial rollout they've had kind of a disastrous first few weeks that have compounded the doubts, compounded the problem that the program is meant to solve.</s>BORGER: You know, this is a president who's always talked about what government can do for you. He wants to embark on immigration reform, which means securing the borders, and who has to secure the borders? Government.</s>BROWNSTEIN: Universal pre-</s>K. BORGER: Will people trust government to secure the borders and by the way, will they trust the president? Because his own trustworthiness is now upside down. It's dropped 10 points since October. So it's a problem --</s>SCIUTTO: And below that crucial 40 percent approval rating, which was dropped -- President Bush dropped below that, George W. Bush, post- Katrina.</s>BROWNSTEIN: Approval rating among white voters it is down consistently around 30 percent, you know, with enormous skepticism. Look, from the beginning, they have had enormous difficulty convincing particularly the white middle class that this program will benefit them and their family. In the Virginia election, the exit poll, three quarters --</s>BORGER: That's why he said --</s>BROWNSTEIN: Right.</s>BORGER: -- if you have a health care plan you like, you can keep it.</s>BROWNSTEIN: Right.</s>BORGER: For those voters.</s>BROWNSTEIN: Right. So, they started with skepticism and rather than dissolving or resolving it, they are compounding it. Still have time to make it work but you never get a second chance to make a first impression.</s>SCIUTTO: Ron, I know you have written in effect that for those white middle class voters this is kind of like food stamps. They view it as something that doesn't affect them.</s>BROWNSTEIN: That has been the core problem they've had. Many voters --</s>BORGER: But it might affect them because their premiums might end up going up. In the end if all of this is a complete failure --</s>SCIUTTO: And just in meantime he's made the point before the 2014 elections, it's going to happen 2015.</s>SCIUTTO: Is this Obama's Katrina moment? You talk about trustworthiness --</s>BORGER: Competency.</s>SCIUTTO: Competency.</s>BORGER: Competency, credibility, all of that. You want to compare it to what President Bush faced except, you know, this president had -- they have had years to plan for this. This isn't, you know, this isn't a disaster that just --</s>BROWNSTEIN: Potentially, I agree. Look, here's something that's really revealing. There were 36 House Democrats today who voted in districts from which Obama won 55 percent or less, 28 of those 36 voted for the Upton plan. There were 156 districts where he won 55 percent or above. Only 11 of them voted. These are the vulnerable Democrats beginning to distance themselves, voting for something they probably knew would never happen. I'm not sure all of them would have voted for it if they thought it could.</s>BORGER: That doesn't take into account the senators who are worried about this who are up for re-election. You know, generally, second term presidents don't do well, they generally lose seats in the midterm election of their second presidency. They were thinking after the shutdown, you know what, we might actually gain seats because they were riding so high. Now they have totally flipped on that.</s>SCIUTTO: We were talking about the GOP, we were ready to --</s>BROWNSTEIN: Not that they're doing so great either. It's a race to the bottom.</s>BORGER: They canceled each other out.</s>SCIUTTO: Fantastic. Ron Brownstein, Gloria Borger, as always, sassing it out. Next, I will talk to the Republican lawmaker whose fix for Obamacare drew support from some Democrats in the House today. Also, Toronto's town council takes action against the city's crack- smoking mayor. Now, even his brother is asking him to take a leave. And a special 5-year-old super hero is called in to save the day at San Francisco becomes Gotham City to help make his wish come true.