Deal In The Works?; Shutdown Ripple Effects; Child Drowns on Cruise Ship
SEN. HARRY REID, (D) MAJORITY LEADER: I'm very optimistic that we will reach an agreement that's reasonable in nature this week, to reopen the government, pay the nation's bills, and begin long-term negotiations to put our country on sound, physical footing.</s>SEN. MITCH MCCONNELL, (R) MINORITY LEADER: Those discussions continue. And I share his optimism that we're going to get a result that will be acceptable to both sides.</s>JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: This tone, this amicable tone is so different than what we heard a week, two or three weeks ago. The current framework outlined to CNN of this deal includes funding the government through mid-January, extending the debt ceiling until early February. Some small changes to the Obamacare law would also be considered including requiring income verifications for health care subsidies. Now, Senate Republicans, they will sit down together in their caucus to discuss potential compromise later this morning that I believe at 11 o'clock this morning. The big question, though, in the House, will the House of Representatives approve this? Will Speaker Boehner allow it to go to the floor at all for a vote? If it does not clear the House, of course, this problem still remains. They have only until Thursday, Thursday to get this all done.</s>ZORAIDA SAMBOLIN, CNN ANCHOR: I just don't like the idea that they're just kicking the can down the road, you know, because we will be here again, potentially.</s>BERMAN: We will be here again in January.</s>SAMBOLIN: Potentially.</s>BERMAN: And then maybe in February, but we're not there now at least if they get this deal done.</s>SAMBOLIN: Yes, we avert (ph) it. Thirty-one minutes past the hour. We are now 15 days into the shutdown and many furloughed workers are really starting to feel the pain. As CNN's Rene Marsh tells us that's one of the wide ranging ripple effects of a government closed for business.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I'm not essential.</s>RENE MARSH, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The day before the government shutdown, CNN met Dee Alexander, a secretary at the Department of Agriculture.</s>DEE ALEXANDER, FURLOUGHED WORKER: You don't really know what -- because you don't know how long it's going to last.</s>MARSH: Two weeks later, the shutdown is still in effect And Alexander has stopped paying her car loan.</s>ALEXANDER: Do you decide that I'm going to have somewhere to live at or do you decide that I'm going to pay my car loan? You also have to figure out what about food.</s>MARSH: On Saturday, she received the last paycheck she'll get until the government reopens, $600 less than usual. Some of the furloughed have turned to food banks for help like this one in Maryland.</s>DEBBIE WEBBER, FOOD PANTRY MANAGER: What I keep hearing over and over is I never thought I'd need a food pantry, but here I am.</s>MARSH: The ripple effect of the shutdown also means no more car recalls. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has stopped looking for automobile defects and the Centers for Disease Control has stopped tracking infectious diseases like the flu. Something the agency's former director says could have dire consequences. Quote, "I can attest to the very real potential for unnecessary pain, suffering, and death when the work of public health officials is curtailed, "he wrote in an op-ed. And in South Dakota, ranchers digging out after an unexpected blizzard are dealing with tens of thousands of dead cattle. Called the U.S. Department of Agriculture for disaster assistance, and this is all they hear.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The U.S. department of Agricultural offices are currently closed due to the lapse of federal government funding. The office will re-open once Congress restores funding.</s>MARSH (on-camera): Well, at that one food pantry, we showed you in the piece, roughly 200 people received food now. That's on top of the food that same group passed out to families last week. Clearly, after receiving that final paycheck, families are now beginning to feel the pinch. Rene Marsh, CNN, Washington.</s>BERMAN: People need to make ends meet. Our thanks to Rene Marsh for that story. Now, there is one other consequence of the shutdown to tell you about this morning. The White House garden now apparently falling into disrepair. A blogger who's been watching the garden says it's now overrun with weeds and wildlife and the produce is rotting on the vine.</s>SAMBOLIN: What a shame.</s>BERMAN: The reason? The shutdown means that gardeners maintaining the White House grounds are down to a skeleton crew can't actually tend to the garden or harvest the crops. White House workers who had been helping, they can't help either because of the government furloughs. A lot of the produce from the garden is donated to D.C. area food pantries.</s>SAMBOLIN: We were talking about earlier is I wonder where all of that produce goes and desperately needed right now and look at what's happening. Another consequence there.</s>SAMBOLIN (voice-over): Thirty-four minutes past the hour. At the World War II Memorial today, an alliance of veterans groups plans to gather to call on Congress to end the shutdown and raise the debt ceiling, calling themselves the military coalition. Leaders from 33 veterans organizations, including the VFW, American Legion, and Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America will make their case that the shutdown is hurting veterans, members of the reserves and their families by cutting off access to pay and to benefits.</s>BERMAN (voice-over): A tragic story to tell you about this morning. A family is in mourning after a tragic drowning on a cruise ship. This happened on the Carnival victory on the last leg of a four-day Caribbean voyage. A six-year-old boy was swimming with his 10-year- old brother when a deejay saw him boy struggling. Passengers, they did jump in to help, but they could not revive the boy.</s>SHAINA SHAW, PASSENGER WHO TRIED TO SAVE BOY: I heard all of this commotion. I actually lifted the boy up. I actually helped prop his body in proper position so they could perform the CPR. Everyone was crying. The family was distraught. They had to pull the mother away and the father. The father was next to his son pleading and begging his son to stay alive.</s>BERMAN: This sounds so awful. Drownings on cruise ships, they do not happen often. Cruise ships are not actually required to have lifeguards on duty. Parents are supposed to be responsible for their children in the pools. The ship owner of Carnival issue a statement saying it extends its sympathy and is offering assistance to the boy's family.</s>SAMBOLIN: I hope they get lifeguards. Sometimes, there are so many kids in the pool, so many people that you really can't tell what's happening.</s>SAMBOLIN: Thirty-six minutes past the hour. The price tag to Penn State in the Jerry Sandusky sex scandal now more than $50 million.</s>SAMBOLIN (voice-over): And that does not include 60 million that was set aside to settle civil claims for man who said they were sexually abuse by the former assistant football coach. The university is also paying off a $60 million fine imposed by the NCAA. Sandusky is serving 30 to 60 years in prison for molesting ten boys.</s>BERMAN (voice-over): The Supreme Court today once again wading into the question of affirmative action on college campuses. The high court is considering a case from Michigan challenging the state's voter approved ban on using racial and gender preferences in deciding who gets into college. Just a few months ago, the court said the University of Texas could continue using racial criteria in admission, but made it much harder for institutions to justify affirmative action policies.</s>SAMBOLIN: So, it was far worse than anyone thought. "The National Journal" says former president, George W. Bush's, heart condition was so serious it was potentially life threatening. His main artery apparently 95 percent blocked. The 67-year-old had a stent put in to open the blockage which was discovered during his annual physical exam in August. Those physical exams are very important.</s>BERMAN: Lucky they caught it. President Obama is doing some virtual stumping for Cory Booker in the last days of the campaign for Senate New Jersey. Tomorrow, a special election will be held to fill the seat once held by the late Sen. Frank Lautenberg. Booker's campaign released a video with the president. This as his lead seems to be shrinking a little bit. It was quite a few months ago. The latest poll shows him with a ten-point lead above Republican, Steve Lonegan, which is pretty big a day before the election. Lonegan has had some big guns to show up the campaign for him. Former Alaska governor, Sarah Palin, campaigned for Lonegan over the weekend.</s>SAMBOLIN: How about Trump versus Cuomo? Some New York Republicans apparently believe The Donald is just the man to beat the incumbent Democratic governor in next year's election. The idea of a Trump candidacy is reportedly backed by the state GOP chairman. The Donald for his part is throwing cold water on the idea. He says the draft Trump movement is news to him and he's not particularly independence in the job either.</s>BERMAN: Interesting, because usually, he fans the flames of candidacy. You know, he's run so many times before. Not really.</s>SAMBOLIN: Not really.</s>BERMAN: Spending big money to defend its sweeping limits on abortions close to $1 million the price tag that is expected to keep growing. The "Associated Press" reports the state has paid more than $913,000 to two private law firms helping it defend abortion restrictions enacted since Governor Sam Brownback took office. Planned Parenthood of Kansas calls it political posturing on abortion rather than good financial stewardship. But abortion opponents say blame those for challenging the laws for driving up the cost.</s>SAMBOLIN: Denver is close to making it tougher to use marijuana. Despite a Colorado law that made possessing small amounts of pot legal, the city council is considering an ordinance that would make it illegal to use pot if anyone else can see it or if they can smell it. So, that means no smoking even on your own property if the odor happens to waft from your own backyard to the one next door. Civil rights advocates are calling the proposal an overreach. They're also calling it unconstitutional.</s>BERMAN: Interesting. All right. A weekend shopping spree leaving two Wal-Mart stores all but cleaned out. Check this out. The company is left footing the bill here. Customers using their government funded debit cards discovered a computer glitch had given them unlimited balances. So, what did they do? They tried to spend unlimitedly.</s>BERMAN: -- buy everything they could. In reality, there was a limit the whole time apparently and Wal-Mart will likely have to absorb the losses.</s>SAMBOLIN: Yikes!</s>BERMAN (on-camera): Yikes! All right. So, what kind of weather can you expect as you walk out the door this morning? Indra Petersons is here to check out the forecast. Hey, Indra.</s>INDRA PETERSONS, AMS METEOROLOGIST: Hey. Yes. Not bad today. I mean, it's kind of nice. We saw the rain that we'd see this weekend kind of push out of the area. You can actually see yesterday's radar of the remnants of that storm. What we're currently watching is the next storm in the pipeline. We can actually see it today. It's going to bring showers pretty much in Minnesota down through Texas. But the big story again will be right around Texas because of the tropical moisture from tropical depression uptake (ph). Now, this is already here. You can see right here in Baja, but look at all that moisture kind of funneling right into Texas. This matters because you now have this tropical moisture. You have moisture that's already hanging around the gulf and you have this slow moving cold front. So, what are we talking about? Anywhere from one to two inches, even three to five inches of heavy rain in the region. We already saw a lot of flooding over the weekend and it looks like, again, we're still going to be having that concern. Another system even makes its way through later on this week. So, Texas is going to be a bull's-eye here the next several days. As far as the northeast, look at the temperatures. Still not too bad. About some 70s. Maybe overnight, a little bit of drizzle and maybe kind of thicker marine layer. Eventually though, we'll see all this cold air from that same system kind of funnel its way across and we'll see those temperatures drop. So, maybe tonight, a little bit of a deep marine layer and drizzle, but overall, nothing like this weekend.</s>SAMBOLIN: OK. Thank you.</s>BERMAN: Thank you so much.</s>SAMBOLIN: Coming up --</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It is so easy and really, really simple way to save someone's life.</s>SAMBOLIN: This is a first in generosity. A San Diego couple stepping up to give the gift of life coming up next.