Poll Numbers on President's Side; Key Vote Underway on Economic Rescue
ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.</s>BLITZER: All right, this is it. This is a critical test vote for President Barack Obama. It's happening right now on the Senate floor. If they get 60 votes, his economic stimulus efforts will survive. If they don't get the 60 votes, it could be over. Let's check in with our senior Congressional correspondent, Dana Bash. She's watching all of this together with us. There are 58 Democrats, as we know, Dana, in the U.S. Senate. They need at least two Republicans to join -- assuming that all 58 Democrats are there and that they all vote in favor of ending this debate now so that the process can move forward.</s>DANA BASH, CNN SENIOR CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: That's exactly right. And, as of now, we believe that three Republicans are planning to join those 58 Democrats to vote for this, bringing it to a total of 61. Those three Republicans are those who worked in excruciating detail to negotiate this compromise. And the Republicans are Susan Collins of Maine, Olympia Snowe of Maine and Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania. They have been talking on the Senate floor over the past couple of minutes about the fact that they understand that this is not perfect. Democrats have been saying the same thing. But they believe this is, for the most part, the right mix of spending and tax cuts to do the trick and at least starting to stimulate the economy. So there you see the vote. And we do expect, unless something extraordinary happens, for it to eke out a vote -- eke out a win -- a victory. But, again, maybe by just one or two votes.</s>BLITZER: The Democrats aren't taking any chances, Dana, because we just saw Senator Ted Kennedy. He's come in. He was obviously very, very ill. We remember on Inauguration Day, he suffered a major setback. He was down in Florida but they brought him back to Washington in order to participate for this vote.</s>BASH: That's right. In fact, I was just down outside of the capitol when Senator Kennedy came in. He was greeted by his colleague from Massachusetts, John Kerry. He came out. He was a little careful in getting out of the car and he was making his way into the capitol. And there were lots of cameras there. And I asked him how do you feel? And he walked right over to the cameras not talking about his health but talking about why it was important for him to be here. Listen.</s>SEN. TED KENNEDY (D), MASSACHUSETTS: I'm doing well. Doing well, looking forward to this period of time. 600,000 jobs have been lost in the last month and hundreds of thousands of American families have been hurt by the failure of taking action on the health of the American families. And it's time that we take action now. I think President Obama has demonstrated his strong commitment to making process on these important issues. And I look forward to being a part of the team.</s>BASH: Senator Kennedy who actually came back from Florida on Friday, Wolf, because Senate Democrats thought that would be when they had the vote. But he stayed in Washington all weekend for this first key test vote which is going on as we speak. We understand he'll be here tomorrow for what they hope will be final passage in the Senate of the President Obama's economic stimulus plan.</s>BLITZER: We're hearing the roll call as it's being read alphabetically. They always do that. I think they're on Ds right now or a little bit further along in the alphabet. I'm not hearing the yeas or nays. Is that deliberate or is there just an audio problem on the floor of the Senate?</s>BASH: You know I think there might not be an audio problem but what happens is they begin to call the roll and it takes time for the senators to get from their offices or wherever they are over to the floor. Everybody knew this vote was going to happen. But that's the tradition of the Senate. It might be a little while before we have them go back through the roll call and people are actually on the floor to cast their yea or nay vote. But again unless something extraordinary happens, we do expect that 58 Democrats will vote yes and three Republicans will vote no. There was some optimism late in the day Wolf I should tell you that maybe more Republicans would vote yes. Richard Lugar of Indiana, the president was in his home state just a couple of hours ago. I saw him on the way over here. And I said will you vote for this? And he said no. At this point, it looks like for this particular volt, just three Republicans --</s>BLITZER: Even as you reported on Friday, Judd Gregg, the Republican senator from New Hampshire who's been nominated by President Obama to be the commerce secretary, he's not going to vote at all, is that right?</s>BASH: That's right. His office told our Congressional producer Ted Barrette that his plans when he was nominated were to not vote on anything until his confirmation process is over. Presumably, that will mean not anything at all. They assume he will be confirmed. He will not be lending his future boss a hand in voting for a stimulus plan at this time. He won't do it.</s>BLITZER: Clearly what's happened is they're reading the roll call, most of the senators haven't even showed up yet. that's why we're not hearing their vote. They'll have a chance to announce their yea or nay at some point down the road. It usually takes about 20 minutes for the entire roll call to go forward. Dana I want you to stand by. Paul Begala our Democratic strategist and Ed Rollins our Republican strategist are watching all of this. Paul, based on what you're hearing, is it a done deal? Does the president have -- does Harry Reid, the Democratic majority leader in the Senate, have every one of those 58 Democrats surely lined up to vote in favor of ending this debate to move the process forward?</s>PAUL BEGALA, DEMOCRATIC STRATEGIST: Yes, that's what they've been told by their colleagues. You never actually know until they vote. That's just the nature of the Senate or any other legislative body. This is where the Democrats see Harry Reid as their MVP. He's been attacked a lot. But he's held together an incredibly diverse Democratic caucus from Bernie Sanders, an independent and affiliates with the Democrats, all the way to, say, Ben Nelson, a very conservative Democratic senator from Nebraska. Reid, should he get this through as they cast the vote, maybe the president of the United States will send him flowers for Valentine's Day.</s>BLITZER: Yes. Are you hearing, Ed, anything different than -- more than those three Republican, do you expect more than three Republicans to vote to end this debate, which is what the president wants?</s>ED ROLLINS, REPUBLICAN STRATEGIST: No, I don't. I think these three are going to be the targets for the next couple years. Specter has a tough re-election race in 2010. He traditionally has sometimes gone across the aisle. The ladies from Maine basically have been pretty independent over the years. There's a couple of more there are along the line. But Republicans have pretty much determined as Democrats have in the past that our best interest is to lay out our positions and clearly our positions are different than the Democrats' are today.</s>BLITZER: In Pennsylvania, which is pretty much a Democratic state, don't you think this would help Arlen Specter in his bid to try to get re-elected in 2010, unless he faces a very stiff Republican primary challenge?</s>ROLLINS: He faced a stiff Republican primary five years ago. And there's always rumblings. I don't know of anybody at this point in time that's going to run. This is not going to help him -- it could help in the general election but not in a potential primary.</s>BLITZER: Here's the latest CNN Opinion Research Corporation Poll numbers, Paul. As far as President Obama is concerned, is President Obama doing enough to cooperate with Republicans, 74 percent say, yes, he is. On the other hand, are Republicans doing enough to cooperate with President Obama? Only 39 percent of the American public think the Republicans are doing enough. How does those two numbers -- how does that translate into legislation and to action in the immediate period ahead?</s>BEGALA: I think the Republicans wrongly perceive this as a free vote, that they can vote against President Obama in order to position themselves or to define themselves, not to be pejorative. The president has gone so far to solicit and recruit Republican support. He's put three prominent Republicans in his cabinet. He met privately behind closed doors with all the House Republicans, then all the Senate Republicans. He has jettisoned part of his bill like support for contraception that Republicans attacked and by the way, winning a tax on Obama from the left, Planned Parenthood, attacked the president for that. So he's doing all that the can. I would also note in the poll, 32 percent of Republicans support this plan. That's a pretty low number, 32 percent. But if only those three senators that you and Ed mentioned, Snow, Collins and Specter from the Republican Party, vote for this, that will mean that 98.6 percent of Washington Republicans oppose the president's plan. So when you're only getting 1.4 percent of the Washington Republicans but 32 percent of the American Republicans, there's a disconnect within the Republican party between their elites who are all opposed to President Obama and their grassroots where Obama has real support.</s>BLITZER: Ed, how significant is it that President Obama today went to Indiana, tomorrow to Florida, Wednesday I think he's going to Virginia. He's got more trips later in the week. He's going out almost every day to work the American public to try to support this economic recovery plan.</s>ROLLINS: I think it's a correct strategy. Obviously there's a lot of Americans very concerned about this plan and are confused by it. They don't know whether it's good or bad. I'm not sure anybody can tell you if it's going to work in the end. Even Vice President Biden says there's a better than 30 percent chance of not working. Historically both parties have drawn the line. Ronald Reagan met with Democrats over 450 times in his eight years in office, with the exception of the first two years where house Democrats voted for him. The Senate never gave him votes, maybe once in a while. Republicans voted against Clinton. Democrats voted against Bush. That's the way it is. Democrats have enough votes to push this thing through and the reality is if they don't overstep their bounds in the House, they may get it passed. If they lose one of those Republican, they don't have enough to get passage.</s>BLITZER: He's painting a very dire assessment, the president, I'm going to play some clips for you of how the president is framing this debate and how the Republicans are framing the debate. Listen to this change.</s>OBAMA: Endless delay or paralysis in Washington in the face of this crisis will only bring deepening disaster. If we drag our feet and fail to act, this crisis could turn into a catastrophe. If we do not act, a bad situation will become dramatically worse.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This bill is a disaster and I can see it in my colleagues' aisle even on the other side of the aisle.</s>SEN. JOHN MCCAIN (R), ARIZONA: Mr. President, if this legislation is passed, it will be a very bad day for America.</s>BLITZER: So it's pretty clear that the strategies on both parts -- how do you read those very, very different assessments of this economic recovery plan, Paul?</s>BEGALA: Barack Obama sounds like every business person you talk to, every normal American you talk to who says this is a crisis heading for catastrophe. I listen to the Republican politicians and it's like their strategy is deny, delay and do nothing. Deny there's a problem, delay it, try to slow walk this and then do nothing. I saw on our air yesterday John King interviewing Mark Safford, very popular up-and-coming governor of South Carolina who said we should do nothing, there should be no federal roll in this. He said you should do it all at once and let it go and let people suffer. That's their strategy, I guess. Deny, delay and do nothing. I think Obama's got the better of the argument here.</s>BLITZER: Go ahead, Ed.</s>ROLLINS: Four trillion dollars have been lent by the Federal Reserve to banks in the last two months. The banks haven't moved money. Either the federal government has to make the banks move the money or local communities aren't going to do well. The idea that the federal government is going to go bailout California and New York and other places is just not going to be long term beneficial to those states. I think we all want this thing to go away and stimulate. But I think the bottom line is it hasn't been open enough and there's so much junk in this bill that people are very concerned about that.</s>BLITZER: Ed, how about an opt-out? If any state -- if Governor Safford doesn't want federal money, let him do without it. There's almost four billion dollars for Tennessee in there, send it out to where I am in California or to Massachusetts where Ted Kennedy came to vote for this. Why don't we let governors opt out? Keep the federal money out of their states.</s>ROLLINS: I think he will. At the end of the day, that's what you're going to find.</s>BEGALA: I'll bet he doesn't opt out.</s>ROLLINS: He's got a $40 billion shortfall isn't going to do it.</s>BLITZER: We heard Charlie Crist, the popular governor of Florida, say within the past few days he welcomes the money his state desperately needs some infusion of federal cash.</s>ROLLINS: He's also thinking about running for Senate and leaving Tallahassee.</s>BLITZER: Obviously different assessments on this. Let me just reset what's going on right now. The breaking news we're following, a critical vote on the floor of the U.S. Senate right now. At issue, whether or not the debate over the economic stimulus plan will continue or whether it ends right now. Sets the stage for the final vote which we anticipate tomorrow. They need 60 votes, 60 senators voting to end this debate. It looks like the Democrats have 58, assuming all the Democrats show up today. They have, it looks like, three Republicans onboard. That would bring the number to 61. But as everyone knows, you never know how they're going to vote until they actually vote. That's why there is drama unfolding in Washington right now on Capitol Hill. We'll stay on top of this vote, they're continuing the roll call now, waiting for more senators to show up. We'll have the results for you as they come in. Stay with us for that. Meanwhile the grandmother of those octuplets isn't very happy. She wants to know how her daughter is going to take care of 14 kids. That's coming up. Plus, the first lady pitching her husband's economic recovery plan. Her remarks, raw and unfiltered coming up right here in THE SITUATION ROOM.