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New Day

The Shutdown Begins; What's Closed Down?; Government Shuts Down: Now What?; Faces Of The Shutdown; Obamacare Begins; Killed By Falling Boulders; Chicago Train Crash Mystery

Aired October 01, 2013 - 06:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning. Welcome to "NEW DAY," Tuesday, October 1st, six o'clock in the east. At midnight eastern time, the U.S. government officially failed you. The shutdown began. We are now six hours into the nation's first government shutdown since 1996. Republicans and Democrats locked in a maddening stalemate over Obamacare basically with no resolution in sight.

This morning, the Statue of Liberty, monuments on the Washington Mall, tours of the capitol, all shutting down. Vacations being ruined. But many have it much worse.

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: Most of NASA many other federal agencies are closing as well. The cost of all of this you might be wondering? Well, it's estimated to be $200 million a day. The cost to the overall economy could be even worse. Hard to calculate at this moment. And there are those hundreds of thousands directly impacted right now.

Some of them are here with us in our studio. And we're going to talk with them, hear from them throughout the show. We're also going to be talking to some of the leading lawmakers who are in the middle of this mess, including Democratic senator, Dick Durbin, Republican senator, Rand Paul, and White House press secretary, Jay Carney.

CUOMO: But we want to begin with what started all this, Congress' inability to make a deal. The back and forth went right up until the midnight deadline but didn't really matter, did it after all? CNN has every angle of the breaking news covered. Who feels the impact of the shutdown first? It's an interesting question with a tough answer. Where does Congress go from here? We'll try and figure that out for you. So let's begin with Brianna Keilar live at the White House. Good morning, Brianna.

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Chris, good morning to you. The White House has already sent out notices to its agencies telling them to start executing their plans for a shutdown, to start an orderly shutdown as they said to them after this staring contest where no one blinked.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

KEILAR (voice-over): Overnight, President Obama released a message to the troops. BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: You and your family deserve better than the dysfunction with we're seeing in Congress.

KEILAR: After signing a bill into law agreed upon by Congress in order to keep paying the military.

PRESIDENT OBAMA: I'll keep working to get Congress to reopen our government and get you back to work as soon as possible.

KEILAR: As lawmakers worked into the night in a heated floor debate --

REPRESENTATIVE JOHN LARSON (D), CONNECTICUT: Do you stand with your country? Do you stand for your country or do you want to take it down?

KEILAR: But failed to reach an agreement to keep the government funded.

REPRESENTATIVE JOHN BOEHNER (R), HOUSE SPEAKER: The House has made its position known very clearly.

KEILAR: This morning, national parks and museums are closed for business and hundreds of thousands of nonessential government employees are furloughed indefinitely. House Republicans did not blink in their demand to push forward a new plan to tie government spending to a weakening of Obamacare, which begins open enrolment this morning. President Obama blamed House Republicans on Monday night and reiterated this was, quote, "entirely preventable."

PRESIDENT OBAMA: One faction of one party in one House of Congress, in one branch of government doesn't get to shut down the entire government just to refight the results of an election.

KEILAR: House Speaker John Boehner fired back.

BOEHNER: I talked to the president earlier tonight. I'm not going to negotiate. I'm not going to do this. I would say to the president, this is not about me. This is not about Republicans here in Congress. It's about fairness for the American people.

KEILAR: After days of talking past each other, competing plans ping- ponged from one chamber to the other and now a government shutdown for the first time since 1996, when Bill Clinton was in the White House, Republican Speaker Newt Gingrich ruled the House of Representatives and their standoff lasted for weeks.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

KEILAR: Now, ultimately, politically, Republicans lost that battle back in the mid-'90s and most polls indicate and most observers think that's what will happen again here. In the short term, really, everyone loses, that includes the White House. Now, Kate, it's this period of pressure. I think that video you saw, President Obama addressing the troops that may be a preview of more to come as he tries to highlight constituencies that are vulnerable because of a shutdown.

BOLDUAN: Clearly more pressure is needed for them to do their job and get this done. Brianna, thank you so much. Brianna Keilar starting us off at the White House this morning.

So what stays open and what closes during this shutdown? Well, take a look right here. This is going to spell it out first and foremost for you. Federal employees, they're really probably the hardest hit. More than 800,000 federal employees will be furloughed due to a government shutdown.

During the last government shutdown, Congress approved retroactive pay for these employees but I'll tell you, there's no guarantee it will happen this time. You can sure hope it would, though. This is what will be closed. All 401 national parks, they'll be closed, national archive museums, closed as well as many zoos and most presidential libraries.

That might sound small, but it is part of the impact. Let's take a look at what's going to stay open. Here's some good news, I guess, a silver lining if you will. Post office will still operate. Passport offices will continue to function, air traffic control, border protection and the Department of Defense will remain open.

Now you might be wondering what does that mean if you're retired and you need the Social Security checks? They're essential to your lifestyle. Social Security checks don't worry. They are still going to go out. But the shutdown is impacting millions that is for sure.

Who's been covering this for us all, Christine Romans, she's here to dig deeper on how Americans are being affected from coast to coast -- Christine.

CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Kate. It's like Congress has hung a big "sorry we're closed" sign on some of America's biggest agencies and most famous attractions. It's a major inconvenience. It's a sign of major Washington dysfunction.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ROMANS (voice-over): This morning, hundreds of thousands of federal civil service employees are waking up to their new furlough status.

DIANE SCHWENKE, PRESIDENT AND CEO, GRAND JUNCTION, CHAMBER OF COMMERCE: Our economy is going to be affected by it and that is scary. It's too much for lower middle class people to deal with right now.

ROMANS: All across the country, national monuments, zoos and parks closed for business.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Along with the government shutdown comes with the closure of all the nation's national parks and that includes Lady Liberty. So for folks coming to new York to see the iconic Statue of Liberty, this may be their last chance and who knows how long.

ROMANS: Tourists are dealing with not only writing off a paycheck --

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: He works for the government.

ROMANS: But writing off their vacation plans as well.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There's not much I can do about it. If I'm furloughed, I'm furloughed. We'll deal with that.

ROMANS: The shutdown is sure to take a toll on the employees of these iconic sites as well like those who work at Liberty Island.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It has a big impact on our check.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: My only source of income.

ROMANS: And not only are employees at national monuments staying at home today --

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We have liftoff.

ROMANS: The 97 percent of NASA employees are closing the office doors on the agency's 55th birthday. D.C., the Washington Monument, Smithsonian and even the National Zoo, closed for business.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The national zoo is a ghost town. It's been closed since 8:00 p.m. last night. Now the National Park Service says that anything that's a safety function will continue to be funded. And any employee that comes here to feed and take care of the animals will continue to do that, but if you want to see the pandas online, too bad. Even the animal cams are going dark.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: When we're shut down it really takes away from things that families can do.

ROMANS: Locally owned businesses around the Hill worry that lack of tourists will dry up their income as well.

TRIPP BURDETT, BARTENDER AT WASHINGTON, D.C. BAR: D.C. might be the next Detroit, because when half the city is unemployed or doesn't have a paying job, this could become Detroit in close to two months.

ROMANS: Across to the mountain, national parks taking a hit, too.

MIGUEL MARQUEZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: In the Angeles National Forest, this morning the crown jewels of the park system, Grand Canyon, Yellow Stone, Mt. Rushmore, Yosemite, all closed. Anyone in any national park allowing camping has 48 hours to vacate.

MIKE HERY, YOSEMITE VISITOR: We've been coming here 35 years. This is not fun if we have to get booted out.

CARL SOLLARS, SAGUIMO NATIONAL PARK TOURIST: It's very frustrated. We invested quite a bit to come out here and see this. It's going to be a huge disappointment, huge disappointment.

(END VIDEOTAPE) ROMANS: Worst case scenario, this thing drags on for a month or longer. You're looking at maybe a $55 billion hit to the economy from lost wages, contracts, unfilled orders, and uncollected fees. There's really no way to know, but one thing we do know for certain, the implementation of Obamacare is mandatory spending. Congress put a foreclosed sign on America, but implementation of Obamacare continues, you guys.

CUOMO: All right, Christine, there's no time for irony here. This is about what's so simple. This is bad for American people.

Let's figure out where the polls are, let's bring in chief national correspondent John King. John, let's start with one half step back. We know that politics is often played this way, however, isn't this a little unusual that a shutdown or even a talk about the debt ceiling is tied not to budgeting issues, but to legislation that's already been decided?

JOHN KING, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes. It's very -- imagine when Nancy Pelosi was speaker if Democrats who kept being mad at the president for extending the Bush tax cuts said forget it. We're going to shut down the government or pick another policy grievance. It is unusual for a single policy grievance to be the flash point in essentially saying we're not coming back to work. We're going to shutdown your government.

This is your government not at work because of one disagreement. That's why the president says he won't negotiate on this. Has he negotiated in the past over the debt ceiling on spending issues, the whole sequester? Yes. On this one, he says it passed. I ran for re- election, it was a big issue in the campaign. I won. The Supreme Court said it's constitutional. So the president's message to those House Republicans is essentially, get over it and right now, they are not ready to.

CUOMO: All right, so that's his side. But on their side, they say, people hate this law. So looking at the numbers, is there any precedence for that? Can you make the case that they are fighting the people's fight here?

KING: They can make a case, are people opposed or deeply skeptical, were worried about this law? Yes, they can. We have some new polling out this morning where we ask people this question, under the new health care law, you and your family will be -- 17 percent of those families say better off, 40 percent say worse off, 41 percent say about the same.

So there's no question, Chris, there's profound skepticism as this open enrollment begins today. Again, people don't trust the government. They think the government, forget the cliche, would screw up a free lunch so many of them are skeptical even if they support health care reform that the government will get it right.

But we also asked this question, the defining question of this debate, should you shut down the government to continue this fight over Obamacare? Six in 10 Americans say no. So nationally the message is quite clear, the American people do not want what we are now six plus hours into, a government shutdown.

However, again, for the 30 or 40 House Republicans who are driving this train, they go home to districts President Obama lost by 20 points or more, they go home to Tea Party districts where people say we're fine with shutting down the government. You have a giant disconnect between the national interest and local interest of the small but very vocal, and at the moment, very important group of House Republicans.

CUOMO: I wonder how many of those people are government workers who aren't getting a paycheck today, that will be interesting to understand once the pain starts to hit, does it change a perspective? Let me ask you something. Anything in the numbers, anything in your perspective to give some sense of how, what seems like political pandering is playing?

It's great that they're paying the military families. We have to respect them and their families. It seems like pandering. Allowing the people who are victims of Building 197 where the Navy shooting was, we want to protect them as victims, is this playing pandering or Congress doing the right thing?

KING: You can call it either way. Much of this, how you view this depends on your political perspective. There are some Democrats who actually think maybe their party should not have gone along with this military pay just to call the Republicans bluff, but Democrats did not want to take that stake. The most important person in this debate right now, Chris, as we talked this morning is the House Speaker John Boehner.

He's been forced into this by, again, that vocal minority in his caucus essentially the House Republicans know the Senate has a pair of kings. The president has a pair of aces. They keep laying down a pair of twos saying we win, right. Well, they don't win and they don't have the votes.

So the question is when do they blink or try to get something out of this? You have a speaker who has a dysfunctional relationship with the president, but more importantly at the moment, has a dysfunctional relationship in his own Republican family. He has to figure that out for us to get out of this.

CUOMO: All right, John, no question they're playing a weak hand, but at the end of the day, the dealer is the president. They'll be looking to him for leadership. He'll be judged as well. Thank you for the perspective this morning. We'll be back to you. Kate, over to you.

BOLDUAN: All right, Chris, thanks so much. So the shutdown hits hard outside the beltway. Small business owners, people from military families, all worried about what's next and what this means for them. Well, we have some of those people here to talk to us about how it impacts them and their families, and kind enough to wake up and join us early this morning. Thank you, guys. We'll be talking to you throughout the show. But Larry Hirsch, I want to begin with you. You worked for the federal government. This impacts you today. Do you know your status? Do you know what you're going to be doing with your job beyond today?

LARRY HIRSCH, GOVERNMENT WORKER: I don't know. It depends whether the budget is enacted or not. Right now we're without pay, we're not working.

BOLDUAN: What does it mean for you and your family?

HIRSCH: Well, this is our second furlough of the past few months. I've had five furlough days over the summer. This has had a significant impact on our family's budget.

BOLDUAN: And that's because of the forced budget cuts. Nobody in Congress said they wanted to or agree to -- a horrible name for a horrible thing. What's your message to lawmakers this morning?

HIRSCH: We're federal employees. Our job is to implement laws and not to hold budget hostage to a law that's already the law of the land. They have to do their job, get a budget passed, to fund the government and do the services that we're paid to do and American people need.

BOLDUAN: Brad Hill, you live in the area. You are a small business owner. You were hit very hard by Hurricane Sandy and your small business. What's the most frustrating part about watching this play out from afar?

BRAD HILL, PRESIDENT, EVELYN HILL INC.: We just today laid off 110 employees including myself. This is coming off of Hurricane Sandy where we laid off 170 employees for eight months. It has a great impact on all of us and also the visitors, the thousands of visitors that would come every day to the Statue of Liberty.

BOLDUAN: So this is just insult to injury?

HILL: Yes, that would be a good way of putting it.

BOLDUAN: All right, guys, stay with us. We're going to be talking to you much more throughout the show and try to find -- no solution to a horrible situation, Chris, but at least we're talking to some of the people who are truly impacted. We also want to hear from you out there. You can tweet us throughout the show and please use the #newday so we make sure that we get it.

There are a lot of news developing at this very hour so let's straight to Michaela for all of the latest headlines -- Michaela.

MICHAELA PEREIRA, CNN ANCHOR: All right, Kate, let's look at those headlines right now. Obamacare begins while the government is closing. The nation's new health insurance exchanges are open this morning, a major milestone for Obamacare. Millions of uninsured Americans can go online and enrol at a health care.gov. Dr. Sanjay Gupta is going to join us later in the show. We'll talk more about this. Crews will try to reach a popular hiking trail in Colorado to recover the bodies of five hikers that were killed in a rock slide. The "Denver Post" reports that they are members of the very same family. A sixth hiker, a 13-year-old girl was dug from the debris. She was air lifted to a Denver hospital. Right now her condition is unknown. The Chaffy County sheriff says a rainy month may have been a contributing factor in that slide.

Some scary moments at UC Berkeley, the campus was evacuated after an explosion in an electrical vault that came about two hours after the campus lost power. One person was injured, 20 others were trapped in elevators on campus. The school spokesman says the blast appears to be related to copper wire thieves who dug up the lines last week.

Two Marine Corps generals have been fired in the wake of a deadly attack in Afghanistan. It was found that Majors Generals Charles (inaudible) and Greg (inaudible) did not take adequate security measures during a brazen insurgent assault last September. Two Marines died, eight others were wounded, when 15 heavily armed insurgents dressed in U.S. Army uniforms breached a fortified coalition base and destroyed more than a dozen fighter jets.

And "Breaking Bad," well, it broke its own record Sunday. AMC says the series finale drew more than 10 million viewers. That's about 7 million more than the season finale last year. The show also ended its run by breaking its own record on social media. The finale generated more than 1.2 million tweets.

I'm curious how many people watched and tweeted at the same time and Facebook updated and Instagram, because that would be a lot.

BOLDUAN: That would be a lot and very impressive.

PEREIRA: It would be impressive. That's multitasking.

CUOMO: I haven't watched it. I'm on the opposite end of the scale.

PEREIRA: You've had a shutdown to focus on.

BOLDUAN: I'm not criticizing you because I haven't seen both.

CUOMO: I've been walking around yelling at my kids, why is this happening?

PEREIRA: They have no answers, do they?

CUOMO: They have great answers, which is the scary part.

All right. So, let's get over to Indra to figure out what's going on with the forecast -- Indra.

INDRA PETERSONS, AMS METEOROLOGIST: We need some sunshine today, right? I mean, we have a bright, sunny forecast out there. We actually have it. And that's the upside here. Dome of high pressure still in place. That means all that warm air going from the Southeast spreading all the way into the Northeast. I mean, we are talking about gorgeous fall weather. It actually feels like summer.

Look at the temperatures. Average for Chicago, you should be 68. Try 81 degrees today. Out towards New York City, 81, average there 69. This is pretty much across the Midwest all the way to the mid-Atlantic and the Northeast today, and into the southeast.

The Southeast, you are used to this. The only difference for you, is you're looking at moisture coming in. That same dome of high pressure is pulling that moisture right off the gulf. So, with that, nothing major, maybe some sprinkles. About one to 20 inches over the next several days.

Otherwise, look at the country. So mild, dry air pretty much across the entire country except for, again, into the Pacific Northwest. We're still looking at a series of waves. Kind of kicking to the areas, so maybe about one to two inches of rain still in the forecast since heavy spots about two to three.

But pretty nice, I mean, it feels like summer. We were explaining for a while. Love it and we need the good news today.

BOLDUAN: All right. Indra, thank you.

Coming up next on NEW DAY, a big mystery in the Windy City. Nobody at the controls of a moving train as it slams into another train, injuring dozens of commuters. Was it a strange accident or was foul play involved? We're going to live to the scene.

And if there's no paycheck for hundreds of thousands of federal workers because of the government shutdown, why do the lawmakers still get one? Well, the answer is the 27th Amendment says they do, but it doesn't say they have to keep it. We're going to track down the men and women who caused this mess to ask them what they plan to do with their next check. You'll want to check that out.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CUOMO: Welcome back to NEW DAY. A mystery on the rails in Chicago. An empty train rolling down the tracks slamming into a suburban line.

It happened at morning rush hour Monday. Dozens were injured. And a bustling commute brought to a halt.

Now, investigators are scrambling to find out why, obviously.

CNN's Ted Rowlands is live in Forest Park, Illinois, with the very latest.

Ted, what do we know?

TED ROWLANDS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Chris.

We don't know a lot. This morning, there's a tarp over a portion of the wrecked train as investigators try to figure out exactly what happened here.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ROWLANDS (voice-over): The head-on collision came during the morning commute and sent 33 people to the hospital.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It sounds like a man. Stop the train, stop the train. It was a crash and then smoke everywhere.

ROWLANDS: Initially foul play was suspected, that someone intentionally sent an empty four-car train head on into an eight-car train full of commuters. Surveillance video and witness accounts indicate no one was at the controls of the runaway train, which was traveling at an estimated 20 miles an hour at impact.

At this point, investigators have not found any evidence of wrongdoing.

BRIAN STEELE, CHICAGO TRANSIT AUTHORITY: There's no broken windows, there's no pried open doors. There's no graffiti or vandalism inside the rail car. But we are doing a thorough investigation of this.

ROWLANDS: But transit officials say someone must have started the train, which had been sidelined for repairs. The question is why. And how come two separate automatic emergency shutdown systems failed?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It should have went through a series of interlocks, and the train should have been tripped and went into what we call emergency.

ROWLANDS: The collision comes after three months after a runaway train in Luc Megantic, Canada, killed 47 people. For investigators here think the system is safe, even though they don't know what went wrong on in this case.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We're looking at everything. If it's not signal, it's not mechanical, then you look at operations, because then it might be a human factor accident.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ROWLANDS: And, Chris, while there were 33 injuries, none of those injuries, thankfully, were serious. It could have been much worse -- Chris.

CUOMO: You take some solace, still got to find out why. Ted, appreciate it.

BOLDUAN: Yes, it's a strange story. Clearly still investigating.

Coming up next on NEW DAY: the U.S. government shutting down. That means no paychecks for hundreds of thousands of federal workers. But members of Congress, they'll still get paid. We'll explain, ahead.

CUOMO: And while the government closes, the Affordable Care Act, yes, that's Obamacare, opens today. Millions of people can go online and buy insurance from government exchanges for the first time but a lot of people still don't understand it. Dr. Sanjay Gupta will join us live to explain.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

ANNOUNCER: You're watching NEW DAY with Chris Cuomo, Kate Bolduan and Michaela Pereira.

CUOMO: Welcome back to NEW DAY. It's Tuesday, October 1st.

Coming up in the show, breaking news we're following -- the shutdown means no paychecks for hundreds of thousands of hard-working families. Many who are living paycheck to paycheck.

But the elected officials who are causing this fiasco are still collecting theirs. Thanks to the 27th Amendment. We'll track them down and putting them on the spot and asking them if they think that's fair and what are they going to do with their money.

Then, we'll be joined by a group of people just like you, American citizens already feeling the squeeze from the shutdown.

SAMBOLIN: Plus, a rough day in court for Amanda Knox's defense. The Italian judge OK'ing one of their request and rejecting a dozen others. We'll break down her murder retrial in a live report. That's ahead as well.

CUOMO: A lot of news for you this morning. So, let's get right to Michaela with the top story.

PEREIRA: Top story out of Colorado, a rescue mission is now a recovery mission in Colorado. Law enforcement officials confirming that five hikers trapped by a rock slide 120 miles southwest of Denver have died. A sixth victim, a 13-year-old girl was airlifted to a hospital in Denver. Her condition is unknown at this hour.

The area's very unstable because of recent rains. Recovery teams won't be able to go in to retrieve the bodies until engineers declare the area safe. We'll bring you more on this later this hour.

We may now know who was aboard the business jet that crashed into a hangar in Santa Monica, at the airport there in California. The vice president of Morley Builders of Santa Monica issued a statement saying CEO Mark Benjamin and his son, senior project engineer, Luke Benjamin, may have been aboard. The plane ran off the runway, Saturday, ramming into a hangar and bursting into flames.

A jury has been picked for Mark Cuban's insider trading trial. The issue dates back to 2004 when the SEC says the Mavericks owner got private information from the CEO Of a small Internet. Cuban is said to have agreed to keep that information confidential but used it to sell his shares in the company, avoiding $750,000 in losses. Well, the SEC wants that money back and wants to impose fines on Cuban.

Check out how a high-speed chase in Oklahoma ended. Officers used spike strips to slow the car down, drew their guns, yanked the driver through the window.