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Government Shutdown; Middle America Sounds Off; Americans Angry Over Government Shutdown; Questions About Female Driver Shot in Washington; Tropical Storm Karen; Snow On Great Plains

Aired October 04, 2013 - 12:00   ET

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

SUZANNE MALVEAUX, CNN ANCHOR: Welcome everybody. This is CNN NEWSROOM. It is day four of the shutdown showdown. I'm Suzanne Malveaux.

MICHAEL HOLMES, CNN ANCHOR: And I'm Michael Holmes. Thanks for you company.

The fierce verbal attacks, and let's face it, toxic atmosphere in the Washington that forced the government shutdown, well, kind of intensified today.

MALVEAUX: We heard moments ago from Republican leaders one after the other simply slamming the president as well as the Democratic Party. We heard from House Speaker John Boehner setting the tone now in Washington. Listen to this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BOEHNER: I was at the White House the other night. And listened to the president some 20 times explain to me why he wasn't going to negotiate. Sat there and listened to the majority leader in the United States Senate describe to me that he's not going to talk until we surrender. And then this morning, I get the "Wall Street Journal" out and it says, "Well, we don't care how long this lasts," because we're winning. Now, this isn't some damn game. The American people don't want their government shutdown and neither do I. All we're asking for is to sit down and have a discussion and to bring fairness -- reopen the government and bring fairness to the American people under Obamacare. It's as simple as that.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MALVEAUX,: Is it as simple as that?

HOLMES: Of course not.

MALVEAUX: Immediately after the speaker made those remarks, we heard something from Democratic Congressman Jim McDermott and he blasted Boehner, simply saying that this is not true. Listen to what he says.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JIM MCDERMOTT (D), WASHINGTON: Now every time the speaker comes out and says that the Senate won't negotiate, he is not telling the truth. I'm going to be very careful how I say that. He's not telling the truth. He refuses to appoint conferees to go and sit down with the Senate. He hasn't done it for six months. And now he says, with his back up against the wall, when he's lost on this Obamacare ploy, he now says, oh, I'm ready to negotiate. I'll send some people over. Well, where has he been for the last six months?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HOLMES: Well, Dana Bash joins us now from the Capitol. Candy Crowley is in our Washington bureau.

Let's start with you, Dana. Speaker Boehner clearly digging in there. The mudslinging continues. What do you make of it?

DANA BASH, CNN CHIEF CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: No, you're exactly right. Look, I mean the reality is that the speaker certainly is getting a lot of pushback from some -- many of the Republican establishment. He is getting a lot of pushback from some Republican senators, even some of the most conservative, saying that this strategy is just unworkable to dig in. But from inside his caucus, the people who he just met with this morning, I'm told that they are really, really standing by him, that his resolve on this is actually helping him from within his caucus. All sides of his caucus, not just the most staunch conservatives, those elected with Tea Party support, but all sides.

So at this point he feels like he doesn't really need to move when it comes to the shutdown. And the message that he put out there that Democrats suggested this is all a game, that is something that we now know has been discussed very clearly as strategy among Republicans to say that Democrats simply won't negotiate and they feel like that this is going to help Republicans at least alleviate some of the blame here. We'll see if that's going to happen.

MALVEAUX: And, Dana, here's how I understand where we are in this. And correct me if I'm wrong here, but you have Eric Cantor coming out, you have Boehner coming out and they're saying, look, you know, we are willing to reopen parts of the government that's shutdown. So we'll offer head start next week, FEMA this week. You know, you can have your pay for furloughed workers guaranteed the following weeks.

BASH: That's right.

MALVEAUX: All these different assurances. And they're saying, just negotiate with us, come to the table with us, Democrats. And the Democrats are saying, and the White House is saying, this is not a negotiating point when it's tied to Obamacare, the budget -- funding the government and Obamacare. Is that where we are right now?

BASH: That's right. And they're going even further. They're not just saying that they're willing to open up these parts of the government, they're voting on it. They voted on NIH already. They voted on veterans. They voted on the National Park Service. You said they're going to do Head Start and so forth in the days to come. So they - that's why they have -- they are convinced that they are going to try to slowly get the upper hand with regard to the way the public is playing.

The other really important thing to keep in mind, I just interviewed Congressman John Flemming. And he said - and he's one of the more conservative members of the Republican caucus. He said that when he talks to his constituents, the overwhelming response to the shutdown is, that a boy, keep going, because they say that they don't even want to talk about - he says they don't even want to talk about the shutdown, they want to talk about how much they dislike Obamacare. That is the reality of many in the Republican caucus. Certainly you have many who are coming out saying that they think enough already, that they want to have a clean, no strings attached spending bill passed. But so far, they've not been willing to put their vote where their mouth is and the others are getting applause from their constituents back home.

MALVEAUX: All right, Dana, hang with us there. Candy Crowley, of course, we're going to get to you in a minute here. But I want to bring in Democratic Congresswoman - this is Nita Lowey, she represents New York, to react and respond to what we heard from the Republicans here. And they're essentially saying, we're offering to -- and approving to fund certain parts of the government here if only the Democrats would now come to the table and talk about what it is that we want to talk about, which is essentially looking at different ways they can compromise on Obamacare. Is it the position of the Democrats and the White House that that's just not on the table? It's not going to happen?

REP. NITA LOWEY (D), NEW YORK: Speaker Boehner has been backed into a corner by the extreme right wing of his party, the Tea Party crowd. He knows that there has been a negotiation. In fact, the number that was sent to the Senate for the continuing resolution is their number. But of course the Senate wouldn't take all those extraneous bits of language about affordable care.

The Affordable Health Care Act was passed by the House, passed by the Senate, affirmed by the Supreme Court. That is not part of the continuing resolution negotiation. Speaker Boehner knows that. The Senate is absolutely right in not wanting to deal with extraneous matters like the Affordable Health Care Act and the president knows that.

So what has to happen now, Speaker Boehner has to come to a table and say, it's our number, we won it, let's get together and let's open the government. The Republicans insist on shutting down the government and hurting thousands of people in my district. People are thrown off Head Start. We know that those who were doing important research for the National Institutes of Health are told not to come to work. We cannot allow this shutdown to continue. The Republicans know it. They have to stop it now.

HOLMES: Congresswoman, it's like you're saying they need to come and they need to sit down. We hear the Republicans stand up. They want to negotiate. Everybody's talking about negotiating and sitting down and it seems nobody's doing it. What are you hearing there on The Hill about actually following through?

LOWEY: Look - look -

HOLMES: It seems ridiculous. You've got both sides saying we need to talk, we need to sit down and work this out. Nobody's doing it.

LOWEY: Look, let me make this clear, the Republican Tea Party are flailing about. Speaker Boehner is getting a lot of flak because the Republicans shut down the government. We did negotiate. It's the Republican number of 988. But the Senate is correct and the Democrats in the House are correct that we cannot let the Affordable Health Care Act, which is law, to be debated once again.

HOLMES: Congresswoman, thanks so much. Nita Lowey there, New York, appreciate you joining us here from the Capitol.

LOWEY: Thank you very much.

MALVEAUX: Want to bring in our chief political correspondent Candy Crowley.

Candy, thank you for being patient and waiting on this here.

So you've listened to both sides of this. A lot of people are wondering, where does this go from here. I mean where do they blink? And, of course we've got the looming deadline, October 17th, when the government essentially is going to run out of money to -- and potentially default on its loans. Is there any wiggle room here?

CANDY CROWLEY, CNN CHIEF POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: Not yet, but there's never any wiggle room until there is. Somebody blinks at some point. So -- and we don't quite know where that will be. And right now, from both sides, what you're hearing is messaging. The reason the House is passing all these bills that Dana mentioned, OK, let's fund NIH and let's fund the Head Start program, is precisely so Democrats like Nina Lowey can't say, well, you know, people who are doing research on cancer for babies can't because the government's shut down and the Republicans can say, wait second, in the House we passed a bill that would put them back to work but the Senate won't take it up.

So this is all about positioning and messaging right now. And it will likely get wrapped up in the debt ceiling, which brings us, as serious as the government shutdown may be, there's real gravity in the debt ceiling and failing to raise that over time. So I think, as time goes on, you're closer to an agreement. But right now, absent any kind of cross party talk in the leadership, I think there's cross party talk beneath the leadership, but there isn't any at the top.

So absent that, it's positioning on both the Democrats and the Republican side. One is they shut down the government and they're hurting babies and they're hurting national security. And the other is, wait a second, you won't even sit down and talk to us about it.

HOLMES: Yes, Candy, I mean you're plugged in as anyone I know and I've been meaning to ask you about this. When you look at this 20, 30, 40 whatever it is right wing Republicans that the Democrats say are behind the whole thing and then there's moderate Democrats who are nervous about what they're all up to, do you see any potential for the - you know some people are saying that there's almost a third party emerging in American politics. Do you think that theory has traction?

CROWLEY: I think third party is just, as a general statement, third parties have a very tough time gathering steam just because of the way the system is set up. You have to have a very well-known kind of leader and you have to have a lot of money in that leader. It's why Ross Perot was somewhat successful. But even a guy with that kind of money couldn't make inroads. What they can do is wreck other people's campaigns. So, that's always possible.

But I want to remind you what Dana said at the beginning, which is, she talked about broad support for the speaker's position. She didn't talk about the 35 to 40 and it's their position only and he's going up against all his moderates. She talked about broad support for the speaker and where he is at this moment.

Now, we're seeing it begin to kind of fray around the edges, but there's been no moderate House revolt. And I -- let me just venture why really quickly. One is that Republicans, especially moderate ones, are less afraid of being thrown out of office in a general election than being defeated in a primary by another more conservative Republican. And as Dana pointed out, one of the Tea Party members that she spoke with, their districts are all for them. So their universe is their district. The Senate universe is their state. The president's universe is kind of the whole country. So politically, they're all kind of talking to their constituents and they get different messages.

HOLMES: Yes.

MALVEAUX: All right, Candy, thank you.

And, of course, you're going to be talking to some very important people, part of this debate. Senator Ted Cruz and the Treasury secretary, Jack Lew, on your show, "State of the Union," on Sunday morning, 9:00 a.m. Eastern. Very important there. And, you know, the Treasury secretary is going to bring up a very important point, when does the pivot happen, because October 17th, it's critical. It has to happen in the next - in the next week or so.

HOLMES: He's going to talk about the carnage. Yes, there would be economic carnage if that - if there is a default.

And again, I keep coming back to this, the world is watching. You've got the IMF very nervous about what would happen were that to happen. So, we'll see. It's going to be fascinating.

Yes, don't forget, "State of the Union" this weekend. Going to be fascinating discussions there.

Meanwhile, coming up, how the government shutdown is impacting people right across the country already.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It's a state of uncertainty. You don't know how long you'll be at home. You don't know if we'll even get back pay. So, I mean, we may be just out of work with no income coming in. (END VIDEO CLIP)

MALVEAUX: The impact of the government shutdown. The outrage over it being felt nationwide all this week.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

MALVEAUX: The impact of the government shutdown, the outrage over all of this, definitely being felt across the country. All this week we have traveled across the country to ask folks, what do they think about all this.

HOLMES: Yes, the real people. Ted Rowlands is in St. Louis asking middle America, what is their message to Washington?

Ted, what are they telling you?

TED ROWLANDS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, get back to work and get this done. People are disgusted. Absolutely disgusted. You listen to the banter back and forth, the strategery (ph) of how to move forward. People in middle America, it just makes them absolutely sick, the politics going on in Washington.

We're in St. Louis. That means the arch - the arch, you can still look at it but you can't go inside it because it is closed and people have come here to get inside. The fact they can't makes them very angry.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ROWLANDS (voice-over): The sign inside the locked gates at the St. Louis Arch says it all, telling visitors they can't come in because lawmakers can't get along. An average of 700,000 people come to national parks and federal attractions, like the arch, every day. Many of those people are furious.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Well, I think if (ph) they would have stopped playing silly games like a bunch of little kids and get this thing done and straightened out. Otherwise, comes November or whenever they're up for re-election, don't worry, we're not voting for you.

ROWLANDS: And this was a trip that you had planned?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes, this was on my bucket list, and I'm not going to get to do it I guess.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We were hoping to go to the top.

It's actually my wife's birthday on Sunday and we got the kids out of school and came here for the weekend and don't get to the do that now, but --

ROWLANDS: What message would you send to the federal government and lawmakers on Capitol Hill?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Hold hands and get along. Get back to work.

ROWLANDS: About 70 federal park employees have been furloughed at the arch.

Karen Bollinger (ph) is with the company that runs the trolley inside the Arch.

Forty-eight if her employees are not getting paid, and unlike federal employees that may get compensated down the road, they'll never get paid.

ROWLANDS: What message would you like to tell lawmakers?

KAREN BOLLINGER (PH): To please come to your resolution soon.

Every day matters. We wake up every morning hoping that this is the day it will come to an end, and we're ready to get back to work.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ROWLANDS: And this park here is normally filled with people lining up to go inside the Arch. They are not here.

That means the people selling food in this area are not making money.

It is serious business, and people around the country are pretty upset.

MALVEAUX: Yeah, obviously it has a ripple effect for a lot of folks there.

Ted Rowlands, thank you, in St. Louis. Appreciate it.

And, of course, coming up, we've got new details now. This is about the tragic shooting that had lawmakers and tourists scrambling in Washington yesterday.

HOLMES: Yeah, we're going to have a look at that woman who was gunned down by police after ramming into a security barrier at the White House and then going off on that chase you see there.

MALVEAUX: Plus, Tropical Storm Karen is weakening, but still packing a punch. This is where the storm is heading.

This is CNN NEWSROOM.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

MALVEAUX: There are many questions today surrounding a tragic incident that started with one woman in one car that put all of downtown Washington into emergency mode.

Watch this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (Speaking foreign language)

(END VIDEO CLIP) MALVEAUX: Folks running there, and then crashing cars, police sirens, gunshots sent frightening people running for safety.

This is an area between the White House and the U.S. Capitol. This happened yesterday afternoon.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (Inaudible)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Oh, my -- what the (inaudible) just happened there. That was (inaudible) was running.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That was (inaudible).

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MALVEAUX: The officer who crashed into this barrier wasn't badly hurt. But this was a city essentially that was in chaos for a while before police isolated the woman who started the disturbance, finally stopping her.

Deborah Feyerick is in Washington now, and explain this for us here, because you have a woman. She leads the police into this dangerous car chase.

Now, she is dead, and there are a lot of people wondering and asking, how was this handled? Was this handled well?

DEBORAH FEYERICK, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, it was handled the way police there on Capitol Hill are trained to handle this kind of incident.

Specifically, they didn't know what the threat was. They didn't know whether this was somebody with mental health issues, or whether, in fact, this was something more serious, somebody, for example, with a bomb of some sort.

And so because when they drew their weapons and the driver of the car did not stop, it clearly escalated the situation.

The woman was trying to gain access to the White House. She was turned away at the first checkpoint, tried to gain access again and then led police on that huge car chase.

What we are learning right now is that, according to a number of sources, is that she seemed to be suffering from some sort of depression, whether it was postpartum depression.

She had a 13-month-old child in the car with her.

Investigators were at the apartment overnight. They did find two types of medication, one that treats schizophrenia or symptoms of bipolar disorder. The other is a medication used as an antidepressant.

So those were in the apartment that were found, and her boyfriend had actually called police back in December, saying that she was delusional, that she thought that the president had her under electronic surveillance.

So clearly things were not right, Suzanne.

MALVEAUX: And, Deborah, real quick here, I know that she had a little baby in the car with her.

Do we know anything about the condition of her child?

FEYERICK: It appears the child was OK. She taken to the hospital. She's in protective services now, Suzanne.

MALVEAUX: All right, thank you. Deborah Feyerick, appreciate it.

Michael?

HOLMES: All right, well, a tropical storm threatening parts of Louisiana and the Florida Panhandle.

We're seeing some crazy weather in Colorado, a lot of snow. There's also a stretch of tornadoes, and all of that is actually getting some of those furloughed people back to work.

Chad Myers, yeah, tell us about that and what we're expecting down here.

CHAD MYERS, AMS METEOROLOGIST: Here is Karen, and the good news is there is wind in the atmosphere that pushes the storms away from the center.

It looks like there's the center. Wow, look at that big blob. That's not the center. The center is over here.

And because the wind is blowing the center off, blowing the storms across, it's not allowing the storm to get around and make a big circle, so it's not gaining any strength.

We do expect it to turn to the north and probably just graze New Orleans and then over here toward the Florida Gulf Coast.

That is the center of the line, but there's still the left and right where we can be all the way from New Orleans all the way over Jacksonville.

Think about this. If the storm stays in the water a longer time, this is very warm water, the storm is going to get stronger if it goes there.

The storm won't be as strong as if it goes straight into land because it's only -- it could be on Grand Isle in 24 hours, but it could take can two days, two-and-a-half days to get all the way over to Pensacola.

HOLMES: Right. Yeah, and bringing rain to a lot of places that have already had plenty as well. MYERS: And, you know, that's the problem.

A 50-mile-per-hour storm isn't a big deal for storm surge or damage, but the trees will fall down. The trees are sitting in mud. This has been the wettest summer of all time. These trees are going to go over.

HOLMES: Oh, great.

Now, Colorado, stuff going on up there.

MYERS: Colorado, Wyoming, South Dakota, major snow event, I mean, we're talking 18 to 30 inches of snow.

Black Hills of South Dakota up into Wyoming, the snow is coming down, at least a dozen counties with blizzard warnings going on right now, blizzard warnings where you can't seats a quarter mile in front of your car.

And like you said, now there are going to be severe thunderstorms from about Omaha through Des Moines and maybe even as far as south as the Central Plains.

HOLMES: That's amazing. I think Suze was saying earlier it's 90 degrees in Washington. You've got snow up there in Colorado.

MYERS: That's exactly right.

HOLMES: Unbelievable. Chad Myers, thanks.

MYERS: You're welcome.

MALVEAUX: All right, as we mentioned, it is day four of the government shutdown.

We are focusing on ways to help you understand what's going on here. Almost 800,000 or so nonessential government employees have been furloughed.

That number does not include contractors who are tied to government agencies who also have now been forced out of work.

The shutdown costing the economy $300 million a day. That is according to one estimate.

And, of course, the shutdown squeeze hitting families with kids in Head Start programs, as well. Centers across the country are now closing.

Going to take a look at this program that has more than a million children enrolled.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

MALVEAUX: Welcome back to CNN NEWSROOM.

Day four of the showdown in Washington, of course, fierce verbal attacks, we've heard from both sides, really a toxic atmosphere now forcing over the forced government shutdown intensifying

HOLMES: Yeah, and just last hour, we heard from Republican leaders, one after the other slamming the president and the Democrats, in general, House Speaker John Boehner setting the tone.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REPRESENTATIVE JOHN BOEHNER (R), HOUSE SPEAKER: This isn't some damn game. The American people don't want their government shutdown and neither do I.

All we're asking for is to sit down and have a discussion and to bring fairness, reopen the government and bring fairness to the American people under ObamaCare. It's as simple as that.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HOLMES: President Obama has canceled now an important trip to the Asia-Pacific Economic Summit, APEC, so that he can keep pressing for Republicans to allow the vote, an open vote, to reopen the government.

That is a significant cancellation, and in Asia, they're a little concerned. This is the second one in a row that he has missed. The last one in Russia, he missed that as well.

MALVEAUX: He's making it very clear. This is not up for negotiation, ObamaCare, that this is not something he's going to tie to funding the federal government.