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GOP Leaders Consider Controversial Vote; Panera CEO Takes Food Stamp Challenge; Obama Meets with Business Roundtable

Aired September 18, 2013 - 10:30   ET

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

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: Welcome back. I'm Carol Costello. Thanks so much for joining us.

A few minutes ago I told you about Republican leaders, House leaders who came out and told America that they were going to pass this short- term budget bill that also defunded Obamacare in order to, you know, come up with a budget and maybe keep the government open, except it probably will not accomplish that.

Dana Bash is on Capitol Hill with more on this. Good morning.

DANA BASH, CNN CHIEF CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Carol.

Well, that's right, the House Republican leadership just formally announced what we knew was coming since our Deidre Walsh reported it last night, that the leadership is effectively giving in to conservatives inside their caucus who are hearing from conservative groups all over the country that they want to take a stand on defunding Obamacare on this very high-stakes vote, which is to keep the government running. Of course that runs out in 12 days on September 30th.

This is something that the House Speaker didn't publicly say he was against to but it is by all accounts privately he very much did not think that this was a great strategy. He was here in 1995 when the government shut down and Republicans at that time led the House ultimately got blamed for it.

So this is not something that he personally it's pretty clear wants to deal with. But I asked him that question, whether he lost control of his caucus. And he said, look, leaders lead. I listened to my people. They said this is what they want to do and they're going to do it. So of course then the next question is, once this is going to come for a vote, which could come as soon as this week, likely to pass because Republicans do have the majority in the House, what's going to happen next? What is Plan B? And that is a big question mark.

So once again we are going to have this high-stakes drama when it comes to keeping the government running and keeping the government open, just like we've seen many times in the past. That you know people have crisis fatigue and they're going to see it again though. COSTELLO: Well a lot of people have problems with Obamacare and there are a lot of valid concerns over Obamacare. I'm not saying there aren't. But is this really the way to do it, to risk a government shutdown at a time when our economy is still fragile?

BASH: That is a great question and our understanding is that is effectively what some of the House Republican leaders who didn't think this was a great strategy was -- they were saying to the rank and file who wanted to do this. Not so much about the economy necessarily but you know understanding the way the votes are stacked.

The Senate is run by Democrats. They will not pass this. They know this. As Speaker Boehner just said, they have passed a version of defunding Obamacare in the House about 40 times. It has not gone anywhere in the Senate. It is not going to be different this time.

So they know that this is something that they are doing to make a point, to be on the record once again because you know for five weeks, Carol, groups like the Heritage Action Network, the Heritage Foundation and others have been out there pounding conservatives saying you've got to support tying funding the government to defunding Obamacare. And they came back and said to their leadership, we need to take a vote on this in order to not get pounded again by the right in their districts.

COSTELLO: All right well, we'll see what the President has to say. He's set to speak at the Business Roundtable at 10:45 Eastern Time, in about 10 minutes or so. Dana Bash thanks so much.

The millionaire CEO of Panera Bread is going to bed hungry, worried about how much food he has left and if he'll be able to eat tomorrow. Sounds silly, right? Well, it's his personal food stamp challenge. Ron Shaich is living on $4.50 a day and documenting it all on his LinkedIn blog. He's inspired by the disturbing numbers like the report this week showing 46.5 million Americans are in poverty, that's 15 percent of our population and about 48 million people are currently using food stamps to survive.

That fact doesn't sit well with Shaich. I spoke to him about his experiment this morning.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

COSTELLO: So you're reaching the end of the challenge today. Today is day six. So what have you learned so far?

RON SHAICH, CEO, PANERA BREAD: Well, you know, it's it actually interesting. It's been an opportunity for me to both experience what I have never experienced, but maybe more importantly to bring awareness to the range of issues that that people who are really food- insecure are suffering. You know, many people have written me, many people have spoken to me. I think the part that amazes me is that, what I'm -- I'm attempting to simulate in, in just seven days, one in six Americans are actually experiencing, one in four children. And we're talking about 48 million Americans that at points during the last year didn't know where their next meal was coming from. COSTELLO: And your blog is really interesting I've read it. On day four, for example, you wrote on your blog describing how you felt. You said, "I can't stop thinking about food. Each night when I go to bed I'm engulfed by a sick feeling that comes from eating too many carbs and I felt so much anxiety about the possibility of running out of pasta."

So as you said, this really does change your outlook about what a family goes through when it's forced to live on food stamps.

SHAICH: Yes well the reality, you know, just as this last six days I've experienced, is food begins to dominate your life. You know I mean to be able to do this, you have to be very planful. When I went to the super market on the very first day to buy it you know I had to figure out what I was going to buy for the entire week and certain meals I made had to take me for two or three days.

And I can remember I actually picked out a number of things, put it in my basket and I went up to the checkout counter. And the reality was, Carol, I had put too many things in my basket. I had to return certain things because they -- because the checkout was more than my $25 that I wanted to spend at that point.

And each day I've been trying to figure out, how do I make sure I have enough to the end of the week? I run a restaurant company. We have 1,800 restaurants across America. And the reality is I couldn't go in my own restaurant. I couldn't go any into any restaurant. The reality is that -- that when you're experiencing life this way, you -- you are at -- you are so disconnected from your food. It takes on such an important --

COSTELLO: Well actually I was going to ask you about that. Because like you say if you're on food stamps you can't go into your restaurant because what I think kids' mac and cheese costs $4.99. Does this experiment want to make you want to lower some of the prices on your menu?

SHAICH: Well actually, what we did do is it we created restaurants where we have no set prices. They're called Panera Care Cafes. We have five of them up. We'll serve over a million people this year in these cafes. And the intention is to provide an opportunity to feed people with dignity who have the need.

The reality is that that anybody who's food-insecure is going to be in a place where no restaurant is available to them, whether it be Panera or what have you. And -- and essentially what -- what -- what folks that are experiencing food-insecurity have to deal with is whether they're going to have milk that week, whether they're going to have enough food that week.

And so to us, a restaurant experience and having somebody cook for you is -- is -- is quite honestly well beyond what we're talking about here.

COSTELLO: I have to get into the politics of this issue and I'm sure that you're -- you're familiar with the politics of this issue. SHAICH: Sure.

COSTELLO: Congress as you know is expected to meet this week on a food stamp reform plan pushed by Republicans. It could cut -- it could cut six million people from the program. Do you think people have become dependent on food stamps and the government is simply enabling them?

SHAICH: Well I think we have to ask ourselves a question, and the question we have to ask is, what kind society do we want? The truth is we have the facts. One in six Americans -- 48 million Americans -- are food-insecure. Now, are there people in that group that are -- that are taking advantage of it in some way? I'm sure there are.

On the other hand, are there people have real need? Absolutely. And the question we each individually have to ask is what kind of society we want? What does it mean? And how do we want to live? And that really falls into two things. What are we going to do personally? What is each of us going to do personally in our relationship with things like NGOs, nongovernment organizations, and charitable activities? What are we going to do with things like Panera Cares Cafes? Are we going to support them?

And the other thing that we have to do is ask what do we want of our government? And what does our government going to do in the context of this?

COSTELLO: But some might say that maybe some tough love is in order and that people who are, you know, don't have the energy to go out and find a job perhaps or -- or who just don't want to find a job or get a job that's higher paying so they can better feed their family and themselves and really the government is just enabling those kinds of people by handing out these food stamps?

SHAICH: Well, this is the question we each have to ask right? I mean when we opened the Panera Cares Cafes, people said that -- in here -- these are cafes where there are no set prices. You can walk in and you -- you can order the entire Panera menu and you leave in a donation box what you think is what you can essentially afford with an expectation if you have the resources you need to pay it forward.

People thought we were crazy, that nobody would do the right thing. The reality is these stores have been opened for a number of years. The reality is we'll serve one million people in them and -- and -- and these stores are self-sustaining and it's continuing to -- to work. The reality is, most people are fundamentally good. Not everybody is bad. Are there bad apples? Absolutely. That's what society is.

But when we have 48 million Americans that are food insecure, we've got to ask ourselves is the problem that these individuals are all trying to game the system, or is there a real problem that we want to deal with as a society?

COSTELLO: Thank you so much for joining us today. We appreciate it.

SHAICH: Thank you, Carol.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COSTELLO: And when we come back, again, President Obama expected to speak in just a few minutes from the Business Roundtable. Perhaps he'll comment on the Republican plan to pass a short-term budget deal that includes defunding Obamacare. We'll take his remarks live when he gets behind that podium. We'll be right back.

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COSTELLO: Some breaking news to pass along to you now. We want to bring you this. It's just come into our NEWSROOM just minutes ago. We heard from the mother of Aaron Alexis, the man who carried out the shooting rampage at the U.S. Navy Yard in Washington. Her name is Cathleen Alexis. Her comments are gut-wrenching. Here is a bit of what she told our national correspondent Deb Feyerick.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CATHLEEN ALEXIS, MOTHER OF AARON ALEXIS: September 18, 2013, our son Aaron Alexis has murdered 12 people and wounded several others. His actions have had a profound and lasting effect on the families of the victims. I don't know why he did what he did, and I'll never be able to ask him why. Aaron is now in a place where he can no longer do harm to anyone, and for that I am glad. To the families of the victims, I am so, so very sorry that this has happened. My heart is broken.

(END AUDIO CLIP)

COSTELLO: All right. That's Cathleen Alexis. More of that interview airs on CNN in the next hour of CNN NEWSROOM and into the day.

Now we have to take you back to Washington because the President is just about to speak before the business roundtable, a group of business leaders. You can see that man is introducing the President now.

Let's check in with Jim Acosta though. He's covering this event. Jim -- good morning.

JIM ACOSTA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Carol. You know, I think you're going to hear the President responding at least in part to what House Speaker John Boehner said within the last hour. You know, the President, his administration, various officials here at the White House have all been saying over the last week that there is no way the President will sign any kind of continuing resolution or temporary spending measure that defunds or delays Obamacare; the White House also wants to fix the sequester. So some of the things that you heard from House Speaker John Boehner earlier this hour that they want to defund Obamacare, that they want to keep the sequester in place, that they want to perhaps use the debt limit as a negotiating tool.

The President has said that is not going to happen. And what you're going to hear the President say, according to White House officials at this speech to the business roundtable in the next few moments is that he is not going to negotiate over the debt limit. He said that on Monday during that speech over here at the White House, that speech caused a bit of controversy because it was so political coming on the heels of that shooting at the Navy Yard.

But the President is going to reiterate some of those messages this morning. And basically, Carol, we have 12 days for both sides to work this out -- Carol.

COSTELLO: All right. Let's listen to the President. Thanks, Jim.

(BEGIN LIVE FEED)

BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: -- the introduction, thanks to Dave and Andrew and John, all of the men and women of the business roundtable. I've had a chance to not only present before this body before, but many of you have been doing wonderful work with the administration on a whole range of issues.

The point that Jim just made about the commitment some of the companies here have made in hiring and promoting our returning veterans is extraordinary. And so we're very, very grateful for that.

Last time I was here in December, I told you once the mikes were working that I'm hugely invested in your success because this room represents not only an enormous amount of economic output but also represents the hopes and dreams of people who are working very hard trying to make a living, small businesses who are supplying large companies like yours.

When you succeed, when you're doing well, when you're competitive at a global scale, then America can do well also. And so we want to be a consistent partner with you on a whole range of issues, and we have.

You know, if you think about where we were five years ago -- obviously we're marking the fifth anniversary of the collapse of Lehman's that triggered the worst financial crisis and then ultimately worst economic crisis that we've seen in our lifetimes -- I think it's fair to say that we've come a long way.

At that point, the auto industry was flat-lining. You had the entire financial sector locked up. A number of banks were in deep trouble. And most acutely for ordinary families all across this country, they were losing jobs, losing homes, losing their life savings. And there was a genuine fear across the board that we might not be able to pull our way out of it.

(EMERGENCY ALERT SYSTEM)

OBAMA: -- in terms of your bottom lines, employer-based health care plans have gone up at about a third of what they were going up when I first took office.

And so there's a lot of bright spots in the economy. A lot of progress has been made, and a lot of good news to report. But I think what we all recognize is we're not where we need to be at. We still have a lot of work to do. And we know what it is that we need to do. We know that if we implement immigration reform that that can add potentially a trillion dollars to our economy and that we will continue to track the best and brightest talent around the world.

We know that we can do even more when it comes to exports, which is why I'm out there negotiating the transpacific partnership and now a transatlantic trade partnership that will allow us to create a high- standard, enforceable, meaningful trade agreement with essentially two-thirds of the world markets, which is going to be incredibly powerful for American companies who, up until this point, have often been locked out of those markets.

We know that we still have to make a lot of progress when had it comes to our education system. And I want to thank the BRT because you've worked with us on issues like creating a common core that ensures that every young person in America has the opportunity to get prepared for the kinds of jobs that are going to exist in the 21st century. And I'm going to be talking to all of you a lot to work with us in making college much more affordable because, just as we've had to take a hard look at what we can do to start bringing down health care costs, we've also got to start taking a hard look at what we're going to do to bring down college costs. We now have over a trillion dollars worth of student loan debt that is hampering the economy, preventing young people from buying homes, starting families, and spending money buying your products.

The good news is that every one of the challenges that we confront, every one of the barriers, whether it's education, immigration, infrastructure, that prevent us from being as competitive as we could be, they're all solvable. We have good ideas. There's actually pretty good consensus in terms of how we might move forward.

The problem is right now that this town, Washington, is locked up, and we are not seeing the kind of progress that we should on these issues. So immigration is the most obvious example. We have bipartisan agreement. We got a bill passed out of the Senate. It's sitting there in the House, and if Speaker Boehner called that bill today, it would pass. We've got a majority of the House of Representatives that's prepared to vote for it. And we could transform our immigration system in a way that would be really good for your companies and really good for our economy.

The reason it's not happening is because there's a small faction that insists that our tradition as a nation of laws but also a nation of immigrants somehow is un-American and they oppose it. And that duplicates itself on a whole range of these issues. And now in the next several weeks it's going to manifest itself in what is going to be probably the most critical debate about our economy over the next several months, and that is what we do about our budget.

So let me just speak very briefly to that issue. As I said before, our deficits are coming down very fast. In fact, the IMF and other international organizations that had cautioned us previously about our deficits are actually now concerned that we're bringing our deficits down too fast. That's the assessment of the economists. On the current trajectory we're on and if we were to pass the budget that I put forward, our deficits would continue to go down, and we would have a deficit to GDP ratio below 3 percent, which is typically the standard at which it's sustainable.

Now in order for us to do that, we've got to do a couple of things. Number one, we've got to continue to be tight-fisted when it comes to spending on things we don't need. We have to continue to streamline government. We've got to continue to cut out waste. And there's waste to be had and there are programs that don't work or used to work and are now obsolete and we should eliminate. We've identified a whole range of programs that we want to eliminate and programs that we'd like to consolidate.

But what is also true is that if we're going to be honest about our debt and our deficits, our real problem is the long term, not the short term. We're not overspending on education. We're not overspending on research and development. We're not overspending on helping the disabled. Those things have all been flat for a long time or are coming down.

Our challenge has to do with our long-term entitlement programs and mostly have to do with our health care costs. So the fact that the Affordable Care Act has been put into place and that many of you are taking steps within your own companies, we're seeing health care costs come down, we're still going to have to do a little bit more because the population is aging and demographics means that people are going to be using more health care costs and the government is going to have to grapple with that. That's a long-term challenge.

The budget I put forward actually proposes some smart fixes on Medicare, some smart fixes on Medicaid, and creates a sustainable path where we continue to invest in the things we need to grow -- education, infrastructure, research and development, deals with our long-term structural deficit that's arise out of entitlements, and puts us in a strong position for decades to come.

The problem we have right now is that, again, that same faction in Congress is no longer talking about debt and deficits when it comes to resolving the budget. Initially, this was an argument about how much we spend on discretionary spending, how much we spend on defense. You could sit down across the table and try to negotiate some numbers. That's no longer the argument.

What we now have is an ideological fight that's been mounted in the House of Representatives that says, we're not going to pass a budget and we will threaten a government shutdown unless we repeal the Affordable Care Act. We have not seen this in the past, that a budget is contingent on us eliminating a program that was voted on, passed by both chambers of Congress, ruled constitutional by the Supreme Court, is two weeks from being fully implemented and that helps 30 million people finally get health care coverage. We've never seen that become the issue around a budget battle. So that's right now the primary roadblock to resolving the budget.

What's worse, that same faction has said, if we can't succeed in shutting the government down and leveraging that to eliminate the affordable care act, we may be prepared to let the government default on their debt. Now, this debt ceiling, I just want to remind people, in case you haven't been keeping up -- raising the debt ceiling, which has been done over a hundred times, does not increase our debt. It does not somehow promote profligacy. All it does is it says you have to pay the bills you've already racked up, Congress. It's a basic function of making sure that the full faith and credit of the United States is preserved.

And I've heard people say, well, in the past there have been negotiations around raising the debt ceiling. It's always a tough vote because the average person thinks raising the debt ceiling must mean that we're running up our debt. So people don't like to vote on it and typically there's some gamesmanship in terms of making the President's party shoulder the burden of raising the -- taking the vote and then there's some political campaign later that smacks them around for saying, "Joe Smith voted to raise the debt ceiling by $2 trillion," and it sounds terrible and it's a fun talking point for politics, but it always gets done.

And if there is a budget package that includes the debt ceiling vote, it's not the debt ceiling that is driving the negotiations. It's stuck into the budget negotiations because if you're going to take a bunch of tough votes anyway, you might as well go ahead and stick that in there. You have never seen in the history of the United States the debt ceiling or the threat of not raising the debt being used to extort a president or a governing party and trying to force issues that have nothing to do with the budget and nothing to do with the debt.