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Interview With Virginia Congressman Scott Rigell; Budget Battle; Chicago Train Collision

Aired September 30, 2013 - 15:00   ET

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

BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN ANCHOR: Let's go back to Capitol Hill, back to our chief congressional correspondent, Dana Bash. So Dana, we saw the vote on the Senate floor. What's next?

DANA BASH, CNN SENIOR CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: What's next is it is now, as you said, in the House Republicans' court. I moved down, Brooke, to effectively to the basement of the Capitol, down the hall from where House Republicans are having that meeting to try to talk to some of them coming out.

But we do know based on multiple sources who are currently in the room e-mailing myself and Deirdre Walsh about what their plans are. As we reported earlier today, it is not to send a clean bill back funding the government, but it is to add some more details and some more provisions chipping away -- the intention, of course, is to chip away at Obamacare. One would delay the individual mandate for Obamacare, which of course, is the core of the law making. And then a second provision in this new plan would be to try to make it very difficult for lawmakers to vote no, and that would be to take away the federal subsidies, the money that comes from the Treasury that goes to lawmakers to help them pay for their own insurance.

That is something that one senior Republican source told me over the weekend was a nuclear option. They're deploying it. So this looks like this is their -- the last cannon in their arsenal before they send it back to the Senate and perhaps, perhaps ultimately maybe by midnight, maybe in the wee hours of the morning, who knows, they might be ready to wave the white flag and say, fine, we surrender. We will pass a bill funding the government without anything there.

But, to do that -- this is important -- to do that, John Boehner, who by the way wanted to do that all along, would have to agree to do it in a bipartisan way, get Democratic support, and definitely face the wrath of many in the conservative base and some in his own caucus.

BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN ANCHOR: So now that you have this intel that these House Republicans still want to fold in those two different provisions that you just outlined, at the same time, you talked to Republican Congressman Charlie Dent not too long ago live on our air who said sort of the opposite, saying, enough is enough, let's pass this thing and then fight Obamacare down the road.

BASH: Absolutely. He was going into this meeting saying exactly that. Why are we going through this, these machinations, knowing how this movie ends? Listen to what he told me about what he was going to tell his colleagues about effectively giving up now.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. CHARLES DENT (R), PENNSYLVANIA: I voted to repeal, delay, defund Obamacare. I have all sorts of problems with the health care law, but I also realize it's not going to be changed between now and the end of the day today. It's imperative for us right now to get on with the business of governing.

We have -- I would say there are over 180, probably 190 members of the House Republican Conference who has a very serious sense of governance and who are the governing wing of the party. We have a few dozen who don't have that same sense of governance. We're just going to have get on with the business, pass a bipartisan bill, and keep the government running.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: Doesn't look like he's going to get his wish. At least that's not going to be the next Republican move. The question is going to be whether people like him and other Republicans who we have talked to, at least privately, who said enough already, will also go along with the Republican plan.

My guess is the answer is, yes, they will, knowing that they will face pressure and they will face a lot of anger from conservatives in the base if they don't at least go along with this next plan, even though, as you just heard, he thinks this is the wrong way for his caucus to go. The one thing I should tell you is, you know, what Boehner and his fellow Republican leaders are dealing with is math. And that is that they have 233 or so members in their caucus.

They need 217 to pass something, so they have to do whatever they can, if they want to just do party-line votes, to please that about 17- or 18-member group who are very conservative, who are absolutely determined to fight and say that they will sit on their hands unless Boehner agrees to do so.

BALDWIN: Dana Bash and crew with their running shoes on, chasing these congressmen down to the basement of Capitol Hill. Dana, we appreciate you and we will back check in momentarily.

Meantime, despite this deadline, the Senate didn't convene until this afternoon, and Republican House members, they took notice.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. JOHN BOEHNER (R-OH), SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE: The House has done its work. We passed a bill on Saturday night, sent it to the United States Senate, that would delay Obamacare for one year and would eliminate permanently the medical device tax that is costing us tens of thousands of jobs that are being shipped overseas.

The Senate decided not to work yesterday. Well, my goodness. If there's such an emergency, where are they? REP. TED POE (R), TEXAS: While we were here until nearly 1:00 a.m. Sunday morning, the Senate was gone. The president, according to "The New York Times," played golf over the weekend. I guess the Senate and the president have other priorities.

But their inaction of talking to us will cause a shutdown. Where, oh, where has the Senate gone. Where, oh, where can they be? With time so short and issues so long, where, oh, where has the Senate gone?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: Gloria Borger, let me just bring you right in, our chief political analyst.

(CROSSTALK)

GLORIA BORGER, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Do I have to speak in poetry?

BALDWIN: No, you do not have to rhyme.

BORGER: I have to speak in rhyme? OK.

BALDWIN: Maybe later. That was entertaining, nonetheless.

(LAUGHTER)

BALDWIN: But let's talk about John Boehner specifically, House Speaker John Boehner. He's in a tough spot. What do you think is going on behind closed doors there?

BORGER: I think John Boehner is in a very tough spot. This is kind of a defining moment for him. And the Republicans I talked to say, look, they believe there was always some kind of an informal game plan, which was to give these conservative Republicans their due, give them a vote on this, send it to the Senate, and then when it comes back, kind of do the clean continuing resolution, fund the government, and then life moves on.

I'm not so sure that's going to happen right now. It depends on what the speaker's caucus wants to do. I don't sense that he's a person who feels threatened in any way. I think he's near the end of his career, not at the beginning of his career. But I do think what he's trying to do is get his Republicans reelected and leave Republicans in charge of the Congress, let them do what they have to do so they don't get primaried by more conservative Republicans, but I do believe he wants to fund the government and sort of get this over with. He doesn't look like a really happy guy to me.

BALDWIN: Listen, at this point, this is all speculation, but now we know that this, you know, bill is going back to the House. Dana Bash is reporting these two other provisions they're going to slap in there, it's going to go back to the Senate. The Senate, I'm just guessing, is going to say no, it's going to back to the House, the clock ticks. We're waiting for midnight. The big -- if the House finally says OK, at least for now, and takes this clean continuing resolution, this whole back and forth and volleying and fight, what has been in the for Republicans? Is it just about 2014 and elections?

BORGER: That's a really good question, and I'm not sure I really know the answer to that because I'm not quite sure they haven't stepped on their own message.

BALDWIN: OK.

BORGER: If your message is, Obamacare is bad, it's a mess, you have got enrollment starting tomorrow, right? There have been lots of problems with it. The president calls it glitches. Some people say it's more than that.

You know, you're giving corporations a free ride, but individuals have to enroll. Small businesses now, they have to take more time to figure it out. There's lots of problems. If you wanted to highlight the problems, why not highlight the problems?

Now all we're talking about is funding the government and this sort of general, we want to repeal Obamacare, but the Republicans really had an opportunity here to talk about what's wrong with the president's health care bill, and try and fix it. And, instead, I think they're caught up in this argument that many people think is kind of a non sequitur at this point.

BALDWIN: OK. Gloria Borger, thank you very much.

And I want to talk here beyond the politics and the polling just about the potential impact of this likely government shutdown tonight.

Megan McArdle writes about business and economics for Bloomberg News. She joins me here.

Megan, and I want to bring you in because whenever I read things from Diane Swonk, economist Bloomberg News, I pay attention, right? So she pointed out, and I just want to quote her, because she pointed out that thus far this year, the economy has decelerated. She says this -- quote -- "Do we want to risk stall speed again in the fourth quarter just because our elected officials can't bring themselves to negotiate on our behalf? Incompetence is a cost that accumulates over time."

Do you agree with Diane Swonk, Megan?

MEGAN MCARDLE, BLOOMBERG NEWS: I absolutely do agree that having good government, and by that, I don't mean necessarily big government or small government, but government that does a good job at the tasks we have assigned it, that does matter.

Having good institutions, research has shown over and over again matters a lot for economic growth. And right now, I think what we're looking at is increasingly uncertainty in the economy, just at a time when everything is already so uncertain that we don't want to give businesses any more reasons to say, you know, hold up. I think I'm going to, you know, hunker down and take my cash and not spend it.

BALDWIN: Speaking of uncertainty, we don't know where this bill is really going next, although we know it's headed to the House.

And speaking of, I need to hop back over to Capitol Hill because House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi is speaking right now.

(JOINED IN PROGRESS)

REP. NANCY PELOSI (D-CA), HOUSE MINORITY LEADER: -- is what they proposed.

So we're saying, OK, you have two bad things there, one, the 988 number, 986, whatever it is, however it comes out, and you have the undermining of Affordable Care Act. Take that off. We will accept your number in order to go to the table to negotiate, which is exactly what we should have been doing for the past six months, when all of us agreed that we wanted to proceed under the regular order of Congress.

The House passes a bill, the Senate passes a bill. That happened in March. For six months, the Republicans who said they wanted the regular order then abandoned that once the Senate to passed their bill -- its bill. And for six months, we have been long overdue.

Let's just bring a clean C.R. to the floor, a clean C.R. to the floor. Pass it with a few weeks that it gives us to come to the table to eliminate the sequester, which, again, hurts our economy, destroys over -- at the cost of at least one million jobs, and again, something that is beneath the dignity of honoring our responsibilities to the American people to do what limited government should do, to grow the economy, to create jobs, and, very importantly to us, to reduce the deficit.

With that, I'm pleased to yield to distinguish Whip Mr. Hoyer.

REP. STENY HOYER (D-MD), HOUSE MINORITY WHIP: Thank you very much, Madam Leader.

We are against shutting down the government. Shutting down the government is bad policy. It undermines the confidence of our people, our national security, our economy, and the creation of jobs. We are against shutting down government.

As a result, we are prepared at this point in time to allow six weeks so that we can negotiate how we operate government effectively and efficiently. And, as a result, we are prepared to work as a leadership team to get the votes for a number which we think is not accurate, but which is the Republican number.

We're asking them to take yes for an answer. We hope --

BALDWIN: So these are the House Democratic leaders, hoping that their overall House of Representatives, as you know, a majority Republican, instead would take the straight up-or-down vote from the Senate bill that was just now passed to the House. But as Dana Bash and our colleagues over on the Hill have been reporting based upon intel they're getting from sources in this closed-door House Republican meeting, that's not going to happen, at least not on this volley.

So, Megan, let me go back to you, because really, this is what Americans are -- they want to know when it comes to if and when this happens, if the clock strikes midnight, if there is a government shutdown, and presumably, as many people will be watching the markets tomorrow and watching it tank, do you think that the numbers on Wall Street will be more reactionary to the shutdown itself or to this larger looming battle that is the debt ceiling deadline 17 days down the road?

MCARDLE: You know, I think that the reaction is not so much to either the debt ceiling showdown or even this shutdown, but to the fact that Congress seems to have so much trouble agreeing on very, very basic things like, should we appropriate the money that we have agreed to spend and then actually spend it? That sends a signal that there's no sheriff in town.

And that is very scary thought for people because for the last five years we have been so dependent on government to be pumping stimulus into the economy, to be bailing out the banks. There's a sense in a lot of places that if the government can't get it together, that really doesn't bode well for the future.

BALDWIN: Not getting it together so far. We just saw the Wall Street -- Dow the down 133 points here, 40 minutes left in the trading day, and the bickering continues.

Megan McArdle, thank you so much.

Back to our special coverage here on Washington in just a moment. I will speak live with a Republican who has been inside the closed-door meeting on what their next move is with the deadline hours away.

But, first, dozens are hurt after these commuter trains collide in Chicago. And investigators say there was a mystery unfolding here over a runaway train. We will take you live to that scene next.

Plus, it's a story that has so many of you talking, these two actors here pulled over in South Carolina, and what they say happened next is prompting police to investigate their own officers for alleged racial profiling. That actor there on the left joins me live. Stay tuned.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BALDWIN: We will take you back to our special coverage of the government deadline, running out of funding potentially here in just a moment, but, first, I want to take you to Chicago to this fast-moving story there.

Dozens of people are hurt after a commuter train collided with another. And the thing is, investigators have no idea why.

Ted Rowlands is there for us live on the scene.

Ted, you have this one train that was full of passengers, the other, this mysterious runaway train.

TED ROWLANDS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, a mystery runaway train, Brooke.

They're not quite sure exactly what happened. Basically, you see behind me the wreckage. You had an eight-car train that was just completely full of passengers at 8:00 this morning, during the morning commute, and then this four-car passenger train with nobody in it. They collided head on.

The four-car passenger train came from a depot very close to here, and at first, they thought that maybe somebody had intentionally hijacked the train and did this on purpose. There was a lot of speculation that that was going on and a lot of nervousness, too. So, there was a full investigation.

Now they have gone back over the last few hours and they have looked at the surveillance tapes and they don't see anybody on that train, and now they're thinking it's a mechanical problem, but the bottom line is 33 people were injured, went to nine separate hospitals, and they don't know why this train got out of control.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BRIAN STEELE, CTA SPOKESMAN: This is an extremely rare occurrence. I don't know the last time, if ever, that this has happened on the CTA system. This is a system that has a very strong safety track record. And this is an incident that really is an aberration, and it brings with it a lot of questions.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ROWLANDS: Brooke, for this train to have gone from the depot into the position where it is right now, it had to go over two stopgaps, a switch, and then an emergency automatic shutdown should have kicked in as well.

Neither one of those two things happened. The NTSB is here to investigate. They want to figure out exactly what happened as soon as they can and make sure it doesn't happen again. But they do say foul play at this point is not suspected.

BALDWIN: OK. Ted Rowlands in Chicago, Ted, thank you.

Want to take you back to Washington as we're now learning that House Republicans are walking out of this closed-door meeting.

There she is, our chief congressional correspondent, Dana Bash, who has snagged one of the House Republicans.

And, Dana Bash, the floor is yours.

BASH: Thank you, Brooke. I'm here with Congressman Scott Rigell from the state of Virginia.

Tell me whether you think this course of action that you all just discussed and I gather agreed to, to not send back a clean bill funding the government, as Democrats are demanding, but to add a delay of the individual mandate for a year and also keeping federal subsidies for you and your fellow congressmen --

REP. SCOTT RIGELL (R), VIRGINIA: Removing them.

BASH: Removing them.

RIGELL: Yes, removing all federal subsidies for the health insurance for all members of Congress and staff.

And I really think it's important that we include the president in this, too. I believe in leadership by example, a principle I learned a long time ago. I think we're actually going to improve the Affordable Care Act if it does have to stay. We think it should be unwound, of course, but what we're doing now, I think, is wise.

I hope our conference will unite behind this and send it to the floor for a vote and then send it over to the Senate. It's a reasonable effort and I think a wise one.

BASH: You're a new member, but I know you're a smart person who understands simple math. And that is that if Senate Democrats are going to do exactly what they did, you know, about an hour ago, which is swiftly reject what you're going to send them, what's the point when we're heading towards midnight and the government will shut down?

RIGELL: Well, we made several concessions in the House, substantive ones, and I haven't seen that from the Senate. There's been no reciprocity on any type of reasonable accommodation.

And when Senator Reid refers to us as anarchists and others say in the White House that they don't want to negotiate with people with bombs strapped to their chest, I'm deeply offended by it. I think there's -- that type of language, when you're speaking of other American citizens who really believe strongly, as I do, that this is not the best path, the Affordable Care Act, that does a disservice to the tone, to the civil debate.

And I'm proud of our conference. We haven't used that kind of language for those with whom we disagree.

BASH: Your colleague Charlie Dent told me before going into this meeting that he's done, he's ready to wave the white flag, and he said he was going to make that argument inside the conference and hope that enough of you all agreed that, you know what, just pass a bill, fund the government, do it with bipartisan support, and move on.

Did you -- if that was on the floor, would you vote for it?

RIGELL: Well, no, not at this point.

I really think we ought to fight for what we believe. Once we get up to 11:59, you know, p.m. tonight, and, well, I will see where we are at that point. I do know this, that I know for the Hampton Roads region, where I serve and represent those good folks, that we have already experienced furloughs because of sequester. To layer upon that more economic pain, that doesn't seem wise to me at all.

But I'm taking this one vote in one hour.

BASH: Are you fighting a kamikaze mission here? You know the way the Senate Democrats are going to respond. And they run the show over there.

RIGELL: If our Senate colleagues want to vote against what I think every American would think is right, that is that we're all in. We're not getting a subsidy either on the Affordable Care Act. I mean, this resonates deeply with the American people. They want members of Congress to live like everybody else.

And so I think it's a wise path. I really -- I have been critical of our leadership many times, but I think this is a viable path. I was speaking to a union member today, he called in on a radio show, and he was saying, look, there's a real problem here. We're not able to stay on our insurance. It's fundamentally changing our insurance.

I think even if one supports the Affordable Care Act that it's wise to delay it for a year. I think that's the best path for our country.

BASH: Thank you for stopping. I appreciate it.

And, Brooke, this is, I think, a good example of what you're hearing from a lot of lawmakers, that they're not ready to give up the fight, which is a big reason why John Boehner is going to have at least this one last try to ping it back to the Senate and chip away at Obamacare and try to again hit lawmakers where it hurts the most, or at least politically, which is their own pocketbook.

BALDWIN: As he said, taking it one vote at a time. We will see what happens after 11:59. Dana Bash, thank you for that.

Coming up, President Obama straight ahead down with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu today in the Oval Office, on the agenda, Egypt, Syria, and President Obama's recent phone conversation with the president of Iran. We will tell you what Netanyahu's bottom line is when it comes to negotiations with Iran next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BALDWIN: The relationship between President Barack Obama and Israel's prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has long been tense, but, today, the two men sat side by side right there at the White House, a meeting with one incredibly significant agenda, Iran.

Just one week after President Obama's historic phone call with the newly elected president of Iran, Hassan Rouhani, Netanyahu has a message for Obama: Don't be so naive. Netanyahu is not at all buying Iran's diplomatic sweet talk, saying its new leader cannot be trusted when it comes to Iran's nuclear intentions. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BENJAMIN NETANYAHU, ISRAELI PRIME MINISTER: Iran is committed to Israel's destruction, so, for Israel, the ultimate test of a future agreement with Iran is whether or not Iran dismantles its military nuclear program.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: So what do Americans think about this? According to our latest CNN/ORC poll, three-quarters of Americans, 76 percent, say they favor direct diplomatic negotiations with Iran in an effort to prevent the country from developing nuclear weapons.

Coming up: just a short time ago, President Obama talking about the deadline hours away here to keep the government running, this as a deal is looking very unlikely.

Plus, just revealed, the results of the investigation into the deaths of the 19 Hot Shot firefighters who were killed in that deadly Arizona wildfire. There was a major, major problem.

That's coming up.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)