vermont, thanks to you, as well. this three and a half hour hearing was historic, very important. we're going to continue our analysis of what happened. thanks very much. and to our viewers, i'm wolf blitzer in washington. we're covering these historic hearings that took place today up on capitol hill. kathleen sebelius clearly in the hot seat today. answering questions from members of congress, democrats and republicans, some very, very testy questions, all of our reporter and analysts are standing by. dana bash is up on capitol hill. gloria borger is here with me. so is elizabeth cohen. we've got our white house team in place. we're going to have full analysis right now. let's go to dana bash up on capitol hill. you watched these three and a half hours, dana. give us your thought how this went down because as i say, i this i a lot of people were watching. >> well, certainly people who are genuinely interested in trying to get answers that they

don't have. there's no question hat secretary came with every intention of falling on her sword and she did several times, making clear that she was wrong would be up and running, that people would be able to activate it october 1st. see told tshe off the bat apolo. what i also thought was interesting beyond the sort of show you see in so many hearings, a real attempt on both sides, but mostly by democrats to try to explain something we have been hearing about particularly over the past week or so, that so many people across the country are losing their health care policies that they actually say they like. her trying to explain the reason is because those policies don't have the minimum requirements under the obama health care law. but she insisted because there are so many more options now because of obama care, people can eventually get lower priced

health care policies. but that was very difficult for her to explain because it is a confusing process. you saw republican after republican showing stories, telling anecdotes about constituents having problems getting on website. that was an important kind of learning experience that people who are watching this could get. understanding why if they got a letter from their health insurance company they were losing their health care and what they could do in the future. of course, because you have a lot of republicans, in fact all of the republicans there opposed the law to begin with, it was a little bit interesting to hear them complain about the process that they didn't want to happen in the first place. >> dana, stand by for a moment. this is an exchange that kathleen sebelius, the secretary of health and human services had with congress woman marsha blackburn, republican of tennessee. >> so who is responsible for overseeing this project? is it you or your designee? >> let me be clear. i'm not pointing fingers at

verizon. i'm trying to explain the way the site operates. we own the site. the site has had serious problems. >> who was in charge, madame secretary? >> the person now in charge as an integrate ser qssi, one of our -- >> who was in charge as it was being built at that team, who is the individual? >> michelle snyder. >> michelle snyder is the one responsible for this debacle. >> well, excuse me, congress woman. michelle snyder is not responsible for the debacle. hold me accountable for the debacle. i'm responsible. >> everythinging that you. i yield back. >> all right. that was a powerful exchange right there. gloria borger is here, elizabeth cohen is here. there were a lot of those testy exchanges between republican members of the committee and sebelius. >> at a certain point, there's only so many times kathleen sebelius could fall on her sword. she said it in 50 different ways. i'm responsible, the buck stops with her.

she said she was miserably frustrated i think was the phrase by all of this. so you sort of got to that. she took responsibility for this. she also took responsibility for telling the president that they were ready to go. and said that no one anticipated this level of problems. i think what we saw today was a very december decentralized process where in fact, it seemed like in funneling all of this, not everybody knew the problems everybody else was having, and there didn't seem to be one kind of decisionmaker hog could say wait a minute, all of this is a real problem. and we shouldn't go ahead with it. >> a project manager i know, a very successful one said it seems like on had project there was no one wringable neck. if you don't have one, projects often go awry as this one seems to have. >> you would have thought that something as significant as the affordable care act, they would

have had a point person reporting to kathleen sebelius every week, to the president pre week. we've got this, this, or at the end of september saying we're not ready into this . >> actually doing the nuts and bolts work of making that policy function correctly. i think those are two different thingsings. >> also inforing the american publicing about why, for example, that some insurers might cancel insurance. this is why. when you go into a risk pool as dana was talking about, why it might cost you a little bit more. but the extent of your coverage will be broader. you know, and all of these issues that where you have three years to kind of explain to people, and i know people don't pay attention until the very end. but it seems to me that the education process here was really lacking. >> let me go back to dana up on the hill.

this is the first major hearing where kathleen sebelius herself was testifying but there are other house committees presumably senate committees want her to testify, as well, including congress man darrell issa's committee. where do we go from here? >> she is going to testify before a senate committee the counterpart committee, the finance committee likely next week. that is going to be probably friendlier territory because the senate of course, has majority of democrats. majority of democrats will be on the committee. maybe not so much in terms of the questioning. it depends where we are when we get there. certainly a lot of the focus of the democrats in the housen an probably will be in the future of the senate was to talk about the good things that the affordable care act is doing for americans. but also again to try to penetrate some of the massive confusion that is going on out there with regard to the law. so you're probably going to see a lot more of that. you know, what's interesting to me that there were a lot of

questions at this house hearing about who should be fired, about whether you know, the guy who runs the website should be fired, about the one who -- woman who runs cms should be fired. because she, sebelius came out of the box an poizing saying she should be held accountable even though these been the poster woman for what she admitted was a debacle, you didn't see outright calling for home run her to resign but you saw a lot of show of questioning whether or not she's doing the right thing for one example, i'll give you rather is questioning by a couple of republican congress men why she hasn't signed onto the exchange, something you would think she would do to show she's in it with everybody else. she gave some perhaps legitimate answers about what is required of her and not. but whether it's required or not, you would think just for pure politics, she would have done that. republicans clearly pounced on

that. >> i want you to listen to this exchange with gregg harper, the republican congressman from mississippi. >> was the president not ultimately responsible like a company's ceo would be? >> sir, he's the president of the united states. i have given him regular reports and those i am responsible for the implementation of the affordable care act. that's what he asked me to do and that's what i'll to imcontinue to do. >> you're saying the president is not responsible for hhs. >> i didn't say that. >> so the president ultimately is responsible, while i think it's great that you're a team player and taking responsibility, it is the president's ultimate responsibility, correct? >> you clearly whatever, yes, he is the president. he is responsible for government programs. >> she clearly, gloria was trying to protect the president from this clear, what's been a website fiasco. >> as we were just talking about before, you get to a certain point and she's just short of

threw up her hands and said whatever. at a certain point, she took responsibility. she said she brought it to the president. she didn't anticipate this level of problems. she fell on her sword. move on. some people had some difficulty honestly in doing that. >> it looks like even if they were told repeatedly throughout the month of september there already some serious problems, she did repeatedly say those four contractors none of them said delay the launch of the website. >> there was a piece of this i thought was very interesting where she said the products were not locked and loaded into the system until the third week of september. when you don't have your products being locked and loaded till the third week of september and starting october 1st, that in and of itself should have told them they weren't going to be ready. >> that's why it was so remarkable that nobody ever, she said nobody ever told her specifically to delay the entire project. and obviously, there's a lot riding on it. but when you've informed the president of the united states

you're ready to go, you should be ready to go. >> they clearly were not ready to go and paying a significant price for that right now. stand by for a moment. we're going to have extensive coverage of what unfolded during those 3 1/2 hours of grueling testimony by kathleen sebelius. much more right after this. [ male announcer ] pepcid® presents: the burns family dinner. why would i take one pepcid® when i could take tums® throughout the day when my heartburn comes back? 'cause you only have to take one... [ male announcer ] don't be like the burns. just one pepcid® complete works fast and lasts. [ male announcer ] don't be like the burns. stick with innovation. stick with power. stick with technology. get the flexcare platinum. new from philips sonicare. humans -- even when we cross our "t's" and dot our "i's," we still run into problems.

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it was a realtime dose of reality this morning's congressional hearing when marsha blackburn called for the website to be pulled up live on a big screen in the hearing room. watch this. >> let's put the screen shot up. i want to go to the cost of the website and talk about the website. this is what is happening right now with this website. we've had somebody in the back trying to sign on. it is down. it is not working. last week, i asked for the cost from each of the contractors that were with us last week.

so, can you give me a ballpark of what you have spent on this website that does not work that individuals cannot get to? what is your cost estimate? >> so far, congress woman, we have spent about $118 million on the website itself and about $56 million has been expended on other i.t. 0 support the web. >> let's discuss what's going on. joining us now political commentator and columnist for the blaze will cane, also the writer and commentator progressive activist sally cohen, right? >> yes. >> sally cohen. i want to make sure it's not khan. thanks very much for joining us. sally's got an article she wrote on cnn.com entitled "a canceled health plan is a good thing." explain why a canceled health

plan is a good thing? >> marsha blackburn had a great metaphor about some people want to drive fords and some per rareries. in the '70s, there was the ford pinto that had a bad habit of catching on fire. it was government stepping in and saying we're not going to let companies make these uni've and dangerous cars. it's the same thing today. a lot of people have private insurance policy that are going to explode on them and the moment they get sick drop them for coverage, for them into bankruptcy. thanks to obama care, those policies are no longer going to be an option. that is generally in our better interests both in controlling costs and providing quality care to more americans and people are going to see more affordable options they can move into. >> will, go ahead. that's a fact she said. >> i'm glad we're talking about the parts of obama care that are working. website and marsha blackburn's, what she's making evident to us it's not functional, that's one

side. the other side is the part of obama care actually working. i don't know how to say this. the first step you take is you expose the lie. did president obama not say continuously if you like your health care, you can keep it? that's false. apparently what he meant is if he likes your health care. he can keep it. now sally's rationalization is we're replacing it with something better. i like sally but this is something we're hearing not just from the commentators but from the administration and lawmakers. i want you to think of the arrogance of that perspective, the conceit of telling you this is better. according to whom? . by whose definition is something better? a plan that forces men to buy maternity care and forces childless 50-year-olds to buy pediatric eye exams? what is better? is it what they tell us is better. >> sally go ahead. >> you know, i this i people americans would agree with me that seat belts and air bags are safer and better, but you know,

like i said, those weren't required till government stepped in. look, let's take a bigger picture here. this was not a hearing. this was harassment. this was republicans who are tired of flowing the obama care bill saying all right, we're going to try and flowing kathleen sebelius. the irony is this is the same committee trying to say we're so concerned people can't sign up we wanted to destroy it in the first place and we've been working for weeks to try and log with all these paper requests and data processing things and overwhelm all the other places that people can go up around the country to sign up other than the website. they're trying to destroy the path to obama karat every point. they have no credibility to have a hearing like this. >> will, go ahead. >> i just at some point, i actually think it's not serviceable for conservative economy taters like myself or lawmakers to voice this message. the problems with obama care are self-evident. i'm tempted to say the problems

with the website show that government can't meet the minimum threshold. the minimum threshold, access to reforming the market. not to to mention after that. but it's more than symbolic. congressman rogers pointed that out. the failures are not just about functionality. they're about security. this is apparently something we knew ahead of time. all these americans who gave private data, het data, that wasn't secure. it was very capable of being breached. this is a huge problem. >> you know, sally, that was an issue that really came to the fore. mike roger who is a member of this committee but also the chairman of the house intelligence committee, a very serious guy as both of you know and a lot of viewers know, as well, when he says information you're putting into the system right now whether your social security number or your wealth or how much money you earn, stuff like that which is pretty sensitive could be compromised relatively easily, that raises a lot of fears out will. >> look, i'm not here to defend the website.

and i wrote another piece for cnn last week making very clear, the website stinks. these problems need to be fixed. it's appropriate to have hearings to call out what went wrong. but the website isn't obama care. the website is not obama care. the reason republicans are in such a hurry to try and destroy this law and throw up obstacles everywhere they can, including stopping the money to fix the website and to build it in the if first place is because it's getting more and more popular as people see that quality of care is going to go up and costs will go down and republicans will have no leg to stand on. they're in this mad dash to try and destroy it before we realize we all like it. >> you want to respond to that quickly, will? >> yeah, just when i think my presence is unnecessary, that the problems of obama care are self-evident, then sally can turn this into something about republicans. this isn't about republicans. i think everyone who's gone to healthcare.gov can see.

this has nothing to do with conservatives and republicans anymore. if there's one feather in our cap, this is going to have problems. the problems with obama care in the long run will have very little to do with the receive eight and have to do with the inability to restructure one-fifth of our economy. >> i'll take that any day. i signed up and i saved money. >> sally, i'll wrap it up with this note. i've covered this specific hearing, this committee for a long time, energy and commerce. the democrats were the majority for a long time. henry waxman was the chairman for a long time, jaung dingell before him. if you think this was a testy hearing today, look at some of the hearingsing that either dingell or waxman shared going after bush administration officials on all sorts of issues. it was at least, you called it harassment. it was at least of as tough as it was today, and probably even tougher. those guys were pretty powerful,

pretty strong chairmen of this specific committee. it's got a reputation for being tough on the opposite party, if you will, if they're the majority in the house. just a little footnote from the hearings i've even over the years. thanks very much. >> a pleasure being on with you. >> still ahead, dr. sanjay gupta joins us with a reminder of what's in obama care and what's not in obama care. later on, the crossfire hosts get ready. newt gingrich and van jones. they are here. i'm angela, and i didn't think i could quit smoking

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our own dr. sanjay gupta joins us now. it's not just about the signup site. remind our viewers quickly, what obama care is all about. >> yeah, that's a good question, wolf. i mean the website certainly is about improving increasing access to health care. but there are a lot of other things that the president outlined in his speech in the rose garden, as well. some of that we've talked about quite a bit. insurance companies will keep children up to age 26 on their parents' plan. they will close the doughnut hole, this idea of improving as far as costs go for medicare recipients. prepreventive care for all people, not just people joining the marketplace. also, insurance companies can't have caps anymore in terms of how much they can pay. so those are some protections. remember, wolf, you and i talked about describing this more like insurance reform than health care reform because many of those benefits you just saw there are sort of mandates on the insurance companies how they

behave with their customers. >> for the folks who are watching right now, they're confused, who needs to really deal with this entire signup process. >> as far as the signup, and again the website part of this, it's really people who don't have insurance now either because they can't afford it, maybe because they have a pre-existing condition and also for people who have chosen not to buy it. they can afford it but knowsen not to buy it. it's that group of people. right now the estimates are about 15 million people are sort of on getting insurance on their own. and so you know, you're talking about 5% or so of the population, wolf. >> we know sanjay the administration got plenty of warnings about the website before the launch. we've got the documents in early september, september 6th. there were some significant warnings. you asked her about that in your exclusive interview last week with kathleen sebelius. you asked if the president was aware of those warnings, as well. listen to what she told you.

>> do you know when he first knew that there was a problem? >> well, i think it became clear fairly early on. the first couple of days. >> so not before that though, not before october 1st? there was no concern at that point either at the white house or at hhs? >> i think that we talked about having testing going forward and if we had an ideal situation and could have built a product in you know, a five-year period of time, we probably would have taken five years but we didn't have five years. and certainly americans who rely on health coverage didn't have five years for to us wait. >> they did have what, three years, three and a half years. you know the president. i know the president. i'm sure he said, why didn't somebody at least tell me there were some problems and maybe we could have made a different decision? but you know, you hear her say that to you the other day, and what she's saying today, i'm sure the president must be pretty furious right now that

nobody bothered to tell him we've got a serious problem here. >> yeah, i mean considering the significance of this certainly for his presidency and this administration overall. it's interesting, wolf, i listened very carefully today. secretary of health added more detail to it saying look, we knew there were problems but the bottom line again, her saying this is that the contractors indicated that they were going to be good to go on october 1st. and perhaps that's why they didn't convey a message specifically to the president. we also know, wolf, you've been reporting this morning there's an internal memo that shows that the administration was made aware of some of these problems, but again, whether that was taken to president obama or not, that was just unclear. >> sanjay gupta, thanks very much. always good to have your perspective. this important programming note for our viewers. later tonight, 6:00 p.m. eastern, we'll have a special edition of the situation room," obama care under fire, 6:00 p.m. eastern, tune in for that. guess who's coming in to the

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democrats say the health care law is working. the website will get fixed. republicans say the website problems are proof that the obama care law isn't working. that political divide certainly was evident in today's hearing on the rocky rollout of the healthcare.gov website. democrats say republicans were using the hearing simply as a pretext to bash obama care and that they're not interested in

fixing it. republicans took aim at the health and human services secretary kathleen sa beious. >> my insurance policy has been canceled. the white house website says if you like your health plan you have, you can keep it. dy hear it wrong? >> again, sir, i don't know how long you've had your policy. >> why aren't you losing your health insurance. >> because i'm part of the federal employees. >> you're in charge of this law, correct? why aren't you in the exchange? >> because i'm part of the federal health employees plan. >> why won't you go into the exchange? you're literally in charge of this law. should you be any different than all the other americans out there losing their health insurance? >> i think it's somewhat disingenuous for my colleagues on the other side of the podium here to have this faux anger

over this bill they have rooted for its failure and voted over 40 some times to repeal this bill, never put thing an alternative plan on the ploor f -- floor for the american people. >> republican newt gingrich, former house speaker, democrat van jones, the former obama administration official. newt, thanks so much, van, thanks to you, as well. you've caused quite a stir with this latest tweet that you put out there today. i'm going to put it up on the screen. sebelius dishonesty in testimony this morning exceeds anything president nixon was accused of. the obama team can't tell truth and survive. did she commit any crimes? >> well, first of all. >> did richard nixon commit a crime? >> first of all. >> did she commit any crimes. >> we don't know yet. for example, cnn is reporting today that health insurance executives are being pressured into not speaking out.

>> so are you an us cccusing he nixon broke the law with the cover-up, right. >> we don't know. what i'm saying first of all. >> i want to know if you want to revise making a comparison to nixon and the only president forced out of office because he broke the law. >> no, he was forced out of office in part, he resigned in part because he had said a series of things that weren't true. >> he lied. he broke the law. that's illegal. >> so you have the secretary of health and human services go to a committee today. >> did she lie? >> after a month -- she says the website never broke down. >> that's nixon? >> how can you have been through a month of the website breaking down? if you want to make the argument, she's out of touch with reality, it wasn't a lie because she hasn't noticed. >> when you make a comparison to nixon, that's significant.

van, you went to harvard law school. >> that would be yale. the better one. >> sheahere's the question. she testified before this committee to tell the truth, nothing but the truth. if she lied, she broke the law. is that what you're insinuating. >> i'm saying flatly whether you take valerie jarrett's tweet the other night, obama care doesn't force you to lose your insurance or take what the secretary said today, they are simply flat not telling the truth. >> well, first of all, with all due respect to compare anything that's happening with this silly website to what nixon did. >> it's not a silly website. >> it's a very important website? but you've got glitches. i remember when twitter used to go down and you the time. they fixed it. but to compare what's happening to nixon is to put the hype in hyperbole. it's so far beyond what's going on here. my concern is we are mou in this rhetorical arms race where every

side is doing everything except focusing on the real issue. democrats are in danger right now of sounding tone deaf to the people who are surprised at some of these outcomes. democrats need to eat some humble pie and show real concern for the people getting these notices. i think republicans need to also show a little bit of human milt. they seem to be completely indifferent to the losers in the last system and now they seem to be completely indifferent to the winners in the new system and seem to be grandstanding. none of this is good for the country. i don't think we should be dragging nixon into this. >> how would you handle -- you look at the scale of dishonesty in the tweets from the white house that says, obama care doesn't require in into lose their insurance. that is plain a lie. what would you call it. >> here's what i honestly think. i think the president was overly broad in his assurances to the american people. that's inarguable. >> he clearly should have been more precise with his words.

>> democrats coming out and trying to twist and turn the words, that's not good. but why was the president so overly broad in these an assurances? there's a contempt here. the context is that you had republicans out there saying stalin was on the way. have you extreme overstatement on one side, extreme overassurance on the other. maybe it's a judgment question. >> wait a second. the president of the united states goes around hundreds of times, hundreds and says, you will not lose your insurance. you will not lose your doctor or your hospital. period. >> if you like them. >> this is not complicated. >> listen -- >> was it the truth or was it a falsehood. >> i think as the law was written, he was right. as the regs were written, it's questionable. as it turned out, he's wrong. you look back and democrats have to. >> 12 to 15 million people have these individual policies and of those, maybe five or 10 million of them are going to lose their policies that they may have

looked them, they may have been crummy policies. they may not have worked if they really got sick. but millions of people are going to lose policies. on the point comparing it to nixon, comparing what she did with this secretary did to nixon, that is, i mean just between you and me, that's a little overblown. >> what do you say about an administration, you just point out, the actual number may be 16 million americans losing their policies. this affects life and death. it affects -- >> you're talking about the president. i'll read it again just to be precise. then you can tell me if you want to revise it. see bellious dishonestity in testimony this morning exceeds anything president nixon was accused of. >> il modify it. equals anything. how is that? >> exceeds may have been too strong. i this i to go under oath and say with a straight face there was not an outage in a site you've been covering for a month. >> that is so far from what

happened with nixon. i don't think it bes the country for us to be in this rhetorical arms race. i think the president should not have said that nobody ever was possibly going to have anything bad happen because it turns out not to be not true. what's not nixon. that's not nixon. >> he said it hundreds of times. >> i think hundreds of times he said something he shouldn't have said. i don't think democrats should pretend that was a wise samt. but for you to say that's a nixonian statement. >> you saw "the washington post" today. they gave the president four pinocchios. >> fair enough. they didn't have nixon's nose. >> we're going to continue this serious important discussion. much more coming up including we're going to play a clip from jake tapper. he just interviewed the former white house chief of staff rahm emanuel about the president and obama care, what the president likes to know, what he doesn't like to know. that's coming up next. so i can reach ally bank 24/7, but there are no branches? 24/7.

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tdd#: 1-800-345-2550 life inspires your trading. tdd#: 1-800-345-2550 where others see fads... tdd#: 1-800-345-2550 ...you see opportunities. tdd#: 1-800-345-2550 at schwab, we're here to help tdd#: 1-800-345-2550 turn inspiration into action. tdd#: 1-800-345-2550 we have intuitive platforms tdd#: 1-800-345-2550 to help you discover what's trending. tdd#: 1-800-345-2550 and seasoned market experts to help sharpen your instincts. tdd#: 1-800-345-2550 so you can take charge tdd#: 1-800-345-2550 of your trading. welcome back. my colleague jake tapper just spoke to the former white house chief of staff, the current mayor of chicago, rahm emanuel. they spoke about the problems of obama care, other challenges the president now facing. listen to this exchange. >> there have been criticisms with president obama not knowing the details of the obama care website problems. and then also with the national security agency and the spying surveilance of our allies. >> uh-huh. >> there have been criticisms of

him as disengaged. were you. >> that is the furthest from the truth about the president. i used to see him every morning. i used to see him hip every morning, three or four times during the day and every evening before he went out. when i see him every morning, had read all the material that was presented to him by everybody and he knew going into the meeting what the assumption of the other side of the argument was, why he wanted to -- he had exactly what questions he wanted whether it was on economic policy or any particular foreign policy. so the idea that he would be disinengaged is unless something happened, i've never seen in the two years of intensity that i was there, i just don't buy it. >> van jones and newt gingrich still with us. you worked with the president. do you agree with rahm emanuel. >> famously well prepared. frighteningly well prepared. everybody in that building if you wrote it, he was going to read it. the idea he's des ingaged

playing golf, that is not this president. something went wrong but the idea the president was not engaged is part part of the story. >> you don't know him as well as van knows him but you've met him. he doesn't seem disengaged to me. >> let's assume for a second he's engaged. that means he knew he wasn't telling the truth when he said you won't lose your insurance. he knew the system wasn't ready on october 1st. which is it? it if he's truly engaged, i'm happy to believe either version. you can make an argument for a president who delegates and trusts his people. if he knew, it was irresponsible to launch the site without any testing. he knew it was totally irresponsible not to tell the american people the truth about the bill. i'm happy top believe mayor emmanuel is accurate. but if he's accurate what the president said consistently for three years was not true and he into you it. >> on this point, there's obviously been a lot of concern over the past few days that for whatever reason, nobody told him

that the system wasn't ready, the website system wasn't ready 0 go october 1st. you heard kathleen sebelius once again say today they didn't tell the president there were these potential problems out there and that the president also didn't know that the u.s. was listening in on phone conversations of angela merkel and other allied leads. he didn't know about that presumably. those are two disturbing elements. you would think the president would know that kind of stuff and somebody didn't tell him. >> something went wrong some place. these are two separate issues. when it comes to surveilance and the whole methodology of how stuff is gathered overseas, that stuff sometimes the president knows and sometimes the president doesn't know the details. >> that kind of stuff he should know. >> we're now conflating the sa thing with this. this is different. this is disturbing. i think people don't understand. >> this is his signature issue. >> people have been a saying this for weeks.

>> for decades politicians have been trying to get affordable health care for everyone. he finally did it. >> democratic politicians have. >> republican politicians too. >> part of what -- >> you initially liked that affordable health care for everyone back in the '80s. >> i still want affordable health care for everyone. i don't think this model, would. >> listen, if the model doesn't work, the romney model, we're trying to implement the republican model and having problems doing it. i think people are going to find out over time exactly how this thing went so badly. but i also -- we live in the age of twitter. we shouldn't live at twitter speed all the time. we will eventually figure out who did what right and wrong. there's a nasty dangerous undercurrent here where people are now trying to challenge and build a case against the character of the president. there may be some flaws in the process here. there may have been judgment mistakes on the campaign trail. but this president is a straight shooting honest, hard working

president who is engaged. we'll find out what went wrong. i'm looking forward to hearing his words today. i this i what you're going to hear from this president today is a president who is going to take responsibility. >> should he say i'm sorry? should he apologize? >> i this i kathleen sebelius did the apology part of. the president needs to do the accountability part. >> the i think two things. his speech today is going to give us a lot of stuff to talk about in "crossfire" tonight into 6:30 p.m. >> here's the problem the president has. on a project this big, one-fifth of the american economy, i am astounded that he didn't have a once a week briefing where they went into detail about the whole rollout. it's not just the website. the website is the tip of a complex iceberg that has many.different moving parts to it and that is not only his biggest single achievement but the singest single change in the american system in our lifetime. it's almost utterly irresponsible to have something

this big coming down the road and having the secretary of health and human services say yeah, went didn't quite tell the president as you know yesterday on your show, you brought up the packet that there was a report as early as september 1st that said this thing ain't ready. >> september something i think is important, listen. a lot has gone right with this. and i think that part of what we are in danger of doing now is pretending that this system now only has losers and the last simmen only had winlers. there were a lot of losers in the last system. if you had a pre-existing condition, a sick kid, you were a loser in the last system. we are moving into a system where there are more winners now than losers. we still have losers. democrats sound tone deaf when they ignore the people who feel like they're losers. but we also have the celebrate the winners. >> the president is going to be

in boston later, i think he's speaking about romney care as well. we got a statement in from mitt romney on what he thinks about what's going on right now. i want you to weigh in right when we come back. my asthma's under control.

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later today, the president will be in boston delivering a major speech on obama care. john king is standing by in boston for us. set the scene for what the president hopes to achieve today. >> well, wolf, what he hopes to achieve first and foremost and most of all, i should say, is to urge people to lift their heads, and he'll say, essentially, look out at the horizon, the obama care rollout seems to be a mess, but the point he is trying to make is a year from now, things will be different. we're getting people who didn't have coverage coverage. we're expanding for people who did have coverage. and while he will take

accountable for the mess, and tell people be patient, things will get better, in the end, this law will be good for you. republicans, ov, disagree. and he will cite the rollout of romney care, or the massachusetts health care plan where only 123 people, according to the statistics, signed up the first month. now it covers more than 95% of the citizens of massachusetts. it has broad bipartisan support among the people of massachusetts and among the politicians. but this is a tough challenge for the president. you saw secretary sebelius on the hot seat. the president's own credibility has been called into question because he did say repeatedly when this was called into question, if you had health care you likes, you wouldn't have to change it. it will be a big challenge for the president to get people to raise their heads up and dress his personal credibility in all this. >> stand by. newt gingrich and van jones are here. mitt romney put out a statement

today saying that what's working in massachusetts should never have been used as some sort of national platform, if you will. he said health reform is best crafted by states with bipartisan support and input from its employers as we did without raising taxes phasing it in without seeing the disruptions we're seeing nationally. >> first of all, if you study carefully romney care, it's the second affordable health care in the united states. >> people in massachusetts like it. >> sure, and they pay for it, but you couldn't extend to the rest of the country. >> should individual states have done what massachusetts did, as opposed -- >> they were drifting in that direction. you look at vermont, which has adopted a single payer system, totally different than anyone else. >> you have romney hugging romney racare. he spent two years running from romney care, now he's promoting

it. that said, romney care started out unpopular and glitchy. now it's popular and works well, the same will be said for obuma care. >> medicare in the '60s, they had a lot of problems early on. now everybody loves it. >> medicare in the '60s was a very different program than this. one of the things to remember is there were no losers with medicare. no losers in medicare part d. there are millions of americans being coerced by their own government to give up an insurance plan they chose. so in that sense, i think what van said a while ago is really important. it's amazing how insensitive the president and most democrats are to the fact there are millions of americans who feel that they have been imposed upon. >> all right, guys, i have to leave it there. i suspect 6:30 p.m. eastern, are you the two cohosts tonight? >> we'll get into it. >> we'll be watching right after "the situation room." i'll be back 5:00 p.m. in "the

situation room." "newsroom" continues right now with brooke baldwin. she's standing by right after the break. you'll see brooke. ve to you thae is the better choice for her, she's agreed to give it up. that's today? [ male announcer ] we'll be with her all day to see how it goes. [ claira ] after the deliveries, i was okay. now the ciabatta is done and the pain is starting again. more pills? seriously? seriously. [ groans ] all these stops to take more pills can be a pain. can i get my aleve back? ♪ for my pain, i want my aleve. [ male announcer ] look for the easy-open red arthritis cap.

a debacle. that is what the woman in charge of the obama care rollout admits as she's getting drilled by lawmakers. now, it's president obama's turn. i'm brooke baldwin. the news is now. >> we're not in kansas anymore. >> kathleen sebelius apologizes, but what will the president say during his speech, live during this show? as the pope is named one of the world's most powerful, a little boy didn't seem too intimidated. plus, a marine under fire for warning his brothers in war about what would become an insider