gwen: you want to know what really happened at the big health care summit? whether the economy is turning the corner? if your toyota is safe? we'll answer your questions tonight on "washington week." >> never have so many members of the house and senate behaved show well for so long before so many television cameras. gwen: they did behave well. but they did not agree. >> the solution to that is to put that on the shelf and to start over with a blank piece of paper. >> the gaps in my judgment are not that great. gwen: honest differences of opinion or rank partisanship? >> both of us during the campaign promised change in washington. >> let me just make this point, john. because we're not campaigning anymore. the election's over. >> i'm reminded of that every

day. gwen: one almost certain casualty, bipartisanship. but is ere room for cross-party cooperation on another key issue? >> the yeas are 70. the nays are 28. gwen: the senate passes a jobs bill. and one of the world's most powerful businessmen receives a congressional scolding. >> if the camry and prius were airplanes, they would be grounded. gwen: trouble at toyota. covering the week, karen tumulty of "time" magazine. john dickerson of "slate" magazine. and cbs news. naftali bendavid of "the wall street journal." and david shepardson of "the detroit news." >>' ward winning reporting and -- award winning reporting and analysis, covering history as it happens. live from our nation's capital, this is "washington week" with

gwen ifill. corporate funding for "washington week" is provided by -- >> we know why we're here. to geoff our war fighters every advantage -- to give our war fighters every advantage. >> to deliver technologies that anticipate the future today. >> and help protect america everywhere. from the battle space to cyberspace. >> around the globe, the people of boeing are working together to give our best for america's best. >> that's why we're here. >> ♪ >> one tribe, you all. one tribe, you all. one tribe, you all. we are one people. another get -- >> introducing the pepsi refresh project.

where giving away millions for ideas that move the world forward. every pepsi refreshes the world. >> additional funding for washington week is provided by exxonmobil, the annenberg foundation, the corporation for public broadcasting and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. once again, live from washington, moderator gwen ifill. gwen: good evening. well, it wasn't yalta or ray vick or dayton. it wasn't even the beer summit. but thursday's health care summit did serve as a turning point of sorts for democrats and republicans. assembled before the cameras around the table in what is essentially president obama's guest house, blair house, republicans set out to make the case that the health care fix the president proposes would cost too much, do too little, and represent an unacceptable federal intrusion into private health care. >> when you start to mandate

that everyone in this country have insurance, and you lay on top of that now the mandates that we all would like to see in a perfect world, there are consequences to that. we can't afford this. gwen: democrats, including the president, who got the first and the last word, wanted to show that they were willing to be reasonable and bipartisan. but that their approach is the right one. >> our republican friends oppose our legislation. and that is your right. but also it becomes your responsibility to propose ideas for making it better. so if you have a better plan for making health insurance more affordable, let's hear it. if you have a better plan for making health insurance companies more accountable, let's face it. let's work on it. gwen: the president tipped his hand in the end signaling he is ready to force action on health care reform without republican support. >> we cannot have another year-long debate about this.

so the question that i'm going to ask myself and i ask of all of you is there enough serious effort that in a month's time or a few weeks' time or six weeks' time, we could actually resolve something? and if we can't, then i think we've got to go ahead and make some decisions and then that's what elections are for. gwen: that sounded like a gauntlet being thrown down. but at the heart of it, karen, what is it that's the nub of this debate? >> the president did begin by saying let's talk about the things we agree on. and see if we can bridge the differences. but as the six hours turned into seven hours, what became increasingly apparent is that while they can agree on some provisions of the bill, that the philosophical approaches between the two parties are so different. especially about what the role of government should be versus what the role of free markets should be, that there is really no common ground here between

the two. and second of all, they -- they're so at odds over whether this is even doable. whether it's affordable. and at one point, lamar alexander said basically this is just something that washington is not even capable of doing. gwen: and is it possible that washington is also just not capable of really finding that middle ground? was it even a possibility, a fairy tale thought? >> it was a fairy tale thought but it wasn't a real thought. and the problem is because both sides came in with different views about how to proceed. so there were the philosophical differences that karen talked about but also these procedural differences. president wanted to take the bill the democrats have put together, a majority bill, shave off the parts that republicans don't like, maybe add in some things the republicans do like, the republicans were saying nope. got to start fresh. and we'll start fresh. and if you can't agree on whether you're going to take the bus or the car, you can't reach your destination. and we saw the president get frustrated several times he would try to build a little

pile of sticks of bipartisanship and things they could agree on and some republicans played and were involved in that. but others would come in and say nope, got to start from scratch and all of these careful work would disappear. gwen: i'm curious what everybody else thought that it was more interesting in substan active than i even expected. maybe -- and substantive that i onexpected. was there substance there? >> there's a lot of substance there, i thought. there were a lot of ideas, very specific ideas put on the table. if you've been listening to this debate, as, you know, those of us who have been paid to do it have for last year, none of these sounded like new ideas. but i think anyone who had heard, you know, the whole thing play out, they got a sense that these -- neither of these parties are completely lacking in their own ideas. >> so karen, we've had this day-long seminar. a lot of back and forth and people talking to each other. it doesn't seem like they agreed. what's next? where do we go from here?

>> where we go from here is now as nancy pelosi and i harry reid, house speaker and senate majority leader left the meeting they made it very, very clear they are going to -- they're all in on this. they are going to push through a large bill. at least do the best they can. so what we're going to see is the house attempting to pass the senate bill. and then both houses using this procedure of reconciliation, where you only need 51 votes in the senate, to make some modifications in that senate bill that would really make it more acceptable to the house. gwen: which is what a lot of liberal democrats have been pushing the democrats in congress. the senate to do. >> right. they want to go with reconciliation from the beginning. and the president didn't want to do that. but what essentially the reason they have to do reconciliation now is it's the -- it's the spoon full of sugar for the house democrats. because since scott brown was elected, they can't pass a bill that represents the best of the house and the best of the senate. gwen: scott brown, the republican from massachusetts. >> they have to go past the old senate -- to go pass the old

senate bill but in the house they can't build a majority to pass that old senate bill so they have to get this other second bill and that has to pass through reconciliation, the second bill that will have the fixes that will make health care palatable to the democrats in the house. republicans say you can't pass a bill that affects 17% of the economy using this trick. but in fact, just as a technical matter, the bill that will actually pass -- has already indeed passed. passed with 60 votes. the health care bill. what will pass through reconciliation is this second bill. this kind of fixer bill. >> john, does this -- does this day-long -- does it unify the democrats and how do they get the remaining votes to get this thing finally passed? >> you har two different stories. -- hear two different stories. when i talk to strategists involved in races in 2010 trying to get democrats elected they wanted the president to draw some bright lines with republicans, do a little bit more of show me your plan, we heard that clip from harry reid saying you put up or shut up in fact with republicans. the president didn't do that

much. he bent over backward to show he was acom dating and reaching out. -- acom dating and reaching out. john mccain was talking about how the president didn't fulfill the promises of the campaign. although obama got irritated later in the day agreed with mccain on something and at another time he praised mccain for being principled. so he wasn't heavily partisan mood. some democrats wanted him to be. instead, what he seems to have done, may unify democrats, is do everything possible to bend over backward so they ultimately can say, look, we tried to meet republicans hatchway. we did everything we could do. and they just weren't up for it. gwen: at the same time, it also struck me that if you were just watching, virgin health care watcher, and you could hear it. lamar alexander make one argument about the -- whether premiums go up or down. and hear the president disagree with him. and not have a clue who's right. >> that's right. that was the first smackdown of the whole summit. this is a question, are my premiums going to go up or down? that's what people are

wondering. that are seeing in the news all these health care -- health insurance companies in these states are hiking premiums like crazy. so it was one of these things that if you parsed each of their sentences, you would realize they were talking about two different things. lamar alexander was saying that premiums in the individual market would go up. according to the congressional budget office. that is true. the individual market is that 10% of americans who don't get coverage at work so they go out and buy policies on their own. what he didn't say is that most of those people would more than make up for that with the additional help they would get from the government in the form of subsidies. and for those of us who are fortunate enough to get health coverage at work, the congressional budget office says that those of us, the 80% of us who do, our premiums are going to stay the same or go down. >> and just as a political matter, to piggyback on that, to your point, gwen, when people were watching, they say gosh, this is complicated and everybody's acting in good faith. let's maybe slow down. that's what the polls are saying. and that's the republican

message. and so democrats, back to your question about whether democrats are unified, those who wanted to make a republican -- to make republicans look like crazy obstructionists, these kind of details suggested there are legitimate differences. -runs are trying to go slow. and maybe that's what we should do. >> the other thing that obama did actually not at the summit but earlier in the week is he presented his own plan. and i was wonderring how important it is that finally the president comes out with his idea of what should be in the bill. gwen: which was greeted be widespread suspicion by republicans. >> yes. i think that in the end was the far more significant development than the summit in terms of actually getting this bill over the finish line in the house and the senate. because what the president did in his own bill was he took out all the things that have made this bill completely unacceptable to the house. starting with this tax on very expensive health care plans. he got rid of the -- a lot of the special deals. ben nelson's so-called cornhusker kickback on medicaid in nebraska.

a lot of the things that have made this bill a lot harder -- gwen: public option, nowhere to be seen. >> public option nowhere to be seen. and so this has made it a lot easier for nancy pelosi to go to her caucus, which does not trust the senate on anything, at the moment, and say, look, you guys have already voted for this thing once. if there's any political damage, it's been done. we've got to carry this through to the finish line and convince the american people that we the democrats are capable of governing. >> and going back to that reconciliation point, the reconciliation bill, the second bill, will have all of those fixes you're talking about in it. that's the little vehicle for it. one or thing, the monday announcement did, it put the president's face on this bill. people haven't liked this process when congress has been in charge of it. and i was talking to a veteran aide on the hill who said we've seen professor obama in the seven-hour -- now we're going to have to see president obama. it now is totally his. this process. this bill. and he's now got to work it. he's got to help nancy pelosi and harry reid. >> until this week there was no such thing as an obama health

care plan. >> he dent want to step on congress -- didn't want to step on congress' toes. gwen: incrementalism is the key, right? this is what he's also embracing a little bit even though that bill is a big bill. >> but over and over again, yesterday, the president made the point that piecemeal reform just won't work. that you can't get -- and this is by the way something health care experts and economists agree with that you can't get costs down unless everybody is covered. gwen: but politically this is something that's very appealing. let's move on because incrementalism did work at least partially, later this week on the hill. and at the same time the smell of stalemate was in the air over at blare house it was a modest measure of bipartisanship on capitol hill. it was a $15 billion job creation bill. incremental rather than sweeping. was it a sign of things to come? >> well, in some ways, it was. but we shouldn't lose sight of how modest it was. first of all, you only had five

republicans out of 41 joining the democrats on the key vote. and secondly, the bill was a modest one. its key provision provided a payroll holiday if a company hires somebody who's unemployed, they don't have to pay that person's social security taxes for the end of the year. and a few other provisions that help construction bonds and stuff like that. so this is not intended to be anything sweeping. on the other hand, it does present sort of a template, i think, for what the democrats are going to do. they're going to perhaps present a series of modest bills that are very difficult for republicans to oppose. and sort of dare them to stand up against it. gwen: in seems like a flip of what we saw in the health care bill. the republicans who didn't vote for this one were unhappy it wasn't bigger. instead of happy that it was incremental. why wasn't this a slam dunk for everybody to vote for at a time of economic crisis? >> that's a very good question. in that republicans supported almost everything that was in the bill. they didn't vote against it because they didn't like it. what they were upset about is at one upon the was a bigger bill. harry reid decided to go with a smaller one and some republicans were upset that the bill had been narrowed down or

slimmed down in that way. gwen: and tax breaks and things were taken out. >> things that they liked were taken out. >> one of the people who helped this bill pass was the new senator from massachusetts. what do you make of his role in this? >> that got a lot of people's attention. the first republican from the whole senate to stand up and say, i'm going to be with the democrats on this. was scott brown. people have been wondering for a couple of weeks what kind of republican he's going to be. is he going to be somebody who adhering to the republican party line, is he going to be somebody that the democrats can work with? and what this showed is he's going to join susan collins, olympia snowe, the small number of republicans that will work with the democrats on some things and i think that's one of the more important developments we saw on the jobs bill. >> how much trouble is this bill in the house? there's a lot of criticism over the fact that a billion dollars in road funds go -- about 60% go to four states. is that going to hold up or will the democrats hold their nose and vote for it? >> the senate finally gets a bipartisan bill and it's running into trouble in the house. among democrats. not just for the reason you mentioned but some liberal democrats think it should be

bigger. some conservative democrats think it should be paid for in a whole different way. so my hunch is they're going to find a way to get it through but it's emblematic of the difficulties congress is having passing anything that they get a good bill in the house and immediately runs into trouble in the senate. >> is this bill going to create jobs? and if so how soon? >> you know, it's modest. like we were saying at the outset. i've heard people estimate 250,000 jobs. for people say a little bit more. at least democrats say a little bit more. but there's no question that with the -- what the democrats have decided to go and do here is small ball. something that they think they can pass but rather than the sweeping approach they've taken to health care, and energy, they want to do this one step at a time. gwen: last night, we saw in the senate, and another what you would think would be a slam dunk idea, which was to extend jobless benefits, which are about to expire this weekend, ran up against a wall. >> there's a senator named jim bunning from kentucky. republican senator. gwen: a retiring -- >> not running for re-election

and also always at odds with his own party leadership. so this is a guy who flies solo and does his own thing. who has a reputation sometimes for being a little bit eccentric and he's holding up this bill. because he's afraid it's going to add to the deficit. very popular bill on both sides of the aisle to extend unemployment benefits. and it's maybe one more illustration of the difficulty that the senate has. its complex rules, rules that require 60 votes for some things, that allow one senator to gum up the works on almost anything. probably get it passed next week but not without a lot of difficulty. a lot of hand wringing. and not without making it more complicated than it had to be. gwen: i wonder how much of this has to do with crisis? whether there has to be an immediate crisis. we get just conflicting economic information today. today we heard that house sales were down. and earlier in the week we heard that overall, there was some sort of glimmers of hope and we saw the market collapsed yesterday. is that what it is? that there's nothing that seems so pressing, so emergency, that people have to get this stuff

done? >> you would think we are in a crisis. the financial stem just about collapsed. the economy is struggling along in a terrible way. everybody agrees that health care really needs to be worked on. but yet they can't seem to get it together. you know, my sense is that just over the years, the rules in the senate have become more and more ossified. people have hardened in their political approaches to these things until we get to this point where people are shocked at how in the face of all these problems that everybody agrees we need action on, they don't seem able to get it done. >> given that unemployment is still 9.7%, shouldn't we expect more job bills down the road and what are the prospects and what might those bills have in them? >> that's exactly what the democratic strategy is, to pass these things one vote at a time. that will help them. it will help them politically, every few weeks they pass another jobs bill. the next one is the one that we were just talking about that senator bunning is blocking that will extend unemployment insurance. it will extend cobra health benefits. and after that, they're talking

about things like investing in infrastructure. like helping state and local governments. how many get through we'll have to see but the democrats love the idea of proposing these things every few weeks and daring the republicans to say no. gwen: and just giving us something to talk about every few weeks. as you can tell, washington did not lack for political opera this week. right at the top was akio toyota's appearance before a house committee where he sought to defend his family name and the eight million cars his company has been forced to recall. i asked transportation secretary ray lahood about it this week on the newshour. the thousands of documents which have surfaced, the investigation we saw today, the testimony we've seen, do you believe that toyota misled the public? >> i think that they were safety deaf. i think they should have been listening. i think toyota in tokyo -- and tokyo should have been list tong their north american people -- have been listening to their north american people who they hire. very professional people. gwen: welcome to "washington

week," david. how much should the government known and how much did the government know about toyota's problem? >> well, since 2004, there are eight separate investigations into sudden acceleration claims at toyota. and the only thing the government did was to force the recall of 55,000 floor mats in 2007. very little. very inexpensive and toyota bragged about the fact that they saved $100 million plus by only having to recall these 55,000 floor mats. then we had this awful accident in august of 2009 of a california highway patrol officer that killed four people. and suddenly they agreed to now $2 billion fix to recall 8.5 million vehicles. i think it's clear the government, was woefully understaffed. did not have the expertise it needed. and didn't do enough to push toyota two or three years ago. gwen: it was revealing to hear ray lahood say on my watch we've been doing it great and ask about somebody else's watch he clams right up. >> what's going to happen to toyota now? >> this is just the beginning. we went through two -- soap

opera-like hearings and another hearing next week in the senate commerce committee which will feature the top two safety officials from japan. coming -- the federal grand jury of new york is investigating to see whether toyota broke the law by not admitting to the problems earlier. the securities and exchange commission is investigating. nhtsa requesting documents and deciding whether to recall the toyota corolla, one of the most popular vehicles in the united states. and another round of hearings looking into the bush administration's response. and now toyota whistleblower attorney who turned over documents. >> and what are these hearings likely to produce? isn't part of the problem that cars now are so full of this high-tech stuff, and the regulations were crasted so long ago. -- crasted so long ago. >> the two problems they've solved so far, floor mats and sticky pedals by inserting a little shim. the big question is the fact that cars are very complex computers. with millions of lines of code.

and we don't know if there's something in the programming that is causing some of these unintended acceleration cases. there are 2,600 complaints since 2000. alleging 34 deaths and a lot of people believe it wasn't the floor mat or the pedals so it's got to be something else. toyota and nhsa have looked at this for decades and haven't found anything but they both vow to take a hard look at it. >> the big questions for toyota seem to be when the public's confidence returns, when they're calm and they sort of accept that toyota has done what it needs to do. and go back to buying toyota cars, when do you foresee that happening? how far away are we from that? >> think where they were at the end of 2009. toyota had either surpassed or tied general moat yorts as selling the the most retail vehicles in the united states and the world's largest automatic 0 maker in this short -- automaker in this short period. their reputation has taken a calamitous hit. a lot of loyal buyers and half the policymakers in the town own a prius.

loyal customers will return if they're convinced that they've fixed the problem and going to be transparent and not going to hide anything. gwen: there's a backdrop here which is the federal government now has a stake in a couple of domestic automakers. so there's some suspicious about whether they are being tougher on toyota. and whether obama is industry friendly was the term that the toyota executives raised. do we know? >> i don't think there's any evidence that because the government owns 60% of g.m. and 10% of chrysler that they would go after toyota. one reason is because i don't think it would work. the average toyota buyer is probably not going to go buy a g.m. versus a hyundai or a honda. i think the domestic companies will get some marginal sales from toyota's problems. but i don't think the answer to fixing g.m. is to destroy toyota. 107,000 jobs they have in the u.s. and i think the obama administration just wouldn't try anything like that. because it would -- gwen: backfire. >> on any number of levels. gwen: thank you, david. and once again, welcome.

>> thank you. gwen: thank you all very much. opera indeed. we have to go now. but the conversation will continue online. be sure to check out our "washington week" webcast extra. everything we didn't get to here and it's good. plus your questions and answers. you can find us at washingtonweek@pbs.org and you can also read my new blog "gwen's take." and keep up with daily developments on the pbs "newshour" and we'll see you around the table again next week on "washington week." good night. join the "washington week" conversation online. email your questions for the webcast extra to washingtonweek online@pbs.org. >> corporate funding for "washington week" is provided by -- >> i've been growing algae for

35 years. most people try to get rid of algae and we're trying to grow it. algae are very beautiful. they come in blue or red. golden. green. algae can be converted into biofuels that we could someday prun our cars on -- run our cars on. using algae, not competing with the food supply and it absorbs co-2 and helps solve the green mouse problem as well. -- the greenhouse problems as well. we're making a commitment to see how algae can meet the fuel demand of the world. >> additional funding for "washington week" is provided by boeing. pepsi. the annenberg foundation. the corporation for public broadcasting and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you.