Going All Out on Health Care
BLITZER: You're in THE SITUATION ROOM. Happening now, recruiting for civil war in Somalia in immigrant communities here in the United States -- we have a special SITUATION ROOM investigation on the FBI's biggest anti-terrorism investigation since 9/11. And he was mayor when Al Qaeda attacked New York City -- what Rudy Giuliani says has to happen now to prevent future attacks. And facing one of the country's most challenging issues -- we're counting down to our special "Black In America 2". I'm Wolf Blitzer. You're in THE SITUATION ROOM. Just three hours or so from now, President Obama will go before the cameras to make his case for health care reform. He's been pushing hard to make good on a campaign promise. But the president is facing growing doubts in Congress and from the public. Let's turn to our CNN senior political correspondent, Candy Crowley -- Candy, what are the political implications for the president if his plan fails?</s>CANDY CROWLEY, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, if failing is described as not getting any sort of health care reform between now and the end of his four year term, I think there's huge implications, because health care and energy policy were the two things he said he wanted to tackle the most. He campaigned on them very hard. However, if the president, at the end of this year, has a bill in front of him that says health care reform on the top and he signs it, then that is a victory that the White House is going to take. And at this point, the conditions look pretty ripe for him to do that. It will not be everything he wants and it probably won't come when he wants. But if he can do that, then he has followed through, by and large, with a campaign promise.</s>BLITZER: If he can't, if he fails on this, I assume he'll lose support -- confidence on -- on other issues, as well.</s>CROWLEY: Sure, because once a -- once a president is weakened on one thing, he is weakened on everything else. And particularly, of course, you know, that it's an off year -- or a midterm elections -- when they come up, you will see that Democrats of all types will -- will look at what the president is doing and will agree or disagree, depending on where they're going in their district. So, sure. I mean there's a possibility it will come back to haunt the president in terms of the numbers of Democrats he has in the House or the Senate. But in general in midterm elections, the party that's in power loses seats. So I don't know that we could directly tie it to President Obama and his failures or his successes. But certainly a huge, massive failure on getting health care reform would affect just about everything else, because people are emboldened then to question what has been a very popular president.</s>BLITZER: Exactly 2 1/2 hours from now the news conference over at the White House begins. Candy, thanks very much. Let's bring in your political contributors, the Democratic strategist, Donna Brazile, and Republican strategist, Mary Matalin. Mary, let me start with you. For the president, tonight is very, very important but it's by no means the ball game.</s>MARY MATALIN, REPUBLICAN STRATEGIST: Right. That's right. All this breathlessness -- Candy was enjoying it -- but it's over, you know. It wasn't over, didn't hurt either of the Clintons. Hillary should have been the nominee. She's robbed. You done have to go there, but President Clinton to this day enjoys high ratings. So the big-government Democrats have been trying for 60 years to have big government health care and their repeated failure hasn't killed one of them. And I could make a contrarian argument that to lose today would be augur well for tomorrow. If he wins these roles of government, these fights, he cannot get re-elected in 2012. That's just the reality. So if he's taking a long view, he should not be so breathless about getting done what he...</s>BLITZER: That is a provocative statement that he would be better off politically by losing this battle over health care because you said if he gets his way he's going to lose in 2012.</s>DONNA BRAZILE, DEMOCRATIC STRATEGIST: Well, we look at it in terms of President Obama losing a fight with Congress or maybe Democrats, Republicans, losing their re-election next year. We really lose sight of the real issue. And that is millions of our fellow citizens are losing their health insurance -- 46 million people. I went home a couple days ago, Wolf, and I saw an ambulance and there was a homeless guy who called 911 because he had a sinus headache and he was about to go to hospital. Now, my premiums are being raised because I'm paying for that. So, it's important that we fix this. Sixteen years ago, 61 percent of small businesses provided health insurance to employees. Today it's 38 percent. So we need to fix this. This is not about Obama. It's not about Congress. It's about those people who are hurting out there.</s>BLITZER: And all the Republicans, Mitch McConnell, he made the point that all the Republicans think it needs fixing as well, they just disagree with the way the Democrats and the president want to fix it.</s>MATALIN: That's absolutely right. And Obama uses a strong-man argument that if you're against his kind of reform, you're against reform. That means all the reform he voted against means he's a status quo person, like he's accusing these guys. But Donna brings up an excellent point. 47 million uninsured Americans represent 50 percent of the population. 80 percent of that, 15 percent could get -- they could afford it or they choose not to get it, they're young people or they're eligible for Medicaid and they haven't signed up. Let's have a targeted program that doesn't cost $1 trillion right out of the box, which is a conservative estimate, and get these people signed up who are eligible and people -- and give people the freedom. If you don't want to buy health insurance, or if you want to buy the kind of insurance that just covers liability, your insurance premiums are not going up because this homeless guy with a sinus infection. They're going up because these states dump all these excessive mandates on insurance companies so you have to pay more for your insurance. If we had health care insurance like we have car insurance, everybody's insurance would be cheaper and it could be done in the private sector.</s>BRAZILE: I think this will mandate to have car insurance, not an individual mandate to have health insurance. And many today we're spending $2.5 trillion on health care and in a couple of years we'll be up to $7 trillion. So doing nothing should not be an option. Look, Wolf, Republicans have agreed with the Democrats on many of these overarching goals. I heard even Mr. McConnell say that. They agree that we should reduce costs, that we should provide more coverage. The big issue right now that I think everybody is grappling with is how do we pay for it. I think we're two-thirds of the way figuring that out. Congress has about 10 or 15 days. If they can't figure out how we pay for the rest of the third, they all should lose their jobs.</s>MATALIN: Let's take the big picture. This is why this thing is stalled. And I'm not -- politics is a reflection of real people out there pressuring their members, in this case largely centrist Democrats. They understand the steps that these are not -- we always get into this, Donna -- these are not my numbers, they're CBO numbers. This one-year deficit for this president is 12 percent of GDP, the highest on record postwar deficit...</s>BLITZER: In fairness, he did inherit a huge deficit...</s>MATALIN: He -- George Bush -- please. We should talk reality. The highest deficit that Bush ever had was 5 percent, not...</s>BLITZER: But he also inherited the worst economy since the Great Depression.</s>MATALIN: And he's making it worse by -- no one -- people out there get this. You know what the American response to this economic downturn is? To increase their savings rates. They do not want the additional savings that they've sacrificed to make to be gobbled up in the future in taxes.</s>BRAZILE: Michael Bloomberg has said the stimulus money not arrived in New York, 14,000 school teachers would have been laid off. That's 14,000 classrooms that would be empty next month. The option the president had on the table was to do something.</s>BLITZER: All right. I just want to move on, Donna, because I want to pick your brain on this extraordinary Harvard University professor who was arrested, Henry Louis Gates Jr. He's one of the preeminent scholars in the United States. Charges have been dropped. But I want you to weigh in. I don't know if you know him personally. You probably do. But give us your thoughts when you heard about this and what it says about the country right now.</s>BRAZILE: Well, first of all, I was shocked because I think Professor Gates is recognizable. Everybody knows him, and I'm sure people up in Cambridge know him and perhaps when one of his neighbors saw two men at the door they assumed the worst. It's unfortunate, Wolf, and many of our public service officers, our police officers, are doing a great job out there. But we also have a problem with racial profiling. I've been profiled. I've been pulled over by the cops...</s>BLITZER: For doing what?</s>BRAZILE: For doing absolutely nothing.</s>MATALIN: For black</s>BRAZILE: For driving the car with a black man and they were looking for a black man and a black woman because some black couple had just robbed a bank. And I'm -- we didn't rob the bank. I have a funnier story. One of my best friends is Eleanor Holmes Norton. And...</s>BLITZER: The D.C. delegate.</s>BRAZILE: D.C. delegate. And she left the key at the office. She went back to get it, meanwhile, somebody was trying to open her door, the alarm went off, she called me, I went around to her house and I was almost arrested.</s>BLITZER: Really?</s>BRAZILE: Yes. So...</s>BLITZER: So you can relate to Henry Louis Gates. All right.</s>BRAZILE: And God bless him. He's a good man.</s>BLITZER: All right. Soledad is going to be speaking with him at 7:00 p.m. Eastern, preview -- you know leading up to the premiere tonight of "BLACK IN AMERICA 2." Guys, thanks very much. An American teenager disappears and winds up dead on the streets of a foreign country after joining a terrorist organization. Our Brian Todd has a special report into the FBI's biggest terror investigation since 9/11. And a tense Senate showdown over an amendment that would let people carry concealed guns across state lines. We're on the front lines of this battle. Stay with us. You're in THE SITUATION ROOM.