Five GOP Senators Oppose Own Party's Health Care Bill; Soon: Bill Clinton To Address Conference Of Mayors
SANCHEZ: With less than a week to go, Senate GOP leaders had an uphill climb to get the votes they need to pass their version of the bill to repeal and replace Obamacare. The math is not on their side right now. Majority leader Mitch McConnell can only afford to lose two votes and as it stands now five Republican senators oppose the bill outright in its current, though some say they are open to negotiations. Three of them plan to review it more over the weekend. Some of those three on the side have already expressed concerns. There's a lot at stake for this next big test for President Trump. He tweeted this out this morning, quote, "Democrats slammed GOP health care proposal as Obamacare premiums and deductibles increase by over 100 percent. Remember keep your doctor, keep your plan?" Mike Shields, Jose Aristimuno are back with us. Mike, to you first. Democrats are painting the Senate health care bill as meaner than the House version, which the president himself reportedly called mean. How can President Trump help Mitch McConnell get to 50 votes if he's handing the opposition these free attacks?</s>SHIELDS: Well, look, this is what always happens in legislation. And we're finally seeing legislating happen again in Washington, D.C., so it's a little bit of a shock to the system to some people to see what happens. You get close to the vote and all of a sudden you're going to highlight who are the three or four senators that want to go negotiate with the leadership and get something changed in the bill. The same thing happened in the House. The House bill failed at first, and then it was dead, it couldn't pass, and suddenly, what do you know, it passed. And so I think all of these are posturing. You're going to see tweets and comments and people are going to make maneuvers and really what this is all about is negotiating behind the scenes. And look, what we know is that Obamacare is failing. We have Aetna now pulling out of more states. You have millions of people who are now losing their health care coverage. You have people because of Obamacare, because they can't afford it. Prices have skyrocketed. They've more than doubled in premiums in over a majority of the state. So the pressure of the system collapsing eventually is going to weigh on the United States Senate and they're going to get something passed. And what we're going to watch in the meantime is sort of posturing as people try to negotiate for their best position.</s>SANCHEZ: Jose, the balance is obviously tricky for Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell. He can only lose two votes. So pleasing any one faction of the Republicans could ultimately tank the bill, pushing it in a different direction. Who do the Democrats focus on trying to keep away from voting yes?</s>ARISTIMUNO: Look, I think the important thing here is that the American people have a voice. The American people have been demanding, they've been calling their senators, and they've been saying, look, this bill doesn't work. This bill, it's un-American. We're talking about pushing back on women's health care. We're talking about benefits that we are no longer going to have. So the big mistake is the Republicans from the very beginning should have looked for ways and solutions to work with the Democrats to improve Obamacare. Yes, we admit it, it's not perfect. It needs work. But the fact that you just want to repeal it and start with something new, it doesn't make sense. With this, you want to talk about mean, what this bill does is not good for poor people. People who don't have as much sort of opportunities as the rest of Americans. This bill doesn't work. And it is why these five senators that you're talking about, Boris, are facing a lot of pressure back home.</s>SANCHEZ: Now, Mike, back to you. Republicans vowed to repeal and replace Obamacare. Some funding cuts notwithstanding. Isn't this just ultimately a tweak to Obamacare? That's the case that Ted Cruz is making.</s>SHIELDS: Not at all. And first of all, I have to laugh at the idea that Republicans should have come to Democrats to work with this. I mean, Democrats from the very beginning created a movement called resist for President Trump where they don't even want to acknowledge that he's the rightful president of the United States. And so they've taken every single step they can to take themselves out of the process saying they're going to fight everything, they're sending people to town halls --</s>ARISTIMUNO: That's not true.</s>SHIELDS: -- to say that Republicans are trying to kill people with their health care bill. But by the way why shouldn't we work with the Democrats on this? Look, here's -- the fact of the matter is --</s>ARISTIMUNO: That's not true.</s>SHIELDS: Let's go back to 1996, OK. 1996 is when welfare reform was passed by a Republican House and signed by a Democratic president six weeks before the election. He actually vetoed it twice, then looked at the polls and signed it into law. At that time, Democrats are saying the same thing. John Lewis went down to the House floor and said there will be a million new children in the street, they're coming after the women, they're coming after the children. And in the end what happened was some welfare to work requirements were put in and the majority of people on welfare actually liked the welfare reform. What happened in the last administration was President Obama boosted Medicare -- excuse me, Medicaid beyond poor people and this bill brings it back and says we're going to have Medicaid for poor people and other people have to have work requirements. That's not a mean thing to do. That actually is --</s>ARISTIMUNO: It's un-American.</s>SHIELDS: It's a huge benefit just like welfare reform was. You know welfare reform succeeded in the '90s because the Democrats never talk about it anymore because it was a huge success, and this bill will be the exact same thing when it's passes this time into law.</s>SANCHEZ: Mike, I have to cut you off because we are just about out of time, but, Jose, I do want to give you a very quick response.</s>ARISTIMUNO: One quick thing. We've got to remember that when Obamacare became the law of the land, we had over 100 town halls, we were on C-SPAN for hours talking about this. You guys don't even invite us to debate this bill. No one saw the Senate bill until a few days ago. How are we supposed to know what's in this bill? How are we supposed to support something that we haven't seen? The whole thing was done in secrecy.</s>SANCHEZ: All right. Mike Shields, Jose Aristimuno, thank you so much, gentlemen, for joining us.</s>SHIELDS: Thank you.</s>ARISTIMUNO: Thank you.</s>SANCHEZ: Coming up, Democrats are reeling after four straight special election losses. So could leadership changes be in the works as the party tries to find its footing heading into 2018? But first, if you're looking to create the technology -- future of technology, I should say, Apple senior vice president Phil Schiller says learn how to code. Here's CNN's Laurie Segall.</s>LAURIE SEGALL, CNN SENIOR TECHNOLOGY CORRESPONDENT: How do you guys at Apple try to get people invested in developing apps, developing this kind of technology at an early age?</s>PHILIP W. SCHILLER, APPLE SENIOR VP WORLDWIDE MARKETING: The growth of the app developer economy is, I think, a potential driving force for our whole economy in America and in other countries around the world. One of the cool things that I'm really proud that we're working on is an education program. We call it "Everyone Can Code." That actually is a little play off of the anyone can cook from "Ratatouille," that movie. And it's kind of the same thing. You know, anyone can cook, not everyone will be a chef. Anybody can learn to code, not everybody will be the world's greatest app developer. We all grew up where you have to learn a foreign language. I think increasingly it's really important that people learn to code because as kids growing up, maybe they have the propensity to be a great developer. But by the time you get older and you haven't tried, then you might not be willing to start. And even if you don't become a developer later in life, chances are, you're job is going to interact with a software programmer. And you're going to be able to have a dialogue at an intelligent level because you understand where they're coming from. So one of the programs we've been launching is K-12 in United States, "Everyone Can Code," Swift Playgrounds to help kids learn and control robots and make drones fly. And I think that can have a huge change in our economy and just in the education of students around the world. That people approach it as just like a foreign language, everyone needs to code.</s>SANCHEZ: For more on Everyone Needs to Code, check out our Web site, CNN.com/tech. We'll be right back. Stay with us.