Lawmakers Take First Steps to Repeal Obamacare
HOWELL: A warm welcome back to our viewers here in the United States and around the world. You are watching CNN Newsroom. It is good to have you with us. I'm George Howell with the headlines we are following for you. This hour, Poland is set to formally welcome the biggest European deployment of American troops since the Cold War. The reinforcements are seen as an affirmation of the NATO alliances, but the Kremlin is calling the deployment a threat to Russia. The Senate Intelligence Committee is looking into whether or not Russia meddled into the U.S. Presidential Elections. The hearings will also investigate any ties between Russia and political campaigns. U.S. Intelligence agencies say that Russia ordered the hacks in order to help the President-elect Donald Trump win the presidency. In the meantime, Trump suggested he is keeping an open mind about U.S. sanctions on Russia. In a Wall Street Journal article, he says that he is willing to consider lifting those sanctions, but that he will keep them in place for some time for society. The U.S. put those most recent sanctions in place last month, as you will remember to punish Russia for its alleged meddling. Donald Trump has promised big changes once he is in the White House. That could include the U.S., that decades old one China policy, under it, Washington has formal diplomatic ties with Beijing and not with Taiwan. But the President-elect told the Wall Street Journal that that's up for negotiation. China says no negotiations. We get more from Steven Jong in Beijing.</s>STEVEN JANG, CNN CORRESPONDENT: If business tycoon Donald Trump thinks everything the world is negotiable, he may be sooner minded as the next U.S. President but at least in the eyes of the Beijing government, one issue is absolutely non-negotiable that is the One China Policy. Officials here have reminded him and his team time and again in the past few week that Taiwan is China's core interest and the One Chine Principle is the cornerstone of the bilateral relationship between Beijing and Washington. They'd like to say that every U.S. President since Jimmy Carter has committed to this policy and stuck to it and they certainly hope the Trump White House would do the same instead of derailing four decades of development and achievements. But Mr. Trump does have a point about that the U.S. does sell billions of arms to Taiwan to allow it to defend itself against the potential Chinese attacks. But it's exactly this kind of strategic ambiguity in the One China Policy that's allow Beijing, Washington, as well Taipei to maintain relative peace and stability in the decades past. So at least on this sensitive issue what's being said matters as much as what's being done. Now, on other issues, Chinese officials have been quite restrained and measured in their response to Mr. Trump's remarks, including issues like trade the South China Sea and cyber security. What they have been saying here is this relationship has so much going tore for it, if less more cooperation, less confrontation is the attitude both sides adopt. They also like to point out the phone conversation Mr. Trump had with China's President Xi Jinping after the Trump's election that both leaders have said mutual respect is important in with dealing with each other. One other thing they like to bring up is that is Mr. Trump is not president yet, so what he has been saying so far is not official U.S. Policy and the Chinese government pays more attention to official policies instead of a leader's style and personalities. But privately, many officials have expressed to me that they're unsure how to deal with this U.S. President, who likes to conduct foreign policy online, some have even asked me for suggestions. My response, follow him on Twitter. Read his tweets and have an answer ready for reporters like us. Steven Jang, CNN Beijing.</s>HOWELL: Steven Jang, thank you so much for your reporting. As for the current U.S. President Barack Obama as he moves into his final days of office, republicans in the U.S. House and Senate seek to dismantle a landmark of his administration. They have voted to begin gutting the Affordable Care Act better foreign as Obamacare. We get more now from CNN's Manu Raju.</s>BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: The current resolution is agreed to.</s>MANU RAJU, CNN REPORTER: The House taking the first step to repeal Obamacare.</s>PAUL RYAN, U.S. REPRESENTATIVE: This law is collapsing while we speak.</s>RAJU: Congress approving a budget that will now give republicans the authority to repeal much of the Affordable Care Act on a party line vote.</s>DONALD TRUMP, U.S. PRESIDENT-ELECT: Repeal and replace</s>RAJU: The move is intended to fulfill one of the main campaign promises of President-elect Donald Trump, who wants to replace the law at the same time as repealing it.</s>TRUMP: It will be essentially simultaneously. It will be various segments, you understand, but will most likely be on the same day or the same week but probably the same day. It could be the same hour. So we're going to do repeal and replace.</s>RAJU: But Trump's comments undercut the plans of GOP leaders, who want to take their time developing a new health care law. House Speaker Paul Ryan even said last month, that a replacement would not be ready by the next football season. At CNN's Town Hall, a shift, Ryan now promises to move quickly.</s>RYAN: So we want to advance repealing this law with its replacement at the same, along the lines of I -- what I just described as something definitely a plan within the first 100 days to get moving on this legislation.</s>RAJU: But they are already running into problems. The party is divided of how to replace the law. And some influential voices are asking party leaders to hit the brakes.</s>CHARLIE DENT, U.S. HOUSE REPUBLICAN: Yes. I think the repeal plan need to be fully, fully developed and better articulated prior to moving forward. I have some reservations about moving as quickly as we are.</s>RAJU: Do you have concerns at all about the time table then in.</s>MIKE COFFMAN, U.S. HOUSE REPUBLICAN: I -- it's going to be a very -- I think it's going to be a very long process.</s>RAJU: You don't think it's going to happen right away?</s>COFFMAN: No.</s>RAJU: Some conservatives are demanding quick action on plans allowing individuals to buy insurance across state lines and to receive tax breaks for getting coverage.</s>THOMAS MASSIE, U.S. HOUSE REPUBLICAN: Why don't we do replace and repeal? You nkwo, we can do these things as -- we could be putting those things on the floor this week.</s>RAJU: Democrats are warning the GOP will pay a political price for scrapping a law that helped insure an additional 20 million people.</s>NANCY PELOSI, U.S. HOUSE MINORITY LEADER: What are they doing in this bill? Overturning the Affordable Care Act, undermining the health security and financial stability of America's working families, and defunding Planned Parenthood. That's their - that's their manhood thing.</s>RAJU: Manu Raju, CNN Capitol Hill.</s>HOWELL: Certainly a chill there with lawmakers in Washington. And let's talk now about the cold also across much of the eastern part of Europe. It is cold. In fact, it is deadly in some places, and we have a lot more to talk about with our Meteorologist Allison Chinchar. You know, online someone just told me it's really cold in California, too cold weather is just the thing to talk about.</s>ALLISON CHINCHAR, CNN METEOROLOGIST: That's right. We now have over 40 million people under some type of ice storm warning, winter storm watch, in portions of the United States. And that's where we're going to start because we have the potential for a very dangerous ice storm that is taking shape, stretching all the way from Texas over towards Washington, D.C. Now, the threat under this is a multitude, we're talking widespread power outages, we're also talking travel disruptions as well. Basically what we have is very shallow cold air, it's being overrun by a warm moist air and what that means is when the precipitation falls from cloud, it's going to be in a form of rain and then just as it reaches the surface it will free on contact and that makes it very dangerous if you're driving along the roads. It appears it's coming down as rain and hit your windshield as rain but it freezes on the road or any type of cold surface, mailboxes, sidewalks, power lines for example. This is where we have the greatest threat for the freezing rain at least in a short term but that system begins to push east as we go into the coming day. That's why it has such as huge swamp and area to cover, it's a very slow-moving system. Now, widespread, we're talking about a quarter of an inch of ice accumulations but you'll notice out towards the especially Oklahoma City stretching along Interstate 40 and 35m we could be looking at three quarters up to an inch of ice accumulations. Again, that's incredibly dangerous. On the other side of Atlantic, we're also talking very cold temperatures and a winter storm. Now, this is a look at Albania where villagers are trying to have for food and water. They've been kind of trapped in the region because of the incredibly heavy snowfall that they had in this region. Here you can see one of those emergency helicopters trying to drop some of supplies. Now, that brought snow to London cancelling at least 80 flights at Heathrow Airport in the last couple of days. That is now traversing off towards the east bringing snow to places like Germany, Poland, stretching all the way down towards Albania in the coming days. Widespread, we're talking snow accumulations about 10 centimeters but there will be some spots especially on those higher elevations or maybe not so many complains because the ski reports like to have it, we could be looking at 20 even possibly 30 centimeters of snow. And then we're also talking the next cold snap that's going to come in. Notice those pink and purple colors there, that's what we're talking the really incredibly cold air. Take a look for example</s>HOWELL: Wow, I remember looking back the image from Budapest, and just frigid temperatures.</s>CHINCHAR: Yes.</s>HOWELL: Thank you so much, Allison.</s>CHINCHAR: You're welcome, thank you.</s>HOWELL: Still ahead here on Newsroom. The fight against ISIS, fight troops could be closing in on the terror group's leader. Also how Mosul University became a front line in the battle to retake Iraq's second largest city. Stay with us. We'll be back in just a moment.