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GINGRICH: Welcome back. In the CROSSFIRE tonight, former governors Bill Richardson and Bob Ehrlich.
Let me share with you the president's Halloween tweet. It says, "Don't let anyone scare you out of getting affordable health insurance."
Now, let me tell you about a real trick rather than a treat. The great problem with ramming a 2,700-page bill through Congress without anyone reading it is you get things you don't know about and you don't understand. One of the many examples with Obamacare is what happens to two people who each make $30,000 a year.
If they get married, it will cost them $11,000 in taxes and higher premiums. Take a look at this: $60,000 joint income, $11,000 hit. Probably, by far, the highest anti-marriage penalty we've ever had.
And I ask you, Governor Richardson, as you look at this bill, aren't they going to have to reopen the bill to fix things like this?
RICHARDSON: No, I think what we need to do, Newt, is give this bill a chance. Let's make sure that everybody has options. And we're going to know this very soon.
The concentration on this whole bill has been on the Web site. Look, no one is defending that. They should have gotten their act together. But you know, eventually I think that the American people are going to have more options, more choices. They can pick -- they can pick a lower cost of coverage. Uninsured can be covered. Employers will have more options, too.
GINGRICH: But are you suggesting that we make 2014 the year of postponing marriage for people who are right in the middle class...
RICHARDSON: I don't know if that's the case. I haven't looked.
GINGRICH: This comes -- this is not our stuff. This comes directly from the Kaiser Foundation, who are pro-Obama.
JONES: But we don't have -- as Democrats, am I wrong? We don't have a problem with upgrading the bill, improving the bill, opening this thing up? If there's...
EHRLICH: You could have fooled us. There's been no...
JONES: We don't want to do it under the threat of a shutdown...
EHRLICH: How about today?
RICHARDSON: Governor, you and I -- Governor, you and I by law have to balance budgets, as governors. We did.
Obamacare was the reason that the Tea Party Republicans tried to shut down the government. I mean, that's not a way to fix it. They were so against it.
Tactically they don't want to -- they wanted...
(CROSSTALK)
EHRLICH: Well, substantively, I agree. Tactically, I agree with you. It was not the right place to fight. Not the least of which, by the way was the politics and tactics, it took all this bad press off the front pages for two weeks. Could have had four weeks instead -- forget about this bad press.
I'm concerned, in all seriousness, in the group market, with large employers, some of whom already indicated "See you, bye. Drop, pay the fine. See you in the exchanges, employees." These are employees who have been happy with their health care. And we're going to see that quote repeated time and time again.
So look, there's going to be various phases of this kick in, and I don't know whether I should say this, but I don't think the numbers work. I don't think the actual numbers work, particularly with regards to the stats (ph) we have now, which is more Medicaid than anything else.
JONES: Well, look, I mean, you are correct that there are dangers and perils when we try to make this kind of change. The problem I think that we have on our side is that the last system that we had was horrible. And we didn't see Republicans jumping up and down every time somebody got hurt in the last one.
Don't forget, now that only 17 percent of people in the individual market, in the old system, could survive for two years with the same plan. They were getting dumped and dumped and dumped. You guys were nowhere to be found. Now suddenly, you're Ralph Nader. You care more. You're the biggest consumer protection party in history for the past four weeks.
EHRLICH: Eight-five percent of the people in this country are generally pleased with their health care. And were there issues? Were there issues? I guarantee one thing. A guy like him and a guy like me could have sat down and drafted a bill that would have scratched the itch for the 15 percent. Not hard. This was a total makeover.
JONES: Now here we go, here we go, here we go. Now the history on this...
EHRLICH: You're supposed to agree with that, Bill.
JONES: But I want -- I want you to correct the record. We've been hearing this over and over again, this history that Democrats just rammed this horrible idea down. Was this not a Republican idea that we put forward that the Republican voted against?
RICHARDSON: The president did reach out on this to Republicans.
JONES: Thank you.
RICHARDSON: And I think it was considered something tactically. And, you know, the minority leader, Mitch McConnell, said, "Our objective is to defeat the president."
JONES: One-term president, no matter what.
RICHARDSON: "We're not going to give him anything."
This is his domestic signature achievement, President Obama. And yes, when you have such a massive change, this is one of the biggest pieces of legislation since the New Deal. When you have such massive change, there are going to be problems. And -- and this -- look, I'm not...
EHRLICH: I used to whip moderate Republicans for him. Hey, I wasn't part of the whip organization. There were a lot of Republicans who wanted to vote from this from blue states. The politics would have been good for that...
JONES: Are you denying -- are you denying that McConnell said that his No. 1 job was to make him a one-term president? Are you denying that there was a meeting of Republicans while Obama was being inaugurated?
EHRLICH: Here's what I'm denying.
JONES: Talk to me.
EHRLICH: If the guy would have had any friends, and he had a whole lot of friends when he was in the Senate. He's had less friends now. You know that. He doesn't do that well as president. If he would have sat down and said, "You know what? I'm not interested in reinventing the world. I'm interested in extending some coverage?" How about defensive medicine? Has anybody talked about defensive medicine? Speaker, didn't they talk about him and doing anything with regard to it.
(CROSSTALK)
GINGRICH: Let me drag this -- and this is hard for me as an historian. Let me drag this back to the present, because I want to pick it back up, what I said a little while ago. Because I was a little surprised, Bill Richardson, by your response.
It's a fact that on January 1, if you're a couple, if you're dating and each of you earns $30,000 a year, if you marry, you lose $11,000 as of January 1. Now, isn't that a sufficiently big direct impact on human beings that the bill ought to be modified?
And we're going to find a number of things like that, where it's a little hard for me to say let's wait a year or two. Rip off a couple million Americans, and then we'll fix it. These things are pretty patently unsustainable.
RICHARDSON: Look -- look, I think that's one example. I don't have the facts on that. I do know when the business community went to the White House and the president and said, "Look, we need more time to adjust on this bill," on the coverage issue, the president gave him more time. He gave them substantially more time to work out the kinks. So...
EHRLICH: But why didn't he give the states more time to work out the kinks then?
RICHARDSON: Because the business community said, "We're not ready." He listened.
EHRLICH: I'm talking -- I'm talking about why didn't he give his own Web site more time?
RICHARDSON: We're not going to defend that.
JONES: We're -- we're not going to defend that (ph). Let me throw one more thing out there before we...
GINGRICH: I like that. Go in the tank.
JONES: I'll tell you what. You talk about going in the tank and going downhill. One thing that's going downhill, despite all this, is your party. I want to -- look at these numbers. You are now at a 22 percent positive, 53 percent negative. That's the worst view of the Republican Party in the history of polling.
As a former governor, do you look at these numbers and say honestly, the D.C. Washington congressional Republicans are destroying your party? Destroying your brand?
EHRLICH: Can I tell you the truth as you know it? The great seat of American politics, it's one of the reasons for this huge philosophical divide is state legislatures have created these safe, very safe seats. Strong right, strong left. These folks are going back, right and left. We've been there actually. They're here and go get them. Both right and left.
So I would argue the congressional approval generally can go to zero, one, and most of these folks are coming back because of the lines that state legislatures have drawn.
JONES: Well, that's very, very discouraging. Hopefully when we come back we're going to be able to talk about it more.
EHRLICH: But the Democrat -- the Democrat (ph)... JONES: We'll get those numbers. I want you guys to stay here. We're going to try to do a "Ceasefire." We're going to see if there's anything we can actually agree on. He want you at home to weigh in on today's Halloween Fireback question.
We also want you at home to weigh in on today's Halloween "Fireback" question: "Is Obamacare a trick or a treat?" Reply with either "trick" or "treat" using #CROSSFIRE. We'll have the results after this break.
GINGRICH: A little bit of editorial.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
JONES: We are back with Bill Richardson and Bob Ehrlich. Now we are going to call a "Ceasefire." We've been talking about Obamacare. Is there anything that we can agree on? We'll start with you, Governor.
EHRLICH: Allowing insurance policies to be written across state lines, putting governors in a room, making it work, expanding choices, making it for the individual center, expanding personal savings accounts, expanding individual freedom with regard to free markets, I think generally we would -- we would agree.
JONES: Is there anything in that that you can sign off on?
RICHARDSON: Yes. I think the fact that Governor Ehrlich recognizes that states need to have more input, especially in the expansion of Medicaid. Especially in perhaps, although I support Obamacare. Maybe governors, bipartisan governors should have had probably more of an earlier stake in that.
EHRLICH: Governors know their states better than folks in Washington. We agree on that.
GINGRICH: And I think this is important. Is I think as we implement this expanded Medicaid, we're going to rapidly discover that we need to really figure out how to run the system. Not just how to pay for it.
And that's going to lead us to, I think, turning to the governors, and maybe in the next few years, having a bill that really creates a substantial increase in the ability of governors to manage, on a state by state basis, how Medicaid actually works. Big, big, big.
JONES: That's actually a lot of good. So I want to thank you, both of you governors, for being here.
If you want to be a part of this conversation back home, you can go to Facebook or Twitter, weigh in on our "Fireback" question. Is Obamacare a trick or a treat? Right now 62 percent of you say trick; 38 percent of you have the right answer, saying it's a treat.
The debate continues online at CNN.com/CROSSFIRE, as well as on Facebook and Twitter. I love you, Kibrala (ph) and Chi (ph).
From the left, I'm Van Jones.
GINGRICH: From the right, I'm Newt Gingrich. Join us tomorrow for another edition of CROSSFIRE.
"ERIN BURNETT OUTFRONT" starts right now.