Health care. In the coming weeks, we are going to get it working as smoothly as its supposed to. Weve got people working overtime 24 7 to boost capacity and address these problems every single day. So heres the plan. The white house has enlisted the help of jeffrey zients. The Washington Post describes him as one of the president s goto guys when he wants programs to go smoother. Private contractor Quality Software systems responsible for two components of the website is assigned to lead the fix. Most issues are expected to be repaired by the end of november. Open enrollment has been extended till march 31st. Heres how republicans responded today. Over the months leading up to the october 1st launch, Top Administration officials and lead contractors appeared before this committee. Looked us in the eye and they assured us repeatedly that everything was on track. Except that it wasnt. As we now know all too well. Texas senator ted cruz is again saying the Government Shutdown over obama care was a success because it got people talking about the Health Care Law and elevated the National Debate. He made those comments last night at the gops annual reagan dinner des moines, iowa. He has lunch events planned this afternoon. And president obama is returning to Campaign Mode after visiting a Brooklyn High School friday afternoon here in new york. He attended a fundraiser last night in manhattan for Democratic CongressionalCampaign Committee donors. Large crowds are gathering for a rally this afternoon in washington, d. C. To protest the nsas surveilance program. Members of congress are expected to join. Chris kin welker, fill us in. Good afternoon. Thousands of people are expected to turn out at the rally on the National Mall where you just saw. People are starting to gather. This comes as there have been new revelations about the governments surveilance program. Those revelations by leaks from former nsa contractor Edward Snowden show that the United States may have tapped into the phone, the cell phones rather of 35 World Leaders and millions of phone records of the french. This as you can imagine has enraged the United States ally germany, the french, they are asking for answers. We know that german officials are set to travel to the United States in the coming weeks 0 discuss all of this with the United States. Now, separately, alex, i can tell you that the nsas website was down for a couple of hours yesterday. There have been speculation that perhaps that site had been hacked. An nsa spokesperson tells me that is absolutely not the case, that it was a technological glitch. But having said all of that, you have the protests today on the National Mall. New revelations about the government surveilance program. I can tell you all of this threatens to undermine the United StatesForeign Policy as they deal with issues like iran, like syria. They need allies to work on this, and right now, there is tension in those relationships. Alex . Hey, before i let you go, kristin, as you well know, the president is certainly doing damage control trying to ease concerns over the rocky roll out of his Signature Health care plan. Whats the latest on that front . The damage control is going to continue into next week. President obama is going to travel to boston to talk about health care. Hes going to send his top officials some of his cabinet secretaries, tom vilsack, shaun donovan, top official Cecilia Munoz on the road next week talking about health care. Behind the scenes, theyre going to be trying to get that website fixed because everything really hinges on that as you reported at the top of your show. Jeffrey zients yesterday said that the site should be running smoothly by the end of november. They have put a contractor in control of fixing all of the problems there with the website. Ive been talking to political analysts who say it is going to be critical for the Obama Administration to get the website fixed by the end of next month. If not, what is currently a large political problem for the Obama Administration will turn into a potentially an allout political crisis and could threaten his larger agenda, threaten things like Immigration Reform and budget reform. Allem, ba can to you. Talk about a domino effect there. Lets hope it doesnt go there. Speaking at that the antisurveilance rally today will be libertarian president ial candidate gary johnson. I spoke with him earlier today. He said in the end the revelations about the nsa will do more good than harm. The nsa is recording every internet transaction thats happening, every cell phone transaction that judges grant warrant or authority for nsa to monitor 1713 million verizon users. This is reminiscent of why the revolutionary war occurred. You know, britain having this general warrant where they could search everyone and every thing. This was really the basis for this country, the cornerstone of this country is really privacy. I think this is why we fought wars and here it is, we are living in a surveilance state and i really think it needs to come to an end. Governor johnson went on to say he thinks the patriot act needs to be repealed if we are to fix our surveilance program. Well, new details this morning how that Danvers Massachusetts High School math teacher died. Police say Colleen Ritzer was killed with a box cutter inside a school bathroom. They say they have surveilance video of 14yearold philip chism following her into the bathroom and emerging with bloodied clothes. Hes under the arrest for the murder and will be tried as an adult. Police also say he visited a Movie Theater and local wendys after alleging killing ritzer. The school reopened yesterday. No word yet what caused a fire at macys Flagship Store in new york city. Panicked shoppers and employees were evacuated friday after a fire broke out in the basement. It sent clouds of smoke into the air. More than 100 firefighters managed to put the flames out in under an hour. No one was injured. Lets go now to the weather with a big chill gripping parts of this country, especially across the south. Nbc meteorologist dylan dreyer is here with an explanation and our forecast. Hi there, dylan. Good afternoon. We are into afternoon now. It was really cold this morning. Its probably an end to the growing season in most areas in the southeast where we had our hard freeze warnings this morning. Profit advisories a little further down into northern florida. Temperatures are rebounding. Its 51 diagnose but still 15 degrees below normal. But that growing season ended about two weeks earlier than we normally see. It certainly is colder than youd expect this time of year. Most of the country is only in the 40s and 50s all thanks to this huge dip in the jet stream. That also means for the western half of the country, its nice and mild. Temperatures will 5 to 10 degrees above average. Were still starting off the day with some fog up in seattle. This is the ninth consecutive day of extremely dense fog in the area and tomorrow looks just as foggy. That could put it as one of the top three foggiest stretches that area has seen. So it is pretty brutal out that way. 45 for a high today minneapolis. He below average as that cold air continues to settle in. Keep in mind within the area of low pressure just to the north of michigan, that cold air comes in from canada and crosses over the relatively warmer great lakes waters creating lake effect snow. Most of the rain isolated into canada and through upstate new york. We will see a little bit of rain and snow showers going on around the great lakes. That should come to that end tomorrow. Isolated thunderstorms possible down across texas where highs today will be in the lower 70s in dallas. Even cooler down that way. 50s again tomorrow in the northeast. We should get up to 69 in atlanta. It will still be below average, just not as cold. Tomorrow is about as cold as its going to get in the southeast before things moderate as we head into next week. Thank you for the headsup on all of it. Imagine cutting 21 mees a month for your family. Its the next food stamp crisis thats about to hit. Is a daily. What if my abdominal pain and cramps come back . What if the plane gets delayed . What if i cant hide my symptoms . What if . But what if the most important question is the one youre not asking . What if the underlying cause of your symptoms is damaging inflammation . For help getting the answers you need, talk to your doctor and visit crohnsandcolitisinfo. Com to get your complimentary q a book, with information from experts on your condition. Wout of landfills each year . Plastic waste to cover mt. Rainier by using one less trash bag each month, we can. And glad forceflex bags stretch until theyre full. So you can take them out less often. With 0calorie monk fruit in the raw. Its made with the natural, vineripened sweetness of fruit, so you can serve up deliciously sweet treats without all the sugar. Raw natural sweetness, raw natural success. Some headlines making news on the west coast. The oakland tribune has this story. Apple, google face lawsuit. A judge in san jose granted class action status to a suit claiming countries along with intel and adobe conspired to limit workers pay by barring them from moving one from company to another. And the Arizona Republic has this headline. Attack ads signal health care fight will be key issue in 2014 elections. Radio ads are already airing in the state highlighting questions of fairness and problems with implementation of the law. A solution in sight. The consultant tacked with repairing the obama care website says there are dozens of problems that need to be addressed but the system is fixable. And the Obama Administration says most issues should be resolved by the end of november. Let me bring in Washington Bureau chief for usa today susan page and White House Reporter for the Washington Post david nakamura. Good to see you as always. Hi, alex. Dave, are you hearing any sense of confidence from the white house these problems with the website will be fixed by the date theyve given end of november . There is. They wont have set that deadline so clearly if they didnt have that confidence. On one hand, its a deadline that has to be set because you know, the people who want to get Health Insurance by january 1st have to enroll by middecember. This end of november time period is the last time theyd be able to do that. This gives them about five, six weeks to do it. Jeff zients is somebody who the administration has confidence in. He helped fix cash for clunkers with the car tradein program several years back was something he helped fix the initial roll out of that. I think as kristin said, administration aides will be going out in the country as is the president continuing to talk about this because they know republicans will keep criticizing them and continuing to have hearings about the problems. Behind the scenes, i know zients is saying they have a punch list of 100 different items that they need to fix. This time period will go quickly. Speaking of the laergs, susan, Kathleen Sebelius has one ahead testifying before a House Committee this wext week. Here is what happened at this hearing with website contractor. Once again, here we have my republican colleagues trying to scare everybody. Will the gentleman yield. I will not yield to this monkey court. This is not a monkey court. Do whatever you want. Im not yielding. Im trying to tell you that the problem here. Protecting american citizens is a legitimate concern of this committee. Preexisting conditions dont matter. Hippa doesnt apply. Theres no Health Information in the process. Youre asked about your address, your date of birth. Youre not asked Health Information. Why are we requesting down this path . Can i just say representative pa loam was on up earlier today. He still had steam coming out of his ears on that one. Is this what we can expect 0 emore of at the sebelius hearing next week, democrats and the gop clashing . Yes, i this i absolutely. That was just a warmup for what well see this next week with Kathleen Sebelius. I this i theyll face questions these steps theyve now taken, why werent they taken two months ago, three months ago when it was clear there were problems with the development of the website. Shes going to face questions about whether she should resign in the wake of the problems with the website. Shell need to have an answer to that question before she gets up there. David, once the website is fixed, does this leave the gop with a lot less substantive criticisms of the Health Care Plan . I think so. Thats a major piece theyre focusing on right now. And i think the question is then, i think what they can look at then is are people getting insurance thats cheaper and how is that going to work. I think the question is also when it gets fixed, as well, if it gets filmed too late and people arent enrolled and if Young Healthy people have been turned off by the process and theyre the last to probably enroll but yet the most important to be able to pay for this thing, if they dont sign up, theres going to be another opening come the spring. Theres going to be other chances. Obviously this is the first big hurdle for the administration. They get past this i think theyll restore some confidence. The gop criticizing the website and its ineffective roll out so heavily. Are they leaving this em he was with nowhere else much to go if it gets fixed on time. Lets say the website gets fixed, people are signing up. They like the coverage they can get. We hear a lot of anecdotal stories about i couldnt get coverage before or didnt think i could get coverage that was so cost effective. So the Program Works the way its supposed to work. That is a big problem for the Republican Party because they have stood so firmly against the Affordable Care act that if it works, it will be like Social Security was. Republicans opposed Social Security from its early days. Many republicans opposed medicare in its early days. Once those programs worked, they became a big talking point for the Democratic Party and a source of strength for the Democratic Party. Thats the concern that republicans would have if this works. Now, it hasnt worked so well so far. So at the moment, its been a political problem for democrats in the white house. But that could turn around. Okay. Ive got another talking point. David, the new fallout from the nsa leaks that includes tapping up to 35 World Leaders cellphones. Youve got a number of european World Leaders hot under the collar about this. What kind of damage control is the white house doing with allies . The president has talked with angelasults. My handle is alex witt on twitter. Ill read more of your tweets later. Office politics. Krystal ball predicts the future for 2014. Go figure. But they didnt fit. Customers not happy, im not happy. Sales go down, im not happy. Merch comes back, im not happy. Use ups. They make returns easy. Unhappy customer becomes happy customer. Then, repeat customer. Easy returns, im happy. Repeat customers, im happy. Sales go up, im happy. I ordered another pair. Im happy. both im happy. Im happy. Happy. Happy. Happy. Happy. Happy happy. The coffee you drink adds up over the years. Causing deep, setin stains. Crest 3d White Whitestrips go beyond where most toothpastes can reach, safely removing stains below the enamel surface to whiten as well as a 500 treatment. Crest 3d White Whitestrips. Well take something tasty and healthy. Must be the honey theres a party going on in your cereal bowl os can help lower cholesterol oh why does it taste so great . Hey must be the honey money talks in todays number ones. First the power of money in politics. A new Sun Light Foundation study highlights the metropolitan areas that are most politically influential based on campaign contributions. New york ranks number one, followed by washington, d. C. And los angeles. While no dollar figures are revealed, the study found 30 of political donations come from the top ten contributing counties. Who are you writing to, linus . This is the time of year to write to the great pumpkin. Oh, we all still love Charlie Brown and that is why his creator Charles Schulz is still earning big dollars even in the after life Charles Schulz ranks third in forbes magazines list of top earning dead celebrities. His estate collected 37 million this past year. In second, elvis with 55 million. But that is chump change compared to miningal jacksons 160 million in earnings. Threat is imminent. And i have to protect the one thing that i cant live with