Congress were risking bad implementation for a shortterm political gain. Regarding the president s infamous promise if you like it, you can keep it, some white house policy advisers objected to the breadth of keep your plan, they were overruled. In recent days, current aides have downplayed or dismissed the damage of those words. The vast majority of americans that statement will hold true. For this small group of americans it hasnt. The calamitous thing here the website wasnt up. Many of those people who have to transition will get better insurance for less money but they cant tell now. Any debate regarding the president s statement ever took place. I dont recall significant discussions around some of the verbiage on this to be 100 honest with you. Do you agree it was a wrong move . Certainly. One former Senior Administration official said the law is crafted by white house and lawmakers, some white house policy advisers objected to breadth of keep your plan promise. They were overruled by political aides. That is true . That is not my recollection at all of that. In the end it is likely with so many aca problems, the intentions may have been good but execution was flawed. As former white house speechwriter john favro told wall street journal, the aim was to make it as simple as possible while still being true. Editor of the magazine, politics Business Insider josh barrow and cohost of nbcs the cycle ari melber. Joining me from d. C. The White House Reporter julia halperin. Congratulations on a big story who reads in many ways like whodoneit. Heartbreaking if youre a fan of in insuring millions of uninsured americans. One thing i noticed throughout the piece that you guys ran this weekend was the fact that the president from the very moment this law was passed said and prioritized the development of the website. As you write, hours after the bill had been enacted, the president stood on truman balcony with Champagne Toast with his weary staff and put them on notice, they needed to get started carrying out the law the very next morning. Given that, his attention and focus and reiteration of the importance of the website, how come this was the problems with it were never run up the chain of command . Its a good question. One thing i would clarify, i think it was very focused on implementation the moment after it passed. In terms of the website, the president s focus from what we understand kicked in six months ago. Thats when he started seeing if the website doesnt work, nothing else matters. In terms of this broader question, something everyone, whether in punishment oacross the country is asking about, i think what it comes down is essentially the white house was talking to senior officials at health and human officials trying to find out what was going on with online enrollment system and those folks were talking to lower level Agency Officials who in many ways were afraid of failure, afraid of admitting this system wasnt working. While its a little unclear what they were communicating to higher ups in hhs, thats where there was a breakdown of communication so the white house was totally unprepared for the problems weve seen since the launch october 1st. That fear must have been so pronounced. Theres an anecdote you end the piece with. Its almost tragic as you write. Some Staff Members worry the website would fail right in front of the president s aides as it was tested out. A few secretly rooted for it to fail so perhaps the white house would wait to open the exchange until it was ready. Have you to ask yourself, why didnt one of the people standing in the room say this isnt going to work. Its not ready yet. Its a really good question. We dont know. The president and communications tried to make people feel for comfortable about admitting whether there were problems. At the end of the day they had known this was so important to the president and to the white house that they were unwilling to say what obviously became obvious to americans as soon as the website launched. I want to open this up to friends in new york who are in coordinated blue shirts and beautiful ties. Thank you for ensuring theres a real uniform for today. Hugo, we read these accounts and they do read like the poseidon adventure. Its not much better despite juliettes excellent report. There is a hope it will all work out. Nonetheless, tracing these errors, its painful. I keep using the words painful and tragic. You know how i feel about the rollout of this. That no one piped up. You look, think back to your own first job when youre a lower level person and working on something thats not working out, you do kind of keep a secret and horde it and worry and dont go running to your boss. We did a story about the launch of iphone. When steve jobs set up the big event. They had something put together with duct tape and wire. It was like he insisted on doing it live, steve jobs. He was pushing it through. It looked like the most ridiculous risk taking you could possibly have. So much riding on it. They could not believe it, the engineers, as they sat there in the audience that it worked for the live presentation. I think there was a kind of Wishful Thinking in this process like you know what, maybe the duct tape will hold and everybody at the lower levels is like i hope, i hope, i hope. It doesnt. Now were in a different stage of the process. Now we under the mistakes that were made. Now really its a question of how quickly the administration can regain its competency and come in there and say now we know what the problems are. We cant keep fighting. Its not time to finger point and blame. Its time to be how do we get exchanges up and running efficiently so we get the effects we need from the amount of signups, get the actual system functioning. I think its if im in the Administration Im not sitting around being like whose fault is this . Whose fault is that . The question will be asked at some point, josh, is the president on the hook for any of this. Theres vast amounts of obstruction both at the state level and congress in terms of funding this thing, opting out of the exchanges. Theres incompetence. Problems the president never could have trouble shot. As juliette points out he was more engaged in the last six months. Should he have been more engaged a year before. Its possible to build a working exchange as we can see 14 states and District Of Columbia have websites that are various degrees of working. I dont think its fair for the white house to say this is an impossible task. We couldnt have done it. I dont think they are saying that, are they . I think they are saying complicated task, systems failed, should have been better, not excusable. I dont think they are saying its impossible. They are sort of talking about it like its reasonable they did as badly as they did under the circumstances. If the thing is basically fixed in a month we will more or less forget about this episode thee years area. It will be like Medicare Part d and look back, hey, do you remember that time when the launch looked rocky for a couple of months. The problem is its not clear they can fix the Exchange Architect youre in a month. If they can, why didnt they do it before the launch. If it drags into the winter, the enrollment deadline it becomes a substantive problem for the law. That will determine how the white house is viewed on this. Attempts to message it day to day dont matter. Futures the substantive thing to work the messaging will be fine. If you dont get it to work, nothing will make it better. Sounds bites from current advisers pushing back on the reporting that he that there was an internal debate between policy advisers and political advisers over whether the president should have said categorically if you like your plan youre not going to lose it. Im of the mind a lot of those plans sucked. Pardon my french. Its a good thing for americans to have better plans. At the same time he was not truthful. People lost their plans. The question again is, is that just part of a perfect storm right now in terms of credibility as the white house is fixed and americans are more fluent in the technicalities and realities of aca . These words have import in months to come or is this truly sort of a damaging mark on the president s record. I think it really depends whether you look at this from a politifact fact checking, how many pinocchios do you get perspective or Health Care Policy perspective. The change they needed in the wording is if you have a comprehensive plan or a standard plan, right . To some degree a lot of plans were talking about are plans from a Health Perspective many people felt were misleading to the people who were on them or more related to catastrophic and not really going to meet the minimum standards they wanted as they regulated the system. So unfortunate word choice you could massage it on the wording and factual piece. It seems like quite a bit of massaging, doesnt it . Go ahead. Also, this isnt quite right. The way people on the left talking about the individual market where 14 million americans get health plans, all the plans are nonsense. They dont really cover things. There are bad plans in the individual market. There are perfectly good plans in the individual market. One of the reasons people get cheap insurance in the individual market is not just that they are buying a bad plan. They are young, Healthy People with low actuarial risks. Insurers look to them and say i dont think youre going to get sick. But that goes to the policy point. The same way if you make a new rule there are going to be new cars and they all have to have seat belts in them. The old cars refitted with seat belts or go off the market, thats a regulatory rule. How you sell it, how much detail is problematic. They clearly didnt find the right balance. Here is the thing. This problem is done. Theres no going back and fixing what the president said. He made a mistake. The white house has to spend time fixing the exchanges and getting that done. Its a good thing to talk about. Its not the first time in a Campaign Someone said something and reality turned out to be different. Here it is, you should have put another adjective in there. Was it mostly true . Mostly didnt get you there. It really doesnt. Read my lips, no new taxes. This one of those moments for him. I want to ask you, given the way this was developed, Kathleen Sebelius couldnt house the people working on the website in her office because of various fears regarding partisan political environment, funding, a host of issues. Are you more confident the system they have in place now, the folks they are bringing in, the outside consultants are going to have an easier, less thorny time unraveling problems with this website they would have had six months ago . It seems the climate around the aca was no less heated than it was preelection. Theres no question they obviously have a better management in place, property back jeffrey zients, former director, quite capable, president is involved, getting nightly briefings on it. Theres no question they have a more concerted focus and better Management Structure for getting this done. Whether they will actually fix the website by the end of november remains to be seen because it is such a formidable task. That still remain to be seen. It is an exhaustive and thorough piece. Thank you so much for report, washington post. That you for your time. Thank you. After the break, debate over the farm bill focused on how much to slash food stamps. Lawmakers also haggling over something else, how much to increase farm subsidies. We will discuss haves and have nots when agriculture secretary joins us live next on now. This is the quicksilver cash back card from capital one. Its not the limit the cash i earn every month card. Its not the i only earn decent rewards at the gas station card. Its the nogames, nosigning up, everydayrewarding, kungfufighting, silverlightninginabottle, bringinghomethebacon cash back card. This is the quicksilver card from capital one. Unlimited 1. 5 cash back on every purchase, everywhere, every single day. So ask yourself, whats in your wallet . Delicious, but say i press a few out flat, add some beef, sloppy joe sauce and cheese, fold it all up and boom delicious unsloppy joes perfect for a school night. Pillsbury grands biscuits. Make dinner pop. You give them the giggles. Tylenol cold® helps relieve your worst cold and flu symptoms. But for everything we do, we know you do so much more. Tylenol cold®. It may not be getting the same amount of attention as issues of hitting the panel, farm subsidies and basic questions of fairness at play, the farm bill ought to be getting more respect. Last week lawmakers gathered to resolve key differences between the house and senate bills. The Biggest Issue of contention, food stamps or s. N. A. P. , which account for 80 of farm bill spending. Republicans want to gut the program by 39 billion over 10 years. On top of 11 billion in cuts that went into effect last week. A stimulus spending ended the gop would mamasive cuts tightening eligibility and imposing tighter work requirements. The focus on s. N. A. P. Dollars has object toured the fact that at the same time big agriculture lining its pockets with farm subsidies. Never mind farm income is the highest its been since 1973 fueled by record Crop Production and high prices for many crops and that farmhouse holds are wealthier than the average american household. Joining me now to discuss the fate of the farm bill secretary of agriculture tom vilsack. Mr. Secretary, thanks for joining us today. Im glad to be with you. I guess my first question is, how is it and why is it that funding for s. N. A. P. Is being cut at the same time that were increasing farm subsidies. Lets make sure we understand precisely whats happening. The farm bill proposed to the house and senate would reduce both commitments to s. N. A. P. And to the farm safety net by direct payments to farmers there would be a savings of 50 billion. Some of that is rolled back into safety opportunities, but the inette is a decline to assistance to farmers. Its significantly less than decline the house proposed for the s. N. A. P. Program and thats where the inequity and unfairness in the house proposal is. Ap reporting both the house and senate bills would increase subsidies for existing Crop Insurance and create a new Crop Insurance program. Then you sort of look at the fail rate for farms compared to regular american businesses. Farms failed at an annual rate of 25 . Annual businesses in the United States annual business failure is 7 . Given that and the disproportionate wealth from American Farms to american households, the question for a lot of us, why are subsidies at the rate they are at. Thats a fair question. The reason is that farmers basically can do everything exactly the way it should be done. They can be perfect at what they do. Mother nature can come along and create a drought, flood, tornado, snowstorm and wipe out your entire operation. The cost of putting a crop in the ground is to expensive, you could lose your farm in a single year. Americans benefited from this program because we have farmers willing to continue to farm. We have the greatest diversity, access and affordability of food of any nation in the world. Were a food secure nation because of the safety net. It is appropriate to have a safety net in place, balanced, help to farmers who need the help most. Thats what new systems and programs are designed to do getting away from the direct payment that provided farmers checks in times i think a lot of americans found unfortunate and distasteful. To the point the subsidies going to those who need them the most, we have a stat since 1985, 83 of farm subsidies payments have gone to the top 15 of farms. Is that changing . Well, its changing a bit. The reason for that is because the top 15 of farms produce roughly 85 to 90 of all the food produced in the United States. They have a significant Financial Investment in that crop. The bottom line is, this is a bill honestly that is not very well understood. We talk a lot about subsidies. We talk a lot about s. N. A. P. We dont talk about the fact 16 million jobs connected to the bill, 50 million americans live in Rural America depend on it for quaflt liquality of life, w look at the bill, all of it, skosh it, we see this is a bill that benefits all of americans, Rural Americans. It seems like the farm subsidies are one thing. Theres at least a Common Thread there in the house and senate bills as opposed to s. N. A. P. Where there are huge differences in terms of numbers here. The senate bill has 4 billion in court, house has 39 billion in cuts. As representative, someone in the president s cabinet, what is the white house prepared to accept in terms of cuts to s. N. A. P. . I think we get focused on the numbers. Its unfortunate, we should be focused on the policy. The house bill has the wrong policy. It would does qualify people from the program, eliminate efficiencies in the program, not the right way to approach this. We should be focused on states where we spend 350, 400 million a year,en courage them to link up Workforce Development in their statement with folks on s. N. A. P. Who are looking for work. We need to demand more from states greater accountability. If we did that wed reduce the number of people who need s. N. A. P. The right way as opposed to discriminately eliminating people. Its the wrong policy and that gets you to the wrong number. Under the circumstances the right policy, youll get to the right number. If we put numbers off to the side to the policy itself, house bill has stringent work requirements, have to have a job, work program, with children can only receive benefits three months, would require states to require drug testing. How many are a nonstarter. The unfortunate thing for you, a lot of folks dont realize a lot of those requirements are in the law. If youre an ablebodied adult without a dependent you are required to look for work or be involved in Employment Training or schooling or your benefits are limite