0 >> time for "newsroom" with carol costello. take it away. >> i will gladly. kate hudson, there's a hot chick for you. "newsroom" starts now. good morning. i'm carol costello. thank you for being with me. right now as we speak on capitol hill, lawmakers are getting their first chance to grill the developers of obama care's botched website. the companies will be pressed to explain the crippling problems that plagued the enrollment process and overshadowed the role of obama's signature health care reform. expect it to ricochet in all different distribution. jim acosta is at the white house to start our coverage. good morning. >> reporter: good morning. health and human services secretary katrihleen sebelius wl not be at the white house. that will be next week. the private contractors that helped build the website will be and they'll be on the hot seat. we're told some of the top health insurers knew about the problems before the site fully launched. the same source tells cnn administration officials did not fully disclose to the white house what was wrong with the site. with the obama care finger pointing shifting into high gear, the private contractors that built the troubled dot.gov website are still saying, don't blame us. they're still overing conflicting stories of what went wrong and prepared testimony at today's house energy and commerce committee. one executive is expect to say the site passed eight technical reviews prior to going live on october 1st, another contractor says, a late decision requiring consumers to register for an account before they could browse for insurance products is behind some of the problems. not only do house republicans -- >> it is our job to hold them accountable. when it comes to obama care, clearly there's an awful lot that needs to be held accountable. >> reporter: some of president obama's fellow democrats want these roll. >> well, it's inexcusable. somebody ought to get fired. >> kathleen sebelius? >> no. they should wait and get the thing up and running and then determine and let somebody be accountable. >> reporter: a health insurance insider tells cnn contractors and officials at department of health and human services knew about the site's problem but gave a far rosier picture to the white house. that insider says no one wanted to go to the white house and say to the president that your signature legislative achievement may not go so well. but white house officials insist the president wasn't intentionally kept in the dark. >> we did not know until the problems manifested themselves after the launch that they would be as significant as they have turned out to be. >> reporter: hhs secretary kathleen sebelius told cnn the president did not know about the problems until after the site was fully launched. >> well, i think it became clear fairly early on, the first couple of days -- >> reporter: all the more reason, republicans say, for the president to hold somebody accountable. >> i mean, the president himself seems embarrassed by it. and if he's not going to resign over this mess, why, he ought to decide who should. >> reporter: later today the administration is going to try something new. they're going to try holding regular briefings on the progress being made to fix the obama care website. we should also point out the department of health and human services is trying to clear up some confusion on the deadline for americans to buy insurance so they don't have to pay a penalty to the irs. hhs now says that the deadline is definitely march 31 st. carol, circumstance that will date on your calendar, march 31st. >> i will circumstance it will. jim acosta, i know you'll stand by with more as needed. thank you very much. jim acosta live from the white house. as lawmakers pepper contractors with questions. two main questions, who bungled the website, implementation failures didn't know or didn't disclose. joe johns is in our washington bureau. good morning. >> reporter: good morning. >> won't this hearing be more about pointing fingers than fixing what's wrong? >> we'll probably hear a little bit of everything, carol. we're expecting to hear from contractors who were brought in to help with the health care.gov website. we have an idea of what they're expected to say thanks to advanced testimony of the hearing. the oversight committee, the testimony today is going to be before the energy and commerce committee. one of the contractors for the website, a company called optum qqsi says the problems might be traced back to a late decision, essentially a last-minute change apparently by the government requiring consumers to register for an account before they could browse for insurance. it put a lot of pressure on the site's registration function and that kind of demand was unexpected. qqsi also said they were involved in testing the website and actually identified error in code and they say they did report these errors to the center for medicaid and medicare services. another contractor cgi is expected to say there was a bottle neck in site security. interestingly, one of the contractors, equifax is expected to say it tested its system and didn't have any issues. and it was actually able to process massive involves of data, up to 120,000 verification requests within an hour without any problem. so, carol, just a full range of testimony, an opportunity for these contractors to get on the record about what they did and didn't do. >> just a thought about these contractors. let's say, you know, contractor is not going to sit there and say, you know what, my company is to blame. it is our fault that these exchanges are not working. a company is -- is probably not going to admit that because then that company would have to absorb all of the costs of fixing, it right? >> right. it's definitely not in their interest to come out and say, we messed this thing up. however, we are expecting to get a little bit more of an idea of who the other guy says messed this thing up. so, there could be a certain amount of finger-pointing between and among the contractors without naming names, if you will. >> oh, i bet there will be lots of finger pointing. joe johns, stick around. thank you so much. an anonymous source says federal officials did not allow testing for healthcare.gov until four to six days before the big launch but a system that big needs four to six months of testing. technology correspondent lori seigal joins us. the blame game officially begins today. from your perspective, a tech person, how might it go? >> absolutely. what you said, this kind of technology takes a long time to test. to put a website like healthcare.gov that's out there and not test it before, silicon valley is shaking their heads. in order to do this kind of thing, you have to go in and break your servers. today we'll probably hear quite a bit about why it wasn't properly tested ahead of time. you have cheryl campbell, saying you can never really anticipate what a website's going to be like when it goes live. let's take a step back. you might not be able to anticipate that, carol, but can you go in and you can actually -- essentially break your servers. you can say, hey, we're probably going to get a lot of traffic. this is a very popular agaenda, we need to make sure we have enough server capacity. that's not necessarily what happened here today. today we might hear why that didn't happen. >> i was just paying attention to representative fred upton, chairman of the committee on energy and commerce. he's making his opening statement, that will take ten minutes, and then the democrat, ranking member of this committee, henry waxman will make a ten-minute opening statement and then the testimony will begin. i want to ask you one more question, at least in the next couple of minutes. we hear a lot of differing accounts on how to fix this thing. some say the whole system needs to be scrapped and we need to start over. what are you hearing? >> you know, what i'm hearing is, look, that might be ideal t idealistic, right? you can't just scrap it. what they're doing now is specifying part by part what exactly what went wrong. if you look on hhs, if you look on their site they're committed to saying, this is what went wrong, this is how we're fixing it. the servers weren't working, we added more servers. added virtual -- we changed virtual technology into hardware. i mean, that's what we're going to be hearing about now. and what joe johns mentioned earlier about going in and realizing, you know, maybe they made last-minute decisions that made it very difficult. you know, last minute decisions where you have a complex website and you can't code a last-minute decision under a deadline. that's what we're going to be looking at now. are they going to extend this deadline? how many engineers are they bringing in and what exactly are they doing to fix these underlying problems now that we're hearing more about what these problems are. of course, i can imagine we'll see a lot of finger pointing as well at this point. >> oh, i bet you're right. laurie, you stick around. we'll continue to monitor this hearing when testify begins, of course, we'll take it live. >> want to check our other top stories. president obama tells german chancellor angela merkel the united states does not monitor her phone calls. merkel had called the president after the german government said her calls might have been monitored. germany and other nations had already expressed concerns about possible u.s. spying based on classified information leaked by former nsa contractor edward snowden. we have breaking news off the western coast of africa. just minutes ago we learned pirates have attacked a u.s. flagship and abducted the captain and chief engineer. both are believed to be u.s. citizens. according to ake, that attack took place off the southernmost coast of nigeria, not far from cameroon. the cousin of kennedy jr. could soon be released on bond. michael skakel was convicted of killing his neighbor, martha moxley. a judge ruled the defense was inadequate. state prosecutors plan to appeal the ruling. hundreds of passengers are stranded at ft. lauderdale airport at spirit airways is doing a proactive check on engines after one failed last week, but that's causing significant delays. >> very frustrating. i'm tired, sleep y hungry. just want to lay down. >> it's maintenance problems. that's what i've been hearing from spirit employees and other passengers. >> spirit told cnn it plans to finish all necessary checks this morning. from the "newsroom" -- no pot of gold under the golden arches. >> can i help you? >> hi. i wanted more information about some help that i need. >> mcdonald's calls it resource line, helping their workers get food stamp and heating assistance. >> do have you kids? >> yes, yes. two kids. >> yeah. you would most likely be eligible for snap benefits. >> why not just pay their workers more? "newsroom's" back after a break. is this the bacon and cheese diet?