that's it for me in washington and all of us in new york. coverage on the debt ceiling showdown, carol costello continues our coverage. >> thanks guys, have a great day. "newsroom" starts now. -- captions by vitac -- www.vitac.com good morning. i'm carol costello. thanks so much for being here. well, here we are, it's october 16th and the nation is on the edge of default, in other words, we're staring down the very debt crisis that lawmakers told us not to worry about. i wonder what the reassurances and promises congress could come together at crunch time and not risk an economic disaster. as you can see from the countdown clock the deadline is less than 15 hours away, the debt ceiling closes in, the partial government shutdown drags on and washington's dysfunction is shaming even the lawmakers. >> it's not a big thing or don't worry about it, that's ridiculous. this is a big thing and going to harm not just this economy but economies all over the world. and we're not going to do that. if we do, i think they should all ask for our resignation. they should ask for all of our resignations if we can't come together for the good of our country. >> okay, let's get the latest from cnn's jim acosta at the white house this morning. good morning. >> reporter: good morning, carol. senators harry reid and mitch mcconnell are working on a deal how this gets out of the senate and the house and over to the president's desk before the nation hits the debt ceiling at midnight tonight is still a mystery but in the words of one top gop senate source, fear not. time is running out. the debt ceiling is within sight and the last hope of dashing a default rests with senator harry reid and mitch mcconnell, back to work, working on a last-minute deal. >> john boehner will likely be in a position where he will have to essentially pass the bill that is negotiated between senators mcconnell and reid, and i believe that the house would first pass it and send it to the senate. >> reporter: president obama called for quick action. >> we don't have a lot of time and so what i'm suggesting to the congressional leaders is let's not do any posturing, let's not try to save face. >> reporter: the president appeared to put the blame on house speaker john boehner's inability to car roll tea party-backed republicans. >> there have been repeated situations where we have agreements and he goes back and it turns out that he can't control his caucus. >> reporter: that caucus is once again up in arms, despite boehner's tough talk. >> i have made clear for months and months that the idea of default is wrong, and we shouldn't be anywhere close to it. >> reporter: the speaker failed to convince house conservatives to line up behind republican proposals to lift the debt ceiling and end the shutdown. it didn't matter anyway, as reid said the gop's plans were dead on arrival in the senate. >> extremist republicans in the house of representatives are attempting to torpedo the senate's bipartisan progress with a bill that can't pass the senate. >> reporter: that portrait of washington dysfunction was all the respected fitch ratings agency needed to see, it issued a warning it may downgrade the nation's aaa credit rating. a potential repeat of what standard & poor's did in 2011. fitch continues to believe that the debt ceiling will be raised soon, the agency said, the political brinksmanship could increase the risk of a u.s. default. some house conservatives were brushing off talk of dire consequences to come. >> most folks understand october 17th is not the drop dead date, there nor payments due for a couple weeks. >> reporter: according to top senate republican and democratic sources here is how the deal looks now, the government would be reopened according to the senate deal as it stands right now through january 15th, and funded through january 15th. the debt ceiling would be raised until february 7th. budget conference of republicans and democrats would be put through for the budget issues, that date was set for december 13th last night but that is up in the air at this point and the income verification requirements and obama care republicans want that appears to be in the deal right now but carol, of course we can't guarantee that anything that we're talking about right now will actually be in the final deal because things have been changing so much but that's sort of where things stand right now, the big question is how does it all get passed, does harry reid send a piece of paper over with the details in it to house speaker john boehner and he tries to get it through the house and then send it to the senate, but to be really honest with everybody, we just don't know how it's going to develop over the course of the next several hours. >> as things stand now this is a senate deal that will likely go to the house of representatives for a vote because the house of representatives can't come up with its own bill as you know jim this is not the way it's supposed to work. i know that. we know that. hasn't anybody watched schoolhouse rock? >> you sure got to climb a lot of steps to get to the capitol building here in washington. i wonder who that scrap of paper is. ♪ i'm just a bill, yes i'm only a bill ♪ ♪ and i'm sitting here on capitol hill ♪ ♪ well, it's a long, long journey to the capitol city ♪ ♪ it's a long, long wait while i'm sitting in committee ♪ ♪ but i know i'll be a law someday ♪ ♪ at least i hope and pray that i will but today i am still just a bill ♪ >> but sadly, jim, in the house of representatives it's not even a bill yet. >> reporter: yes. well to paraphrase schoolhouse rock i think we're at dysfunction junction instead. let's see how it works out today, i don't think we're at end times. i've been exchanging e-mails with a top republican source as for the idea they might take the senate bill on a piece of paper and try to get it through the house they're not at that stage just yet. they'll make that call as they see what the senate has to offer but not exactly schoolhouse rock as you pointed out. >> no. jim acosta many thanks. washington's brinksmanship has angered other countries knowing the u.s. economy is vital to their own well-being but investors seem to have mustered some confidence in a deal getting done. ftse and dax each down less than 0.5%. the nikkei closed up albeit slightly. wall street opens later this hour, cnn's chief business correspondent christine romans joins us from washington with that. good morning. >> reporter: good morning. futures are higher, sharply higher here because okay you had schoolhouse rock. i will i guess channel "war games" what investors are telling you is that there will not be mutually assured destruction on capitol hill that they are not stupid enough to not raise the debt ceiling so investors are betting that they are going to do something and they're going to do something soon. let me give you a little bit of timing. first of all no, one wins. no one wins if you don't raise the debt ceiling. i'm going to be wracking my brain to figure out who could win if you don't raise the debt ceiling, that's what washington is about, who is going to win. no one wins so what happens next, if they don't raise the debt ceiling? i don't think the lights go out on october 17th, you have a couple of days while the treasury figures out which bills to pay and slowly the momentum would continue after that and you start to see the cracks in the financial system, you'd see yields spike and the stock market come unclud, just when that would happen no one knows for sure but today right now, a half hour before the market closes investors around the world are betting that washington will not be that stupid. carol? >> i hope they're right. i really hope they're right. what about the action that fitch took? what should we read into that? >> you know, fitch essentially is warning the u.s. and telling us what we already know the congress doesn't know how to run a business. it should have raised the debt ceiling by now, that's what fitch said. fitch said it assumes there will be some sort of deal in the days to come. they don't think we'll default on obligations to investors, that's important that you have to pay the interest on your loans, on your bonds, no indication fitch says that we wouldn't do that but look, every day that we don't raise the debt ceiling and get a real agreement here, comprehensive agreement to end the budget battles is a wasted day in washington and these days just keep wasting away, carol, and i don't think you can count on the optimism in the markets and the stability in the market to continue forever if you don't have any kind of coherent strategy just this warfare in washington, so there are so many risks still for your money and interest rates, for your mortgage and credit card bills, for the availability of loans, for your stock investments and portfolio, it's still scary here. >> yes it is. especially for those late on in life with 401(k)s. christine romans thanks so much. just ahead in "the newsroom," calls from republicans in congress to investigate the obama care website glitches and the president's response, next. (knochello? hey, i notice your car is not in the driveway. yeah. it's in the shop. it's going to cost me an arm and a leg. that's hilarious. sorry. you shoulda taken it to midas. get some of that midas touch. they tell you what stuff needs fixing, and what stuff can wait. next time i'm going to midas. high-five! arg! i did not see that coming. trust the midas touch. for brakes, tires, oil, everything. (whistling) thnot at the rings.looking. i can feel them looking at my thick, flaky red skin. do i tell them it's psoriasis? do i speak up and say it's not contagious? or do i just say... have a nice day!" when your psoriasis has gone from uncomfortable to unacceptable, visit psoriasis.com to connect with a psoriasis patient advocate from abbvie for free one-to one education and support. sign up at psoriasis.com, and talk to your dermatologist. just by talking to a helmet. it grabbed the patient's record before we even picked him up. it found out the doctor we needed was at st. anne's. wiggle your toes. [ driver ] and it got his okay on treatment from miles away. it even pulled strings with the stoplights. my ambulance talks with smoke alarms and pilots and stadiums. but, of course, it's a good listener too. [ female announcer ] today cisco is connecting the internet of everything. so everything works like never before. you may be muddling through allergies. try zyrtec-d®. powerful relief of nasal congestion and other allergy symptoms -- all in one pill. zyrtec-d®. at the pharmacy counter. where their electricity comes from. they flip the switch-- and the light comes on. it's our job to make sure that it does. using natural gas this power plant can produce enough energy for about 600,000 homes. generating electricity that's cleaner and reliable, with fewer emissions-- it matters. ♪ shopping for insurance? have you been on healthcare.gov? did it work? it has been two weeks since the launch of the obama care website and for the second morning in a row the government still isn't telling us how many people have been able to successfully sign up or when those problems will be fixed. the "miami herald" says house republicans plan to investigate the launch. the paper says the house energy and dmers committee will ask health and human services secretary kathleen sebelius and federal contractors to explain exactly why things went so wrong, after their earlier testimony which they said the site would run smoothly. tuesday president obama expressed his frustration with the disastrous launch. >> i am the first to acknowledge that the website that was supposed to do this all in a seamless seamless way has had way more glitches than i think are acceptable and we've got people working around the clock to do that and we've seen some significant progress but until it's 100% i'm not going to be satisfied. >> the president went on to say people are still able to sign up for programs by phone and by mail, with little or no problems at all. but there are clearly problems with obama care and guess what? those big glitches are not addressed in the senate's deal, potential deal to reopen the government, but let's move on from that for now. the senate might or might not pass a bill that funds the government through january 15th and extends the debt limit until february 7th. in other words, at best this is a temporary fix and aren't you sick of hearing that? so is david walker, former comptroller general for the united states or put more simply he was the nation's top independent account under president clinton and supported mitt romney in the last election. welcome, david. >> good to be with you, carol. >> so you kept the books for the government? >> no, no, i didn't keep the books for the government. i was not responsible for this accounting because it's atrocious, i can tell you. >> i totally get while you're explaining more carefully. so it astounds me the number of people who don't believe anything will happen if the debt limit isn't raised. >> well, something will happen, but we have more than enough revenue to service our debt, only about 10% of our revenue is necessary to service our debt, there's one thing guaranteed in the constitution of the united states, that's bondholders and u.s. debt. now the treasury is admitting they have well maybe it's not october 17, maybe a few days past october 17th. look we shouldn't be in a position to decide what bills we're going to pay and not. >> this is a bad thing. >> it's a bad thing. they should not keep on moving the ball. they lose credibility. if you say this is what the deadline is, at a minimum you can say it's going to be around there, we don't know the exact date. here's the real thing we need to get it done before this, the deadline is november 1 because november 1 social security payments, payments to medicare providers are supposed to go out and right now social security and medicare are negative cash flow and the only thing they can pay benefits out of is what's in the trust fund. >> we hear lawmakers say we can pick and choose what we want to pay out. >> most of them don't know how to do math. look, here's the problem. the treasury does have visibility over bond holders of u.s. debt, they're going to get paid on time. what they don't have advivisibi over is the ongoing day-to-day payables so they'd have to prioritize and end up paying certain mandatory payments, discretionary payments and the sad thing is we would end up paying more penalties and interest because the paymeof th payment act. the senate will pass it and the house will ultimately pass what the senate does. it may not happen by the so-called deadline but i think it will happen by the beginning of the week. >> but still this plan that the senate is thinking of passing is just a temporary fix. we have to go through all this again next year. >> what we need to do is to have substantive negotiations to deal with the three things we haven't dealt with needed to restore fiscal responsibility. we haven't had a budget in five years, we need social insurance reforms, rationalize our health care promises and comprehensive tax reform. they're not going to do all of that december 13th. maybe they can come up with a framework we can begin implementing in installments over time, as that's what it takes to deal with the fiscal cancer we're stricken with. >> everybody agrees this fiscal cancer exists but has this been such a terrible experience for lawmakers, do you think, that we won't ever be at least, that we won't be be in this position again? >> my parents taught me you never say never and they're right. the fact is the american people frankly have a very short term area and if they can get through this and the next election is not until next november so people are largely forgetting, but we need to get through this. the other thing is the polls came out basically giving the president, the democrats and the republicans all an f. some got a lower f than others but they all got an f. the people are disgusted with what's going on in washington. we have a republic that's not representative of or poresponsi to the public. we need political reforms and a state-led constitutional convention to focus on fiscal electoral and states rights reforms. >> the odds on whether that will happen? >> better than you know, better than some other things happening in d.c. but we'll see. the founders gave us this. >> thank you so much for joining us. >> good to be here. >> we appreciate it, david walker. still to come, edward snowden's father reunites with his son in russia. >> certainly very emotional to know that my son is safe, secure and is he free. >> lon snowden tells cnn about the nsa leaker's life in russia, next. 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[ male announcer ] don't be like the burns. just one pepcid® complete works fast and lasts. ♪ [ male announcer ] don't be like the burns. ♪ save your coffee from the artificial stuff. ♪ switch to truvia. great tasting, zero-calorie sweetness... ...from the stevia leaf. from nature, for sweetness™ checking our top stories at 22 minutes past the hour, police arrested a suspect in connection with two dry ice explosions at los angeles international airport. 28-year-old bennett dekaare low was booked on possession of an explosive device. two bottles with dry ice exploded in restricted areas. >> i think it does reveal a vulnerability that we're going to shore up and that is that you have cameras in public access areas, we should also have cameras in restricted access areas to maintain the integrity of the security system. >> decarlo is being held on $1 million bond. the 75-year-old mother of cal ripken jr. managed to thwart a gunman threatening to steal her car. the suspect was arrested two hours later. at tempted carjacking is not related to her abduction last year taken at gunpoint from her home in maryland and found the next day. oreos are just as addictive as cocaine according to a study from connecticut college. eating oreos activated more neurons in the pleasure center of rats brains an cocaine or morphine. rats like to eat the oreo cookies creamy middle first like most humans. a cable failure in detroit's electical grid knocked out stadium lights in alcs three. the power to comerica park took 15 minutes for the lights to fully reset. the game was delayed though it was still daylight and i don't want to read the next part so we'll skip over it the tigers lost. et ward snow snowden's fathe described the emotional reunion. >> it was, you know, enormous and the first hug that i gave him wasn't simply for me. it was for the entire family, and it was much in the way that i last saw him, in april. i hugged him. it was, "i love you son. i love you, dad." we hugged a little longer, a little harder and it was certainly, it was an important moment because on june 7th, two days before this story broke i wasn't certain my son was alive. in mid-june i didn't know if i was going to see him again. it's emotional to know my son is safe, secure and free. >> phil black is on the phone from moscow. hi, phil. >> reporter: hi, carol. you can see he was emotional when he was describing that reunion. he was also much relieved, different lon snowden. about a week ago he flew in for the first time we spoke to him then, hadn't seen him son, worried about what he was going to find. he said having been