Answers in the first congressional hearing with the men and women who designed the online exchanges. Representatives from four of the largest contractors the government hired to bill the site defended their work. Do you know anyone else at the table thought or made a recommendation not to go forward on october 1 . Thats a correct statement. I refer back to my earlier answer. We did not make a recommendation. We simply made everyone aware of the risks we saw. Okay. No, we did not make a recommendation. We did not either. There are thousands of websites that carry far more traffic. Amazon and ebay dont crash the week before christmas. When was the integrated system tested . During the last two weeks in september. We didnt see the full kind of integrated endtoend system testing youre talking about. Why not . Until a couple days leading up to the launch. Shouldnt we have had that . Ideally, yes. We were testing up to the time that the system went live. Ideally, integrated testing would have occurred well before that date. How far in advance of a major website coming online . Well, with enough time to correct flaws before they begin. Whats the recommended Industry Standard for endtoend tests before rolling out a major website like this . Months would be nice. Did you deliver the product you were contracted to build, ms. Campbell . We have. For the did you deliver the product you were contracted yes. Yes. Wow. The contractors were not the only ones in the hot seat. Democrat Frank Pallone turned up the heat on the republicans ulterior motive on holding the hearing. The republicans dont have clean hands coming here. Their effort, obviously, isnt to make this better but to use the website and the glitches as an excuse to defund or repeal obama care. Here we have my republican colleagues trying to scare everybody will the gentleman yield . No, i will not yield to this monkey court. As the higher ups bicker about whos to blame and the worker bees crack open their Energy Drinks and continue trying to fix the glitches, the white house says the individual mandate enrollment deadline is not february 15th but is march 31st. That means to avoid tax penalties, you must start the process by the end of march. We start with nbcs luke russert. Luke, what is the response, whats the reaction today to these hearings on the hill . Well, it depends who you talk to. Democrats say this is a hearing that was needed, but the way in which the gop has gone about it is theyre actively trying to persuade people not to enroll in the new Health Care Exchanges. Democrats and republicans say no, this is a needed thing to occur. We need to shed some light on what went wrong here and why this website has been crashing almost nonstop off and on since its launch. Obviously its getting better, but its had a horrific opening, its safe to say. What i found interesting from watching this hearing was a few things. When you have these types of hearings, the question is where does the buck stop . You have these contractors and theyre blaming each other. The contractors are all saying, well, you know what, we do what were supposed to do, but we didnt get the proper oversight. The proper oversight did not come from a specific agency. What was that in this case . That was the centers for medicare and medicaid services. Thats where theyre placing the blame, saying we did our job, but it was that agency that was supposed to string all these things together and make the website better for the people and make it usable, more user friendly. It will be interesting to see next week when Kathleen Sebelius of hhs and cms have to go testify on capitol hill. Thatll be where we really get answers for the governments involvement. As far as what the contractor have said, aside from blaming each other and saying there wasnt enough oversight on the governments part, their message has been, well, we would have liked to have had more testing. We made the government aware of our concerns. You saw in the leadin, we would have preferred to have months, not days. Nevertheless, krystal, this is a problem we see off and on with government contracting. They walked away, we found out today, with 375 million between all of them. They got paid. Their work is subpar. For a job well done, luke. We dont know where the blame goes. This just goes back to the contracting weve seen from the u. S. Government over the years. We saw a lot of horrific contracting during the iraq war, horrific contracting before that. Thats the big issue here. How come the government can never hold these contractors accountable or get it right . Absolutely right. Luke russert, much appreciated. Take care. Jonathan cohn is Senior Editor at the new republic. Were going to dig into the details of the Health Care Exchange itself, but i wanted to start with the Bigger Picture question, the more philosophical question. Back in september before we even had the Government Shutdown and the debt ceiling hostage situation, americans faith and trust in government was already at near record lows, according to gallup. All three branches of government near record lows with the legislative branch unsurprisingly being at the lowest. I mean, doesnt such a botched rollout as this website just further undermine Americans Trust that the federal government can do anything well . Unquestionably. I think thats one of the real great losses here and why you hear a lot of liberals as upset as conservatives. This was a test case. Can the federal government take on a complex task . And in this instance, i dont think it did a very good job. Nobody i know thinks it did a very good job. There were management failures up and down the chain of command. As a result, we have a website thats very important to the functioning of the new health care law, and it doesnt work, or its working very poorly. Now, you know, theres time to fix it. Hopefully they will fix it. There are lots of things the government does right, but the next time conservatives say, hey, you know, we dont have faith in the government, look what happened with healthcare. Gov, youre going to have to say, yeah, you know, in that instance, youre right, it did a lousy job. Now, no surprise you have democrats speaking out against the website. First read said today one of the chief reasons why democrats won the fight over the shutdown was obviously the partys impressive unity. You had democrats all standing together, whether it was the white house, blue state members, or red state members. Were now seeing that same unity does not exist when it comes to the website. For example, you have senator joe manchin as one democrat who is drafting legislation to delay the first year of penalties to folks who dont have insurance. Its one thing for republicans to be fighting against this, but now having pressure from democrats, how does that up the heat, i guess, for the administration to make some necessary changes . Right. Well, youre going to see, i think, anxiety levels on the democratic side of the aisle rise the longer this takes. On the other hand, you know, theres still some time. I think democrats will hold it together. I think democrat believe in this law. They believe in what this law is supposed to do. The problem is the website suspect letting people get access to this insurance they desperately need. Lets fix the website. I think everyones aware the republican motives here are not exactly pure. Theyre holding these hearings not because they want to fix obama care. Theyre holding these hearings because they want to get rid of obama care. So i think theres some patience there. You know, either the website has to be working within a few weeks or the administration has to come up with some other ways to make this work. There are the proverbial break the glass plans. There are work arounds, there are alternatives. You know, jonathan, theres two things going on. One, obviously, you have some problems with the website that weve been covering and need to be fixed. Youve got republicans, as you say, disingenuously attacking that. But theres a media piece here too. I think the media gravitates towards some simple stories. Broken website is a very simple story to tell. The fact that 60 of the poorest americans are in states where john roberts created an escape hatch for republican governors to opt out of medicare despite 90 funding is a horror story to tell. We did a segment on it this week because we think its important. Theres that aspect. Another hard part of this is something you wrote about. Speak to the fact that at the state level weve seen that the most critical period for enrollment is not typically the period were in right now but comes later. I know you had a chart on that. Yeah, i mean, the media does gravitate to the easy, the quick story. Now everybody is suddenly looking for these enrollment numbers. I think some people expect we should have a stock ticker running across the bottom of the screen every day. Oh, someone signed up for obama care. Ten people signed up for obama care. Thats not the way it works. If you look at massachusetts, which implemented a set of reforms just like these. Its really the best model we have. Almost nobody signed up at first. People waited. It makes sense. We have your chart up on screen where people can see the big red part at the end is more later near the deadline, not what would be right now. Right. I mean, why would you pay now for an insurance policy that doesnt start until january 1st . Thats true if you have private insurance from an employer. Ask a Human Resources benefits person at a company. When does everybody sign up for open enrollment . They do it on the last day. So this is one of the stories i think people need to keep in mind. Dont get hung up on the enrollment numbers, whether theyre good or bad, frankly. The rush will come towards the end, towards the last minute. The question is whether the system is reasonably functional, fully functional by that point. Thats absolutely right. People are procrastinators by nature. Of course theyre not going to be signing up right away. I wonder if the president at some level is saying, i wish we had done single payer after all. But i want to turn the corner and talk about Something Else the president is trying to push. Immigration. He was up this morning talking about immigration, trying to drive the narrative more toward that. The Business Community is pressuring republicans to get on the page with the president on this because the farming industry, the restaurant industry, and the Hospitality Industries in particular see the value this could do as well as anybody who sees the value of allowing 11 Million People to pay more in taxes and to spend more as consumers. The tremendous value to america. So what is the likelihood, do you think, that were going to get comprehensive immigration reform, say, i dont know, pick an arbitrary deadline, before the cardinals win the world series. Which hopefully will be a long time from now. I know youre a red sox fan. Youre right. Look, this is one of those you look at the fundamentals and think this should have been ages ago. All the Interest Groups are lined up behind it. You know, democrats are willing to compromise. Theyve come to the table. The republicans, this is in their longterm interest. I know theyve been told this by everybody. But if they dont get behind immigration reform, its going to be a really long time before they win a president ial election. So you would think this would have happened already. Thats totally true, but jonathan, as you well know, theyve spent over a decade demagoguing against this. Its a little bit hard for them to do a 180 now that they see their electoral future is in trouble. Right. So the answer is, i dont know when its going to happen. It should happen. At some point i would imagine the pressure on speaker boehner, on the House Republicans from their business groups, even from evangelical groups will become enough, it will become overwhelming. Theyll look at their disapproval ratings. Theyll look at those demographic numbers and dd, you know what, we need to bite the bullet and do this. If you asked me, it would have been happened a year ago. Im surprised it didnt happen already. If it didnt happen already, its hard for me to say when it will happen. All right. Well, well keep the hope and remain optimistic. Jonathan, thank you very much. Thanks for having me. Up next, the website is not the only thing that has the white house under pressure today. Some of americas closest allies are personally dialing up the president to ask, hey, are you spying on me . Well be dialing up the spin as the cycle rolls on for thursday, october 24th. [ woman 1 ] why do i cook . Because an empty pan is a blank canvas. [ woman 2 ] to share a moment. [ man 1 ] to remember my grandmother. [ woman 3 ] to show my love. [ woman 4 ] because life needs flavor. [ woman 5 ] to travel the World Without leaving home. [ male announcer ] whatever the reason. Whatever the dish. Make it delicious with swanson. [ woman 1 ] thats why i cook. No longer for your eyes only. This afternoon the u. S. Ambassador is meeting with the German Foreign minister to discuss allegations of the nsa monitoring of cell phones of chancellor Angela Merkel. Merkel called the president herself yesterday demanding immediate clarification over the issue. According to the white house, president obama assured merkel that the u. S. Is actually not monitoring and will not monitor her communications. Notably, though, no word on whether they have monitoring in the past. Its just the latest in a series of questions from allies the u. S. Has been forced to respond to as the result of documents leaked by former nsa contractor Edward Snowden. Frances president wants the issue of u. S. Spying brought up at an eu summit that started today. Lets spin. First of all, for those who are outside of this world, which is pretty much everyone talking about this today, its not a black and white world, right . I think its easy to assume that it is, our intelligence gathering. But its a very gray world. I think wed be naive to assume that this type of thing doesnt go on. Wed also be naive to assume our allies dont do the same thing to us. They do. They do, do the same thing to us. Its a very murky world. Youre never going to have full transparency in a field where transparency actually works against you. Maybe you could put out rules of the road for your allies, but then the question is, where do you draw that line . What constitutes that red line . Is it any worse than having a spy sitting in a meeting . My reaction to these latest leaks is i was a bit frustrated. Who does this benefit . Edward snowden, i feel like its more about him. If anything, it puts the trust among our allies at risk. That becomes very, very problematic. Once when i was a kid i did something really bad and my dad took me aside and said its not bad you did it, its bad you got caught. I think thats what we have going on here. Its really bad we got caught. Wait, grandma told you that . Absolutely. Love her. God rest her soul. Its going to damage some relationships. If we werent doing intel spying on people like this, Angela Merkel, jim jongil, we would be derelict in our duties. Thats why we have a cia. We have to know. Germany in particular. We have to know what theyre telling us publicly is what they believe privately so we can confidence in the eurozone. To your point of the problem isnt doing it but getting caught, one interesting aspect is apparently Angela Merkel hasnt had much to say about the nsa controversy until it was her own cell phone that she found out was being bugged. One reporter tweeted, the first time that merkel is showing some proper passion during the nsa affair. So its all fine when theyre spying on someone else. Suddenly when its your cell phone theyre listening to conversations on, it makes a difference. Ari, i was curious from you. Youve been strong in terms of transparency and reform of the nsa spying system. Do you feel differently about Edward Snowden leaking documents about our own surveillance programs within the United States versus information about what were doing with our allies overseas . Do you feel differently about those things . Yes. I mean, we expect the United States to lie to a lot of other countries as they go about their business of keeping us safe. Espionage is itself generally a lie in the sense that its a secret that if exposed you would continue to lie about it and not want them to know. Thats why the bourne movies are so fun. What Edward Snowden has done is released a great amount of information. The problem with that style of disclosure is we dont get the hierarchy. I think the nsa documents that have leaked about what we see in the United States as we know from president obama himself have already triggered some changes because we found out that they were abusing the patriot act in ways they didnt admit, spying on way more americans than they had indicated and without the normal legal requirements they should have been following. Later we learned the fisa court had actually rejected some of this. All of that on the home front was problematic. The problem here with the disclosure, and even people like me who have been supported of the press right to report on these things without going to jail, is we dont really need to know the details of the Foreign Espionage if it doesnt involve law breaking or malfeasance. One final thing to compare it. If we find out that they are abroad torturing people, we still need to know about that because its illegal and violating our constitution. Im not saying anything that happens abroad isnt our business, but theres nothing against u. S. Law in doing espionage abroad or conducting military operations legally authorized abroad. So i think the difference here is the gate keeper press, the times, nbc news would typically not run some of these stories if they were in sole possession of the material and didnt see anything wrong with it. Thats the distinction. Youre making an important distinction. What we do abroad is very important and valuable. Spying on our own citizens, thats a lo