>> rose: welcome to the broadcast. in what may be a historic day on the way to health care reform, the senate finance committee by a vote of 14-9 passed a bill. we'll talk about it with ezra klein of the "washington post." >> there are two things. one is snowe's involvement is a really big deal. the other is that democrats have a realization they didn't have in 1994. so in 1994 health care reform began to get unpopular, clinton was suffering under a number of scandals at that point and they began to abandon it basically. what happened then is they suffered losses like they have never suffered before and as far as i know haven't since in the 1994 elections. they lost the congress for the first time in 40 years. they lost more than 50 seats. so i think's a real understanding among both moderate and liberal democrats among the leadership, among the white house that either this passes and we can all run on a success together or it fails and we can all lose our elections together. >> rose: and then afghanistan as the president ponders his choices with ike skeleton, chairman of the house arms services committee. >> what i recommended to the president is that according to the custom in afghanistan that he urge president karzai to call together a conference of leaders of tribal leaders, and ask them how they clean up the government the services that they should be rendering as well as how you clean up the corruption. and let that group determine just what the standards would be and then we hold them to their standards as to how to clean that government up. i think that's the best way to handle it. >> rose: finally, david finkel, a pulitzer prize winning reporter, has remarkable book called "the good soldiers," about what it was like on the ground in baghdad. >> it's stories about these soldiers. and, look, i want to assure you, it's not a political book. it's... i promised the soldiers one thing when i went, that this would be a piece of journalism without agenda. i wasn't out to say the surge was working, not working, the war in iraq was worth it, not worth it. but that part of the conversation had to include what was happening at their level. and i was there to document it. so that's what i did. >> rose: health care reform, afghanistan, and soldiers in war when we continue. captioning sponsored by rose communications from our studios in new york city, this is charlie rose. >> rose: congress today moved up with step closer to overhauling the american health care system. the senate finance committee approved legislation that would extend coverage to millions of uninsured americans. the measure was supported by all 13 democrats on the committee, along with one republican, senator olympia snowe of maine. senator snowe said she would give her support to the bill despite some reservations. >> was this bill all that i would want? far from it. is it all that it can be? no. but when history calls, history calls. and i happen to think that the consequences of inaction dictate the urgency of congress to take every opportunity to demonstrate its capacity to solve the monumental issues of our time. >> rose: speaking earlier this afternoon, president obama said that the health care debate had entered its final phase. >> as a result of these efforts, we are now closer than ever before to passing health reform. but we're not there yet. now's not the time to pat ourselves on the bk. now's not the time to offer ourselves congratulations, now's the time to dig in even harder and work to get things done. >> rose: over the next couple weeks the debate will move to the open floor of the senate and house. joining me from washington, raze klein of the "washington post." i'm pleased to have him here on this day to help us understand what happened at the senate finance committee today and its significance. welcome. >> thank you. >> rose: tell me about this and what do we know about what went on in olympia snowe's mind as she made this crucial decision to support this. >> if we all knew what went on in olympia snowe's mind, all of our jobs would have been easier in the past couple months. i mean, what hapned today is genuinely literally historic. health care reform has never passed five committees. trueman wasn't able to do it, clinton wasn't able to do it, nixon, carter, have m have tried it. it's never been this close before. olympia snowe was a crucial vote today but it is important, i think to know, she wasn't the crucial vote. health care reform passed 14-9. it had a fair margin. olympia snowe came on board at the end and i think white house is very relieved to have her there because it meant they have at least a one-vote margin to beat a filibuster and that means they're not going to need to go down the reconciliation route which got a loss of press a couple months ago but internalfully the house and the senate and t white house, there's a lot of concern that that would be a tricky path to go through. so they can point to a remember on the bill, it's a huge win for the white house and for, frankly max baucus at this point who had been under bad press in recent weeks for having taken so long. >> rose: and some people were suggesting he was sort of too heavily influenced by the insurance industry and over the last several days insurance industry has made it clear to that was not true. >> well, i don't know if they've made it clear that was not true. they've made it clear they have problems with the bill. i think that really backfired. last night, pricewaterhouse cooper, which is a consultant tansy the insurance industry used for their smear attack, they backed off. th released a statement saying "they paid us to do the report in a certain way, we only looked at a small number of things, we didn't look at the subsidies or cost-saving measures, don't blame us." and the insurers were sort of on their own. i was watching today blanch lincoln, the democratic senator from arkansas, was attacking that report. when you've not got blanch lincoln on your side and you're trying to influence moderate democrats, you've made a misstep somewhere along the way. >> rose: what's your reference to senator baucus, then, in terms of his role? >> i mean, senator baucus has had... you know, he's really been the chairman with the most power over this, right? the senate is the crucial chamber because the filibuster makes it so much harder for anything to get done. and the senate finance committee... remember, the help committee, which used to be chaired by the late senator ted kennedy and is now going to be chaired by senator tom harkin, they produced a bill and they passed it. the problem for the health committee is they don't have jury diction over medicare, medicaid or anything having to do with revenues so their bill is very incomplete. it was only baucus who could do that. he took a long time and he doesn't have a lot of trust from liberal democrats but he did produce a bill. and whatever its failings, it's not that far from the other bills on the table except arguably on the public option question and i think that it is going to be a bill that can be merged with the others. i think that he's really proven an ability to do something that's, again, historic. it's literally historic. it hasn't been done before. and it's interesting to note that this is a committee that has had very renown chairmen, moynihan and dol and lloyd bentsen and baucus often wasn't considered in their class but he's going to go down within w an achievement they weren't able to grasp. >> rose: and how did he do it? >> you know, he did it through a couple things. one is that he had the votes and at other times they haven't. democrats have 60, it's very rare, hasn't happened since the time of carter, so that gave him a really big push forward. the other thing is he really wanted to do it. it was a year or two years ago now that he began holding hearings which is traditionally very early for something like this and hfs very painstaking about going to the industry groups, trying to mute their opposition, going to other senateors, trying to hear their concerns. the big misstep-- and i think it was that-- was the gang of six where i think he overestimated the ability of senator chuck grassley and senator mike enstoi buck their party. that was a long delay, it made a lot of people angry and was a very high-risk maneuver. but health care was able to survive after that and he did one thing that shouldn't be underestimated: he produced a bill that was able to get an incredibly good congressional budget office score. i mean, as a simple measure of policy achievement, he managed to cover 94% of americans and cut the deficit. and that took a lot of work. i mean, just a lot of substantive legislative work which i think doesn't always get the accolades, maybe, that it deserves. >> rose: so what happens to the public option? >> you know, it's a bit hard to say. what we move to now is there will be a merger beten the health committee bill which has a public option and the senate finance committee bill which, of course, doesn't. in the house all the bills have a public option. so a couple things could happen. one is it could get just sort of a normal public option along the lines of what senator chuck schumer offered. so not a public option that can partner with medicare and be a competitor that insurance is unable to compete against but a public option that works like any other insurer. but there are a couple of compromises getting a lot of attention and the main one i think... olympia snowe had a trigger proposal which i don't hear much about. the main one is senator tom carper's. the idea is basically individual states can choose whether or not to have a public option. and in a move that liberals liked a lot, senator chuck schumer has offered up an improvement to that, maybe in which there would be a national public option and states could opt out if they chose. so you would have a somhat stronger public option, but the alabama, if mississippi, if california didn't want to be part of it, they could just say sorry, no thanks, it's not for me. >> rose: what is this bill that passed the senate finance committee do about the disparity between states in terms of monopolies and in terms of how insurance is available. >> well, the main thing here is the exchanges. we'll see as it moves through the process what form they take. in the house bill it's somewhat national. the big thing is it creates new marketplaces which would initially be open to small business and individual markets. so uninsured people, people who work for businesses under 20 or 50 or a hundred people depending on the bill we're talking about now. and, you know, the idea there is you help dozens of different insurers competing for them. that works fine in a big state like california, but what about a state like montana, for instance,? well they can form interstate compacts so montana could partner with a couple other states in the west or delaware could partner with pennsylvania and a couple others so there would be a very large market that that insurers would want to serve and that they would have structure for competing with. >> rose: the likelihood now that we will have health care reform in 2009 from this congress has gone up to 80%? >> it's much higher than i think one would have felt comfortable predicting at any other point. the basic... there are two things, one is snowe's involvement is real a really big deal. the other is that democrats have a realization they didn't have in 1994. so in 1994, health care reform began to get a bit unpopular, clinton was suffering under a number of scandals at that point and they began to abandon it basically. and what happened then is they offered losses like they have never suffered before and as far as i know haven't since in the 1994 elections. they lost the congress for the first time in more than 40 years. there's a real understanding both among the leadership and the white house that either this passes and we can run on a success together or it fails and we can all lose our elections together. >> rose: and to those people who said the president should have fashioned his own bill, should have gone to the congress and said "this is what i insist on having, i'm a very popular president and this is the legislation i want" rather than doing that, he did it this way. in the end, the judgment will be that the president made the right call? >> i think so. i think they were dead wrong about that. i mean, it's an interesting thing because that is exactly what bill clinton was criticized for in 1994, right? you remember the sprawling task force of 500 something people trying to build a bill up from the beginning. here's what they found, and this is exactly what they didn't do this year, and it had policy consequences but it's good on the political side. in 1994 because they did it all on their own, congresen, interest groups, outside lobbies, the american cancer society, all these groups, because they hadn't built the bill, when it came to congress, they were still ready to try to get more. so they weren't invested in things they had already gotten into the bill. they didn't feel like they had won any battles yet, so they didn't support it. they were trying to change it. but at that point, the bill was a very delicate compromise and couldn't be changed. this year they let all those groups come in at the beginning and, you know, you could say they got too much or gave away too much. but what it meant was as it rolled on everybody had something they liked. even if they didn't like everything. everybody had something they were fighting for. liberals had subsidies and conservatives had deficit reduction and interest groups had new customers. and everybody had parts of it that up set them, too, but they felt invested in the process, think had been part of it from the beginning. and that allowed the white house to come in pretty much near the end and use that sort of power of the presidential bully pulpit to push those final ten yards. to come in with that speech, change the media narrative a bit and give max baucus and the senate finance committee room to finish their work. >> rose: you have been normously informative about what happened today and putting it into context and i thank you very much. >> thank you. >> rose: ezra klein of the "washington post." back in a moment and we'll talk with ike skeleton. he's the chairman of the house arms services committee and we talk about afghanistan. while health care votes in the senate were the topic of the day in washington, the president continues to deliberate about the way forward in afghanistan. he will meet again tomorrow with his national security team. as he continues to weigh his options, the debate in washington has intensified. top democrat congress have different opinions about what the president should do and about what general mcchrystal wants. here's senator carl levin, the chairman of the senate arms services committee. >> general mcchrystal said a number of things, not just that he needs more resources, whatever that number is, he also says we need a new strategy and that that is even more important than the resources. those c r mcchrystal's own words. he also says deliberate, take the right amount of time to think this thing through. and he also says that what is even more important than numbers is the resolve. and i had a personal information with mcchrystal and what he says is that you want to find ways of showing resolve to the people of afghanistan. there are many ways to show resolve in addition to more and more combat forces. including many more trainers to get the afghan forces to be aa lot larger and a lot stronger. >> rose: other democrats and a majority of republicans support general mcchrystal's request. joining me now is representative ike skeleton. he's a democrat from missouri, he is chairman of the house arms services committee and a leading voice on military affairs for many years, i am pleased to have him on this broadcast. welcome. >> charlie, good to be with you again. >> tell me what you think the president... how he's framing the decision he has to make as he talks with national security leaders and congressional leaders and everyone else. >> well, you have to go back quite some time. when the president entered office, i had been saying for quite some time as well as others that the war in afghanistan was the forgotten war. and the president made an excellent speech in march setting forth a comprehensive strategy as to where we ought to go in solving the very difficult challenge in afghanistan. and i compliment him now and i complimented him then for that speech. subsequently, he hired general stan mcchrystal, the previous general has left and has retired a fine gentleman by the name of mckiernan and he asked general mcchrystal to give him an assessment of where we are in afghanistan and he did. and as you know, this assessment came across after a period of time and it was... it made it into the news media in essence saying that afghanistan is in dire straits and it's... it could fail if we don't do something about it. and subsequently-- although it has not been made official-- i'm sure that general mcchrystal has asked for additional troops and additional help, aid, and support in that country. so that's where we are and the president now is weighing where we go from here. >> rose: but you have said that you were impressed by the fact that the president listening and asking the right questions. i'm asking you what are the right questions. >> well, i sent a letter to the president some time ago, a six-page letter spelling out my analysis and the fact that i think that he should listen to general mcchrystal and his recommendations. after all, he's the one who appointed him. the questions he should ask are, of course, very basic. he should ask what type of governance is there, what type of security is there. those are the two major problems. and what do you need. that is really what he should be asking. and if he gets good answers to those, which i think he will, general mcchrystal is a top notch leader, top-notch commander, i would hope he would listen to general mcchrystal's recommendations. now, as you know, the president has several of us down to the white house a few days ago talking about this issue. >> rose: should general mcchrystal if he needs 80,000 troops get 80,000 troops? >> if general mcchrystal asks for it and can justify it, i think he should get what he needs. now, there's... the media reports and no official reports but the media reports said he is requesting some 40,000. but that's not official and i have no reason to know what official figure or what they are for. they should be... there should be an increase in trainers, we need to continue to go after the al qaeda wherever they are. and i have a concern-- i'll talk about it if you want me to-- regarding the governance and the flawed election that came to pass. >> rose: well, clearly the... president karzai said in an interview today that the election was good and fair. clearly that's not the indication we get from all reports from there as well as from members of congress and the national security contingent in the white house and at the pentagon and at the state department. >> well, one of the basics is that there being a strong governance and it appears that there was a rather fraudulent election. now, what i recommended to the president is that according to the custom in afghanistan that he urge president karzai to call together a conference of leaders of tribal leaders, and ask them how they clean up the government the services that they should be rendering as well as how you clean up the corruption. and let that group determine just what the standards would be and then we hold them to their standards as to how to clean that government up. i t