NBC "The Ed Show" - Transcript: Republicans, Affordable Care Act, and State Exchanges

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SCHULTZ: Joining us now, Senator Sheldon White House of Rhode Island. Senator, good to have you with us tonight.

SEN. SHELDON WHITEHOUSE, (D) RHODE ISLAND: Good to be with you, Ed.

SCHULTZ: I was in Kentucky and I heard people talk about Rhode Island. They say the exchanges aren`t working where they`re properly implemented. Tell us about the health exchange in your state. Is it working?

WHITEHOUSE: It sure is. It has had a few minor glitches, largely that came through the federal problem but it -- let me tell you some of the stories that I`ve seen. I went in the first time and there was a family that had been served earlier that day and had gotten health insurance and they were so thrilled. This was they`re return trip and they were bringing big boxes of Dunkin` Donuts, coffee and stacks of Dunkin` Donuts to give to the workers there because they were so pleased.

I walked around and there was a woman who is absolutely beaming when she sat down the phone and she said she just saved that last caller $300 a month going from $800 in Cobra (ph) to $500 under one of the buzz. The buzz in Rhode Island is so good that the latest story is a father who`s daughter is working there had heard so many good things about what`s going on with the exchange that he wanted to come in and he said to her, "I just want to see what the good things whether they are happening. I`m so proud of you that you`re part of this."

SCHULTZ: Yeah.

WHITEHOUSE: So there`s a whole other story out there that some people in Washington just don`t want to hear despite listening to.

SCHULTZ: Well, they`re all Republicans I mean and just so it was relentless again today on Kathleen Sebelius. What is the Republican mission at this point? The website is making progress, it`s handling more people, 17,000 people a minute, it`s going to get better. Obviously it`s better since the last time there was testimony a week ago. What`s the Republican mission at this point?

WHITEHOUSE: I think it`s to create as much bad news and bad spin around the health care plan as they can to discourage people from going to it and sort of the last dripping (ph), you know, last ditch fight that they have. What`s frustrating is that when you look at the individual states that have made this work like Kentucky, like Rhode Island and then you look at these usually kind of states rights, Senators, and their own states have the chance to do this.

SCHULTZ: Yeah.

WHITEHOUSE: They have the chance to make it right. They have the chance to do what Rhode Island did and they didn`t. They chose not to do it. They chose not to even try .

SCHULTZ: They would .

WHITEHOUSE: . so now they`re blaming the federal government when they didn`t even try to do it. I mean, if you`re not going to do your job, you got to be ought to be careful about blaming the people who came in to do it for you.

SCHULTZ: That`s all Republicans were talking about. It was local control and no government takeover and we can do it ourselves in the backyard which I think walked the Health Committee down the road of framing it to their liking and then the rejection came and now we`ve got the, for a lack of a better term, a small mess on our hands that has to be mopped up.

WHITEHOUSE: Yeah.

SCHULTZ: But it didn`t .

WHITEHOUSE: But it didn`t have to be that way.

SCHULTZ: No.

WHITEHOUSE: Their states could have done just the way our states did. And of course then they wouldn`t have anything to complain about. So if you think of the purpose of the exercise as to find things to complain about in health care rather than to find a way to get health care to your constituents. Well maybe they consider the success from that point of view.

SCHULTZ: Senator, what`s your response to the potentially low enrollment numbers early on and maybe not, you know, below the projection of 7 million by March.

WHITEHOUSE: Well, we heard from Elizabeth Warren in the Health Committee yesterday about Massachusetts experience. Massachusetts is ahead of us in all of these. They have done the same thing with what we like to call RomneyCare. So they said it was the same thing.

People usually tend not to sign up until the last minute and nobody`s due until nothing`s available even until January 1st. There`s no penalty until March 1st which is months away. And if you`re a small business coming in, you don`t have to come in until your existing policy rolls over which could be a year from now. So I think we got to be a little patient with the, you know, first two minutes of the game outcomes in predicting what the final score is going to be.

SCHULTZ: Well, ObamaCare is going to be a big story in 2014. Is there any parallel by the way it was handled by Terry McAuliffe in Virginia and the way the Democrats in the midterms should handle it in 2014?

He didn`t run away from it. And his opponent was saying that it was a referendum. The election was a referendum on ObamaCare. How did you break that down? And what do you see for 2014?

WHITEHOUSE: I, you know, it`s hard for me to give advice to a whole bunch of different races and very, very different states of very, very different constituencies.

SCHULTZ: Yes.

WHITEHOUSE: But I think one thing that is very consistent through this is that when you get through the Republican hyperbole and you cut down to the experience of real people, they are seeing good results from this program. We are getting -- our folks in Rhode Island are getting hugs. They`re getting people bursting into tears. They`re getting people saying, "My God, this is the first time in years I have health insurance. I can sleep tonight." That story is what`s real and that`s story is eventually sooner or later going to get out. They can`t deny it indefinitely.

SCHULTZ: All right. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, good to have you with us tonight. I appreciate your time on the program. Thank you, sir.

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