Obama backing Saints: 'Colts favored'

by Mark Silva and updated

President Barack Obama, while rooting for the New Orleans Saints in the Super Bowl today, allows that the Indianapolis Colts "have to be favored.''

"I think the Colts probably have to be favored, mainly because they have the best quarterback in history. Peyton Manning is unbelievable,'' the president said in a pre-game interview just now with CBS News. "I do have a soft spot in my heart for New Orleans, mainly because of what that town has gone through....

"The Colts have to be favored,'' he said, confessing that he could be bearing a grudge in today's match: "One other factor that I have to confess here - when my Bears went to the Super Bowl several years ago, it was the Colts that beat them.''

The president also signalled another play in the pre-game interview: He plans to meet with bipartisan leaders of both houses this week on the stalled health-care legislation. And Republican leaders greeted that word with a cautious welcome today.

CBS Evening News anchor Katie Couric interviewed the president as part of the network's pre-game coverage of the Super Bowl. The talk was aired starting at 4:30 pm EST, a little over an hour before kickoff.

On a sunny but cold day on which Washington was digging out from a couple of feet of snow - as much as 32 inches out at Dulles International Airport far west of town, but less than two feet in town - the president was holding a Super Bowl party at the White House with congressmen from the home state teams, Louisiana and Indiana, as well as some injured veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

He was wearing an open-collared dress shirt.

They talked about more than football -- chiefly, health care:

This week, the president said, he is going to start meeting with legislative leaders of both parties about the way forward on health care.

"They're going to be coming into the White House next week, and what I want them to do is put their ideas on the table,'' he said.

"Part of the reason we can't back off on this,'' he said, is that major insurers already are increasing premiums. "That's a portrait of the future... We're going to have to do something about it....

"What I want to do is look at the Republican ideas that are out there - how do you guys plan to lower costs... how to you intend to insure that the 30 million people without insurance get it,'' the president said.

Republicans responded with a ready signal:

"We always appreciate the opportunity to share ideas with the President, particularly on an issue where Americans have spoken so clearly,'' Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said after the interview. "If we are to reach a bipartisan consensus, the White House can start by shelving the current health spending bill, and with it their goal of slashing a half trillion dollars from Medicare and raising a half trillion in new taxes.

"The American people want lower costs, not Medicare cuts and tax increases,'' McConnell said. "Setting these goals aside would be a sign that the administration and Democrats in Congress are listening to the country and are truly interested in a bipartisan approach.''

House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) said: "I am pleased that the White House finally seems interested in a real, bipartisan conversation on health care. The American people have overwhelmingly rejected both of the job-killing trillion-dollar government takeover of health care bills passed by the House and Senate. The problem with the Democrats' health care bills is not that the American people don't understand them; the American people do understand them, and they don't like them.

"The best way to start on real, bipartisan reform would be to scrap those bills and focus on the kind of step-by-step improvements that will lower health care costs and expand access,'' Boehner said in a pre-game, post-interview statement. "The House Republican alternative, which would lower premiums by up to 10 percent while increasing access for Americans without health insurance, would be a solid starting point.''

In light of the way the health-care debate has played out, does the president wish that he had waited until the economy was stronger before undertaking his health-care reforms, Couric asked Obama.

"No,'' he said.

His administration was working on economic stimulus last year, "and, having taken those steps very quickly at the front end, at the beginning of the year, it was also very important for us to start focusing on issues that middle class families have been struggling with...

"It was the right thing to be done then,'' he said. "It continues to be the right thing.''

"What is absolutely true is that getting something passed through Congress, with 535 members, is hard,'' the president said. "Each legislator, they think they're doing what's best for their state or their district... What we have to do is make sure it is a much more clear, transparent process... The end product, he said "will benefit millions of people.

"I would have loved nothing better than to simply come up with elegant, academically approved approach to health care, and it didn't have any legislative fingerprints on it,'' the president said. "That's not how it works in our democracy... What we have to do is a lot of negotiation... Cumulatively, it looks like each individual legislator is looking out for his own... My job is to look out for that bigger picture.''

The president maintained that he is running a more transparent administration than ever, with full disclosure of who is visiting the White House. "All these things take time,'' Obama said. "You're not going to transform a culture in Washington in a year... You've just got to keep chipping away at it. ''

Couric asked a cab driver's question about the deficit.

"The biggest... most important thing we can do about deficits is to get a health insurance package passed,'' the president said. "If we can start bending the cost curve on health care, that's the biggest thing we can do... in the long term.''

The president defended the administration's handling of accused terrorists and maintained that some can be held in maximum security prisons - such as the one that the government wants to purchase from Illinois, the Thomson Correction Center, to house detainees.

"It is a virtue of our system that we should be proud of,'' he said. "It's important for us to recognize that, when we're dealing with al Qaeda operatives, they may have national security intelligence that we need,'' and the approach to handling them is not the same as dealing with a drug dealer. On the proposed trial of Khalid Sheikh Mohammad in New York City, he said, "we have not ruled out anything.''