Pfeiffer: ‘We’re going to keep the Senate’

White House senior adviser Dan Pfeiffer on Sunday rejected the suggestion that Republicans will take control of the Senate in the midterm elections, saying that the GOP argument to repeal ObamaCare is a “political loser.”

“I’d say we believe we’re going to keep the Senate,” Pfeiffer said on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”

{mosads}“But look, health care is a divisive issue,” he added. “It’s been that way for a very long time. That’s where it took 15 years to get health reform passed.

“I do think that the Republican argument for repeal is a political loser. What they’re arguing now is that the seven million people who signed up through the exchanges and the millions more who got it from Medicaid and other ways, they’re going to take health care away from all of those people.”

Pfeiffer said 200,000 people enrolled in ObamaCare last week, after the April 1 deadline.

“We have a number of people who were in the queue when the deadline hit, who we have to get signed up,” Pfeiffer said.” We don’t have complete data yet. But 200,000 additional have signed up this week. So that’s progress.”

The White House last week announced that 7.1 million people had enrolled in ObamaCare, surpassing initial estimates of seven million.

“We have to continue implementing the law,” Pfeiffer said. It was a celebratory moment. We all felt pretty good when we hit the mark that no one thought we were gonna hit. But it’s not a victory lap. And the president has told us to keep our eye on the ball every day to make sure this law is implemented as well as possible.”

Pfeiffer did not discuss demographics of the enrollees when asked by host Bob Schieffer.

“Well, we’ll have more demographic data on the last group of people here … in a few weeks. What we have thus far through February is perfectly in line with what the insurance companies say they need to have a good mix,” he said.

“And all indications are, particularly if we follow the same example that Massachusetts did, more young and healthy people come in at the end. So we feel good about the mix thus far.”

As far as lessons learned from the rollout, Pfeiffer said administration officials learned they “can absolutely never take your eye off the ball.”

“And I think, you know, everyone from the president, Secretary Sebelius on down, got a lot of deserved blame and took responsibility for the mistakes that happened. I think the same group of people deserve a lot of credit for how they’ve rescued this and brought it to a level of success that people thought was impossible just a few months ago.”