Steve Israel, Mike Michaud and Charlie Rangel have all voiced their views. | AP Photos, Reuters Obamacare frustrations for Hill Dems

House Democrats voiced growing frustration and anger with the broken Obamacare enrollment site on Wednesday as administration officials tried to reassure them that HealthCare.gov will be repaired.

Democrats, who labored to get the Affordable Care Act through Congress in the first year of the Obama presidency, said they wanted the administration to share details of what’s wrong and when it will be fixed.


“It’s screwed up,” Rep. Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.) said, summing up the whole situation.

( Understanding Obamacare: A guide to the ACA)

The disastrous rollout three weeks ago of HealthCare.gov was obscured initially by the government shutdown, but now it’s Topic A on the Hill. Republicans are pouncing on ineptitude — and demanding delays. They had demanded a briefing too —and House Speaker John Boehner’s office said HHS had agreed and details were being worked out.

“It’s not clear why Republicans were excluded in the first place, but we look forward to getting answers to how the administration botched this enormous use of taxpayer dollars so badly,” a spokesman emailed reporters.

And Democrats are none too happy about all the problems of a program that they have a lot riding on. Expanding health care coverage is a longtime Democratic goal — but it’s also been politically costly and they need it to work.

( POLITICO's full Obamacare coverage)

“Democrats have frustration about the rollout and implementation because we want to do the right kind of oversight to make sure it works. Because that’s Congress’s job,” said Rep. Rick Larsen (D-Wash.). “General assurances aren’t going to make anyone feel better. The administration needs to be specific about what they’re doing to solve specific problems.”

White House press secretary Jay Carney says there was “no question” that the White House did not know how bad the web site’s rollout would be. “While we knew that there would be some glitches and said that we expected some problems, we did not know until the problems manifested themselves after the launch that they would be as significant as they turned out to be,” he said Wednesday.

Now, the administration is deep in repair mode, calling top insurance industry CEOs to the White House for an afternoon meeting with chief of staff Denis McDonough, presidential adviser Valerie Jarrett, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and top health care aide Chris Jennings. In another step to calm frayed nerves and respond to demands for more transparency, Sebelius is instituting daily HHS press briefings beginning Thursday

Gary Cohen, who is in charge of the health insurance exchanges office within HHS, briefed House Democrats at their weekly caucus meeting Wednesday morning. Lawmakers who attended the closed-door session said he promised that the administration would improve the enrollment process.

( Also on POLITICO: Poll: Obamacare approval inches up)

Cohen told Democrats that the administration is not where it wants or needs to be, but that people are slowly getting through the system and enrolling, according to a source in the room. Cohen told them that the administration is diagnosing problems, prioritizing repairs and making upgrades every evening.

The briefing comes amid intense scrutiny on the rollout. The four contractors working on the website are scheduled to testify Thursday in front of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. Sebelius is supposed to go before the same panel next week. Both Republicans and Democrats told POLITICO on Wednesday that they want answers to what went wrong and when it became clear that there would be problems.

Republicans are hoping to latch on to the computer problems as a sign of the law’s greater inherent flaws — and a number have demanded that Sebelius be fired over the errors.

( PHOTOS: HealthCare.gov: 10 quotes from Kathleen Sebelius)

House Democrats raised several concerns with Cohen, including whether the personal information going into the system is secure and what is being done to reach uninsured people who don’t have Internet access. And they demanded more specific answers to what’s wrong.

Rep. Lloyd Doggett (D-Texas) said only one person from his Austin area was able to get all the way through the clunky website to the end of the enrollment process.

“A lot of questions being asked of the administration,” said Rep. Nick Rahall (D-W.Va.) as he left the meeting.

( Also on POLITICO: Nancy Pelosi: Don't extend open enrollment)

“Everybody was concerned with the glitches,” he said. “I feel that every effort is being made to resolve the glitches.”

But there was also acknowledgment in the room that the administration still hasn’t publicly acknowledged the vastness of the sign-up problems.

“We need to move beyond ‘glitches.’ ‘Glitches’ perhaps existed on Oct. 1 and 2. It wouldn’t describe the extent of the problem. But, it’s all fixable,” Larsen said.

Some Democrats have begun suggesting extending the enrollment timetable so consumers have more time to sign up and don’t get fined for not getting a product unavailable on a glitchy website. Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) said Tuesday that the open enrollment should be extended past March 31, and DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz said on MSNBC that “there should be an openness” to changes.

( WATCH: 7 quotes on Obamacare glitches)

But House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said Wednesday that there is no need for any delay.

“I don’t support that,” Pelosi told reporters. She said she didn’t hear any members suggest that in the Democrats’ meeting.

“I think we should be able to go forward,” she said. “There are glitches but there are solutions as well.”

Even behind closed doors, the administration declined to say how many people have enrolled. Officials said last weekend that about a half million people had done the initial applications — but they’ve repeatedly said they won’t announce how many have actually enrolled in a health plan until November.

“If they have it, they’re not giving the number out,”said Rep. Michael Michaud (D-Maine). “We’re just tired of anecdotal answers to some of the problems.”

Democratic Rep. Dina Titus, who represents a heavily Latino district in Nevada, said the CMS officials assured lawmakers in Wednesday’s briefing that the Spanish-language Obamacare enrollment websites — which haven’t worked — would be up and running by mid-November.

About two-thirds of the people going onto the website are trying to register, Julie Bataille, director of the CMS Office of Communications, told House Democrats. Another third are trying to get information, such as phone numbers and locations to sign up in person.

Republicans have clamored for their own briefing on the problems. House Speaker John Boehner’s office said HHS had agreed and details were being worked out.

“We look forward to getting answers to how the administration botched this enormous use of taxpayer dollars so badly,” a spokesman emailed reporters.

Democrats maintain that the law is still solid and that there are other ways to enroll, such as on the phone or in person.

“Of course, we want to know when it’s going to be over,” Pelosi told POLITICO, referring to the sign-up problems. “But that is not to diminish the thrill that we have about the Affordable Care Act, and member after member emphasized the fact that good things were happening.”

“When something goes wrong there are two ways to look at it. You can say, ‘What went wrong and who do we blame?’ Or, ‘[What] went wrong and how do we fix it?’” said Rep. Steve Israel (D-N.Y.).

Jonathan Allen, Burgess Everett, Paige Winfield Cunningham and Seung Min Kim contributed to this report.

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