>>> a new day, a beautiful day here on the east coast. and what may be a brand-new day for democrats in washington. the height of autumn, a certain spring in their step we havent seen in a long time. well explain that in a minute. also we have known for a while that george w. bush and dick cheney werent exactly best buddies, we did know their relationship was a close one. a new book excerpted in todays new york times magazine shows it may have been a lot more complicated than any of us realized. the details of that in a discussion is ahead. and last week, we inducted lloyd benson into the debate hall of fame. this week, on another big anniversary, another presidential debate question i want to bring before the hall of fame committee, maybe the hall of shame committee for this one. either way, a moment that had a ripple effect were still feeling and well talk about it. first, once again, it is a sunday morning in october. it is a holiday weekend in fact. happy early columbus day to all of you. also an nfl sunday. still eight hours before the marquis game of the day, the saints and the patriots before that kicks off. so we will pass some of the hours between now and then with politics. and some pastries too on the table over there. also not too early to talk about playbooks and you dont have to follow the nfl to get the concept of a playbook. it is the notebook, where a team keeps all the diagrams of its plays, how it hopes to fake out and beat the other team. and for a few years now in washington, the fiscal negotiation playbook for john boehner and congressional republicans has gone something like this, threaten to do something extreme or to allow something extreme to happen, something that makes the political world say they wouldnt seriously do that, would they? and the prospect of a debt default is a perfect example of this. this isnt the first time we have been down this road, since republicans took back the house in 2011. and it isnt the first time because when they did try it for the first time, two summers ago, pretty much worked. president obama negotiated with republicans over the debt ceiling back then. and sent a message to them that they could dangle the prospect of a catastrophic default and extract real meaningful concessions by doing that. that same basic republican playbook has now led us into a government shutdown and once again to the brink of default. there are five days we are told now until the u.s. will no longer be able to pay its bills. that day is maybe not an exact date, there are some tricks that the treasury could do, juggling of accounts, can move some t-bills around or something like that. i dont know the details. this isnt cnbc. but the damage that a dead default would do is very real, that much i am clear on. can send the dollar crashing, could cause interest rates to soar, could freeze credit markets around the world, stock markets would almost definitely crash. in short, it could send the u.s. economy into a recession even worse than the one we are still struggling to crawl out from. that is the republican bet that precipitated this standoff, that in the face of another default threat, democrats would agree to give away the store. a lot has happened in the two-plus years since that last debt ceiling showdown. obama was willing to negotiate and make concessions in the name of averting a threat to drive the u.s. economy off a cliff. a lot has happened. in fact, just since yesterday. the weekend began with lets mack a deal worthy promise, behind door number one we had paul ryan trying to broker a deal, the budget guru of republicans in the house, a conservative with deep ties to the republican establishment, but also just as much clout with the tea party wing of his party. behind door number two, in the senate, we had republican susan collins, a moderate from maine. shes been trying to broach a deal in her chamber that everyone could find acceptable. where t the fact the senate is engaged in trying to reach a deal is significant. the deal that susan collins proposed would raise the debt ceiling until the end of january. also, ask for so-called minor adjustments to obama care, the presidents signature achievement. the democrats own playbook calls for changing the republican playbook, putting an end to the constant parade of cataclysmic deadlines. they said yesterday what collins was calling for simply isnt enough. >> susan collins is one of my favorite senators, democrat or republican. i appreciate her efforts as always to find a consensus. but the plan she suggested and ive seen in writing is not going to go anyplace at this stage. two good things in it. number one, it opens the government. number two, it extends the debt ceiling. but other than that, theres little agreement with us. as i explained to senator mcconnell and senator alexander this morning, theyre not doing us a favor by opening the -- reopening the government. theyre not doing us a favor by extending the debt ceiling. those are -- thats part of our jobs. thats why we have said open the government, let us pay our bills, and we need to do that before we have any agreement on what goes after that. >> so what is now day 13 of the shutdown, were in the just right back where we started. were at a point where democrats are feeling more emboldened. they want to raise the debt ceiling for more than 14 weeks because they dont want to turn around and do this all over again in january. there is also this. democrats main concern according to reporting in the washington post is scaling back sequester cuts, making sure once the government is open and running again, it is not at the drastically reduced funding levels we have been operating at because of the deal that was struck the last time there was a debt ceiling fight. there are -- these are sure signs that democrats think they are in a strong bargaining position here. bargaining is apparently what harry reid and mitch mcconnell are now doing with each other. in poker, reids move is called a raise, which makes the question now, is he, is his party, are they bluffing? i want to bring in nbc news capital hill reporter and producer casey hunt to talk about this with bob herbert, former new york times columnist and alex sites, reporter with national journal and msnbc political analyst joe walsh. also with salon. im with salon. youre with salon. alex is with salon. lets start with you, casey, set the stage for what is happening right now and what will happen in the next few days in washington. because yesterday on the show, we were talking about, it looked like at this hour yesterday morning there was maybe this emerging deal with susan collins that maybe would be forced on the house. since then, john boehner told republicans in the house hes done negotiating with the white house or the white house has done negotiating with him. and senate democrats said the susan collins is no good with them. can you take us through what happened yesterday? >> the susan collins plan is something bubbling along for the past few days on capitol hill. i will say that senate democratic leadership has always been pushing people off of that plan. they havent really liked it from the beginning. there were some initial conversations, sat down around the table, realized it wasnt going to go where they wanted it to go. harry reid has never really been fully on board with that. while she was selling it really hard after coming out of that meeting on friday, from my perspective, i never saw it actually coming to fruition. but what youre going to see now with reid and mcconnell and my understanding is theyll probably speak today. there say senate session starting at 1:00. theyll probably speak again on monday as they try to sort of hash this out, but reid clearly wants to take a strong sort of position. he doesnt want to give up any ground to either john boehner or to these other moderate republicans. so him and mcconnell in a room is something that, you know, we havent seen thus far. but, of course, one thing we learned after the friday meeting with republicans at the white house was that senate republicans and house republicans were not communicating about their two plans. there wasnt a lot of understanding. senate republicans actually came out and came to the white house and said, hey, can you explain what it is that the house has offered to us? but on the flip side of that, the plan after -- excuse me, after house republicans came out of their meeting yesterday, saying the senate needs to stand strong, keep in mind, the plan we were talking about then is whatever collins was offering and that wasnt good enough for reid. imagine how house republicans will react to whatever reid and mcconnell manage to -- >> thats -- i want to pick up, because the whole house piece, this is fascinating, but lets just -- i want to make sure we understand what it is that harry reid and the democrats are looking for here. this susan collins plan we were talking about yesterday morning, it would have extended the debt ceiling until the end of next january. >> right. >> it would have put in this, like, process, where supposedly the house and senate would agree on a long-term budget plan before -- between now and january or i get -- otherwise, the debt ceiling wouldnt be raised then. the other stumbling block is the plan called for reopening for six months. harry reid is saying thats too long. he wants a shorter deal because he wants pressure on republicans to get rid of the sequester or some of the sequester. >> this is what is so great about what harry reid is doing, hes reminding everybody the democrats already compromised. he thought he had a deal at some point with john boehner. they were just going to bake in the sequester cuts and the continuing resolution and the democrats were going to eat that. they were going to eat this budget level that was close to the horrible paul ryan budget. and that was their compromise. so by doing this, harry reid is at last focusing on the fact that, yes, we compromise already and it was terrible. so now were going to up the ante. what he does with it is we dont know, but at least it gives them something to bargain away, the democrats are always bargaining away their power before they start bargaining. >> where did this come from? i think a lot of people seeing the news reports yesterday, wow, suddenly the democrats make a stand here on sequester at this moment, i dont think people saw that coming. is there a back story here that brought this about? >> the playbook theyre playing now could not be more different from the 2011 playbook when they caved immediately. i think obama had enough of this. he said the 2012 election would hopefully break the fever of the tea party. that proved not to be true. hes making a stand now. saying no more extortion, no more hostage taking, and trying to set a precedent for any future president, this is not the way to run a government. he is drawing a hard line now. more than about this particular fight, setting a precedent he cant be extorted in the future. he has to draw a tough line. talk about overplaying your hand, the poker analogy. the sequester levels would be baked in. now not only are they not going to get any serious extractions from obama care, but they might lose sequester cuts as well. >> maybe you can clarify, yesterday morning we were talking about maybe democrats would be willing to go along with this. i think a two-year delay in the medical device tax with obama care. is harry reid saying thats not part of the deal for him? >> thats still something on the table. some sort of alteration to the medical device tax. democrats dont like it either. there are several democrats with major device manufacturers in their home states who want reid to repeal it. you could potentially see that. one thing on the sequester, one idea on the table that had democrats very unhappy was, replacing the sequester cuts with cuts to mandatory spending. cutting benefits, but returning that money over to the discretionary spending side. and there was some interest among republicans like senator lamar alexander who i spoke with, last weekend who was in the room for this meeting yesterday morning, he was open to it. but reid has basically said no way. >> what about this? alex is talking about the attempt by democrats, the white house, to establish or re-establish the precedent that, you know, youre not going to use the threat of a defaurlt. when you hear about the idea of maybe the medical device tax on the table, if thats part of the deal, are democrats still effectively enforcing that precedent or -- >> i think so. there is a lot of democrats that are on board with the medical device tax issue anyhow. i dont think thats a big problem. i think what the democrats have done, they are, in fact, making a stand. i think they have, one, someone stiffened obama spine to some extent saying we cant do what we did last time. it was disastrous to our priorities. two, i think the republicans to start it off from such a terrible point when they were demanding, you know, changes to obama care or delaying obama care or giving -- or defunding obama care, none of which was going to happen, even obama couldnt negotiate on that. and then i think also, the democrats, the president, harry reid and everybody else, are looking at the polls. the republicans are killing themselves now and in terms of public opinion, they have essentially zero leverage here. so, you know, all the chips are on the democratic side of the table for the time being. >> thats what im wondering, if harry reid and the democrats took a look at the republicans at 28% favorable rating and said, you know what, maybe the compromise here could be a little more, you know, slanted to our side or less slanted against us. i want to pick up what happened on the republican side, what happened in this closed door republican house meeting yesterday. we have the best reporter to explain this, robert costa from the national journal. hes coming up right after
Posted on: Tue, 15 Oct 2013 06:10:39 +0000
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