>>> what to do when your party is backed into a corner. knock down the walls. friday october 18th and this is now. i got overrun. according to politico that was the excuse given by house speaker john boehner when confronted by the president of the united states about why he shut down the federal government in an ultimately fruitless attempt to shut down the affordable care act. having cost the american economy$24 billion and lost the confidence of a nation, republicans just may have learned their lesson. speaking to the national view senate minority leader mitch mcconnell warned fellow republicans about the next budget fight. one of my favorite things is an old kentucky saying, theres no education in the second kick of the mule. the first kick of the mule was in 1995. the second one was the last 16 days. a long mule kick. a government shutdown is off the table, were not going to do it. mcconnells former counterpart harry reid was cautiously optimistic about whether the grand old party was broken. i dont know said harry reid, i dont like the word broken. remember, were not dealing with rational folks. i do believe they have been hurt ir reply irreparabley. >> cruz had this to say. >> i will continue to do anything i can to stop the train wreck that is obama care. im not serve in office because i desperately needed 99 new friends in the u.s. senate or really, any friends at all. as josh green writes, the wacko bird wing of the republican party is unlikely to back down any time soon. quote, while the shutdown might look like spectacular self-immolation of band or bitter enders its a better understood as the natural consequence of decades long shift in the american political landscape. over the last century and especially since the mid 1970s congress has grown steadily more polarized as the south has relined from solidly democratic to republican. joining me ryan grim, eugene robinson and co-founder of the in si insight agency ben le bold. joining us from washington senior national correspondent for bloomberg business week josh green, whose piece this is, crisis is the new normal. josh, i dont want to be a pessimist here but theres been some very solid analysis taking history into account that points to the notion that these bitter enders, these fractious bitter-enders are not going away soon. tell us why that is. specifically the last few decades, 1970s, transition of the south and how that plays into this. >> sure. if you look at this against the broader sweep of history, what you discover is the debt ceiling slowdown and shutdown are less of a symptom -- sorry, more of a symptom and more of a mania that gripped washington over the past couple of years. thats because if you talked to political scientists who studied this, they will tell you that the country has been undergoing a geographical and partisan sorting basically since the late 19th century that is especially sped up since the 1970s. so what you have is a polarized congress that cant seem to kind of bridge the chasm that really is the reason that john boehner cant marry his right ring with even moderate democrats. i argue in the piece that this is really the new normal. there isnt any reason to think that just because republicans got hammered during the shutdown that they are now going to back off and were going to return to a more reasonable mode of politics. >> eugene, frank rich has been writing in new york magazine and he would seem to agree with josh this is part of a larger historic battle. he couches it as sort of outcropping of the battle we saw during civil war, two parts of america at odds with one another in a fundamental way. this week he updated his piece and wrote, this insurgency has been fighting to bring down the federal government for almost 200 years. whatever temporary electoral setbacks might come in 2014 or 2016, whatever its inability to win national elections, its hardly going to turn back now because it lost this foolhardy battle anymore it turned back now after the shutdowns and clinton impeachments debacle. >> thats an interesting way to look at it. there is a geographical split. party has become more southern, south has become solidly republican. however, there are tea party congressmen and women from other parts of the country as well. so you find this insurrectionist sentiment as well in the south. i think complicating this are a bunch of anxieties the demography or beijing of america around economics and globalization and in some ways the race to the bottom of wages and insecurity. >> ben, michael baron makes the point we have this notion, these dreams of halcion days when everybody used to retire together and drink scotch at the end of a legislative session and the country was more on the same page. he makes the point where we are now is very much where america has been throughout history. ill read the interpret. he writes, american politics has returned to its combative partisan default mode. in the 1790s-- i never thought i would quote american history of hundreds of years ago as much as i have in the first five minutes of the show. in the 1790s americans were divided over a worldwide war between commercial brit & and revolutionary france. strive was bitter. anti-bell um split over issues of bank of united states to slavery in the territories. for three generations after the civil war americans north and south lived almost entirely apart from one another. do we take that as a measure of solace that weve always been a warring nation? do you agree with that? >> we always had a couple of laughs in the white house about the number of times we turn on tv and say if the president would have just had that member of congress over for a drink, they would have voted for legislation. what the common thread throughout history, whats in the political self-interest of those members and the districts they represent. i dont think the tea party is likely to change at any time but the question is is speaker boehner emboldened after this battle. the tea party was allowed to run this play, where did it get them? republican party has the lowest approval rating in history. 14 districts that werent competitive before the shutdown are now competitive. will he allow more votes that allow those what he called responsible democrats and republicans to team up together. more than 40 republicans have voted two out of three times for -- on republican leadership side when baper allowed votes in the past. that path is possible if the speaker feels emboldened after this battle. >> let me play devils advocate. one of the questions, we have this bipartisan committee that is supposed to work on a budget deal. i think people are incredibly skeptical as were discussing right now, sounds like the tea party isnt going anywhere. harry reid was asked if republicans want to trim social security, medicare or medicaid, they would have to give on tax revenue and exchange. asked specifically if the deal must be revenue for entitlements, reid said yes and call it mandatories. bloomberg review, government should give up on tax question, the thing republicans will die on. revenue raisers aka tax increases. instead they should go for a mix of other tradeoffs which would put the country on a better course, immigration. what do you think about that? >> as reid told us yesterday hes not going to do that. >> progress i was and democrats relax on the tax issue. >> i dont see the point of trading taxes for entitlement reform. if you look at it from this perspective, slightly a different angle than ezra is taking, the purpose is to fund a social safety net. why would you give up the social safety net to get more tax revenue. >> his argument is, and josh, i would love to get your perspective ongoing, ezras point, you can deal on sequester levels, use some of the funds there to invest in infrastructure or education, but the question of raising taxes is just going to be the republicans will never come to the table on that. >> i think its true to an extent. i think what ezra tries to do is take a hard eyed look at what is possible in this environment. i do think there are positive things the democrats could accomplish in terms of loosening up sequester rules, maybe raising spending caps a little bit. the danger, though, youre in a position if youre in the white house, democrat of trading temporary spending increases for permanent cuts and entitlement reform. up until now these something democrats havent been able to do. doesnt sound like harry reid is able to do that either. im not sure how much appetite it will be for a deal. >> one thing said several time in the interview, he doesnt feel like its such an easy equation they want to undo the sequester they see it as a -- nondefense goes up a slight bit, cuts in the pentagon. the way he sees it, theres a ton of pressure on republicans to undo sequester. why trade things for something they already want. >> ive got to ask you, we always talk about the hawkish wing of the republican party. they have taken a back seat. the idea these defense cuts are so painful has not been born out in all this. >> people like rand paul are saying bring it on, more cuts. i think we should recall that less than a year ago republicans degree to more tack revenue, to increasing taxes on the wealthy. so its not like it never happens. the president campaigned on this. along with the affordable care act, the phrase he said most often was balanced approach. every speech, balanced approach. were going to have balanced approach to our deficit and economic growth problems. i dont see how democrats are going to go ahead with entitlement cuts without some additional revenue. i just dont see it. >> i would also think, ben, theres a lot of wind in their sales from projecting such a unified front in this latest battle. if harry reid is setting down the marker saying were not going there, given how the president hates to use the word victory, given how successful it was in the pivotal moment, transformative one, its hard to imagine anybody splitting from that. >> i think eugene is right. the essential question on the ballot in the last election. are we going to fund middle class priorities and reduce the deficit in a balanced way. you might be able to package it with another deal like tax reform thats important to republicans, lower the corporate tax rate. maybe thats the exchange. i agree theres no way this wont be done without some sort of revenue, which by the way every bipartisan deficit that looked at this -- >> you can start with corporate tax reform, exactly right. everybody says the corporate tax rate is too high, democrats, republicans. >> then its a question of what to do with the actual revenue once you have it. >> what to do with the revenue, is there a creative way you can propose a partial tax amnesty to repatriate. >> millions of dollars -- yeah, trillions of dollars. >> parked overseas. theres lots to work with there. >> josh, i want to ask you about this as a closer to the big ticket items weve been discussing. theres a piece out, how to fix washington. he has a number of suggestion lift the ban on earmarks so theres more sticks and carrots to yield in congress. allow national parties to spend more on individual campaigns. that way the rnc and dnc and dccc, et cetera, they can control the candidates and they are not just funded by outside groups like heritage action. reform the 60-vote threshold which everybody would like to see happen and streamline process of bringing bills to the floor of the house. the last two are accepted of the first two, are those wildly optimistic or wildly pessimistic assessments of where we are in our current political -- on the current political stage? >> i think they are both good ideas. they are wildly optimistic in the sense i dont know how republicans would sell to their base the idea that we need to bring back earmarks, as good an idea as it would be. its a lubricant to the legislative process and in the broader scheme of the budget and how much money it entails, its a drop in the ocean. the problem, i talked to political scientists about these reforms toward the end of my piece. the problem is that the same partisan forces that are causing the polarization are also impeding congress from passing these kinds of reforms that would sort of, you know, sand the rough edges off the legislative process and help do away with some of the excesses weve seen like the debt ceiling scare, showdown. youre really trapped in this maze where you cant reduce the partisanship because partisanship is preventing these very reforms. >> right. reforming 60-vote threshold would be filibustered. you know what im saying. >> ted cruz would be leading the charge im sure. >> bloomberg business weeks josh green. thank you as always, my friend. after the break in his post crisis speech yesterday president obama listed among his top three legislative priorities, will republicans shut down comprehensive immigration reform. well discuss when maria kumar joins us next on
Posted on: Sat, 19 Oct 2013 02:28:43 +0000