One of the rules that i was thinking about is that whoever is in the Minority Party, they be given three opportunities in one year, every year you get three opportunities, the minority speaker can bring a bill before the floor. Because with the tea party and all of the other people who are moving this ship, they are closing the government down. I believe if the minority speaker would be given like three opportunities to bring a bill before the floor, i think this could stop some of this gridlock. Guest they do actually have that power today to allow that. I know as democrats weve tried to make that happen procedurally and its been moved out of order. There has been may be seven or eight opportunities for republicans to put that in order and to allow the clean continuing resolution to come to the floor to reopen government. I think its the right thing to do. When i think about whats happening not just in my district but around the country, its really devastating not just for federal workers but now im hearing from some of our Small Businesses whether they are coffee shops, restaurants, or dry cleaners who are struggle right now because all of that workforce isnt spending money in those Small Businesses. Again, the Ripple Effect of not opening the government really is creating kind of an irresponsible and wreckless situation where were willing to take orsome willing to take an entire economy because they want to repeal the Affordable Care act. You tried 42 times and its not going to work. Tom cole said, lets get off that mark. Its time to reopen the government and not hold hostage all the rest of us because of the narrow policy agenda. Host lets go to daniel in fort worth, texas on our line for republicans. Caller thank you for taking my call. I do appreciate the comment from the representative. Gentleman called earlier that it is not great characterization of the American People. I called her office, she made the same comment, theres 25. I said where are they . Are they on your website. She goes no, you have to look them up online. She looked up the washington journal and she looked up huffington post. I said i want to see on your website, she entered into the federal record. She made the comment on the floor. I want to see the letter or the people who came to her and said we will. They need to back them up. Thank you. Guest im only going frankly, on press reports. I know as a representative if i talk to a reporter on the record, that reporter quotes me, its pretty much what i believe and its what ive said. What im suggesting to you, various news reports and a lot of news organization, i i that the Washington Post gathered a number of on the record statements about 20 or 25 of republican member who said affirmatively that if a clean continuing resolution were put on the floor to reopen the government they would vote for it. Lets put it to the test. I know there are 200 democrats i personally signed a letter to Speaker Boehner saying just that. Combine that 200 democrats with only 10 of the republicans in congress. We could reopen government. I think its really unfortunate that a very small faction of the Republican Party seems to have all of us in their grip. That is not the way our founders envisioned government should work. It is true we should hear from minority interest within the Majority Party they shouldnt constrain everything that the government does. Keeping government close, threatening the full faith and credit and the good name of the United States by threatening not to pay our bills and to detail on our obligations. These kind of things are really irresponsible. As a member of congress, i have one point of view on a whole range of policy issues. I might disagree with representative cole or Speaker Boehner or any number of people. My goodness, i would be irresponsible if i said i have a policy disagreement, i will organize my group of people and shut the government down. Host House Republicans brought to the floor series of bill, piecemeals to fund district of columbia, research and theres a great list in the Washington Post today. Harry reid and the president said thats not the way to go. Explain why thats not enough and tell why we can reach some kind of budget. Guest first of all, the republicans didnt shut the government down in piecemeal. I have three Program Workers in my office a couple days ago. One work for the Environmental Protection agency or the department of health and human services. The woman who works for nasa describes the joint projects shes working on with nola. If hes working but some of those other agencies are not working, then the projects just dont get done. At the e. P. A. Where the e. P. A. Might be making referrals to the department of justice or working with the department of energy. People of our government, we have a lot of interactions among agencies. Thats actually a good thing. It saves taxpayers money. I think we have to restart all of government for all americans. Not part of government for some americans. All government for all americans. Host harris from mansville, ohio, and hes a federal worker. Caller my big question is that the house of representatives, why do their senator the bill was passed. The shame of this government. Host thank you. Guest i think that issue is going to be resolved again. Thats a perfect example you think youre fixing kind of one thing, paying our military. We moved that through the house and senate an on to the president. It turns out this is one area thats not covered by that law but its part of the function of the department of defense. We realize that we missed that. We have to go back and fix that. Thats why its important to open up all of the government. It doesnt make sense to open up part and not others and then realize that weve made a mistake. People served this country who put their lives on the line for this country, died for this country and need to be paid a death benefit. Again a perfect example of why it is that we need all of government open. I dont know what i will say, my dad was in the air force and he served for 30 years. My heart is with military families and their service and sacrifice. What i would say to them, Service Members and their family not only do they need that death benefit, they also need a functioning government and economy because there might be other needs that they will have down the line. Both for those families who sacrificed but for all of the American People, the responsible thing to do is to open government. If it comes by way of shame, ill accept that. But i want to reopen government for all americans. Host lets take another call from scott in massachusetts for independents. Caller good morning representative edwards. I have a question. I owned an assisted living in rhode island and unfortunately due to budget cuts, the democrats controlled the state of rhode island for about 30 years. Unfortunately due to budget cuts to the poor, i had to put 16 people out on the streets unfortunately. Kind of upset about that. The reason im saying this, because i think rhode island is a micro can you tell me what youre doing to address the debt. Are you putting any specific type of legislation forward . You personally to address this clip that were going to go over eventually and unfortunately probably going to be on the backs of the poor like they were in rhode island. Anyway, do you have anything specific that you can tell me that you are doing to address this 17 trillion elephant a room that nobody is paying attention to. Guest i can tell you some ideas i had along with some of my colleagues. There are none among us who agrees its a good idea for us to have 17 million debt. The question is, how you reduce that responsibly and still meet the obligations that the American People expect. For example, i think that the more that we could focus on job creation and on incentivizing for example domestic manufacturing and things like research, you put people to work in a 21st century economy. Those people paying taxes and those taxes go to pay down our debt. We can think of creative idea thats are about cutting our budget responsibly but also creating opportunities since incentivized growth. Those are things i supported. I continue to support. As well, what we havent taken a look at, there have been reductions in our deficit actually over the last four years that this is a really tough economy as well. I want to balanced approach. Democrats proposed a balanced approach. I think that we can get there in the way you get there, you get democrats and republicans around the table to negotiate these things out and to move forward. People talk about the contribution of entitlement programs, i heard your prior guest talking about that to our debt and our deficits. I would say, for example, like on Social Security, why not list the cap on Social Security. Why is it member of Congress Making 470,000 a year, i dont pay Social Security tax on all my income. Why is it somebody whos a multimillionaire and billionaire doesnt pay social on 100 or significant portion of their income. It would reduce the obligation for future generations and its a really common sense solution. Its not razeeing raising the age of retirement. Getting new people in the economy and paying on all of our income. Thats a common sense solution but we cant get the Solutions Like that if House Republicans are not even willing to appoint conferees to a Conference Committee but rather start a new supercommittee. We dont need another supercommittee to negotiate these things out. We need a Conference Committee to operate werent the processes of conference. Host lets take a call from brian in washington d. C. On our line for democrats. Hes a federal employee. Youre on washington journal. Caller good morning ladies. I had two questions or comments. The first was that i came i voted for this president under his ideas that we were going to have a single payer plan for healthcare. I was never one that wanted to send money to a private entity. So im not really approving of the Affordable Care act in that we have to go that way. He ran under the single payer and once he got in office, it became unfeasible. Thats one point you can address that. The second one is, Social Security, im 56 years old, i recall when they used to say in congress that Social Security was in a lock box that the money could never be touched. I understand, i guess it has been spent by congress and whatever and we dont seem to be putting that money back. Now Everyone Wants to say that its entitled. The big word is entitlement, but it is not entitlement it is what we paid into. Can you also address how this so called money in the lock box was taken out and where was congress and what was their idea about the single payer and why that never happened under president obamas first term. Ill take my answers offline. Thank you so much. Guest thanks so much for the questions. With respect to Social Security, sometimes theres misunderstanding about that. We all contribute to Social Security trust fund. Sometimes theres a draw down Social Security trust fund. Theres statutory obligations to put that back and that happens because it happens under statute. Social security is completely solvent for the next 20 something years. I had an idea about how it is we can make it even more solvent by lifting that income cap. Under the Affordable Care act, i came to congress as a supporter of single payer healthcare. Thats not what we got. I do believe we got an Affordable Care act that is in the process of being implemented. Think its a good deal for the American People. I think that it puts us well down the line toward having a Healthcare System that brings down cost and provides healthcare for a lot of people who are uninsured and people who are underinsured. Im excited about the prospect of implementation. I know theres been some implementation problems. Yesterday i went on to the Maryland Health connection. Gov website. I wanted to experiment with whether or not i could set up an account and i can maneuver do and do some shopping and figuring out the healthcare plans that might work for me. I got on, i got logged in. I got an account. I started shopping around and i put some things in a cart. I looked at the various plans. I think that for the American People that would become increasingly easy as the bugs get worked out in the system as the volumes level out. I did what a lot of people do when they go shopping online. You put something in a cart, you wait a few days and go back and look at it. That accounts towards to almost nine Million People who visited these marketplaces up to date. Thats a good thing for us. Also healthcare costs are coming down. When you see some of the tractors saying saying experts under the American Public doesnt support the Affordable Care act. It turns out there are people like robert, who dont support it because they wanted single payer. They wanted to go even farther. I think theres a minority opinion that doesnt support the Affordable Care act. The majority of americans believe that you shouldnt try to defund the Affordable Care act as a compulsion for restarting our government. I agree with that. The fact is that the Affordable Care act is being implemented and people are excited about it. The Software Bugs in the system are going to get worked out. Years from now we will look back at Social Security and medicare, and say what a great deal for the American People. Host lets take another call from nate from allentown, pennsylvania. Hes a federal worker. Caller i lived in an area where theres a lot of people on welfare. Some families that i know havent worked in welfare for decade. I met with them, they were still receiving their checks. We hear about military men and women serving our great country and not receiving a paycheck. Speaker boehner and senator cruz went on and said those in congress allowing members to be paid. I believe they said it was one or nine bills held up by senator reid. Have you got a conclusion to this . This factual. Isnt true if the senators looked at the two 2. 3 tax that the government could be back up and running . Host sound like he was referring to the bill in the house last week. Guest that passed the house and that bill went to the president. The military is being paid. Lets clear that up. There is some gap we uncovered that related to the payment of the death benefit for the Service Member who died in his term in afghanistan. Were going to clear that up too because its the right thing to do. This is the reason that we have to have all of government working. Nate has pointed to that. I wanted to comment on nates reference to some of the people in his community who are receiving government assistance, commonly known as welfare temporary assistance for needy families. This is why i think that we have to focus on creating jobs. We had a situation in this country for about the last decade, real income has actually gone down. It is why i supported things like increasing the minimum wage so it keeps pace with inflation. When you work a minimum wage job, it actually put you above the poverty line. Those are important public policies, things that we have to work out. Its also true that we have to do things where were retraining people for 21st century economy. If were investing in domestic manufacturing, investing in research and technology, we have to have a skill set of workers who can go into those jobs. Those are investment thats will pay off for the future. Doing things like making investments that rebuild our roads and bridges and our Public Transit system. Those again, are things that create jobs. I would rather we get these budget issues set aside for a long period of time, not negotiate over whether were going to pay our bills. Get government running again and then let all of us, republicans and democrats, invest oh focus on what we need to do. Host were talking with maryland congresswoman donna edwards. Lets take a call from jean in tennessee on our line for democrats. Caller good morning representative edwards. Guest good morning. Caller i have a couple questions i like to ask. One of them is i believe it was 41 or 43 votes taken on the floor to eliminate obamacare. Can you give me a figure on the cost of that time and effort to do that in dollars and cents . The other question i have, could that time been well used to negotiate obamacare and second question i have or third, host we will respond to your first one now. Were short on time this morning. Guest only thing i would say we have taken 42 wasted vote on defunding, delaying, eliminating the Affordable Care act. Its a total waste of time. Our time would be better spent on these fiscal issues and on creating jobs for the American People. Thats what i want to spend my time on as a legislator. I want to get the government r