Signature legislation. To ask you about the government shutdown. Did that help or hurt conservatives . That topic is constantly debated among conservatives. At the time, and continuously, i argued that it was a bad idea. As long as harry reid is in charge of the senate and president obama is in the white house, you are not going to repeal or defund obamacare. Any strategy contingent upon hising obama to defund signature legislative achievements that he spent the first year of his presidency , staked his whole reelection on, and the idea that this is his one accomplishment and it is a big legislative thatplishment the idea he was going to on do that and you and you based your entire strategy on that was a poor strategy. The publicans ended up caving without getting much in return because they had to. Then, we saw with the deal that was just struck with the budget, it loosens the sequestration cap that conservatives fought for. It loosens them for 2 years. Conservatives originally said, our bottom line is we do not want to break the sequestration levels of spending. That wouldve been a realistic demand in september. Off ended up in a worse position because they are not being taken as seriously by leadership because john boehner will said, i will put things on the floor and pass it with democratic support. What i compared it to is salary negotiations. There are conservatives who try to argue, we have to stake out the maximalist position. If you staked out firm ground, the ultimate settlement will be than you would have gotten if you took a less extreme position. That only works within certain boundaries. Someone isit to if making 50,000 a year and they go to their boss and say, i want a raise. I want 70,000 a year. , the boss says, we will give you an extra 5,000 or 10,000. To ask for more. If you go into your boss office and say, if you do not give me 2 million, i will leave. The reason the response is not going to be, how about we give you 5,000 500,000 . That is the problem with what happened with this government shutdown. Weremade demands that completely unrealistic. They could never happen. Theme stopped taking seriously and they ended up with a result that was even worse than they would have otherwise gotten. Host our guest for this segment is philip klein, a Senior Writer for the washington examiner. If you want to join the discussion, the number is 202 four democrats for forcratsand 2025853882 independents. Our. Our first call is from dudley. Was listening to you talking about the conservative priorities for 2014. Why do you mention jobs, jobs, jobs . A living wage. That,s you did not do because he would be under this president. This is a shame. You are not hurting president obama. You have conservatives out here who are poor. You have independents and democrats who are hurting. Why cant you come together as a country and human beings to help people . You do not want us to have unemployment. Help president obama get his jobs agenda. Get us a decent living wage . 725 you live off of 7. 25 an hour. I did not hear anything like that come from you. Why dont you stop this madness and live together like we should in this country . This country is too rich and powerful for people to hurt people because you want your party in the white house. You might get into the white house if you do something for people. Guest thank you for the call. Good morning. About whats an idea they want to do about the economy. Just as president obama has passionate views about the approach he wants to take with moreconomy in terms of Government Spending and trying to do infrastructure projects, extending unemployment benefits, and so forth. Republicans just have a different idea. Conservatives do not think that approach works. In and heobama came did this 800 billion dollars stimulus plan and republicans do 800 billion stimulus plan and republicans do not think the stimulus was the right way to go about it. The idea that republicans should just give in to all of obamas not saying come together. Come together is both sides meeting halfway. Just as republicans have their point of view in terms of what would be the best economic policy, obama has his point of view. Host next call is from tampa, florida. Woody is on the line for independents. Caller i find it interesting. The lady that called for the much called you out on most everything. Interesting that conservatives feel we should throw 1. 3 Million People off of longterm unemployment. I notice we have not heard the speaker standing up and screaming, where are the you see, he was standing up all the time screaming jobs, jobs, jobs. He was not the speaker of the house for the first year and a half or so. Noticed is that he is not screaming jobs, jobs, jobs. You tell us that you do not believe. You do not believe that there should be stimulus. Haveou continue to vote to 40 billion go to big oil companies. They are the largest profitmaking machines on earth. You continue to give millions and tens of millions of dollars to multimillion dollar business. Instead of the momandpop farmers. We continue to give money to wall street to bail them out with quantitative easing. They can continue to buy back their shares and pay higher dividends. They continue to bend over the average middleclass american. They utilize them without benefit of lubrication or protection. Guest thank you for the call. I think that youre confusing me with a spokesperson for speaker boehner. Opposed the type of corporate welfare that you have talked about. Back in 2008, i strongly advocated against the wall street bailout. I did not think it was fair to give wall street bankers, who did a lot to contribute to the financial meltdown, a big bailout. Problems in the long run in terms of creating a moral hazard. It encourages bad behavior. And so, i think that the famous libertarian conservative freemarket economist, milton that the one said importance of capitalism is that it is not just a process system. It is a profit and loss system. The loss is as important as the prophet. Were ushering in a longterm market. I agree with the caller. We should not have corporate welfare. The Republican Party should be more consistent in its small government message. That is part of the battle that is going on within the conservative movement right now. It is the moneyed interest thats the Tea Party Groups are trying to fight against the corporate influence. We recognize that often times, the corporations do the most increase. During the bush administration, president bush had prescription drug. Tot was a huge handout multibillion dollar pharmaceutical companies. A lot of conservatives disagreed with that. I am among them. I do agree that conservatives should do more in the freemarket message. That means ending corporate welfare. Host i want to talk about health care. You talked about different priorities. It is a tactical disagreement. Paul broun is running for saxby chambliss. Lets take a listen and get your thoughts. [video clip] a lot of conservatives say step back and let it fall to pieces. I do not think that is a responsible thing to do. We need to be looking for things that improve health care of overall. If there was something, we need to know about it. Jack kingston wants to keep obamacare. He wants to fix it. I think that is wrong. As a doctor, i know that obamacare is hurting georgia families. They are increasing premiums. Just ask the 400,000 georgians who could have their Health Care Plans canceled under obamacare. I do not want to fix obamacare. I want to get rid of it. I am the only candidate for the u. S. Senate who is consistently calling to repeal obamacare. I have the solution. It is my patient option act. That is the difference. Host bill klein, your thoughts. Guest it is important to create a distinction between repealing obamacare and having an alternative. Is the saying that fixing it tantamount to supporting it. I think that these terms get thrown around and inflated in the political environment. Healthpresident obamas care law passed, the United States did not have a free market. Most individuals got there health care through explicitly government run programs like medicare or medicaid or they got it through their employers. That then for that is tax code is set up in such a way that it benefits individuals getting their health care through their employers as opposed to Getting Health Care themselves. At the state level, there are a lot of benefit mandates. They require insurers to cover certain prespecified services and benefits trip that drives up the cost of insurance. The conservative approach to health care should be to try to thate all of the issues were presenting preventing the creation of a free market. It would give people more control of their health care dollars. If you give individuals more concise control and you have a more consumer driven approach, and there is more transparency, nobody knows what the cost is going to be. Nobody knows what the cost of a doctor visit will be. If you give more transparency and put more power in the hand of the consumers, this draws down the prices. It will increase the quality. That has happened in every aspect of the consumer market. Americans are consumers. We shop around and that is what we think should happen for health care. Where the debate existed prior to obamacare. Obamacare took a different approach. Instead of saying consumers should be in charge, he said that the government should be in charge. Officials that all purchase insurance policies to offset the cost of requiring insurance to cover older and sicker individuals. Were going to create these government run exchanges with people buying government designed benefits. The choice is very limited. You are seeing a lot of problems with that approach. Facingstion right now conservative is how close can you get to that ideal of a consumer driven system. , i think i wrote a column on that this past week. I think that 2014 will be a pivotal year. Determine thel success or failure of obamacare. It is quite possible that the , thehat this works out individual market for insurance will collapse in this country. The reason why is that there is something in the and churns industry known as a dust smut death spiral. If you guarantee that everyone can Purchase Health insurance regardless of whether or not theyre sick, then it gives a disincentive for people to buy insurance. They figure they may as well wait until they get sick to buy coverage. If you are healthy, you do not have as much reason to buy health coverage. What happens is that Healthy People leave the Insurance Market. Suddenly, youre left with higher prices. The insurance for is more skewed to older and sicker people. Insurers have to charge more. This dissuades more Healthy People from the Insurance Market. When that cycle perpetuates, you end up with an unsustainable situation. Obamacare took some sort of measures in order to mitigate against that risk. That is why you have the individual mandate, which will force healthy individuals into the market. That is why you have the subsidies that entice them. It makes it a bit of deal. What youre seeing a lot of , in a lot oft cases, the premiums are a lot higher than people expected. Even after the subsidies, they are not enough to cover the increased cost. The mandate in 2014 is rather modest. It is ramped up over time. Next year, it is one percent of your taxable income. A lot of people will be more likely to go there. We do not yet have the demographic of the insurance exchanges. People of the young and healthy demographic, how many are older and sicker but enrollment numbers have been much lower than expected, even though they are expected to be higher in december. I think that that is a sort of major problem. Are the law kind of collapses the instability of the Insurance Market. Republicans will have a greater political leverage to argue for alternate solutions. They will want to undo much of obamacare. If a lot of these doomsday scenario predictions end up being wrong, and it turns out that this growing pain works out, we end up with a much more stable Insurance Market, then it ht under some predictions it will be harder for republicans to undo it. If millions of people are getting insurance through the law, then it becomes politically more difficult. That is one of the arguments for throughrepublicans push the d funding strategy in december. Once the benefits are turning out, it is harder to undo. Just as medicare and Social Security and other Government Programs have become entrenched. Host we have a lot of calls waiting. Next is kansas. Richard is on the line for democrats. Caller the Affordable Care act was part of the private insurers. A restricted regulators. They have to ensure the healthy. Or toher components promote the health of all. Mammograms for women had to be paid for with no copay. Same for cancers readings. The Affordable Care act was to restrict what the insurers could do. To buy insurance today on exchange, those policies are being offered by private insurance companies. Not by the government. Careree market for health is saying that health care could be provided by a free market. It requires many buyers and sellers. Leg,we get sick or break a there are not many providers are sellers that we can go to. We have to go to the one that is closest. Saying that the Health Care Market is a competitive market that operates that way no. It is priced more like a monopoly market. Guest thank you for the call. I think that the issue is that it is true. Does imposeare law a lot of new requirements on insurers. Accept that they have to all comers. Even people who are sick or have a previous condition. It is true that they require that insurers offer a lot of benefits. There areis that tradeoffs involved. Going to require insurers to cover people with preexisting conditions, you have certain benefits without copays. That means that premiums have to be higher. That is not a big deal if youre someone who are older and you could not get coverage. Then you probably are very happy about the Health Care Law. For a number of other people who do not have that benefit, who do not need a lot of the medical services that are now required, they now have to pay for those medical services. A lot of people are seeing their friends lansky canceled. Many people who like their plans are getting them canceled because they do not meet requirements. Part of having the free market would give people more choice. They could choose what insurance to get. It is true, as you say, that there are emergency scenarios where people do not have much choice. If you are having a heart attack, you will not go online and try to find the best possible way to treat it. However, a lot of medical procedures are not necessarily that much of an emergency situation. If you are getting a certain test, it is not necessarily something that has to happen that day. It might be something that could happen in a few weeks. It might not have to happen immediately. One thing that is interesting that you might want to look at as an example is if you look at the market for basic surgery. That is not typically covered by insurance. Time,ou see is that, over the price for laser eye surgery has gone down dramatically. Technology has improved so that the procedure is a lot better. It is a lot less risk involved. So, that is all i am saying. Improves andarket quality improves. Price goes down. Why is it that health care is not . I would argue that the reason is that it is because consumers do not have control over their health care dollars. Host our guest is phil cline. We have 10 minutes left. Next, ken in boca raton, florida. Caller good morning. From the and duration of president obama, Mitch Mcconnell and paul ryan and the they foundation agreed that they were going to be obstructionist and they were going to be the party of no. I had the opportunity to speak with senator leahy, who was very much a part of the early negotiations. He agreed to certain aspects of the Affordable Care act and went off to iowa claiming that the Affordable Care act was going to kill your grandmother. There were death panels. That the seems to me an idea romney care was that the heritage foundation, a very conservative organization, passed. It occurs to me that what really is going on here is that once it became a president obama program, based on romney care, it became an egregious. It was not acceptable to republicans. I do not know if that is what was said earlier on. We pay for when people go to the emergency room. People pay, the taxpayer pays for their care. Theyre republican or conservative approach to health care was dropdead. There was an he harry truman quote where says never teach a pig to sing. It only irritates the pig. It seems to me that everyone in this republican, conservative arena seems to be more caught up with the fact that we have a black resident. If this was romney, it would not been a problem. Guest ok. Thank you for the call. You bring up some fair points. Other points i disagree with. Particularly with bringing race into this. If nothing else, you can blame partisanship or something. If you look at how president healthcare proposal was opposed, it is tough to argue that race is a factor and not partisan disagreement. That two things. It is true that a version of the mandate and exchange approach was supported i heritage. Romney wasthat mitt essentially the models for obamacare. We had medicaid expansion. Where peoplechange receive subsidies. That was regulated. But the important point to note is that, while there were some conservatives supporting the policy, it was not the standard conservative policy. Strenuously and, at the time, disagreed with romneys Health Care Proposal package. Therenuously disagreed with idea of forcing individuals to purchase a product that they do not want. I did not agree with the idea of mandating health insurance. I for one strongly disagreed with romney then. I agreed i disagreed with it when it was called obamacare. Yes, we can differentiate between conservatives and the Republican Party. Often times, they are very much in conflict. Host the next call is from texas. Jill is on the line for republicans. Caller i have two questions. It is ahink statebystate problem as far as unemployment . Here in texas, there are jobs everywhere. We have the highest