Transcripts For MSNBC MSNBC Live 20110411 : vimarsana.com

and republicans think the government should and should not do? at stake in this battle, a government default, another financial crisis, and the fate of the safety net that s been helping americans since the great depression. on wednesday president obama will unveil his plan to reduce a deficit, returning to the 2012 budget. the president s plan would repeal the bush tax cuts for the rich and cut defense spending, it would also cut medicare, medicaid and reform social security. we don t know yet exactly how the president plans to do this. what does he mean by social security reform, for example? we don t know how big those spending cuts will be, so we ll find out soon enough on wednesday, of course, but we do know what the republicans want. this budget deal that was cut or the spending deal that was cut is only the beginning. this is the first bite at the apple. republicans, of course, want to take another huge chunk out of that apple by attaching a new round of devastating cuts to any vote raising the nation s dead ceiling. without that vote, the government will hit its credit limit with potential disastrous effects to our economy. the consequences of failing to raise the debt ceiling would be armageddon-like in terms of the economy. we do not need to play chicken with our economy. essentially the republicans are willing to hold a recovery hostage in exchange for more spending cuts, and much more importantly for them, more tax cuts for the top bracket. the gop seems to be willing to shred medicare and medicaid to make sure that top 2% get bigger tax breaks. the big question is, will the president let them? so far presidential adviser david plough we cut spending. these were some tough cuts.ç curious to see a democratic administration boasting about that when that s what rpg usually run on, but the fight plouffe is referring to is coming up. how will the president position himself for that fight? whatever he decides will likely define his presidency. joining me is peter defazio, democrat from oregon, and member of the progressive caucus. are you encouraged or discouraged how that under card went? pretty discouraged. remember we wouldn t have a record deficit if in one vote in december he hadn t reduced the income when the president went along with extending all the bush tax cuts. then suddenly, my god, we have a record deficit, yeah, you reduce your income you have a deficit. ryan proposes we reduce our income more and therefore will get to a more fiscally responsible and even if we add it up, he set we wouldn t be balanced until 2040. he carefully leaves a lot of the pet things aside, paying people not to grow things, he s from an agriculture state. instead we ll hit at kids, wic, tax cuts, i m pretty discouraged. i guess what i would say is, remember, this republican class was substantially elected with a lot of help from folks on wall street, a lot of big money people through secretive giving, and through the u.s. chamber of commerce. the people on the front line, if they threaten the debt of the united states are the people on wall street, and are some of those big guys. i would suggest they pick up the phone and call their friends here in congress,ç the ones th just elected to change things and tell them, don t met with the fault for the united states of america. i appreciated your math in the beginning, because that puts it in perspective. they are brack bracking about this 38.5 million in spending cuts. that did hurt a lot of people, but they added $400 billion. so that means about ten times as much to the deficit as they helped with the spending cuts. now, it s amazing to me that washington seems to think that s perfectly normal. how do you turn that conversation around, congressman? because like we said, the next fight is much, much larger and critical that the conversation be different the next time around. how do you in congress turn it around? well, i advocated in january to my colleagues, democratic caucus, said we ll have one point of leverage that year. that will be the debate over extending the debt of the u.s. we should say they don t get a single democratic vote until they stop pretending that you can achieve fiscal responsibility without revenues. you just can t do it. today if we eliminated the entire government, all of the defense department, everybody the government does, we would still have a deficit. you can t pretend you re getting there with cuts and you can t keep cutting income. in somehow in their bizarre world that will rectify the deficit. it seems obviously the white house is critical. what you re saying is obviously it makes sense. there s revenue, and then there s spending. it looks like we have a massive problem with the revenue side of this equation, though congressman boehner keeps saying you don t. are you sure the white house will be on your side? it looks like wednesday they are. it looks like they ll go back to the bush or take away the bush tax cuts. are you encouraged by that? are you sure they re going to stay strong with that? that s a small step. remember, tho president did run on that, and he did cave on it in december. whether he was blackmailed with the treaty over russia, we won t know. this will be a kick turnaround. it s got to be more, honestly than just the top bracket tax cuts. if we allowed all the bush tax cuts to expire, own ten years we would have cut the deficit in half. that would have been a small increase on working families, a large increase or are on more wealthy folks, would have taken us back to clinton-era tax ruts where we balanced the budget and had a surplus. we re headed the wrong way, i fear. as you see from that poll, the american people are on your side, 81% say raise taxes on millionaires. it s hard to imagine a better number, but you said something interesting earlier on, up that s a moment of leverage for you. that s interesting, because that s what the republicans say, too. eric cantor said the same thing. is there going to be a lot of pressure from the president on both sides? yeah, but it s time for him to call their believe and speak out more forcefully. remember, they have a certain number of new members who have signed pledges not to vote to increase the debt in the united states, despite the fact that the 14th amendment says basically thousand shalt not question the debt of the united states in any place or time. they re going to do that, they re just saying they won t vote for it. they re creating an impossible scenario. how many of those there are, i m not sure, but i think they ll need democratic votes to get past this, and i think we could have a point of leverage and could maybe get real. you can t get to fiscal responsibility with numbers this big without revenues. one last thing, is it realistic to expect democrats in congress to actually pressure a democratic president? a lot of times we ve seen some hints of that, then when push comes to shove,ç they pull bac and say it s a democratic president, we have to do what he says. what s your sense of this time around? will it be the same old thing? or will it be real pressure, saying no, no in my opinion that s what the house did wrong in the last congress. we never pushed back no matter how offbase he was. there are a number of us in the caucus pushing back very hard on our leadership. i m going to continue to do that. who knows where they ll end up, but maybe we can take enough ds with us to make them uncomfortable and make them stick with making the president act like a democrat. he is a democratic president, you would hope he would do that, but we ll see how that turns out. congressman defazio, thank you for the time. thank you. ezra klein is a staff reporter for the washington post, and msnbc contributor. good to have you here. good to be here. just real quick, let s score the last round and tell me what you think it portends. what do you think it means for the bigger match? i think the central thing to know about this budget battle is when it began, john boehner had an opening bid we should cut $32 billion from last year s budget. at the end we cut $38.5 billion. john boehner ended up being in the center left. i think that tells you pretty much what you need to know about how far right this ended up being. so, think what everybody is asking right now is where is the president going to be in the next one, right? he said to chuck todd, you know, who obviously works here, at some point that he was itching for a fight at some point. when chuck pressed him on that a little while back after they did the big tax cuts back in december, right? obviously based on what you re saying and what a lot of people are saying, this was not the big fight the president gave more than boehner originally asked for. do we have any indication that the next time around is the time, that when president obama will fight, or do we not have an indicationç of that? you can argue it both ways. the white house will tell you a couple things, they got good cuts main ly it didn t come fro the nondefense discretionary bucket. the next time is the debt ceiling. if you don t raise it, it essentially goes into a tailspin. so there are on, on the one hand much, much higher consequences to try and hold this hostage. on the other, the president may like the occasional fight, if he says so, i trust him on that, but he doesn t like to allow consequences to come to fruition. he didn t want the bush tax cuts toss increase, even if that was the showdown he wanted to get the preferred tax cut. he didn t want the government to shut down, and he s really not going to want the debt ceiling to expire. one question for both him and the republicans is if no one is willing to let this happen, what is the nature of the negotiation that keeps it from happening. in for one in the end has that leverage, if no one is willing to admit they have the leverage, then why should anybody listen to the other side? see, but i think that gets to a critical question, who is going to blink? in reality, the republicans are actually, in my opinion, controlled by the chamber of commerce. the chamber of commerce did not want to shut down, they were just playing poker, and the chamber of commerce certainly does not want us to not raise the debt ceiling, because that would have tremendous problems for the economy, so i think you re right, the republicans do ultimately want the deal. the president wants a deal, but when we ve seen these showdowns in the past, am i wrong in thinking the democrats are usually the ones that blink? and again any indication from the president this time around he will not blink? sometimes people say that in negotiation so-and-so is an ace card. boehner is a joker. he has the tea party, the republicans, the çfreshmen, however he is refers to them this week. you know my donors don t want the shutdown, and i don t think the shutdown is a good idea. i ve been clear about that over and over again, but you also know i can t control these freshmen o. whatever it might be, so trust me i would like to cut a deal with you, but unless you give my something, i can t do it. at the end of the day, they have the capacity to make a more credible threat the democrats, obama, do not have that threat. the question then becomes whether or not the threat of what the republicans would suffer if they allowed the republicans to default, whether or not that outweighs their desire to try to negotiate a very large deal. so far michele bachmann and others have said this will be the big battle. kay bailey hutchinson called it armageddon. at the same time, what they got in the shutdown deal was not that significant. for obama and i think it s unlikely he ll give up a whole lot more than that. based on what you re saying, what congressman defazio said is all the more important. if there s a real credible progressive caucus that says no to the president, which they haven t effectively done yet, if they can do that, doesn t that give the democrats something to go back to boehner and say, well, i can t get my guys to vote yet, either, so sad day for you? arguably. i think these things are different when they play out. we saw some you have to balance out all sorts of different things about what would happen if we did default and the economy went into a tailspin. at the end of the day, the problem is they re actually too responsible to let that happen. i don t know if that threat ends up being as credible as it sounds at theç beginning of a negotiation. ezra, though, the bottom line is you re saying you re playing a game of chicken and the other side is crazier, so you never will win? sometimes that s a game you re playing. you end up sometimes having to eat more than they do. all right. we ll see how it turns out. ezra, thank you, we appreciate your insight into this. thank you. next, the fight over tax is about to heat up again. president obama will reportedly call for hikes on the rich this week. this time i hope he means business. robert reich joins us on real shared sacrifice and how it has worked before for america. a very interesting conversation. mitt romney releases this riveting video announcing his exploratory committee. can you feel the excitement through your tv screen? and sarah palin is back on the birther bandwagon, no wonder we re learning republicans are freaking out about the potential 2012 field. be kind to your eyes with transitions lenses. transitions adapt to changing light so you see your whole day comfortably and conveniently while protecting your eyes from the sun. ask your eyecare professional which transitions lenses are right for you. ask your eyecare professional for your transitions certificate of authenticity for your chance to win instant monthly prizes or our $20,000 grand prize! how are you getting to a happier place? running there? dancing there? how about eating soup to get there? campbell s soups fill you with good nutrition, farm-grown ingredients, and can help you keep a healthy weight. campbell s. it s amazing what soup can do. so who s right about taxes? should they be higher or lower? we re going to do something crazy. we re actually going to look at the evidence and show you what s happened in american history, when we return. we re america s natural gas. and here s what we did today in homes all across america: we created the electricity that powered the alarm clocks and brewed the coffee. we heated the bathwater and gave kelly a cleaner ride to school. cooked the cube steaks and steamed the veggies. entertained dad, and mom, and a neighbor or two. kept watch on the house when they slept. and tomorrow we could do even more. we re cleaner, domestic, abundant and ready now. we re america s natural gas. the smarter power today. learn more at anga.us. [ male announcer ] for the things you can t wash, freshen it with febreze. febreze eliminates odors and leaves a light, fresh scent. it s a breath of fresh air. president obama s plan for reducing the deficit will introduce a topic sure to make last week s wrangling seem like a lovefest. he s expected to call for tax increases for the wealthiest americans, and they re not going to like that. that s a prop for republicans. in fact, they think it should be more lopsided. they re proposing more tax cuts. just lynn to speaker boehner. washington has a spending problem. it doesn t have a revenue problem. they always say that. it s just an assumption, but nowhere near reality. the reality is we have a massive revenue problem, but paul ryan s plan would lower the top tax rates for individuals and corporations from 35% to 25%. the plan would bring the tax rate on high earners down to the lowest level since 1931. and the tax policy center puts the revenue lost from ryan s plan to $2.9 trillion over the next deck indicate. that doesn t help the deficit. it hurts the deficit by 2.9 trillion. you know what? that money has to come from somewhere. how do you think they make up for it. look at this grand from robert greenstein. he shows two thirds of the spending cuts come from programs that help lower-income americans, programs like medicaid. food stamps and çlow-income housing. that doesn t sound like shared sacrifice to me, so how does the gop spin this one? we re in a situation where we have a saved net in place in this country for people who frankly don t need one. we have to focus on making sure we have a safety net for those who actually need it. that s amazing, but i might be wrong, but by cutting medicare and medication, the gop is taking away the safety net from people who need it to create a safety net for people who don t need it, but this is gop 101. they are constantly trying to rig the system for the rich. remember, just this december, the bush tax cuts were extended for two more years. it cost the is government $900 billion. a quarter of the savings went to the top 1% of americans. let me just repeat that. top 1% of the country. quarter of $900 billion, and now they say they have to have spending cuts from you. but by increasing the tax rate on the rich, of course, it could ease the pressure to make the cuts that paul ryan is suggesting. it shows that the top marginal tax rate was 50% in the mid 1980s, and much, much higher in the 1950s, the golden age of america. remember when president clinton had the higher rates? we created 22 million jobs. joining me now is former clinton labor secretary robert reich, now professor at uc berkeley. his latest book is called aftershock. first of all is the team misreading the legacy? they are saying, okay, we have to be centrist like you guys were, is there something wong with that? or do they have it right? the big thing wrong is this is notç like the mid 1990s. a lot of people are hurting, we re still in the gravitational pull of the great recession, it s very different to get out. we have 13.5 people listen unemployed. know, the economy is not buoyant. this economy is really in trouble. if we make major cuts overall, we ll be slows economic growth down and slowing the creation of new jobs. i love the point in one of your articles is the reason clinton was reelected is because we were creating 400,000 jobs a month. i think that s a available lesson. to the point on taxes, we can also talk about the clinton experience there. there was a higher tax rate for everybody, for the rich, but also for the rest of us. it does create 22 million jobs. is that the right way to go? should president obama go further and say, hey, we have to go back to the rates, period? look it, i don t think there s any choice, cenk. most americans in polls show they are in favor of a millionaire s tax. they understand that the alternative, the 07b8 alternative of cutting social security and medicare and education and roads and bridges and everything we need is to raise taxes, and most people can t afford to pay more, so who can t afford to pay more? the rich who have been getting a steadily larger percent of total income in this country. look back over the past 30 years, the people in the top 1%, they doubled their share of national income. doubled. if you re in the top 0.10% of income you ve tripled, and yet tax rates, and i m talking about income taxes, estate taxes, capital gains taxes, those tax rates keep on going down. you know on friday s show, we showed a piece from bloomberg business week that showed for the top 400 earners in the country their effective tax rate has gone down to 17%, which is a lot less than what we pay, which is unbelievable, right? and now that s main by and let me just also add to that, they re doing better and better. the top ceos pay went up this year by 12%. now the average ceo for the top 200 major companies makes $9.6 million. it s absurd to say they can t pay the tax. of course it s absurd. i think it s a matter of patriotism here as well. if you were taking home a bigger and bigger slice of the economy and paying less and less in tax rates and imposing the costs on everybody else, are you really being patriotic, fulfilling your responsibility to this country? i would say possibly no. wall street is doing better than ever. as you said, ceo are doing better than the recession, but most americans are doing worse than they were doing before, and they were certainly in trouble we are in a financial crisis right now, we re in an economic crisis, and the rich have to pay their fair share. secretary reich, one last quick thing, maybe if we ask it in the form of a trick question. if we asked the republicans would you be willing to agree that the last tax rate that the last republican president had, maybe they would go for that, and of course the answer is dwight eisenhower, and what was his tax rate? 90%? 91%? the marginal tax rates under the dwight eisenhower administration and nobody would have accused him, a republican, a former general, of being a çsocialist, the top marginal tax rate was 91%. and the economy did well. in fact it was doing better in the three decades after the second world war than it s been doing. rachel maddow once said she is a liberal, which means she pretty much agrees with the eisenhower administration, right? who would have known? that s how much the spectrum has shifted in this country. secretary reich, we always enjoy the conversation. thank you for joining us tonight. thanks, cenk. bye-bye. a new report shows republicans getting frustrated about their weak 2012 candidates. now they want more options. why do they think their current crop of leaders are so bad? we ll discuss that next. plus or con job of the day. oohhh.my back. 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[ male announcer ] for powerful pain relief, use bayer aspirin. you must first tear it down. and, as you ve probably heard, this place has seen its share of that. yes, we have become an underdog. but, no, we will not be asking you to lower your standards to buy a car made here. we will in fact be asking you to raise them. what do you see yourself doing after you do retire? client comes in and they have a box. and inside that box is their financial life. people wake up and realize. i better start doing something. we open up that box. we organize it. and we make decisions. we really are here to help you. they look back and think wow. i never thought i could do this. but we ve actually done it. [ male announcer ] visit ameriprise.com and put a confident retirement more within reach. it s time for the con job of the day, one of my favorite segments. it s a flip-flop from congressman mike pence. last week republicans were howling about defunding planned parenthood as part of the budget fight. mike pence even saying on morning joe it was a deal breaker. are you willing to hold up this entire budget over defunding planned parenthood? well, of course i am. of course, he is, but after the budget deal came through without the rider, pence had a very difficult take on the whole thing. it s nonsense to say that republicans were willing to shut down the government over this. the same nonsense he had said just a couple days ago. so on tuesday definding planned parenthood was important enough to shut down the government, but on sunday it was nonsense. i know it went by fast. let s watch again. are you willing to hold up this entire budget over defunding planned parenthood? well, of course i am. it s nonsense to say that republicans were willing to shut down the government over this. that was so much fun. i want to do it one more time. of course i am. it s nonsense. of course i am. it s nonsense. of course i am. it s nonsense. i m trying to figured out if the con job was the first or second statement or the whole thing that they cared about the riders. either way, it s definitely the con job of the day. mitt romney takes a big step colin poweller to running, but republicans are less than excited. why they re freaking about their potential 2012 candidates. michele bachmann is in iowa today with bad çcompany. what was she doing speaking to a group whose leader has bashed gays? [ twig snaps ] [ whispering ] shhhh. did you hear that? it sounded like the chocobeast. the what? half man, half beast. he ll stop at nothing to sink his fangs into people who steal other people s chocolate temptations. you guys have nothing to worry about, right? aaah! [ all scream ] nice job, chocobeast! thank you. [ male announcer ] six indulgent layered desserts, at 150 calories or less. new temptations. it s the first jell-o that s just for adults. can stop frequent heartburn before it begins? heartburn happens when stomach acid refluxes into the esophagus. prilosec otc uses a unique delayed-release system that protects the medicine as it passes through the stomach s tough acid. then it gets absorbed into the body, turning off many acid-producing pumps at the source. with just one pill a day, you get 24-hour heartburn protection all day and all night. prilosec otc. heartburn gone. power on. it s a tough year for mitt romney to run for president. the majority of the gop is pushing to repeal a health care law that s almost identical to the one that romney signed five years ago tomorrow, actually as governor of massachusetts. nevertheless he officially announced his presidential exploratory committee. president obama s policies have failed. he and virtually all the people around him had never worked in the real economy. they just don t know how jobs are created in the private sector. that s where i spent my entire career, with able leadership, america s best days are still ahead. that s why today i am announcing my exploratory committee for the presidency of the united states. it s time that we put america back on a course of greatness.ç yeah, okay. all right as scintillating as that was, politico is reporting that republicans in congress are increasingly unhappy about the 2012 prospects. california congressman david dreier told politico everybody is looking for ronald reagan and they don t see one. they re always looking for reagan. i ve got news for them, anyway, shelley moore kaputo said there s no and there s thighs jam for some of the candidates, but that enthusiasm is tilted toward the extreme right. donald trump has breathed new life into the absurd birther movement and has been rising in the polls, which may have inspired sarah palin to rethink her position. at an event back in february, she dismissed the issue. the birth certificate, you know, others can engage in that kind of conversation. it s distracting, it gets ann annoyi annoying, and let s stick with what what really matters. now that it s worked for trump, all of a sudden palin is reconsidering the birther strategy. here she is on fox news this weekend. i appreciate that the donald wants to spend his resources in getting to the bottom of something that s so interests him and many americans. i think he was born in hawaii, because there was a birth announcement put in the newspaper, but obviously if there s something there that the president doesn t want people to see on that birth certificate that, you know, he seems going to great lengths to make sure it isn t shown. that s kind of perplexing for a lot of people. what s perplexing is that it s been online for three years and you still haven t looked at it. while she s hopping on the birther bandwagon, michele bachmann is in iowa working the homophobic crowd. today she spoke to the iowa family leader, an extreme antigay group, the head of this group recently told think progress, he thinks homosexuality isç a public heah risk comparable to smoking. we re teaching kids as an adult don t smoke, because that s a risky health lifestyle, the same can be true, too, with the hock osexual lifestyle. can you also catch it that way? you never know with these crazy people what they think. bachman is no the only hopeful cozying up to that group. tim pawlenty has spoken to them. rick santorum, herman king and newt gingrich are all expected to address them soon. do any of these guys have a winning strategy? or are they david weigel, i think ron paul spoke to them earlier, i should be clear on that, but dave, nice to have you here. first, let s start on bachman2346789. you don t seem too disappointed, but let s go. let s do it. i can t wait. she s going to appeal to this antigay group. do you remember the story of how she hit in the bushes once and jumped out at a gay rally? this sounds like crazy stuff. is it possible it will work that social conservatives in iowa, et cetera, will love this? and have her win iowa, possibly? well, a lot of times that s what iowa republican caucus-goers want. this might be a little difficult, because there s not a contest the democratic race this time, and maybe more independents will show up, but if you look at who s won in the past, mike huckabee won in 2008, pat robertson did well in 1998. alan keys did well. there s a big contingent of social conservatives who can t win elsewhere, but they ll make their stand in iowa. i think that s complicating the strategies of the couple of candidates who polled better than her. o cf1 or. them seriously, but mitt romney polls very well. tim pawlenty, as generic a right-hand as you can get. a generic republican does pretty well against oy obama. they don t do as well when they take these extreme positions, and they might to win in an iowa or south carolina, so that s a structural problem for republicans. speaking of mitt romney, he not only released that ad, but he also has a new slogan or logo, i get? as you pointed out in slate it looks amazingly like aqua fresh. is that a mistake on his part? imaso mr. corporate america, i ll take a corporate logo and pug it on s mine. if all we can sake about them is their logo looks like something you would whiten your teeth with, then they re doing okay. his video i thought was 2 1/2 minutes man to camera dialogue. that was anti-pawlenty. this is more independencie movie style. i thought everyone knows what they re getting. he came in basically second in 2008. he was a good soldier who dropped out early, so for whatever reason, kind of like reagan in 1980 or even bush in 2000, he can come in kind of slow, safe, make make fun of him, sure, but he s going to blow everybody away in fund-raising. i don t know how he beats them on a couple issues that they re passionate about like health care. that will be a major problem for him. if he can get beyond that, he s in better shape. david plouffe was making fun of trump and the birther ç movement, what is palin trying to do here? get media attention? or does she think this is a wins strategy? you know, polling keeping going back and forth. kind of surprising to me, because i was reporting on some of these rumors three years ago and thought they might fade after a couple years. it s still 20-some percent of the country who believe there s really doubt so this is kind of what we re getting at before. as long as they candidates are going for part of the republican base, there s things they might indulge in that won t play well. this one, palin has actually been falling precipitously in polls since november 2010, really since january, when she kind of, you know, mangled and was a xwit too self-serving in the handling of the tucson response. she s fallen very low, beyond unelectably low. she loses to obama in states where i don t think he could land without being protested. so she s desperate, because as the old xherchls in the 80s used to say, she fallen and can t get up. she can at least mock him and bring down the tone of conversation, which is something she s proven to be pretty good at. well, congratulations to her. david weigel, thank you for your time tonight. next, the shut jon showdown is over for now, but boehner and the republicans think they scored a big win, but that s the debate we re going to have next. hi, dad. we need to talk. 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[ male announcer ] nothing s proven to relieve pain better than extra strength bayer aspirin. it rushes relief to the site of pain. feel better? yeah. thanks for the tip. now, let s look at the big picture coming out of budget battle. what does it mean for the next showdown? republicans ended up getting $78.5 billion in cuts, but back in february they were pushing for just $72 billion in cuts. at the time harry reid called that extreme. the chairman of the budget committee today, today, send us something even mo draconian than we had originally anticipated. so harry reid and the democrats ended up giving away 6.5 billion more than the initial draconian republican plan even called for. that sounds like a pretty being loss, right? but senator reid declared victory saying they were proud to have gone this deal. once again david plouffeç conceded that, yeah, the cuts that the republicans forced democrats to swallow were brutal. some of the cuts were draconian. it s not just the number. it s what composes the number. but the obama administration argues the cuts could have been even worse. they say democrats were able to save some programs that republicans tried to put on the chopping block. meantime there are also big questions on the republican side. true, they got more than the $72 billion that they originally wanted, but some say it s still not good enough. from what i know, it sounds like john boehner got a good deal, probably not good enough for me to support it. and michele bachmann wrote on friday, quote, the deal that was reached tonight is a disappointment for me and for millions who expected $100 billion in cuts. sure enough, republican leadsers are already bending to that pressure from the far right, positioning themselves for a much bigger fight ahead. this is just the first step, the first step is what has to be a lot of steps. if the president won t lead, we will. in other words, republicans are getting ready to seriously target what they call entitlements, just as paul ryan called for. that s a move that could backfire on them. i want to bring in two people to talk about that, paul waldman, from the prospect. in his new article he says republicans should brace, and karen kinney. first, let me start with you, paul. i get the sense that you didn t think that what obama and the democrats accomplished in this fight was really a victory. we still don t know the details, but the thing that was disconcerting to a lot of people was when, afterwards on friday night president obama came out and hailed the cuts as historic, theç largest budget cuts in history. the problem with that is that it then sets the context for the next battles, the battle over the debt ceiling and the 2012 budget, and what it s saying is essentially that cutting government spend seg what we ought to be doing even in a shaky recovery. the problem is most liberals, including most committed believe that s not what we ought to be doing, we should be spending more when we re in this economic condition. but the president has accepted the presumption that the republicans are working from, and the problem could be when we get to the next battle once again we won t argue over whether we should cut, but how much. karen, is that a problem in framing, or are we missing something about the obama strategy? i don t yet know can we all agree that cuts need to be made, but where and how is what we re fighting over. then they end they kind of came in and made it a tough argument. that being said, if you take a step back, i suppose there s one school of thought that the says there would be implications of these cuts that we can point to and say, this is what the republicans will do. if you give them the white house, if they get full control back of the house and senate, this is the kind of thing they will do versus what we want to do, which issie, we need to rein in the debt, but we don t want to do it on the backs of the middle class. but that s the best i can come up with. i appreciate you trying isn t it tough to make that argument when you agree with them. sure,ç i think what s important is coming up to the next set of battles, let s take a lesson from wisconsin, even from this last week from people in america were enraged at the idea of cutting women s health care and clean water, make it simple, make it straightforward and delineate what it is we stand for and what democrats are opposed to, and stout letting the republicans get ahead of the game on it. you know, paul, no matter what you think of the democrat strategy, the republican strategy may have some problems. charlie cook wrote most want to see the budget balanced and spending cut. however they don t want security or medicare or medicaid touched. they re soaking it with lighter fluid and waving a match at it. he thinks the republicans might be in a lot of trouble. did the president set them up to be in this kind of trouble be overreaching? possibly. it s important for democrats to make it concrete, to talk about what s going to happened. i think that the outcome of the debt ceiling argument is one that is really, really important. today, this afternoon, the white house came out and made what was essentially their opening bid, say they wanted a clean bill on the debt ceiling, one not loaded down with more cuts and policy riders, which is what republicans want to do. it s important for them to hold to that position. we re going to have to raise the debt ceiling, everybody understands it, and what republicans are engaged in when they re saying that we re going to allow the united states government to default on its loans unless we get the things we want, this may sound extreme, but that s almost economic terrorism. so it s really important for the white house to say, we re not going to negotiate about that, we re not going to potentially send the entire global economy into a tailspin. if you want an argument about the budget, we can do it in the fall over the 2012 budget, but it will be really telling whether or not the white house stands firm on this idea thatç the debt ceiling soob a vote in and of itself. paul waldman and karen finney, great conversation. thank you both. thanks. we ll tell you what it means to be a liberal when we come back. whoa. right? get out. i know! who knew? i mean. exactly! really. that s what i mean. 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[ male announcer ] visit ameriprise.com and put a confident retirement more within reach. we ve been talking a lot about the budget battle today, and i know what the president s strategy was. he wanted to stay above the fray. look, that makes some sense in certain contexts. you have a president that says democrats want this, republicans want that, and i m going to bring them together, i m going to bring the country together, but sometimes we need a leader in the middle of the fray, saying this is what i stand for. i want to tell you a quick story, someone who was on my show the young turks he s an actor a comedian rick overton. he said he dad fought the nazis, a proud and strong liberal and told them what a real liberal does. he says you put the women and children behind you, and if you re in a war you put the weak and the wounded behind you, you grab a gun, stand a post and say i will protect you. that s what it means to be aç liberal. i was blown away by that. i love that definition. in the context of this political battle, we still need someone to stand the post and be a strong leader and say these are cuts i am not willing to make for the most disadvantaged or for the middle class. it s reeds freshing to have that kind of strong leader from time to time. that s what we believe we elected in president obama. so i think of rick overton and his dad every once in a while and what it means to be a liberal and what it means to be a strong leader. i hope the president knows that. what we ve got next is a really important battle, the battle we ve been telling you about all day day. it s about