Vice president of the progressive think tank, new York Democratic congressman and friend of the show jerry mather and msnbc contributor joy reed, managing editor of thegrio. Com. On a Conference Call with donors this week, portions of which were posted online by abc news mitt romney blamed his loss to president obama on what he calls gifts the president had given to core democratic constituencies like students, women, and latinos. What the president the president s campaign did was focus on certain members of his base coalition, give them extraordinary financial gifts from the government, and then work very aggressively to turn them out to vote. Just note that, you know, doesnt actually cost any money but side point. Romneys framing of the president s Campaign Strategy is, of course, offensive but it is also not entirely inaccurate. The president did, indeed, deliver on some of the major policy priorities of those core democratic constituencies. Mandatory Insurance Coverage for birth control, making Student Loans more affordable, and deferring action, as i said on young, undocumented immigrants among other things. Romney calls those gifts, and in many cases a majority of americans would call them good policy. What republicans seem to be picking up on is key components of the president s coalition exerted considerable leverage over the white house during the president ial campaign. Know as we enter the fight over what i and some others are calling the fiscal curve the combination of tax increases and spending cuts set to start on january 1st, the question is will the left retain any of that leverage over the president , or has it disappeared . On tuesday, a group of Union Leaders and progressive organizers met with president obama at the white house. Lee saunders, president of asfcme, the American Federation of state, court and municipality state county and municipal employees said the coalition that reelected president obama would remain intact to pressure lawmakers during the standoff over the fiscal curve. What were going to do is keep our members mobilized and organized in certain communities across the country. Were going to another campaign, we won the election but were going into another campaign now. For his part president obama reiterated on wednesday the election had delivered a clear verdict on the question of whether taxes should be raised on income over 250,000. If there was one thing that everybody understood it was a big difference between myself and mr. Romney it was when it comes to how we reduce our deficit i argued for a polled, responsible approach, and part of that included make sure the wealthiest americans pay a little bit more. I think every voter out there understood that that was an important debate. And the majority of voters agreed with me. President obama met with congressional leaders yesterday to begin the talks and House Speaker john boehner suggested the parties could reach broad agreement on revenue targets and savings from entitlement reforms to avoid the immediate budget cuts. The leaders said they would meet again after thanksgiving. All right, congressman mather, before we get to this political question, because i think the political question is really important. I think some of the stuff we saw in the Election Year really was the product of Election Year dynamics. And in a positive way. Thats why we have elections. Thats exactly right. People say thats politics. Thats also known as democracy. Thats also known as accountability. Theres nothing wrong with it, right . Before we get to the politics of that, and george i want to bring you in on that question, substantively, where do you want, what do you want to see . I mean if youre to say jerry mather, i make you emperor of america for for or emperor of these negotiations and you get to like sign the document and thats what we get, what is the end point you would like to see . The end point i would like to see is something were not going to get given the fact that republicans control the house, but, what i would like to see is much less of an emphasis on the deficit, which is a longterm, maybe mediumterm problem, not an immediate problem, and a concentration of getting people back to work in curing this economy. I would like to see much more spending on infrastructure. Let the government can borrow money at negative Interest Rates, theyre paying us to take money off their hands, borrow more money as a temporary increase in the deficit frankly, use that to invest in infrastructure, schools, hospitals, roads, bridges, smart electric grid protection against hurricanes, whatever, which will make us more competitive in the long run. Right. Number one. Number two, give money to state and local governments, as we did in the stimulus bill but havent been doing since then so that they dont continue laying off Police Officers and firefighters, and teachers and so forth. And make investments in education in the next generation. And if we did that, put people back to work, get the economy moving again, if we got unemployment down to 5 , which is where it was in 2007, that by itself would reduce the deficit by 40 . Yeah, thats thats what id like to see. So shortterm stimulus, combination of ways of focusing on getting longterm investments right. Because those investments in infrastructure are key. Right. We used to invest close to 3 of gdp in infrastructure prereagan. Now we invest less than 1 . China invests 9 . Lo do you think is going to be more competitive 30 years from now in terms of efficient economy. George you were just arrested last week i think in the offices of senator dick dush v, illinois senator. Now someone might say well, why are you going after senator dick durbin . Hes your friend. Hes your ally. Hes a democrat, hes a progressive democrat in the senate. Why werent you in his offices getting arrested . I think that first obama term was like a dress rehearsal for progressives. We got some stuff right but at the end of the day it was like we got him elected and we thought he would govern and wed work in unison and this time around weve got to inject way more more post oosh election accountability. So yeah senator durbin is a great ally of ours but hes been part of this gang of six or gang of eight depending on the story, and you know, really trending in the wrong direction. A Bipartisan Group of senators in the house who had been working to the to try to hammer out some kind of deal they could take to the full senate. They seem to be backing away from the senate. Theyve got a shot at doing that. I think we need to in this second chance, were past the dress rehearsal, is actually get out on the streets, put tension, two of the big things that president obama did that he didnt plan on doing, would block the Keystone Pipeline, added tension in the relationship and the dream act work. And those were both times where people actually put tension into the relationship, put people on the streets, and made the administration react. And i think this time around it cant just be a handful of them doing that. We need a broader set of folks. Whats your ask in that office . I think we want to broaden the conversation. Feels like completely the wrong place. We started off with deficits. That was the frame. We should be talking about the jobs deficit and like a fairness deficit. So how do we expand the number of revenue options on the table . Nobody is talking about financial speculation in this debate. So you know, obamas now got 1. 6 trillion on the table which is certainly better than where we were last year. But why not add the financial speculation tax which if you went with congressman ellisons bill that would be 3 trillion over ten years, close more tax loopholes, tax shelters, cayman islands, generate real revenue. We have a graphic here that shows some of the, some of the revenue options, and one of the things that always gets said is, and ed conner here said thats a carbon tax. There are different proposals. We could raise taxes on income over 250,000. Thats on the table from the president. We could repeal Capital Gains tax break, financial transaction tax. Or we could limit u. S. Figures are annual little over ten years, yeah. Little over ten years. So theres and again, depends on how you structure this and what the actual number is, right . But you can you can end up in a situation where you can get a lot of revenue. One of the ways in which the conversation has been constrained is this idea of well, cant all be on the revenue side. Who says it cant all be done on the revenue side. Taxes as a percentage of gdp are the lowest theyve been since the 1950s. And we have already done it all on the spending side. Thats right. Thats one of the things that is sort of detracting the conversation always misses is that we have actually done, because of the debt ceiling deal the budget control act, about 1. 5 million in spending cuts. Trillion and a half. Trillion and a half, sorry. A trillion and a half in spending cuts. And we are, you know, we have discretionary budget caps right now which has been a longtime conservative aim and we are looking at, you know, in the out years, the lowest amount of federal spending, you know, the share of our economy in about 50 years. And that just doesnt make any sense if you look at whats actually going on with the working middle class in this country. And one way thats before any spending cuts that theyre out to negotiate. Exactly. Weve already done it. One of the ways to look at it is like elections have consequences, right . And like they won and provoked the debt ceiling crisis and we got the budget control act. That was a bill that reflected their priorities and the mandate they interpreted as having when they ran and those are locked in 1. 5 trillion cuts now we just had another election. And the democrats whooped up on them. And so its like the, the, the centerpiece of the conversation should be shifting, but joy as someone who covers this, i dont feel like the centerpiece has shifted except on the one issue the president mentioned, which is taxes at the top. Right. Its interesting because i think that it is a beltway fetish, this idea of a tax of tackling the deficit. And i think that is both, in washington, on capitol hill, but also in the media. The media, the beltway i think has bought into this idea that deficits are the primary conversation we should be having. But if you look at it as a historic matter, you know, what did fdr do wrong after injecting a huge amount of stimulus in to the economy he gave into the temptation to attack deficits than he did austerity which plunged the country back into a recession. What did europe do wrong . They responded to this huge economic crisis with austerity and in the case of Great Britain they went into a doubledip recession. Their economy is flatlined because of austerity. So, you know, president obama has a great opportunity to not make the mistakes of history and not make the mistakes of europe. Austerity doesnt work. The other issues and we talk about that budget fight, what youre saying accurately that after 2010, were going to try austerity, were going to do what the republicans want, which is cuts, we found out how difficult it is to find things to shave off the budget. There are only a few things to cut. Theres defense, theres Social Security, what are the big items in the budget . There isnt a lot out there. Particularly when you talk about noun defense Discretionary Spending which is basically the lowest level of spending in a generation. But congressman i want to hear about what the policy, how politics, i think theres some consensus at the table about what broadly division went ahead towards so the big question is how to get from here to there. Flattered when regenerist beat a 100 cream. Flabbergasted when we creamed a 500 cream. For about 30 regenerist microsculpting cream hydrates better than over 20 of americas most expensive luxury creams. Fantastic. Phenomenal. Regenerist. We have a conversation thats happening, the center of which to me seems wrong. The focus of which seems wrong. Not on mass unemployment and the massive waste of resources and livelihoods, and just Human Happiness that is represented by that. Just emotional level, just like, its like causing psyching destruction amongst our fellow citizens and depression for no good reason. Like we cant fix it. Thats not the conversation. Conversation is about what are the projections of the balanced payments in 2026. Okay, fine. So then the question is, as member of the United States congress, and as member of the minority in the United States congress in the house of representatives, what can be done . What are the actual political points of leverage to change this or do we just sit here on my show and go like oh, theyre saying the wrong thing . The main point of leverage is the socalled fiscal cliff, which isnt really a cliff, but, the fact is that come january 1st or so, all the bush taxes including those on people below 250,000 expire when the payroll tax cut expires the alternative minimum tax hikes up, sequestration of 1. 2 trillion dollars kicks in and various other tax breaks for moderate income people go away, that will hit the economy hard. And Everyone Wants to avoid that. Now we dont have to avoid it on jaush 1st. Right. If we make an agreement on february 1st, or march 1st, you can make it retro active. People get nervous. But we can do that. Theres no hard deadline, really. Right. But, the the one leverage we really have, i guess, pure republicans, saying what theyve been saying, is that all the leverage changes on january 1st. Right. Because right now, youve got to vote to extend taxes and theyre saying were not going to vote to extend the tax cuts without everybodys tax cuts not just for people under 50,000. After january 1st the tax cuts expire. Right. Theyre gone. Everybodys taxes have gone up. And now, you come in to the building and you say, lets reduce the following taxes, and there are the republicans. So that is that. Ive heard that is that what you want to see happen . Or well, i guess i think the one thing it seems like we all agree on is we have the wrong starting point, and deficits are the frame and thats where were starting and so we need to break that up. And then, at least i feel like the election created some opening, so we have this kind of fairness moment in america. And actually occupy, play a big role in that. I think people were feeling something wasnt working. Feeling a lack of fairness in their lives and somebody named it. Then it became real credence to what people were feeling and the election was about many things but i think it was about fairness. So i think to actually, i mean, an insider strategy will only get us so far. And a fight thats starting up on such a bad place. So what are we going to do . Youve got to go out and engage constituents all across the country to get into this. I think with the fiscal cliff frame also like i was in a cab on my way to the airport yesterday to get here and the cabbie is like theyve got to fix this fiscal cliff, the world is going to come to the end. We started saying no its the inequality cliff. Thats very deliberate. That frame is very deliberate to frighten people and set up the political nature to which people would do things they never would otherwise do such as voting to cut Social Security and medicare and medicaid. Which would normally be unthinkable. Youve got to do it to have a balanced solution. And i think its amazing the exconsistent to which despite the fact that weve had occupy, despite the fact that the wall street is their ultimate candidate mitt romney who is their embody, right, lost the election, we still frame everything in terms of what will hit the street. What will happen to wall street . Which made tremendous profits over the last four years. They havent been hurt at all. But theyre so terrified of this fiscal cliff, its their frame. Last week, former partner of bain capital the irony is two things are happening simultaneously. The one hand, as actors in the political sphere, people in the 1 and in finance and wall street are saying, oh, my god, were screwed. Our deficits are going to be too big, and its going to mean huge Interest Rates and a run on u. S. Treasuries, right . This is how they talk when theyre in the sphere of politics. Then during their day job when theyre trading bonds, right, the actual yields on the bond prices which is a market reflection. These are people who believe that market prices convey the right information, when theyre in their day job trading the bonds its historically low yields. All everyone cannot give the u. S. Government money fast enough and leave their jobs and take, sell it down to washington and say oh, my god its a total disaster the whole thing is going to blow up and go back to trading their bonds. And by the way, i saw some of the news mentioned the other day 448 days or Something Like that since the u. S. Was downgraded by one of the rating agencies. What are we going to do about it . What it shows is nothing will happen. The Rating Agency was dumped. Talk out this idea of direct action. I want you to talk me through where that goes. Because it seems to me like people are going to say, look, sorry, theres a republican the Republican House of representatives weve got to deal with them. I want to hear more on that when we come back. Into their work, their name on the door, and their heart into their community. Small business saturday is a day to show our support. A day to shop at stores owned by our friends and neighbors. And do our part for the businesses that do so much for us. On november 24th, lets get out and shop small. Is bigger than we think. Sometimelike the flu. Fer from with aches, fever and chills the flus a really big deal. So why treat it like its a little cold . Theres something that works differently than overthecounter remedies. Prescription tamiflu attacks the flu virus at its source. So dont wait. Call your doctor right away. Tamiflu is prescription medicine for treating the flu in adults and children one year and older whose flu symptoms started within the last two days. Before taking tamiflu tell your doctor if youre pregnant, nursing. Have Serious Health cond