Call to increase Infrastructure Spending as part of a broader agreement on spending and taxes. The house gop seemed to be fracturing and pull from the appropriation bill known for the transportation of housing and urban development. The tea party opposed the bill because it didnt cut enough and moderate republicans including members of the Appropriations Committee because it cut too much in line with the automatic spending cuts that were put in place last year. Hal rogers of kentucky complained on a letter on his website, discretionary cuts must be brought to an end. With House Republicans unable to pass a seeming appropriations bill on their own suddenly looked like an open for the senate to broker a compromise and pass its own bipartisan bill and that, in turn, would put pressure on House Republicans to let that bill come to the floor for a vote and pass mostly with democratic votes. Such an arrangement would allow congress to avoid a debt limit showdown and maybe shut off the sequester. That all came crashing down on thursday when Senate Republicans filibustered their appropriations bill on a 5434 vote with only one republican, Susan Collins of maine joining with the democrats. The Congressional Republican crackup is on hold for you and the october 1st government shut down is still looming. We want to bring in White House Correspondent at buzzfeed. Com. Malia political reporter for washington post. Crystal ball, former cohost on the cycle. And chris wilson and contributor to the conservative online forum ricochet. Com. So, thanks, everybody, for joining us. I guess well start, you know, congress is now the recess has begun. Theyre out for august. You know, who want to be in washington, d. C. In august anyway . Its 142 degrees there every day. The recess has begun and a really interesting week because around wednesday i thought i could start to see the basis. We always talk about some kind of big deal on the budget. The basis seemed to be there where there were some republicans in the senate showing willingness to compromise with the administration and then like we said, this thing got filibu filibustered to death. The caucus hasnt fully emerged there. Lets start on the house side and take it one chamber at a time. What happened . When you look at the bill falling apart and moderates werent for it and conservatives werent for it and didnt have the 218 votes. What exactly was going on . I think we saw the markings of what the problems are with the Republican Party. More conservative side, more moderate side and democrats didnt want anything to do with this bill and i think were also seeing the thaw out of sequesteration. We saw some of that already in the jobs numbers but people are trying to figure out what to do with sequestration and the white house wants to roll back some of those cuts and you saw some republicans say we werent cutting enough and then uothers saying there were too many cuts. Again, i think you have that same kind of gridlock. It seems like a disconnect where it took republicans a while, the sequester was sort of the threat that was put in place september 2011. It took a while and republicans braced the idea of the sequester but what the bills represent is, okay, you embraced it and now you need to put some numbers behind that and pass these bills. You basically exempted entitlement programs, Social Security, medicare. If you want to spare defense, it means really, really deep cuts in areas like transportation and these bills coming out now and a fair number of republicans who are now saying, that is too much. Its hard to its nice to talk about cutting things, its a nice idea. Its hard to cut things. If it were easy to cut things, wed do it all the times. The republicans are faced with a way to cut things and go back to their districts and cutting stuff and deal with the National Fallout of deep cuts and Community Block that were talked about right there in the process. This is a dilemma for them which talking about cutting is good but doing cutting is really hard. Thats where theyre stuck. Rick, what do you make, you had hal rogers longtime appropriator from kentucky coming out and saying this sequester has to stop. I dont want to think of it as fracture. I like to think of it as the party, theres a big cohort of people who were elected in 2010 and those people were elected to cut. Not elected to play the old appropriator game. Run like the vatican and you moved your way slowly up the food chain. Those guys dont, the new guys dont care about that. They were not effected to do that. They understand were at a spending crisis in this country and theyre willing to do hard stuff. The Leadership Division on this, you know, being an appropriator used to be the super bowl of this thing and now the rank and file was a lot more skepticism and a lot more leery of that whole culture and get you taken care of, youll get a highway here and a block grant there. A lot more skeptical of that, i think rightly so. They know were on an unsust unsustainable path. They werent sent to d. C. To be go along, get along guys. They were sent to d. C. To get the budget under control and address the deficit and spending and they take it seriously. Thats why there is a cultural difference. This is not going to be the same problem four years from now, because four years from now the actuarial tables alone will push people out of the old jobs theyre in and bring up some of this new leadership. Were at a transition point where if the Republican Party is serious about this, the party of more fiscal discipline. We went off track in 2004, 05, 06, 08. We lost races because of that. These guys know what got them there. I get there is that cultural clash between the tea partiers elected and what that seems to add up to right now for republicans is they cant pass anything. They have all the chaos with the farm bill and there was another, sort of drafting the interior appropriation bill. There basically seems like theyre intent in passing. You know, republicans only bill. 218 republican votes and small error for margin to start with and from pennsylvania saying, hey, look, youre going to cut amtrak by 85 . Im in the northeast corner, thats too much. Conservatives saying thats too much. You cant get 218 votes. I disagree with much of what you said, but the one thing i do agree with that i would put a little differently is folks elected in 2010, they werent elected to govern. They dont care that governance is not working. They were elected to throw bombs. The real dichotomy for me is not real establishment. People who are actually interested in governance and people who arent. If the Republican Party were two pa parties right now and there were no democrats and the republicans were negotiating with themselves, we would still have grid lock. Thats what we saw in the farm bill and thats what we saw this week. They cant even with them selves there is too much difference between the bomb throwers and the people just interested in governance to be able to get things done. Evan, to your point, i think youre exactly right. When i was running for congress, my republican opponent, he loved to talk about how much he wanted to cut the budget and the deficit, but he could never answer the question of, okay, what would you cut . Not even one single thing could he name. Youll recall, i dont know if this website exists but the republican answer was to put up this website youcut. Gov where people could suggest their own cuts to sort of let them off the hook from having to the come up with these cuts. The same thing with the paul ryan budget. When paul ryan came out with this budget he was this serious, smart person. But as the rubber is meeting the road, were seeing that those abstractions only work in the abstract. Where you only have to put numbers to it. This is a long march, though. These guys, they know theyre not going to be able to come in immediately and get the big kill of entitlement reform. It is going to take some time to overcome of the cultural things that are not partisan. There is a spending culture in washington that allow the people elected, look, a lot of these people are just not there to blow things up and not just there to drop bombs. They had a longterm commitment to working out a way where we can get the deficit and get the debt under control. I think what i wonder when were talking about in the context right now in the appropriations bill for next year. The debt ceiling showdown in 2011, the budget control. Actually, there were cuts in that. It kicked in the sequester then because no grand bargaining. We had the sequester on top of that and now republicans wanting to cut further in the house below the sequester level to meet the paul ryan budget level. That means youre exempting the socalled entitlement programs and republicans say we dont want to cut from defense. We want to restore money to defense. Results in looking at clean water rates. 83 proposed cut in the budget. Going from 8 billion to just over 5 billion. Youre talking about a third from the amtrak and i wonder if the mindset here when you talk about what these numbers actually add up to seems like the mindset is we just dont want government outside of some very basic things. Look, there is a skepticism. First off, there are people that believe we need to radically shrink the footprint of federal power. And those people are a rising element in the Republican Party. But theres also a lot of skepticism that all this spending, all these wonderful sounding things, these water grants and Everything Else are not delivering the things that they claim to deliver. Theyre not the magical solution that creates thousands of jobs every time you switch on a program somewhere. Theres a lot of skepticism about that and that is largely the fault of the Obama Administration and they promised by now, if we passed that stimulus bill, we would have 5 unemployment. Real unemployment is 14 . We know that these things are increasingly met with the publics skepticism, not with, oh, joy. When you say a jobs bill, it sounds great, but now people are like, what does that mean . What does it do . They dont see the connection. They didnt see the stimulus dropping unemployment to, like i said, right now on their chart that they released that the Obama Administration released. 5 unemployment right now because of the stimulus bill. That was their solid promise on it. Were not there. Were percolating along with this weak, iffy economy. Were not ever never been a big break through from the spending stuff. People still want the government to do cut, cut, get rid of all this stuff, the government isnt going to do anything at all. This is something that worked very well on a cpac podium. I mean, that stuff sells very well. The government isnt going to do anything but defense. You get out there and try to campaign on that and talk about things youre not going to have money for this project that you like. Its very difficult, people dont like that. The hard thing they have to deal with is they have part of their base that wants to hear that message, but a lot of the voters want to hear, youre going to do stuff. Doesnt want to necessarily hear about cutting medicare and medicaid. When you go to these websites about who wants to cut what or you look at polls, always the same thing. Foreign aid which is such a small part of the budget. Were talking about, thats what i say, we talk about the appropriations bill. We talk about nondefense discretionary spending. Were not talking about medicare and Social Security and you end up with these cuts and the story right now is that republicans are, some republicans are finding they cant stomach that. We want to talk about the other side of it because in the senate the story is different. 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Ive got something for you too. announcer fancy feast delights with cheddar. A meal that is sure to delight your cheese lover. Now available in the classic form she loves. Fancy feast. The best ingredient is love. We talked about the sort of chaos in the house this week. Republicans were unable on their own to get 218 votes to get an appropriations bill through. The senate, you know, the same bill in the senate, which would be funded at a much higher level in the senate. Like 10 billion difference between the two. Transportation and housing and urban Development Bill and it was a surprise, though. It actually made its way out of the committee on the senate on a bipartisan basis. Republicans who voted for it in the committee and the expectation was that we are going to break the filibuster and get more than 60 votes and get closure on this and bring it to the floor and have a dozen republicans voting for it and a signal the house cant get its act together and bipartisan majority in the senate and this is how gridlock was going to be broken and then they took the vote on closure. They did not get 60. Susan collins helped draft the bill and she voted for it and she said it was leadership. Mitch mcconnell and Senate Leadership that made a very aggressive push, what was going on there . I think Mitch Mcconnell in many ways not eyeing what he should do in the senate but what is going on in kentucky. In terms of getting deals done. He had, i think, earlier, some filibuster deals that he made, but i think right now he isnt interested in dealing. I think this is an unfortunately named bill. Or very fortunate. But it looks like there is what president obama is calling common sense, corburn and all the same people he had lunch or dinner with a couple months ago. I do think, again, the senate has a cooling effect. But the problem that this whole idea that the senate will have a boomerang effect with the house there is a few. It hasnt happened with immigration reform. That was the whole argument there. Oh, if they got a bipartisan bill, we havent seen that yet. This whole idea. What were up against, now we have the august recess and nobody in d. C. For the next month. Theyre going to come back and say i think theres like ten working days in december. So that is the deadline to get funding bills through. The case of maybe why this would happen with immigration would not happen with immigration, but might happen on some kind of budget thing is that deadline. The deadline is if you dont get anything passed, you have to shut down. Maybe that adds pressure that is not there on something else. Except for the fact that we go to deadline in washington now. Maybe a couple days after and then go back and fix it. Maybe you just have to wait. These deadlines are what seems to move congress and way too early talking about them doing anything. Youre sitting there waiting for the guy to come out of the senate door. With the easel. Waiting for the easel to show up. The royal does this model this idea that it seems to me its still a compromise caucus emerging the senate and still our discussions between the white house and republican senators going on. We actually did see in the last month not much happened in congress or the senate a lot happened because the five nominations went through and its because some of these republicans, the compromise caucus rooms starting to work with democrats. That was seen as kind of a buffing, a rebuking mcconnell. Theres the whole talk that mcconnell talked about how end run had happened and that is how the deal had been made. I think he was trying to reassert his power with this bill and i agree, you know, its not necessarily. Its hard to rely on the house to do anything. It makes sense maybe for republicans in the senate to just sort of maybe help the house out. Because its not probably going to die there anyway. Let me take the optimistic perspective. Miamalika is right hes nervous about his own election and has a Tea Party Challenger from the right and hes concerned at the moment about getting through his prima primary. So, he does not want to put a bipartisan bill forward and pass through the level of sequestration. That is one thing. The other thing that i think youre pointing to, steve, is weve seen these cracks in the senate and seen the mccains and the grahams saying they want to have some sort of governing coalition. We are now just starting to see those cracks in the house, too, for the first time. As you pointed out, chairman Howell Rogers coming out and saying, this is absurd, essentially. Moderate republicans in the house raising their voices and saying these cuts are even too much just for us. To me, thats encouraging. The other thing. Set us up nicely for the next segment, kentucky stuff coming up. Primary challenges in 2014. Li Lindsey Graham will have a primary challenge in 2014. I believe her name is nancy mase. Impressive biography and it looks like on paper you look at what Lindsey Graham represents and i look at this and say serious primary challenge for him. Hes done more in terms of outreach to the Obama Administration and more receptive to that than the average senator. Do you think well see a different Lindsey Graham now that he has to worry about a republican challenge. Earl adays still in her campaign and i think the first wave of buzz has been very favorable for her. Lindsey graham is a character, however. I have s