debates saying that the budget repair bill is necessary to balance the state's books. by taking away state employees collective bargain rights. >> one democratic, chris larson, says the senators will return when and only when the governor is willing to listen. the governor's response? a throwdown. >> you can't participate in the democracy if you're not in the arena. the arena is in madison, wisconsin, and it's time for those state senators to come home. >> meanwhile, everybody from president obama to speaker john boehner have weighed in and after the republican senate leader said i don't think there's any doubt they are burning the bridge now. it's clear the standoff is not going to end any time soon. >> what is at stake in wisconsin? one of the legislators has been waiting two days for his missing colleagues to show up and vote. state senator glenn joins us now. >> senator, welcome. why do you think your democratic colleagues felt they needed to call extreme action to repair the budget bill? >> unfortunately, a lot of the democrats are very close to the most extreme members of the teachers union and other public employees in the state of wisconsin. they desperately want to raise taxes instead of bringing in public employees on the solution to this fiscal crisis. >> senator grothman, there are things in this budget repair bill that will not raise revenue but will affect the ability of these public service unions to function. specifically, senator grothman, how do you help the deficit by making unions have to recertify every year, by not allowing unions to collect money after their members? how does that help the deficit? >> there are a lot of public employees who strongly object to making these payments and it's completely unfair to these employees to be part of a system of which they are forced to pay, quite frankly, for the type of people who are organizing what is going on behind me right now. >> that sounds like a pretty rowdy crowd. how does that feel? have you been through this before? >> actually, i think most of these people are very nice if you talk to them on an individual basis but right now they are being riled up a little bit and that's what is going on. i enjoy talking to these people as i do with any of my other constituents. many of them will agree we have to change the current system. >> how long do you think this standoff is going to last? >> i hope that we can wrap it up sometime in the next week. after all, the state of wisconsin is in a budget crisis and there are hundreds and thousands of people around the state who will agree with us. >> senator, if this is a collective bargaining issue, why were certain organizations exempted, such as law enforcement and fire and then only others were included? >> governor walker felt that we may have a problem here in the united states or a problem here in wisconsin regarding public order and the importance of public safety officers at this time has never been greater. we've seen that in the state capital the last couple of days. >> senator, does that have more to do with the greater support for the governor in the election? because that's what some of the analysis is saying. >> they are absolutely wrong. they fought governor walker, have made me their number one opponent in the state senate. the firemen's union are close to republicans. there was one local police union who was in favor of walker but that was about it. >> all right. senator, if you had a message for the missing democrats, what would it be? >> well, i wish they would come back. it would be nice to wrap things up. i know their own staff is under a lot of pressure in the building and they are getting paid $50,000 a year do the people's work and not to mention, they will find the average guy to go back and vote as well. >> all right. state senator grothman, thank you for putting up with or enjoying, however you want to put it, the commotion in the background. thank you very much. >> always glad to talk to you folks. now we turn to the other side of this divide. >> state senator chris larson is one of the state democrats in hiding. he won't come back until governor walker is willing to listen to the teachers. he's across the state line and out of the reach of wisconsin state patrol. he joins us now but phone. at the same time we're watching things going on where the fight is over right more fundamental. you've gotten yourself into a pickle by getting out of the state and by not going back for the vote. what is the end game? what is it that you think is going to happen? >> right now the big issue is we're waiting for walker to come back on the table. we hope that the governor takes this time to listen to the people that are speaking and pay attention to what the thousands of people who are turning out are having to say. what they don't want is their rights trampled on, their rights to organize as a union and they don't want this debt to flow to the middle class in wisconsin. >> senator, everyone is curious to know where you are all. but are you and your colleagues together or are you sitting around and playing chess and jeopardy or have you had contact with the governor. >> we have tried to reach out to the governor but unfortunately we have not been able to talk to him. we are all out of the state. i can say that. some of us are together. we're not all in the same place. we've never all been in the same place at the same time. so, yeah, we are still south of the border. we're still waiting to hear from the governor and the legislature to see if they are actually willing to listen. unfortunately what we've heard is that yesterday they were kind of being polite about it. and the level of state patrols outside of the democratic senator's homes. so it seems that they are paying more attention trying to figure out how to jam this thing through than how to come to the table and find a compromise that works for everybody. >> senator, let me ask you this, though. you make a compelling case. there are some who are making a compelling case that there are elements of the budget repair bill that appear to not have any financial benefit but appear to be designed to damage the unions. let's take that at face value for a moment. at some point you and your colleagues have to take at face value that there are 14 of you and 19 republicans. and they were voted in. do you sit around and say at some point you and the voters of wisconsin have got to face the music that as unpalatable as this may seem, it is what it is? >> we had an election but a democracy doesn't just happen on election day. democracy happens every day. actually, a lot of the people that have come out and spoke, there was a good number of people who said, if i would have known that they were going to pull this crap, i would have never voted for them. this was not something on the table during the election, this extreme agenda. people did not expect it to happen. and so i think when we elect leaders to work with everybody in our state, we do not allow dictators to run russia over the minority. in our democracy in america, majority rules but minority is always heard. that's the way our democracy is run. >> how long do you think you and your colleagues can go on? what's your strategy, ultimately? >> well, until they take these measures off the table, we've been surprised by the outpouring of support and as long as that public support continues, we will continue to be motivated to established with them. each day has been more historic than the day before it in madison and i don't know, it's unlike anything that has ever been seen in our state's history and we're hearing there are more people on the way coming in and people were want to speak up and be heard on this. and until that -- those people are satisfied and those people are heard, we'll be standing with them in spirit just across the border. >> state senator chris larson, thank you for being with us. >> thank you so much. appreciate it. up next, dozens are dead as clashes intensify between protesters across the middle east. stay with us. gecko: kate frll, it a yours. ka: i'shopping for my first car. gecko: nice! i do hopchse geit i bet yod great in a bl ofcar.h... atol is th kate: no...actually, i'm torn between a fuel-injected inline-6 and a higher torque quandary!esel.cko: yeahq um in course you could save either way. save you 15% or more on car insue. curtis: yeah but is one of them blue? 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>> well, the violent eruptions have tapered off. the police barricaded the area off because they moved close. the police fired over their heads, according to some witnesses. some witnesses say shots were fired directly at the crowd. that's what they say killed the people but the protesters moved again towards the police. the police fired tear gas, chasing them away. we were there with the protests as they flied over our heads and red hot canisters laying in the road. but now the police have a much bigger security corridor. they have chased the protesters away. there were about 1,000 protests. now there are just small groups, perhaps a few hundred here. so the situation now is much calmer than it was. the situation seems to be that the police and the army here have restored security to that area right now. >> nick, whatever security is restored there, it's going to be tenuous. this is a country that has had tension for some time, different than that in egypt. a lot of it has been sectarian. you have the shiite population, influences of saudi arabia and iran that thought of bahrain as a state. an iranian state at one point. where are these tensions lying now? the government may have things under control but does this feel like a sectarian proxy battle going on? >> it doesn't feel like a proxy battle just yet. the dynamic is still evolving here. i was talking to a government official who is not allowed to go on camera, go on the record either and speak his mind. what he was telling me was that the government is shocked by what has happened and meetings are going on late into the night. they really don't know how to handle this. it's not clear which will come out ahead. the protesters have been becoming more angry, more used to getting in confrontation with the police. they know what the battle on the streets looks like, feels like, smells like. they are learning thousand fight it. it seems that we will see more of these spontaneous protesters taking on the police and it would seem that it's almost inevitable unless the government can pull a negotiation out of the bag, there would be different types of protesters. that's something that bahrain has never had to deal with. it doesn't seem proxy between iran and saudi arabia at this time. one can see that things could develop that way. we are hearing murmurings of outside interference, of games being played here, not in bahrain's interest by other countries and at the moment it's the street tensions and battles that are leading the way. >> remarkable images, nic robertson. thank you for joining us. we'll continue to follow this story with you. all right. so is real change going to come from a population that is hungry for reform and can the u.s. handle its conflicting interest in that region. joining us here tonight, mark gingburg is the former u.s. ambassador to morocco under president clinton. ambassador, thank you for joining us. >> good to be with you. >> president obama and several officials have been urging restraint in bahrain. is that the right response? >> i think the u.s. at this time has to stand for something because the demonstrators are certainly uncertain about where the united states is trying to navigate because on the one hand we've got to navigate between our stat strategic interests. of course, we have strategic interests throughout the region. how do we balance the strategic interest, israel, the fifth fleet, against the hearts and minds of the campaign officials now on the white house serving the president want to stand for something delivered in cairo. i don't think whether you're republican or democrat, that they have very easily given what has taken place. >> given the air rain world they are not going to accept that these movements in tunisia. the social contracts that entitle that to a god life, and that's where this is for being heard better are coming from. >> absolutely. in all of the years that we have spent in the middle east, even if they don't understand each other linguistically, most don't understand how corrupt the arab world is. we are united by the common language but there's such cultural differences and yet the one thing that has been clear is that the people in that region, the young people in that region, have watched a globalizing world pass them by. they have not benefited from what they see is the connectivity that has prospered and they see autocratic regime put in and none of it is trickled down. >> you have a production company and you have -- you've been building programming and they help to see america in a certain light. how are they helping during the demonstrations? >> it's a challenge that we have to something that we're looking at in the united states. the deals that they aspire to and not walking that we are committed to have done by offering tangible support for democracy. and they do not trust us. to fulfill the aspirations and this revolution needs to occur in spite of all that we stand for in the middle east. people are looking, the young people are looking for deals but not from the u.s. government. they were largely awol from all of us. >> the u.s. government policy has been, at least, and most complementary inconsistent. is this an opportunity to apply a more consistent policy and con grew went with the interest of the people on the ground. >> when you sweep aside all that we are seeing it's all about whichever way you look at it and what these young people are better connected and have better jobs elsewhere. it all comes jobs, how does the united states in south korea and elsewhere, teach young arabs the vocational skills that they need to compete in the globalizing world and if we can start thinking that not ma the american taxpayer has to fund this but set the stage for the type of reforms that would make these countries that prosper. we would be rewarded for decades to come if we did that. >> it doesn't matter what the question is. the answer seems to be jobs. >> yes. absolutely. >> jobs is job one. >> thanks so much. coming up, the budget debate on capitol hill as ugly as the savaged most president's prize anthony weiner when we come back. that's a recipe for failed investing. open an e-trade account and open doors, seize opportunities, take action with some of the most powerful yet easy-to-use trading tools on the planet. all built to help you maximize the potential of every dollar you invest. successful investing isn't done by throwing ideas against the wall and hoping. it's done by lowering your costs and raising your expectations by using unbiased research and powerful screeners to build a diversified portfolio with stocks, bonds, mutual funds and every etf sold. and we'll help you every step of the way. with 5-star service and free education covering everything from the basics to advanced investing strategies. start now and we'll give you up to $500 and let you trade free for 60 days. visit our website, call us, open an account. e-trade. investing unleashed. tempers flared today over $60 billion from this year's budget. when the return to president obama and started when congressman steve king a republican offered an amendment. >> and anthony weiner, take a listen. >> let us have this debate. maybe this is the moment that we've been waiting for. please, praise god, this is the moment. i think the gentlemen is correct. is he not legislating in this bill because it's impossible for him to do so because they simply don't know how. >> wow. apparently weiner's argument was convincing. amendment was dismissed, the republican drive to cut millions more continues at full steam. congressman weiner is on capitol hill and he joins us with the latest. welcome. >> thank you. >> that was quite a colorful display there. the vote to defund health care is a big blow to the democrats and not to mention the president and this after cuts and school reform cuts and the epa heating subsidies for the poor, have republicans won the battle here? >> well, i don't know. the president said that he's going to veto this bill. that exchange i was speaking somewhat tongue in cheek and they have been in power for a few months and they have yet to tell us what they want to do. every day they come to work and talk about another thing that they want to defund but they don't seem to have any affirmative division. what we're doing is a dance because the president said that he is dealing with this bill as cut aid for people trying to get energy assistance, pell grants for college students. it doesn't make sense. the president is going to veto it and i think he should. >> congressman weiner, you're a compassionate guy. you always are. you want to make your point. where are we going with this? you want some things to happen in the bill. your republican colleagues want something else to happen with this bill. are you going to come to an agreement? because it sounds like you are butting heads. >> the real problem is the republicans have a problem with schizophrenia in their own caucus. i think we are going to end up doing what they in 1985, which is shutting down the government because they have the core of this caucus that doesn't want to have any reasonable, rational discussion. if the republicans can say listen, we want to continue to fund the government, we want to look for cuts, two of the amendments that i've offered, two more to be considered, there is reasonable ground for reasonable people but this is not a reasonable bunch governoring the house of representatives right now. >> even if you don't agree on a bill, as ali said, you're going home for their long president's day weekend, you know, is it possible for you all to reach some kind of resolution before that? >> yeah, but the problem returns of the republicans trying to get together amongst themselves. you remember what we've been through? we went through a week of dysfunction. their leadership announces $30 billion cuts and they want to do 100 billion and what do they come back with? a 20% reduction to air traffic controllers. that seems pretty crazy to me. tell the troops fighting in afghanistan that we are not going to pay their bill. i'm not sure the taliban will understand that. the republicans won in 2010 to govern the house of representatives. there is a fundamental inability to make the trains run on time and make things work. there's no reason to expect that they will pull it together. they are talking about shutting down government. we've seen this before. >> so are you. you just said it yourself. the more people that talk about shutting down government, the more likely it becomes the kind of thing that someone is going to do. i think we all respect the passion that you bring to every argument on the floor and we respect that people go to washington and do this. but you guy are not headed for a compromise and american voters told you in november that they need government to do business. >> hold on. first of all, you asked me a question to speculate on what i thought was going to happen and then i answered and you say i'm contributing to it. >> congressman weinor, you said that they were saber rattling. you put anthony weiner in charge, it would be a lot better. you're asking me to comment on whether or not john boehner and his crew, who came to washington on a platform of everything that they are against but now are being asked what are you in favor of, i don't believe standing here that the republicans know what they are in favor of. you want me to handicapped whether they will shut down congress? the last time they took over they did. that presumes there's leadership in the republican caucus and i'm not seeing it. >> if we were running the place, things would get done differently. anthony, what a pleasure to talk with you. thank you for being with us. >> thanks, anthony. >> thank you, guys. coming up, in wisconsin, some politicians are running for the hills. what they don't know is that they are part of a great american tradition. we'll tell you why on the other side. politicians on the lamb. we've seen it in wisconsin where republicans are hiding out to black the agenda. it's high stakes political poker and we don't know who is going to blink first. but this sort of game is nothing new. but nobody does it like texas. they walked into the state house in austin, they were trying to block redistricting plan and that's when it really got interesting. the republicans called out the texas rangers. no, not the baseball team, but the real texas rangers, to haul them back to austin. they galloped back to oklahoma and called a republican's bluff. republican rick perry had other ideas. he started wheeling and dealing. 11 democrats saw him and raised him. and they took off again for new mexico. they held out for a month but they missed their spouses and their kids and so they came home and the legislation passed. the same thing happened in 1979. 12 democrats, known as the killer bees, took off for the mexican border to prevent a vote. then they turned themselves in after five days. it isn't always democrats who cut and run. in 1840, abe lincoln was a member of the illinois legislature. the democrats wanted to kill the state bank. lincoln was determined to save it. so he tried to leave the state house in springfield before they could take the vote. the democrats locked the doors, guaranteeing a quorum and that's when the future 16th president of the united states jumped out of a window and ran away. who knew honest abe was starting a great american tradition? 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>> yes, i am because they propose to spend $46 billion. no one can forecast anything where it counts, in 2012, 2013, 2014. they cut less than 7% of that deficit. >> so what you're saying is, the one-year deficit that we have is bigger than all of the savings he's trying to do over ten years? >> that's exactly right. if you set aside the numbers, the nondefense discretionaries, let's address that. every year congress takes more and more spending that is discretionary and reclassifies it as mandatory. >> slow down a second. you talked about nondefense discretionary spending. >> if you're not willing to address the entitlements, $1.5 trillion, if you're not willing to address defense and security, $900 billion still. >> each year? >> this year. he's increased a little bit. i want to put something in perspective. this budget for the eight years ahead, obama is proposing to spend $7.5 trillion on defense and security. do you know what? that is three trillion more in constant dollars, current year dollars than ronald reagan spent during the eight years of his administration. >> let me make this harsh and in my view the legitimate view. at least let me make it bipartisan. >> sure. >> because what we've heard on the other side of the aisle frankly is no better. paul ryan, they say we'll cut $100 billion from nondefense discretionary but that is all from one little area. it's about 12.5% of the total budget. the rest of it, they are basically saying, we don't want to look at. why is that? >> when you look at medicare and medicaid, 7, $800 billion and massive political lobbies, the doctors, pharmaceutical companies, they constantly push back in terms of any type of change that might save money and both parties continue to insist that we don't need to bite the bullet on these big issues. we have to raise taxes. the president hasn't said anything about that other than a few loopholes. >> say that again. i want to hear -- i want the world to hear president reagan's budget director, a conservative, conservative i don't think i'm someone who is dyed in the wool conservative i don't think i'm saying that critically. you say we have to raise taxes? >> absolutely. there is no way around the revenue shortfall that we have given the massive size of government that neither party wants to cut. >> let me ask you a question. it seems to me that by focusing on that, are we not focusing the cuts in the area that at one level is perhaps most important? in other words, if you do believe that the model of economic competitiveness for the united states down the road is out innovate, out educate, and be more creative, it is going to emerge from education spending and that's where all of these cuts will be -- >> he's not cutting education. i think i dispute that a little bit. federal, state, and local, we're spending $1 trillion a year, double in real term what is we did in 1990. we have plenty of resources that are not being used effectively. what we don't have are jobs. we have today 7 million less jobs than we had in october 1999. i want to restate that. this budget is doing that. >> let me state this at a different level as well. it seems to me when it comes to understanding why we have these huge deficits, we have one, the massive spending in the programs that you've defined, medicare, medication, social security, and defense. that's one piece of it. >> yes. >> two, we are fighting two wars right now. >> right. >> three, we have these tax cuts that have advice rated our revenue base and, four, we had a reception. two are going to disappear, the wars and the recession. the other two we're simply not confronting them. >> i agree with that. the deficit will remain above $1 trillion a year even when the recession goes away which it already has from a statistical point of view. i think they are dream walking down there. why are we spending more today for defense and security than ronald reagan at the height of the cold war? you know that's a great question. >> i'm absolutely with you on 98% of what you said. i want to ask you a political question. there are some senators who i think word is they are trying to build a political coalition around that sensible set of cuts and revenue enhancements. do you think there is at this moment the political will anywhere in washington to make that a reality in. >> i don't see any sign of it. the white house is pushing middle class tax cuts again which we can't afford. it totally -- we have done social security because of the political pressure. the republicans are lined up against any kind of revenue increase, even the minor loophole closings that there are in this budget. >> right. >> so when we have revenue off the table, when we have entitlements off the table, when we have an administration that can't even get his act together on the defense, this is a left of center administration and they are spending all of this money on defense. it doesn't give me much confidence that anything is going to materialize. it's going take a great shock, a great dislocation in the global bond market before we finally face the issue. >> thank you for that encouraging assessment. always good to chat with you, nonetheless. thank you for being here. >> yep. coming up, where does ferris buehler's former teacher spend on the cuts in wisconsin? we'll ask ben stein right after this. in just two weeks from today, the government's temporary budget runs out. the entire government could shut down. so now with the white house and republican leadership playing this high level game of chicken, whose job is it to break this impasse? >> a close friend of the show, economist ben stein, is author of the little book of bullet-proof investing, dos and don'ts to protect your life. tell us how likely it is going to be that the government is going to shut down? >> i would hope that it would be 100% unlikely. i don't like playing these games of chicken. i don't think my fellow republicans are doing the republicans are doing the smart or responsible or patriotic thing right now by threatening it a little bit. i don't want the u.s. bond rating to be cut below aaa. i don't think this is the right way to play this game. >> ben, whose job is to to break that impasse. you say you don't like the way your republican colleagues are doing it. the white house is digging in on the other side. who is supposed to break this? who is supposed to say, let's find a solution? >> they have to get together and do it in a compromised way but i don't think the republicans should be threatening to not raise the debt seal. i don't think that should be part of our arsenal ideas. i don't think dwight eisenhower would approve of that. i don't think abraham lincoln or teddy roosevelt would approve of that. i don't think we should do it by threatening armageddon. >> the republicans don't even think that's the way it should be done. boehner said the problem is, a lot of these people don't understand how things work and we've got to talk to them about how bad it would be to not raise the debt ceiling and now he's changed his tune. what do you think is going on there? >> well, i love the tea party i know a lot of their people and i think they have to understand this is not a childish game that is being played here. this is deadly serious. if the government shuts down, if there is the slightest question about the credibility of the u.s. debt, if we have to raise interest rates dramatically on what we pay on the national debt, it's going to cost so much more from any savings that they are going to get, by playing this chicken game, the nuclear standoff game, it's just not a good idea. i bless the tea party. i love them. let's try some alternatives. >> blessing the tea party, this comes when you look at things in the black and white fashion and i worry, ben, the federal budget impasse is something that they don't pay attention to until we're talking on march 3rd or 4th about shutdown and then it gets everyone's attention. what people are talking about is the trickle down to state's budgets which we're seeing across the country and we're seeing it play out in wisconsin in a particularly confrontational way. what's your thought about how we're going to see state budgets faring as a result of this black and white approach to budget cutting? >> that crunching sound you're going to hear all over the country that you're hearing about in wisconsin is a sound of american taxpayers crunching down on the benefits, perks, and pay that they have bestowed upon public employees. the taxpayers are not going to put up with it anymore. we're going to see it in california in a big way. we're already seeing it in a certain way. the taxpayers just don't want to keep paying public service employees more than they get paid themselves. i'm a union member. i sympathize with the public service worker. i love teachers, firemen, policemen, firefighters, police people. but i don't want to see republican lawmakers houses getting stormed. i don't want to see that kind of illegal behavior. the basic theme here is, we have a real problem. let's handle it like grown-ups and not like spoiled children like the tea partyiers and the goons from some of the teachers union, maybe their friends are planning to handling it and are handling it in wisconsin. let's handle it in a gentlemenly-like way. >> i hear where you're coming from but that's 30,000 people protesting in wisconsin. we've gotten past the goons. this is a popular grass roots support. >> ali, 30,000 is a trivial percentage of population of the people of wisconsin. i have demonstrated very actively in many demonstrations in washington, d.c. i love demonstrations. but i'm talking about the people storming the legislature, keeping them from doing business, storming the homes and families of the republican lawmakers. that is outrageous behavior. that is what i consider goon-like behavior. marching in the streets, calling your representative, that's the way it should be. storming people's homes, frightening them, that is outrageous behavior and totally unacceptable. speaking of grown-up behavior, the adults have to step up to the plate and do their job. what's your take very simple and dangerous people since the end of the cold war, don't cut defense. i don't think it's right to cut one penny from military families or even make them pay 8 or $10 a month more for insurance costs. not one penny should come out of their pockets. on the other hand, i think it's wrong for a person to do as well to do as me or should get the same medicare benefits that a person who is a retired factory worker should get. there are going to be -- medicare is already means tested and i paid a large insurance premium. it should be larger. there are going to have to have tax increases on well-to-do people. there's no way you can postpone it. if the goal is to balance the budget, we have to raise taxes on wealteo