Skepticism is unwarranted, consider the debt crisis denyieys. Debt skeptics say we can grow our way out of debt with more tax revenue. Not so says Harvard Universitys nile ferguson. In a recent column citing forecasts from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, the cbo, last month, the cbo published its 2013 longterm budget outlook, forecasting u. S. Debt 25 years from now and beyond. Like Climate Change projections, the cbo uses models, based on Current Trends and likely future scenarios to forecast the national debt. By 2038, 25 years from now, the debt may rise 73 of Gross Domestic Product today to as much as 190 of gdp, says the cbo. Unlike Climate Change, which has failed to heat up for the past 15 years, the federal debt outlook has worsened substantially since last years cbo report. If you think rising sea levels are bad, get a load of this. As debt rises, so will the percentage of the federal budget that goes to pay interest. From 8 today to 40 in 2072. Even under the cbos optimistic growth scenario. Does that send nervous chills up and down your spine . It certainly does, but if you read the cbo report, youll realize, and all the cbo reports on this issue going back several years, virtually the whole debt problem is a healthcare cost problem. If we can get healthcare costs under control, we dont have a longterm debt problem. Thats the thing that people are avoiding talking about. We talk about entitlements, reforming entitlements. We talk about we dont have an entitlement problem. Its like saying you have a leaky boat and its full of people and the way to fix the boat is to throw people off the boat. The way to fix the debt problem is to fix our longterm healthcare cost problem. How can you say that healthcare reform healthcare entitlements are not one in the same . Medicare is an entitlement. One is how you pay for it. The other drives the costs. Well you dont control the cost of healthcare by paying less for it. You control the cost of healthcare by fixing the system itself. Nile ferguson has a very negative outlook. He goes, like, 50 years out. If you go that far out, the solution is, which he concedes, is raising revenues, ie, taxes, and cutting spending, which is the formula, you know, bolz simpson, talked about in the upcoming talks between congress and the white house, and whether theres any give yet on the republican side on taxes, well see. Okay. Tough talk. Heres a sample of the level of discourse in the nations capitol this week. The only thing that i will say is that were not going to pay a ransom for america paying its bills. Were willing to pass at least a shortterm budget that opens up the government at current funding levels. The president said today if there is Unconditional Surrender by republicans, hell sit down and talk to us. Thats not the way our Government Works. We cant make extortion routine as part of our democracy. On the president ial characterizations of the republican strategy by president obama, quote, hostage taking. Blow the whole thing up. Insane. Unquote. Senator majority leader harry reid calls the leaders of the gop, quote, unqoan, anarchists . Susan . Its really in starke contrast to what he talked about, as candidate obama in 2007 and 2008, somebody who was going to unite us all, unite the two parties, stop the clamor on capitol hill. Its gotten so much worse. Ive been on capitol hill for many, many years. Ive never seen it this partisan and never heard this kind of rhetoric constantly used by both sides, republicans and democrats, talking about gun to the head, suicide caucus, all these terms, and it really does keep them further apart when it comes to finding a deal. Is there anybody who seems to be able to con silliate . Yes. And the people who always do this are the moderates. They are a shrinking group in both parties. Susan collins never uses terminology like that. The problem on capitol hill right now is that we have these swing elections and it puts people in the conferences for both the house and the senate who are really polarized. Thats why you get this kind of conversation on capitol hill. I must say, i, i think its correct that the president is calling out the other side and you can put together a montage of republicans saying things that you might regard over the top. You could also put people like warren buffett, who says that the tactics that the republicans are using are like putting a nuclear bomb, that we dont fool around with the full faith and credit of the united states. So i think the quality of the discourse here is very different and as long as ive been in washington, they always fight it out in public and then they go in the back room and make the deal. And thats whats going to happen in the next couple of days. You dont think president obama is trying to demonize the republicans, do you . Oh, they are doing that to themselves, john they dont need any help the difference is this president has very few personal relationships, not only with the republicans, but even with the democrats. I can tell you that from direct personal knowledge listening to the leadership in both house and senate. Reagan, when he was president , every week would have a luncheon with six democrats. He built up a relationship. You know, bill clinton did the same thing. You dont have this here. So the kind of dialogue that you normally have that leads to compromise, that leads to negotiation, that is not there. It comes when we have an emergency, which is what the republicans let me finish, please. That is a key part of the way our Government Works and it is not working now. Thats because the republicans are too busy negotiating among themselves. There is a civil war in the Republican Party. [ overlapping speakers ] its a very different politics were dealing with today. That kind of rhetoric among the republicans. Even the president s liaison, no one knows who he is. Susan crabtree wrote a great story about the person is an invisible man. Normally Everybody Knows the liaison. Its about the white house being really separated from congress. You can see the effect of it, particularly with this whole government shutdown. I think it would be nice if they had better personal relationships and i applaud the president inviting them over and all of that. Of course john boehner said he didnt want everybody going over to the white house. Might see some deif he can tores. I do not think having more dinners together and more schmoozing together would break, would break the wall of opposition that the Republican Party has created. Lets prolong this a little bit. Heres a question. Was president raising the debt ceiling does not increase our debt . Well, on one level, hes right. But in a real sense, hes not right, okay . Why do we have to raise our debt zealing . Because were spending more money than were taking in. At some point, you reach the ceiling and you have to move on or else you cant do it. Congress and the president raised the debt ceiling. Of course. Its not done exclusively by the president. But you cant just say that, you know, accumulating all of these debts has no consequence. One of the consequences is it runs into a debt ceiling. Ask any family in america. They will tell you what their debt ceiling is. These are obligations already incurred for which you have to pay. So the debt is already incurred. We havent yet printed a treasury bond to make good on that. You dont think he was being disingenuous . No, no. Technically, and in the spirit of it, hes absolutely right. Talking about disingenuity, the Republican Party is claiming they are so obsessed and worried about the deficit, they send home 800,000 government workers that they will pay them, not getting any work out of them, costing millions to the communities around america, depending on federal money and grants. They are not saving any money. By the way, the big thing were going to do to pay, is to get rid of a tax thats going add 20 billion to the deficit this. Isnt about the deficit. Exit question. Do the Congressional Budget Office forecast underscore the importance of a grand bargain on taxes and spending . If so, does president obama have the requisite political skills to pull it off . Mort . I dont think he has, but i think there will be some kind of a deal. I dont think it will be a grand bargain. It will be temporary to get us through the crisis. What we need is a grand bargain, because we are looking at an accumulation of debt in this country, or you want to call it debt service, or you want to call it spending more money than we have. Call it whatever you want. But we know were in that kind of a problem. And this is going to have an end, whether we like it or not, because the whole financial world is going to stop doing what we are now doing, which is funding american debt. So thats a yes and no answer . One of each. Republicans arent even sure what they want to extract in terms of concessions from the white house. So they have to agree and i think the burden is as much on the republicans as to whether they can deliver a majority of their caucus than it is on the president. Okay. This may not be a grand bargain like mort said. It might be the grandest bargain weve seen in a long time, though. Ive never seen the two sides come together with so much at stake and the real leverage is here now to try to get some kind of spending reforms, some kind of entitlement reform. Weve never really seen that, not in recent years. Im thinking this may be the most Significant Movement we have seen. Will it be a great grand bargain that we were speculating about months and months ago . Probably not. But it will be the most movement weve seen on spending reform in a long time, because i just dont think the republicans will go along with anything less. Do you think the engine of it is fear . I think the engine of it is something we talked about on a show that we aired months ago, where you showed a poll number where what the public considered one of the most important priorities of the Obama Administration in part 2, which is lets solve our debt problem. Yes. I think thats driving a lot of this. People want an answer here and the lawmakers are responding. Whats the answer, paul . If the republicans dont put revenue on the table, there will be no grand bargain. Will they . I dont know. They havent yet. So we will live in wonder. Issue 2, yelling at the helm. We have made progress. The economy is stronger and the Financial System sounder. While we have made progress, we have farther to go. The mandate of the Federal Reserve is to serve all of the American People and too Many Americans still cant find a job and worry how they will pay their bills. President obamas nominee to be the next chair woman of the Federal Reserve board of governors, janet yellen. If confirmed, dr. Yellen would become the first woman ever to lead the Federal Reserve in its 100year, this year, history. She will also become the most powerful Economic Policy maker on the planet. Yell lien we replace the outgoing ben bernanke, whose term ends in january 2014, two and a half months from now. Listen to this remarkable curriculum vitae of dr. Yellen. Born brooklyn, 67 years of age. Husband george, a noble prize economist. One son, robert, democrat, brown university, bachelor economics. Yale university, ph. D, economics. Harvard university, assistant professor, five years. Federal reserve board, economist two years. London school of economics lecturer, three years. University of california berkeley, professor of business and economics, 14 years. Federal reserve board governor, four years. White House Counsel of economic advisors, chairman. Clinton administration, three years. Oecd, the organization for Economic Cooperation of the Economic Policy committee, three years. Federal reserve bank of san francisco, president and chief executive officer, seven years. Federal reserve system, vice chair, three years and currently. Is it fair to say that if yellen cannot resolve the problems of the worlds economy, nobody can . I ask you, mort. Well, i think the first thing and her major challenge and job is to resolve the problems in this economy. That will help the rest of the world. She is as good a Federal ReserveBank Governor as were going to get. Bernanke, i believe, saved our system, as chairman of the Federal Reserve board. She was his principal deputy. She followed in his steps. I think she understands what he was about. She is absolutely the right choice for it. I, i mean, you couldnt find better did she give guidance . Give who guidance . Yellen give guidance to the chairman . To bernanke . Im sure she did. They worked very closely together. She was his closest colleague on the board of Federal Reserve. Was obama originally opposed to her . I dont know that. I dont know the answer to that. But all i can say, she was the right choice at the right time. And i hope she does what she has to do. Bernanke sort of put out the fires. And now shes coming in the next phase and from her remarks at her ceremony, she put the emphasis on employment and jobs. And so shes making a shift after bernanke, an appropriate shift. And i must say, she takes her place alongside kristine legarden at the iws, as two women at the center of monetary policy. And i find that quite exhilarating, especially since she comes out of brooklyn, public school. You listed all of those achievements, but and she married well. Well i think her husband married well. But when she came out of high school, the editor of the School Newspaper always interviews valedictorian, but she was both. So she interviewed herself. So i mean, shes just a wonderfully accomplished and apparently a very downtoearth person. Whats the person on capitol hill regarding her . The story on capitol hill is they will yellen will continue the quantitative easing. Thats the big question here. Whats going to happen with the economy . You keep pumping money shes going to review whether, when and how fast to unwind it all. Shes going to keep it going longer. I believe shell be confirmed, but even if shes not, the unique situation here is shes the vice chair, so shell be in the role anyway even if suddenly oneword answer. Do you give her a vote of confidence, yes or no . Absolutely. I served with her in the clinton ages. Do you . Yes. Do you . Yes. Do you . Conditionally . Conditionally, very much. Spoken like issue 3, obama on the war path. No matter what the history of something is, if its offending people, then its time to change it. And this is a great time to do it. The leader of the Oneida Indian nation, a native american tribe from up in new york state. This week, the nation put pressure on one of the biggest institutions in the district of columbia, washingtons football team, the washington redskins. The Oneida Indians find the term redskins to be a racial slur, pointing out that the word red skin defined in the dictionary is a highly offensive term formerly used to refer to a native american. The oneida are airing their grievance to the nfl, the National Football league, in hopes redskins owner Dan Schneider will be pressured to change the name of his team. Mr. Schneider is on record claiming he never will. However, that was before president obama, when asked by the associated press, said this. Ive got to say if i were the owner of the team, and i knew that there was a name of my team, even if it had a storied history that was offending a sizable group of people, i would, i would think, i would think about changing it. President ial pressure, oh, no, schneider wont budge, defending the teams name to a letter to fans, hail to the redskins, and celebration at every redskins game. They speak proudly of redskins nation, in honor of a sports team they love, unquote. Schneider also pointed to polling from the Public Policy center that found that 90 of native americans did not find the teams name, quote, unquote, offensive. The team has had the name redskins since the 1930s. The name was originally a tribute to its native american coach at the time. Well, that was then. This is now. The oneida see nothing honorable about the tradition. They see it as derogatory and have launched radio ads decrying the name, also asking for legs legislation be passed that would board schneiders trademark status on the term redskins. Passage of the bill would mean opening the money drawer to other entities mimicking the name on knockoff merchandise and lessen the redskins franchise profit. What about the baltimore colts . What about the Miami Dolphins . What about Pittsburgh Steelers . What about Oakland Raiders . What about Dallas Cowboys . What about Chicago Bears . Should all these names be changed . What about the bengals, Cincinnati Bengals . The vice vikings . I think we should ask the bears. The bears are upset. What about the vikings . The vikings can have a say. What do you think of this whole argument . I think that in a year we wont be calling it the washington redskins. Really . Its gone. Unbelievable. Im going to put it this way. There are so many people in this country upset with washington, they probably ought to change the name washington as well. [ laughter ] just redskins. Right, right. What do you think . Well, the people whose opinion really matters most are the people really who have the right to feel offended by this, the native americans. One thing i heard the president say, is significant number of people. Lets see how significant is that number . I know one group of native americans was offended, but there are many other native americans who are not offended by this. It really amounts to what they think and what the owners think. And thats why we need to ask mort what he thinks, because you are a former part owner. Ive given you my view on it already. I dont have anything else to say. Is it constitutional for congress to pass legislation banning a pacific trademark . Not that i know of. I cant believe this will take the attention of congress. They have a few other things to Pay Attention to. This is another edge of the wedge that this Congress BetterPay Attention to, which is their own work. This is an argument thats been off and on for the last 20 years at least. And i think there is a momentum. I think well end up eventually they will change their names. I dont know its going to be in the next year. But the intensity right now is on the side of the fans. Lot of fans feel deeply attached to that name. What about the anaheim angels . Do you think well hear from athiests on that . No, we might hear from god himself. Then i think its worth the argument. Boy, i tell you, they win the super bowl, youll hear from god, ill tell you that. Prediction, mort . Going to amend the obama care legislation so that it is not restricting employers to employ people for under 30 hours a week and they are going to raise that to 40 hours because it has reduced an onslaught of parttime workers. Polls show that the Republican Campaign against obama care has back fired. The law is more popular now than since before the shutdown. Susan . Thats crazy, but let me just add my opinion. The government will reopen this week when they fund the federal government in congress. Paul . Everyones looking at fec versus mccutchen, Big Supreme Court bill when it comes to unleashing corporate power. Keep your eye on u. S. Versus standard poors. I predict the computer glitches are the tip of the iceberg for the implementation problems with the new obama healthcare law. And the more the law unfolds, the more frustration citizens will experience, but none of this will doom the law as history making and president obamas crowning legislative signature achievement. Byebye. Hello, i am Llewellyn King, white chronicle. There are people ready around the capitalhouse saying the shutdown is not a big deal, it is not hurting anyone. They do not have it right. It hurts a lot of people. In the building where i live outside of evidence, rhode island, we had military families food, we that had no had to start a food bank for them. We had people in great need and great fear, contractors, people who make small salaries and it is hard for those who have money dontderstand those who live from paycheck to paycheck, something else. Inther inside into things this great nation. The has this program is called white house chronicle, the phone rings, and it is people in of trouble. We had a conversation with a nice single mother who works for walmart and makes 17,000 a year and cannot survive without food stamps, and she wanted to speak to the president to explain that with a small child, it was absolutely essential that she continued to get her food stamps. People are hurting in this country, and we cut off the access to the pain, we do not hear it, we do not have novelists writing about it. We have novelists writing about various psychological and wish but not about where the rubber. Ate meets the road at the grocery store. I am very glad and i am in washington to be able to avoid some of the horrors. I stay at the american guesthouse which is more club hoteltel, but it is more then bedandbreakfast. Very comfy, like a suit of old clothes. Lovely furnishings and delightful people. Check it out, the american guesthouse. Today i will be talking to hend smith, who has written a powerful, important, historical book, i would say because it has and researchotes on what happened to the American Dream and who stole it. I will be right back with he drick smith. You will love him. White house chronicle produced in collaboration with whut, Howard University television. And now your program host, Llewellyn King and cohost linda gasparello. Hello again. I promised to introduce you to Hedrick Smith and here he is. He has been a hero of mine for many decades. The newrter for york times, he wrote a book on russia that helped me when i went to russia. I have been there quite a few times since then. Without his book i would not have understood the place. He has continued with a great output of highquality books,ism in print, newspapers, and in Public Television broadcasting. Welcome to this broadcast. What a pleasure to be with you. What are you up to . Here is your book, who stole the American Dream . And it isd it sobering. It was stunning. It