but congress can t pass a bill. we have a sequester, because no one wants to make the hard decisions that need to be made on entitlement and everything else that we need to do, to be fiscally sound. so what do they do? they take the easy way out and they shut government down. that s not dealing with the debt and that s not fiscally responsible and it has nothing to do with dealing with the nation s debt. that is governance by cowardice. well, we are now going to enter a phase in which we re going to have a prolonged negotiation about the way out of sequestration, and all eyes are on what you just referred to as entitlements. the long-term debt projection, the elusive grand bargain, which we are going to talk about in just a moment, including the reappearance of one paul ryan, who voted for default yesterday, an amazing thing. political analyst michelle bernard and cnbc contributor, james pethokoukis, thank you both. coming up let s work together to make government work better.
economy is growing is slower because of the debt. i think the debt is a, you know, it s a medium to long-term problem. i don t think it s a right-now problem. so they are focused on that to the extent of everything else. and i think that s a huge problem. and that, michelle, is because the debt to me, as taken on this kind of symbolic residence, it s not necessarily about the numbers attached to it, it s some manifestation of the ills of the country, and there s no amount of empirical argument that could dissuade people that that s the problem. chris, if you look at this, everybody wants to lower the united states debt, but we also want our members of congress to actually govern the country. they ve done nothing to deal with the debt through governance. we had the gang of six. they couldn t get anything done. we ve had the president talk over and over and over again about how the government should be smart, that we need smart government. no one disagrees with that. but congress ca
you know, i know at least 107 of us signed a letter months ago to the president that said, don t cut social security or medicare as we figure out these budget issues we need to. you know, i sit on the budget committee. paul ryan s budget is the same recycled stuff he s put out there, that s not realistic. we can t even pass appropriation bills, based on their ideas, they re so unrealistic. it s like sasquatch economics. it s something you want to believe in, but it s just not real. and that s why they can t even pass bills assigned to those numbers. i think we need to stand strong. i want to sort of hang a lantern on that for a second. this is really important. the transportation bill. i mean, there s routine work that congress did, passing an appropriations bill. they tried to come up the republicans tried to get a transportation bill that came in under the caps that were put in there by the ryan budget, and the cuts were so deep, the republican leadership had to pull it off the f
the culprit? here s the story. way back in 1988, congress authorized $775 million for the ohmstead locks and dams project to deal with a choke point in the ohio river. the locks and dams is supposed to reduce ship delays through this busy stretch of river. its completion date was once slated for 2006. it is now 2013, seven years later, and the project remains unfinished and the price tag has soared. the projected costs are now $3 billion. the urs corps is the contractor on this army corps of engineers project. so the project is now, if you re keeping track of this, costing four times as much as originally slated and is behind schedules seven years and counting. and yet there it is, in the legislative language of last night s deal, after a government shutdown ostensibly about
and that s because everything here at the ohmstead locks and dams is on a grand scale, from the floating walls to the construction equipment to the cost. but then, republicans started getting squirmy about ear marks. here s mcconnell in 2010. and what i ve concluded is that on the issue of congressional ear marks, as the leader of my party in the senate, i have to lead first by example. nearly every day that the senate s been in session for the past two years, i ve come down to this very spot and said that democrats were ignoring the wishes of the american people. when it comes to earmarks, i won t be guilty of the same thing. that s why today i m announcing that i ll join the republican leadership in the house in support of a moratorium on earmarks in the 112th congress. so has mcconnell violated his pledge to lead by example? did he try to sneak it in in the 11th hour when no one was looking? no, heavens no. alexander came forward to say,