we had another one, dennis roth of florida deciding not to run. do the democrats feel like they ve got a shot here? oh, for sure. paul ryan was the 40th house member of the republican caucus to retire. clearly, he made a crucial mistake. he took a job he didn t love. you heard him talk about the time on the ways and means committee chairman. he came to be a deficit hawk and just passed $3 trillion in spending and tax cuts. it s not what the man came to washington to do. i can see why he would be sick and tired. i admire his 20 years of public service. clearly the political wins are totally swirling around given the timing of this announcement. dana: josh, the speaker had a tough approval rating. i think the wall street journal just last month put him at a 24% approval rating. that was pretty much in line with nancy pelosi s. hers is around 21%. you worked for mitch mcconnell when he ran for re-election in
financial oversight and resources in terms of the execution of that. the president s job is to be commander in chief and make those policy decisions. you have some here whether it s trying to make news, whether they really believe it, that want congress, 535 of us between the house and senate to basically be apprised of every operational detail of the u.s. military. the question is where does that line end? i think the president is well within his authority to strike syria, to strike them right now before coming to congress and he ought to do it. dana: i don t have all that much time. i want to ask you about the retirement of your colleague and friend, speaker paul ryan. it s sad. lot of us saw it coming. he accomplished tax reform. we knew he wanted to spend more time with his family. he ll be sorely missed. we ll have great people behind to replace him. dana: you stepped out of the facebook hearing to come. what do you make of the hearing so far? do you think this will result i
territory. dana: michael, do i want to ask you from the message from the democrats going forward. clearly we know that midterms are usually a referendum on who ever is in the oval office. this happens to be president trump this year. democrats have a very solid anti-trump message. that s what they re banking on. but at some point, does that lead too much ground on the table policy wise for democrats to actually go to the polls and vote for something? do they need to change tactic and have something positive to run on especially if the economy continues to be as good as it is now? it s been my experience that you don t really draft your message in april for the november election. we re too far out for that. 80% of the people who are gonna vote know how they re going to vote no matter what s said between now an then. if we go to the election today, we d win the house because we re performing 12, 13 points better than hillary clinton with 40
the senate. his approval rating was also down. part of being a member of leadership. what do you think about the future of the republican party and what will it say about who actually runs and wins the speakership going forward? well, look, this is the price you pay for leadership in congress. the modern day model is that if you want to be liked and you re concerned about your approval rating you shouldn t be a leader in the house or senate. it just comes with the territory. you have to make extremely difficult decisions. concessions that go against your faith. everything you do alienates the other side of the aisle. and so you are stuck in the middle. but that is the price of leadership. that s why you have to have strong leaders doing the job they do on a daily basis. i think who ever succeeds him, the first thing they need to understand is that they re not going to be everybody s most popular guy out there or girl out there. they are going to be extremely under a lot of different
cbo just announced the deficit figures and looking at them now, $804 billion in 2018 but if we do nothing looking at $1.5 trillion in 2018. in addition to that, you also saw the affordable care act, or obama care, repeal and replace did not happen. is that something those two things, do you think you ll continue to work on those in whatever you decide to do next? those two things are one in the same. repealing and replacing obama care is entitlement reform. that s one big thing that we still haven t done. what i m proud to say, the house has done it. ever since i became the head of the house committee, they have balanced budgets. the house did pass the biggest entitlement reform bill last year that congress has ever considered, which would have done more to shave trillions of dollars in debt off the books than anything else congress has ever done. so i m really proud dana: some of our allies might think you might need to