from and the people whought you underwhelbrought youet speeds. temperamental satellite television. introducing. underwhelming internet speeds and temperamental television. in one. welcome to the moment no one s been waiting for. the fastest internet and the best tv experience is already here with x1. only from xfinity. the goal here is not to shut document government. the goal is to stop these horrific practices of organizations selling baby parts. you put the budget stuff together with that moral issue and our leadership doesn t move on it the rest of the country s just going to say all right, that s it, right, we are fed up it is tsunami time, throw everybody out. house republicans sharply divided about whether to threaten a government showdown shutdown, rather, over defunding of planned parenthood.
before sunday night but this is crazy. there s no excuse for it. it didn t even have to happen in the first place. it could have been resolved some time ago. i think everybody going into this conference understands the stakes. the center piece of the deal, really, is the conference. basically they hit pause, we ll go back to work. we re not going to break the debt ceiling. those states are looming out there in january and i think people understand we shouldn t be putting the country through this. as i say, everybody that s worked on this budget stuff, they know what the elements are. we can do it if it s not, you know, i m the i got all the answers. there are no my way or the highway, all the other things we see all the time. this country was built on compromise. if somebody tells you i m not going to compromise, what they re telling you is i ve got all the answer. i m 100% right. i never knew anybody that was
in some ways it is worse than i expected although we have been able to do some things on a bipartisan basis the student loan compromise in the senate. the immigration bill, we re pretty solidly bipartisan. there are little bills passing here and there. but when you get to this budget stuff you re talking about the core values of the two parties and it is very hard to resolve but, what worries me, jenna, is, and i heard the interview with the republican congressman before and he was right, that the way you change laws and make policy in this country is by winning elections. and what bothers me is this, using the debt ceiling or the funding of the government as a weapon to get something that you want that you couldn t get because you don t have enough seats in the senate or you don t have the presidency. so i would like to get back to democracy with a small d, following the constitution, and abide by the rules as they have been established and not go through this constant hostage-taking
priori priorities by lowering our debt to more sustainable levels. and then the crisis happened and now is the moment that it has come back this austerity is back and what the republicans say is that this congress has never done it. they have never tightened their belt ever. so they are going to do it. is that the right approach? well, you have you are talking about the difference. let s get into the weeds of budget stuff. you are talking about the structural deficit. you have to spend higher unemployment benefits and it is the structural deficit that is
put things off. i want to introduce you a little bit to our viewers who outside of new england may not necessarily know that much about you. you were a two-term governor? two-term governor. of maine. you ran against a democrat and a republican. there had been a shutdown in maine two years before and you ran against the partisan system. coming here to washington, is it as bad as you thought? is it worse than you thought? you caucus with the democrats although you ve said your mind is open if the republicans ever take control you could caucus with them. are things worse than you thought it might be? certainly they are in this two weeks. i don t think i could characterize my first nine months as being worse because we were able to do some bipartisan things. i got very deeply involved last summer in the student loan negotiations, where that was a truly bipartisan deal where we snatched something that was about to die. immigration was done on a bipartisan basis. but the problem is y