racked up and funding the government through december to avert a shutdown. but the measure is already doomed. senate republicans say they will not support democrats suspending the debt limit, even if it means letting the government go into default. that s setting up a standoff with only eight days until federal agencies run out of money, a month until the government defaults on debts. joining me, nbc s senior congressional correspondent, nice new title, garrett, for your great work. garrett haake. congratulations. how is mitch mcconnell justifying saying that republicans, that he believes they have to do the debt limit, that it has to be done. important for the country. can t let the country go into default. but republicans won t vote for it at all, and the democrats will have to carry it themselves, even though democrats unanimously voted for three donald trump debt limit raises helping republicans when they were in charge.
borrow money could go up. where are you on this? i know you voted against raising the limit in 2011. what s your stance and position now? back in 2011, that was part of a broader negotiation, leading to the budget control act. you cannot screw around with the debt limit. even if you shut down government, as bad as that is, that doesn t default america s debt like the debt limit does. basically the debt limit is let s pay the bill of the credit card we just got in the mail. that s what the debt limit is. you just cannot pay your credit card bill and say you re being fiscally responsible. at the same time, though, whole different conversation. the spending in this country is in a really bad place and we ve got to get back to talking about that and having conversations about how do we in a bipartisan way really start to tackle this problem. so you ll vote to raise the debt limit this time around? i certainly won t let the country go into default, absolutely. do you think other r
30% of the people in this country i m not talking republicans, this is the american population 30% of them believe that president obama is muslim. he is also dealing with a congress where maybe a majority of the republican side of the congress believes that you can let the country go into default, that the debt ceiling is optional. every congress prior to the congresses president obama has had to work with has understood that the debt ceiling is not optional, that it s absolute must-pass. the lessons that he has had to teach, the elementary lessons of governing that he has struggled to teach this congress is something that no other president has ever had to go through. it is something. yeah. it is something that you have that percentage of people who believe he s a usurper. in fact, if you listen to trump. it s not just that he was born in kenya or indonesia somewhere, it s that he was an identity thief.
alexander, with director clapper, the figures in the national security element, as well. the confluence of the two makes this a bigger and more glaring issue for the president s credibility. right, unfortunate, but also a coincidence. i don t think we connect these two things and say oh, this white house, this president wants to be in the dark about things so hands i m just trying to imagine what charles would say about this confluence if george w. bush were in the white house. i think these two things were actually separate things. they re completely different agencies and completely different timelines. the nsa situation has been happening over a very long time. the website issues happened over a much shorter period of time when they were rolling it out. the government was shut down. the president was distracted by the idea of trying not to let the country go into default. ah. there is no ah, come on,
down without concessions from the president. we are not doing that. this is an offer that is predicated on serious negotiations and it is a limited offer. it goes out six weeks but it says let s not have the country go into default. let s try and work this out. on the senate side, however, some republicans think the party has done itself a disservice. here is john mccain. we shut down the government and that gave the opportunity for this to be terribly mismanaged by the white house. they shut down the government with a fool s errand and that is a fact. there has been a change in tone. insisting that the would not gauchetiate in raising the debt ceiling to a focus that