but the damage that a dead default would do is very real, that much i am clear on. can send the dollar crashing, could cause interest rates to soar, could freeze credit markets around the world, stock markets would almost definitely crash. in short, it could send the u.s. economy into a recession even worse than the one we are still struggling to crawl out from. that is the republican bet that precipitated this standoff, that in the face of another default threat, democrats would agree to give away the store. a lot has happened in the two-plus years since that last debt ceiling showdown. obama was willing to negotiate and make concessions in the name of averting a threat to drive the u.s. economy off a cliff. a lot has happened. in fact, just since yesterday. the weekend began with let s mack a deal worthy promise, behind door number one we had paul ryan trying to broker a deal, the budget guru of republicans in the house, a conservative with deep ties to the republican establishment,
still is paul ryan, just the budget committee chairman and once harry reid stepped into the fray, ryan s whole influence over the process evaporated. bob, it is casey hunt. nice to see you. wanted to ask, there was a lot of talk about how the longer this went on, the worse it would look for republicans in polling and they would start to come around. we obviously have seen that polling. my question is, for you, as somebody who talks to the house conservatives, how much has that moved them, if at all? not i think the polling hasn t been important, and i think some of the major polls last week have had an impact, but two things that are really having an impact are the constituent calls. a lot of republicans publicly aren t very candid about how many negative calls they re getting about the shutdown. that s really bothering them. and long-term they don t think the shutdown will be that much of a political problem for them in 2014. but they re really nervous about the home districts,
house, it won t have a lot of support, at least initially. and democrats, who knows where they re going to be on that. house republicans, they feel like they re helping the senate to build the product and they don t feel like boehner is leading them in a certain direction. as much as there may be pressure for baoehner to take up whateve the senate passes, there is no guarantee that the house knows what it is going to do. bob herbert here. we know there are some members of the house and the gop who feel that the default would not be that big a deal. is there a way to characterize a general sense of how house republicans feel about default? do they think that this would be disastrous? it is a great question, bob. i think politically when you talk to them privately they re very much aware this would be a bad thing for the party if republicans are blamed in any way for default. what they have done, perhaps too much, according to some leadership aids, talked too much publicly about the
base that, it is not that bad, we re going to go to the deadline, don t worry about it. i don t think boehner wants to default. so that s really where the house is now. can they usher some of these conservative members along to avoid default by coming together in a senate deal. right now, it is so fluid, i m not sure where boehner has the votes on almost anything. how delusional is paul ryan that he thought he was going to be the person who was going to come through this and cut between the left and the right and broker a deal that was based largely, not fully, but largely on ryan budget levels? i don t think it is the word delusional. there was a moment last week where ryan published that wall street journal op-ed and the house was leading the talks. ryan was engaging directly with the president. for a brief moment, it looked like ryan could be the one to get boehner, the right flank to come along and support a debt limit skeextension. that was always ryan s goal. but the problem
with. how much leverage does he have? if the hopes of getting a deal now are in reid and mcconnell hammering something out, how much leeway does mcconnell have to actually hammer out a deal here? not so much. the only argument i m hearing from senate republicans. they re going to democrats to chuck schumer and harry reid and saying, look, maybe if you push us too hard on sequester, push us too hard on bca levels, only get four or five republicans, that s not going to be helpful to you once you send this volley back to the house. you really should be looking harry reid and chuck schumer for seven to 15 republicans, don t touch the bca levels, if you don t touch those levels, maybe we ll have a lot of people come along and that will put real pressure on boehner to take up the senate s bill. so it is really an argument not only about not touching the bca levels, but about avoiding default, to make boehner pass something by getting some republican support in the senate. and that s the