Because they are earned in the view of these people, rightly or wrongly. To a significant degree, wrongly. And significantly antielitist, that theres a wisdom in the collective that the elites often are combating. He wrote, and i thought this was quite a remarkable statement, the tea party is jacksonian american aroused, angry, and above all fearful backed by the new american demography that threatens its interests and scorns its values. They view obama as a sort of, having a conscious strategy of Building Political support by increasing americas dependence on government, and they i in polls of the tea party conducted by Pew Research Center and others suggest that these people consider obama as pushing america towards socialism. Well, thats not entirely wrong in the sense that obama seems to be ad slow candidate of advocate of europeanstyle social democracy. So this is a powerful strain in american politics. It has significant antecedents in our political tradition. It may not be a big majority that ran the country from about 1828 until the civil war in terms of dominating american thinking, but it is in these days for reasons having to do with the crisis at hand, it is very intensely held political beliefs. And, therefore, is a Political Force that has to be reckoned with. Now, there are a lot of democrats, liberals, people t in the media who suggest these people just need to get over it. The country has moved beyond them. And often sometimes you hear some kind of adjective suggesting that theyre sort of white bread people which is a pejorative that it ranks with almost any kind of pejorative that you could just throw at an ethnic group. But they dont have to get over it. Maybe historys not on their side. Probably demographics of the countrys not on their side, but the political, american political tradition is on their side. They dont have to get over it because they can press their points of view just as thoroughly as any other group or alignment within the political spectrum. And so what is this question that is pushing america into these crises . It really has to do with the definition of america. Are we going to move into more of a europeanstyle social democratic ethos and system, or are we going to retain something closer to the free enterprise, free market concepts exemplified, let us say, by in our lifetimes most strongly by Ronald Reagan. I dont have the answer to that, but thats the question. And its a profound question. And its got america in its grip. And as a result of that, america has washington in its grip. And as a result of that, washington has become dysfunctional. And as a result of that, we have such things as the crisis of the governmental shutdown. Now, we solved that crisis with a very temporary bandaid and, therefore, were going to be back in this soup very, very soon. And i think that this has a long ways to play out before we know which direction americas going to go in. Well, bob, thank you for those remarks, and it reminds me a bit of a piece that was in the New York Times a few weeks ago by Sam Tanenhaus arguing that the best the tea party could do was precisely what ted cruz was arguing, that the republicans should function best as an obstructionist force rather than trying to push legislation through. David, i would like to turn to you and say where is the gop headed, and where should it go and why shouldnt we count it out . What does the elephant, in fact, have some life left in its limbs . Theres plenty of life within the elephant, particularly in a twoparty system. In the course of the last two decades the Republican Party has been counted out as dead and ready to be buried several times. After the 1964 election when the goldwaterites took control of the party, time and newsweek carried covers saying the Republican Party was dead. Four years later the Republican Party took the white house. In 1974 those same covers appeared along with Television Programs talking about how the Republican Party was dead, and, in fact, timid republicans actually held meetings to discuss changing the name of their party because no one would ever vote for a republican again. Six years later republicans were in the white house. So this is not something thats new. Its something that goes on. Remember when george w. Or george h. W. Bush was elected, there was the talk of what was called the republican lock. All of a sudden things switched. And they said no democrat would ever be elected in our lifetimes because of the electoral lock as it was referred to in the media. A few years later bill clinton was president. So in a twoparty system in which both parties are prone to screw things up and find themselves unable in some cases or many cases to deliver on their promises or to perform as adequately as the people who have put them in office expect them to perform or just simply because people get tired of them, the other partys got a chance of coming back. I think the Republican Partys in a pretty good position. Right now if you look at much of the punditry, the talk is of the surveys that show republicans got more blame for the crisis of the shutdown than did democrats and that this means republicans are in real trouble. History and, in fact, those who have looked at it think that by the fall of next year when the congressional offyear elections take place this is not going to be something that very many people are going to vote on. Nate silver, for example, the former New York Timesman who makes a habit of handicapping these races says he doubts very much itll have much impact, and thats what history shows. Also while is the a crisis in a sense, its not the existential crisis that folks have talked about. The coverage of this one, of this shutdown and i think that bob is correct that the fault lines here make it in some ways more significant, but the shutdown itself was not significantly different than previous shutdowns other than the fact that the executive branch decided to make as much visible pain as they could for people, for average americans outside washington so they could argue rationally that this was a real crisis. The president argued that never before had this kind of situation occurred where one party tried to put something on to a continuing resolution of such, of such importance. In fact, the government shut down four times under Ronald Reagan, three times in a battle over the mx missile which as i recall was a fairly significant debate that took place in those days and once over the question of aid to the contras which was certainly as controversial as anything that weve talked about now. The champion president to suffer through shutdowns, of course, was jimmy carter. Still holds the record for the longest and the most days during which the government was shut down, and the debates then were over the Hyde Amendment about abortion. If those were insignificant questions that these president s were able to bring people to the table to solve, one wonders about the ability of this president to do the same. Jim baker, the former keefe of staff to chief of staff to Ronald Reagan and later secretary of the state, secretary of the treasury, writes and talks about the fact that when reagan was president and these shutdowns occurred, he immediately called everyone together and got things moving again. That didnt happen during this one. And its the kind of rhetorical crisis that could become real because, for example, in Alan Greenspans new book he talks about the failings of economists coming up to the economic collapse of a few years ago was that perhaps they underestimated the importance of psychology and herd performance on the part of investors and others when it comes to economic decision picking and were looking too much at simply the economic facts. What weve had this time is certainly a white house that has argued that this is such an existential crisis that the entire World Economy could collapse as a result of something thats happened many, many times before. As we approach the debt limit, the assumption if one reads the the daily newspapers or watches cbs or the other networks is that if, in fact, we dont extend the debt limit by whatever deadline the secretary of the treasury sets and that varies from week to week, that the World Economy will collapse because well renege on our obligations. And the fact, of course, is that theres revenue coming in that that wouldnt necessarily happen unless the president decided to rearrange the bills he was going to pay so that when the house of representatives voted recently to pass, to pass legislation that would require from present revenues the payment of all International Obligations of that sort, the president said if it got to his desk, hed veto it because he wants that leverage, and he wants to scare the bejesus out of both voters in this country and people abroad. And if greenspans right and if psychology matters, that could turn a political rhetorical crisis into a real economic crisis as people react not to the reality of what might happen, but to the political bantering and back and forth that takes place in this country. And its interesting, i mean, id add one other thing. When we get into these kinds of battles, you know, the New York Times some years ago when obamacare passed praised those dem can accurates who because democrats who because they believed so strongly in it they were willing to vote for it even though it probably meant theyd lose their seats as heroes, men and women of conscience. When republicans who believed as strongly that there was something wrong with it and that it would take the country wrong with it, the New York Times said they were fools because they were risking their seats. And the fact is sometimes courage and heroes depend on where you stand and where you want the country to go, so the people that agree with you are heros, people that oppose you and disagree with you are fools. And that sort of characterization dominates things. Its interesting to me that once the partisanship ended, once the shutdown ended, within the last 4 hours six democratic 24 hours six Democratic Senators have said we need to delay obamacare for a year because it isnt working and because its a disaster. Those six democrats and all the other democrats in the senate a week ago said delaying obamacare for a year would destroy everything. But now when you remove the partisanship, they said, gosh, weve looked at this, and wed better do something about it. Most americans in the polls blame the republicans for the shutdown. Today a National Poll came out, 51 of americans want obamacare repealed. So the fight between these two sides is not going to end either over this or any of the other issues that are going to dominate american politics for the next decade. David, thank you for those remarks. And now i will turn to Romina Boccia of the heritage foundation. On october 16th, excuse me, congress did what it does also well, it didnt do anything. The deal that passed, it did end the Government Shutdown, the first one we had in over 17 years, but only by setting up another with the finish another battle in early january. The deal also suspended the debt ceiling without enacting any reforms to slow the growth in entitlement spending which as we all know is driving our spending and debt crises, and we wont know by how much the debt limit was lifted until february 8th because there is no actual dollar limit right now on the debt. Effectively, there is no debt limit in place. Next week the 29 members of the Budget Conference Committee will hold their first meeting. The committee faces a deadline on december 13th to come up with recommendations to present to the full house and senate in a report. The first priority, of course, will be to figure out government funding past january 15th because on that day sequestration, the automatic budget cuts that were passed in 2011 as the tet limit was raised debt limit was raised by 2. 1 trillion, by the way all of that borrowing happened in a year and a half but those cuts to be faced over ten years through 2021, the sequester would kick in again on that day. Whats important to keep in mind as this Budget Conference Committee starts negotiating is that we do have a dual crisis of spending and debt in this country. The Congressional Budget Office projects that without any fiscal restraint the public debt will reach 100 of Gross Domestic Product in less than one generation. By 2028. Which poises the concerns of summarizes the concerns of businesses in the 12 Federal Reserve districts. Businesses were reporting yet again that uncertainty in increases over Health Care Premiums and the Affordable Care acts regulations were keeping them from hiring and especially hiring fulltime workers. And concerns over the 2,000page law that barely any lawmaker read before they voted on it, also known as obamacare, is affecting the American Economy, americans in general, and what it does to change the size and scope of the federal government. These were at the core of the recent Government Shutdown. House republicans refused funding for the implementation of obamacare, and the president and senate decided to keep the government partially shut down until they were able to get funding for this law. But the stage was set for this challenge, for this funding challenge back in 2010 when president obama and his Senate Allies decided to hijack a budget process mechanism called reconciliation to ram through this law without popular or even bipartisan support. And if you look at the history of the United States, no equally major change in social policy not Social Security, not medicare, not even the Civil Rights Act was able to be successful over the long term without any bipartisan support. But president obama and his allies decided to enact the Health Care Law with just a 51vote, purely partisan majority, and thats why we have this funding challenge now, because we have a majority of republicans in the house. They control the pursestrings, is and t within their Constitutional Rights to deny funding to a law that a they dont agree with. The founders of in this great nation wanted there to be broad consensus before laws or with passed passed. They neither wanted a single person, nor a Single Chamber of congress to be able to impose its will on the public, so they deliberately assigned a system with checks and balances that required agreement between the house, the senate and the president that can only be produced by compromise. But compromise was all but absent during this recent shutdown as president obama repeatedly and publicly refused even to negotiate. One of the checks in our system is that theres a twopart system to laws, first as enacting the law and second is funding the law in each and every year. And congress can overturn laws, they can stop funding laws. Thats part of our constitutional system, and its not new, and its what happened in this time which is why we had a Government Shutdown. Now, the house made several attempts at trying to force compromise, trying to front the entire government but not obamacare or certain provisions like delaying the individual mandate which we heard the administration is now even considering delaying it for six weeks as the exchanges, especially the web exchanges have proven to be completely unworkable. Even so, the administration was arguably using the shutdown as leverage to push pressure the House Republicans into funding this law because even attempts to reopen parts of the government were almost all rejected. And i quote here from the wall street journal a Senior Administration official said we are winning. It does not matter to us how long this shutdown lasts, because what matters is the end result. So the house gave in on october 16th and voted to Fund Obamacare to reopen the goth, the government, and they also suspended the debt ceiling through february 7th. In the meantime, our deficits are more than half a trillion dollars, and before the end of the decade they will rise back up to trillion dollar levels. The Congressional Budget Office projects that even with very modest increases in Interest Rates what the federal government pays to service its debt will double in less than five years and triple before the end of the decade. Theres broad bipartisan agreement that entitlement spending is at the core of this spending and debt challenge that we face as a country. This is true from the president s own Fiscal Commission which he ignored to just about every economist out there. The sooner lawmakers come to terms with our fiscal reality and start the process of reforming programs like Social Security, medicare and medicaid, the more deliberate and thoughtful those reforms can be. By judging how far apart the house and Senate Budget proposals were, h