0 willing to give the president a clean debt ceiling inquiries, every time the president asks us to raise the debt ceiling is a good time to try to achieve something important for the country. >> we, as a caucus, along with our senate couldn't parts, are going to meet and discuss what it is we want to get out of the debt limit. we don't want nothing out of this debt limit. we're going to decide what it is we can accomplish out of this debt limit fight. >> what all this amounts to is what an old basketball coach of mine used to call down the block tough. if you're familiar with the concept of down the block tough, if not the phrase. it's when you start jawing with someone or get into a little fisticuffs and after you've walked away you say, yeah, and your mother. this is what has happened in the last three months to the republicans. they got their clock cleaned by the shutdown, and had to capitulate fully and completely to the initial offer, having gained nothing but a lot of bad feelings from the country. and the disaster of is that incident completely discredited the central tactic the gop has been using since the big fight back in 2011, with the first tea party congress. which was to use deadlines and manufactured crises as bargaining chips to extract ransoms from the president. now that particular kind of leverage is gone. and if you want to see how much it's gone, look at the roll call vote that just happened on the budget deal. so, republicans leave 2013 impotent and neutered. but even though their bullying and hectaring is mostly false, it doesn't mean they still don't have the power to kick people who are down. they can't make the white house do what they want it to do, but the one thing they can do, the one thing they are successful at doing, the thing that they deliver reliably is screwing over poor and working people. just ask the 1.3 million people on unemployment insurance, whose checks will run out three days after christmas. this, this was the big concession republicans got out of the democrats on this round of budget negotiations. democrats wanted to include the unemployment insurance extension, so the big thing seems like this is not an accident. this is actually the agenda. just take a look at congressman jack kingston, now running for senate. this is what he has to say. >> one of the things i've talked to the secretary of agriculture about, why don't you, you know, have the kids pay a dime, pay a nickel, to instill on them that there is no such thing as a free lunch. and yes, i understand that would be an administrative problem, and i understand that it would probably lose you money, but think what we would gain as a society in getting people, getting the myth out of their head that there is such thing as a free lunch. >> poverty as punishment. this is what the policy agenda of the tea party congress has reduced itself to. joining me now is john nichols, my colleague at "the nation" magazine, where he and his washington correspondent. john, there is this strange, weird equilibrium we've arrived at, where republicans are impotent to enact their agenda. they've gotten some of the austerity they wanted, the one thing they have the power to do is basically screwing over constituencies that don't have a lot of political power. >> it's absolutely true, chris. and it's a particularly dekeynesian moment we're in. the notion that coming into the christmas holiday, you would fight to your last breath to prevent an extension of unemployment benefits. the metaphor is to powerful, but it goes way beyond that. we talk about 1.3 million, and i suppose for some people, that doesn't sound like a lot of folks, but what you need to understand, those 1.3 million folks who are getting the unemployment benefits were people who were employed. they tend to have a family. they've got people who need support. so you extend those numbers out, then you talk about the food stamps. chris, on the food stamps, we're talking, over the next decade, about tens of millions of people who could be affected by these cuts. this is ugly stuff. and it is, as you suggest, a politics of going for the low road. there's so many areas where the republican party really could go at costs, could go at expenses of government. people who are unemployed and people who need food stamps are hardly the problem with our budget. >> and what's amazing to me is to sort of imagine, and i don't think this has necessarily been highlighted in the way it should, but you had a budget negotiation, and each side is saying, i want this and i want that, and there was some coming to the middle ground. and the budget deal that got passed was a mutual nonaggregation pact. we don't go over medical and social security to the republicans. democrats say, we don't raise taxes. those are the big things our caucuses care about, okay. but this is the thing republicans say, no, we're not going to pass it unless you kick these 1.3 million people off of long-term unemployment insurance three days after christmas. that is a nonnegotiable. that needs to be -- people need to understand that that is what this party went into the negotiations, what they fought for and what they want. >> you know, franklin roosevelt used to read sections of a christmas carol to the american people on christmas eve. and he would choose out the section where ebenezer scrooge realized that it was a pretty bad thing to refuse to care for the poor. a pretty bad thing to say to those two gentleman who asked, what can we put you down for, to respond, nothing. and what roosevelt was trying to do there was a political act. we have to understand it. he was trying to say that, at a certain point, human beings wake up to the cruelty that they're engaging in. and what troubles me is, it's not just republicans in congress. that's too easy. what we've really ended up, chris, with is an austerity politics in washington, where the beginning of the discussion is, we can't do anything. >> yeah. >> and then it extends into, well, no, we can't do any good, but maybe we could do a little bit of harm. and that's something that needs to be broken. and i don't want to let the democrats off too easy on this. >> let's be clear, the democrats capitulated, right? this was the big thing the republicans want and the democrats gave in. they didn't want to, but they voted for it. the white house is signing off on it. the democrats capitulated on this. in terms of psychology we were just talking about, i think there's a really, really key thing here, and it's captured if that jack kingston quote we just played, which is, that it's not just that we have austerity and we have cuts, because we've spent too much money, but it's actually that there is a part of our politics, there's a constituency in the house republican caucus and tea party base who believes that punishing people, that squeezing people, that making people more miserable is virtuous, that it actually teaches them a lesson that this hammer is being brought down on people so they will understand the error of their shiftless ways. this is an intentional policy to make poverty punishment for people. >> and i think it's important for people who watch that clip to understand two things. number one, jack kingston is thought of us as one of the more thoughtful and reasonable people in the georgia delegation. that's number one. number two, he's running for the u.s. senate. he is in a primary contest with folks who have staked out more extreme positions. and so what we begin to realize here is that within the republican party, even folks who have reputations as being relatively thoughtful, if they're going to get ahead, they have to play this politics. >> and there's an audience for that. there's demand for that. john nichols -- >> and the demand is varied. >> it is. john nichols from "the nation" magazine, my friend and colleague, thank you. joining me now, senator jeff merkley, democrat from oregon. senator, you'll go back to oregon, shortly, i imagine, for the recess. what are you going to tell the people in oregon who are long-term unemployed? what is your explanation about why they were cut off from benefits three days after christmas? >> well, i still have this very slim hope that the senate and house will come to their sense, because delivering 1.3 million lumps of coal across the country, kicking people when they're down, is certainly absolutely wrong. but barring that, i'm going to have to explain to people that there is a caucus in the united states senate and in the u.s. house, that kick them when they're down has become their official motto. and we're going to keep fighting against it in every way we can, but it's a difficult battle. >> should democrats have gone to war over this? should patty murray and the rest of your caucus said, no. no, no, no. no deal, no deal unless these people are included? >> well, do understand that the budget control act creates a default position, even worse than the one that patty was able to negotiate. so we're trapped into that default, and that is a huge mistake. that is a budget box that is with us for eight more years. patty murray did a tremendous job by changing some of the sequestration and we need to come back after the break, if we don't get it before the break, and we need to renew this fight, insist on a vote on the floor, and try to carry that vote to the house and restore this unemployment. i mean, in oregon alone, it's 17,000 folks. as you mentioned, 1.3 million across the country. not only is this a program that provides significant funds that immediately strengthen the economy, but it is carefully calibrated so it only adds additional weeks in areas of high unemployment. in other words, if unemployment is low, then you go back to the regular 26 weeks. and so this was calibrated with a republican president. it adjusts automatically. and stripping it away is terrible policy and really cruel policy. >> that's a great point. the way this was crafted, and it was started under george w. bush, as the recession started to pick up steam, the way this was crafted was to avoid the pitfalls of perverse incentives. you want to keep people in the labor force, don't want to keep people on the sidelines. but it was crafted to avoid all those pitfalls. what we're seeing now is simply, it seems to me, punitive. what do your colleagues, your republican colleagues, how do they defend this to you? >> well, their general notion is that people should just go find a job. and i must say, i think they are living in gated communities and some kind of a bubble, because if they were in my working class community, they would realize that people get up every day. they want jobs. a job is the very best thing for them and their family, and not just for the income, but certainly for the structure in their life and the sense of satisfaction. and they pound the pavement. when there are a hundred people applying for every job, your chances are slim. only one person is going to get that job. the other 99 are out of luck. so this is just an unreasonable view of the world that somehow folks are on unemployment because they are just aren't making an effort. >> senator, harry reid, majority leader harry reid today tweeted, saying, republicans are holding unemployment insurance hostage. and then later said, pleased that senators deen heller and jack reed insured a three-month extension of unemployment insurance. it should be passed. so do you think, there hope that you'll see the caucus come around, the republican caucus, you know, not be uniform in this and actually maybe take this up, maybe retroactively pass it when you get back? >> i do have hope that that will happen. when people go back for the holidays and see in their communities the reaction to what congress has just done, i mean, three days after christmas, taking people and throwing them out in the cold. when you lose your unemployment, it's basically, you may not be able to make your house payment. now your house is in foreclosure, you may lose your home. so this program is good for the overall economy, but it's certainly critical to those families, and it's certainly fairly calibrated for areas of lower and higher unemployment. >> we are smashing people's lives to bits for no reason. senator jeff merkley, thank you very much. >> you're welcome. coming up, an unimaginable sentence for a nonviolent drug crime. >> when they gave him life without parole, it literally killed me. i didn't even exist anymore. because i couldn't understand. i said, how in the world could these people sit here and just take a young man's life away like that? 23 years old! >> the young man she's talks about is clarence aaron, and today, after 20 years, some incredible news for clarence aaron. we're going to tell you about. you'll want to stick around for that, next. 14 jetta. it gets an impressive 34 highway mpg 14 jetta. and 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