TDPS: Would anyone care about government shutdown? Wouldn't it just hurt Republicans? TRANSCRIPT

[celtics23]

Run time: 06:35 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sV2A1MFe7c4   Posted on YouTube: March 01, 2011 By YouTube Member: MidweekPolitics Views on YouTube: 193   Posted on DU: March 02, 2011 By DU Member: celtics23 Views on DU: 492

 
From: www.davidpakman.com | Subscription: www.davidpakman.com/membership | YouTube: www.youtube.com/midweekpolitics

David: Bill Scher from Campaign for America's Future and www.LiberalOasis.com is joining us via Skype. So Bill, what's the latest on number one, how likely this is to happen?

Bill Scher: Well, a lot of the headlines over the past few days have suggested that the probability has decreased. I don't share that view. The reason why you're getting those headlines is that Speaker Boehner proposed a two-week stop-gap bill. So the government would close down March 4th, only a few days from now, if no bill passed, Boehner has suggested a two-week bill to give him some more time to negotiate, and that legislation has been received favorably by Democrats because it only would cut things that the president has already said he's willing to cut. So it's a classic example of let's agree on what we can agree on and talk about what we can disagree about separately.

Fair enough, but what they agree upon is a sliver of the outstanding issue, so there's no actual concession on the Republicans' part. Now, the cuts that they've proposed are drastically draconian. There's no backing off of that position. So until I see some budging from that, I mean, it's clear to me that Boehner would like to avoid a shutdown, but he does not control his caucus by any stretch of the imagination, so until you have a sense that the Republican caucus is willing to budge from their position, I'd say the odds of a shutdown are just what they were last week.

David: And we've been talking also, speaking of John Boehner, his just horribly backwards priorities up until Barack Obama brought up DoMA, and then all of a sudden, now John Boehner is concerned with jobs, even though three weeks ago redefining rape was a, quote, "high priority". But that's another story. I'm curious, what would it actually mean for the everyday person, and then for a government employee, if the government were to so-called "shut down"?

Scher: Well, the exact nature of it is a little hard to say because there is some discretion on the part of the White House, because what happens when you get to a point of shutdown, they shut down what they call "non-essential services" and not "essential services", so, you know, the military doesn't pack up and go home. It's not that severe.

David: And people still get Social Security checks?

Scher: Probably initially, although it would be more difficult if you just start turning 60, whatever the entirement age is right now, or if you're getting early retirement. You wouldn't have your new application process right away, so that's a likely hiccup that would probably happen. But the exact scope of this is, and there is some discretion on the part of the White House what to classify as essential and non-essential, and they can't be, you know, overly cute about it, they can't just say everything is... everything's essential, nothing shuts down. But they have some latitude, so what exactly happens is still a little unclear at this point.

But what Republicans have always thought in the past is people won't mind it if the government shuts down; this will show how irrelevant it is. But you know, things like contractors, you know, make sure they get their payments, whether parks are open, not to mention, you know, hundreds of thousands of people not going to work, not collecting their paychecks, them having economic hardship, that reducing economic demand throughout the country, all those things are almost sure to happen. And we have found that if these shutdowns go on for more than a few days, the public tends to get very upset.

And as Dick Armey, if you recall, Dick Armey was the former House Majority Leader when the last time a shutdown happened in the 90s, he told "USA Today" this week, let's not kid ourselves, the public will blame Republicans because everybody knows Republicans don't like government. No one blames Democrats when the government shuts down because everyone knows the Democrats like government.

David: Yeah, so I wanted to ask you about that. I've been hearing... I looked into, I guess during the 90s, was it just a few-day government shutdown that took place, I believe in '94?

Scher: There were two separate shutdowns happening in the winter of '95 and '96, so it was a year after Newt Gingrich had taken over Congress. And the first shutdown was a few days, and they backed off, but then they had one that went for about three weeks, and that's when it was seen as way too drastic a measure on the part of Republicans. They'd hoped that the president would get blamed; often the guy at the top gets the blame for these things, but as Dick Armey said, it was pretty transparent that the idea of government shutting down was something that it was internally desired by the Republican Party, and their position was seen as way too out of the mainstream, way too draconian, way too radical. They took the brunt.

David: Well, that's my question. That's my question, because what I've been reading was that the Republicans, exactly, did take the brunt of the political perception hit in the 90s, and the argument I've heard from some Republicans this time around is that because now there is this frenzy about fiscal responsibility and so on and so forth that if it happened this time, the public actually wouldn't be mad at Republicans. I don't buy it at all. What do you think?

Scher: Well, I don't buy it at all either, because there was a very similar political dynamic in the 90s, too. I mean, this was just coming off of Ross Perot's surprise, you know, 20% vote in the 1992 election showing there was a clear constituency for some general notion of deficit reduction. Bill Clinton, the president at the time, embraced that and talked about that regularly. So they were still talking about excessive spending back then, too, but as it was then and as it is today, the public does not have a narrow, simplistic view on this subject, there is a sense that yes, we should try to cut waste where we can, but not, you know, gut key parts of what we want government to do. People like Medicare, people like Social Security, people like investments in infrastructure, people like having their parks open, people like having their schools open. So all those...

David: People like having snow plowed.

Scher: All these basic things people do want their government to do, and don't have a libertarian fantasy that the public sector's going to... the private sector's going to magically take care of these things. So Republicans, a lot of these Republicans have a very deluded notion that today's political dynamic is drastically different than before; Speaker Boehner seems not to be one of those people. He wants... I think he sincerely wants to avoid a shutdown because he was there in the 90s and saw the political backlash that ensued, he just doesn't control his caucus, which is... that's what his problem is.

David: I think you're right. Bill Scher, Campaign for America's Future and www.LiberalOasis.com. We'll see what happens. Thanks so much for joining us, Bill.

Scher: Always a pleasure.

David: All right, see you soon.



Transcript provided by Alex Wickersham and www.Subscriptorium.com. For transcripts, translations, captions, and subtitles, or for more information, visit www.Subscriptorium.com, or contact Alex at [e-mail].

[aliciaabs19]

1. Politically, i think it would actually be good for democrats

[tins0404]

2. Maybe it would make teabaggers realize they need government