Guests: Alice Rivlin, Jonathan Capehart, Robert Reich
LAWRENCE O‘DONNELL, HOST: President Obama takes the budget fight to Nevada on the same day that Nevada Senator John Ensign finally stops his fight with the Senate Ethics Committee. Senator Ensign just announced his resignation.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
(MUSIC)
BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I need you all in.
(CHEERS)
CHRIS JANSING, NBC NEWS: President Obama is in campaign node.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: As hard as it was in 2008, it‘s going to be harder this time.
O‘DONNELL: The president rallies his base with the fight with Republicans over the budget deficit and the debt ceiling.
MIKE VIQUEIRA, NBC NEWS: A lot at stake here.
JANSING: He is pitching his plan to cut the debt but he‘s also selling himself to voters.
OBAMA: How many people here know that not only did we cut your taxes when I first came into office, but back in December, we just cut your taxes again?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: If there‘s no discussion on revenue, the negotiations won‘t go anywhere.
ALICE RIVLIN, PRESIDENT‘S FISCAL COMMISSION: We can‘t keep limping along. We have to raise the debt ceiling in the next few months.
O‘DONNELL: That‘s the only responsible position. It‘s not what you get from Karl Rove or Eric Cantor.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Eric Cantor said yesterday in a letter that, listen, we‘re not—we will allow the country to go into default if we cannot get other compromises on spending restraint.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Look, if you vote against the debt ceiling, you‘re voting to foreclose on the United States of America.
O‘DONNELL: And after Donald Trump says in “USA Today” that he doesn‘t want to talk about the president‘s birth certificate anymore, he goes on CNN and says this.
DONALD TRUMP, CEO, TRUMP ORGANIZATION (via telephone): I don‘t know why he doesn‘t just show his birth certificate. We‘re looking into it very, very strongly, and at a certain point in time, I will be revealing some interesting things.
O‘DONNELL: Attacking Bill Cosby wasn‘t enough. Now, Donald Trump picks a fight with Jerry Seinfeld.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Jerry!
JANSING: What did Jerry Seinfeld do to make Donald Trump very angry?
JERRY SEINFELD, COMEDIAN: They say what‘s your show about? I say nothing.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There you go.
SEINFELD: I think you may have something here.
(LAUGHTER)
JANSING: Donald Trump is unleashing a heated attack on Jerry Seinfeld. He is uncomfortable with Trump‘s questioning of President Obama‘s citizenship. Trump says the funnyman should be ashamed.
O‘DONNELL: That‘s right. NBC‘s Charlie Sheen tells NBC‘s ratings hero Jerry Seinfeld you should be ashamed of yourself.
TRUMP: I‘m extremely liquid. I have great assets.
SEINFELD: I think I‘m pretty much like you, only successful.
(LAUGHTER)
O‘DONNELL: Good evening from Los Angeles.
Republicans in Congress are playing a very dangerous game of brinksmanship with the vote to raise the debt limit. And now, they are getting reckless encouragement from Bush‘s brain, Karl Rove, the man who helped elect the worst offenders of irresponsible fiscal policy in history.
Today, Rove used his column in the “Wall Street Journal” to advise congressional Republicans on how to leverage the debt limit vote without ever stating the consequences of what would happen if the debt ceiling is not raised. Instead, Rove said that when the members of the Obama administration, quote, “warn of catastrophic consequences if the debt ceiling isn‘t raised,” that‘s just part of their strategy.
Rove, then, said, “The adults in the Obama administration understand the debt ceiling must be passed with deficit and spending caps to reassure markets that the U.S. is serious about putting its fiscal house in order. Unfortunately, the adults are few in number, and the politicos run the show.”
Karl Rove, politico, is wrong when he says that the markets require anything attached to the debt limit vote. In fact, business leaders are saying the exact opposite.
Here‘s what the president of the National Association of Wholesaler-Distributors, Dirk Van Dongen, told “The Hill” newspaper today: “I‘m more concerned that it gets done. If we get it down with ornaments, let‘s get it done. If we can‘t get it done with ornaments, let‘s get it done anyway. This is a check-the-box exercise for lawmakers.”
Even the Chamber of Commerce, which spent $33 million to help elect Republicans in 2010, is now stepping up its efforts to convince the Republicans they helped get elected not to play chicken with the debt limit.
The debt ceiling was raised seven times under the presidents Karl Rove served, George W. Bush. But Rove says this time is different: “A vote to raise the debt ceiling is an acknowledgment of past actions—in this case Mr. Obama‘s massive spending since coming to office. Republicans are not to be blamed for Mr. Obama‘s spending.”
Rove is right that a vote to raise the debt ceiling is an acknowledgment of past actions, but President Obama told the full story of how we got into this debt position at a town hall in Reno, Nevada, today.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
OBAMA: We had a surplus a decade ago. But we cut taxes, including for millionaires and billionaires. We fought two wars. We created new prescription drug plan, and we didn‘t pay for any of it. A lot of folks promised us a free lunch.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
O‘DONNELL: As the Bush administration was running up the debt, Vice President Dick Cheney actually said, quote, “Reagan taught us deficits don‘t matter.”
Joining me now is Dr. Alice Rivlin, who served as the budget director for President Clinton as the founding director of the Congressional Budget Office. She is also a winner of both the McArthur Prize and the Moynihan Prize.
Thank you very much for joining us tonight, Dr. Rivlin.
ALICE RIVLIN, PRESIDENT‘S FISCAL COMMISSION: Glad to be here.
O‘DONNELL: Let‘s go to that point that dick Cheney made. He said that Reagan taught us deficits don‘t matter. When do deficits matter, and when do they, if ever, not matter?
RIVLIN: They don‘t matter if they‘re temporary, if they‘re caused by something that is going to go away, like a deficit created by a recession from which you‘re recovering.
But the deficits we‘re facing now aren‘t of that sort. They‘re created by promises made by both parties, Republicans and Democrats, over many years to fund entitlement programs, Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security, at a time when we have a lot more old people, we have the baby boom generation, and we have a rapidly rising cost of medical care.
So, the combination of those things means that federal spending is going to go up rapidly over the next couple of decades, and taxes won‘t. So, we will have to borrow more and more money.
Now, we can‘t do that. Nobody‘s going to lend it to us. At anything like the current interest rates, we‘re going to have to pay more and more. The government will end up spending a lot of your tax revenues on just paying interest, and we could have a serious debt crisis. Meaning at some point, we just can‘t market our bonds or only at very high interest rates, and the economy plunges into a new and deeper recession.
That‘s a big risk. We can‘t do that.
O‘DONNELL: Dr. Rivlin, I want to draw on your expertise in thinking about these things in the ideal form. You‘re in that unusual situation of having worked in the politics of these issues as a budget director, but you also stepped back and can look at them from a more academic perspective.
If you were not trapped in the political dimensions that we‘re living in today in trying to figure out how to make these decisions, what would you recommend as the ideal, the ideal posture that the government take on debt and deficits as we try to work our way out of this recession? If you didn‘t have to get Republicans to go along with you or Democrats to go along with you, what would you recommend we do, and when would we start it, and what would be the combination of elements that you would use to move us out of the deficit and debt position we‘re in now?
RIVLIN: Well, the answer to when we would start it would be about 10 years ago. But we don‘t have that option. We‘re here now. And we have a large and growing debt.
I don‘t think there is an ideal answer. It takes a lot of different things.
We have to slow the growth of Medicare and Medicaid because we can‘t afford to have them grow up—go up as fast as they‘re going over the next few years.
We have to put Social Security on a firm foundation. So, it‘s there for the next generation or the current generation even.
We have to reform our tax code so we can have a fairer, simpler tax code that raises more money. And we have to spend the money that we appropriate every year more wisely, and not quite so much of it.
So, it‘s going to take all of those things.
O‘DONNELL: Should we be so eager to cut government spending so quickly while we‘re still trying to work our way out of this recession with such high unemployment rates that are still plaguing this economy?
RIVLIN: No. I wouldn‘t cut quickly or drastically in the next year or so. I think we could freeze government spending, both domestic and defense, without damage.
The recovery seems to be taking hold. It‘s not as fast as any of us want. But I think we can‘t risk a debt crisis. That would be worse.
So, we‘ve got to get started on a plan that will reduce the deficits over time. And freezing spending in the near term is one way to do that.
O‘DONNELL: I‘ve been asking people with expertise like yours what would happen if we failed to raise the debt ceiling on that day that it approaches, where at the stroke of midnight we crack through it at the Treasury. And it‘s not an easy thing, because we‘ve never done it. It‘s one of these scenarios that you have to imagine that we‘ve actually never come close to doing before, because there has never been a significant group of people in the Congress who were actually openly willing to discuss risking not raising the debt ceiling.
What would you envision happening in the near term and in the longer term if we somehow get to that point, where this brinksmanship actually goes right through that point at midnight, on a date certain, when we will hit the limit of our debt ceiling and we have not raised it?
RIVLIN: Well, the first thing you do when you know you can‘t pay your bills is stop paying them. So, the first thing that would happen was that contractors wouldn‘t get paid. Social Security recipients wouldn‘t get their checks. The doctors that do Medicare wouldn‘t get reimbursed. All of those things.
But, I think, in some ways more serious is that the world would know that we‘re a dead beat country. We take on obligations and we don‘t pay them.
And why would you want to lend to a dead beat country? You wouldn‘t -
or not unless they were willing to pay you astronomical interest rates.
So, we couldn‘t borrow any more. And we would be in the position that some other countries of much less stature than us have gotten into. And it would throw us into a deep recession. Interest rates would be sky high, and we‘d be in terrible shape fairly quickly.
I don‘t think any of that is going to happen. Nobody in their right mind would want to have that happen to the U.S. economy.
But we shouldn‘t take the risk. We shouldn‘t lose the confidence of our creditors because we‘re going to need them to lend us some more money, even if we were to reduce the rate of growth of the debt—and I believe we have to.
O‘DONNELL: I share your feeling in the past, of course, that nobody in their right mind would let this happen. But I don‘t know who‘s in their right mind on Capitol Hill.
RIVLIN: Yes.
O‘DONNELL: But we are hearing statements coming out of the Congress that we have never before heard about the debt ceiling. We have heard senators talk about they might just filibuster—and any individual senator could prevent us from raising the debt ceiling on the day we must do it. He wouldn‘t have to filibuster that long to work us past the midnight hour where it becomes the breakdown points.
And we have members of the House of Representatives, including Eric Cantor, a leader in the House of Representatives, saying that he absolutely will not allow the debt ceiling to be raised without certain conditions being applied to it. That‘s the kind of talk that we‘ve never heard around this issue before.
Do you feel somehow that the institution will take control of all that thinking and the institution of Congress will somehow get this done, despite all the new noises we‘re now hearing about the debt ceiling?
RIVLIN: I don‘t know, obviously. But I think that much of what we‘re hearing is a negotiating position. It is a threat. Lots of negotiations begin with threats.
I‘ll never sign this. I‘ll never do that. That‘s a good opening move in a negotiation, because people like Eric Cantor really do want to get spending down, and they want to cut a deal.
In the end, I think that the Republicans will vote for raising the debt ceiling. But they may want to exact a price. And starting your negotiation by saying, “I won‘t sign unless you do this,” is a pretty good way to get there.
O‘DONNELL: Alice Rivlin, thank you very much for joining us tonight.
RIVLIN: Thank you.
O‘DONNELL: Coming up: Senator John Ensign of Nevada has just announced his resignation after more than a year of ethics investigations.
And the ugly lies of Donald Trump are too much for Jerry Seinfeld. And when Seinfeld registers his objection to Trump, of course, Trump tells Seinfeld he should be ashamed of himself.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
O‘DONNELL: He‘s already said he wouldn‘t run again. Then, tonight, Nevada Republican Senator John Ensign resigned because of the Senate Ethics Committee investigation. He says it‘s because he just doesn‘t want to put his family through the ethics committee hearings.
And next, Jerry Seinfeld doesn‘t find anything funny about the lies of Donald Trump.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
O‘DONNELL: I‘m not the only one who‘s been trying to get Donald Trump to stop telling lies about President Obama‘s birth certificate. I‘ve been getting some help on this one from my buddy, Karl Rove.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
KARL ROVE, FORMER BUSH AIDE: Donald Trump‘s consigliore, Michael Cohen, told this weekend that this was not Trump‘s fault. It was the media‘s fault, because the media was always asking Trump about this, and that Trump wanted to talk about other things. I said, “Well, fine.
Gratuitous advice, next time the media asks about it, say, ‘I‘ve said all
I‘m going to say about the issue. I want to talk about the big issues that
America is concerned about—deficits, debt, jobs and respect for America
in the world.‘”
And, of course, you know, Cohen called me back later and said, “Oh, Mr. Trump is going to do exactly that.” And then, of course, Monday, he went out and did what he did, which is to say, “I got deep doubts about it,” and give these series of interviews in which he continues to escalate the issue, not step back from it.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
O‘DONNELL: Donald Trump‘s writers wrote a short piece for “USA Today” in which they said under is byline, “I have spoken my piece on this issue.”
Now, in a sane world, have you the right to assume that Donald Trump was finished with the birth certificate thing. But in Trump world, he then goes on CNN this morning—and guess what happens?
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
KIRAN CHETRY, CNN ANCHOR: You can‘t get out of the gate in a general election if you say that Barack—you are questioning whether Barack Obama was born in America. You won‘t win.
TRUMP (via telephone): Well, I don‘t think that at all. I think there‘s a real question as to whether or not. And, frankly, 75 percent of the people in the Republican Party are really doubting whether or not—they have very big doubts. So, you know, there are a lot of people—I don‘t know why he doesn‘t just show his birth certificate.
ALI VELSHI, CNN ANCHOR: Well, you know?
TRUMP: I would much rather run man-to-man. I don‘t know why he doesn‘t just show his birth certificate.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
O‘DONNELL: Yesterday, Michele Bachmann showed Trump how to handle questions about the president‘s birth certificate.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS, ABC NEWS: Well, I have the president‘s certificate right here. It‘s certified. It‘s got a certification number. It‘s got the registrar of the state signed. It‘s got a seal on it, and it says, “This copy serves as prima facie evidence of the fact of birth in any court proceeding.”
REP. MICHELE BACHMANN ®, MINNESOTA: Well, then, that should settle it.
STEPHANOPOULOS: So, it‘s over?
BACHMANN: That‘s what should settle it. I take the president at his word, and I think for any—again, I would have no problem, and, apparently, the president wouldn‘t either. Introduce that, we‘re done.
STEPHANOPOULOS: So, this has been introduced. So, this case—this story is over?
BACHMANN: Well, as long as someone introduces it, I guess it‘s over.
STEPHANOPOULOS: It‘s right there.
BACHMANN: Yes.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
O‘DONNELL: Now, we know Trump is an obsessive watcher of every bit of television that refers to him in any way. So, we know he has seen how Michele Bachmann handled the birth certificate question. He knows that‘s an option—accepting the president‘s birth certificate as real.
But he refuses to do it. And instead, chooses—actively chooses—to continue to fan the flames of hatred of Barack Obama. He must realize by now that much of that hatred is based on the president‘s policy positions. But probably even more of it, that raw ugly hatred is based on simple old-fashioned racism.
According to the polls, millions of this country‘s most virulent racists now feel they have someone they could vote for for president. Donald Trump is giving public voice to the most polite things that those people think about our first African-American president. The rest of what those racists think about Barack Obama and black people generally cannot be said in public, so they don‘t actually expect to hear it from Trump. But they hope deep down—if there is anything deep down in Donald Trump—that he is every bit as racist as they are.
When the racists see Michele Bachman back down in the face of the proof of President Obama‘s birth, and they see Donald Trump fight on, they have reason to hope that Trump shares their motivation, their strain of hatred of Barack Obama. And Trump is careful to do nothing, to say nothing, to dissuade them from that belief.
FOR SUBSCRIBERSCBP leaders cut out of Trump ad buy decision
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FOR SUBSCRIBERSCBP leaders cut out of Trump ad buy decision
FOR SUBSCRIBERSA harrowing ordeal aboard an Israel-bound plane
Donald Trump may not be a racist, but he is now the racists‘ greatest hero. He is their front man.
And so, it comes as no surprise that decent people are now shunning all things Trump. Jerry Seinfeld pulled out of a September 13th event at the Trump National Golf Club run by Trump‘s son to raise money for a charity.
This provoked another round in what is one of Trump‘s favorite forms of communication, the idiotically angry letter. Apparently feeling that he isn‘t getting enough publicity, he released the letter to “The New York Post.”
It says, “I just learned you canceled a show for my son‘s charity because of the fact that I am being very aggressive with respect to President Obama, who is doing an absolutely terrible job as our leader. We don‘t care that you broke your commitment, even though the children of St. Jude are very disappointed, and despite the fact that your manager clearly stated you are truly a man of his word, what I do feel about is that I agreed to do, and did, your failed show, ‘The Marriage Ref,‘ even though I thought it was absolutely terrible. Despite its poor ratings, I didn‘t cancel on you like you canceled on my son and St. Judge. I only wish I did. You should be ashamed of yourself.”
Seinfeld‘s press representative confirmed that he is dropping out of the press event because he believes that Trump‘s, quote, “demagoguery has no place in public discourse,” end quote. Jerry Seinfeld still plans to make a contribution to the charity involved in the Trump event. Jerry Seinfeld is, of course, too classy to point out to Donald Trump that Seinfeld‘s nine-year run of the show “Seinfeld” made more money for NBC than Trump ever has, and made hundreds of millions more for Jerry Seinfeld than Trump has made for himself at NBC.
I point out that money thing only because it is Trump himself who has expressed the belief that nothing measures a person‘s value better than money. Trump has announced that someone named Bret Michaels will substitute for Jerry Seinfeld. I for one have no idea who Bret Michaels is, what he now does for a living or what he may have done in the past. But I do know that Bret Michaels has never served as a substitute for Jerry Seinfeld.
Trump is desperately trying to lure other celebrities to participate in his September 13th event. His people have suggested that some New York Yankees or some New York Jets might show up. But any public association with Trump now is an association that no decent person can bear, as Jerry Seinfeld has clearly shown us.
I am doing this show tonight in the very same building here in Burbank where NBC programming executives have been quietly planning their continued association with Donald Trump by ordering another season of his NBC show. Jerry Seinfeld has made that association with Donald Trump a lot more difficult for NBC or for anyone who cares at all about truth and decency.
Still to come: Nevada Republican Senator John Ensign called it quits tonight rather than face more questions from the Senate Ethics Committee. And why is Bill Clinton‘s Global Initiative now setting its sights on the U.S.? Are we really in need of the kind of humanitarian attention given to places like Haiti?
Former Clinton cabinet member Robert Reich joins me later.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
O‘DONNELL: After a quick stopover in Nevada today, President Obama is back here in California this evening for a series of fundraisers. Last night in San Francisco, he took on the criticism from progressives who have accused the president of caving in on key issues. His response, change is not simple.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: And I know there are times where you‘re sitting there and you‘re thinking, golly, you know, Obama has made some compromise with the Republicans on this or that or, you know—how come he‘s—you know, he should have done it this way. Everybody is a political consultant.
And, you know, if he had just phrased it that way, I‘m sure we could have gotten health care done in two months.
You know who I‘m talking about. You. That‘s right.
And then your friends call me and say, oh, Obama‘s changed, you know.
He‘s—you know, I used to be so excited. I still have the poster. But -
-
I know.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
O‘DONNELL: While admitting there are times he shares their frustration, the president also pointed to successes, including the drop in the unemployment rate, the repeal of Don‘t Ask, Don‘t Tell, and of course the health care reform law. He should probably throw in Sonia Sotomayor becoming a Supreme Court justice with that list.
Still to come, tonight‘s breaking news, Senator John Ensign of Nevada finally quit after years of scandal and Ethics Committee investigations. . Jonathan Capehart joins me next.
And later, Republicans vowing change in Washington stick to their same old strategy of protecting the wealthy, even if the rich don‘t want their help. That‘s tonight‘s Rewrite.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
O‘DONNELL: Tonight‘s breaking news, Nevada Republican Senator John Ensign is resigning from office effective May 3rd. That‘s a week from Tuesday. Senator Ensign had already announced he wouldn‘t seek re-election next year amid a Senate Ethics Committee probe into his affair with a former campaign aide, Cynthia Hampton.
In 2009, Senator Ensign admitted the relationship and acknowledged helping Cynthia Hampton‘s husband, Doug, a member of his Senate staff, find lobbying work with two Nevada companies. Senator Ensign‘s parents provided the Hamptons with 96,000 dollars, which was described simply as a gift.
In a statement released a short time ago, Senator Ensign said, quote, “while I stand behind my firm belief that I have not violated any law, rule or standard of conduct of the Senate, and I have fought to prove this publicly, I will not continue to subject my family, my constituents or the Senate to any further rounds of investigation, depositions, drawn out proceedings, or especially public hearings. For my family and me, this continued personal cost is simply too great.”
Joining me now, “Washington Post” editorial writer and MSNBC contributor Jonathan Capehart. Thanks for joining me tonight, Jonathan.
JONATHAN CAPEHART, “THE WASHINGTON POST”: Thanks, Lawrence.
O‘DONNELL: Jonathan, normally when a senator under an Ethics Committee investigation takes the action of resigning, of leaving the Senate before that investigation is concluded, before going to hearings, it means that the Ethics Committee has made it clear to the senator and the senator‘s lawyer that they will be recommending expulsion.
That‘s exactly what happened the last time we saw this with Senator Bob Packwood. He was informed that he would be—that they would recommend expulsion. The vote to expel would probably be successful. And so he got out.
Is there any indication—is there any reporting tonight indicating that the Ethics Committee had been moving toward expulsion and had let Senator Ensign know that their position was going to be to expel him?
CAPEHART: Nothing that I‘ve seen so far, Lawrence. But I don‘t think that that‘s, you know, outside the realm of the possible. By resigning, what Senator Ensign has done is basically cut short whatever investigation the Senates Ethics Committee had. Because once the senator resigns, I mean, it‘s—in his action as a sitting senator, once that senator goes, the Ethics Committee no longer has jurisdiction.
And as Senator Ensign says in his letter, his resignation letter, he‘s been cleared by the Justice Department—or should say the Justice Department hasn‘t found any wrongdoing. But also he was investigated by the Federal Elections Commission.
You know, he had probes up and down his conduct of what he did in this affair with the campaign staffer, who was married to someone on his Senate staff. And, you know, I just wrote a piece asking what took him so long.
I mean, he announced in March that he wasn‘t going to run for re-election,. And it couldn‘t possibly be a crisis of conscious that he decided suddenly that he didn‘t want to be in the Senate.
O‘DONNELL: You know, I ran into Senator Ensign a few weeks ago in the Senate. And he seemed, pardon the expression, quite resigned to a life without the Senate and actually looking forward to it. He said he wasn‘t sure what he was going to do.
But I certainly got no hint in my short chat with him that a resignation like this might be coming. Now, to fill the seat that becomes open on May 3rd, what is the Nevada process? Does the governor appoint?
CAPEHART: Yes, the governor appoints. In the Constitution—the Constitution says that if, say, a member of the House were to resign, a special election must be called. That is in the Constitution. What‘s not in the Constitution is what happens when a senator resigns.
And right now, the way it is—and it depends state by state how they do it, but the senator—I‘m sorry, the governor appoints someone to fill that Senate seat. And sometimes it could be until a special election. Sometimes it could be until the end of the term, and then that person would have to run.
But what this sets up in Nevada is a chain reaction. So Governor Brian Sandoval, who is the new governor of Nevada, is a Republican. He is expected to appoint Congressman Dean Heller, who is a Republican. Sharron Angle has already announced that she was going to run to fill Congressman Heller‘s seat, because he had already announced that he was going to run for the nomination for Ensign‘s seat.
So there will be a special election for his seat, and then Heller would step in to Ensign‘s seat, if Sandoval follows through and does that, which would give Congressman Heller a leg up in the 2012 election. He has a Democratic opponent who has already announced, Congresswoman Shelley Berkeley in Nevada, who has said that she wants to run for Ensign‘s seat.
So what ends up happening now because of Ensign‘s resignation, the governor gets to appoint Ensign‘s successor. That‘s going to be a Republican, most likely Republican Congressman Dean Heller. And the Democrat who has already announced that she was going to run for the race, Congresswoman Berkeley, is now finding herself running against presumably an incumbent in 2012 instead of an open seat.
O‘DONNELL: Jonathan, as you just took us through the dominos falling there, my mind is reeling back now to realize that it is Senator Ensign who has been saving us from a possible Congresswoman Sharron Angle in the opening up of this seat. If they, in effect, promote the congressman, Sharron Angle will actually be the first one in a campaign there.
CAPEHART: Right. She has already announced that she was going to run for that seat, in anticipation of something like this happening. She still has to run. Now remember, she lost to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid for the majority leader‘s Senate seat. So it‘s—maybe she‘ll have better luck in a smaller pool of voters, instead of the entire state, in getting into the halls of Congress.
O‘DONNELL: And how much harm can she do in the House of Representatives, right? That‘s what the voters of that district will be asking themselves as they watch Michele Bachmann, you know, prancing through there every day.
“Washington Post” editorial writer and MSNBC contributor Jonathan Capehart, thank you very much for joining us on this breaking news story.
CAPEHART: Thanks, Lawrence.
O‘DONNELL: Earlier today, Bill Clinton announced he will hold a job summit in Chicago this summer, the first time the Clinton Global Initiative has hosted an event dedicated solely to a domestic issue. That‘s coming up.
And two different polls released this week show a majority of Republicans favor increasing taxes on the rich. Then why do their representatives on Capitol Hill preach the opposite? That‘s in tonight‘s Rewrite.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REP. JOHN BOEHNER ®, HOUSE SPEAKER: There‘s been a lot of discussion about the need to raise taxes. And I‘ll just say this. We can‘t tax the very people that we expect to reinvest in our economy and to create jobs. Washington has a spending problem, not a revenue problem.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
O‘DONNELL: That was Speaker John Boehner responding to the president‘s speech last week on reducing the debt. In that speech, the president suggested ending the Bush-era tax cut for those in the highest income tax bracket.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
OBAMA: As a country that values fairness, wealthier individuals have traditionally borne a greater share of this burden than the middle class, or those less fortunate.
It‘s a basic reflection of our belief that those who have benefited most from our way of life can afford to give back a little bit more. Moreover, this belief hasn‘t hindered the success of those at the top of the income scale. They continue to do better and better with each passing year.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
O‘DONNELL: Speaker Boehner has said that tax increases are a nonstarter. But maybe Republican lawmakers should Rewrite what they think they know about the rank and file members of their party, particularly when it comes to more taxes for the rich. Congressman Paul Ryan learned that the hard way on Tuesday.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The top one percent took home about 10 percent of the total annual income. Yet today, we are fighting to not let the tax breaks for the wealthy expire? And we‘re fighting to not raise the Social Security cap to 87,000 dollars. I think we‘re wrong.
(CROSS TALK)
(CLAPPING)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We have to lower spending. But it‘s a matter of there‘s nothing wrong with taxing the top because it does not trickle down.
REP. PAUL RYAN ®, WISCONSIN: We do tax the top.
(CROSS TALK)
(BOOING)
(CROSS TALK)
RYAN: Let‘s remember—let‘s remember, most of our jobs come from successful small businesses.
(CROSS TALK)
RYAN: So whey you raise your tax rate to (INAUDIBLE), which is what the president was proposing—I would just fundamentally disagree. That is going to hurt job creation.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
O‘DONNELL: Two polls released this week show, as they have before, that most Americans favor increasing taxes on the rich. No news there. A Marist/McClatchey poll found 64 percent support raising taxes on those who make more than 250,000 dollars. That‘s the top tax bracket. Only 33 percent opposed it.
And a “Washington Post”/ABC News poll found that 72 percent of Americans supported raising taxes on the top wage earners, with only 27 percent opposing it.
But what about Republicans? Sure, Paul Ryan had a hard time at that town hall, but how do we know those trouble makers weren‘t Democrats who were planted there to fight with Ryan, who would never dream of voting for Ryan? “The Washington Post”/ABC News poll found over half, 54 percent, of Republicans favor raising taxes on that top tax bracket.
That‘s right. Most Republicans, 54 of Republicans support raising taxes at the top bracket. Support among independents is 68 percent. And Democrats of course an overwhelming 91 percent say yeah, raise that top tax bracket.
But what about the rich? What about the people in the top tax bracket? The same poll broke down the numbers for those who make more than 100,000 dollars a year. The top tax bracket is much higher than 100,000 dollars, but what we have is information on those making more than 100,000 dollars a year.
And again, a majority of them, 61 percent of them say people in the top bracket should pay more taxes. Republicans, Democrats, Independents, the rich, most of the nation agrees that taxing the rich should be part of our national debt solution.
The only group standing in the way of that are elected Republicans in Congress. So we know they‘re not representing their constituents on this issue, which makes it all the more clear that what their anti-tax strategy really is is starve the beast, the starve the beast strategy that was started in the Reagan administration.
The strategy that cutting government spending will be politically easier to do if you cut government‘s financing by cutting taxes, by refusing to ever raise taxes under any circumstances, including war. Never, ever raise taxes. Make sure the government never has enough money.
That is the key to the otherwise impossible Republican political trick of defunding the government programs that Congressional Republicans hate. Programs they hate, even though their voters support those programs and live on those programs, indeed, survive on those programs. That‘s some trick.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
O‘DONNELL: Today, President Bill Clinton announced he will host a job summit in Chicago in June. It will be the first time that the Clinton Global Initiative has dedicated an event solely to economic issues within the United States.
The announcement came as the Labor Department released weaker than expected job market numbers, even while reports of high corporate profits lifted stocks.
Joining me now is Robert Reich, secretary of labor during the Clinton administration, and author of “Aftershock.” Thank you for joining me tonight, Bob.
ROBERT REICH, AUTHOR, “AFTERSHOCK”: Good evening, Lawrence.
O‘DONNELL: Count me as shocked that the Clinton Global Initiative—
Global Initiative, is focusing on unemployment in the United States. Yes, unemployment in the United States is in a terrible position, and it should be focused on, and there should be a job summit, and I‘m happy for Bill Clinton to run one.
But to take an organization whose focus is on a global economic development, and to decide that the United States, the richest country in the world, is the place where the attention should be focused while there are other countries struggling with much worse conditions than ours, I‘m having a little trouble with that one. Does it make sense to you?
REICH: Well, I can understand your perplexity, Lawrence. Because after all, global problems—I mean, there is hunger around the world. Food prices are going up. Energy prices are going up. You would expect that there would be many other things for the Clinton Global Initiative to look at.
But this is, remember, Bill Clinton. And under Bill Clinton, 22 million new jobs were created in the United States. This is a man who‘s very concerned about jobs. And he‘s also very concerned, I believe, about global corporations headquartered in the United States that are not creating jobs in the United States.
O‘DONNELL: Let‘s talk about the politics of it as it relates to the Obama White House. If you‘re the Obama White House, or more importantly, if you‘re the Obama re-election campaign, headquartered in the Chicago, are you happy that President Clinton is doing this in June?
REICH: Well, I think that if you were surprised by it—and I don‘t think that the Obama White House was surprised. But if you‘re surprised by it, you‘re not necessarily happy, because a lot of your political advisers in the White House may be saying to you, Mr. President, you should have been doing this job summit, not Bill Clinton.
On the other hand, there‘s another scenario that might explain this, Lawrence. And that is that right now the president—that is the current president, Obama—has got to be worried about selling his deficit plan in order to head off a Republican deficit plan, which is very Draconian. We‘ve talked about that before.
And maybe the current president, Obama, has said to the former President, Clinton, look, we do need to focus on jobs at the same time. We do need to shame these global corporations. I will be there at your summit, but maybe you do this one.
O‘DONNELL: And does it happen in an environment—or will it be allowed to happen in an environment that is considered nonpolitical? All Clinton Global Initiative activity prior to now I think you could reasonably say has been treated as nonpolitical activity. Will this be welcomed that way?
REICH: Well, I think it has to be nonpolitical in the sense that if you are going to put the spotlight on big global corporations that are hiring more people outside the United States than they are inside, even though they are headquartered in the United States, and—you know, among them is General Electric and Caterpillar and Oracle, many companies—they are building and creating more jobs abroad than here in the United States.
If you‘re going to do that, you‘ve got to have them there. You‘ve got to have it a nonpolitical environment. But you‘ve got to shine the spotlight on their failure to create jobs here.
O‘DONNELL: Will Republicans find in this an opportunity to try to focus on—in a positive way actually on the job that Bill Clinton did and your administration with Bill Clinton did in terms of jobs, compared to what the Obama administration has done with jobs? Isn‘t that a comparison that Republicans might actually welcome?
REICH: Well, the Republicans may try, but the current president, Obama, can simply say the truth. And that is that he inherited an economy far worse than the economy Bill Clinton inherited from the first George Bush.
And, you know, President Obama has been struggling to get out of the mess created by the Republicans. I‘m not sure the Republicans really want to make that comparison.
O‘DONNELL: And is there something—is there some counter message that the Republicans will try to get across while the Clinton message is being delivered?
REICH: Well, Republicans may try to say, as Republicans have said before, that if we get the deficit cleaned up—the only way to create jobs in the United States is to cut the deficit. But you know something, Lawrence? There is not a shred of evidence that cutting the deficit now creates jobs.
In fact, that‘s a big lie. That‘s the big lie that, in fact, the Democrats, hopefully the president and other Democrats and maybe even Bill Clinton at this Clinton Global Initiative, can begin to rebut. It‘s the worst and most nefarious lie that‘s being told right now. And like all big lies, if it‘s repeated often enough without being rebutted, the public starts believing it.
O‘DONNELL: We‘ll be watching for it. Robert Reich of U.C.-Berkeley, and former labor secretary—thank you very much for your time tonight.
REICH: Thanks, Lawrence.
O‘DONNELL: That‘s it for “THE LAST WORD.”
THE RACHEL MADDOW SHOW is up next.
Good evening, Rachel.
END
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