you would have a much different economy, a great economy. we would be respected all over the world the way we were just three years ago. i want to thank everybody. we think we had a good day today. the concession of these two major points was amazing. thank you very much. >> you just used the word -- >> the case heard today by the u.s. court of appeals in washington, d.c. on whether or not donald trump a room from prosecution in his alleged role on the january 6 attack. if you missed it, you can see it on our website, c-span.org. a reminder that coming up momentarily, antony blinken will be holding a press conference on the israel-hamas war. live coverage from tel aviv when

he gets underway, shortly here on c-span. familiar with stephen pearlstein , former washington post columnist, currently at george mason university professor, politico concerti writer. this is the headline of his most recent piece. the root causes of congressional dysfunction, capitol hill has forgotten how to make a deal. what do you make of the spending deal announced last night with this -- was this a sign of dysfunction or breaking dysfunction? guest: it is a sign of dysfunction. first of all, the fiscal year began in october. once again, they did what they normally did and not have a budget. they did not have appropriations bills. they did the continuing resolution. they had known since fall the continuing resolution would be expiring this month. what did they do in anticipation of that? nothing. they dickered around all fall

with non-legislative, political theater, like they have done for the last of the 10 years. again, once again, the only way to avoid going over a cliff is to have the leadership negotiate something behind closed doors, bring it at the last minute to the members and say, take it or leave it. the members have very little input into it. it undermines regular order. it undermines the process by which congress has historically figured out what the country needs and wants. for to put it differently, what the country needs and is willing to accept. that was a process that involved individual members doing whatever they thought was best for their country, for their district, for themselves. interacting with each other on

line by line, on bills and committees, then going to the floor and having the ability to amend that further. that is the way the majority was discovered, for what the country wanted and or was willing to accept. now, it is all from the top. every time they do it from the top, it simply undermines regular order, undermines the committees, undermines the original numbers. host: governing by crisis, this is a complaint we have heard most vocally on the house floor from the freedom caucus and matt gaetz, in particular. do they have a point? guest: the point is valid, but then what happens is they want the republican conference in the rules committee to bring bills to the house and they do not want to let anybody amend them. if they let anybody amend them, a moderate majority of democrats and republicans would vote to amend them in a way that would

make them less palatable. in fact, the freedom caucus wants republican leadership to put their bill on the floor and not allow any amendment to it. they are hypocritical in that respect. host: getting through your piece in politico we are focusing on in these 45 minutes about hostagetaking. what is the difference between hostagetaking and dealmaking? guest: hostagetaking is connecting things that do not belong with each other. if you say that israel a has to be connected -- israel aid has to be connected to ukraine aid and ukraine aid has to be connected to order security -- these are three difficult issues and separate issues. if you say that they have to be done together, then what you are saying is that the same majority that passes one has to pass all three. it is like a rubik's cube. you have to get all three majorities to line up together, which is very difficult, as you can imagine in today's congress.

not just in terms of the polarization of the parties, but on issues like ukraine and israel in particular, and border. the issues do not line up strictly partisan. if you force all three, what you are doing is what we just said. you have to have the deal made by leaders at the last moment, put before them embers and take it or leave it, you can't change it. if they can do that. it is difficulty line all of these things up. take each issue separately. what is the problem with doing it? the problem in the minority of any one issue do not want to accept the or compromise, so they will use another issue to force their view on the majority that does not want it. host: you argue in your piece the problem of doing it is also of the parties. 30 years ago, parties were largely irrelevant to the legislative process for folks

who can't imagine at a time like that. explain. guest: i used to work in the congress. i was what you now call a chief of staff to the united states senator as an improbable -- at an improbable age of 24. in those days, the democratic party went from jim allen of alabama on the right, very conservative, to jim avenue arrest, the south dakota democrat, who was the most liberal. the republicans went from jake javits, who is almost as liberal as any democrat, to a very conservative firm and. the probably -- the parties could not stand for almost anything, because the difference of opinion was so wide. congress was able to legislate, but almost everything went through on a bipartisan basis. for each issue, there was a different majority.within the

committees on the full floor, there were always changing. because each of the pieces meaning each of the members was flexible and could go this way or that way on any given issue and within an issue, on various amendments. this part of the bill, that part of the bill, they did everly. that is how they put together bipartisan majorities. that is the only way you could get things done was a bipartisan basis, because the entire democratic caucus in the house or senate, or the republican caucus, they did not agree on anything. host: was the mindset of members different back then? was it ok to work with the other side? guest: ok to work with the other side? that is all they did. no one took direction from the party caucus, or the party leaders except for the rare occasion when an issue was a party issue. rare.

majority leaders in both houses are like air traffic controllers. they simply scheduled things for votes. they sometimes encourage committees to move ahead and do it faster or slower. maybe at the margin exerted influence, but all the power was in the committees and particular, the committee chairs and subcommittee chairs. it came up from the bottom. it was not dictated from the top. you did not know in my day what mike mansfield thought about an issue. he did not tell you what he thought, because he tried to keep himself neutral on things. for the very reason that he wanted to be trusted by his full caucus. tip o'neill did not impose his will on the house. he is a great leader of the house of representatives, but he did not pose his will on the house. it would not even occur to him to try to do that, except if the president of his party asked him

to do something. then, he might twist some arms. there were rare occasions when leaders did that with civil rights bills, having things to do with foreign affairs and wars. in general, they let things come up from the members. host: to break this fever of dysfunction, what is the first step? guest: the first step is to get back to regular order. host: how do you do that? the system is designed top down, no incentive from the top to change. guest: the first thing is for a group of people, it could be the freedom caucus or a group of moderates or some combination, to -- it has to be a bipartisan group in the house who would have to be 25 from each party in the senate, 10 or 15 from each party, to say to the leaders, no matter which party is in control here, when things come to the floor, you have to allow an movements. if you do not do that, we will

not allow things to come to the floor. because of the tight majorities, you lead our vote. we are not trying to dictate an outcome here. we are trying to dictate a process. if they would open the process up that way to allow bipartisan majorities to emerge on an issue by being able to debate and vote on amendments, it would start to return to regular order. second thing, nothing comes to the floor unless it has been to committee. don't even bring it to us until then. if they would insist on that, they could insist on getting back to regular order and insist on power being pushed down again to the members. the big question is, why the members put up with this. they actually do have the power and have handed it over to the leaders. i honestly not understand. i have been trying to understand for the last year. i have decided to spend my time in congress. i still do not know why they

have handed the power over that they have and had. host: stephen pearlstein our guest, george mason university public affairs professor and could tripping writer at politico -- and contributing writer at politico. taking your phone calls this morning until the end of our program at 10:00 a.m. eastern. democrats, (202) 748-8000. republicans, (202) 748-8001. independents, (202) 748-8002. as folks are calling in, are earmarks a good thing? guest: earmarks to an extent are a good thing -- are good things, because they provide committee chairs and leaders with some carrots, for the absence of them, some sticks, to get members to make the kinds of concessions, political concessions, they need to get

something passed. if you set a numeric limit in terms of a percentage of the whole bill or how many can go into any one district, they had some rules on this for a while to make it fair both between the parties but also between the members and among the members. that would be fine. host: do you think members, if everybody had one, would not use them as political leverage against another member of congress to point out, look at this spending in that district -- they would not use them as a sword in congressional battles? guest: this idea that you have to prevent members, that you have to protect members from political battles, whether they be in primaries or the final, is ridiculous. they have now got to the point where everyone expects to be a little snowflake student. we have to protect our members from tough races.

if you don't want a tough race, don't run for congress. if you don't want to make tough decisions, don't run for congress. do what you think is right for the country, the district or itself. they can make ads out of anything. they can make stuff up if they want, and they do. why are you worried about that? just do your job. host: political committees have a lot of sway in elections. you say they should not be in -- guest: i think your question begs a larger question. too much of the money comes through the top. it answers my question from before, why do people do what the leaders say? why do they give their proxy to the leaders? they control the party money from the special interests. it used to be raising money from your district. nobody raises money from their district anymore, primarily.

it all comes from special interests, national groups directed by the leadership down to individual races. that is one of the key sources of the leaders power. if you want to know what the original sin is, that is the original sin. host: my phone lines are full so we will pause here. patricia in california, democrat. good morning. caller: good morning. what a breath of fresh air. i guess i want to take a historical perspective and try to understand why are we moving away from democracy on both sides? where we want a strong party, a strong party boss and we allow ourselves to be strong-armed. i am so upset that i have no choice other than biden. i am a democrat. i am thinking of registering

republican just to participate and picking someone else. what do you think of that? guest: i would like to duck the question -- it is probably a good strategy to temporarily make yourself a republican to vote in the primary. the first question you asked over the phone, why do these guys toe the party line? they have been convinced by their leaders -- i think this is false, but they have been convinced by their leaders if we just stick together this session, then that will allow us to win an overwhelming majority at the next election. and then, we can take our policy and shove it down the throat of the rest of the country. so, if you just stay together now, we can achieve the 100% victory.

well, this is a fantasy. the country is fairly evenly divided. you are never going to achieve that kind of sustainable majority. maybe you might get it to two years, but that is it. so, if you start with the idea that we are going to achieve total victory and we need to stay together for that, then it is rational the way they are behaving. but, the whole thing is a fantasy because they are never going to achieve total victory, control of the house and send with overwhelming majorities and control of the white house. the last time that happened for more than two years, i can't remember. host: what do you think of the problem solvers caucus? guest: i think they are ineffective. good idea, but they are the people who should be doing what i suggested before, saying we are not taking stands on necessarily the issue, but we are going to take stands on the process. we need to be able to offer amendments. our group needs to be able to offer amendments because we know

they will pass. in fact, they do represent the political center of gravity of the country. but, they never -- they are never allowed to offer amendments. they should make a principled stand on this from the start. nothing comes before the house and senate until it comes before committee and until a reasonable number of amendments with broad support are able to be offered. host: in an age of x, formerly known as twitter, facebook, social media posts, candidates and members of congress having social media personalities, how do you get americans to care about the process? guest: you can't get americans to care about process. you ought to get the members to care about process. host: they will care if americans care. guest: americans never cared about the process. it is not for -- the americans lack representatives. they are supposed to do the job of legislating.

it is not for the citizens to do. i will say that the best thing we can do was take those phones away from the members. i will tell you something, during the very first days of this session, i was in the gallery. they were having all of these votes one after the other on speaker. i would look across, they are all on the phone. they are not even talking to each other. it is like my students at george mason. they come into the classroom and before class -- in the old days, students talked with each other. what a jerk the professor is and how much work we have to do. now, they are just on their phones. sometimes, they are texting with other people in the class. but, the members ought to get off their phones and ignore that stuff. really, they are so overly focused on it. frankly, they are quite afraid of it. they are afraid of partisan moms threatening them -- partisan mobs threatening them, their

staff and their families. that is a threat that is used to impose party discipline. host: pensacola, florida, pat. good morning. caller: i have a comment for mr. pearlstein. i agree with you, the ukrainian aid should have been linked with israel aid order. but, the biden administration, they are the ones that put it out like that. those items should have been broke down individually. number two, where are all of the blue dog democrats? the democratic party has been hijacked by the left, the progressive so much, they never criticize biden for anything. yet, 8 million people left in this country illegally and the democrats do not want to vote for any kind of border control. the third thing is, you are a professor at a fairly elite university.

how many of your colleagues are progressive? how many of your colleagues, professors that you know, are liberal, and how many are conservative? i will hang up and let you talk. guest: you are right, biden didn't do the linking initially but did that because that is the way the game is played. he knew he was going to have trouble with ukraine ate with republicans, so he wanted to link israel aid which republicans generally are in support of. yes, he started it, but he does not have one vote in the house or senate. they could have separated those, and they should have separated those. everyone plays the game that way now, both republican and democrats. have the progressives hijacked democratic party? probably to the extent that i would suggest the freedom caucus and trump has hijacked the

republican party. it is not true that democrats would not and will not devote for border controls. as you know now, the president and many democrats want to do that because it is a problem and because it is a political problem for them. it is not actually true. but, you are right. take a look at the democratic-controlled senate. they have had years to have hearings on this and to come up with a good proposal on border. you may not like their proposal, that could be there starting position for the negotiations. they have not even done anything. they have just ignored the issue because they know the issue will divide their party, so they just do not bring it up. this fixation on party unity. we won't talk about anything

that jeopardizes party unity. if you won't talk about anything that jeopardizes party unity, you are not when you talk about anything important. anything that is important and hard to work through is going to divide a party. they do not want to do that because we have to keep the party together to win the next election so we can run the table and impose our policy on a country that does not want it. we have got to stop that. host: on your job at george mason, any thoughts on claudia gagne's downfall and the congressional hearing that eventually led to that? guest: your caller from pensacola asked me about george mason, the professors being liberal. it is not an elite university, it is the largest state university in virginia. it is not highly selective. it has one of the most conservative law schools and economics departments in the

country. they are beyond conservative, they are libertarian. we have a wide range. i am sure if you go to our professors in our african-american studies program, you will find lots of liberals. in general across the country, professors tend to be more liberal than conservative, but they are not radical liberal. frankly, they accept conservative stte and modernist -- conservative and modernist colleagues easily. host: good morning. caller: good morning. host: what is your question or comment? caller: i just wanted -- i don't really have a question so much.

how is the ukraine, so they are not the most mainstream political conversation? how is it that the real issue is not the one that is [indiscernible] host: it is more of a media question for you, i guess and how we are discussing politics. guest: we discussed politics through the same prism they discuss on the house floor, which is in a highly partisan way. the republicans this and the democrats that. if you start to frame every issue that way, then it excepts the idea that parties activate as a unified group within each chamber. once you accept that, then you get the outcomes that we get. let's talk about the substance of border. when was the last time you actually heard that broken down into seven discrete issues,

which -- by the way, many of which are difficult to find a good solution to, and let's talk those through. but, we have been hearing about the republicans wanting border for months now. have you heard much discussion on what are the details of the thing that they want? i have not heard much. i have not seen much. i have not read much. let's talk about the issues. if we were to talk about the issues rather than the parties and the grievances about this party, let's blame biden -- blaming biden, there were lots of people getting into the country under trump. it is a problem. host: who is the best speaker in your time of watching congress? guest: i am afraid --nancy pelosi was a great speaker, but she was a great speaker at a time where parties acted in unified fashion.

she helped undermine regular order as much as anybody else, but she was more effective at doing the top-down thing then republican speakers have been since her. host: who was the best speaker at trying to institute a system like what you are talking about? guest: hit was great. host: why? guest: if you went to tipp and said, i want this outcome, he would say, do not talk to me. host: did you know him? guest: i did, because i was a chief of staff within -- we did not call it those days, but we were chief of staff to a member of congress from massachusetts. he was from massachusetts. in those days, the delegations were very tight. i said that parties -- delegations were very tight. state delegations, particularly in the house, not so much in the senate.

in the house, they were bipartisan delegations, but they protected each other. they worked very well together. so, that is my -- going back to the mid-1970's and early 1980's. host: about 15 minutes left with stephen pearlstein. the column we are having this discussion about is the root causes of discretion all -- of congressional dysfunction. capitol hill has forgotten how to make a deal, the impotence for this discussion, what a time to have this discussion. two miller place, new york, line for democrats. this is anthony. caller: thank you, gentlemen. i appreciate professor pearlstein's honesty, as well as intellectual integrity. he is getting to the crux of many of the issues. alexander fraser tyler said that most democracies only last approximately 200 years because of the abuse is of power --

abuses of power and the loose, fiscal policies lead to the collapse. it would appear what we have is a government that is monopolistic by its designs at this late stage whether the corporations are calling the shots and the taxpayers have been left out of the loop, where the decisions being made behind closed doors and secrecy. they basically -- 350 million people population, only $34 trillion in unaccountable debt and yet, we seem to have a military for higher that is marching all over the world to slaughter innocents. where is this discipline was the -- where is this diplomacy? young men are having, being led to die and kill other people. host: what was your question,

anthony? caller: my question is, donald trump holdback that curtain in that day of rally, the troops against him as one man. any man is supposed to rise to the presidency of the united states, try to help us do the right things. yet, they thought this guy whether it was russia, russia, russia. had they not done all of that, nancy pelosi ripping up speeches behind his back, his presidency would have come and gone. it is lingering now in a way that we are so divided as a country. i see the corporations, the congress, they are monday -- money laundering. host: got your point. stephen pearlstein. guest: there are times when corporations called the tunes, but those issues are fairly limited and tend to be below the political radar.

this is not a problem of corporations being the puppeteers here. these, this is a different problem. this is all kinds of special interests and ideological faction who are calling the tunes. if you want to talk about tax breaks for corporations, yeah, corporations have undue influence. corporations, to the degree they care about, for example, the border -- they are actually for a lot more legal immigration and corporations are for legalizing those who have been here a long time and are there employees. they want to keep them here. corporations have had no effect on that issue, frankly. so, big corporations have limited power and that is not what is driving the

congressional dysfunction. host: did donald trump represent something fundamentally different to this dysfunctional system? guest: yes, he did, but he got co-opted by the right wing of the republican party to a degree that he said, well, i am not only going to join those guys, i am going to lead those guys. he was a democrat at one point, but he was a fairly moderate, let's get practical guy when he first was running. but, he decided that his best interest was to be a right-wing populist. he was right about that. he has good political instincts. host: memphis, tennessee, good morning. ben, are you with us? we will go to samuel, south pasadena, california. good morning. caller: good morning. thank you for taking my call. host: what is your question or

comment? caller: my comment is this. i have one comment to say. who is running this country? i know what is not joe biden running the country. somebody else behind him is running the country. they are telegraphing messages to him, what to talk about. when he comes to marine to to get into the helicopter, there is always press there. why don't he take questions from them? i don't want him to talk politics. i want him to say, how is your corvette? where do you have it repaired at i want him to talk about without looking at a teleprompter. guest: samuel, the answer to the question of who is running this country is pretty obvious. nobody. that is the problem. host: richard, missouri, democrat. good morning. caller: good morning. i have got a deal here. the guy about congress, the riot

they had in washington, d.c., my senator and the guy from california got up there and delay the vote long enough for the mob to get there to do away with --they found the boats and destroyed them. what would have happened to the country then? it was a big conspiracy. that was the reason for the mob, to get them votes but they did not get them. they looked through the papers to see what was there. host: the third anniversary of january 6. guest: i can assure you, sir, it never occurred to one member of that mob that there were actual pieces of paper somewhere in a box that they needed to go and get. i am sure not one of them understood the paper process of the electoral college well

enough and congress' opening the ballots. i am sure not one of them knew. they were just trying to intimidate the members of congress to voting in a certain way. host: george mason university professor of public affairs, are you optimistic about the generation coming up? their view about politics, their ability to change this system we have been talking about? guest: no. host: why? guest: they spend too much time on social media. when my students tell me, i get my news from social media, i tell them, no you don't. you don't get news at all. news is something that comes from professionals who know how to gather it and organize it and prioritize it in a certain way. it needs to be curated by people

who spend their professional lives doing that. what you get on social media is not curated. it is not checked. it is not professionally gathered, for the most part. so, i do not have a lot of confidence because you can't have a democracy unless you have citizens who will start from a factual base together about what is going on in the world. host: what do you try to leave those students without the end of the semester? guest: i tried to leave them with a better understanding of exactly what we have been talking about. what are the real reasons, and how the system could work better, which is a system that used to work quite well. i understand that we can't go back to the 1970's or 1950's. technology is different. the world is different. but, there are some lessons there. we could come up with updated

versions of regular order that push power back down to the members and give them incentives to figure out what the country ones and needs -- wants and needs. host: new mexico, republican, good morning. caller: how are you, can you hear me? host: yes ma'am. caller: first of all, i appreciate the professors unbiased view. i think both sides are totally horrible and highly incompetent. i feel like they have -- they never have any solutions, they just offer lipservice. i think the people need to be more involved in a think we should get to vote on major decisions, since they use our taxpayer dollars. my question for the professor is, do you think that they are even working for the people anymore? i feel like they just keep the people against each other like dogs shaking their tails back and forth and back and forth.