>> schieffer: today on "face the nation," top democrats tell embattled congressman anthony weiner to get lost. and more dire warnings on the economy. anthony weiner says he signed up for therapy after sending inappropriate pictures and messages to women. but debbie wasserman shultz, the chairman of the democratic party, and nancy pelosi, the leader of the house democrats, say he has to resign. we'll bring in steny hoyer, the number two democrat in the house, and republican congressman paul ryan, the architect of the republican economic plan, to talk about that, and whether the country is headed into another recession. senator lindsey graham is just back from afghanistan. we'll ask him, is it going to be possible to bring our troops home from there on schedule?

it's all ahead on "face the nation." captioning sponsored by cbs "face the nation" with cbs news chief washington correspondent bob schieffer. and now from washington, bob schieffer. >> schieffer: good morning again. the number two democrat in the house leadership, steny hoyer; the republican chairman of the house budget committee, paul ryan, are in the studio with us. mr. hoyer, this thing with congressman weiner turned even worse, if that can be believed, overnight. now, new photos of weiner apparently which he apparently took of himself posing before a mirror in the house gym have shown up on the web site tmz. at least that's what this all appears to be. these are the tamest ones. we are not going to show you the worst of them. chairman of your party, debbie

wasserman shultz, the leader of the house democrats, nancy pelosi have both said it's time for him to resign. but seeing this develop this morning, i have to ask, aren't you going to have to move faster than that? aren't you going to have to put pressure here to force him out immediately? >> well, forcing him out will require a process. but this is bizarre, unacceptable behavior. it's my understanding mr. weiner has indicated he wants to take a leave. i would hope he does so. i hope he reflects upon whether or not he can proceed. it seems to me extraordinarily difficult that he can proceed to represent his constituents in an effective way, given the circumstances of this bizarre behavior. >> schieffer: you think he should resign. >> i think that certainly he has to consider that option. i don't see how he can proceed and effectively represent his constituency. >> schieffer: mr. ryan, republicans haven't said very much. there's an old saying in washington-- "don't get between a man and a firing squad." i take it that's what a lot of republicans have done. they stood back and let this thing happen. with congressional approval

ratings down to 16%-- and that's lower than richard nixon's approval ratings when he was forced out of the white house-- it seems to me this is not just a problem for democrats. >> it's a problem for the institution. this is getting beyond ridiculous. i feel so sorry for huma and her family most of all. we have to get this behind us because it's a distraction. yes, he should resign. i don't take pleasure in saying that. we have important work to do, and this is just a ridiculous distraction. >> schieffer: is there something that can be done to speed this along? >> well, there is a process. it would take a little while for this process to go through. there are censuring and... you'd have to go through a process, you'd have to go through the ethics committee would have to process. this would take time. i think the fastest best way is for anthony to resign. >> effectively, i think paul and i and probably all his colleagues agree that any process, judicial process through the ethics committee is going to take time. i don't know that we have that time.

i would hope that mr. weiner would use this opportunity to reflect upon whether or not he can effectively proceed. i don't see how he can. i hope he would make that judgment. >> schieffer: all right. let's talk about the economy. the "washington post" editorialized this week that the economy seems to be stuck in neutral now. washington seems at a loss at how to fix it. the "post" also suggested that the republicans and democrats are in such an ideological gridlock here that you may be unable to do anything about it. what do you say to that, mr. hoyer? >> i hope that's not the case. i hope that we will be able to reach agreement on a number of very important things. first of all, the debt limit extension. this is causing apprehension in the business community and in the markets, not only here but around the world. secondly, i think we ought to be able to get together on

substantial deficit reduction and debt reduction over the long term. i think we have that responsibility. the american public expects that. in the last election, they were concerned about two major issues, from my perspective. that is jobs-- getting jobs for them and their families and their people, their neighbors; and getting this deficit under control. we ought to work together to do that, if we can work together. i think that's going to raise the competence level here and around the world. i think that will, in itself, have a very substantive effect. >> schieffer: do you think, i mean, saying you hope-- and i appreciate what you're saying. but you "hope" you can do that. can you do it, mr. ryan? is there a way here? >> i think it's washington's policies over the last few years that have given us this slow economic growth, this stagnation. enormous tax uncertainty. enormous regulatory uncertainty because of health care and financial laws and debt uncertainty. on the last one-- debt uncertainty, meaning are we going to get our act together and prevent a debt crisis, that is where i hope we can get a down payment on the problem.

this debt limit negotiation, from my perspective, given that there's no budget. it's been 774 days since the senate passed the budget. the budget process is done. in the debt limit negotiations, hopefully we can get a down payment on spending cuts and debt reduction. i think that would help calm the markets and help us get to a recovery. >> bob, let me say though if i can, paul, you and i both know it's not realistic to say that the problem results from the last two years. in point of fact, we had the worst recession starting in december of '07 under policies that you supported and president bush promoted. we had three million jobs lost in the last year of the bush administration, which was under the policies... >> absolutely. let me respond. president obama inherited a tough problem-- no two ways about it. i'm not suggesting that's not the case. what he's done since then is to make matters worse, not better. the economic policies that the president has pushed through congress into law have made this recovery harder to sustain itself.

that, to me, is he inherited a tough problem and didn't go with the right policies, but went with the wrong policies. that is why we have very anemic economic growth. >> paul and i disagree on that. mark zandi, whom we like to quote because he's not a democrat. he was john mccain's economic advisor, paul. he and others, republicans, marty feldstein. >> did you read his op-ed in the "wall street journal"? >> i did not. i did read some of his op eds at the time we were considering what we needed to do to respond to this deepest recession we had. >> forget about what the economists said. look at the results. the economy is flat. >> the economy was put in the deepest recession that we've had since the deep depression of the hoover administration. >> schieffer: you're both reasonable men. you like one another. >> we do. >> schieffer: you personally are friends. tell me something. that the congress could agree on that would make this situation

better. where would you start? >> let me say that where i would start is with bowles-simpson. >> schieffer: what? >> the bowels-simpson. >> schieffer: the deficit commission that the president appointed. >> the reason i say we ought to start with that is because we had a process. i wanted to see a statutory commission appointed that would have had real teeth. unfortunately, we couldn't get the votes in the senate. largely, republicans wouldn't get us give us the votes to get the bill on the floor. the president put in place a commission. that commission was bipartisan. paul served on that commission. they did some very substantive work. not only did they do substantive work, but you saw three republican members of congress and three democratic members of congress support it. along with boules, a democrat, and simpson a republican. you saw five out of the six members of the president's appointees support it, which means that it got 11 votes.

very frankly, had paul and mr. camp and mr. hencealing supported it, it would have had 14 out of 18... let me continue. which would have meant then, both senator reid and then speaker pelosi had pledged if they got the 14 out of 18 votes, they would have put it on the floor. was it perfect? nothing's perfect. but it certainly serves as a basis, i think, for bipartisan agreement. >> schieffer: let's see. >> what happened was that the president disavowed his own commission. he put out a budget that did nothing to fix the problem. republicans, since we didn't like all the details in the commission, we took a dozen or so ideas from the commission, put it in our budget. we passed a budget to fix this problem, to pay off the debt, grow the economy, save medicare, fix the social safety net. we put our plan out there. then, the president just launched another commission, the biden commission, which is now underway. we need real leadership on this. steny has exercised leadership, but not every democrat is steny hoyer in the white house and the

in the senate. >> schieffer: mr. ryan, tell me this. what is one thing you could say that republicans are willing to do that you think mr. hoyer might go along with. >> we have a big spending problem in washington. that's inescapable. we do want to get spending under control. we've simply said very easily-- for every dollar that people want to raise the debt limit, we should cut more than a dollar's worth of spending. we've put $6.2 trillion of spending cuts on the table. there's plenty to choose from. so we would like to think that somewhere that the democrats will be will to go get spending under control and get the debt under control. >> the reason i start with the commission. what did the commission do? everything was on the table. now unfortunately mr. ryan and others have taken spending... excuse me, revenues off the table. he's right. we need to constrain and cut spending where appropriate both on domestic, on defense, on entitlements, so that we get a handle on spending. but at the same time, what the commission said, supported by three republican members of the

congress of the united states and the united states senate, said we need also to have revenues as a component. so that the problem i have with paul, and where paul and i have the difficulty is, paul is a camp disciple, if you will. supply side economics frankly has failed. it failed in the reagan administration where we incurred $1.4 trillion in new deficits. it failed in the... >> steny, steny. the commission recommended supply side economics. it recommended lowering tax rates. that is pro-growth economics. bowels is saying lower tax rates. >> as you know, i agree with that. >> so we agree with that. >> no, you don't think that revenues ought to be any part of this. >> we think revenues should grow by growing the economy. raising tax rates hurts economic growth. >> schieffer: both of you... >> bob, that's an important point because, with all due respect, that was your argument in 1981. that was your argument in....

>> i was a kid in 1981. >> not your personal argument but kemp's. listen to me. that was the argument in 1981. that was the argument in 2001. both times, we had continuing large deficits. >> the deficit today is the difference today is putting up the spending controls and the tax reform. tax reform for economic growth. >> what you're also doing is... >> i can tell you that.... >> what you're also doing is you're doing it in a partisan way. clearly, your medicare proposal was rejected soundly. we don't need to change medicare's guarantee in order to make sure that it's fiscally sustainable. >> when you say partisan, we took this idea from bill clinton's commission that john braude chaired an idea.... >> you didn't have one conservative democrat vote for it. >> i wonder who is being partisan about medicare these days and who is not. the sooner we deal with medicare, the better off we all

are. >> schieffer: you've got to... medicare, i think, there's no nobody who doesn't say that medicare could possibly sustain in its current state. it's going to go broke. don't you have to reform it. mr. ryan wants to replace it. that's one thing. >> with a guarantee. >> the difference is we.... >> we don't want to change it for current seniors, because we should keep the promise we made to them. >> that's not accurate. >> for the next generation, we ought to go a system that's solvent and cure. more money for the poor and sick. less money for the wealthy. steny and i were two of 18 republicans and democrats in 2009... >> schieffer: just two. >> two of 18 to vote against increasing benefits for wealthy seniors. there hopefully is a coalition evolving. >> paul and i have some areas of agreement, as you hear, bob. but when paul says there are no cuts to those who are currently on medicare, that's not accurate. he repeals the affordable care act.

he repeals the wellness provisions, the benefits that are in there. he repeals the preventive benefits. and he repeals the help that we give to prescription drug for those in the donut hole. to say that no benefits are changed... but having said that, what paul should have learned, what all of us should have learned is if we're going to move forward in a fiscally responsible way and politically adopt-- not just talk about but adopt an objective-- it will be because we work together and very frankly come to a solution together. >> the mistake we made was we took an idea that use to be a democratic idea supported by democrats in the 1990s. we foolishly thought perhaps this is the start of bipartisan talks. what we got was partisanship. >> schieffer: gentlemen, i would love to continue this, but we've got... >> there's been a lot of demagoguery. >> schieffer: lindsey graham is waiting in the wings. i've got to talk to him in a second. thanks to both of you. >> thank you.

>> schieffer: and congressman hoyer, we'll see you soon. congressman ryan, you'll be joining erica hill and me along with some of your fellow republicans in a cbs news town hall on the economy that will air tuesday morning at 8:00 a.m. on the early show. "face the nation" back with lindsey graham in just a minute. >> thank you, bob. >> thank you. >> schieffer: thank you. ♪ ♪ [ male announcer ] and just like that, it's here. a new chance for all of us: people, companies, communities to face the challenges yesterday left behind and the ones tomorrow will bring. prudential. bring your challenges. two of the most important are energy security and economic growth. north america actually has

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you said it's time for the administration to do more than it's doing. what needs to be done here? >> get the regional partners to tell assad he has to go and put everything on the table, including military force. if we don't turn this dynamic around-- the red cross can't go into the syria. it's wholesale slaughter. we're about to get qaddafi gone. we need to turn our attention strongly to syria with the regional cooperation like we have in libya. >> schieffer: when you say it's time to think about military force, you're talking about sending in u.s. troops into syria? what are you talking about? >> put on the table with the regional partners-- turkey is being overrun by syrian refugees. to put on table at the united nations in an international way aid to the syrian people. humanitarian disasters abound, what we did in libya to protect the people against a rogue regime. if it made sense to protect the

libyan people against qaddafi, and it did because they were going to get slaughtered if we hadn't sent nato in when he was on the outskirts of benghazi. the question for the world is have we gotten to that point in syria? we may not be there yet but we're getting very close. if you really care about protecting the syrian people from slaughter, now is the time to let assad know that all options are on the table. >> schieffer: i think you also called for expelling the syrian ambassador from the united states. >> it has gotten to the point where qaddafi's behavior and assad's behavior are indistinguishable. the reason we went in to libya is to protect the libyan people from wholesale slaughter when when they protested qaddafi started killing them in the streets. he took his army, turned them on his own people. that's exactly what's happening in syria. if we could have a power change, a regime change in syria that breaks syria from iran, the world would be a much better place. but it's going to take regional and international cooperation to get there. but if you really care about the syrian people, preventing them from being slaughtered, you need to put on the table all options

including a model like we have in libya. >> schieffer: let me turn now to afghanistan, which is why we invited here this morning. you're just back. you were there what, a couple of weeks? you do your.... >> about... yeah, i was there as senator graham and spent eight days. two years ago, we about lost afghanistan. we didn't have enough troops. president obama made the right decision to send 30,000 surge forces in. we're now on offense. the enemy is under siege in the south. they're recruiting 12-year-old suicide bombers. the places we lost in the south we now have back. the afghan people and security forces are getting much bolder against the enemy. so i'm very encouraged that we're on offense. we have a long way to go but this has turned around in the last year pretty dramatically on the security front. >> schieffer: are we going to be able to start bringing these troops home, as president obama said we would do? can we do that on schedule? >> yes, sir. i think this, in the next few weeks, i look at secretary gates and general petraeus has said for a modest withdrawal

somewhere in the 3,000-5,000 range, reducing surge forces from 30,000 by 3,000 to 5,000 but if the afghan security forces, bob, keep getting better their army and police are better today than any time i've seen. the training programs work much better. we could stay on track to reduce our forces by 2014. the goal is to transition to afghan control. there are 98,000 u.s. forces in afghanistan. if progress continues in afghanistan, where there are no safe havens for the insurgents, virtually no safe havens, we could have a substantial number of our troops at home with the afghans in the lead if we stay with the program we have today. the biggest threat to afghanistan is no longer inside the country; it is pakistan's safe havens. >> schieffer: what about pakistan? c.i.a. director leon panetta was there, and he kind of read the riot act to the intelligence service there. what about this? >> well, i think it's the biggest threat to our efforts in afghanistan.

when we provide information to pakistanis about i.e.d. factories in pakistan on their side of the border being used to kill our troops, they give the information to the enemy and these places are... before we can get there and the pakistani army can get there to neutralize these threats, the i.e.d. factories are disassembled. quite frankly, bob, i'm tired of telling a south carolina family, "sorry about losing your son in afghanistan to an i.e.d. made in pakistan and there's nothing we can do about it." my message to the pakistanis is you have to choose who you're with, and the safe havens in pakistan are the biggest threat to our progress in afghanistan. i appreciate the drone attacks, but we need benchmarks and measurements in terms of future cooperation with pakistan and afghanistan. we need to start measuring our progress in both countries, and we're on a collision course with pakistan. if this doesn't change soon, i would urge the president to use more aggressive military force against safe havens in the

pakistan side of the border being used to kill our troops and undermine progress in afghanistan. this cannot sustain itself. >> schieffer: senator graham, thank you so much. i'll be back in a moment with some final thoughts. [ wind howling ] [ technician ] are you busy? management just sent over these new technical manuals. they need you to translate them into portuguese. by tomorrow. [ male announcer ] ducati knows it's better for xerox to manage their global publications. so they can focus on building amazing bikes. with xerox, you're ready for real business. so they can focus on building amazing bikes. or creates another laptop bag

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even making parts for solar panels that harness the sun's energy... working on social activities like clean up programs on beaches in many locations... and regional replanting activities that will help make a better world for all of us. ♪ one team. one planet bridgestone. >> schieffer: finally today, the author kurt vonnegut once observed that life was more or less a replay of high school. with every passing day, that comparison becomes more apt in describing washington. the one difference is that high school stays in session most of the time. yet, the parallels with high school are inescapable. just think about this. distractions such as vanity and the mania for gossip and the short attention span that prevents focusing on problems even long enough to try to understand them.

unbridled meanness toward those who are not part of your crowd. the cliqueishness that requires group-think. "if you don't believe exactly what we believe, you can't be part of our crowd. we're right, you're always wrong. don't confuse us with facts." an inability to act for fear it will cause a loss of popularity. did i miss old-fashioned jealousy and insecurity, which seems to be a factor no matter the issue? which brings me to this scandal over anthony weiner, the new york congressman who sent out those pictures of-- how shall i say this-- himself to women on the internet. i think most high school students would have been smarter than that. but here's the other part. a high school student who did what weiner did would have been expelled in a matter of hours. not until late yesterday did leaders of weiner's own party finally say he should resign. well, good. my question is what took them so long? back in a second.

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to help move business... forward. ♪ >> schieffer: that's it for us. we'll see you tuesday morning on the early show with our report on the republican economic summit. and of course next sunday on "face the nation." captioning sponsored by cbs captioned by media access group at wgbh access.wgbh.org ,,,,,,,,,,