. ♪ from washington, the mclaughlin group, the american original, for over three decades, the sharpest minds, best sources, hardest talk. issue one, debt crisis. what debt crisis? >> because it's called raising the debt ceiling, i think a lot of americans think it's raising our debt. it is not raising our debt. this does not add a dime to our debt. two issues have paralyzed washington this month. the federal government shutdown, which began october 1, and the $16.7 trillion debt ceiling limit, which the government will hit on october 17th unless congress raises the debt limit. president obama and speaker

boehner have been deadlocked over a clean debt ceiling extension, meaning no spending cuts attached versus a messy debt ceiling extension, meaning one with spending cuts or tax hikes attached. on thursday, house republicans presented mr. obama with a proposal, to end the debt ceiling deadlock. republicans will vote to raise the debt ceiling enough to last through november 22. in exchange, mr. obama will agree to negotiate with republicans over spending cuts. on wednesday, the president met separately with house democrats to prepare them for the coming compromises. according to congressman jerry conley, who was at the meeting. conley says obama told house democrats they, quote, need to be prepared to give and take, unquote. and quote, we weren't going to

win everything, unquote. financial markets cheered the breakthrough. the dow rose 272 points moments after the breakthrough announcement. but the debt ceiling proposal will not end the government shutdown. republicans and democrats remain at loggerheads over the 2014 federal budget. question, what made president obama change his position on negotiating with the republicans over the debt ceiling? >> well, because inc. it would have been a catastrophe for the country if they hadn't found some way to begin talking about it, and the country would have reacted in a plague on both your houses. i think that's something he had to avoid if he's going to be president for the next three years. we would have ended up in a real economic catastrophe that would have had reverberations for years and years to come that the united states is no longer good on its money and would no longer be the world's reserve currency. this would have been an absolute disaster for the united states. and i think they both more or less stepped back from the

brink, but we're not through this crisis yet. >> what happens if the debt reaches 190% of gdp? >> i think that's big trouble. and that's why you see the republicans basically backing off of their stand. you see the big money donors and small business administration people and wall street basically putting pressure on the republicans, and the republican party as we knew it, is imploding over this issue. their tactic of making the president agree to certain conditions before they open the government is wildly unpopular. and while i don't see the democrats winning in this environment. i think we all lose because the face in government is very costly. but at this point, i think the republicans want to take one hard vote and they will do that next week to avoid defaulting on the debt ceiling and it's hard for me to imagine that

they are not going to open the government at the same time because the political cost is way too great of sticking with this position that they have, which is so unpopular. >> what's the house republicans' position on this? >> they are are a little bit more flexible than they are letting on. i believe they will agree to reopen the government if they are going to have the opportunity for a larger deal on spending, entitlements, tax reform. that's what they are gunning for. that's what the main stream part of the house republican conference is really trying to achieve. and they have on their side republicans in the senate, including more moderate members like susan collins of maine, given that the deal i see happening is one eleanor was talking about. they have a short-term deal to raise the nation's borrowing limit till sometime in late november. and in the interim, they will agree to reopen the government with some changes to the healthcare law that they will put forward, though medical device tax, which is unpopular,

income verification for people seeking healthcare subsidies, changing what makes up a full- time employer, which would certainly affect the economy in the whole scheme of the new healthcare law. all of this will be packaged together. and given the fact that the poll numbers for republicans right now are terrible on this, i think you'll have an agreement. it will end up on the house floor and will pass. it's in the best interest of republicans and democrats to stop this thing now, because every -- the poll numbers show everybody looks bad. >> okay. >> all that together means it's going to happen next week. debt crisis denners. >> if you think client change skepticism is unwarranted, consider the debt crisis denyieys. debt skeptics say we can grow our way out of debt with more tax revenue. not so says harvard university's nile ferguson. in a recent column citing forecasts from the nonpartisan congressional budget office, the cbo, last month, the cbo

published its 2013 long-term budget outlook, forecasting u.s. debt 25 years from now and beyond. like climate change projections, the cbo uses models, based on current trends and likely future scenarios to forecast the national debt. by 2038, 25 years from now, the debt may rise 73% of gross domestic product today to as much as 190% of gdp, says the cbo. unlike climate change, which has failed to heat up for the past 15 years, the federal debt outlook has worsened substantially since last year's cbo report. if you think rising sea levels are bad, get a load of this. as debt rises, so will the percentage of the federal budget that goes to pay interest. from 8% today to 40% in 2072.

even under the cbo's optimistic growth scenario. does that send nervous chills up and down your spine? >> it certainly does, but if you read the cbo report, you'll realize, and all the cbo reports on this issue going back several years, virtually the whole debt problem is a healthcare cost problem. if we can get healthcare costs under control, we don't have a long-term debt problem. that's the thing that people are avoiding talking about. we talk about entitlements, reforming entitlements. we talk about -- we don't have an entitlement problem. it's like saying you have a leaky boat and it's full of people and the way to fix the boat is to throw people off the boat. the way to fix the debt problem is to fix our long-term healthcare cost problem. >> how can you say that healthcare reform -- healthcare -- entitlements are not one in the same? medicare is an entitlement. >> one is how you pay for it.

the other drives the costs. >> well-- >> you don't control the cost of healthcare by paying less for it. you control the cost of healthcare by fixing the system itself. >> nile ferguson has a very negative outlook. he goes, like, 50 years out. if you go that far out, the solution is, which he concedes, is raising revenues, ie, taxes, and cutting spending, which is the formula, you know, bolz simpson, talked about in the upcoming talks between congress and the white house, and whether there's any give yet on the republican side on taxes, we'll see. okay. tough talk. here's a sample of the level of discourse in the nation's capitol this week. >> the only thing that i will say is that we're not going to pay a ransom for america paying its bills. we're willing to pass at least a short-term budget that opens up the government at current funding levels. >> the president said today if

there is unconditional surrender by republicans, he'll sit down and talk to us. that's not the way our government works. >> we can't make extortion routine as part of our democracy. on the presidential characterizations of the republican strategy by president obama, quote, hostage- taking. blow the whole thing up. insane. unquote. senator majority leader harry reid calls the leaders of the gop, quote, unqoan, anarchists? susan? >> it's really in starke contrast to what he talked about, as candidate obama in 2007 and 2008, somebody who was going to unite us all, unite the two parties, stop the clamor on capitol hill. it's gotten so much worse. i've been on capitol hill for many, many years. i've never seen it this partisan and never heard this kind of rhetoric constantly used by both sides, republicans and democrats, talking about

gun to the head, suicide caucus, all these terms, and it really does keep them further apart when it comes to finding a deal. >> is there anybody who seems to be able to con silliate? >> yes. and the people who always do this are the moderates. they are a shrinking group in both parties. susan collins never uses terminology like that. the problem on capitol hill right now is that we have these swing elections and it puts people in the conferences for both the house and the senate who are really polarized. that's why you get this kind of conversation on capitol hill. >> i must say, i, i think it's correct that the president is calling out the other side and you can put together a montage of republicans saying things that you might regard over the top. you could also put people like warren buffett, who says that the tactics that the republicans are using are like putting a nuclear bomb, that we don't fool around with the full faith and credit of the united states.

so i think the quality of the discourse here is very different and as long as i've been in washington, they always fight it out in public and then they go in the back room and make the deal. and that's what's going to happen in the next couple of days. >> you don't think president obama is trying to demonize the republicans, do you? >> oh, they are doing that to themselves, john! they don't need any help! >> the difference is this president has very few personal relationships, not only with the republicans, but even with the democrats. i can tell you that from direct personal knowledge listening to the leadership in both house and senate. reagan, when he was president, every week would have a luncheon with six democrats. he built up a relationship. you know, bill clinton did the same thing. you don't have this here. so the kind of dialogue that you normally have that leads to compromise, that leads to negotiation, that is not there. it comes when we have an emergency, which is what-- >> the republicans-- >> let me finish, please. that is a key part of the way our government works and it is

not working now. >> that's because the republicans are too busy negotiating among themselves. there is a civil war in the republican party. [ overlapping speakers ] >> it's a very different politics we're dealing with today. -- that kind of rhetoric among the republicans. >> even the president's liaison, no one knows who he is. susan crabtree wrote a great story about the person is an invisible man. normally everybody knows the liaison. it's about the white house being really separated from congress. you can see the effect of it, particularly with this whole government shutdown. >> i think it would be nice if they had better personal relationships and i applaud the president inviting them over and all of that. of course john boehner said he didn't want everybody going over to the white house. might see some deif he can tores. i do not think having more dinners together and more

schmoozing together would break, would break the wall of opposition that the republican party has created. >> lets prolong this a little bit. here's a question. was president -- raising the debt ceiling does not increase our debt? >> well, on one level, he's right. but in a real sense, he's not right, okay? why do we have to raise our debt zealing? because we're spending more money than we're taking in. at some point, you reach the ceiling and you have to move on or else you can't do it. >> congress and the president raised the debt ceiling. >> of course. it's not done exclusively by the president. but you can't just say that, you know, accumulating all of these debts has no consequence. one of the consequences is it runs into a debt ceiling. ask any family in america. they will tell you what their debt ceiling is. >> these are obligations already incurred for which you have to pay. so the debt is already incurred. we haven't yet printed a treasury bond to make good on that.

>> you don't think he was being disingenuous? >> no, no. technically, and in the spirit of it, he's absolutely right. >> talking about disingenuity, the republican party is claiming they are so obsessed and worried about the deficit, they send home 800,000 government workers that they will pay them, not getting any work out of them, costing millions to the communities around america, depending on federal money and grants. they are not saving any money. >> by the way, the big thing we're going to do to pay, is to get rid of a tax that's going add $20 billion to the deficit this. isn't about the deficit. it question. do the congressional budget office forecast underscore the importance of a grand bargain on taxes and spending? if so, does president obama have the requisite political skills to pull it off? mort? >> i don't think he has, but i think there will be some kind of a deal. i don't think it will be a grand bargain. it will be temporary to get us through the crisis. what we need is a grand bargain, because we are looking at an accumulation of debt in this country, or you want to call it debt service, or you

want to call it spending more money than we have. call it whatever you want. but we know we're in that kind of a problem. and this is going to have an end, whether we like it or not, because the whole financial world is going to stop doing what we are now doing, which is funding american debt. >> so that's a yes and no answer? >> one of each. >> republicans aren't even sure what they want to extract in terms of concessions from the white house. so they have to agree and i think the burden is as much on the republicans as to whether they can deliver a majority of their caucus than it is on the president. >> okay. this may not be a grand bargain like mort said. it might be the grandest bargain we've seen in a long time, though. i've never seen the two sides come together with so much at stake and the real leverage is here now to try to get some kind of spending reforms, some kind of entitlement reform. we've never really seen that, not in recent years. i'm thinking this may be the most significant movement we have seen. will it be a great grand

bargain that we were speculating about months and months ago? probably not. but it will be the most movement we've seen on spending reform in a long time, because i just don't think the republicans will go along with anything less. >> do you think the engine of it is fear? >> i think the engine of it is something we talked about on a show that we aired months ago, where you showed a poll number where what the public considered one of the most important priorities of the obama administration in part 2, which is let's solve our debt problem. >> yes. >> i think that's driving a lot of this. people want an answer here and the lawmakers are responding. >> what's the answer, paul? >> if the republicans don't put revenue on the table, there will be no grand bargain. >> will they? >> i don't know. they haven't yet. >> so we will live in wonder. issue 2, yelling at the helm. >> we have made progress. the economy is stronger and the financial system sounder. while we have made progress, we have farther to go.

the mandate of the federal reserve is to serve all of the american people and too many americans still can't find a job and worry how they will pay their bills. president obama's nominee to be the next chair woman of the federal reserve board of governors, janet yellen. if confirmed, dr. yellen would become the first woman ever to lead the federal reserve in its 100-year, this year, history. she will also become the most powerful economic policy maker on the planet. yell lien we replace the outgoing ben bernanke, whose term ends in january 2014, two and a half months from now. listen to this remarkable curriculum vitae of dr. yellen. born brooklyn, 67 years of age. husband george, a noble prize

economist. one son, robert, democrat, brown university, bachelor economics. yale university, ph.d, economics. harvard university, assistant professor, five years. federal reserve board, economist two years. london school of economics lecturer, three years. university of california berkeley, professor of business and economics, 14 years. federal reserve board governor, four years. white house counsel of economic advisors, chairman. clinton administration, three years. oecd, the organization for economic cooperation and development, chairman of the economic policy committee, three years. federal reserve bank of san francisco, president and chief executive officer, seven years. federal reserve system, vice chair, three years and currently. is it fair to say that if yellen cannot resolve the problems of the world's

economy, nobody can? i ask you, mort. >> well, i think the first thing and her major challenge and job is to resolve the problems in this economy. that will help the rest of the world. she is as good a federal reserve bank governor as we're going to get. bernanke, i believe, saved our system, as chairman of the federal reserve board. she was his principal deputy. she followed in his steps. i think she understands what he was about. she is absolutely the right choice for it. i, i mean, you couldn't find better-- >> did she give guidance? >> give who guidance? >> yellen give guidance to the chairman? >> to bernanke? i'm sure she did. they worked very closely together. she was his closest colleague on the board of federal reserve. >> was obama originally opposed to her? >> i don't know that. i don't know the answer to that. but all i can say, she was the right choice at the right time. and i hope she does what she has to do. >> bernanke sort of put out the fires. and now she's coming in the next phase and from her remarks at her ceremony, she put the emphasis on employment and

jobs. and so she's making a shift after bernanke, an appropriate shift. and i must say, she takes her place alongside kristine legarden at the iws, as two women at the center of monetary policy. and i find that quite exhilarating, especially since she comes out of brooklyn, public school. you listed all of those achievements, but-- >> and she married well. >> well -- i think her husband married well. but when she came out of high school, the editor of the school newspaper always interviews valedictorian, but she was both. so she interviewed herself. so i mean, she's just a wonderfully accomplished and apparently a very down-to-earth person. >> what's the person on capitol hill regarding her? >> the story on capitol hill is they will yellen will continue the quantitative easing. that's the big question here. what's going to happen with the economy? you keep pumping money-- >> she's going to review whether, when and how fast to unwind it all. >> she's going to keep it going

longer. i believe she'll be confirmed, but even if she's not, the unique situation here is she's the vice chair, so she'll be in the role anyway even if suddenly-- >> one-word answer. do you give her a vote of confidence, yes or no? >> absolutely. i served with her in the clinton ages. >> do you? >> yes. >> do you? >> yes. >> do you? >> conditionally? >> conditionally, very much. >> spoken like -- issue 3, obama on the war path. >> no matter what the history of something is, if it's offending people, then it's time to change it. and this is a great time to do it. >> the leader of the oneida indian nation, a native american tribe from up in new york state. this week, the nation put pressure on one of the biggest institutions in the district of columbia, washington's football team, the washington redskins. the oneida indians find the term "redskins" to be a racial slur, pointing out that the

word "red skin" defined in the dictionary is a highly offensive term formerly used to refer to a native american. the oneida are airing their grievance to the nfl, the national football league, in hopes redskins owner dan schneider will be pressured to change the name of his team. mr. schneider is on record claiming he never will. however, that was before president obama, when asked by the associated press, said this. >> i've got to say if i were the owner of the team, and i knew that there was a name of my team, even if it had a storied history that was offending a sizable group of people, i would, i would think, i would think about changing it. >> presidential pressure, oh, no, schneider won't budge, defending the team's name to a letter to fans, hail to the redskins, and celebration at every redskins game. they speak proudly of redskins

nation, in honor of a sports team they love, unquote. schneider also pointed to polling from the public policy center that found that 90% of native americans did not find the team's name, quote, unquote, offensive. the team has had the name redskins since the 1930s. the name was originally a tribute to its native american coach at the time. well, that was then. this is now. the oneida see nothing honorable about the tradition. they see it as derogatory and have launched radio ads decrying the name, also asking for legs legislation be passed that would board schneider's trademark status on the term "redskins." passage of the bill would mean opening the money drawer to

other entities mimicking the name on knock-off merchandise and lessen the redskins' franchise profit. what about the baltimore colts? what about the miami dolphins? what about pittsburgh steelers? what about oakland raiders? what about dallas cowboys? what about chicago bears? should all these names be changed? what about the bengals, cincinnati bengals? the vice vikings? >> i think we should ask the bears. the bears are upset. >> what about the vikings? >> the vikings can have a say. >> what do you think of this whole argument? >> i think that in a year we won't be calling it the washington redskins. >> really? >> it's gone. >> unbelievable. >> i'm going to put it this way. there are so many people in this country upset with washington, they probably ought to change the name washington as well. [ laughter ] >> just redskins. >> right, right. >> what do you think? >> well, the people whose opinion really matters most are the people really who have the right to feel offended by this,

the native americans. one thing i heard the president say, is significant number of people. let's see how significant is that number? i know one group of native americans was offended, but there are many other native americans who are not offended by this. it really amounts to what they think and what the owners think. and that's why we need to ask mort what he thinks, because you are a former part owner. >> i've given you my view on it already. i don't have anything else to say. >> is it constitutional for congress to pass legislation banning a pacific trademark? >> not that i know of. i can't believe this will take the attention of congress. they have a few other things to pay attention to. this is another edge of the wedge that this congress better pay attention to, which is their own work. >> this is an argument that's been off and on for the last 20 years at least. and i think there is a momentum. i think we'll end up eventually they will change their names. i don't know it's going to be in the next year. but the intensity right now is on the side of the fans.

lot of fans feel deeply attached to that name. >> what about the anaheim angels? do you think we'll hear from athiests on that? >> no, we might hear from god himself. then i think it's worth the argument. >> boy, i tell you, they win the super bowl, you'll hear from god, i'll tell you that. prediction, mort? >> going to amend the obama care legislation so that it is not restricting employers to employ people for under 30 hours a week and they are going to raise that to 40 hours because it has reduced an onslaught of part-time workers. >> polls show that the republican campaign against obama care has back fired. the law is more popular now than since before the shutdown. >> susan? >> that's crazy, but let me just add my opinion. the government will reopen this week when they fund the federal government in congress. >> paul? >> everyone's looking at fec versus mccutchen, big supreme court bill when it comes to unleashing corporate power. keep your eye on u.s. versus standard & poor's. i predict the computer glitches are the tip of the iceberg for the implementation

problems with the new obama healthcare law. and the more the law unfolds, the more frustration citizens will experience, but none of this will doom the law as history making and president obama's crowning legislative signature achievement. bye-bye. . ♪

♪ >> this week on moyers and company -- is there no limit to the cash the rich can throw at elections? the supreme court will decide. >> politicians are always hungry for more money. right now we limit the ways they can get that money. but what mccutcheon wants to do is make it easier for politicians to get that money. >> and -- >> curiosity depends upon your imagining something different from what exists. this radical notion that we aren't bound by everything that we see and that we're told. >> announcer: funding is provided by -- carnegie corporation of new york, celebrating 100 years of philanthropy, and committed to doing real and permanent good in the world. the kohlberg foundation. independent production fund, with support from the partridge foundation, a john and polly guth charitable fund. t