watching this as an american audience, it brings up almost a sense memory of what it means to see a leader leaving on a helicopter and saying good-bye. when we americans see leaders leave at the end of their rain come in america that means the president is leaving the white house at the end of their tomb because they served their two terms in office. maybe they served just one term and then lost. most famously, a president once had to leave the presidency because he resigned under duress in the face of scandal, richard nixon. we are used to seeing leaders take off in that big, deluxe chopper and never coming back.

today, watching the pope do the same thing dressed in white, seen him take off in that dramatic fashion and exit stage up, there is one big difference. unlike presidents who are leaving forever and not coming back, today he took off and left the vatican, but he is just going on vacation for awhile. he will stay at his summer plans for a while, and then he will come back to the vatican, where he will live, dressed in white, sharing this man as a secretary. he will be sharing him indefinitely. he will be there indefinitely for the rest of his life. the ex-pulp's brothers says that he will be happy to advise his successor while he is not being pope. it took him away today, but he going to go

>> in his darkest moment. speaker boehner cited the serenity prayer. today we were introduced to the sequester prayer. >> rise up oh god and save us from our selves. >> we want solutions republicans want sequestration. >> the president is having a meeting on march 1st. >> no meeting today. >> that meeting is tomorrow. >> there is no chance to get legislation done. >> i don't like it. >> it won't help the economy. >> the president proposed this. >> it is something that congress has proposed they have to act. >> so, why are we hear? >> it goes back to july, 2011.

>> i got 98% of what i wanted. >> it has taken far too long. >> both parties have reached and agreement. >> the sequester. >> the sequester. >> both cuts that parties will find objectionable. >> i got 98% of what i wanted. >> i got 98% of what i wanted. >> i'm pretty happy. >> their here. >> another day another crisis. >> it is going to cost the taxpayer more. >> i got 98% of what i wanted. >> fema will see a significant funding cut. >> i got 98% of what i wanted. >> rise up oh god and save us from our selves. >> i'm chris hayes in for lawrence odennel. instead the congress decided to

replace the democratic bill and it received 51 votes in favor 9 short of the 50 needed and the republican bill would have granted the obama administration authority to reallocate the cuts. that measure failed 38-62. you might have think the this would have welcomes more latitude. president obama explained why on tuesday. >> the problem is, when you are cutting $85 billion. in seven months, which represents over a ten percent cut in the defense budge it in seven months there is no smart way to do that. >> today in a statement.

>> so today in washington we saw three camps. the first camp is led by the republicans and it is for austerity. i should clarify that. they are for austerity for some. pretty much everyone but the pentagon. and the republicans do support they don't want to take all of the blame for it. they voted on the cuts for the president give him the knife and tell him to plunge it in where he sees fit. the democrats are okay with some austerity measures so long as revenue is part of that package.

and the third is the least talked about. but probably has majority support among democrats and supports the most sensible solution. cancel it. caucus member introduced this the cancel the sequester act 2013. section 251 a of the balanced budget act of 1985 is repealed. this is the sensible bill that stops the thing everyone including the american people says is a bad idea. >> as we anticipate and across the board set of budget cuts, becoming law in our land, we still expect to see your goodness prevail. rise up oh god, and save us from our selves.

>> joining me now jared bernstein. and robert reich. his new book is "beyond outrage". robert. i'll begin with you. what do you think? we don't need god to save us we need to put together a majority in both houses. >> we just need courage. >> i know the answer to this, but why can't we have a one sentence repeal bill? >> we should. after all, the budget dest sit right now is shrinking. it is slightly higher than when bill clinton came into office in 1992. right now we don't have a budget

deficit problem we have a jobs problem continuing and so why can't we get together and do the right thing. the american public if it understood the details would say this is in sane and it is the republican party and they started out in july of 2011 and they said we are going to blow everything up and not pay the nation's bills and the president said forget it. we are going to have the sequester instead. that is what is so frustrating. it is like the distance between lightening and the thunder. or the bat hitting the ball and the crack of it getting to your ears. we still find ourselves bound by the constraints now and yet

there seems no way out of it. it is true. it is funny, i spent the last few days talking to people about this and going through the details and how it is going to unfold and citing the damage and self inflicted wound of the thing but talking about it as if this is kind of the new normal and this type of government is what we should expect and given the recent track record i guess it is. every five minutes i stop and say this is nuts. we have an economy that is actually doing it's best to get a recovery going and yet every few months we take another whack at it. i have not heard anyone until bob reich talked about the jobs deficit. here in this town all you hear

about is the budget deficit. and the budget deficit has fallen. but none of what we are talking about scratches those issues at all. i think the big obstacle of this is the house republican caucus. they ran on the austerity agenda and they have stuck to it. just cuts, just cuts, just cuts. right? >> and yet there are two camps about what the white house wants. they are playing ball with the republicans because they don't see any other way of rejecting the conversation. they actually want to be in the midst of a grand bargain negotiation. i wonder which of those you think is true. >> the latter. it has significant spending cuts

including entitlements. i think they are still in that mode. the reason we are stuck here is because republicans refuse to compromise on revenues. of course that has been unacceptable. >> if you look at the one pager that the white house has put out. there is the cpi change to the way that the cost of living increases are calculated. real dollars represent a cut over a time window. my theory is this is all a game in which they reduce the democrats into advocating the

cuts to them so they can turn around and run against democrats for entitlements. this is what they did in 2012. the president came up with ways of cutting medicare and then what did romney do? they said look at their white house. this is what they have done every single time. and what they are trying to do is with their strategy of gridlock convince them that they are so dysfunction al that they get rid of it. >> they said the president won't tackle the entitlement program and he wants to cut medicare. >> and here is harry reid sniffing out the same logic that we saw in the republican alternative.

that would have given the president more digression for the cuts. >> they said we are going to cut off three fingers. we want the president to decide which finger goes first. and that is about it. we have tried everything we can and they will not budge on anything. period. >> i have been going through the details on this. the next big deadline is the end of march. when the resolution expires. is that the end game? >> everyone seems non interested about the sequester kicking in tonight? >> i think it is an end game in the following sense. what i think and fear what will happen then is that, the new levels of spending including the sequester will get built into a continuing resolution.

it will take these caps that are all right too low if you look at the side of the budget. and they are going to lower them further. this does not end. and the plan is to keep this thing rolling on and on. at some point there has to be a battle. a waterloo, thank you. >> if you are looking for ways to increase revenue a great plan was announced today. it is a win win win for everyone involved but no one paid attention. >> stepping into the marriage equality fight in california. we'll get tonight's last word.

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the motion to reconsider is laid upon the table. >> and with that after 18 months mired in congress. the violence against women act will go to the president's desk will go to his desk. it has been reauthorized twice since with strong bipartisan support. what many expect to be authorization objected to the bill which prohibited discrimination and they didn't want the bill to prohibit equal access to justice for american indian women. if a woman is assaulted by a non indian woman on tribal land. neither the state or local law enforcement have the jurisdiction to protect her.

within minutes the senate took up the senate version. joe biden spoke today to a violence awareness alert. >> there are too many women in this country who live in fear of violence. there are too many victims we mourn. there is an urgent need for the bill that we passed. >> joining me now are my guests. thank you both for joining me tonight. senator, why did it take so long and why out of nowhere did you finally win?

>> first of all, we are thrilled tonight. that this happened. it has been 14 months since the house had the opportunity to act and didn't and we have had 16 million victims of violence rape, assault since they chose not to act. as we are talking right now. there will be 24 victims of domestic violence for every minute that we are speaking. i think that it was the overwhelming bipartisan outrage and activism of women and families and law enforcement. people who care about their families and children who care across the country. they were overwhelmed. it really means that when people get engaged and we stand up for what is right.

every victim of domestic violence should have the opportunity to be protected. and regardless of their circumstance. violence is violence. we stood up for that principle and there was an overwhelming amount of support for it. and i want to thank everyone who made that happen. >> did you see this as a story of successful outside pressure overcoming this political obstruction? >> what we are seeing here is the political instincts of the gop trump to the party of the extreme.

one of the things that we felt and saw and last year's election is that there are a whole bunch of folks out there want to great classes of women. some women don't deserve to have access to contraception or choice. but you know what? women made their voices heard last election and they are going to do it again. and they are giving a second look to bills that say hey, women, we are going to treat you like united states citizens with all of the rights and free demes that are afforded by that. >> the item that got the most attention are the expanded protections for american indian women on tribal lands where there are high rates of domestic

assaults. some members of congresses, republicans thought there were constitutional problems or this was setting precedent that was going to come back and be bad in the future. i wonder what your argument was in the senate to elay their fears about that. >> first of all, i think those were just excuses and secondly. yes, i know. and you did a good job. but the bottom line is violence is violence. it does not matter where it happens. i remember back in the 70s when i was a small child. i less the effort in michigan to create one of the first two domestic violence arguments.

it was very tough at the time. but since then. this has become a commonly held bipartisan believe that domestic violence is wrong and it shouldn't matter whether you were assaulted outside your house that you ought to have protections under the law and in fact the most dangerous situation a law enforcement individual can walk into is that they need support. this is about making sure we treat all victims all women with dignity and respect. it doesn't matter if it is tribal land or if they are in a city or small town. it doesn't water who their partner is, violence is violence. i think i'm recalling this correctly that all of the republican women in the united states senate voted for the version of the bill that would

ultimately pass with these expanded protections. i wonder what you make of that. >> well, you know it is interesting. i really believe what senator said was true. i believe women are women and i think that is something that everybody in this country believes. that your basic protections under the law regardless of what we are talking about should not be determined on what kind of women you are. women are 52% of our country's make up. and when protections are afforded to women they need to be afforded to all women. and we are seeing more and more women vote that way and more and more women regardless for which side of the aisle. they are voting on that principle. >> i also wanted to say if we elect more women we will get

better results. >> i agree. >> that is the key question here. i pine for the day when we have a 50-50 day. >> happy birthday. chris. >> thank you. >> what is the point of putting up a fight when you are only going to wave the legislative white flag days, weeks later. coming up why the tax is a good idea and it is time for it to final pass congress. a talking car. but i'll tell you what impresses me. a talking train. this ge locomotive can tell you exactly where it is, what it's carrying, while using less fuel. delivering whatever the world needs, when it needs it. ♪ after all, what's the point of talking if you don't have something important to say?

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so this is kind of late for me. i'm used to hosting in the morning and i'm used to having a pastry plate. it has it's own twitter handle and an up coming guest recently tweeted a message to the plate. i'm going to make you delicious. it is getting a makeover this week end. the plate is nervous and excited. tom is talking about hunger in america. you can see what happens this saturday on my show starting at 8:00 am eastern right here on msnbc. coming up.

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from capital one and earn unlimited rewards. choose double miles or 2% cash back on every purchase every day. what's in your wallet? [ crows ] now where's the snooze button? in the spotlight tonight. republican obstruction getting less obstructiony. it marks the third time this year speaker boehner using the rule. unless republicans could pass the bill without democratic votes. it seems the hasstert rule is no more. from now on i will refer to the hasstert rule as the hasstert rule as a success.

but i think it is a [ bleep ] rule let's vote. >> they have used the destructive ryan bill and the more destructive son of ryan bill. if we are supplying the votes we should be able to help write the bill. >> after a 12 day delay republican senators allowed the vote to confirm chuck haegl. it is one thing to obstruct an exchange to lead to legislation but it is hard to understand the point of obstructing for a period and then folding.

but that is what the gop has done on two bis issues alone. again, the violence against women act will be signed into law. so now the question is if the boehner rule will be signed into legislation, what does this mean? david, you worked in the house. what is the logic here? >> i think the logic is that the republican party is going to show that the existing base that we are going to go to bat for you. but they are in chaos. the hastert rule is something i remember well. being on the floor of the house and seeing republicans have their arms twisted to vote for bills. once in a while we slipped in a bill. and i was on the floor where they didn't get enough votes to

stop a bill and so the republican leader went like this and 70 votes switched while they kept the voting to make sure the bill that passed looked like it was passing. allows legislation to pass is an amazing thing. >> it was wise how he did this. they voted for the house version first and then the senate version. you can say i voted for violence against women and with sandy, you could say i didn't support that money going out the door. it is wide how he has done it. this is a little bit of boehner trying to get some leverage. >> it seems to me, on the house side, the three instances, it seemed like he ended up like the clock ran out or their will went

out of them. what is the strategy? >> the tension is this. he needs to let his members go home and say i voted against this and i voted against that. and he needs to say i tried to go to bat for what you want but i want to run the house. the danger here is that members are going home to their district and whether he will be able to maintain being speaker while playing this game? can i mention that the republicans who did not have a problem voting against violence against women? it doesn't hold up. >> if it were the theory of legislating. if you put a nice enough name on a piece of legislation it will pass.

but it doesn't work out that way. this is what is fascinating to me. there is the caucus politics on the hill. how he is leveraging himself and then there is the politics in the districts and then there is the politics here is a list of members who are considering or declared for a senate bill. you only get to talk to people who agree with you. right? >> you have to run statewide. this is a long list of people who voted against the violence against women act. it says that -- >> didn't they vote against the senate version but for the house version? >> when the adds get run against them they can say that is not true. this is a larger reflection.

how do you go to your base and say i did what you wanted me to do and then also run a legislative body. how do you do that? >> how do you do it? >> they did the same thing. they picked the same fight. it is a whole different space. >> this violence against women thing got delayed and then nothing changed. >> if you washed the hearings. there was the grand standing of ted cruz. this was about the iraq war. some people have hard feelings for the things he said against bush. >> i think if they are smart. which is a big if.

that he will say instead of us voting against something that is going to pass and then vote for it. why don't we start voting for things and take credit. >> and that is the logic of the bargain. right? >> that is the normal way that people think about this working. the train is leaving the station get on the train. >> he has a segment of this caucus and they are excited to see this happen. that is what he is trying to navigate between. >> there is also a little bit in both cases of running a hustle on your own base. which you and i are familiar with. we are fighting telecomm immunity. and we lost the fight.

you can talk to your base and see we did it dudes. we tried and the votes weren't there. >> he thinks he can get away with that. you will see he will try to play that game with something explosive and then you will see a tea party candidate for speaker. it is such a live wire of an itch. karen and david, thank you so much. >> coming up. taxing wall street. it could bring in billions of new revenues at a time when the government said it is in need of crash. so why did the announcement go unnoticed. ♪

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coming up, democrats today announce plans to tax wall street speculation. it is a win win win from a policy perspective. also supreme court and gay marriage. the obama administration will no longer sit on the side lines. this is big news. details ahead. [ male announcer ] there are only so many foods that make kids happy. and even fewer that make moms happy too. with wholesome noodles and bite sized chicken, nothing brings you together like chicken noodle soup from campbell's. it's amazing what soup can do.

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it offset the cost with a mix of both spending cuts and revenue. it included $1.8 trillion in new debt. but it makes these dire times at a time when a nation turns it's eyes to revenue that will not hit the paycheck of american workers who see their paychecks staggering. enter the three democrats who held a press conference today who discussed an idea to raise $352 billion over ten years and almost no one showed up. my colleague was in the room and he said there were six or seven reporters there.

compared to this. here is what the same room looked like on the press conference on the sequester. it is a standing room only crowd for a bill that everyone knew was dead on a rival. what is the new bill? and why is no one listening to it. the bill would place a small tax of three points on non consumer financial trades. a tax of three pennies on every $100 traded in the markets. that is $1.50 on a $5,000 trade. this modest tax would have virtually no impact on most americans. it taxes something we want lesson.

this is right out of econ 101 the thing we don't want is wall street speculation. it would apply to traded stocks and bonds and puts forward swaps and other instruments and would not cover the initial issuance of stocks or bonds or loans in the form of stocks and it would impact high frequency traders. it would be slowed if the bill is passed. high frequency trading produces no net social value. making a nano second faster than your competiter does one thing. here is how it was put today and there is only one video of this

and it has bad audio which is why you are about to see subtitles. >> this idea is such a good one that 11 countries have planned to implement the same thing. the same idea was introduced during the legislative sections of the two previous congresses. as was noted today in the past, tim geithner was against the idea.

>> so finally, there is a bit of >> so finally, there is a bit of an opening on this idea. he didn't say no like the last guy did. the europeans are doing it. the bill has a 20 so sponsors on it. this country has a deficit in debt crisis because washington spends too much. taxes complete two roles raising revenue and this does both.

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some very surprising and welcome news today. opponents of california's prop 8 same sex ban gained a new ally. the obama administration. in 2008.

52% of voters supported prop 8. >> march 26th, spring court is set to hear the subject. >> i have the most amazing news but i won't be if you don't want me to be. ready? >> i'm getting married. who is the guy? >> the love of my life. >> so you finally bagged your boss. >> yes, but it is not him and i don't work there anymore. he is the greatest guy ever and are you okay with this? >> why wouldn't we be. >> because i can get married and you guys can't. >> really? >> what kind of people would we be if we denied you the right to marry. hash tag politics.

>>. welcome, jesse. gay rights activists. >> much more official. >> the bow tie. you are promoting tie the knot. >> it is an organization that me and my partner, fiance are designing. the tie bar. >> it is difficult to tie a bow tie. >> i had to learn it. i started a bow tie line. i used to wear clip ones. the guy told us that we needed to do self-tie ones. i had to learn. >> it is intimidating. >> but it looks quite spiffy. >> we have seen this tremendous change in almost area of american life. state jurisdictions and the

white house and the white house's industrial support with a proactive brief on perry and the prop 8 case. what do you chalk this up to? why have we seen this as quickly as we have. a lot of it is because we have more of the younger generation getting out and voting and they don't care. also, we have a lot of people having the president you know, saying that he supports it was a really big cue. >> i think culture plays a big role in this. how much do you think that is driving public opinion more than politics?