guess -- i, you know, this past administration, at least we have something in common, perhaps. >> did president wiretap mr. trump? the former head of u.s. intelligence. >> there was no such wiretap activity. >> the speaker of the house. >> i have not seen any evidence of this. >> the republican house intel chair. >> we don't have any evidence that took place. >> the top democrat on the house intel committee. >> thus far we have not seen basis for that whatsoever. >> james is set to testify tomorrow on the spy claims and russia's role in the 2016 election.

the ranking democrat on that committee adam schiff of california joins me this morning. plus the budget blueprint, sharp increases in spending for the military, sharp decreases in domestic programs for the poor. >> we want to give you money for programs that don't work. i can't defend that anymore, budget director mick mulvaney is here this morning and health care fight, can president trump win over enough republicans to get his bill through congress. i'll talk to one republican no vote this morning senator susan collins from maine. joining me for insight and analysis are george will, yamiche alsindor and anchor of world news america katty kay. welcome to sunday. it's "meet the press" from nbc it's "meet the press" from nbc news in washington, the longest running show in washington, this is "meet the press" with chuck todd.

good sunday morning it was in the late '60s that the term credibility gap first gained currency as people grew increasingly skeptical about president johnson's gains in vietnam. we began with such claims as whether his inauguration crowds were larger than president obama's, they weren't has met aft sized into something far more consequential. the president and the white house have spent two weeks redefining and never retracting mr. trump's insistence that president obama had him wiretapped and surveilled and even revived it on friday taking a swipe at the national security agency on president obama for listening in on angela merkel's phone conversations and the policy of ready, fire, aim took an incident with the white house claim that britain's spy agency worked with president obama to spy on mr. trump.

james comey will testify before the house intelligence committee where he will be asked about the spy claims as well as about russian meddling in the 2016 election. the president's credibility issues are growing just as he's struggling to sell his agenda to congress. >> as far as wiretapping, this past administration, at least we have something in common, perhaps. president trump claiming president obama had him wiretapped despite ambiguous republicans. >> we don't have evidence that that took place. now the british are livid after sean spicer used the white house podium to traffic an unverified claim by a fox news commentator that it was britain's spy agency that monitored mr. trump on mr. obama's behalf. >> he's able to get it and there's no american fingerprints on this. >> he's able to get it and there's no american fingerprints on this.

>> the british agency calls it nonsense. utterly ridiculous. the white house is refusing to apologize, quote, i don't think we regret anything. >> all we did was quote a very talented legal mind who was the one responsible for saying that on television. >> he's referring to fox commentator andrew napolitano, but on friday, fox news distanced itself. in the two weeks since mr. trump tweeted the allegations, the president and his aides just can't let it go. >> the president has already been very clear that he didn't mean specifically wiretapping. he had it in quotes. >> president trump's wiretapping claims are straining his credibility with republicans just at the time he needs a united party to push his agenda through congress, and two months into the trump presidency, that agenda looked stuck in the mud. the president's revised travel ban, blocked again, this time by federal judges in hawaii and maryland. >> i think we ought to go back

to the first one and go all of the way which is what i wanted to do in the first place. >> health care legislation on the rocks with the house vote scheduled for thursday, the president promises he is getting republicans to yes. >> every single person sitting in this room is now a yes, and we made certain changes. >> those changes recommended by the house budget committee giving states the option to require able-bodied medicaid recipients to work in order to get medical care and further limiting medicaid spending and freedom caucus conservatives say they need further changes before they support the bill. >> i've been very fully articulating my problems for about two weeks. so i don't know that any of those have changed. >> but every time this bill is changed to placate conservatives they lose risking another moderate in the senate. >> we want to be there for our constituents who have received the benefit of medicaid expansion. >> in addition to health care, there's president trump's budget. the budget blueprint calls for significant increases for the defense department, homeland

security and the department of veterans affairs while making huge cuts in discretionary spending, the epa, and the state, agriculture, labor departments and all of that take big hits in the budget. joining me is the debtirtor of office and management and budget, mick mulvaney. thank you for being on the show. >> thanks for having me. >> do you take the president at his word that he or his associates were wiretapped? >> i'm the numbers guy. i'm sitting here doing the budget and i'm not involved in the wiretapping issue. >> on one hand, are you concerned that eroding credibility on the that issue makes your job harder? >> listen, those of us who see and work with the president every day believe him, trust him and have no difficulties like the folks in the press do. >> you think this is just a press thing? you don't think this is a difficulty for folks that can take the president at his word on health care. he's made, hey, take my word for it and i'll make the changes and some of these folks are out on a limb on it. >> i was in that meeting

thursday or friday, i lose track of the days and he had cogent argument, and it was a credible discussion and i don't have concerns with those things. >> you said this, you're not the first person to say something like this, but remember, a budget is more than just a spending document. it is also a vision document. explain the vision that does whack a lot of domestic programs some of which are a lot that people benefit from and put emphasis on security. >> the vision is that this is what the president ran on and he's trying to do something that politicians are not very famous for which is actually following through on his promises and if we go back and look at his speeches and talk to him directly and say what's important to you. look for the message that the president was trying to deliver. that meant more money for defense. more money to secure the border. more money for law enforcement generally and more money for veterans affairs and private and

public school choice and that's where we spend more money. at the same time the president was very clear that he did not want that to add to the deficit this year. so when we added that $54 billion for defense we took that money from other places. that's the vision. more money for what the president said without adding to the deficit. >> he said we'll take care of those people. he will not let people be not taken care of and you've seen story after story of specific programs, take appalachia, programs that benefit his voters that he is taking a whack at here. why do that? >> some of the stories are grossly wrong or nearly grossly wrong. all of the stories about how we cut meals on wheels. the program that we proposed to eliminate for meals on wheels accounts for 3% of the meals on wheels funding, but step back -- >> you're getting rid of the whole block grant that that provides. >> the block grant only provides 3% of meals on wheels money and that didn't get broadly reported. step back to what you asked the

question and what about the trump voters? the president knows who his voters are. his voters are folks who pay taxes, as well, for the first time in a long time you have an administration you have an administration that has compassion for both sides and not where the money goes, but the compassion of where the money comes from. could i as a budget director look at the coal miner in west virginia and say i want you, please, to give your money to the national government to give to the national endowment of the arts and we got to the point where we can't do that. you owe $60,000 in the government and so do i in terms of the deband thident said let's te care of both sides of the equation. some of the cuts seem to be counterproductive to the president's message on infrastructure. you want to do a bunch of spending on infrastructure, and you're cutting the vehicle manufacturing program, and the extension partnership that provides assistance to small and mid-sized manufacturers to get off the ground to create jobs in these very counties that need the jobs.

why cut these programs and why do it before you've even come up with the infrastructure plan? >> sure. because when we look at the infrastructure, we think we'll do health reform, i think this week, as a matter of fact, in the house and tax reform after that and that moves infrastructure probably to summer or early fall. so what we did with this budget is go through and find out where we thought the infrastructure money was not being spent as efficiently as it possibly could and let's take it out of the discretionary budget with the intention of putting it back with the infrastructure bill. it's a better allocation and better use of the resources. >> you said one of the president's goals was not to add to the deficit as it is, but this budget will have a deficit, is that fair to say? >> the deficit before we came into office was going to be $4 88 billion this year and after we spent on defense, on border enforcement, law enforcement, veterans, the deficit will be the same. we plussed up the spending and

we increased the spending on the president's priorities without adding to that number. >> all right. i want to ay something, this is candidate donald trump throughout the lyear. >> i do want a balanced budget. >> we owe $19 trillion, we have to start paying it down. we have to start balancing budgets. >> these people are talking about balancing budgets 35 years from now? we can do it, believe me, much quicker. we can do it quickly. >> he even made a pledge to get rid of the debt in eight years. okay, if you're going to do this, very, very quickly, nothing in this budget goes close to balance. the fact that you're just even doing neutral to what the deficit was last year is not progress. >> what a budget blueprint is and this is fairly traditional, chuck, for the first year of a new administration, obama did it and bush did it. what this is is a spending outline and all it is as you mentioned in the intros the discretionary spending part of the budget is only 25% of what the government spends and the other 75% roughly is what people call entitlement spending.

in may we'll address the ten-year budget window, tax flows and larger approximately see changes and health care reforms. >> are you pledging a balanced budget in may, no, we're trying to get it to balance within the ten-year budget window which is what the house and the senate would have in ten years. >> the goal is to have a balanced budget in ten years and you will add to the debt every single year for the next ten years. >> it's very difficult -- >> that's not what candidate trump said. candidate trump id this will be vy easy. as it turns out this is not easy and it's complicated, too? >> it is a very complicated budget process when your entitlements and your mandatory spending is driving most of your budget deficit. for example, you could cut the agriculture department to zero, hhs to zero, hud to zero, the fbi to zero and you'd still have a deficit this year. so over the course of the next decade we'll have to look at the mandatory spending side in order to figure out a way to make

changes to the way to spend money. >> have you figured out a way to pay for the trillion dollar infrastructure yet? >> no. in fairness, one of the neat things about having a businessman in the office and the private sector is they've brought ideas that i don't think government has contemplated before, public-private partnerships and really create of ideas. listen, i'm a deficit hawk. it's why i think i got the job and the more i hear about the infrastructure plan the more comfortable i'm getting. >> speaking of being a deficit hawk, the ceiling, we hit it on friday and we'll need a couple of more months. you were a tough nut to crack on the debt ceiling when you were congressman mulvaney. >> yep. >> why should people who are like minded with you who said i'll give you the debt ceiling, but i want real cuts and real deficit reduction and a real plan. at one point you said i'll raise the debt ceiling and you're not making that this time, are you? >> i voted to raise the debt ceiling before as most people in congress have traditionally. you go back to the 1920s, 1930s

and 1940s, and the debt ceiling debate has been used to step back and say okay, why do we have a deficit problem? why dohave a debt oblem and how can we fix it and we'll come up with ideas to raise the debt ceiling and try to address the long-term reasons that we have a debt in the first place. >> you're not someone who voted for a lot of budgets when you were in congress. why -- this doesn't look like a budget congressman mulvaney would have supported? why would you support keeping the -- i feel like congressman mulvaney would not be supporting the numbers that this shows. >> every house member as i used to be, has a constituency that we have a group of people back home that we represent. senators represent the whole state and there's also a lot of special interests and lobbying involved and the president is not behold tone any of that. the president represents everybody. lobbyists were not consulted and special interests were not and this is a budget for the entire

nation because that's when he represents. >> as you put together this budget do you look back and say maybe i shouldn't have voted that way. >> no. i did the best job i could to represent the folks in south carolina and i think we put out a good budget. >> i want to wrap up with one final question, when will you be able to propose a budget? what year? >> it's mid-may and we'll have the larger budget. >> the first term? >> i don't know yet. i honestly don't -- because we don't know what health care reform will look like and we don't know what tax reform will look like and what it will do with the budget and those are the really, really big picture items that we won't know for a couple of months. >> mick mulvaney, thanks for coming on. >> thanks for having me. >> president trump is working hard to get the republican support in the house and the health care plan to get through the house, but the obamacare replacement does face tough opposition in the senate, as well, if all 48 senators who caucus right now as expected, the president can only afford to

lose two republicans. right now there are only two republican noes. rand paul, mike leigh who say the bill is too generous and susan collins who argues it is too harsh and susan collins from maine joins me now. welcome back to the show. >> thank you. >> you were very tough on the house bill. you were unambiguous when it came to your vote. very simply, what would it take to get you from no to yes? >> we have to deal with three issues. the first is coverage. under the house bill 14 million americans would lose coverage next year. that rises to 24 million over the next decade. second, we have to do something about the fact that the house bill disproportionately affects older, rural americans.

the congressional budget office has estimated that a 64-year-old who is earning $26,500 a year would see an increase in his or her cuts from $1700 to $14,600. that is unaffordable, and third, we have to do something about the medicaid changes which ship billions of cuts to the states and to other people who are insured. >> do you believe health care is a right? if so, it is a right that the government is responsible for fulfilling? >> i believe that as the practical matter, if they're stick and go to a hospital they're not going to be turned away and federal law requires a hospital to come to an emergency room and that is the least cost-effective way to treat an

individual who does not need emergency room care. so there's a lot that we can do to reduce the costs of health care by, for example, using managed care for the medicaid program. >> let me ask you a couple of questions on the president's budget. is there any part of the president's budget that you support? >> yes. i do think that we need an increase for our veterans and we need an increase in military spending because readiness has suffered, but i think we'll have to do a more gradual increase. one of the most disturbing parts of the president's budget is his slashing the funding for the national institutes of health. we have been making tremendous progress in the increasing nih's budget and that has helped us to develop effective treatments and new cures for very expensive diseases, and if we're serious about reducing health care cuts,

the last thing we should be doing is cutting the budget for boy owe medical research. >> where do you get the money though? that's going to be the fundamental question is, you know, there's a lot of these programs that i think a lot of people can individually make a case for, and i think what the white house would say is hey, some of these maybe they are good programs that could be done better, but we have a financial problem in this country. we have a rising national debt. we can't seem to get under from under an annual deficit. where do we find the money? >> for instance, can we afford a massive tax cut? >> we do have to scour the budget and tax reform does not necessarily mean that we're going to have a significant reduction in revenues. it's possible to come up with a tax reform bill that is more pro-growth, simpler and fairer and does not substantially reduce revenues. senator bill cassidy and i have

a health care bill and we're looking at different pay fors for that bill including some that were included for the affordable care act and some others, as well. so we need to scour the budget. there are duplicative programs that need to look at everything, but i'm worried about the outlines of the budget that have been submitted. i would point out that i've never seen a president's budget make it through congress unchanged. >> that's for sure. >> let me ask you about the president and the issue of credibility. he continues to believe that he was somehow, either he or his associates were wiretapped or under surveillance and it was ordered by president obama. you also have access to various intelligence, is there any way that that statement, to your knowledge, is true? >> i have seen no evidence supporting that statement, and what we need is evidence.

if the president has evidence of that i would encourage him to turn it over to the house and senate intelligence committee. we're in the midst of a big investigation of russian activities in our country, and we want to look at this allegation, as well. >> can you take the president at his word? >> yes. do i think the president gets everything right? no. but i want president trump just as i've wanted every other president to be successful because he is america's president. now that doesn't mean that i support his policies and it doesn't mean that i'm going to be with him when i think he's wrong or has misstated what the facts are. >> if he's wrong about this allegation, congressman tom co said that president trump owes president obama an apology. do you concur? >> well, i'd like to first get

to the bottom of before saying what should be done. i don't know the basis for president trump's assertion, and that's what i wish he would explain to us in the -- on the intelligence committee and to the american people, and i do believe he owes us that explanation. >> senator susan collins, republican from maine. i will leave it there. senator collins, thank you for coming on the show and sharing your views. >> thank you. when we come back, tomorrow, big day in washington. hearings begin for supreme court nominee neil gorsuch and fbi director james comey testifies on russia's role in the 2016 election and those wiretap claims made by president trump likely will come up. we'll be right back. ♪ minutes old. ♪ a baby's skin is never more delicate. ♪ what do hospitals use to wash and protect it?

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welcome back. panelists here. syndicated columnist george will is making his 52nd

welcome back. panelists here. syndicated columnist george will is making his 52nd appearance on "meet the press," but it's his first since 1981. have you been? have you been on another show that i don't think about. yamiche alsindor of new york times and katty kay, and i will give you the first word and that is on the president's credibility. at what point does it become a president on capitol hill when you are trying to sell the healthcare? >> there is a much bigger credibility problem and secretary tillerson in the far east in korea raised the possibility of preemptive war against the ballistic missile program with north korea, that means that there is not a trivial possible they some time in the life of this term, this presidential term the president would have to come and say because of the intelligence services tells me x, y and z. these are the peoplet you don't trust and we don't trust and we're not sure about you particularly so it's hard to

hermetically seal the loss of credibility. >> robert, do they understand this or are they not thinking about this? >> my sources inside of the white house tell me that the president reviews news organizations information sometimes even more than intelligence information. >> so we're more important than the presidential daily brief? >> he gets the presidential daily brief and if you look at the tweets that started the whole wiretapping situation and it was part of a breitbart article and now he's watching judge napolitano on fox news and digesting all of this information rather than just the intelligence brief and he's disseminating it publicly. >> katty, i think about him with the house republicans this week going no, no, no, i'll make the fixes for you, you have my word on it. >> the question is how valuable is that word which is what we've had members of both republican and democratic parties asking quite publicly this week when they refuted from the idea that there had been wiretapping that the president, and it was very

interesting susan collins, she didn't answer the question, do you trust him? that's a precarious position for him to be in. >> there was this observation, yamiche, and he saidhis, it's very easy to have a good meeting with trump. it's very -- he'll promise you the world and he'll betray you. you don't know when to take the president at his word. >> that that means and the people that are our allies are sitting down with donald trump and they might have a great meeting with him and when they get on the plane to go back to their respective countries they can tell he might betray them and that was interesting, too, when i was waiting for senator collins say, i do trust him. he's someone that when he says something he'll do it. when i think about the credibility issue as a whole, i think about the fact before he

was president and before he walked into the oval office this was someone who came into politics because he thought president obama wasn't born in the united states and the central park five were guilty and those things are not lost on people including his own party, and only think about the fact that these are the credibility issues he has. >> you've had exactly that with two very important american allies. theresa may came here and thought she had a good meeting and she got to the plane, went back to europe and wakes up and the executive action had been ordered and trump never even thought about that. they were apologized to this week over the whether thgchq had spied on the president, if you apologize to your wife and you roll back the apology it never goes back well. you are left in a worse position than where you were originally. >> when the president stands next to angela merkel treating this wiretapping flippantly and

a joke, he was standing next to someone who grew up in east germany when the stasi was listening all of the time and it's not funny to people. >> not to her. >> and probably won't be funny to americans over time. >> one thing i keep hearing from people in the foreign policy community and diplomats is who will shape the white house in the coming months? >> we know steve bannon, the chief strategist is there and you look at this rising force in this white house who wrote about it in today's post and dina pal from goldman sachs, gary cohn from goldman sachs. >> the new yorkers. the new york liberals. >> and they see it as a moderate force and a lot of people in the foreign policy world are saying, can dina pal, can gary cohn, can they have more influence in the coming months? >> we'll see. all right. we'll discuss this. i wanted to get to health care and now we'll do health care in the second when you guys come back, but first, the house intelligence committee does hear from fbi director james comey on russia tomorrow and about those

wiretap claims. the leading democrat on the house intelligence committee adam schiff joins me next for a preview. various: (shouting) heigh! ho! ( ♪ ) it's off to work we go! woman: on the gulf coast, new exxonmobil projects are expected to create over 45,000 jobs. and each job created by the energy industry supports two others in the community. altogether, the industry supports over 9 million jobs nationwide. these are jobs that natural gas is helping make happen, all while reducing america's emissions. energy lives here.

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welcome back. when fbi director james comey

testifies before the house intelligence committee tomorrow we can expect to hear about two stories that have dominated the news. one, evidence that the russians interfered with the 2016 election, perhaps on behalf of the trump campaign and two, the committee has asked the fbi to turn over any evidence it has to confirm president trump's allegations of t welcome back. when fbi director james comey testifies before the house intelligence committee tomorrow we can expect to hear about two stories that have dominated the news. one, evidence that the russians interfered with the 2016 election, perhaps on behalf of the trump campaign and two, the committee has asked the fbi to turn over any evidence it has to confirm president trump's allegations of the wiretap of trump tower prior to the election. congressman adam schiff is the ranking democrat on the house intelligence committee and you will see him a lot tomorrow and he joins me for a preview. congressman schiff, good to have you. >> thank you. >> the agency security director mike rogers, what do you hope, what light will be shed tomorrow, do you hope? >> i think for a lot of americans this is the first time to really tune in to exactly what the russians did and what the investigation involves, and i'd like to walk through with

both directors. what do we know about the russian operation? what was its breadth? we know it was hacking and dumping of documents. we know their slick use of their media campaign, but more than that, i think we want to share with the country why we are so concerned about the issue of u.s. person involvement. were there u.s. persons that were helping the russians in any way? was there any form of collusion and what can we do to protect not only ourselves in the future, but our allies are facing the same russian onslaught. >> if this is an investigation by the counter terrorism and fbi, what do you expect director comey can say publicly? >> on the issue of collusion he is limited on what he can share how the ruians operate in europe, what techniques they use and what we should be on the lookout for our investigation and in europe and other places, we see them use the natives of foreign countries that are intervening and how they use paid social media trolls. so the full range of russian intervention and what that looks like and so i think flushing out why this ought to matter to americans, i think people need to understand we are in a global

war of ideas. it's not communism versus capitalism, but it is authoritarianism versus democracy and putin is very much at the vanguard of that movement and that ought to concern all of us. >> let me ask you. you received information on friday from the department of justice about president trump's claims on wiretapping. what can you tell us? were you satisfied with the information they provided? >> well, i got a classified briefing on that response and they delivered it after most of us had left town, but once again, no evidence to support the president's claim that he was wiretapped by his predecessor. i have a lot of respect for susan collins, but i have to differ with her on this. we need to get to the bottom of this. there is nothing at the bottom. >> do you think director comey will say that? >> i suspect he will. we have to put an end to the goose chase. what the president said is patently false and the wrecking ball it created has banged into the british allies and german

allies and continuing to grow in terms of damage and he needs to put an end to this. i suspect what's really at root here, chuck, is this is just how e president does business. maybe this is the way he conducted his real estate business with half-truths and sometimes no truths and a lot of bluster. that, in my opinion, is no way to run a business, but it's in no way to run a country. it's dangerous to us and it's alienating allies and as george will so correctly pointed out, when there is a crisis with north korea and iran and what not and every president has one in their term we need to be able to believe our president and he's making it very, very difficult. >> i want to get to the point of, look, collusion is sort of what hasn't been proven here between whatever the russians did and the trump campaign. in fact, the former acting director of the cia who was mike morel who was a supporter of hillary clinton. he essentially reminded people it took director clapper on his word that says there has been no evidence that has been found of collusion.

are we at the point -- at what point do you start to wonder if there is a fire to all this smoke? >> first of all, i was surprised to hear director clapper say that because i don't think you can make the claim categorically as he did. i would characterize it at the outset of the investigation and there was circumstantial evidence of collusion. there is direct evidence, i think, of deception and that's where we begin the investigation. now i don't want to prejudge where we ultimately end up and of course, there's one thing to say there's evidence and there's another thing to say we can prove this or prove it beyond a reasonable doubt or there's enough evidence to bring to a grand jury for purposes of criminal indictment and there is certainly enough for us to conduct the investation. the american people have a right to know and in order to defend ourselves, we need to know whether these circumstantial evidence of collusion or direct evidence of deception is indicative of more. >> i want to get to the witness list here. you have subpoena power if you

choose to use it. has congressman nunes, you can and congressman nunes need to come to an agreement on that. is he willing to use subpoena power? >> there will be people we need to bring before the committee who may not be willing witnesses and if we'll do this credibly and right now we're the only game in town, we and the senate intelligence committee, we'll need the power of compulsion. i still think we have a lot of spade work to do before that. you don't want to bring the witnesses in before you've reviewed the evidence that you want to question them with. you may only get one shot at the witnesses, but we'll have to do that. >> you seem far behind. the senate intel committee has asked roger stone one-time adviser, he's been ordered to preserve documents to make sure he doesn't destroy any documents and perhaps he is going to be subpoenaed by them. have you done that with any -- have you formally sent letters to potential witnesses to say hey, you need to make sure you have saved any documents related

to the campaign or russia? >> we were the first to send letters to the u.s. government to tell them to preserve evidence. >> what about outside? mike flynn, carter paige and roger stone. >> we've not yet is not letters to individuals. it's a good practice. i'm not sure that if someone wants to hide that letter will have an effect that it ought to, i think in some respects we're ahead of where the senate investigation is, and in some respects they're ahead of where we are. i do think, look, at the end of the day the real question where the rubber will really hit the road is as you suggest when we have to use compulsion to get documents that we need, to bring in witnesses. i hope the answer is going to be yes from the majority. i also do think -- >> right now you have not been given that authority. >> well, we haven't -- >> you haven't asked for it. >> to subpoena certain witnesses, but we will be. there are a lot of witnesses. >> devin nunes agrees with you on this? >> well, he'll have to -- >> which means he doesn't yet. >> i don't want to say that.

we hammered out a very detailed scope of agreement that allows us to look into issues like collusion with u.s. persons with the trump campaign. >> adam schiff from the house intel, we'll be watching your hearing. thanks for coming on today. >> the one thing that may be more responsible than anything for the current state of polarization for american politics. before we go to break, this note, centuries from now when rock 'n' roll is merely one chapter in the history books there may only be one name that you have time to associate with rock 'n' roll and that name may very well be chuck berry. he was the genius who created the kind of music that paved the way for elvis presley and countless white rockers to become mega stars, "johnny b. goode" and "beethoven," chuck berry died yesterday. ♪

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♪ ♪ welcome back. "data download" time. in an issue i've been spending quite a bit of time on how the misuse of data has been destroying the political system. if you won the middle, you won the election. now campaigns are using or abusing big data to identify and mobilize like minded voters rather than using it to make

arguments that change minds. so how bad has this polarization gotten in the last 20 years? according to pugh in 1994 there was a great deal of ideological overlap in the two parties. 36% of republican voters were more liberal than the typical democrat and 24% of democrats were more conservative than the typical republican. just 8% of republicans and 6% of democrats were more conservative lan the liberals of the opposite par and guess what? we've seen the same shift on elected officials. based on the initial analysis of voting records, there were 137 house members who fell in the ideological middle ground with voting records somewhere between the most conservative democrat and the most conservative republican. in 2013 that number was down to four. let's go to the senate. in 2002 there were seven members, in 2013, zero. so as you can see in the last 15 years we've seen a complete

hollowing out of the political center and this coincided with the advent of microtargeting in 2004, then advanced by team obama and now, of course, everybody usees it. look, the electorate and politicians alike used to be conditioned to know that the middle mattered. that's why big deals in washington were bipartisan. tax reform in the '80s and welfare reform in the '90s. flash forward to 2010, democrats passed health care without a single republican vote and right now republicans appear poised to try to do it the same way, but look, there is good news in this. big data can be used to fix the very problems that it helped create as long as there is a political will to do it. the incentive structure has to change where we persuade the middle again because then elected officials who win by persuasion suddenly want to make deals. when we come back, how far are democrats willing to go in opposition to president trump? are they hey team, i know we're tight on time, but i really need a...

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welcome back. panelists here, yes, director comey is testifying tomorr >> they don't know yet because usually in legislative deal making it's an additive process, i support x if you support y, i'll support you if you support me and that's how coalitions work, and in this case addition is subtraction and the heart of obamacare is the expansion of

medicaid. 20 republican senators represent states that expanded medicaid. add synthetics bench and they have huge holes in their budget and they're a problem. >> asa hutchinson, john kasich, brian sandoval and three republican governors all over the ideological spectrum, che, signed a legislation saying be careful with this medicaid cut. >> he came out and saying all of these people would lose their health insurance it sent shock waves into the party and there are some things complicated for voters to understand. losing insurance is not complicated. it's either you have it or you don't and while trump supporters didn't like the idea to be force ed to have insurance, and not having it is scary for a lot of people. >> it's interesting for house republicans who have gone on the conservative side with the effective worrying have gone from a hell no to possibly yes.

now you have moderates among the republican party in the house and if this is going to die, where should i sign my name to it for the next two years. >> the poll out this week shows here's the president's approval ratings among republicans. he's got 83%, among all voters he's got a 55% unfavorable rating. you're corey gardner, republican senator, do you listen to the republican base who loves trump or do you overall, realize a majority in colorado don't trust him and are unsatisfied and you go with him on health care? >> who actually has ownership of the health care bill? we know the speaker is tweaking it with the medicaid expansion and doing things so the conservatives want to get it through the house, when it from comes to the president does he want to get it? >> he's not driven by philosophy and his team and his populous talk about infrastructure and taxes. they didn't get elected in their minds to do health care first. >> george, is the debate over

about whether the idea is involved with the government or not? there are some who say we shoun't, the iss of whether it is a reit or privilege, senator cassidy in louisiana said hey, the debate's over, we have to provide these people health care. >> before the obamacare legislation was passed, 50 cents of every health care dollar was a government 50 cents and the government has been deeply involved in this forever and it will only become more so. >> when i was listening to senator collins talk about not wanting to say health care is a right, as soon as you say that sentence you think about bernie sanders. >> right. >> in theory she made this point that we're paying for health care whether we like it or not so whether we take medicate and we feel like we're not paying for it in this way, you are still paying for it when people show up in the emergency room and have to pay for it and these hospitals have to provide them care anyway. >> very quickly, neil gorsuch, is it a filibuster? do democrats get to filibuster neil gorsuch?

>> no. there will be enough democrats up for re-election to decide this is not the fight they want to have now. they may want a fight to the second pick. >> it's an easy to look bipartisan on this pick, isn't it? >> in almost any other period they would be consumed by gorsuch. when i talk to progressives they say russia, trump, the wiretapping allegation, chaos at the white house, they're focused on different issues. >> and health care. we'll be back in 45 seconds with "endgame" and a viewers' alternative version. yes, we do pay attention to what you have to say. >> coming up, "meet the press" endgame, brought to you by boeing. always working to bring something better. (baby crying) ♪ minutes old. ♪ a baby's skin is never more delicate. ♪ what do hospitals use to wash and protect it?

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"meet the press" "endgame" is brought to you by boeing, always working to build i want to continue quickly, we talked about on the gorsuch conversation whether democrats is it the right strategy to just be a party of no? george will, you've been used to covering that and the answer to that used to be no, but perhaps it's better for them politically to be the party of no. >> it's better in the sense it energizes their base and you have action and you realize you can't win an election with the base alone. the old axiom used to be that american politics took place within the 40 yard lines, i still think it's true. >> yet, does anybody win that way?

if they don't think they win that way, whether they actually do or not, they don't think they win that way, yamiche, this is the why they act the way they act. when i talk to freshmen representatives who say we should be the party of no mainly because they feel their base is watching this and saying we need to stick to our grounds and we need to not make compromises when it comes to health care and not push a single-payer season and they should really stop and not make deals. >> we keep talking about the democratic party. who are the leaders of the democratic party? we know there's leader schumer and leader pelosi, but who is the soul right now of the democratic party if they are going to be the party of noes. it's senator warren? it's hard to tell. >> democrats can easily point to the last six years of the obama presidency and say, hey, it didn't do the republicans any harm being the party of no. take garland, case in point. why not try that, too? >> it's not often we do viewer mail and we don't want to make a

habit of it, this week is an exception and we took a tongue in cheek look if we applied repeal and replacing obamacare language to repeal and replacing sports and we reported that sports was on a death spiral when 50% of all teams are losers and if you throw in soccer into this, we even have losers and ties. it's important to give players greater access to more home runs, touchdowns and allowing players to choose the success that's best for them and that teams need the ability to cross state lines as the new york giants and jets did when they moved to new jersey. one viewer, kevin mcgonigle, he wrote to offer a more conservative alternative to our examples. >> mcgonigle writes that because of the death spiral, the san francisco, oakland, all expand leaving the los angeles angels of anaheim and without competition the angels could increase prices by 160%. elizabeth warren and bernie sanders may say it's a basic right for citizens and

non-citizens alike and that all states must have sports. in order to cover everyone, the nhl is forced to set up a failing team in a hockey hotbed like new mexico. subsidizing teams like that and others would force prices to rise for all hockey fans and of course, everyone will be mandated to buy season tickets to their home teams whether they want to or not. anyway, see? we can have a little fun here. that's all we have for today. we'll be back next week when, i guess, the big ten will teach the acc another lesson. if it's sunday, it's "meet the press". >> you can see more endgame in "post game" on the mtp facebook page. ♪ ♪

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