government funding runs out again some were atheists make you know the shutdown. it's very possible i mean we are at a point unlike what we used to be you know twenty years ago or thirty years ago where the full house would decide vote now it has to be practically all republican all and when the democrats were in charge all democrats and that's not healthy. trump once twenty five billion for border security is ministration intends to propose two hundred billion over ten years for infrastructure where's the money come from well that's the that's the big issue i mean he it's easy to applaud a tax cut and a big tax cut though this wasn't the biggest like you said but the eighth in rank. no it's really tragic what people realize is one of the things that slows our economy down are our huge deficits twenty billion dollars i left congress feeling

that i had let people down in two thousand and eight with such a large national debt and so we have a twenty plus trillion dollar national debt. it's outrageous now concerning that the g.o.p. was the one that always complained about the national debt and now to the republicans i guess deficit is not a dirty word anymore no it isn't but remember under ronald reagan he was willing to have deficits and under george w. bush we had deficit said we've kind of ignored it partly because we tell people they're bad but they don't see it and it it happens in the future with some other president and some other congress so you kind of can enjoy the fruits without having to pay for it and that's tragic and and frankly the news media allows members to get away with it they don't talk about it as well because it's not romantic right it's not romantic it's hard for people to visualize but they know

intuitively in their own household when they have large that it's not a good thing so i take one of my really my most satisfying time in congress was with john kades that i was the number three guy on the budget and we balanced the budget four years in a row had surpluses and that was really satisfied and then two thousand came along and the tools that we had grabbed my admin and so on that enabled us to control spending disappeared they they had they were no longer operative and then the budget just started to float high again during the congress when clinton left the presidency and that was a major surface right. it was a major surprise but what it was was president clinton saw what happened in ninety four republicans one he recognized that republicans were in control and john k. sick and frankly under newt gingrich we really focused on getting our country's

financial house in order and we we saw four years of surpluses and the irony was that we started having people complain because the bond market was losing some of. their bonds to sell and they complained that that we didn't have debt. it's kind of funny and they're dead serving of nearly twenty point five trillion was imposed in december after a three month debt ceiling suspension house republicans now believe that they have until late february to act on the ceiling what do you think will or should happen. well what should happen is along with increasing the debt limit they should show that they can control spending and get a handle on spending but he mean even the amounts that they're talking about for national defense are pretty extreme i was reading recently what president eisenhower said in his farewell address and he talked about the the industrial

defense complex that would always encourage us to spend money it's not that defense doesn't need money but it wastes so much money i chaired that commission a wartime contracting and it was astonishing the waste we have too many bases now that's the fault of congress because they don't want to get rid of them but but it's not an efficient use of money in defense congress will stay right there will be back with more politicking right after the break. turkey's decision to invade northern syria has foreign policy implications far beyond the middle east what are anchors objectives in syria and the region does it to silicate for a final peace settlement to syria's proxy civil war and what is turkey's future in it to.

go back to politicking i'm talking with chris shays former republican member of congress where he served on the budget financial services homeland security and government reform committee. he did not mention the russian investigation of the state of the union mix it in seventy four state of the union called for an end to the so-called watergate affair did you expect the president to bring up russia. frankly i didn't i didn't expect him to but i also i didn't expect him to have so many wonderful stories so there were a lot of things i didn't expect that happened but but but the bottom line is russia and his involvement with russia it's messy ugly and and he exhibits in tremendous fear about the outcome of the investigation and i think most of us recognize it has something to do with his income taxes something to do with the financial support he

received from the russians maybe something to do with things that they have about him and his activities because we know he's been someone that. has been willing to do a lot of things that my mother would not approve of. he was very ominous about north korea saying they're reckless pursuit of nuclear missiles could resume threaten our homeland there are reports that hawks in the administration want a limited strike a preventive attack against north korea are you worried about all that well i am and you know the longer i was in congress the more i realized you don't threaten to do something and then not do it. and you don't show weakness because then you alternately have to use force but the way the president has approached this has been it's been pretty alarming a limited strike on north korea you have sold just you know within easy range of

the artillery that are incased in the mountains in north. north korea they could obliterate the city it would just beat now having said that. it's one of the reasons why i believe that. you merican people need to understand that we can always promote our values and criticize countries that we need help from we need the chinese and the russians to be absolutely determined to prevent north korea from progressing with its nuclear arsenal and its missile program we need that and i greatly fear north korea having the ability of anshul to have missiles that could reach the united states not just california but new york city several commentators have noted the trim never used the word democracy in the speech and that surprise you you know frankly nothing he surprises me now if you ask me if it disappoints me it does disappoint me but what i loved his speech about you know talking about in

the end that the that to temple is right there where he was in congress lech walesa when he addressed us this is the polish leader who climbed over the chain link fence and he came to congress after he became in charge of poland and he said when i crossed that chain link fence and thought i might be killed i knew that this chamber this congress would know what i had done and it would not be for naught i mean that's the impact that we had elect will lend you know he wants to make america great again and we're not being made great again by you know a tax cut we're not being made great unless the rest of the world sees our moral leadership as well as our economic leadership he said he's offering and this is a quote an open hand to work with americans of both parties for these talks the bipartisan talk willie walked all. well if you want to get something done you have

to do and and i guess i had an issue with people who are criticizing his proposal if he is wanted to make i think one point eight million so-called dreamers and you know i agree with him there are a lot more than just those individuals that we could call dreamers but that's huge and if it means that we have a fence in mexico along the mexican border and it has some expense to it i think that's a pretty good trade off if it means they can become citizens after twelve years i think that's a pretty good tradeoff but i also buy the argument that you can't allow people who are here illegally to then bring in others because you now are going to become a citizen chris as always thanks for your time today love talking with the and would we love love talking with you god bless bob shrum is a veteran demesne democratic operative who's worked with many progressive

candidates during the last four decades including positions as senior adviser to the presidential campaigns of al gore and john kerry he's presently director of the jesse m. institute of politics at the university of southern california i spoke with him earlier about the prospects of passing a government spending bill doc and his opinion of the current congressional leaders in the democratic party hears that interview watch. ok robert what do you make of the latest stopgap measure funding the government to foot worry eighth well it's it's ridiculous it was the only thing they could get done because the president seems incapable of just sitting down and making a deal i mean he held that meaning at the white house he said you came up with a deal lindsey graham and dick durbin came up with a deal on daca funding some of the border wall came back to him and obviously he talked to other advisers like steven miller and he just turned it down so it's not

clear how you get a permanent deal and larry this is going to get more more critical because we're going to bump up against the debt limit in february and if we ever breach the debt limit the economic consequences across the world would be extraordinary because of be the first time in history that the u.s. had in a serious way damaged its full faith and credit so that the u.s. bonds and investments in the u.s. underlie the world economy and if we ever violate the debt limit we're in serious trouble then the democrats make any mistakes. i think think i think that if they you want to say they made a mistake as they took the president at his word but they had to try when he said i'm willing to make a compromise they had to go ahead and try and make that compromise so they had no other choice i don't think they had any other choice what do you think will happen between now and february eighth when the funding runs out i think republicans are very worried about the midterm elections there is a route it's

a radical group called the freedom caucus radically conservative in the house that wants to hold out wouldn't be all at all unhappy about shutting down the government but i think that there is going to be an enormous amount of pressure on the president on paul ryan on mitch mcconnell to come up with some kind of deal but once again the cob here is the unpredictability of donald trump you just don't know how he's going to react when they get a deal and whether he's actually going to he could agree to the deal one day and two hours later say i don't i don't want that deal how's the current congressional leadership on the democratic side are you happy in the senate in the house i think that chuck schumer has done a very good job of holding his caucus together of getting them to act in unison on tough measures the other day the ban which is flatly unconstitutional the ban on all abortions after twenty weeks. and he held democrats together or even them across from red states and it was voted down. i think nancy pelosi is the most

unfairly maligned person in american politics. stunning amazing job of exercising power in the minority in the house an amazing job of recruiting candidates to run this year in all of these congressional races and an amazing job of raising the resources to help them do that and if they take back the house of democrats take back the house a lot of the credit will be due to nancy pelosi i have to add though a lot of the credit will also be due to donald trump will she be sworn in again this. speaker i think it's inconceivable that if the democrats win the house by anywhere between six ten fifteen votes that she would not be sworn in as speaker she would have to decide after that having had this achievement and having been the first woman ever to become speaker in two thousand and six or two thousand really two thousand and seven how long she would like to stay but i think it would

be the height of in gratitude not to swear in a speaker assuming democrats took the house and strummed done anything you like yeah i'll give you one. getting rid of bannon. oh wait you think the russian thing is gone we've been talking a lot of people van jones alan dershowitz they said no matter where it goes they don't think it will bring down his presidency well i'm not going to i'm not going to go that far i think it would be very hard to to get him impeached first of all the republican house is not going to impeach him secondly even if democrats took the senate which is a big uphill climb this year because of the numbers twenty five or twenty six democrats up only eight republicans be very hard to get the two thirds needed for conviction. on the other hand if evidence comes out either in collusion with the russians in which he was involved serious obstruction of

justice or financial dealings that are questionable it will certainly hobble his presidency will certainly drain authority away from his presidency look he i think he's been given the wrong advice or he's come to the wrong conclusion him self he's got a base strategy george w. bush in two thousand and four had a base strategy mobilize the base but he also tried to reach out to other people and he reached out just enough that he won that election. trump only appeals to the base and the base is getting smaller and smaller so he's going to end up marooned on an island with about thirty thirty or. three or thirty four percent of people and it's going to be very tough for him to get reelected one of the other things in our poll that was astounding was that twenty five percent of republicans want someone else to be the nominee in two thousand and twenty other than donald trump and forty two percent of college educated republicans want somebody other than donald trump it's inconceivable to think that members of their party in those numbers would have said that about ronald reagan or john f.

kennedy a year into their presidency what do you make of these attacks on the at the way. they're outrageous they're dangerous they're subversive of democracy if you start taking law enforcement institutions that are supposed to be neutral and labeling them as prejudiced on no real evidence at all. you begin to destroy faith in the system and you try you you try to build look the president apparently keeps talking about my justice department it's not his justice department it's the american people's justice department and the people who work there did not take an oath to donald trump they took an oath to the constitution so i were the attacks on the press the attacks on law enforcement those are the kinds of things that can subvert democracy there are some reports including in the hill paper that bob kerrey is thinking about running. i mean john kerry john kerry maybe bob you think.

well i mean look well run run again do you think i have no idea i do think there will be a very big democratic field in two thousand and twenty. on our numbers in our poll joe biden starts out as the clear favorite this by his age despite his an age. but there's also a sense in that play and bernie sanders has a hard core of supporters but there's also a sense in those numbers that people are yearning for someone new but kerry did a kerry almost got elected president he became he was a terrific secretary of state if he ran again i think he'd be a serious candidate but they're going to be twenty people up on that stage i mean i don't know that these debates may have to be broken into elizabeth one will be in the hunt right bernie sanders as you said any. long shots that might not be long shots well thought they're all long shots they're all these these these new folks who. who are registering at three or four or five percent. cory

booker hair or joe kennedy the third but you've got to step back from this and say one thing the great unwitting unifier of the democratic party in two thousand and twenty will be someone named donald trump and people will understand i think that even if their choice didn't get the nomination if they don't go out and vote for the nominee they're likely to get donald trump for another four years with terrible consequences for the supreme court for example i mean ruth bader ginsburg has just hired clerks for two thousand and twenty she sent a big signal that she's staying you know hiring clerks for twenty twenty four that's a long way away and that's what she'd have to do there will be a lot on the line in two thousand and twenty and i think democrats are very likely to rally around whoever the nominee yes my thanks to bob shrum for that interview and i thought. thank you for joining me on this edition of politicking remember you

can join the conversation on my facebook page or tweet me at kings things and don't forget to use the politicking hash tag and that's all for this edition of politicking. we have a great team we need to strengthen before the free world and. to keep it back. in one thousand nine hundred forty five for the european championships at the very last moment no one believed in us but we won and i'm hoping to bring some of that winning spirit to the r.c.c. . recently i've had a lot of practice so i can guarantee you that peter schmeichel will be on the best fall since my last will come from that three. thousand zero zero zero zero zero.

zero zero left left left more or less ok stuff that's really good. sports world's highest court in the lifetime olympic bans handed down to over two dozen russian athletes accused of doping violations. bipartisan divide deepens in washington with the white house expected to really set classified to congressional memo on friday allegedly details surveillance of the f.b.i. including a bit spied on. german intelligence warns that the children of myself could be recruited to carry out terror attacks in the country scribing them as living. have a look at for the latest on those stories and others coming up though it is so fico and she has the finance minister talking. whole lot more so with.

sophie shevardnadze the u.s. is again threatening fresh sanctions against russia. cope with a comic pressure and what does a trade war mean for the global economy while today i talked to russia's finance minister and. the russian u.s. standoff sees washington release an extensive blacklist of kremlin officials threatening to slap individuals with sanctions will the measures really change the political that russia or the u.s. is talking. personal sanctions designed to fix and how much longer will the two heavyweights continue to mirror each other in this financial conflict. against a lot of russia's foreign and main finance minister with us here in the studio and

against lancaster show on a welcome to our studio and your first interview with us great to have you here we have a lot to discuss first off you're number sixty four in the so-called kremlin east and i don't know whether to give you condolences are going to let you let me at least you're not in the top ten. at least i'm a good company quite good no one is being left out. that well yeah. so i don't know whether congratulations are in order. to doing our job you know someone doesn't like it and doesn't want us to keep on doing it because they want to put businessmen and politicians and government officials on so-called sanctions lists if you want to make it difficult for the government to perform his duties we're going to make sure it will backfire on them or these measures on stopping us from working as usual from business as usual also when someone wants to one russian anyway you know i think it's in our mentality to take it in stride so it's a present. action mobilizes us on the contrary view. of it.

that's right now speaking of my area of work which is the economy where no on the conjuring stepping up a reference to do for business what hasn't been done for business for years hasn't even been planned to be done for example we're not going to liberalize our currency regulations when our existing currency laws are a holdover from soviet times and until recently we just haven't had the chance to change them so all these sanctions make us improve our domestic business climate to make it more attractive to russian investors and by extension to foreign investors as well with the. dozens of questions regarding that i promise you will come back to them later but what i want to do now is discussed a criminal because i'm not even sure as to why it actually means when your counterparts from the us treasury presented it to the congress to congress it's just a list no need to worry that what was that all about doesn't mean that for instance

when you apply for a loan in a bank when you there is no telling whether you will get it or not what are the questions of being on the list what does it all mean to you personally being on that list with some funds. well as you observe the list itself was an initiative by the u.s. treasury and the final decision is up to the u.s. congress not to say that the treasury hasn't expressed its own position on the matter now as for what the list means for our kind so speak for officials in the ministry agencies work well at the end of the day so it doesn't really mean much really we don't have any foreign bank accounts or own any property abroad everything using russian technologies and russian banks are the property we have in russia i didn't feel in any way limited or restricted after the list was published . you heard the theory that because the confrontation between the trumpet

ministration on the congress runs so deep and because to congress pressure the treasury to put as many people on the list as possible the creators of the lease just include it the entire russian government almost as if they were mocking the congress. looks like she wants even trying you know it is silly yeah just listed all of the officials and all of the business people with considerable assets both in russia and abroad she didn't really specify any criteria they used a person to the list which could be any way frankly all the sanctions especially this latest initiative look someone half hearted and then releasing i guess we'll just have to see what happens next but i don't think my colleagues or i will be affected in any significant way. but sanctions in general i mean this whole story has been unfolding for several years now with moscow never even considering backing down or making any concessions in other words sanctions failed to reach

terrorist state it political goals they probably never will moreover when you ask people on the sanctions have affected them i mean you hear the standard answer those who didn't buy parmesan cheese before don't buy it now those that in fly abroad before hardly do that now could it be that the sanctions have absolutely no effect on the russian economy and then other people's lives and that's not possible right. of course. these sanctions limit the deliveries of our military goods they restrict the ability of our country to attract investors sloan's naturally this affects our economy because we don't receive as much investment as we otherwise would for example we could have had higher rates of return on our securities and we have today we could have been obtaining more loans from western banks to develop our industry and production clearly there's an impact. but on the other hand i believe we can always find a way out of

a tricky situation. if they are imposing their sanctions we just start developing our domestic capabilities topping our internal resources member how pure in the previous u.s. administration they said that the russian economy will be in shambles pointing to falling oil prices and sanctions and all that stuff well are we in shambles now quite the opposite we have mobilized our economy we now have the lowest inflation rate in all of russia's history we have overcome the economic crisis very quickly and this gave us an additional push to undertake structural reforms mobilize our financial resources so you know really say what did rather well and get out of this difficult period without any significant losses even credit rating agencies recognize this by upgrading our ratings are going to go against them. we'll talk about that little later. yeah i do agree that there is nothing more stimulating

them being in a hostile environment but let's remember to get in there after said in an interview to the financial times i asked him if the u.s. were to impose white scale sanctions against russia plus kind of cold war would seem like child's play would you agree with assessments. unless you know if we look at the record of sanctions used against other countries like iran can see that in their case sanctions run much deeper and include such steps as cutting the country off from the swift banking payment system and freezing its assets in western banks are basically a form of financial warfare it really is of course. come to that in russia so this. could i mean we've been hearing this idea of excluding russia from this with the system quite a lot recently a.j. have a back up plan in case it actually happens this would affect russia sure but also

it would affect our foreign partners because they will force us all so use alternative less practical and less modern payment systems we know that this is a double edged sword this would hardly be a pleasant experience for russia but it will be just as bad for our foreign counterparts you know what if you have a plan being case that has. forced we do we have first of all we have developed a proprietary technology for interbank message exchange that we can use in russia and we do use it already for domestic transactions it has already been tested and is now used by a number of banks so in terms of domestic transactions we have it covered as a banking operation involving foreign parties that's the area that will be affected but i believe will find a way out. and washed external that is decreasing and that is understandable since externally investments are shrinking and russia's internal debt is growing is and it's about one hundred twenty five billion u.s.

dollars now what are their risks involved here. our internal debt is really small little's only about fourteen percent of our g.d.p. if we look at other countries for example in europe it ranges from sixty percent to one hundred percent of g.d.p. from country to country. it's in the united states exceeds one hundred percent of g.d.p. so russia's internal debt is not growing in relation to g.d.p. and that's what matters our goal is to have a state budget unaffected by oil price fluctuations or any sanctions what does it mean it means that our budget deficit should stay around the possible minimum and that we would generate the budget primarily from domestic investments in bush so if we keep our budget deficit at the minimum. won't grow. our own internal and the projections for the next few years will stay within the range of fourteen to sixteen percent of g.d.p. .