senate. >> let's bring in joan walsh. editor at large salon.com.ael eric dyson, professor of sociology at georgetown university, and author of "can you hear me now?" the inspirational wisdom and insight of michael eric dyson. great to have both of you with us tonight. joan walsh, what does it say about speaker boehner when he gives rush limbaugh a call before he checks in with the real boss, i guess, of the party, before he goes further? what does that tell you? >> yes, he checked in with the real boss. you know, you caught me. i think the camera came to me in mid -- open mouth, shaking my head, listening to that quote again. you know, we just have to talk about the utter mendacity of john boehner tonight. i'm sorry, ed. this man, for better or worse, has been negotiating with this president. on friday they got within $400 billion of a deal. sounds like a lot of money, but when you're talking about $4 trillion, it's not really that much. they were close, he had to walk away. so what did he do? did he come back today and say, hey, we were this close

dccc, congressman keith ellison of the republican caucus, analysis of the republican response with joan walshand michael eric dyson. the hidden damage of the boehner bill with former labor secretary with robert reich, and we'll go outside the beltway. >> if you want a balanced approach to reducing the deficit, let your member of congress know. if you believe we can with solve this problem through compromise, send that message. >> great to have you with us tonight, folks. this is "the ed show" on msnbc. it's just eight days and two hours from right now the united states government will default and washington pretty much is grasping at straws a this the hour, trying to stop all of this. president obama doesn't want this to happen. no president would want this to happen on his or her watch. so he took the case, as he said he would, to the american people from the east room of the white house. and just over an hour ago, the president made it very clear that he is not on board with speaker boehner's plan. >> defaulting on our obligations is a reckless and irresponsible outcome to this debate. and

, congressman keith ellison of the progressive caucus, analysis of the republican response with joan walsh and michael eric dyson. the hidden damage of the boehner bill with former labor secretary with robert reich, and we'll go outside the beltway. >> if you want a balanced approach to reducing the deficit, let your member of congress know. if you believe we can solve this problem through compromise, send that message. >> great to have you with us tonight, folks. this is "the ed show" on msnbc. it's just eight days and two hours from right now the united states government will default and washington pretty much is grasping at straws at this hour, trying to stop all of this. president obama doesn't want this to happen. no president would want this to happen on his or her watch. so he took the case, as he said he would, to the american people from the east room of the white house. and just over an hour ago, the president made it very clear that he is not on board with speaker boehner's plan. >> defaulting on our obligations is a reckless and irresponsible outcome to this debate. and republi

msnbc political analyst richard wolfe and salon.com's joan walsh.ou very much. >> thank you. >> mike kelly gets ripped at a town hall sticking up for big oil. his defense is our con job of the day. >>> and is george w. bush secretly planning to take down rick perry's presidential campaign? stay with us. [ male announcer ] this...is the network -- a network of possibilities. in here, the planned combination of at&t and t-mobile would deliver our next generation mobile broadband experience to 55 million more americans, many in small towns and rural communities, giving them a new choice. we'll deliver better service, with thousands of new cell sites... for greater access to all the things you want, whenever you want them. it's the at&t network... and what's possible in here is almost impossible to say. i thought i was invincible. i'm on an aspirin regimen now because i never want to feel that helplessness again. [ male announcer ] be sure to talk to your doctor before you begin an aspirin regimen. talk to your doctor, and take care of what you have to

for more let's go to joan walsh, editor at large salon.com and "washington post" columnist e.j. dijon. he's a senior fellow at the brookings institution. e.j., the office of management and budget has come out and weighed in against cut, cap and trade saying that neither setting arbitrary spending levels nor amending the constitution is necessary to restore fiscal responsibility. your thoughts on this. you've written extensively about it. what do you think? >> i think the so-called balanced budget amendment, because it's not even that, is one of the most dishonest pieces of legislation to come along. i know that saying something here in washington, it's a way of cutting your big three and a lot of other programs without actually doing it. if you'll forgive the harry potter metaphor it throws a cloak over the cuts, but if wants to limit federal spending to 18% of gdp. first of all, since when is gdp a constitutional principle? in fact, it would probably be less than that if if it were calculated on the previous year, because you don't know what gdp would be the next year. that wou

let's go to joan walsh from salon. this is a real tough one.'t about metaphor or crazy talk. this is about looney tuned history from some. this is about america and what's happening in greece. when you spend time with economists they scare the bedickens out of you because we look at countries going into default and insolvent now and we're willing to say to creditors around the world, we're not paying you. the united states we grew up with is no longer good for its debt. we're now a deadbeat country. >> this is a kind of economic hostagetaking, chris. you know and it i know it. it actually does have something in common with what you and i have been talking about these last two years. these people, the tea partiers and their friends and their enablers and their corporate friends like dick armey, they have created this shrieking on the right, and this sense of the country being ungovernable and the sense that the majority of people feel this way, when you and i both know that most people think the deficit is a much lower problem than jobs. people

with us is michael steele, and salon's joan walsh. let's go to the old issue of negotiation.'t want to be too sophisticated. it seems that the tea party element doesn't seem to be -- he used some crude language and crude like some of the other politicians are when they get in the back room. he would agree to almost anything but high frontier. let's talk about -- he would raise taxes, would raise the debt ceiling multiple times in order to get a reduction or continue ways of the debt ceiling so he wouldn't have a crisis. why has your party changed on this? >> that's a good question. i think what you see is the transition from a party in those days, and even before that really did look at deficits and debt as a long-term impact on the nation's health and economy. >> i think when you got to the point when he realized the road ahead would be tougher for that future generation, it was easier, better and smarter political to making the compromise today, not when you give up on principle, but where you take that principle and you reshape it around this new idea i think reagan did th