i think a good example of this is richard gephardt, one of the leaders in the house for years. he was a big champion of the armenian -- he did some work trying to advocate for the armenian genocide, to condemn the armenian genocide, and then he went back and was doing some lobbying for turkey and reversed himself. we oppose the term genocide. i think they were paying him almost $70,000. i think at those rates, genocide goes down a little bit easier. is big divide in washington not just democrats and republicans but insiders and outsiders, and i think once you are in the club, whether you are elected to it or you stay in term and join a lobbying group, you are in very, very good shape. you are an insider. inis: so when you are insider, democrat or republican, what we see played out every day on the cable news network, is that real, or is that faux fighting? >> i think there is a lot of f aux fighting. washington does very well if things do not happen. if a tax reform bill passes or an immigration bill passes, that will be tens of millions of dollars in lobbying fees that will no

in 1979, a democratic congressman named richard gephardt set out to change this, merging the two votes into one. but when republicans took back the house in 1995, they separated the votes again, paving the way for what is happening today. since then, democrats have never demanded concessions in direct exchange for raising the debt ceiling. as house speaker under george w. bush, nancy pelosi had the opportunity three times to take the american economy hostage in exchange for a list of democratic priorities. and each year, she passed the debt limit increase without incident. >> i would be willing to say, don't mess with the debt limit. >> the reason democrats never tied the debt ceiling to a list of demands, a united states default would be catastrophic. >> the idea of reaching the debt limit is really unthinkable. >> it's so dumb, you know, it's disturbing. >> if you don't raise the debt limit in time, you will be opening an economic pandora's box. >> when republicans did this in 2011, the united states saw its credit rating downgraded. the house republicans are now holding the entire c