host: we are speaking with thomas mann. he is a government senior fellow at the brookings institution. they are taking your calls and comments as we talked through this potential government shutdown that would happen at midnight tonight. karin is up first for maryland on our line for democrats. good morning. caller: good morning. can you hear me well? i moved to the area from georgia about six weeks ago. my husband is a federal employee working in i.t. support. he is still going to have to do his job with interest. my question to you -- internet access has become sparse. i am in the home buying process. i am trying to follow as much as i can to keep up with the story because it directly impacts my family. are they shutting down because --have we reached some kind of debt ceiling? are we shutting down because they cannot reach an agreement? you can jump in. sets ofe have two issues right now. david rogers of politico wrote a very good piece about how this is really about a host republican budget that cuts spending so far bel

host: we are joined by congressional scholars thomas mann and norman ornstein.ou have both written books about why the government is so dysfunctional. the situation congress finds itself in, ours from a shutdown, ies it surprise you? guest: wish it did but it is entirely predictable. in fact we predicted it in a first edition of our book. politics has become intensely partisan, even tribal. our parties do not fit with our governing institutions. one of the our political parties has a sharp -- one of our political parties has veered sharply to the right. host: we can get more into the differences between the party. is the current situation more serious than past moments of gridlock and crisis? guest: it is. i actually was a little bit surprised that we would be at this particular impasse now after the 2012 elections. some recall the difficulties we had a were a part of the permanent campaign, that you are always focused on bringing down your opponent to gain traction for the next election. mitch mcconnell made a statement was tos number one goal make president ob

we will discuss the likelihood withgovernment shutdown thomas mann and norman ornstein. after that we will continue our series on the health care law and health exchanges set to open for enrollment on tuesday. then a discussion with peter coy about the limit on the debt ceiling, how the issue has been handled in the past, and what potential consequences might the for not raising the limit. beginning at 7 a.m. eastern on c-span. u.s. chief operation officer wears a few hat. is the budget for the executive ranch. it covers the agencies of government and the department of defense to formulate the budget every year. the second thing is through the act we have, the u.s. chief information officer has the authority to set policy. the visionary view of government and driving back forward as part of what we u.s. chief third, information officer, a

then we will discuss the likelihood a government shutdown with the brookings institution thomas mann and american enterprise institute's norman ornstein. galewitzt, phil talking about health insurance exchanges. then a discussion with peter couric about the debt ceiling limit. he will talk about how the issue has been handled in the past and what the potential consequences might be for not raising the limit. host: good morning. it is monday, september 30 two yet today marks the last day of the federal government's go year. the government does not have a spending plan in place to fund itself tomorrow. if it stays that way the government will undergo its first shutdown in nearly 23 years beginning at midnight. took placeiations yesterday, plenty of pointer finger and was go -- finger pointing was going on. our phone lines are open to

you've got norm augustine and thomas mann with their book. it's even worse than you think. guys who have been, you know, scholars of the congress. they try and take a step back and look at what we going to in this period, and the argument is that right now you do have this very extreme right wing tea party faction that is uncompromising and, you know, refuses to try and negotiate these differences for the good of the country. so i think it's too early historically to really answer you question whether this is kind of a permanent condition. it would be very dangerous for the country if this is a permanent condition. because as you know with our system of separation of powers, it requires, especially during these areas a divided government that there be compromised. in fact, caught must is the only thing that stands between a country that works and dysfunctional government in areas of divided government. >> the way you do your job when you come to work is all that different from what it was before you got into this period of crisis? >> well, it is different. i'm sorry, in the

co-founder of the award winning website science website real climate dot org dr michael mann welcome. thanks thomas great to be with you thanks for joining us what are tipping points and why is it that we generally only know that we've passed them after we've passed them. well the tipping point is sort of a threshold in the climate system so it's the situation where you know you're doing something you're adding c o two to the atmosphere increasing the greenhouse effect and up to a certain point the globe warms slowly the climate changes slowly but you get some threshold and suddenly the climate transitions to a very different state and it's these tipping points these abrupt potential climate changes that represent perhaps the greatest threat to civilization the problem with these tipping points is that we don't know exactly where where they live we know that they're out there but where exactly you know at what point we had enough c o two to the atmosphere where we cross one of those tipping points we don't know for sure is it possible that we've already crossed a tipping point with the arctic and.