POLITICS - New Congress 2011, Debt Ceiling

"Shields and Brooks on the New Congress, Obama's Staff Revamp" PBS Newshour Transcript 1/7/2011 (includes video)

Excerpts

MARK SHIELDS, syndicated columnist: When you have got people who are on record as saying they will not vote to raise the debt ceiling, I mean, that's not negotiable, Jim. That means...

DAVID BROOKS, New York Times columnist: Right.

JIM LEHRER (Editor Newshour): Explain why that must be done.

MARK SHIELDS: OK.

The debt ceiling limit is not about spending now. It's about obligations this country has and has had for a generation.

JIM LEHRER: Already made, yes.

MARK SHIELDS: And already made.

And you don't stop and say, let's reexamine it. That means every E-3 who is on the line in Afghanistan and his or her family is cut off. That means every military hospital. I mean, it's not selective. It's Border Patrol. It's all the things they care about beyond Social Security and Medicare. And that's the reality.

DAVID BROOKS: But it's defaulting on the debt. As Secretary Geithner said, it is catastrophic.

MARK SHIELDS: Yes. He's right.

DAVID BROOKS: And so they're going to have to compromise.

But you look at -- they came in and they said we're going to cut $100 billion right away. And some of the senior Republicans, who really want to cut the size of the government, said you actually can't cut that much in the middle of a fiscal year, because government has made certain commitments, hired certain people and such. And, so, here is a practical reality. So we have to deal with that.

So they sort of have scaled back.
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MARK SHIELDS: And just one thing on Speaker Boehner. I didn't want to suggest that his week was a bad week, because I thought, of all the public figures in the country that I thought showed an understanding of the tone, ear-deafness, of you would, of what was going on in the country, the mood of the country, the two best were Andrew Cuomo taking over as governor of New York and John Boehner. There was nothing self...

JIM LEHRER: A Democrat and a Republican.

MARK SHIELDS: Yes, nothing self-congratulatory, no high-fives, no victory dance in the end zone, no big gala with high rollers there. I thought he showed a very good tone and a personal modesty.

DAVID BROOKS: Yes. I would say, since the election, if you look at the two Washington figures who have had excellent periods, I think Boehner and Obama have both had excellent periods.