Rep. Bass: There's a crack in Grover Norquist's armor

>> karen bass . so you're hearing all the sides going back and forth but the one thing that everybody seems to just about agree on is that we're not getting anywhere fast. lindsey graham says we're going over the cliff among others. what do you think?

>> i don't believe we'll go over the cliff. i do think people are drawing a line in the sand which is a typical part of negotiation like your previous speakers said. i think that everybody understands the consequences, that the president has put forward a plan that would reduce taxes, or maintain the tax cuts for 98% of the u.s. public. and so i don't believe that my republican colleagues want to see taxes go up on 100% but they do need to come to table and counter the proposal. if they want changes and entitlements they need to say what those changes are. i know that where we all draw the line in the sand is that there's ways to find savings every where. however this is not the time to use the fiscal problem as an excuse to completely break the guarantee that we've had with the american public forde kids a.

>> republican strategist john feehery. he said about the president, he's overreading his mandate by doing the campaign thing. he is making the same mistake bush made in 2005 . and of course he's talking about when george w. bush tried restructure social security , couldn't broker a deal in the home. is there a chance that the president is overreading the mandate, that we know the american people agree with him about taxes on the rich, but anything else is fair game ?

>> no. i don't think there's a comparison between those two at all. what bush made the mistake of is that the u.s. public does not support ending or privatizing social security . there have been poll after poll about raising taxes on the 1% of the u.s. public, the wealthiest. and poll after poll shows that close to 70% of the u.s. public agrees with that. there was no poll that ever showed that the u.s. public agreed with privatizing social security .

>> most americans know that a big driver of the deficit and the biggest expenses we have are entitlements. you said grover norquist house of cards may come crumbling down. is the bigger problem revenue or democrats not wanting to give big cuts on entitlement?

>> no. i think the bigger problem is grover norquist if you want to know the truth. he's the bigger problem because he threatens republicans with primaries. so you had several republicans who expressed that they were willing to moderate their view and that they felt their most important pledge was to the u.s. constitution and not to grover norquist . what did grover norquist do? he took their quotes, called them up, he had conversations with them and he read them line by line their quote and essentially threatened them with primaries. he's the problem. if grover norquist wants to run government he needs to run office.

>> you have people like saxby chambliss to indicate they were backing away from their pledge. grover norquist gets on the phone to them in the last several days and report of phone calls are that suddenly chambliss is going back a little bit maybe on what he had to say. so, i mean, do you think that his influence has waned?

>> this is exactly what i'm saying is that, and chambliss is who i was thinking about. he threatens people. i do think his influence is reining. i think there's a crack in grover's armor and that's why he tried to shore it up last week by calling up people and intimidating them. it's time we hold him to task. he should not be allowed to hold the republican party hostage like he has. it's very irresponsible. do i think there's enough republicans that are moderate enough that they understand the need to raise revenue. but the question is will they be able to step forward . the other question will john boehner lead his caucus or will his caucus lead him. if john boehner leads his caucus then he'll be able to identify 100 votes, 120 votes. he can come over and talk to the democrats and say do you have 100 votes, 120 votes that we can put together and get this deal done. the question for the year is who runs this place, is it grover norquist , does john boehner run the republican caucus or does the republican caucus run him and how long will we allow grover norquist to hold the u.s. house of representatives hostage.

>> congresswoman karen bass always good to have you on the