House Republicans won't take 'yes' for an answer

>> "the ed show" from new york. here we are. it's sequester week in washington , and house republicans aren't negotiating. thart not even on the clock, like you and me. this is "the ed show." let's get to work.

>> these cuts do not have to happen. congress can turn them off any time with just a little bit of compromise.

>> four days until the sequester starts killing 700,000 jobs. and the speaker of the house is clueless.

>> do you have a sense of how many jobs will be lost as a result of the sequester?

>> i do not.

>> tonight the one and only james carville on the republican obstruction threatening to cripple the middle class .

>>> the big congressional panel on how the sequester will cost middle classers in their districts.

>>> plus, eric cantor is using the video game world of warcraft to deceive the public.

>>> the plot to steal electoral votes moves forward in pennsylvania.

>>> and the first lady made movie history at the academy awards .

>> i am so honored to help introduce this year's nominee for best picture .

>> tonight the story behind michelle obama 's oscar surprise.

>> good to have you with us tonight, folks. thanks for watching. republicans basically have embarked on a campaign to go across america and blame the president for the upcoming sequester. now according to house gop leaders, the president hasn't even tried to negotiate.

>> the president really ought to stop campaigning and come back to the table and work with us. we care about what happens to this economy and the people who sent us here.

>> well, if eric cantor cares so much, he shouldn't be ignoring the proposal the president has put on the table, because it's got a few lefties upset. the president has offered an additional $1.8 trillion in deficit reduction. more than $1 trillion comes from new spending cuts. the plan includes chained cpi, which of course is a reduction to social security benefits. now hold it right there, folks. my head can explode in 20 seconds of commentary. this is not what this election was all about. there is no poll out there that shows that the majority of americans want to dig into social security so the wealthy can have more tax breaks which of course is what the republicans are all about. the plan that is on the table now, the plan is definitely compromise coming from the white house . it is hard to negotiate with somebody who has basically drawn a line in the sand . republicans have said repeatedly, there will be no new revenues. here is congressman tom cole of oklahoma. he was asked earlier today is there any chance that republicans would put new revenue on the table.

>> no, there is not. the president got revenue six weeks ago with no spending cuts whatsoever. this time it's spending cuts with no revenue. down the road we'll have another negotiation over the budget and the continuing resolution. eventually the debt ceiling again. but in this case, i don't think there is any room for revenue at all.

>> this is what you do when there is a mistake in a game. you call time -out. i am sick and tired of hearing the republicans saying that the president got new revenue. that was the expiration of the bush tax cuts . everybody with a brain knows that. that's not new revenue. that doesn't take us beyond the rates that we used to have. but this is the republican strategy. you have to negotiate with them on their terms or you're not going to save jobs in america . john boehner isn't even concerned about the immediate loss of jobs from the sequester.

>> do you have a sense of how many jobs will be lost as a result of this sequester?

>> i do not. but i can tell you this. if we don't solve the spending problem here in washington , this will be tens of millions of jobs in the future that won't happen because of the debt load that is being laid on the backs of our kids and our grandkids.

>> well, then why don't you take th the table, mr. boehner? republicans are willing to see people lose their jobs. they are willing to see projects and services fall by the wayside. this is the new mantle of obstruction. president obama is using all of his resources to put a public face on these upcoming cuts. and folks, they are real. the transportation secretary already explained how the cuts will create a national travel slowdown. tell that to your business friends. today the homeland security secretary reinforced this point.

>> the lines over the next few weeks are going to start to lengthen in some dramatic ways in parts of the country.

>> ah, just what we're looking for. democrats in congress are highlighting this for the traveling public. it's the best way to explain how everybody is going to feel the pinch, the pain because of these cuts.

>> we can't allow a manufactured invented crisis to harm clickcally indispensable government services.

>> there are going to be real consequences for anybody who travels in america , for anyone who comes into a port in america , and for the people who screen us to make sure we're safe.

>> now, of course, republicans are calling that all scare tactics . well, scare on this one. officials from states dealing with hurricane sandy, well, they say the damage also is going to hurt in the cuts is going to have an affect on the recovery.

>> this is nothing short of a fiscal hurricane, a fiscal storm for the victims that are already been devastated by sandy.

>> these are the consequences of republicans not budging on any revenue whatsoever. but democrats , they've got a line in the sand too. 107 congressional democrats have signed a letter saying no cuts whatsoever to medicare , medicaid and social security . they know what the election was about. there is revenue available to keep the big three intact. and of course the democrats , what they want to do, and something that the republicans haven't identified, the democrats want to close some loopholes. and they want to cut subsidies to big oil and big agra business. these big agra companies, they don't need the kind of money that they're getting. and of course, the democrats want to go down to the road to the buffett rule. higher taxes on millionaires. kind of even things out with the secretary, you know, the people that actually work in the office, warren buffett has a better deal, you me that story. 76% of americans want a balanced approach. this is balanced what the president has on the table and he is accused of not negotiating. the president already signed $1.7 trillion in cuts before we even got to the sequester. he got $737 billion in revenue from the expiration of the bush tax cuts . this is not even new revenue. it's going back to the old rate it expired. and the president did exactly what he said he was going to do. he did not let those taxes go up on middle class americans . so the country still needs nearly $1 billion in revenue to get this balanced plan. republicans would rather dig in their heels. they are taking the country down a path of ruin, and they're not even concerned with it, and not concerned with the consequences. and they've got this thing pretty well figured out. here are a lot of talk about gerrymandering. let's take the state of virginia , for instance. in the state of virginia , there are 11 congressional seats. three of them are democrats . really? how in the world did president obama ever win the state of virginia ? well, he did. and the gerrymandering is protecting all of these righty seats in the state of virginia . ironically, it's governor mcdonald who is coming out saying hey, you know what? this is really going to hurt our constituents. do we really want to go down this road? these are real cuts. if you do the numbers, there are 234 republicans in the house. 15 of them probably could be defeated if the races were resourced properly by the democrats . they think they've got 219 that are untouchable because of the gerrymandering that has taken place in this country and what the republicans have done. they're on safe territory. they don't feel like they have to negotiate with the president. what they're going to do is allow these cuts to go in. they're going to blame the president on the economy. boehner knows exactly how many jobs this is going to hurt. and he knows exactly how this is going to hurt small business . and then they want to blame it on the democrats . and then they'll just limp to the midterm. and so we're going to be here fighting back and forth, doing this pr war as to whose fault it really is. are we ready for that? is that what you and i are paying for? we can't get these guys to go to work, and when they go to work, they can't agree on anything. get your cell phones out. i want to know what you think. tonight's question, will the republicans ' plan of obstruction backfire with voters? text "a" for yes. text b for no to 67622. you can always go to our blog at ed.msnbc.com. we'll bring you results later on in the show. skroyng me tonight the great james carville . he has been down this road a whole bunch of time. democrat strategist, political consultant and author of "it's the middle class , stupid." and let me respond to that. it sure. if the democrats can't draw their line in the sand , james, what does this mean for the future of the party if they're going to turn over every time something like this comes up? your thoughts.

>> first of all, i don't think they have turned over. secondly, this is what the republicans say. government doesn't do any good. it just gets in the way. so we're going to find out how much government gets in your way. you're talking about, you know, airports and you know custom officials. you're talking about national parks , a lot of things. we're going to get a good lesson here in this country of how -- what the government does and how it affects people. but they're completely unconcerned about this. john boehner said in april 2011 he got 98% of what he wanted. i'm not sure that a lot of that caucus is not just delighted with this. i really believe that. i think they're actually excited about this. beats me why. it's going to really hurt middle class people a lot. macro-economic advisers out of st. louis, probably the most respected in the country say this is going to shave 6/10 a percentage off gdp.

>> if you have a $3.5 trillion budget for the year and yank $85 billion out of it over a seven-month period, obviously it's going to have an affect. republicans don't even seem to be on the sage page with their message. some of them say the cuts are president obama 's fault, and the others are saying the cuts are no big deal . here it is.

>> i would say balder. dash. it's true. unfair, dishonest, disingenuous. the president is making stuff up.

>> why are they having so r such a hard time with their message?

>> well, the truth of the matter is they came up with the idea because they said this is so insane, this is so out of bounds that no one would allow this to happen so we would negotiate. and the white house , i think it's legitimate to say that they underestimated just how republicans -- what lengths they would go to. the republicans actually like this. they're all out there saying this doesn't hurt anything. you're just cutting government a teeny bit. it's nothing to worry about. this is no big deal . it's the only way we can get spending under control. the republicans are actually embracing this. they want it, they can have it.

>> we've been down this same road 18 years ago. let's take a look.

>> unfortunately, republican leaders in washington have put ideology ahead of common sense and shared values in their pursuit of a budget plan. we can balance the budget without doing what they seek to do. we can balance the budget without the deep cuts in education, without the deep cuts in the environment, without letting medicare wither on the vine.

>> now, james, you know republicans got killed in the polls when they shut down the government down in 1995 . will the outcome be the same this time around?

>> you know, go back and remember what president clinton said. you know what is interesting? every word he said was true.

>> yeah.

>> he said we can balance the budget without doing all those things. and guess what happened? we did balance the budget . we didn't destroy medicare . we didn't destroy education. we were able to do that. and they didn't want to do that. and president clinton stood up, just like today. they're sitting there saying who needs government. they're excited about shutting this stuff down. you watch them on tv. they think this is good. they think that this gets in the way. they're going to find out just what it is. and they're going to find out in a defense department what this is like. and a lot of places like that. you got to understand. their whole philosophy is government is a bad thing. and so if you have less of a bad thing, you're better off.

>> you think the president is going to get any help from the republican governors that know how bad it's going to be in their backyard?

>> i think the phone is going to start ringing. not only that, i think they're going to get some help from the business community that knows how bad this is. i think they're going to get some help from the national defense community, which knows how bad this is. i think they're going to get some is help from places where all these national parks are that are going to be cut that so much of the commerce around these areas depends on this. i think they're going to get a lot of phone calls .

>> yeah.

>> and they're going to be surprised because they're going to find out that the government does a lot of worthwhile things.

>> you see a parallel between president obama handling this the same way president clinton did?

>> well, it was a little bit of two different things. but i think that president obama now realizes that he just kept going along with them and coming up with this and they just kept moving the ball on him. and now he is saying look, i have put $1.8 million in deficit reduction out there. that's the legislation called for in august of 2011 . it didn't say spending cuts. it actually said deficit redux. he has $1.8 trillion on the table. some of this unduly hurts middle class . there is a story today in the paper that health care costs have flattened so much it's saving 100s of millions of dollars.

>> sure it is.

>> there was a wonderful story in "time" magazine how medicare delivers health care much cheaper than any other system in the united states . people should read that, because it's an important thing in this health care debate. but at any rate, he probably started out further than a lot of democrats like to go. but the president has already put $1.8 million in.

>> i think they do a better job of lying right now than they did back this your day. i think they're doing a heck of a job of that. james carville , always a pleasure to have you on the "ed show."

>> you bet.

>> remember to answer tonight's question at the bottom of the screen. share your thoughts with us on twitter and ed show and on facebook. we want to know what you think.

>>> a new white house report lays out exactly how folks are going to be affected by the sequester. the congressional panel tells us what it means for their communities and all middle classers. stay tuned. we're right back. [ man