Welcome to the weekly standard podcast, I'm your host Michael Graham with us when the weekly standard is built crystal and built in a vintful day in Washington as we sit on the brink of apocalypse, perhaps even Sharknado, as appears the government may be shutting down. It looks that way, I gather the house about to send back to the Senate another continuing resolution at this time adding to it a delay for one year of the individual mandate in Obamacare, a very defensible thing to do since Obama himself delayed the employer mandate, and adding the provision that would cancel, that would eliminate the congressional exemption that the administration gave to Congress and staff from Obamacare from the provision of the law that they passed themselves three years ago. I think these are both very popular things in the Republican House, and they probably would have been better off advancing this a week or two ago, and forcing the debate to be on the individual mandate and the congressional exemption, both of which I think are very unpopular. But still, I think this now puts the Republicans in a pretty good place, Harry Reid is going to shut down the government because he won't delay the individual mandate for a year, and because he wants Congress to get subsidies to know what else in the exchanges will get.
But will the media allow the Republicans to tell that story, or is the media simply going to say shut down, shut down, shut down, would seem to be their approach over the weekend? The media will not be fair, that's a shock to you, Michael, but in fact, they are, I'd say the last 48-hour liberal media bias kind of waxes away, it's always there, sometimes it really flares off, you know, like a summer in Washington, it's always hot, sometimes it's really unbearably hot, and it's been unbearably biased over the last 48, 72 hours, and I think it will be for a while longer. But I'm not sure how Republicans can't punch through. I think also they passed the Bill's late Saturday night, which I guess the Senate may take up today, guaranteeing the military's pay.
And Harry Reid has not taken it up yet, I believe, but he may take it up and pass it. If he passes it, then they've established the precedent that little can be funded even during a shutdown, that the Senate will take up bills that the House passes, funding particular parts, particularly important parts of the government. I'm a former House Speaker, I would think about presenting the Senate five bills tomorrow, funding food safety inspections and airport traffic controls, things that people do sense are important. I'll let the Senate explain why they're not taking them up if they don't.
If they do take them up, the House can open the government, they really are important. We can also buy the shutdown of most of the other parts for two, three, four, five, maybe ten days, and then see if we're a public opinion is that. I think there's a public opinion back to the way I would've done it, as you know, if you've been reading with the Senate or if you've been talking to the House, but I think they've ended up in a less bad place, we've heard it that way, then the media all think, and maybe actually in a pretty good place where they can win this debate. The people I've been talking to who observe Republican politics and politics as a whole say the best they can hope for is a non-disaster.
Is that really how bad it is for the Republican leadership that non-disaster they do? Look, it's President Obama who has shown a total failure of leadership here. His position is he won't negotiate about anything, the continuing resolution, that feeling which is coming up in two weeks, the Senate, he's got the president, I think, our health responsible for failures on their watch. He's got a Democratic Senate and he should be able to do a little more than just say no to the House Republicans, he's trying to pass legislation to open the government and the Senate Democrats that keep the government open at the front, and the Democrats just keep rejecting it and saying, no, we don't want any provisions, I'm not sure how that debate plays out.
I don't think it's a dire for Republicans, it's a lot of other people think, and look, I think it shut down, it could be a little bit like a sequester, which is supposed to be such a disaster, and there's all that hoopla, and then it happened and people kind of lifted it pretty well, there's some bad facts, there aren't that good, there aren't that good. I shouldn't have that effect, at least for a while. And then I think we run into the debt ceiling discussion, there, I think the president really has an untenable position, which is I won't negotiate on the debt ceiling worse, every president, so both parties have negotiated various items in return for raising our debt ceiling. This is odd argument to Harry remade it explicitly when he said, we have spoken, as he put it, we have spoken, and you shall listen, and I'm going, I don't think that's how it works, usually it's one side gets to speak, another side gets to speak, and my suggestion for Democrats who don't want to have to negotiate Republicans, it's very simple, stop losing all those congressional elections, if you'll stop losing them, you won't have to debate with Republicans, but as long as you keep losing, Republicans have won the House twice in a row in elections matter.
And look, these Republican Congress would think they were elected partly to do their best to stop the lay and ultimately repeal Obamacare, now they can't do it with President Obama, it's better they can't repeal it, and they can't even fully defund it, can they delay the most egregious parts of it, I'm not sure, they're going to test that proposition right now, maybe there were clever ways to get this issue front and center a few months or two ago, I think it might have been, you know, attached to the continuing resolution, it's to complicate the debate, it's now it's a debate about government shutdown, as well as about Obamacare. So at the end of the day, I think Republicans are in a principled position, I mean, their position is the habit to keep the government going, but they do think that we should delay the individual mandate for a year and treat Congress the same as we're treating the rest of the country. Is that really such an unreasonable position, maybe the media can make it seem unreasonable, maybe some of the stuff that's said in the run up to this makes Republicans seem a little more, you're just looking for a fight instead of trying to do the right thing, but I think it's more they are trying to do the right thing, what they're proposing is the right thing, so let's see how this debate goes. But it is part of the concern is that the, as many people who don't follow politics closely, those people who shame on them don't read the weekly standard and don't listen to podcasts, that they just see a rerun of a fight that they've been told by the media over and over again was going to come, and they're not going to listen to the specific issues.
On the other hand, I saw very interesting, two very interesting polls, Bloomberg reports that by a two to one margin, Americans say they want some kind of spending restraint attached to the debt ceiling. They don't just want to raise the debt ceiling just because they want to see something that slows growth down to go with it. And the second thing is we have the highest number of Americans self-identifying as conservative as we've had since 1952, and you wonder if those two forces together don't give Republicans an opportunity to break through that wall of kind of the media is going to tell you the story before you even hear the story and there's no reason to pay attention. And the point out that is Obamacare goes into effect or exchanges go into effect tomorrow, that's what the individual mandate has to do with people having to go into exchanges, let's see how well those are working, and let's see whether it doesn't seem a little more reasonable a week from now than it does today, though it already seems reasonable today to say, gee, we should delay this a year.
This doesn't seem like it's got all the problems worked out, and I think it's going to be a real mess. We'll see if the media reports how much of a mess it is, but even the media can't help but I think that if people are trying to buy things and then they can't be bought because the pricing is inaccurate and there's no way to safeguard security and privacy and everything else. I mean, I wonder, I'm not so sure that the media reality matters, and I do think the debate on the individual mandate in Obamacare and the crash on exemption in Obamacare, that could really have an effect. And I might get swamped by terrible stories of the effects of government shutdown, I suppose.
And we'll have to see, Republicans really need to stay on the offensive. I think that's the key I was talking with a member a few hours ago, and you know, it immediately gets you anyway, so you're much better off trying to frame the debate. You should have passed five more bills tomorrow. Keep Democrats on the spot.
Keep saying pass maybe a debt ceiling extension with a suspension of Obama for a year and see if that may be a bit too far, but it's a lot of Republicans will just never vote for any hike into debt ceiling. But at least put that on the table for President Obama, I think you've got to kind of keep kicking the ball back into their side of the field. Absolutely, particularly we've got two great issues like special treatment for Congress and special treatment for large businesses. Those are two things that the average voter can grab, but I just have to say, your cynicism hurts me, it really does.
You hear from the administration today, they've been testing the exchanges over the weekend, and they're up to 66% accurate when you type in your information and ask if you get something accurate. You know, when you buy something and they purchase online, if it's a two-thirds chance that the price is right or that you're going to get what you ordered, you're happy, right? It's only healthcare bill. It's only healthcare bill.
If you're part of the third, if you're part of the third, don't get the way you've ordered. You should accept, and of course here, you don't get to send it back either, right? You should accept whatever they give you. It's only healthcare.
It's only medicine. It's only medicine. It's a good crapshoot. It hurts me.
And the other good thing to know is that the people who are being trained to be navigators, 65 billion dollars or spending on other people to get other people to sign up for Obamacare, will get the same outstanding vetting that the guy at the Navy shipyard was able to get to get the secret clearance from security. So what can possibly go wrong? Two-thirds of our computers are operating correctly, and some of the people who will have your personal information are not identity thieves. What can you ask for?
The one thing we can't do is put it off for you. We've got to close the internet. That's where the debate, I mean we're joking, but we're joking, but that is where Republicans just need to fan out and force the debate over the next 48, 72 hours, they need to be super aggressive on every radio show, on every TV network and in their local papers, town halls, whatever. They just need to really get the message out.
I'm not sure the media necessarily will chump the, in this case, what I think is the sound message. Bill Crystal, the Weekly Standard. Thanks so much for your observations for it today. We'll have more weekly standard podcasts coming up throughout the week.
Be sure to check weeklystandard.com regularly for podcast updates. I'm your host, Michael Graham.