00:00 David Plotz House Republicans started their new session off with a delightful fiasco late on Monday, which is a holiday, incidentally. 00:08 There was a sneak attack led by House Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte to change House rules. 00:16 and gut the power of the Office of Congressional Ethics, an independent body that investigates ethical violations by members of Congress, which was started in 2008 after the last obscene round of congressional misdeeds. 00:31 The sneak attack was publicized. 00:33 There is social media these days. 00:35 People notice stuff. 00:36 There was a huge outcry from the public. 00:39 The Congress was swamped with calls. 00:42 Trump himself stepped in and criticized this move, not really necessarily the move in general, but the timing of it, that they weren't draining the swamp by doing this. 00:53 And then the House Republicans were like, oh, whoa, sorry, didn't mean it. 00:58 Caved, backed off, didn't make these changes. 01:01 Emily, why go after this office to begin with? 01:05 What possible gain is there? 01:06 Do they think that people wouldn't notice what they were trying to do? 01:10 Emily Bazelon I don't know whether they fooled themselves into thinking people wouldn't notice. 01:14 I guess they did. 01:15 And also Goodlatte tried to sell it as like strengthening the ethics investigations or at least strengthening due process. 01:22 And they tried also to frame it as this kind of libertarian, like get government off our backs. 01:28 But yeah, 01:29 It was so obviously, at least in hindsight, the funniest way to begin the new Congress. 01:36 And the reason they want to get rid of it is that there are 10 investigations going on right now. 01:41 And this office is not something that the 01:44 House representatives themselves control. 01:47 And there are some really funny stories. 01:48 And when you start reading about the guy in California who paid $600 for an airline ticket for his pet rabbit, and the ethics office said, I'm not sure that's a legitimate expense. 01:59 And then it turned out he had more than $60,000 worth of questionable expenses. 02:03 David Plotz Duncan Hunter, say his name. 02:05 Emily Bazelon Yes. 02:05 Sorry, I forgot. 02:06 David Plotz Name and shame. 02:07 Emily Bazelon Right. 02:07 So when you hear stories like that, you realize why the folks in Congress would prefer not to have embarrassing revelations like that out in the media. 02:18 And you also think as a taxpayer, gee, this office sounds like it's earning its keep to me. 02:23 I think the most important part of this basically like cul-de-sac story is that people getting upset on social media and flooding the lines of their Congress people worked. 02:37 And especially right now, when a lot of progressives or people are just skeptical of Trump are wondering what kind of power they can actually wield. 02:45 That seems like a real victory that the Republicans accidentally handed their opponents. 02:52 David Plotz John, did Trump have anything to do with the back off or was it really the public? 02:56 John Dickerson I think it was probably a combination of factors. 02:58 Paul Ryan and Kevin McCarthy, the Republican leaders, told their members who wanted to do this that they didn't think this was a good idea. 03:05 David Plotz But they didn't stop it. 03:06 No. 03:06 And they didn't work hard to stop it. 03:08 And I'm sure Paul Ryan could have stopped it had he fought hard enough. 03:11 John Dickerson So fair point. 03:12 And this goes back to the previous point I was making. 03:13 When Donald Trump abandons you, now you're on your own and or – 03:17 More tweets to come from the president elect. 03:21 And so they decided it's not dead. 03:24 It's been shelved for the moment. 03:26 The idea was this is bad PR for the moment. 03:28 Let's shelve it. 03:29 And basically, leaders went to the members who wanted to make this change and said, look, if you want to continue doing this, you're going to have to have an open vote with debate on the House floor. 03:37 And nobody wanted to. 03:38 To have that open debate, especially at the beginning of the term. 03:42 So I think it's we're going to have another round of this. 03:45 I think it's in August that there's supposed to be a report from the ethics committee on itself. 03:49 And maybe that'll be the next moment we get this. 03:51 But I think this will come back again. 03:53 But this was just a it's a bad launchpad explosion for the new. 03:57 I mean, I don't think it has any long term effects, but it would have if it were if it continued on and on for several days. 04:02 Why do you think it won't have any long term effect? 04:04 Well, I just think there are going to be a billion other things to occupy the mind and not all of them shiny objects. 04:09 I mean, I think we've talked about Obamacare and tax reform and infrastructure and immigration. 04:15 There's just going to be so much for people to be. 04:18 consumed with, this will pass, I think, pretty quickly because the dog didn't bark. 04:23 When it comes up again, it'll matter. 04:26 I think another way it'll matter, of course, is if there is an additional ethics scandal, Democrats will certainly be able to say, yeah, this is the kind of thing they were going to try and hide, and thank goodness they weren't allowed to. 04:35 That stain still exists and could be politically problematic. 04:40 David Plotz Emily, this does suggest that the Republicans in Congress are not going to dig too deeply on Trump's violations of the Emoluments Clause. 04:50 We're unlikely to see an impeachment of Trump for self-dealing and getting foreign governments to fund his projects and that form of corruption because it doesn't seem that they're all that corruption-focused, these guys. 05:04 Emily Bazelon Right. 05:05 Except that it is the sort of card that they hold in their back pockets. 05:09 Right. 05:09 I mean, if Trump spins out of control, if he literally jumps into the arms of Vladimir Putin or does something, rattles North Korea in a way that actually like nuclear war begins or I mean, just these various like somewhat paranoid and yet not totally paranoid. 05:28 insane scenarios out there, the Republicans in Congress are going to be able to hold this over him because he's going to be technically and perhaps seriously in violation of the emoluments clause, presumably the minute he steps into office. 05:41 It doesn't seem like he's planning to take the steps that, you know, the ethics experts have been begging him to take to prevent any of that. 05:47 And so it does sort of hang out there over his head in a way that could be a little bit useful to them. 05:56 David Plotz Really? 05:56 Do you think they'd ever do anything? 05:58 Emily Bazelon I do think it's possible. 06:00 It just depends. 06:01 This is such an unpredictable presidency. 06:03 Like, we stand at the beginning of it. 06:04 I mean, from their point of view, Mike Pence would be a much easier person to work with, and I'm sure they'd all sleep better at night. 06:11 John, do you think that's crazy? 06:13 John Dickerson No, I don't think it's totally crazy. 06:16 Emily Bazelon Not totally crazy. 06:18 I'll take it. 06:18 I'll take it. 06:20 David Plotz I mean it's just bizarre the level of conflict of interest that – that Republicans were so upset about what the Clintons were doing and the Clinton Foundation were doing. 06:29 It's for thee and not for me. 06:31 I mean it's really shocking. 06:33 There was a great national review column by Jim Garrity, which I think was the headline was, I guess we're just not going to make a fuss about that, which was all about the things which Republicans were crazed about. 06:45 During the campaign about conflict of interest to the Clintons or the absence of press conferences by Hillary Clinton or, you know, there's a series of examples and he's just said pointing out like, oh, now we're not going to make a fuss about it. 06:56 John Dickerson Well, and you add Julian Assange and the Republicans to that. 06:59 I mean, it's a, you know, and this goes back to the conversation we've had a million times over the years, but that partisanship. 07:05 It just determines everything now. 07:07 Support for the Russians, support for Putin and the Russians has gone up in the Republican Party since Trump has been elected. 07:12 Support for Julian Assange. 07:13 Frank Luntz tweeted some poll that shows support for Julian Assange has gone up in the last several months among Republicans for whom he was a particular kind of evil before because he had endangered the lives of American troops. 07:29 Yeah, it's really sickening. 07:30 David Plotz And that actually, I mean, just I want to just to put a button on this. 07:33 But going back to the question around health care, should the Democrats cooperate? 07:37 And, you know, one school of thought is, you know, you don't this is partisanship. 07:42 It's partisan war. 07:43 This is everything my opponent wants. 07:46 I fight and that's how it is. 07:49 And that's the way Republicans have carried forth. 07:51 I actually think. 07:54 Despite all the evidence of the last eight years where Obama got screwed and Democrats were played as patsies over and over again by seeking some form of cooperation, I think that is the only way in the long term the republic is healthy. 08:06 The republic will not be healthy unless we have parties that treat each other as respectful rivals who are to be worked with. 08:14 partners in creating a better America. 08:16 We can't simply keep breaking everything all the time. 08:19 Everything cannot be partisan. 08:20 And so you just have to act. 08:23 The Democrats, even if the Republicans won't act this way, the Democrats have to act as if they have a trustworthy, honest partner and sort of seek the best outcomes with it. 08:30 In the long run, I think that's the only way we survive with the political system we have. 08:35 But there's certainly no good signs about it. 08:38 President Obama's final few weeks in office are here. 08:41 He is taking justifiable, in my view, victory laps around the country. 08:46 He is vastly popular. 08:47 His wife, Michelle Obama, is the most popular figure in the country. 08:52 He leaves the office of the presidency untouched by a whiff of scandal with an economy that's been growing for years. 08:59 He's been the alpha and omega of this podcast, the most important politician in my adult life, or maybe I would say the politician that I admire the most in my life. 09:16 And we're going to take the opportunity of his departure to talk about how he governed and how he leaves the country. 09:21 So for the next three weeks this week, starting this week, we're going to do a segment about him and his legacy. 09:26 This week, the economy. 09:28 I think you can argue it round or you can argue it flat. 09:31 The economy President Obama inherited back in 2009 was in free fall. 09:35 We lost 700,000 jobs the month before he took office. 09:39 The Great Recession was full swing. 09:41 The economy was shrinking at 8% annually. 09:44 Carmakers were on the verge of default. 09:47 And he took very positive action with very little help from Republicans. 09:53 He got a stimulus passed. 09:55 We've had steady job growth for seven years. 09:57 We had loans to the carmakers. 09:59 Carmakers are now profitable. 10:00 GDP growth has been strong or has been adequate for several years. 10:05 We have also avoided the catastrophes that Europe, which has pursued much tighter policies, much less Keynesian policies, and has suffered accordingly and has had much less economic growth. 10:18 Yet inequality remains at record high. 10:20 Labor force participation has dropped. 10:22 All of the new jobs that have been created in the Obama recovery have been temporary jobs essentially. 10:28 So Emily, what part of this picture is most persuasive for you? 10:35 Has this been a great economic presidency, an adequate one or a poor one? 10:41 Emily Bazelon Isn't it so hard to judge these things in the moment? 10:45 I mean, you did a really good job of the glass half full part of this, and then you kind of flicked at the end at half empty, right? 10:53 Right. 10:53 John Dickerson His approval rating, by the way, is at 53%, which is not like vastly popular, although you could argue in today's partisan world, maybe 53% would have been like 58% 20 years ago. 11:02 But anyway. 11:03 Emily Bazelon Yes, just to let a little air out of the balloon. 11:06 Right. 11:06 So, I mean, half empty seems I believe in giving Obama his due and the fact that they averted this huge crisis in 2008 and did not get a big victory lap for that. 11:18 That's like a real thing. 11:19 And, you know, this is where the president's marketing and communication strategy was developed. 11:25 not great. 11:26 He keeps giving lots of blame to that. 11:29 And one does wonder watching Trump take these big victory laps over very small interventions like the carrier plan, which we keep invoking, even though every time I read about it, the number of jobs actually saved has sunk even lower. 11:45 Anyway, one does wonder if Obama had been better somehow at 11:49 making the country feel a sense of, you know, he was heading this ship out of this terrible storm, whatever, if that would play very differently now. 11:59 But I do think the rising inequality and the fact that, yes, unemployment is down, but there are all these people, especially... 12:06 men in prime ages who've taken themselves out of the workplace. 12:10 And then when you look at the kinds of jobs created, we're talking about home healthcare aides, customer service representatives, service jobs. 12:17 People don't have the same sense, it seems, of kind of fulfillment and security that they had from the kinds of jobs that have gone away. 12:26 Now, it's hard to know how much we're supposed to blame the president for that because it has so much to do with the shifting world economy. 12:33 I do wonder, though, if we're going to look back and think that the fundamental error of this presidency wasn't to side more with Trump. 12:43 working class people like, you know, the fight for 15, the rise in the minimum wage, maybe the $15 minimum wage is just totally unrealistic for the country. 12:53 I don't know. 12:54 But I do think that Obama, perhaps out of necessity and being a grown up or perhaps out of a 13:02 kind of didn't never like really came down on this in a kind of, you know, big New Deal FDR populist sense. 13:11 And maybe that was unrealistic. 13:13 The politics wouldn't have allowed for it. 13:15 But one does wonder, I wish we could run the tape and watch what would have happened if he had tried. 13:22 David Plotz I remember this example and I'm sure I'm going to botch it, but there was some tax cut that was given, which nobody ever realized they got because it was one of these things which it was just a slightly lower rate and you were getting a few dollars extra in each check. 13:38 It was something the government was not taking out. 13:58 Whereas the big honking check is from the government, which says tax rebate. 14:03 It's a much less economically efficient way to distribute money. 14:06 But that was optically a very bad thing to do because people didn't realize they had lower taxes. 14:12 They didn't notice it. 14:13 Even though they had actually more money to spend, they didn't give credit to that to the administration in any sense and didn't feel like, thanks, Obama, for that. 14:23 So if you polled people, were your taxes higher or lower, people would say – 14:27 They were higher the same and hadn't realized that, oh, I've gotten this tax cut. 14:31 That's an example of like really bad, really bad optical management. 14:35 Donald Trump will not make a mistake like that. 14:37 If we get a tax cut, it will be the Trump tax cut, I'm sure. 14:41 John, do you think on any of the things that have not improved, notably around inequality and on labor force participation, there were huge failures where Obama missed opportunities or these were things that he just couldn't have done given the circumstances? 14:54 John Dickerson I don't know. 14:54 I feel – 14:56 Having recently been trying to struggle my way through the rise and fall of American growth by Robert Gordon, which struggle only because of my own limitations, not because of the book, which argues essentially there was a special time in American history from basically the 1870s to 1970s when America grew at big rates because of very specific and special things and that – 15:18 What that has me thinking about is – and this is a part of this larger conversation – is the growth numbers during Obama are pretty anemic. 15:28 So they've not been stellar. 15:29 Now – 15:31 Immediately people will say, yeah, well, but look at what he inherited and look at where the economy was and there are changes going on. 15:35 And so the question here is context. 15:38 And the context is not only what Obama inherited but also the context if you buy Gordon's theory that the American economy is just in a different place now than it was historically. 15:47 So to judge it by historical big growth standards during that 100-year period I mentioned is fundamentally wrong. 15:54 So if that's the case, then how do you measure whether this is not stellar growth or is stellar growth? 15:59 Now, we're about to have – and Emily said run the tape. 16:02 We're about to have a super big experiment. 16:04 We were in Knoxville over the holidays and Anne was talking to somebody who owned a small business and who said they were opening a new – expanding their business significantly in a way. 16:16 And they said, I wouldn't have done it if Donald Trump hadn't been elected. 16:19 And the argument was essentially, you know, he's going to be more favorable. 16:22 There are going to be fewer regulations. 16:24 Taxes are going to go down. 16:25 And just the business environment is better. 16:26 Now, anecdote is that. 16:28 I don't even believe that. 16:29 David Plotz I don't believe that for one second. 16:30 I don't believe that's meaningful. 16:32 That's a not meaningful example. 16:34 Emily Bazelon It's interesting that people are telling that story, though. 16:36 It's not the only anecdote like that I've heard. 16:38 John Dickerson Yeah. 16:39 So that may be totally meaningless. 16:42 On the other hand, there may be people who – for whom that – if that feeling – let's put it this way. 16:49 If that feeling goes beyond that single instance – I hope it does and I hope it does. 16:52 Yeah. 16:52 And if it goes past that single instance, then what does that look like? 16:55 Then there will be growth. 16:56 And if there's growth, will the money be put into wages, into hiring and all the rest of it and therefore growth will go up and all of the beneficial effects as a result of it will happen? 17:05 We're about to have a big experiment. 17:08 So I guess my point is in the big experiment. 17:10 A, whether this emotional response exists is one part of it. 17:14 And then the second part is they're about to – Republicans in Congress and this president collectively are about to pull out as many restrictions and regulations as possible across a whole variety of industries. 17:27 And the argument being if you unshackle private enterprise, there will be lots of growth. 17:32 We're about to see whether that argument will bear fruit. 17:35 David Plotz To me, the biggest missed opportunity of the Obama economy is one which he deserves some blame for because he didn't work on it rhetorically, which is that we had – because interest rates were basically zero and borrowing costs were thus zero, especially for the US government, we missed this incredible opportunity to make major infrastructure investments. 17:58 Infrastructure is something which costs up front, it explodes the deficit up front, and then it pays off in these huge ways because you get better transportation networks, you get better technology networks, you have better energy networks. 18:12 And he got some of that. 18:13 He got $700 billion worth from the original stimulus package. 18:17 But there was a period of seven years after that where you could have made massive investments in infrastructure and made a long-term investment in the country that would have been hugely valuable, also would have created jobs. 18:31 And he – 18:32 He was unable to do it and he didn't really push for it that hard. 18:35 And there's no – Republicans never would have passed it. 18:37 There was no appetite for deficit expansion under Obama even though there clearly is about to be appetite for deficit expansion under Trump. 18:45 But he didn't make an effort on it. 18:46 And that's – that I think historically we will regret as a country. 18:50 And I don't think Obama deserves a lot of blame. 18:53 But as a country, we will regret the fact that we didn't use this period to make our roads better, make our networks better, make our ports better. 19:02 And and that's a that's a real bummer. 19:06 Emily Bazelon Does this go back to the division from, I don't know, 2008, 2009, where Rahm Emanuel was saying jobs, not health care? 19:15 Let's do that first. 19:16 Let's employ people. 19:17 They're going to care about that more. 19:18 And was that realistic? 19:20 Like, could he could the presidency have taken that turn instead of doing health care? 19:26 David Plotz Well, healthcare is also a great infrastructure investment if you think of human capital as being a thing that you want to invest in. 19:32 And healthcare is the – if it sticks, would be the great achievement of the Obama administration. 19:39 But they were unable – I mean they tried on the stimulus. 19:41 But the stimulus bill they presented was half the size of what most economists wanted it to be. 19:47 But they couldn't have gotten a dollar more out of it. 19:49 John Dickerson And I think that's right. 19:50 They couldn't get the – because of Democrats who were abandoning the bigger dollar amount, A. 19:55 And then, B, they did in the Obama – even much later when Obamacare – when the website was about to go online, I remember White House officials making the case really pointedly that this was likely to be the greatest economic payoff that people would feel in the Obama era because the rescue – whatever he – all the things he did to rescue – 20:18 And I think this goes, again, back to when you think about what Obama inherited, it's not just the actual state of the economy, but it is the forced march that it put him in Congress on right away at the beginning of his presidency to solve those problems. 20:33 In an emergency fashion, Donald Trump has a much and George W. Bush had much more relaxed beginnings of their presidencies to implement and try to do what they wanted to do because of the state of the world when they both came into office than what Obama faced from the – in his early days. 20:51 But the Obama White House argued that when people got Obamacare, they would credit the White House – 20:58 in economic terms because of that economic anxiety that they felt, which was like – because – and we've seen for a long time, and Alan Greenspan used to talk about this extensively, is that your benefit – that it's no longer just about wages, that the important thing to look at is people's wages and benefits. 21:13 And so to the extent that people started to think about their economic conditions, not just in terms of what they got in their paycheck, but also their health benefits they got, if that was true, then when you increase and improve those health benefits – 21:24 So the theory went people will feel more economically secure. 21:28 So the theory went. 21:30 David Plotz Yeah, that's gone well. 21:32 Any other areas around the economy where you feel like, oh, you know, Obama, good job or Obama. 21:40 What a bummer. 21:42 I'll give one more, one small example, which is that he had really serious people around him. 21:46 They took data seriously. 21:48 They were careful. 21:50 They sought political gain, but they were the best of breed. 21:55 The economists he had working for him, Jason Furman, I already cited as one example, just really, really, really smart and really serious about looking at what data shows them and willing to follow what that data shows them for the most part. 22:09 And I admired that and respect that. 22:12 That is not something that seems manifestly to be an interest of Donald Trump and his appointees. 22:18 The Obama economists were pragmatic more than they were ideological and that's –