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00:00We're in day six of the shutdown. We're on week two officially. Given that you do have this experience under your belt. What's your best guess as to what those conversations behind those closed doors might sound like at this point? Well, there's a lot of first of all, thank you for having me on and raising this important topic. And I thought the previous conversation was very helpful as well. There are two main conversations that you'd expect behind closed doors right now, or at least two. One is assessing who's winning. Public opinion is a huge factor in determining how long this goes on and when it ends. Right now, the polling shows that Democrats are doing better than Republicans in this regard, both because people are somewhat moved by the Democrats message regarding health coverage. It's also the case that 70% of people who are on the Affordable Care Act exchanges live in red states. So it's not quite the clean, red blue break that Republicans would like. And then there's a discussion of just pure functionality. Are we getting what we need? How damaging is it that the data reports aren't coming out? Who's an exempt person? Are we have what's going on with things that are huge for consumers? Air traffic control. The TSA workers, remember, they're now working without pay. And that has been a real source of pressure in prior shutdown. So some of the things going on, I would imagine, behind closed doors. Well, that's what I'm curious about, where the rubber meets the road when it comes to actually determining public opinion. As you say, that's really going to determine who blinks first when it comes to this standoff. So, I mean, maybe missing the jobs report. We care about that. But when it comes to the American public, what are some of the things that we need to keep an eye on as these days and potentially weeks progress? Well, it's a great point that folks coming to your microphones, including myself, will bemoan all day missing the jobs report. It's not something that regular people are really keyed into. I think it has a lot more to do with the things that affect people's everyday lives. Okay. So travel is huge and I've seen shutdowns and the afternoon of the morning that the air traffic controllers said, that's it. We're just not going to keep coming to work without pay. Now, that can take four weeks. It can take five weeks, but that is what happened. And one of the more recent shutdowns, same with, of course, TSA workers. People are very sensitive to those kinds of lines. Then you have services that people want to access, whether it's getting your passport in a timely way, whether it's calling the Social Security Administration, we should is very clear. Of course, Social Security checks go out and they'll continue to go out. The workers that send those out, our so-called exempt or essential workers, are exempt from the furloughs. But if you try to call somebody and get them on the phone, it's hard anyway. It's particularly hard now. So I think it's those kinds of you might think of them as almost harassment and just getting through your daily lives, factors that can lead to a level of frustration that eventually forces Congress to move. I am curious, Gerri, just about the politicking around this, particularly on the Democrat side. I know that they have made this an issue about the Affordable Care Act and reinstating the provisions that they think should have never been stripped out to begin with out of those previous bills. But I'm also curious as to whether there is something underneath the surface here that goes a little bit deeper about trying to curb the power of the presidency of Trump specifically. Oh, that's unquestionable. And I don't even know if it's that far under the surface. I mean, you've heard the Democrats explicitly argue that one of the motivations for the shutdown is that they can't even trust Republicans if there's a handshake, if there's agreement because of all these rescissions and impoundments, the idea would be that you'd legislate a budget deal, but then the other side would refuse to spend the allocated funds. I think one way in which Democrats are operating is that this may not prove to be the ultimately successful legislative strategy. They may not end up getting exactly what they want. That's typically the case in shutdowns, but it's also a very important messaging strategy for them. They have the microphone. They have a little bit of leverage here because of the filibuster. And they're going to let people know the ways in which they're being left out of politics, be the ways in which Republicans are hurting them, right where it hurts in their affordability, their pockets, in their wallets and pocketbooks. And, you know, see just very, very focused on on the health care dimension of all that. Does that do you think that that's going to resonate, though, with the American people? I mean, we've seen the spin by the Republicans and they've been relentless and more importantly, united in that messaging so far. And I am curious as to how rank and file voters actually view what's going on in Washington. Well, that's where we now have pollsters who are literally taking daily polls of this stuff. So that that question is very much a temperature question. You have to take the temperature every day, see where the public is. Thus far, I've actually been surprised about how disciplined the Democrats are. They're not exactly known for being a disciplined group these days, but they've been staying very much on message. And I've seen numbers north of 70% in terms of people who are moved by the Democratic message that Republicans are hurting them when it comes to health care affordability. This certainly came up during the Budget Debate Act. But the fact that 70%, 77% of folks on the ACA exchanges are in red states, that hasn't been lost on folks in the debate. And the fact that Republicans, of course, control all three branches of government for if you want to include the conservatives on the Supreme Court. And so thus far, Democrats have been prevailing. I have a sense that that's pretty elastic. It could change perhaps quickly, but that is that is the temperature taking exercise these days.

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Public Opinion Key to Ending Shutdown: Bernstein

Jared Bernstein, former Chair of the Council of Economic Advisers under President Biden, says public opinion will play a key role in how long the shutdown lasts, with Democrats faring better so far. He speaks with Romaine Bostick and Katie Greifeld on “The Close.” (Source: Bloomberg)

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