 Hi, thanks for joining us at Think Tech Hawaii. Just a little reminder, this is still part of our fundraising season. So if you'd like to help us keep going and sharing these difficult conversations to make good trouble, go to thinktechhawaii.com, click the donate button and whatever you're willing to share to help us continue is appreciated. Today we get to take a look at how the negotiations at our center stage right now on debt ceiling and budget are being handled and managed and how that looks to two very experienced negotiators and negotiation professionals, Professor Vernalia Randall, Professor Emerita of the University of Dayton School of Law and one leading experts on race and racism in the law and Tim Apichella, Hawaii Think Tech host, business entrepreneur, rock contour and consultant. Okay, Professor Randall, Tim, what a mess, right? What a mess. It's hard to know where to start on assessing, evaluating, critiquing the debt ceiling slash budget negotiations on both sides of the fence. Professor Randall, just taking a look at it as a negotiation professional, what comes to mind for you? How to or not to? I don't consider myself a negotiation specialist. I'm a specialist on the law and race and racism, but I've had very little experience in fact having to negotiate anything except grades with students who were upset with whatever grade I gave me was, I don't know, I've been taken back by the Democrats keep wanting to make this a bipartisan decision when I think they have the power to ignore the debt ceiling thing. I think that the debt ceiling is a self-enosed limitation that is not constitutional and that the only reason it's still around is because both parties like having it as a way to push the other party to do something they, you know, when they're in power to do that. So what's taken me is that they're, but they're both parties are in the situation where they need the other party to give a lot of votes to be able to pass something. And there's both the far right of the Republican party and the far left of the Democratic party are not going to go along, at least I hope the far left don't go along with some of the cuts and proposals that the Republicans want in a bill. So I'm not sure that this is the place where you can negotiate. That this is the place where you can negotiate and acceptable out. That Biden has to be the parent of the room and behave like he has the authority that he has as president instead of trying to get their agreement. Fair enough. Tim, what jumps out at you from these negotiations? What's being done right? What's being done wrong? Well, I think the first thing that jumps out is the negotiator that's not in the room and he's not negotiating, he's dictating terms and that's Donald Trump. When Donald Trump is quoted on CNN town hall meeting that he hopes that the debt ceiling is not renewed, that the GOP should not do it, there's an arsonist in the room. There's an anarchist in the room. And believe me, on the GOP side, many, many, many, if not most, are taking their marching orders from Donald Trump. So where does that put you if you're President Joe Biden? And that is, okay, negotiating with arsonists isn't going to work and it hasn't worked. He should have been exploring the 14th Amendment Clause a year ago knowing that this was coming up and now he's behind the eight ball because he didn't do all that research or maybe they did, but he's timid and he's reluctant to use it. But last night, Fitch, the credit reporting agency, said the United States is very close in the jeopardy of reducing their AAA status rating. That is devastating for interest rates, the stock market and everything in between. That will, we did it once before, many years ago, we were downgraded as a nation. That's not something you want to toy with. And so as far as the negotiations where it stands now, Joe Biden is going to have to say, hey, even if I cut a deal with McCarthy, House Speaker McCarthy, there's a very good chance that the MAGA GOP and the House of Representatives will say, no, it's not good enough. We want more. And at this point, the President's looks very weak and hapless. And that's a bad place for Joe Biden to be as he just announced that he wants to have second term for 2024 as President of the United States. He looks very weak and ineffectual. Feckless is the word I was looking for. Well, the 14th Amendment, which, you know, they passed this law, the 1917 law, which is what all of this debt ceiling thing is about. But the 14th Amendment is a constitution law. And as a part of the Constitution, I don't have the exact word, but the 14th Amendment basically says, the United States will not renege on any debt that it has incurred. That was passed in order to make sure that subsequent legislatures didn't try to renege on the civil war debts. Well, and remember also we were in World War I. I'm sure there were expenses that Congress had to parlay out that needed to be extended out. And we were a nation of isolationists back in 1917, but we were in a war. So I guess my question is, Professor Randall, is why do you think President Biden is so timid about taking the authoritative control to extend the debt ceiling? I don't think, I think that he's not timid, that he philosophically does believe that he should do that. I mean, that he is a barely center moderate. I've always thought of him as a center right moderate and that he empathizes with a lot of the positions that comes from that not so far right. And that just like they don't want to give rid of the filibuster, it costs it's useful to them when they're in power. They don't, this is the one, the thing about the 14th Amendment constitutional is once that's pulled, you can't go back. Once it's pulled, saying that it's unconstitutional now, yeah, the Republicans are gonna take them to court, but that's gonna play out court. In the meantime, under the 14th Amendment, Biden could issue an executive order as president and over the executive to all departments to pay their bills. And in could issue an order to the Treasury to produce the cash necessary to pay their bill. And I mean, I guess if I can imagine, especially if there are some center right moderates in control of the departments, people, he put the heads of departments, not the lower downs, but if the secretaries of the department, if there's someone that disagree with it, they might try to raise a fuss, but I think that their role and they understand their role is to carry out the wishes of the president in how to administer these departments. So they will pay the bills. Professor Randall? Yes. I agree with you that once you implement the provisions of the 14th Amendment, there's no going back. But at the same time, once we default, the United States defaults on its obligations, there's no going back from that either. So I think it's a choice of the less of two evils. And I'm actually shocked that Joe Biden gave that option up very early on, that he didn't want to explore it. And I think that really weakened his hand in the negotiation room. I don't think the 14th Amendment is an evil. I think that it would be a good for our society to say, you know, don't make that, we would have to move to, which we, like many other countries, we would have to move to saying it would be a budgetary fight. Because once the budget is bad, the administration can spend the money. And so people would have fights over the budget and knowing that once the budget got passed, there would be no way to stop spending the money. Because of the 14th Amendment, that would be a good thing. Yeah, I like that. I like your comment. I really like your comment, because I'm thinking of paragraph three as well in the 14th Amendment. That would preclude Donald Trump from running for president again. So I'll leave it at that. But I really do think that is that, I think the reason Biden is against it is because he is a conservative at heart, Democrat conservative, not a Republican conservative. And they the white having that. I mean, Democrats have used the debt ceiling too. To as a way use arguments over the debt ceiling as a way to get Republicans. But don't you think Janet Yellen, our treasurer, our secretary of, I mean, the treasurer of the United States is spot on when she says, this is not something that should be a partisan battle. This is just paying the bills that we've already spent and the full faith credit of the United States government is at stake here. I absolutely agree with you. I agree with you what she said. And I think Biden, he so much wants to be seen as bipartisan. He wants to be able to be seen as a person who can pull people from both sides to the center together. But like you pointed out, they're not negotiating in good faith. And what they're asking for should be too much. We should not agree to anything that reduces social program spending. If it's just they know, we're not going to do that. Well, I don't have a problem with negotiating just not on the same table as the debt limit extension. They wanna talk about budget issues. You know, I don't care, fine, that's Congress, but not in the same breath as we're trying to extend our debt limit. It's just the wrong avenue to do that in, I think. You know, I agree with you. And that's what I'm talking about. And I also think, because it bugs me that we passed military budget in a separate round from the social pro budget. I think that that needs to stop. That if we, to the extent that people are concerned about the debt, military debt has to be on table as well. And in the only way, and right now, at least what I've noticed is what they do and Democrats participate in this is they almost neatly pass the military budget months before they start talking about social programs but domestic program. And so there's no kind of balancing. There's no way to say, oh, well, you want us to take this off the program, then we want to cut the military budget. In fact, the last military budget, the last awful military budget, they have added on billions of dollars more than what Biden requests. They just like, you didn't ask for this money, but we want the military to have it. And so, yeah, I agree that the budget negotiation, but it has to be full faith. It can't be, and I think that budget negotiations need to go on at the same time we talk about tax cuts. I think that people, one of the things people talk about are examples, people say, well, when you're in a household and you don't have enough money coming in, you cut your spending, yeah, been there, done that. Probably we'll do it in the future. But I also look for more ways to bring money in. I mean, I take a second job. I tell my kid, look, you gotta go work part-time at wherever because we need to, we need to, you gotta pay for the gas in your car. So, because I can't afford it, bring more money in. What we seem to want to do is cut the money coming in and then complain about not having enough money coming in. I think the IRS provisions are trying to strip out of Biden's budget, you know, they're trying to strip out all that personnel that would catch tax cheaters and go after, you know, the more than the one percenters. They stripped all that out. No, they don't want to. They want to not have enough money to do things. They think that they will always be able to fund the military. And so if they don't have enough money to do things, that's the argument. And that's been a Republican play. Make a agency work bad, complain about how bad that agency is working and then cut it, cut the money for it, you know. So if we don't have enough, if we don't have IRS agents collecting money, they're not going to complain about that. They already know that that result of that means less taxes. And the results of that means less money to spend on social programs because currently no one is talking about less money to spend on military. So where do you folks see it going? The deadlock, are we going to get through this? What might it look like? I think Biden is going to capitulate and I think Democrats are too. I think they're going to hold their notes, talk about the lesser of two evils and vote for whatever, because we can't afford to have, I'm quoting them because I don't entirely believe this. We can't afford to remain on our debts. I'm like, you know, it ain't the worst thing in the world. The worst thing in the world is people who don't have enough food to eat, kids who can't get educated, having bombings of other countries. If we become a separate country, we become a separate country, maybe we'll do less interfering in other people's jobs, but we're a country. But I don't, I think the Democrats is going to, what do you think, Sam? I think Joe Biden already has capitulated and he did so when he said, I'm not going to negotiate on the national, you know, the national debt extension. And guess what? It looks like he's negotiating on the national debt extension. You know, maybe he's going to call it budget, but it's all on the same table. Therefore, the message is not clean. It's not separated. And he looks, as I said earlier, he looks very weak and ineffectual on that point. And I think he's going to capitulate more because he knows what the devastation that's going to occur, should we not make that deadline in time? And he doesn't have the, he doesn't have the, he doesn't, I don't think, I don't want to say he can't do it. I think he doesn't want to do it. And so he's never going to use the 14th amendment as an escape clause because- I don't think any president wants to be known for the president that allowed the national debt not to be extended and the calamity that follows both internationally and in our course of in our own country and set off a wild chain of events that once released, he won't be able to put back in the box. And I just think he's more worried about legacy and reputation than he is about his negotiating style and strategy. I think he will not allow the national debt to be extended, but he's going to take a real hit as far as his popularity because he looks like he's capitulated and he didn't know what he's doing. Chuck, yesterday you had mentioned that he had appointed three top-ranked negotiators, pros from Dover, if you will, and then no sooner are they in the job and then he solves off the chairs, chair legs to their authority. How wise was that? It wasn't. And so this has gone down from bad to worse. And in my estimation, he's just going to have to go with the GOP handsome, kind of similar to when he went down to Saudi Arabia and asked them to ramp up production and they laughed at him and said, excuse me, we're not cutting production, we're not ramping it up, we're going to do what the Russians want us to do. That was a sorry day in our presidential history. But that's what he looks like right now. But he doesn't have to. The thing is his unwilling, the 14th Amendment is a perfect escape for him. Yeah, pull it. Because it would completely avoid, it would give them a legacy, a historical legacy of being strong and using the Constitution. And the Republicans are going to challenge it. No doubt. They're going to go to court. But that's a process. In the meantime, the debts will get paid. I don't think the Supreme Court will give them an injunction. But I mean, that's a possibility. But before all of that happened, he should have the mechanisms in place so that the day that it's supposed to, he issues a letter, he goes and have a press conference and he tells the world, we're paying our debts. Well, did he come out in the news and we're paying our debt? I mean, did he come out with a month or so ago about some tough talk, very tough talk about doing exactly what you just said, I'm going to pull the 14th Amendment. And then he kind of like fell apart on that position. And that's the part that makes him look very, very indecisive. And should I say the word again, weak? I don't remember him saying that. I just remember him. He said he had at his disposal. He had the 14th Amendment at his disposal. He was making an empty threat and everybody knew it. Well, that's the thing about threats. Never make a threat that you don't intend to pull on. You absolutely, you don't do that. And when you give a condition for something, you got to do it. Mean it, mean what you say, say what you mean, you know? Yeah, you know. Come on, Joe, wake up. But he backed off of that because, you know, his party doesn't want that. It's the, not his party. Well, his party won't want him to default on the debt, and I guarantee you. Well, I think the thing is, is he is going to, I think he is going to give in to the Republican. Well, he has to. I don't think, I don't, I think you're right. He can't, he, there's no way they can default on the debt. That's not a legacy he wants. The party doesn't want him to default on the debt. And the question becomes, is what, is what they negotiate? Will he be able to bring enough Democrats along? Because whatever he's giving the Republicans, there is going to be a large percentage of the Democratic party who is not going to vote for it. And so it really is going to be a Republican plan. Now, you know, the Republicans have been talking, oh, we get everything we want, or we get, or we do nothing. I don't know, I, I wish- Guess what, that's working. It's, yeah, because he won't, it's working because he won't come out and say, you know what, adopt that position if you want to, but I'm going to do the 14th Amendment. Yeah. And here's, here's my reasoning for it. Although I personally think he ought to wait that, that he ought to go ahead and implement it. He should, but stop with the negotiation. Say, okay, I'm not negotiating anymore. I'm pulling the 14th Amendment right now. I don't have to wait for some date in the future for the, for us to default. I'm saying, I'm telling everybody right now to do it and do it publicly, you know, but I don't, I think I agree, he's not going to do that. I don't know, I'm really scared of, you know, I don't know that I think defaulting on the debt is worse than setting up a social program that is going to harm thousands of people in the daily life and from which they won't be able to recover from who puts debt thing on the poorest people, on the people who have the least resources, you know what, let's default on the debt. No, no. I mean, it's the choice I have. I'm gonna be quite serious. If the choice I'm given is, and maybe it comes from, I made this choice years ago. When I got a law school, I had a lot of debt. I had a decent paying job, but my job didn't cover enough money to pay my debt and take care of the kids the way I wanted to because I wanted them to be able to do things and not just survive. I defaulted. Oh, I can't curse, I almost cursed. I said, you know what, having bad credit ain't the worst thing in the world and my children only have a life for so long and I want them to experience that life. If the choice that I'm given, if the what the Republican has asked is putting more onerous requirements for Medicaid which is in social security and social program default on the debt, you know? You said something about the priority of social programs versus national debt. If we default on the debt, it's my belief. If we default, you'll see interest rates soar. You'll see a tightening of credit. You'll see companies that can't get access to that credit and certainly at a much higher rate and you'll see a massive unemployment rate that will further impact those who are at risk now or barely hanging on. They won't barely be hanging on, they won't have a job and I could see unemployment and the entire economy knows dive into a huge, huge recession. So I do take a little bit of exception to what you said because I just think it's the impact both nationally and internationally will be catastrophic and Janet Yellen, she's not kidding. Well, you know what? Everything that you said happened to me and my children got a good education and got good things because I decided good credit wasn't the most important thing in the world. I don't know, you could be right, but if I have to be the lesser of two evils which is the choice I'm being, the greater evil to me is knowingly pushing people that are on the edge the way they're on. The other things that you talked about may or may not happen and we have the opportunity to go out and do something, get a better job, do things to rehabilitate our debt and stuff like that. And professor- Everything that you said may happen, but to me that's not the worst or evil. So thank you both so much. We're out of time for today, but you've left us right where we're on that precipice in so many ways and you phrased it perfectly. Are we going to protect the people who are least well-served and most deserving of that protection or are we going to sacrifice them for those who are already over-served and over-protected? That's the ultimate decision in the works here. Let's see what happens. Think Tech Hawaii, thanks for joining us. We'll be back. Thanks so much for your help and support. Thank you so much for watching Think Tech Hawaii. If you like what we do, please like us and click the subscribe button on YouTube and the follow button on Vimeo. You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn and donate to us at thinktechhawaii.com. Mahalo.