 President Biden framed this agreement as the only way forward and good for the American people and for the Democratic Party and his administration. Do you agree with him? Are you happy with this deal and the spending cuts that are involved? No, Medea, but I don't think that's the point. This is the deal. I mean, you don't have any. What the Republicans did essentially subjected all of us, the entire nation, to being held hostage. And this was the negotiation with the hostage takers. And the alternative is the entire system, both our political and economic system, mostly our economic system, blows up. What can you say about it? Well, you know, the best thing that can say that could be said about this deal is it's not as bad as it might have been. But it's pretty, it still has a lot of stuff that you just have to hold your nose to. Yeah, well, well put. The United States, Bob, is one of only two countries in the world with a legal debt ceiling. The other one is Denmark. And Denmark sets it so high it's irrelevant. We were talking in the last hour about how this new agreement, you know, puts the debt ceiling off until 2025. But we assume it'll rear its ugly head again, then, especially if Republicans control the House and the Senate in 2025. All of this is to say, isn't it time to get rid of the damn debt ceiling rather than just keep kicking the can down the road and allowing the GOP to use it as a hostage every two years? Of course it is. And the fact that the Democrats couldn't do it when they had both houses of Congress, when they controlled both houses of Congress, is a pretty damning, damning indictment of the Democrats. And of mansion and cinema and the whole crowd that did not want to go along with anything like this. Look, one of the problems here is that by caving in to this Republican effort to use the debt ceiling as a hostage taking operation, it sets the norm for the next time. The Republicans will do exactly the same thing, assuming that the Democrats have any power and assuming Democrats are in the White House. So it's going to get worse. It's not going to get better. And by doing it this way, I think Biden and Democrats have made a terrible mistake. It should never have got to this point. Indeed. And you've called out Republicans' fake outrage on the debt, pointing out that tax cuts under the Bush and Trump administration have added $10 trillion to the country's debt since they were enacted. So what is the GOP game plan here, right? They don't actually care about debts or deficits or fiscal prudence. What is it they care about? They care about power. They care about asserting power, about showing that they have power, about diminishing the Democrats, about demonstrating to the extent that they possibly can, that Joe Biden is weak. That's their whole game plan. I mean, they never talked about deficits. They never talked about the debt. As you pointed out, if you look at the Reagan and Bush and Trump tax cuts for the wealthy, primarily for the wealthy and for big corporations, I mean, that's where a lot of today's debt and deficit come from. And you add in military spending. That's it. I mean, this is a charade. And everybody should know it's a charade. I think that the Biden administration's communication strategy also should be called out as pretty awful. Again, the best thing that can be said is that this was not a worse deal, but it's going to be a tough going over the next week to get the 218 votes that Biden needs and that also Kevin McCarthy needs. It's interesting you pointed out the com strategy. I've been critical of it, too. Defenders of the Biden approach say, no, no, no, this is how he negotiates. You stay silent. You do your talking behind the scenes. You get a bipartisan agreement. The problem with that approach, of course, is it misses the big picture. And the big picture is the Republicans are allowed to sell spending cuts as some sort of inherently good economic move. And we have to do this whole charade again in 2025 because we haven't delegitimized the idea of a debt ceiling. There's also, as you say, the charade around debts and deficits. I would point out to you, Bob, in this agreement, this deal cuts back the money that Biden wanted the IRS to spend on chasing tax cheats, money that actually increases tax revenues and decreases the deficit. This deal, the IRS cut part of it, will actually increase the deficit and the debt ironically. Absolutely right. The irony upon irony is that those tax cheats are mostly very wealthy people. So you're going to actually aggravate, exacerbate inequality in this country. You're going to allow the wealthy to get away with cheating on their taxes. They were the ones who were cheating before. That's why the IRS didn't have the resources to go after them. That's why the IRS needed more resources. And at the same time, you're putting extra work requirements on some of the most vulnerable people in our society, aggravating the central dilemma of our society, which is the widening gap between the very, very rich and the lower middle class, working class and the poor. Well, last question for you, Bob. I don't want to end all on doom and gloom. A lot of progressive, a lot of people on the left say, see, look, Biden, this is who he is. He sold us out. He's not, you know, progressive enough. And yet, to be fair to Joe Biden, he did do a lot of progressive things in his first two years in office. We did cut child poverty in half in the first year. The American Rescue Plan was record spending. And there seems to be almost two Biden administrations right now, the first two years that was very progressive. And now this one that is going in for spending cuts and agreeing to Republicans defining the terms of economic debate. Well, that's true. But also, let me end on a very positive note. The environmental, the kind of climate change provisions that Biden really did put into the Inflation Reduction Act are still there. I mean, they were not touched by this deal. And hopefully, if the deal does hold, and let's hope and pray it does, because the alternative, again, is Armageddon, if then there is a lot for Biden to crow about. Yeah. And of course, the spending in the Inflation Reduction Act was described by the Biden administration as the biggest single investment in fighting climate change in American history. So you're right to highlight that that has been protected and that is an undeniably good thing. Robert Reich, thank you as ever for your time and for your analysis. Appreciate it. Thank you, Mitty.