We have in Washington today a government that is absolutely incapable of resolving the problems that are confronting the nation.

What has happened here is it really goes back to the money that is become the overriding and the driving factor in politics.

The slush of money that have come in.

And the fact that you can now have unlimited amounts of dollars flow into campaigns, without, any even disclosure.

The Citizens United Supreme Court case, which basically took off all the campaign finance restrictions.

I gotta hope and pray that the Supreme Court realized they muffed on that one.

It used to be that those of us in the middle who prided ourselves on forging compromises were applauded for our efforts.

Our constituents were happy.

Our colleagues were pleased.

Because we were getting things done.

Now we are by no means praised for our efforts.

Were often vilified, by both the far left and the far right for trying to achieve a compromise.

All of the different Rubicons of civility keep getting crossed.

Senators never used to campaign against each other.

Now, senators will go into their colleagues state all the time to campaign for their opponent.

They never used to raise money against each other.

Now they will actually contribute money to defeat some of their colleagues.

Votes are put up in the United States Senate for the sole purpose of creating the basis for a 30 second attack ad, They sit in caucuses now on Tuesday, just figuring how, oh, how do we screw the other side?

How do we screw the Dems?

How do we screw the Republicans?

How do we stick one on the president?

We've since had a sorting out of the American people and therefore their representatives.

You can't find liberal Republicans anymore.

There really aren't any in Congress.

You've got no more than a handful of conservative Democrats in either House of Congress.

So you've got a comprehensively liberal Democratic Party, a comprehensively conservative Republican Party.

They have almost nothing in common.

They don't socialize with one another.

They can't meet in the middle because they have their principles and they feel them so strongly.

And the party bases, the voters at home won't permit it.

Candidates running for federal offices now have to raise so much money back home in order to run for an office.

They have to sign off with so many interest groups before they get to Washington that once they're here, they can't compromise on anything.

They can't move an inch to the left or an inch to the right.

And when you have a legislative body that can't compromise, you have what we have now, a government that is in total gridlock.

Funding for out of order was provided by RFI Foundation, Inc.. Jay Thornton Kirby.

Robins Foundation.

Richard Jay and Ellen G. Bodorff Charitable Foundation, Inc.. There are also those who claim that our reform efforts would ensure illegal immigrants.

This too is false.

The reforms, the reforms I'm proposing would not apply to those who are here illegally.

I think everybody remembers when a certain congressman from South Carolina yelled out, you lie during a speech by the president on the floor of the House of Representatives.

I think everybody remembers when another congressman of a different party from Florida said on the floor of the House, if you get sick, America, the Republican health care plan is this.

Die quickly.

That's right.

The Republicans want you to die quickly if you get sick.

These are things, unfortunately, that are becoming the norm in American politics.

The climate is surly and it is acidic.

And I think it is more so with each passing year.

I've been here 21 years, and that is about the most mean spirited partisan statement ever made.

Members of not just the House of Representatives, but this entire nation.

Mr.

Grayson, how about apologizing?

Mr.

Grayson?

It's been a long time coming, and each side has examples they can point to, or the other side has perpetrated some outrage, which has then, of course, been used as an excuse to re perpetrate the outrage right back when you have a chance.

So it's been this cycle of recrimination and revenge that's been going on for some time.

Washington has always been a partisan town.

It's supposed to be a partisan town.

But when I came to Washington, you had these great across the aisle relationships: Ev Dirksen and Lyndon Johnson.

And one day they were two of them were having a fierce debate.

And then when they completed the debating, a quorum call was called, and Dirksen was in his seat, and Lyndon Johnson came across the aisle, put his great big arm over and said, now Ev, I know you're campaigning for reelection.

Let me tell you, if I can help you, let me know, because I can't run this place without you.

They trusted one another.

They knew when they had to work together, and when it was good for both of them to work together.

They could get up on the Senate floor and make these speeches and just tear the hide off the other side.

But after work, they could all sit around and have a drink.

They used to socialize, and that was the grease that made Washington run.

It didn't always run smoothly, but it ran and they managed to accomplish what needed to be done.

You don't have that anymore.

Every week, the Democrats and the Republicans have a caucus lunch.

All Republicans in one room, all Democrats in the other.

They never, literally never have a common lunch.

Every Thursday, there's a policy meeting.

All Democrats here, all Republicans there.

They never have a common policy meeting.

And that's intentional.

The leadership of the two parties doesn't want the members meeting with each other, because they may try and start compromising on their own.

The system is designed to enforce party discipline.

The pressure is constantly on to always vote with your party 100% of the time, 90% not enough.

And if you don't, well, surprisingly, you're not appointed to the committee that you want to get appointed to.

Oh, your bill is not brought up for a vote.

Your amendment is not offered.

The campaign support is not there.

The leadership wants to keep control.

I think one of the worst things that's happened to our democracy has been computerized redistricting as starting at the state level and then going to the congressional level, where incumbents would draw districts that were safe.

Both parties did it.

So it meant more and more often that the real election that mattered was the primary election, not the general election.

The founders had an archaic system where the voters chose the representatives.

And today, of course, we have a much more up to date advanced system where the elected officials choose their voters.

We've always had gerrymandering.

The difference is we never had computerized data about individual voters.

Forget about census blocks or communities.

Today, it's possible to construct a district that is absolutely guaranteed under any circumstances to elect either a Democrat or a Republican.

If you've got a district that is overwhelmingly Democratic, that district will elect through the primary the most liberal Democrat possible.

Eventually, if you got a district that's overwhelmingly Republican, there's almost no way a moderate Republican will survive over time.

Given the small turnouts for primaries and the fact that the most conservative activists, just like the most liberal activists in the Democratic Party, choose to participate in the primaries.

The problem for people in the middle is by the time we get to November, the Democrats have picked the liberal.

The Republicans have picked a conservative, and they have to choose between the liberal and the conservative.

There isn't a moderate candidate to pick.

They haven't done their first duty as voters, which is to participate in primaries, in caucuses, in conventions.

Because they could moderate the choice of the nominees, they could actually make it easier for the two parties to compromise.

In states that have referendum.

You could pass a referendum that requires that redistricting be done in semi non partisan ways, and there are some states that do it that way.

Well California has fixed it.

The public took matters out of the hands of the politicians.

And they now have a neutral state body that draws the legislative districts are no more incumbents protecting themselves.

And you're going to have a lot more competitive races out there, which will mean independents and moderates will have a bigger say, not just the far right in the far left.

One other thing they did is everybody runs in the same primary now.

So it's not a Republican primary, not a Democratic primary.

So you could have elections.

You will have elections where the two finalists are both Democrats or both Republicans.

So there are elections out there now where moderate Republicans and Democrats are running, knowing that they won't finish first in the primary.

Ordinarily, that would have been their out.

But now if they can finish second, well, they can win in the fall because they'll get more of the independents and members of the other party.

So the two extremes will have less control.

So let's see how California works.

And if it does lead to more pragmatists getting elected, more reasonable people, then maybe it's something other states might choose to follow.

But I can guarantee you it'll scare the bejesus out of the politicians because they won't be in control anymore.

No one's ever asked to see my birth certificate.

They know that this is the place that we were born and raised.

This was a swipe at the president.

And I wonder why you took it.

No, no, not a swipe.

That was a good joke.

That cheap shot of bad.

I don't have a problem with my birth certificate.

It was awful.

And it's an embarrassment to your party to play that card.

The media definitely plays a role in a campaign.

We have this 24 seven media culture that did not exist when I was first elected to the Senate.

Why doesn't Mitt Romney come out and say it?

That he believes this president exists solely to create black dependance on welfare?

It's hard to run against Santa Claus, which is what you're doing with the Democrats.

You're running.

Obama is Santa Claus, but we are reality.

And they've got they've got to show that what Santas promise comes Satan's consequences.

There's a lot to be said for having a variety of diverse views available to people for what is happened, and is people tend to listen only to views that reinforce what they already believe.

Boring, moderates like me are less likely to be invited than people who have extreme views.

Sometimes I pull my hair out because, they want to hear the the sound bite or the attack.

And trying to give an answer that's longer than two sentences doesn't ever make it past the editing room floor.

But a lot of these issues that our country faces, how we got to a $16 trillion debt, what's it going to take to get out of it?

How do we make our tax code more competitive?

You know, anybody that gives you a sound bite answer on that isn't telling you the truth?

As you may know, we cover politics a bit differently here.

We're not much on party propaganda or political bloviating.

Again this morning, saying that the entire Obama health care plan was something brought in from Europe, when in fact, Teddy Roosevelt, Governor Romney is pretty much neutralized the far right.

Sarah Palin not been invited to speak in primetime, although Rick Santorum will give an address.

There are no local Tea Party leaders on the docket, although Senator Rand Paul will speak and he's a big Tea Party guy.

But if a fundamental thing in your campaign, if a main pillar of what you're running on is a lie, then that's a problem, because the media is interested in conflict, controversy and confusion.

They're not interested in clarity.

Clarity is doesn't sell when there's a puddle outside bigger than you are.

You know what?

I want you to be careful what you want.

This is the dodge.

The dodge?

We're in the midst of a communications revolution for.

Everybody who has a word processor now is a commentator.

And many feel no restraint on commenting.

We don't broadcast something at CBS or any of the mainstream media unless we believe it's true.

And we go to some trouble to make sure that before we broadcast something, that it is true.

What we have to remember is the internet is the first vehicle we've ever had to deliver news that has no editor.

The worst newspaper has somebody on the staff and knows where the stuff came from To get a letter published in a newspaper.

You have to verify that you're the author or you have to use your real name.

But if you send an email, comment, you can do it under a pseudonym, and it can be vicious and not factual, and it will be attached to the end of the article that you're commenting on completely different the standards.

And people who would never say face to face or sign their real name to a negative comment can now be vitriolic and indeed not even tell the truth.

Using the internet as a forum and they can reach more people than ever before.

It's a guaranteed privilege under the First Amendment to blog and to say whatever you want, and the Supreme Court has actually upheld the opportunity to say things anonymously.

I don't happen to agree with that.

I think that that any honorable individual should put his or her name to comments made, but everybody doesn't feel the same way.

There's both good news and bad news in this, in the way the social media connects people.

When you say something like the Arab Spring, people understood there were people out there that agreed with them.

And this this had a great deal to do with that revolution.

I mean, those revolutions were unique and that they had no charismatic leader at the head of them.

People just realized, hey, he feels the way I do.

And then they suddenly realize there are thousands of people out there.

That's the good news about that.

The bad news out there about that is the nuts know where to find each other now.

I think one of the things that changes that has hurt our democracy has been the rush of money that have come in to the Citizens United Supreme Court case, which basically took off all the campaign finance restrictions.

And the fact that you can now have unlimited amounts of dollars flow into campaigns without any even disclosure.

I think we've seen that in the most recent presidential campaign, where certain candidates that were maybe in past their expiration due date, only because they might have had one single donor.

You're seeing particularly some of my Republican colleagues who are now bearing the brunt of some of these single, deep pocketed funders going after them in primaries, that this can be used against anyone, the power of one individual or the power of one special interest to turn on any candidate and, basically, overwhelm them.

I'm not sure that's what the founders had in mind when they set up this, this form of representative democracy.

We have taken what used to be a, an amateur sport, American politics, when people got into it and when people helped candidates because they it was in their interest to do so, or because they believed in a candidate or because they just wanted to be part of something.

But now we have taken what used to be an amateur sport and turned it into a professional sport.

We have created this enormous cottage industry that's grown up around politics the consultants, the Gurus, the speech coaches, all of these people have to be paid.

And that's why these campaigns now cost so much money.

These so-called super PACs are a bit of a mystery.

You're not really sure who is funding them.

They have names that don't really tell you who they're affiliated with.

In a small state in particular these outside groups can have a disproportionate impact because their million dollars or so can buy an awful lot of TV ads.

We sent him there to fix it, but somewhere along the way, something went horribly wrong.

That's the constant pressure to be prepared in order to counter what may be an onslaught of negative ads from out of state groups that have absolutely no connection to your state.

Puts a lot of pressure on members to constantly fundraise.

When you are running for office, it's not uncommon that you have a fundraiser for breakfast, a fundraiser for lunch, and a fundraiser for dinner, and we have spare time.

You get on the phone and you call people for money.

And when you are constantly campaigning, when you're always raising money, a lot of the money comes from all ideological sources, and all things political are higher up on your brain, and you're not thinking so much about how do I find common ground and solve the country's problems?

It's all, where am I going to get the next dollar?

It's an endless quest for political power through the use of means that render that power's effective use impossible.

If you're out raising money all day and all night and on a Rolodex or whatever, and calling people for the president's dinner or for whatever or whatever you're doing, you're not legislating.

You're not holding hearings.

You're not you're not amending your product.

You're not getting to conference committees.

You're not making the you're not doing what you're supposed to do, which is to govern by legislating and doing legislation that's understandable to the governed.

I'm concerned that the enormity of this money is filtering down and lessening the enthusiasm of the man or the woman or the family that only maybe has $50 to contribute.

Now, with these millions coming in from the super PACs, they say, what difference does my $50 make?

Does my voice even count anymore?

With the thunder of the advertisements coming across the airwaves?

We're in for a real test in this country.

The truth is, there was unlimited money before Citizens United.

What Citizens United did was to alert very wealthy people to the fact that there was now an open loophole available to anyone with the means to use in politics to spend in unlimited fashion.

The problem that has come along with Citizens United is a lack of disclosure.

What you want is full disclosure of campaign spending and campaign fundraising.

You want to know where the money is coming from and where the money is going, so that the news media can publicize who has an interest in what campaign, what they're getting potentially for the money they're spending, and the voters can then take that into account before they cast a ballot.

That's the way the system is supposed to work.

Government and politics conducted in the shade can be cynical, dangerous and corrupt.

Government in the sunshine.

Politics in the sunshine is the only solution.

It always has been in American politics or in any Western style democracy.

When you get tired of one side or you think they've done a bad job, you throw them out and bring in the other side.

Are we at the point in American politics where people have lost confidence in both sides?

And where does that put us, and what do we do about that?

But the only thing that really gives one hope about the mess that our political system is in is that in the past, when we had to do it, the American people have always found a way to do it.

You look at some of the challenges that we've overcome in the past, whether they're civil wars or world wars or great depressions or all the different journeys that America has made to make us a not perfect, but more perfect union.

And you've got to think that if we're true to our character and we vote our values, and we ultimately say, look, we're just not going to support people who are brain dead, partizans or inflexible ideologues.

We're going to support people who are Americans first.

We can correct the system.

It's ultimately up to us.

That's the good news.

But it is up to us.

And so we've got to take this political process back from the two extremes.

The American people really want us to take a more pragmatic approach to the enormous problems we face, huge issues that can only be tackled by people being willing to listen to one another and to work together.

I think the genius of our system was the Founding fathers set up a system of government that was slightly dysfunctional independent house, independent Senate, independent president.

If anything was going to get done that folks had to work together.

And so this notion that you shouldn't find common ground, that doesn't mean sacrifice your principles, but you shouldn't find common ground is the antithesis of everything America has been about.

And if somebody wants to say my way or the highway after every election, there are other legitimate forms of government.

A parliamentary system works pretty well for the UK or works for Canada, but it sure as heck is not the American form of government, which, with its checks and balances and with its need for compromise in politics, there are no right answers, only a continuing flow of compromises among groups, resulting in a changing, cloudy and ambiguous series of public decisions where appetite and ambition compete openly with knowledge and wisdom.

Thats all there is.

You know, it's easy to blame the media.

It's easy to blame big money.

It's easy to blame specific politicians.

And they all deserve some blame.

But we never seem to get around to blaming ourselves.

After all, we do elect these people.

Thomas Jefferson once said, if a nation expects to be both ignorant and free, it expects what never was and never will be.

And to me, that's the heart of the solution.

The better educated people are about politics and government, the more likely they are to make responsible choices.

And that's where I think we've fallen tremendously short.

In many schools, civics isn't even taught anymore.

You have to understand how the government works so that you can know how to influence it.

You have to study what ideology is before you can pick one, and you have to understand where the candidates stand in order to know that you're making an informed choice.

When you go to the ballot box.

If I expect the right things to happen the way mushrooms just naturally grow, if they get the right amount of moisture.

No, I don't I don't think that will happen.

I think it will take all of us deciding it is very important to solve these problems and that it requires time, effort and sacrifice by all of us, not by that group over there and those individuals over there, but by all of us has to include all of us.

If it doesn't, it won't work.

That's as optimistic as I can get for you.

Funding for Out of Order was provided by RFI Foundation, Inc.. Jay Thornton Kirby Robbins Foundation.

Richard J. And Ellen G Bodorff Charitable Foundation, Inc..