All In with Chris Hayes, Transcript 10/28/15

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) CHRIS HAYES, MSNBC HOST (voice-over): Tonight on ALL IN -- SHERIFF LEON LOTT, RICHLAND COUNTY, SOUTH CAROLINA: School resource officer Ben Fields was terminated from the Richland County Sheriff`s Department. HAYES: The officer who flipped and dragged a student in South Carolina is relieved of duty, as the victim-blaming grows. . LOTT: We must not lose sight that this whole incident started by this student. HAYES: And Hillary Clinton`s tough talk on Wall Street. STEPHEN COLBERT, HOST, "THE LATE SHOW": If you are president -- HILLARY CLINTON (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Yes. COLBERT: -- and the banks are failing. Do we let them fail this time? CLINTON: Yes. Yes. COLBERT: We let them fail this time? CLINTON: Yes. Yes. HAYES: I`ll ask Robert Reich if he believes what we`re hearing. Plus, Paul Ryan begins his vision quest. REP. PAUL RYAN (R), WISCONSIN: Our party has lost its vision, and we`re going to replace it with a vision. HAYES: Sir Richard Branson on the fight to end America`s war on drugs, and why today`s runaway government blimp was actually a runaway zombie blimp. WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: All right. We`ll stay on top of this very disturbing story. HAYES: When ALL IN starts right now. (END VIDEOTAPE) HAYES: Good evening from New York. I`m Chris Hayes. A Columbia, South Carolina police officer who used heavy force in his arrest of a Spring Valley high school student has been fired. Less than two days after videos of that arrest went public, Sheriff Leon Lott of Richland County, South Carolina, terminated Deputy Ben Fields following a recommendation by the sheriff department`s training division. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) LOTT: Their recommendation to me was the Deputy Fields did not follow proper training, did not follow proper procedure when he threw the student across the room. From the very beginning, that`s what`s caused me to be upset. When I first saw that video and continue to upset me when I see that video, is the fact he picked the student up, and he threw the student across the room. That is not a proper technique, and should not be used in law enforcement. Based on that, that is a violation of our policy, and approximately 20 minutes ago, school resource officer Ben Fields was terminated from the Richland County Sheriff`s Department. When you make an arrest for someone who does not have a weapon, that you need to escape from, you never let go of that subject, you maintain control of the person you`re trying to arrest. When he threw her across the room, he lost control of her. That`s not acceptable. That`s what violated the policy. (END VIDEO CLIP) HAYES: The findings of the training division to which Sheriff Lott referred outlines what it views as acceptable and unacceptable use of force. The memo the training division findings reading in part, "when dealing with a suspect who is refusing to get out of a seated position and is not a threat to anyone, deputies are trained to use tactical communications to try to talk them into compliance. If that fails, the training division teaches pain compliance techniques, such as pressure point control or joint locks, i.e. transport wrist lock. If those techniques fail, or if the deputy has reason to believe they will not work, a straight bar or takedown may be used. The training division does not train deputies to throw or push away a suspect unless the goal is to disengage from the suspect because the suspect is attempting to harm the deputy." We`ve reached out to Deputy Fields through his attorneys to invite him to appear in our show, the statement from Deputy Fields` attorney reads in part, "We believe that Mr. Fields` actions were justified and lawful throughout the circumstances of which he was confronted during this incident. To that extent, we believe that Mr. Fields` actions were carried out professionally, and that he was performing within his job duties within the legal threshold." Today, Sheriff Lott reiterated the student refused to leave the class when a both a teacher and an administrator asked her to and refused again when the school resource officer asked her to. Sheriff Lott returned to the issue of what he saw as her responsibility to the situation several times. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) LOTT: She was very disruptive. She was very disrespectful, and she started this whole incident with her actions. We must not lose sight that this whole incident started by the student. She is responsible for initiating this action. Now, what she did doesn`t justify what our deputy did. I don`t want anyone to think that. It doesn`t justify his actions. But she needs to be held responsible for what she did. Our students must be in an educational environment, and it`s the responsibility of everyone to make sure it`s that way. It starts with the parents, goes through the students, goes through all of us. This needs to be a learning opportunity for all of us. We need to talk to our kids that sometimes young people make bad decisions and they should be held accountable for that. And that they should have discipline, and they should have respect, they should have that everywhere, but it`s particularly in our schools. She wasn`t following the instructions of the teacher. There were certain things the students were supposed to be doing, and I think they had chrome books that they were supposed to be studying from and doing something that`s education related. She was not doing that. She was using her phone. He had asked her to put it out. She continued to do it. She wasn`t doing what the other students were doing. (END VIDEO CLIP) HAYES: Last night, Niya Kenny, another student at Spring Valley was our guest. She was also arrested while trying to stand up for the student being detained and she referenced allegations about Officer Fields` reputation. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) NIYA KENNY, STUDENT: I`ve heard about him. So, I wasn`t really surprised, because I`ve heard so much about him. So, before he came to class, I was actually telling them take out your cameras. I feel like this is going to go downhill, because I`ve heard so much about him. He`s known as officer slam around our school. I`ve heard he`s in the past slammed pregnant women, teenage girls. He`s known for slamming. (END VIDEO CLIP) HAYES: Obviously, those are serious allegations and we`re in the process of trying to authenticate them. We do not have independent confirmation. Today, NBC News spoke with another student who witnessed the incident who did offer a different description of Officer Fields` reputation. (BEGIN AUDIO CLIP) REGINALD SEABROOKS, SPRING VALLEY HIGH SCHOOL STUDENT: I would say that he`s a good resource officer. And he`s not racist. He`s not racist at all, because he coached a diverse football team, and he spoke to every student, even when they didn`t (INAUDIBLE), he still kept it moving. He didn`t have like -- he wasn`t a mean person. He never had attitude with nobody. (END AUDIO CLIP) HAYES: Joining me now, MSNBC national correspondent Joy Reid. Well, what did you make of that press conference today? JOY REID, MSNBC NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, I thought it was interesting that the sheriff focused so much on tactics. Obviously, I think in situations where there is use of force by an officer, we have seen repeatedly, there`s a great reluctance on the part of police forces, on the part of whoever is involved, to come down on the officer and question their actions. And so, in this case, it seemed to be a very painful thing for this sheriff to do. This officer did report to the sheriff`s office, and so he focused on the specific tactics about how an officer is required to handle a subject. All of it is very surreal, because I think it`s easy to forget you are talking about the suspect being a kid that`s in class and the fact that the violation of law that is codified in the South Carolina law, this disrupting school law was passed in 1976, literally legislates around kids being naughty in class. That`s just bizarre. So, to talk about this in terms of the grappling and holding tactics is odd. HAYES: Yes. I mean, I -- it`s been fascinating to watch the reaction of this because a lot of people are talking about it. People on the Internet, people just in conversations about it, they are people I would say more than I would have anticipated say, well, you know, you can`t disrupt class, you know, and you need discipline. And all I said, look, yes, sure, you should listen to your teacher. I mean, sure, that`s a true thing, but also -- it also strikes me like this happens, I don`t know, tens of thousands of times a day across high schools in America all the time? REID: Yes. HAYES: Presumably there are ways they get resolved without someone being thrown to the ground. REID: Without being thrown to the ground. And I think back to even just being in high school, and remember, there were also disruptive kids. There was also a class clown, or someone who doesn`t listen. In this case, the young lady had significant personal and emotional issues as well. And so, when you throw a police officer into the mix, and keep in mind, the SRO program that was started throughout the country in the `50s and `60s was originally started as a way to improve relationships between kids and cops, to bring them and mix them in the school environment. In this case, this SRO didn`t just walk around being a cop, he actually coached and was a strength trainer in the football team. So, these SROs are coaching and teaching kids. The SROs in my kids` school used to teach soccer and were coaching. And so, they`re trying to put them into the school mix as almost a friendly face of law enforcement, an officer friendly program. HAYES: You hear that from the other student. I actually saw someone else on Twitter, I think was in the class. People obviously had different views of this officer -- REID: Yes. HAYES: -- because of the way they interfaced with him, whether in a friendly role or in a role like we saw there. REID: So it`s an awkward position to put the police officers in, they are sworn officers, the police officers. Then when they`re shifting from coach mode and friendly officer mode into actual law enforcement, as if this is a crime on the street mode, it`s a really awkward I think position to put any police officer in, to begin with. HAYES: Yes. But also, I`ve got to say, in the reaction to this, and I try to be open minded, but in reaction, you know, if someone pointed this out, you know, if this was a video of a parent doing to this kid -- REID: They would be in jail. HAYES: I mean, you would not have your kid -- REID: And they`re actually -- HAYES: And I think that`s because we have a kind of social consensus that you don`t lay hands on kids unless they`re immediate danger to someone, right? I mean, that`s just how we have kind of come to where we are, I thought. REID: All teachers will tell you they cannot put their hands on a child. If the teacher had thrown that child across the room, that teacher would have been escorted out. I`ve seen that actually happened when I was a kid in elementary school and there was a teacher who lost control and threw a teacher across the room that hit a kid. He didn`t even throw at the kid, but he was marched out of that school. Never came back. These kinds of things are prohibited. Teachers can`t even touch children. So, there is this question of, I don`t know why people seem to see this as just a disciplinary thing that the young girl instigated, when naughtiness in school, not behaving is not something uncommon, introducing this law enforcement aspect which again is under South Carolina law, it just introduces a bizarre element. I can`t see this as a workable way to conduct school. HAYES: We`ll talk about that right now, Joy Reid, thank you very much. Appreciate it. REID: Thank you. HAYES: All right. Joining me, David Feige. He`s a former public defender, and author of "Indefensible", and Carla Shedd, assistant professor of sociology and African-American studies at Columbia University, author of "Unequal City: Race, Schools, and the Perception of Injustice." David, let me start with you, Joy has referenced this. I think in some ways, aside from the shocking nature of the sort of physical assault, or whatever you want to call what happened there, the fact that that girl and the other girl are charged with the law, it`s called disturbing schools, which I don`t -- it`s unclear to me why you need separate statutory criminal authority to prosecute someone for disturbing schools when if they`re doing something criminal in the school, you can just persecute them for that. DAVID FEIGE, FMR. PUBLIC DEFENDER: Exactly. I think the short answer is, you don`t. The corollary is that`s exactly these kinds of laws that are dangerous and most often get misused. HAYES: What do you mean by that? FEIGE: Well, look, there`s a particular danger to a law like don`t be obnoxious in school, which is literally what this thing says. It uses the word "obnoxious", OK? Now, I don`t know about you, but pretty much somebody has obnoxious in every single classroom I`ve ever been in ever. HAYES: David, you may possibly -- FEIGE: Oh, for sure. HAYES: I mean, I like you quite a bit. But I imagine you at one point might have been obnoxious? FEIGE: I might have been big to throw with such alacrity. But obnoxious? Guilty as charged. That said, when you have laws this broad and this vague, everybody is violating them all the time. HAYES: That`s right. FEIGE: And when everyone is always violating them, the question becomes who do you enforce against? And we`ve seen it with loitering laws. We`ve seen it with disorderly conduct laws. All of these vague laws become proxies for unconscious race bias and systemic bias. And so, what winds up happening is this broad, broad laws get enforced unequally. HAYES: Carla, this is actually something that you write about, you`ve written a book about, right? Does that jibe with what your research says about how this goes down in schools? CARLA SHEDD, AUTHOR, "UNEQUAL CITY": That is exactly in alignment with what I saw in my years of Chicago public schools and thinking about the disparate enforcement of laws in schools in particular populations. It`s unequal. It is not random, but almost it`s very targeted in a way at certain types of behaviors done by certain types of children. HAYES: Elaborate. SHEDD: So there might be a way in which we looks as girls and criminalize them for talking loud or acting out. We`ve seen this in the suspension rates being much higher for black girls. We see the way that we might read a black boy running and think that he might be running from committing a crime instead of racing a friend. I think there are many ways that the criminal lens or criminal gaze has been sort of used on our young people and then there are consequences that are both legal and psychological. HAYES: Right. And more than gaze, right? I think we have shifted or policy over the last 20 or 30 years, right? We`ve shifted policy to school discipline being increasingly enforced by the criminal justice system, cops coming in, making arrests. You know, I did not go to particularly rough schools, you know, but there were fighting. SHEDD: Did you have metal detectors? HAYES: No, but there were fights. I`ve watched fights. I`ve been in fights. I mean, you know, a fight is an assault, I mean, that`s a criminal infraction, but no one -- no one understood a fight. I mean, a fight is a terrible things and being in an unsafe school is a terrible thing. We should just make very clear, right? I mean, the threat of violence in the schools are really horrible way to try to learn. It`s bad to the teachers, for the administrators, for the students. All that is true. It`s also true that the violence that happens between teenagers sometimes with fight or something else or disruption is different from how we think about criminal infraction. SHEDD: Right. The school is the site for what should be education, but instead you bring in what I call carceral apparatus into the space, you have police officers, you have metal detectors, you have kids who are patted down. Every school in Chicago has two police officers there, but they operate differently, depending on the school context. So, if you have police there, they will enforce the law. HAYES: That, David, everything sort of hammer and nails aspect to that? FEIGE: Exactly, exactly right. I want to broaden that point, Chris, because the truth is it`s not just schools. We have got this reflexive desire to use the criminal justice system in broader and broader ways, in broader and broader places. We haven`t just seen it in schools. We`ve seen it in the mental health arena. We`ve seen this in homelessness. All the of the social ills that we perceive are quick fixes, let`s bring in the cops. Let`s use the criminal law. It is the worst tool imaginable to solve subtle social ills. HAYES: This is the thing that struck me today watching the sheriff. When I watched the sheriff -- he`s out there, this is a guy who`s sheriff of the county, all right? You know, he`s got -- there`s all sorts of probably terrible violent things that are happening and crimes he wants to solve, and he`s talking about, well, I think she was supposed to be using a chrome book, on her phone. This is not -- the sheriff shouldn`t be having -- involved in whether she was properly doing her assignment. It just struck me that, you know -- this is what we ask law enforcement to do. FEIGE: Right. (CROSSTALK) SHEDD: It shows how these systems have been meshed. If you have a sheriff talking about how a child should act in a classroom, what does that mean for enforcement of classroom policy, classroom management? You`re bringing in police officers to escalate a situation, which should have been de-escalated by perhaps asking her, is something going on at home? Is there something that you`re needing to know about where you have your phone out? There are ways in which teachers can do that, but they`re no longer in control of the kids` bodies, that`s been moved to police officers. HAYES: And let`s also just say, like I said to Joy, thousands of times a day in high schools and schools across the country, teachers, administrators and do successfully do just that. But this is not how all these end up, thankfully. David Feige and Carla Shedd, thank you both. SHEDD: Thank you. FEIGE: My pleasure. HAYES: All right. Coming up, no bank bailouts in the Clinton administration, according to Hillary. She`ll let them fail if another financial crisis hits. A look at how realistic that promise will be. Plus, why today`s spectacle of a loose blimp renewed scrutiny of defense spending. The zombie blimp explained ahead. And later, what is Sir Richard Branson, the billionaire, doing taking about drug policy and criminal justice reform. My interview with him ahead. (COMMERCIAL BREAK) (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) RACHEL MADDOW, TRMS: You don`t have the nomination, and there was already a sitting Republican member of Congress from Alabama, Mo Brooks, who says that he is ready to impeach you on the first day of your presidency. (LAUGHTER) CLINTON: Isn`t that pathetic? It`s just laughable! MADDOW: It`s amazing. CLINTON: It`s so totally ridiculous. MADDOW: But that is where the Republican Party is. CLINTON: That is where they are. MADDOW: That`s probably good politics in Republican politics for him to say that. CLINTON: Well, it`s -- it perhaps is good politics with the -- you know, the most intense, extreme part of their base. I guess that is, or otherwise why would they be doing it? (END VIDEO CLIP) HAYES: That was Hillary Clinton speaking with my colleague Rachel Maddow last Friday. Today, it appears the most intense extreme part of the GOP base that Clinton references, those voters would be attracted to talk of her immediate impeachment is actually pretty big. At least in North Carolina, according to a new poll, 66 percent of North Carolina Republicans would support impeachment Clinton on the day she takes office, just 24 percent fewer than 1 in 4 Republicans would oppose impeaching Clinton on a day she is sworn into office. (COMMERCIAL BREAK) HAYES: Last night in an appearance on "The Late Show with Stephen Colbert", Hillary Clinton had tough words for Wall Street. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) COLBERT: If you are president -- CLINTON: Yes. COLBERT: -- and the banks are failing. Do we let them fail this time? CLINTON: Yes. Yes. COLBERT: We let them fail this time? CLINTON: Yes. Yes. COLBERT: Wow. CLINTON: Yes. First of all, under Dodd/Frank, that is what will happen, because we now have stress tests, and I`m going on impossible a risk fee on the big bank if they engage in risky behavior. But they have to know, their shareholders have to know that, yes, they will fail, and if they`re too big to fail, then under my plan and others have been proposed, they may have to be broken up. (END VIDEO CLIP) HAYES: Who will be the toughest on the banks and who is too close to them has become a key fight in Democratic race for president. The reason is because seven years after the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, five years since Dodd/Frank, the biggest piece of financial reform since the New Deal, it`s genuinely unclear if he fixed the problem. I mean, cold it all blow up again? Bernie Sanders and Martin O`Malley are both in favor of reviving Glass-Steagall, that`s a law that separated vanilla commercial banks that take deposits from the much riskier investment banks. And whose repeal signed by former President Bill Clinton is seen by some observers as helping cause it is financial crisis. The candidates pressed their case in the first Democratic debate. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) MARTIN O`MALLEY (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: And, Secretary, I was proud to support you eight years ago, but something happened in between. That is, Anderson, a Wall Street crash that wiped out millions of jobs and millions of savings for families, and we are still just as vulnerable. Paul Volcker says today. We need to reinstate Glass-Steagall, and that`s a huge difference on stage among us as candidates. CLINTON: I`m with both Senator Sanders and Governor O`Malley putting a lot of attention on the banks. The plan I put forward would allow regulators to break up big banks if we thought they posed a risk. (END VIDEO CLIP) HAYES: All right. That said, Hillary Clinton`s campaign made it known back in July, she would not propose reinstating the Glass-Steagall Act. Instead, looking to give regulators the authority they need to reorganize, downsize or even break apart any financial institutions too large or risky to be managed effectively. Joining me now, Robert Reich, labor secretary under President Bill Clinton and chancellor professor of public policy at the University of California, Berkeley. His new book is called "Saving Capitalism For the Many, Not the Few." All right. I saw that response, and I you may be saying that now, and Bernie Sanders may say that now, Martin O`Malley, anyone might say that now. It`s a whole different thing when the chips are down as we learned when the actual crisis happy? Do you believe that? Are we at a point where we actually would let a big, something like Citi, fail? ROBERT REICH, FORMER LABOR SECRETARY: Well, we`re not going to let the banks fail, Chris, because they are so big. They`re much bigger now than they were before the financial crisis, before they almost melted down the entire economy. The five biggest banks in the United States right now, before the financial crisis in 2007-2008, they had about 25 percent of all banking assets in America. Now, they`ve got 45 percent of all banks assets. So, the five biggest banks are -- pose a systemic risk. That`s why no matter who is in the White House, they will not allow those big banks to fail. They can`t fail. But that`s why they have to be broken up. And that is why -- now, Bernie Sanders is saying we have to break up the big banks right away. Hillary Clinton is fairly close. She says if they are risky enough -- HAYES: Right. REICH: She would break them up. But that`s actually a difference that is pretty significant. HAYES: OK. But didn`t we take -- I mean, look, we had Dodd/Frank. Dodd/Frank is a -- I remember covering Dodd/Frank quite closely when I was in Washington, I was with "The Nation", and it`s a quite complicated piece of legislation, but part of it was designed to say, look, you know, we just saw what happened. This is going to help to make sure it never happens again. It basically says the big banks you have to tell us we`re going to liquidate you if you start to go under, right? We`re going to do to you what the FDIC does all the time with commercial banks, write what`s called a living will, basically, how your own demise would proceed? I mean, wasn`t the idea that we can do this? REICH: Well, they were all supposed to write living wills, and then what happened was last summer they came up with living wills and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and the Fed looked at those living wills and said, nope, not good enough. It still poses too much of a risk. You`re still too big to fail. They came back again. They have to resubmitted their living wills. It`s not clear they`re much better. In other words, there`s no teeth in any federal regulator to say, well, if you don`t provide a living will that`s gull enough you`re going to be what? You`re going to be liquidated? HAYES: Here`s the elemental problem, it seems to me, from how I understand this. It gets back to Hillary Clinton, I think honest answer, Colbert -- I mean, that is her policy and that`s what she would like to do as president. It`s a question of power more than a question of policy, right? We saw what happened, how much power the banks had in a real raw and elemental sense when they almost went under. How much everyone was panicked, that`s the kind of core issue. REICH: Yes, it`s economic power, but it`s also political power. It`s economy power in the sense if you got five big banks with 45 percent of all banks assets in the United States and they`re intertwined with every other bank and every other financial institution and every other big corporation, well, if one of those really looked like it was in danger, and they`re that big, you just can`t let them go understand. We might want to let them go under, but economically (INAUDIBLE). But also politically, Chris, when you get that big, you have a lot of political power in Washington. Where do you think a lot of the contributions are coming from? They`re coming from Wall Street, particularly from the biggest banks. HAYES: All right. Robert Reich, always a pleasure. Thank you. REICH: Thanks, Chris. HAYES: Coming up, Paul Ryan gets the nomination for speaker, but will the Freedom Caucus finally back him? Well, Representative Mark Sanford, a member of that caucus, will join me live to talk about it. (COMMERCIAL BREAK) HAYES: The GOP led house is refusing to let go of the supposed IRS scandal, despite the Justice Department concluding a two-year investigation last week without bringing any charges. Yesterday, house oversight committee chairman Jason Chaffetz, who you will remember from his recent grilling of Planned Parenthood Cecile Richards, introduced an impeachment resolution against this guy, IRS commissioner John Koskinen, who Chaffetz claimed failed to comply with the subpoena, allowed documents to be destroyed and misled the public -- impeachment. Now, Koskinen has been a regular target of GOP lawmakers since the supposed scandal first broke. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) PAUL RYAN, REP. HOUSE REPRESENTATIVE: I don`t believe you. JOHN KOSKINEN, IRS COMMISSIONER: That`s fine. We can have a disagreement. I`m willing to stand on our record. RYAN: Being forthcoming is to say, you know what, investigators, congress who`s investigating -- KOSKINEN: Will you let him answer the question? RYAN: I didn`t ask him a question. (END VIDEO CLIP) HAYES: Okay, a few notes here. First off, we have known that there wasn`t any their to the IRS scandal since all the way back in June 2013, when it was revealed that the IRS had scrutinized a broad array of groups, seeking tax-exempt status, not just Tea Party groups. Indeed, it has screened some groups because they had the word "progressive" in their names. Then there`s the fact the Justice Department last week, while there was mismanagement at the IRS, there was no evidence the GOP punching bag and former IRS official, Lois Lerner, or anyone else at the IRS had targeted a political group because of its views. Quote, "we found no evidence that any IRS officials acted on political, discriminatory, corrupt, or other inappropriate motives that would support a criminal prosecution. But, none of that has stopped impeachment hungry house Republicans. As ranking member of the house oversight and government reform committee, Elijah Cummings, who has to be getting pretty tired of this kind of thing by now, said today, "this ridiculous resolution will demonstrate nothing but the Republican obsession with diving into investigative rabbit holes that waste tens of millions of tax payer dollars, while having absolutely no positive impact on a single American. Even Fox News conservative commentator, Charles Krauthammer, is not impressed. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER, FOX NEWS: Look, this is not going to end well. Republicans have demonstrated -- if the have demonstrated anything, Republicans in the congress have shown that they have no ability to conduct successful investigations of this administration. Everything they have touched has failed or backfired. (END VIDEO CLIP) HAYES: Well, nobody said there wasn`t going to be a silver lining. (COMMERCIAL BREAK) HAYES: House Republicans today nominated Paul Ryan to be the new speaker of the house, replacing John Boehner, who is expected to formally step down this week after a tumultuous month following his announcement that he plans to resign from congress. Ryan, who long maintained he didn`t want the job, got 200 votes in a closed-door meeting in the GOP caucus, short of the 218 he needs to be elected by the full house tomorrow, though, Republicans are confident Ryan will pick up backers now that he`s a nominee, and be elected with room to spare. Ryan`s closest competitor in today`s vote was Representative Daniel Webster of Florida, the one-time favorite of the far right freedom caucus, that has been at the heart of GOP`s house unrest. Webster got 43 votes, and no one else got more than one. After today`s speaker vote, Ryan appeared before the cameras to say a new era had dawned. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) RYAN: Tomorrow we are turning the page. We are not going to have a house that looked like it looked the last two years. We are going to move forward. We are going to unify. (END VIDEO CLIP) HAYES: Also today, the house voted to pass a sweeping two-year budget deal that was cut between the leaders in congress and the White House. The deal calls for an increase of $80 billion in federal spending over two years, it also cuts Medicare payments to doctors and tightened eligibility requirements to the Social Security disability program, which already rejects a large number of its applicants. Crucially, the deal would also raise the federal borrowing limit until March 2017, avoiding a potential debt default and significantly reducing the risk of government shutdown. Now, the bill passed with the support of all 187 Democrats, as well as 79 Republicans, but 167 Republicans, the majority of the caucus, voted against the bill, which now heads to the Senate, where it is expected to pass. Paul Ryan, who helped negotiate the last budget agreement in 2013, was among the Republicans who voted yes today, despite opposition from much of his caucus. Ryan cast his yes vote despite expressing frustration yesterday over how the deal was ironed out. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) RYAN: If you want to ask me what I think about this process, I think this process stinks. Under new management we are not going to run the house this way. We should have been discussing this months ago as members, so that we have a more coherent strategy. (END VIDEO CLIP) HAYES: Joining me now, Republican Representative, Mark Sanford of South Carolina, a member of the freedom caucus who voted no today on the budget deal. Congressman, say what you will about the freedom caucus, and people say things, you are not dumb, you are a smart group of people, you are quite savvy, in fact. You obviously understand this whole thing was kabuki, right? I mean, clearly Boehner was going to roll you guys. He`s clearly going to bring it to the floor, pass it to the Democrats, take it off the table, make sure no debt default, make sure the budget gets passed. Ryan, of course, signed off on it, and then he pretends he`s upset about it. Didn`t you get rolled today? MARK SANFORD, REPUBLICAN REPRESENTATIVE OF SOUTH CAROLINA: Well, I think the taxpayers in general got rolled today, whether you`re Republican, Democratic or Independent in political focus. What I think we`d all agree on would be on, this is not the way that the (inaudible) process ought to work in Washington, D.C. Ryan just alluded to that in the clip that you just played, saying, wait a minute, this process stinks. I think were his words. Two, anytime you look at a trillion and a half of basically new sign- off on debt, there ought to be more contemplation, more look, more review than a 48-hour window, which is all that members of congress got. So, I think we all got rolled ultimately, and that`s why I voted no and others voted no. HAYES: Here`s what I think, here`s one way in which it did look like how I would anticipate this body working. Which is, there`s 435 members, and a majority supported it, and it came to a vote and that majority passed it. Now, what we have seen over the last two years is a variety of legislation that people say has a majority vote, the immigration legislation, which doesn`t get to the floor, which means that it can`t get past, even though a majority of the duly elected House of Representatives of this great nation want to see it get a vote, want to see it voted on. Shouldn`t that change, too? SANFORD: I don`t know. That`s a big debate we`re going to have over the weeks ahead. It ultimately has much to do about Ryan being elected Speaker of the House, because really what`s at play here is whether power is centralized within the house, or whether it`s more diffused. The system that you looked in place, the `70s and into the `80s, really changed in the early `90s, was power being diffused to the committees themselves, and if a committee chairman was really against something he could bottle it up. That really changed with the Newt Gingrich and the quote, "Republican revolution" in `94, when more power got swept up and was centralized at the leadership level, the speakership level. And what you see now is decent against that. So, what I would agree with on is that ideas ought to make their way through the committee process. What I suspect we might disagree on is whether or not power should be centralized at the leadership and speaker level. Because if not, if that`s the case, many of us as representatives, all of whom represent about 750,000 people in some swath of the United States, become nothing more than minions in sort of doing the work of leadership. I don`t think that`s what representative government is about. I think there probably makes sense, to the idea of -- in fact, some ideas get bottled up at the committee level, because that means that power more diffused as opposed to centralized. HAYES: So, here`s the question. The question is rather that`s a reform agenda in terms of where the power is located that Paul Ryan is going to pursue. Which would be essentially devolving power away from himself, which I guess is a first of everything. Are you going to vote for him tomorrow and is he going to get the votes? SANFORD: Yes, he will, and yes, I will vote for him tomorrow. HAYES: So, what was this whole -- what was the voting for Daniel Webster today? Is this a sort of symbol? Is this a high inside fastball to leadership, basically saying, we`re watching you? What was that about? SANFORD: I think that probably too many people read too much into the tea leaves there. I don`t think there were a lot of tea leaves there. I think it was a handful of folks, in this case almost 50, that had a dissent vote, perhaps they needed to protect themselves in their home district and they wanted to say, you know, my first choice was Webster, but since he didn`t make it in the caucus I`ll now support the speaker on the floor vote. I suspect his vote count will rise tomorrow, and I think he`ll be speaker come tomorrow. HAYES: Well, it`s got to rise or he won`t be speaker. Congressman finally, I have you here, you represent South Carolina, and obviously there`s been a lot of attention paid to the videotape of the resource officer and the girl in that Spring Valley High School. I`m just curious what your reaction was when you saw that video? SANFORD: I think the reaction is the same as anybody else, which is shock and horror. It seems like a gross overplay of law enforcement strength relative to a student there in the classroom. And one frankly of frustration, in the sense of real tragedy. It`s a tragedy that the teacher can`t be more in charge of the classroom, such that when they ask somebody to get off the cell phone they don`t do it. It`s a tragedy for the other kids that are trying to learn. And they say, well, somebody wants to talk on their cell phone throughout classroom period -- So, I think it`s probably an indictment on some of what`s going on in the education system, it`s an indictment on the loss of control there at the teacher level, which is so important to learning, and it`s certainly an overplay by this officer`s hands, which is why I think he was removed, appropriately so, by Sheriff Leon Lott, the sheriff there in county. HAYES: All right. Congressman Mark Sanford, thanks for your time tonight. SANFORD: Yes, sir. HAYES: Up next, as Marco Rubio tries to convince the nation he should be the next president, a major newspaper in his home state doesn`t think he`s doing a good enough job as their senator. That story is ahead. (COMMERCIAL BREAK) (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) MARCO RUBIO, (R) PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: In the history of presidential politics, people, when they`ve been running for politics, in the Senate, they miss votes. And, I`m not missing votes because I`m on vacation. UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: But this many votes? RUBIO: Actually, this is lower than what other people have missed. I`m running for president so that the votes they take in the Senate are actually meaningful again. (END VIDEO CLIP) HAYES: Senator Marco Rubio has missed 74 votes since he announced he was running for president, and his home state is starting to notice. The Florida Sun Sentinel editorial board, which endorsed Rubio when he ran for Senate five years ago, is now accusing him -- is now calling on him to quit if he doesn`t want to do his job. In an op-ed titled, Marco Rubio should resign, not rip us off, the newspaper tears into the junior senator, telling him, quote, "Floridians sent you to Washington to do a job". Adding, "by choosing to stay in the Senate and get the publicity, perks and pay that go with the position - without doing the work - you are taking advantage of us." And concluding, "your job is to represent Floridians in the Senate. Either do your job, Senator Rubio, or resign it." (COMMERCIAL BREAK) (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) BRIAN WILLIAMS, FORMER NBC NIGHTLY NEWS: This is basically an unmanned, unpropelled radar hub, and it is an enormous balloon. Helium fills it in different chambers, they are usually tethered. (END VIDEO CLIP) HAYES: Residents in parts of Pennsylvania were greeted by a strange sight in the sky this afternoon. A military surveillance blimp, longer than two football fields that came loose from its mooring and managed to float all the way from Aberdeen Proving Ground, a military installation outside Baltimore, to somewhere near Muncie, Pennsylvania, over 100 miles away. A path that may have included parts of Amish country, if this photo is any indication. Two F-16 fighter jets were scrambled from an air national guard base in New Jersey to monitor the blimp, which was trailing around 670 feet of cable, snapping power lines and causing about 30,000 outages, according to local utility. To most onlookers, the sight of a giant blimp overhead may have come as a shock, but to longtime observers of the Pentagon budgeting process, that specific aircraft is a legendary icon of wasted bureaucracy. Last month the LA Times published an in-depth report on the joint land attack cruise missile defense elevated netted sensor system, JLENS for short. The Pentagon`s 2.7 billion blimp program, which has consistently failed to detect intruders in American airspace, including a Florida postal worker who managed to fly his gyrocopter over Washington, landing on the lawn of the U.S. capitol, to protest big money in election. According to the report, army leaders tried to kill the program in 2010, but it was saved allegedly after lobbying by a member of the joint chiefs of staff, a general who went on to sit on the board of the programs main contractor. The result, according to the LA Times, is, quote, "17 years after its birth, JLENS is a stark example of what defense specialists call a zombie program, costly, ineffectual and seemingly impossible to kill." While the program lives on, however, the escaped blimp was not so lucky. After starting to deflate, the blimp eventually came down on its own. (COMMERCIAL BREAK) HAYES: Sir Richard Branson is a billionaire. He`s made a fortune through Virgin Airlines, Virgin Records, dozens of other companies. He`s also a philanthropist speaking out on everything from climate change to education to the war on drugs. He was in New York this week talking about the need to reform drug policy in criminal justice, and I got a chance to ask him why. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) HAYES: What`s the motivation for someone who is, you know, not an American, not someone who is enmeshed in the world of people that are chewed up by the criminal justice system. Where does your passion on this issue come from? SIR RICHARD BRANSON, PHILANTHROPIST: I think any of us who are lucky enough to get ourselves into a position in life where we can make a difference, it will be a waste of our life if we didn`t. So, you know, I have financial resources. I`ve managed -- I have a public persona, so you`ve got involved in a lot of issues in the world where I can hopefully make a difference. As far as the criminal justice system globally, I think there`s a lot of things that are wrong with it, and a lot of that stems from the war on drugs that was started in America nearly 60 years ago, has been an abject failure, and I`m part -- on the global drug commission. I think with one voice we believe that particular law needs to be changed. HAYES: In the American context I think we think about it in terms of the impact it has on American citizens, particularly in areas of people that are struggling, poverty, but obviously we`ve also -- in launching the war on drugs we`ve exported the problem in many ways. We created criminality around the world as well. BRANSON: Yes, there are enormous numbers of deaths in South America or in other parts of the world as a result for the demand for drugs here in America. And as a result of Americans` draconian drug policies that they have imposed on the rest of the world. You know, at the very time when America is actually, to an extent beginning to decriminalize some drugs, they still are not having that kind of approach on countries overseas, and people in countries overseas are still suffering enormously. HAYES: In fact, the U.S. will leverage it`s diplomatic power with other countries to make sure they don`t do things like decriminalize, even while our own states are sort of running these experiments. BRANSON: Yes, it`s very strange. I actually know of prime ministers overseas who are frightened about doing what they believe to be the right thing, and that is treating their citizens who have drug problems with dignity and giving them health advice, and they`re worried about doing that because they`re worried that their other citizens will be penalized when they come through customs coming into America, and that there would be an inordinate amount of pressure put on them by the American government. From the global drug commissions point of view, we`re just hopeful that as America effectively does decriminalize, and obviously with marijuana, legalize in a number of states, that the initial feedback from those experiments is positive. We don`t see a large increase in numbers of people taking drugs. And that, in time, we`ll get America to start treating countries overseas with a big of dignity and humanity. HAYES: It`s fascinating to hear you say that you`ve had conversations literally with world leaders who are worried about the American response to them moving in that direction. I mean, how important is American leadership both in terms of launching the drug war and reforming or scaling it back or getting rid of it? BRANSON: President Nixon launched the drug war, and obviously Ronald Reagan very much continued that war and, you know they have used the U.N. and they`ve used their power on a global basis to enact it, despite the fact that it`s been going for 60 years, it`s been failing for 60 years. And, as a businessman, if I had had a business failing for one year I would have closed it down 59 years ago. So, I think pretty much every politician I`ve talked to on a one to one basis acknowledge it`s a failure. Pretty well every politician I`ve talked to on a one to one basis, I say to them, would you want your brothers and sisters, or would you want your children criminalized if they had a drug problem, or would you want them helped? Every one of them will say, I would want them helped. But when it comes to actually doing the right thing for their citizens, they generally don`t seem to act upon it, or they don`t have the courage to act upon it. HAYES: It`s funny you personalize it that way, because one of the things the president has spoken about with regards to this, his own drug use, and also in periods of his life where things kind of could have gone either way, right, but for the grace of god, I had the right support system at this moment. And I always wonder if people like yourself, who are as successful as yourself, when you run back the loop of your life, you think about these moments where if things has broken a different way, if you had not had this person or this institution supporting you at that moment, you could have ended up in a very different place. BRANSON: Absolutely. I had an issue when I was a teenager with a tax man, and if my mother couldn`t have afforded to put up her house up to stop me from going and spending a few weeks in prison waiting for the case, Virgin may never have been born. So, I`m a great believer in giving people a second chance, and you know, we as a company, we make the point of trying to employ ex-convicts. We have not had one reoffend, and we try to encourage other companies to do the same. (END VIDEO CLIP) HAYES: That is All In for this evening. The Rachel Maddow Show starts right now. Good evening, Rachel. THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED. END