With the United States just a week away from defaulting on its debt, former Senator Bill Bradley says that the looming debt crisis is just the latest symptom of our broken, hyper-partisan political system. The former Democratic presidential candidate says Congress needs to quickly reach a deal on the debt ceiling and then move on to the real problem facing the country: unemployment and underemployment.

On MSNBC, The Nation‘s Ari Melber joins Bradley to discuss what President Obama needs to do to break through the stalemate in Washington and what we can learn from past efforts to reduce the national debt. You can find Melber’s latest blog post on the default crisis here. 

—Kevin Donohoe