president and the vice president within the last hour. we are now fully engaged, the speaker and i with the one person in america out of 307 million people who can sign a bill into law, i m confident and optimistic that we re going to get an agreement in the very near future. so that is certainly a strong change in tone, if you will, because a little earlier this afternoon, we had senator reid and senator mcconnell kind of duking it out on the senate floor over the way forward from here. but privately i heard from senator mcconnell s aides that they wanted the president to be engaged. they want to know what was acceptable to him, what he would sign, and it appears after a phone call with the president and the vice president, the republican leaders of congress are feeling quite confident. gregg? heather: it s heather. although speaker boehner fought hard to pass his own plan that was killed by the senate, what is his take on where things stand now?
person in america out of 307 million people who can sign a bill into law. i m confident and optimistic that we re going to get an agreement in the very near future and tlofl crisis in the resolve this crisis in the very best interests of the american people. questions? mr. speaker, a question for you. the chairman of the joint chiefs is in afghanistan, and he was asked by a number of soldier whether they re going to get their checks next week. how can you even allow these soldiers to wonder whether they re going to get paid? i think senator mcconnell and i are both confident that we re going to be able to come to some agreement with the white house. delayed the vote for various reasons, did this buy time when we could have had this realistically worked out with a bipartisan agreement next door? we could have had this bill finished early this past week. there was a bipartisan agreement
together to support a bipartisan compromise bill, one that is going to be pretty distasteful to most democrats. she s going to be the one really needed to get that across the line in the house. joe, want to get your response. first, i want to play you sound from the news briefing, the news conference that happened about 25 minutes ago. listen to this the only thing standing in the way of the house proposal over in the senate is the president and senator reid. it s time for them to tell us what they re for. time to tell us how they ll get us out of the cul-de-sac that they ve driven our country into. i ve spoken to both the president and the vice president within the last hour. we are now fully engaged, the speaker and i, with the one person in america out of 307 million people who can sign a bill into law. i m confident and optimistic that we re going to get an
we are now fully engaged, the speaker and i, with the one person in america out of 307 million people who can sign a bill into law. i m confident and optimistic that we are going to get an agreement in the very near future and resolve this crisis in the best interests of the american people. all right. leader mcconnell saying that just about 20 minutes ago. i d like to bring in our strategist to look at what s going forward base odds what s happening today. crystal ball, democratic strategist, joe watkins, msnbc republican strategist. crystal, we ll start with you at this moment. what do you think about what leader mcconnell said there? was that perhaps why we did see a little delay? he maybe got a call from the president and, therefore, was able to say last hour i did speak with the vice president and as well the president? in fact, i think it was essentially the entire purpose of the chris conference. there were two things here press conference. there were two things here. we g
the saturday before our economy can conceivably drive off of the cliff and they say it shouldn t have gotten to this point. mike, emanuel thank you very much. we ll check back with you if the news warrants. you heard senator mitch mcconnell saying a deal in the white house could be closer than ever. we are now fully engaged, the speaker and i with one person out of the 307 million people who can sign a bill in law. i am confident and optmistic that we will get an agreement in the very near future and resolve this crisis in the best interest of the american people. what we are learning today he was on the president three times today . what about top democrats? just a whole ago they met face to face with the president and no details are coming out of the that and maybe we ll get