speaker and i with one person in america out of 3 out of people that can sign a bill into law that we can get an agreement in v the very near future and resolve this crisis in the best interests of the american people. mr. speaker, the chairman of joint chiefs of staff is in afghanistan hoochbd and he was asked by a number of soldiers whether they are going to get their checks next week. how can you allow these soldiers to wonder if they going to get paid? i think senator mcconnell and you are both confident we are going to be able to come to some agreement with the white house and end this impasse. it was a bipartisan agreement next-door. we could have passed this
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
meeting between the president and his top party leaders in congress? reporter: as far as we know, the president is meeting right now with senate majority leader harry reid and with leader pelosi from the house, the leader of the minority in the house. and we don t have details on this yet, it s a closed press meeting, meaning we didn t even get our pool cameras inside to get a glimpse of this, but we know from a white house official that they are meeting here at the white house and we re hoping to get at least a notification when that all wraps up. white house officials saying this is to update the president on around these debt negotiations and what we re really seeing, and this is part of it is a flurry of negotiations going on and this all kind of follows some cab book i can theater playing out on the bill. we saw the house vote on the boehner bill and the senate picked it up and the boehner bill failed in the senate and we saw the house vote on the senate bill t reid bi