their people to vote for. it they couldn t do it. this is a disaster for the republicans in the house. shouldn t nancy paw pelosi, shouldn t she support her own idea? she is in the minority. look, the republicans run the house. boehner couldn t get his own people to vote for this. who know hows pelosi would vote who knows how pelosi would vote. now it is strictly on the senate. coming man frost quick question before we leave, the speaker, speaker boehner, moved more toward what president obama wants. that s in terms of the limits of who would see higher taxes. do you think that was a step in the right direction? i think it was exactly the right thing for the speaker to have done. i just feel sorry for him that his own party wouldn t support him. what should have happened is this should have been brought up for a vote. boehner should have been able to get his own party to support it and send it back to
up with something and pass it and then send it back to the house and if boehner would permit a vote knowing he would only have a minority of his own party and he would have enough democratic votes to pass it, those are two things that have to happen. whether those can happen qukly enough to raw void the cliff remains to be seen. but it will take some cooperation on the senate side and boehner s willingness to let it come up in the senate knowing his own party won t necessarily support won t support it enough to avoid the cliff. we need some leadership here. matt it has to come from both parties and from the president. and let s face it, congressional approval ratings are a low, low. what is the impact of this? do you think american voters are sick and tired of things coming down to the wire? they will be hit hard? just about everybody after the first of the year if nothing is settled. i think that is why. that s why i think the congressional approval ratings
weapon of mass destruction and it would have been preferable to take the debt ceiling fiasco off the table. lack thereof, then. what s your feeling on the compromise? the president coming forward with 400,000 and the first 400,000 not having a tax increase. would you be fine with that number or no, i wouldn t. i would support it if it was part of an overall bargain and the numbers would have made it up and we would have made up the revenue with tax code changes, but if we have this temporary situation, i actually hope that the president will stick with the 250 and that s what he campaigned on and he s got strong support in the senate and in the house and it would put us in a better position. you would be fine if the revenue numbers looked good enough. yes, i would. the president has been very good on the revenue side and, you know, even at a million, mr. boehner couldn t get them to
al sharpton is here. and we re pleased to have ken burns. his new film central park five debuted in new york on friday. and we ll be talking about that. ken, great to see you. hope you all had a great thanksgiving. now we re looking ahead, because things are going to get serious in washington. amid all the holiday parties for the president, he has to try to get a fiscal deal. reverend al, based on what you ve heard here today, don t we have to deal with the tax fight first before the president moves on to anything else? and do you sense that republicans are prepared to do that? i think we re going to have to deal with the question of where the tax rates go. no question about it. friday before last, the president met with 12 progressive leaders. i was there. the same day he had just met with boehner and mcconnell. and i got a sense in that meeting that the president was going to be firm on dealing with that first, in terms of taxing the rich. and then there was the questions that we
important, and i think part of what the president has to deal with, david, is we thought he had a yes in the grand bargain, and then boehner couldn t bring in his caucus. let s not act like there are not those on the president s side that are saying, wait a minute, you had all of these people signing these grover norquist commitments that wouldn t give any on the deal you re talking about. and i m encouraged when i hear colleagues implying that maybe they will give. i m a preacher. sunday morning, i love congress calling. maybe you are all coming over this way and not being so hard lined. but it was not the president in the grand bargain. it was the norquist committed republican caucus that after boehner made the agreement would not let him do it. look, you had on this program this morning peter king saying this, chambliss is saying, that does seem to be breaking. we can still fight about tax rates over capital gains or whatever, but it does seem to be breaking. i think people know