this committee would be lou makers who would be chosen by both parties, by both chambers and they would be essentially empowered to come up with these cuts. chief washington correspondent james rosen has been obviously watching all of this as well and join us in this conversation about the joint committee, james. that s correct, bret and governor huckabee. this is going to be a bipartisan, but also by came cameraal committee and will come from the house and the senate and clearly not the gang of six limited just to the senate. a number of interesting aspects from what we ve just heard in the last ten to 12 minutes from both president obama and the congressional leaders, the leaders of the senate, senators mcconnell and reid. for example, from the president, he talked about this being a down payment on the deficit reduction we need. and he talked about how everything will be on the table, including modest adjustments to medicare, when this committee meets. it is worth remembering that
director, the house g.o.p. conference was meeting or having a telephone conference call i should say at 8:30 eastern time tonight. they did not stop that call when president obama took to the james f brady briefing room to listen to him. there s one further point to be made about this committee and recommendations it s going to produce on further deficit cuts, deficit spending cuts by november. and that is that once it produces those recommendations, the congress is going to vote on it straight up or down vote. they re not going to have the chance to tinker with it. it s interesting in designing that committee they could have made it such that its recommendations would become law unless coping held a vote, but that was seen as perhaps too strong medicine for the united states congress, they wanted a chance to vote it up or down, so it s a clean up or down vote on the committee s recommendations, bret. governor, quickly, we re just getting more information by the second from chad, you
did they take the gang of six, a committee or brand new committee and do we have any confidence whatsoever, considering how bitterly divided these bodies have been, that a bipartisan committee could actually craft anything that would be passed by either and especially by both houses of congress? going through this power point presentation, which has many details, i m going through it as we speak, it does not, governor, tell you exactly who, who appointed. it says each chamber would consider the joint committee. so, i guess, each chamber would nominate each party would nominate a certain number of people, lawmakers to that committee. now, one would think that the gang of six would have a head start on all of this and perhaps provide a frame work, because that s exactly what we re talking about. everything on the table. and that s what they ve been dealing with for a number of months and ed henry at the white house just, oh, he just unplugged. but i ll tell you that i think
atmosphere tha we see in washington, do we honestly believe that there can be a committee that isoing to present something that is going to pass in both house? that s an optimistic view, almost to the point of having more faith than most times you d see in a faith hling meeting under a tent. so, i would be vy amazed to see how this will ever come together, given just how divided and not just divided, but how angry, how hot the tempers have been. it s a big ask i think, of both houses of congress to come to something in november of this year. mike: i d t know if it s a sugar-ated satan sandwich, but i ll tell you this, the commissions have not been that successful overall in the history of washington if you look in the bad ectrum. however, this one, if it is tied to lawmakers believe, if it s tied to these triggers, if the punishments are so great that if they don t come forward with something
the members, both in the senate and in the house before the deadline that the treasury department says that the u.s. will default on tuesday. just in the past few seconds, speaker boehner s office has sent out a power point presentation to lawmakers, i m just going through it right now, it s very extensive, about all of the details of this proposal. and in an efforts to try to sell his caucus on this proposal to get the votes needed to get it through. the president, obviously, doing a sales job right now. governor huckabee, your reaction to president obama s statement? welcome, i think it was short and sweet and it s sort of encapsulated all the things that we ve been hearing today, not only about the bipartisan committee, but about the trigger, and the fact that this was in reality, a short-term effect. but bret one question that you or perhaps ed or someone that s been monitoring this today could answer. this bipartisan committee, who appoints it? who is likely to be on it?