source. what is absolutely true is the highway trust fund has consistently gone smaller and smaller and smaller and inadequate for the needs. what is also true is patchwork approaches of three months or six months at a time don t make any saenzr sense. nobody foresaw that we could actually get a dock fix done and saw the long-term problems in terms of how we were managing medicare payments for doctors. who knows? maybe we might see some intelligent bipartisan outbreaks over the next few months because i think everybody recognizes this is important. thank you very much, everybody. so there he is a rare event. camp david maryland dealing with leader from six arab gulf
congress not doing much. today on the medicare dock fix, there are green shoots if you will, in terms of functionality. i also wonder, to your point, about this being the nomination of the country s first african-american female attorney general, in a moment where it feels like we re talking about race every week for whatever reason, videos controversies, the like is this republican sort of coming to reality and saying, this is not a good move for us as ari said not good to hold this confirmation indefinitely? i think they re coming up with that conclusion overall. the problem is and when reid wants to bring them into executive session, there s a thing called unanimous consent and that means any one of these guys, any ted cruz or rand paul or anyone who wants to show boat
recently then they ve just passed a dock fix which is not offset to the tune of tens of billionsing of dollars again. so you must be if this is the case you must be terribly disappointed in the house leadership. i am frequently disappointed. i see the memos. they don t do what i tell them to do. it s just crushing. what do you make of those two recent decisions, which is essentially deficit spending? two things. i think it is key to hold the overall sequester and key, what we do need to do is reform military spending to save a great deal of money and that isn t focused on sufficiently. steve schmidt. at the end of the day, the tea party rise if american politics is misunderstood i think by a lot of commentators in the national press core. it s at least as much a reaction to the prophecy of the republican congress and republican president as it is to do with barak obama. that s where the anger comes
department of homeland security given we re giving back from the senate a clean bill. again, remember that what we tried to achieve, stop the president what we think of is over reach, we ve succeeded and we got it in an arena where we can win. we re never going to win in congress. broader question which is there are other cliffs so to speak, coming down the horizon. the dock fix, highway trust bill that needs to be funded. we ll have the return of sequestration. is this the pattern that we should expect going forward whereby the two chambers just can t get on the same page we kind of tip toed the line or can we see a more cooperative congress? i think there are three things and i think you will see a mixture of them. sometimes you re going to see things like see seen where we cooperate across the line get it to the president s desk and he vetoes it. other times, trade, which i think you will see this quarter, where we cooperate with the president and his own party
medical device makers. it s a shocking thing that that industry would come out against something like this. but there s a lot of bipartisan support for getting rid of the medical device tax. partly because of that kind of lobbying and as a symbolic effort to do something about the affordable care act. everyone says they want to fix it, want to tweak it want to do something with it even if they don t want to repeal it. it s something they can say they ve done even if it doesn t have much impact annior average american who is according to republicans, suffering mightily rnd the weight of the affordable care act. there s some unlikely allies for getting rid of it. al franken, min. elizabeth warren. both states with huge medical device industries. there s a chance it happens. and a vote coming up some time in the spring. that s a time you can see something like a must pass bill like the dock fix. something like that gets larded up. what is the dock fix?