This is one of those numbers everyone is going to commit to memory. The firstterm senators running in single obama states will stop one of the things we have two absolutely look at is when we look at the way the senate is going to be operating, or at least the way senator mcconnell envisions the senate operating, we dont know how this experiment is going to work. The macconnell doctrine appears to be a return to what we used to call regular order where you process bills through committee. He actually got a laugh from the press yesterday. He held a News Conference yesterday afternoon at i am not kidding the elaine chao auditorium at the Mcconnell Center on the campus of louisville. Was there that role earmarking involved . Got a laugh line from the press when he said something to the effect of believe it or not, the committees have to function. When bills come out of committee on a bipartisan basis, those bills should actually come to the floor. They have been talking about bringing bac
The issue is important and there is a general agreement on the solution around high skilled immigration. The problem is is the politics and the economy and jobs have been prumped by the politics of immigration. I think there are four paths. One could be the pass the senate not be taken up in the senate. There is a lottery that would flult raising the overall level of immigration. If there was an agreement to include that that bill could be passed. A second option which is what the president has ind indicated he favors is to link high skilled immigration with the dream act. So it is a broader solution around immigration. The third would be to say this deals with the 50,000, this deals with a million five. The third would be deal with 11 million which clearly we have to as a nation deal with and there is a desire now more than there might have been a month ago to do. That and ive heard a number of people talk about the need to take up the issue and called for a comprehensive solution. So
Investments we need to make to train our future work force and to create an environment in which we can care for the elderly. The think americans will remain optimistic but this did of the economy . If we have not tackle the things we have just talked about like the cost of education, the Housing Market . We are figuring out some philosophical issues about taxing and funding . I think the economy has been growing slowly and steadily all in the absence of any movement, which we have seen over the test of the last year. I have worked on guantanamo for the past 10 years. My sense is that if there is some movement until the positive direction, which have not seen out of washington and enter a long time, in a long time, at least we will not see head winds. We are making some progress. I see that continue. I want to come back to what todd said earlier. I am concerned about confidence being fragile. Todd reference what happened until august of 2011. We saw in limited to lie confidence tank. M
so we re going to start by fast forwarding a little bit. i want you to bring us to the november/december time period and tell usow well, we have a convergence of at least three major fiscal events, right? one is the sequester. one, of course, is the entiration of the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts. all of them. and then we also have the looming issue of the debt ceiling where we re currently scheduled to hit the debt ceiling probably sometime at the end of next year. we may be end of this year. we may be able to manage it into the early months of the following year. so the convergence of those events hold a couple possibilities. one possibility is that it s an action-forcing event that produces a positive result. where you could get an agreement that deals with the question of the taxes together with the sequester. after all, the sequester is about $1.2 trillion in deficit reduction. our budget, the democratic alternative budget, which we ll have on the floor of the house today,