and welcome to a new hour of happening now. great to see you on this monday. jon: in our brand new studio. i m jon scott. we are just hours away from the federal government shutting down. supposed to happen at midnight tonig tonight, 12 hours from now as both sides show no sign of bowing down. senate majority leader harry reid called the latest funding measures from republicans pointless. it would delay obamacare for a year. democrats accusing republicans of holding the government hostage. senator mccain calls it irrational and yet when you see in the house is speaker boy boehner handled the gavel over to senator cruz these days. jon: while republicans are accusing democrats of being
can move forward, and if not, we will have a number of competing unanimous requests, because procedurally at this time the necessity of getting 60 votes and filing cloture would not happen. and so what we have to do then is to see if we can come up with a unanimous consent request to have votes on very short-term funding measures for the country. one last country. senator, you said this morning when you were working sor ir sorry, back here behind all of the cameras. you said earlier this morning you were working on a one-week offering sort of to counter what the house had passed yesterday. i wonder what levels that would be at and if that would include a funding for the troops in addition to the one yes, it would. it would be a date change for a week s funding for the government and take care of the troo troops. and can you explain the
requests because procedurally at this time with all the necessities of getting 60 votes it will be hard to do that. so i hope in fact if the republicans in the house can t agree to what they agreed to, then what we ll have to do is see if we can come up with unanimous consent request to have votes on very short-term funding measures for the country. one last question. you said earlier this morning you were working sorry, i m back here. you said earlier this morning you were working on a one-week offering to counter what was cast yesterday and i m wondering what levels that would be at and also if that would [ inaudible ]. it would have a week s funding for the government and it would take care of the troops.
in washington, house republicans are vowing to make deep cuts to the federal budget. the showdown with democrats could lead to a potential government shutout march 4th when stop-gap funding measures run out. when we say we re going to cut spending, read my lips. we are going to cut spending. republicans have vowed to cut $60 billion from the fiscal 2011 budget. yesterday, lawmakers voted to cut $20 million from the national endowment for the arts and retain $290 million cut aimed at heating subsidies for poor households. they never want you to accuse them of sleeping on the job but a small number have taken sleeping at the office to a different level. critics say they are taking
government spending has risen right along with the deficit itself and the president saluted that in his last state of the union. starting in 2011, we are prepared to freeze government spending for three years. spending related to our national security, medicare, medicaid, and social security will not be affected. but all other discretionary programs will. and if i have to enforce this by veto, i will. we have to go line by line, page by page, to eliminate programs that we can t afford and don t work. we ve already identified $20 billion in savings for next year. the president submitted a budget last year that would have frozen federal spending and saved $23 billion but congress, which was in the hands of it is own party all last year never finalized the deal. instead, the government has been operating and spending through temporary funding measures. that leaves us with no other choice but to call this one