well, let me ask you both then. i mean, a big problem, obviously, is the distrust that has built up between both sides. you know, you had to bring in vice president biden and mitch mcconnell to make this deal. you have even bigger challenges ahead as we ve been talking about all day long, so i m wondering, joe, is there anything that we can learn from what we ve seen over the last couple of days, even last several weeks, and ways to fix it that could sort of mitigate what everybody is looking at to be a disaster when we start talking about the debt limit and sequestration. i think cooler heads need to prevail. people need to look at not saefrl interest but of the interest of all americans, and compromise is going to be the really the name of the game here. the degree to which republicans and more republicans more so than democrats are willing to
endorsement to the senate s passed bill saying, dear god, don t let an imperfect bill be run amok because of some political differences, someone trying to make a political statement. you usually don t see the house chaplain interjecting themselves into these types of negotiations. i don t know. the last couple of days what i have been hearing they have been wanting to get this done as much as any other american. so maybe divine intervention will be the end all be all, but you mentioned joe biden. we know his motorcade is on the way here up to the house of representatives. he is talking with the house democrats. they re meeting. presumably he is coming in as the closer. similar to what he did as his democratic colleagues. this idea that this is the white house backed position. it s a very good deal for all of us. we re not going to give up any leverage on the debt ceiling. come to reinsure any anxious democrats who might not like this deal because they don t like the threshold numbe
things done. that has got to happen here. we have to find ways to come together. again, if we can t get the whole thing done at once, we ve got to get pieces done, but we ve got to get a result for the american people. that s our job. senator john, i don t think the american people would disagree with that, and they re waiting for it to get done. thank you so much for being with us, sir. happy new year. thanks, cress. again, happy new year. we are just about 30 minutes away from the big meeting on capitol hill that will include speaker boehner briefing republicans on this senate passed fiscal cliff bill, and big question is how many of his republicans will he get on board, and at the same time we know that there s some movement on the democratic side with the vice president heading over for the democrats who are meeting. stay with us. a lot going on in this special hour of breaking news on msnbc. we ve all had those moments. when you lost the thing you can t believe you lost. whe
meeting has begun with the vice president he was appropriately respectful of how challenging an effort this was, but more importantly, how important this was for the american people and the trust that was given to him by the president and leader reid to engage with jord leader mcconnell who had heretofore, if you will, joined with the chorus of naysayers not wanting to do figure. right now we are going over what the proposal is to the american people. let me just say this. i spent a lot of time looking at the basic principles of this propos proposal. we pet last evening with the caucus into the evening on the initial details. we can claim victory that we protected the middle class. we have provided at this point
fiscal cliff deal or whether house republicans might try to change it. the white house, of course, keeping a close watch on developments. in fact, we just learned that the vice president has arrived into the democratic meeting. nbc s mike mccara is live at the white house for us. what s the expectation there? i think that white house officials are relatively confident that this is going that this thing is going to go through the house of representatives, and that is really a remarkable development in and of itself, chris, when you consider the fact that it was just ten days ago when the speaker of the houshgs john boehner, put that bill on the floor, plan b, that would have raised taxes on all individuals making more than $1 million. we know what happened. it crashed and burned. things punted to the senate, bringing us to the point we are today. now that threshold has moved considerably lower. it is considerably higher than many democrats, particularly from some on the left we hear