lame duck sessions have a funny way of allowing legislation to come rise from the ashes and get passed. this is one of those things that the president promised, made a promise to the gay community that he would get this done. the guy xhoount held his feet to the fire and made sure that, you know, the process worked its way through, but i think throu a lot of sort of luck played was involved in getting this done and, you know, the president is right to be emotional. everyone is right to be emotional because people are, people who want to serve this country openly and honestly now will soon be able to do so without fear of losing their jobs and fear of losing their careers. let me play for you one of the sounds, one of the little clips from the president because this is one point at which he got really fired up. we are a nation that says out of many we are one. we are a nation that welcomes the service of every patriot.
greta: how is lame duck different behind the scenes from the other part of the session? if you want my real opinion, the lame duck is awful. in my opinion it is unconstitutional. the 20th amendment passed in 1933 was meant to eliminate all future lame duck sessions. congress didn t want to see happen what is happening now. consider, we are doing all of the spending the tax bill, nuclear disarmament treaty, don t ask, don t tell, they are trying to do amnesty for illegal aliens, all in a couple weeks. a year s worth of work after the voters spoke at the polls. the people spoke, they don t want what is being passed in congress. we shouldn t be doing this. is it is the 20th amendment to the constitution. greta: because you didn t do it before the election. why aren t republicans screaming a little more? i was. greta: okay, how were you screaming?
lame duck sessions should not be used in the fashion they re being used. but this treaty is not ready for prime time. the russians have told the united states senate you can t change one word or we ll withdraw, and as i understand the treaty, they re interpreting the treaty to limit the united states ability to develop four stages of strategic missile defense. in other words, the russians are saying openly if we go down the his sill defense road to protect this missile defense road to protect this country from an attack by iran, north korea or an accidental launch, they re going to withdraw from the treaty. we ought to wait until january of next year. of we ve got ten republicans coming into the senate who have asked to be part of this debate. we can negotiate a better deal for the unite, and that s what i am united states, and that s what i am proposing that we do. why do you want to jam through a treaty the week of christmas where the russians say the united states can t defend
tax bill? obviously a lot of republicans love the idea. i didn t because i don t like adding a trillion dollars to the national debt. could we figure out a way to pay for that? lindsey graham said during impeachment that not much good happens in south carolina after midnight. not much good happens in a lame duck session. historically. the post wrote that we re not supposed to have lame duck sessions. i know there are good things harold is my friend. he was talking about the great things that were happening. i remember nafta came about in the lame duck session between the day you and i were elected and day we were sworn in. there weren t ideas on how to pay for it, were there? it wasn t even considered, was it? just like senator durbin said they put things off until after the election to work them out but that s not the best time to address the issue. peggy, it is stunning to me that we have a deficit commission that says we figured out a way to cut $4 trillion
government for a year, so they ve won big. if the cost of that is money for a bipartisan natural gas payback program to nevada county, i would imagine that many will lump it, accept that, and go home for christmas. jenna: quick question here about the lame duck session overall because so much has been made of this particular one. is it really that different from other lame duck sessions, chris, when you look over the last few years? well, if we take the broad view of history, either the last few years or the very broad view of history, this is a perhaps unprecedentedly large agenda for a lame duck session to take up. usually a lame duck is for unfinished business, little things that are hanging hanging out there but because of the historic nature of the elections and because democrats opted to push so many important issues beyond the election in hopes of not losing as many seats by dealing with those issues, this has turned out to be one of the biggest, most exhausting and i think