heard he called vice president joe biden and said, we need you i guess is what we must have said? mcconnell cut the deal earlier about the payroll tax cut extension. so he has a track record, in spite of his rhetoric and saying that his number one priority was making sure president obama was a one-term president, he has managed to cut deals before and joe biden has cut deals, as well. so it doesn t surprise me that s where it s headed. but maybe his relationship with joe biden is better than it is with harry reid. what happened to john boehner? it was really interesting. i spent a lot of the christmas holidays in ohio. but also since i ve come back, a question i get over and over and over again is, is john boehner a good guy? i think the point of that question is, is he willing to work with the president? is he willing to do what needs to be done to get a deal done? now obviously he s marginalized.
are profoundly unhappy. that s a great point. congress approval ratings are abysmal. but the pressure from the right for conservatives to cut a good deal, all this discussion about chained cpi is confusion. basically it means that republicans want to include entitlement reform as part of a deal. but why did they take that off the table? because when the debt ceiling comes next year, they can have a bigger fight about entitlement reform. so the big story today is that republicans are starting to resign themselves to the fact that this ultimate deal will be about tax rates and nothing more. and taxpayer also have to resign themselves to the fact that if we do go over the fiscal cliff, this is just the start of a long set of unpleasant negotiations. good to see you, gentlemen. thank you. coming up, with just under 30 hours to go before the