obviously. when you talk to folks like senator lindsey graham, they say the big issue is not taxes, it is spending cuts. take a listen. if you want leaders you have to lead. the president has been a pathetic fiscal leader. he produces three budgets and can t get one vote for any of his budgets. here is what i would vote, revenues including tax rate hikes, even though i don t like them to save the country from becoming greece. i will not set aside the 1.2 trillion in cuts. reporter: talking about $1.2 trillion in spending cuts. the president s scaled back plan i mentioned dealing with unemployment benefits, dealing with taxes, leaves the issue of domestic spending cuts basically after the holidays. that is why some republicans like graham are skeptical. gregg: is it fair to say democrats are adamant there will not be a deal without taxes going up? yeah. when you talk to white house officials they say, they re sort of mystified that speaker boehner is still
hospitalses, medical device manufacturers. that will be a negative for the economy too. if you hire a worker that works over 30 hours a week those employees will have all sorts of new regulations in terms of the costs that you have to incur. these regulations hit you everywhere coming and going. heather: thank you so much, steven. we appreciate it. thank you, merry christmas. heather: merry christmas to you. gregg: we are awaiting the official results of a critical vote in egypt this morning on a new hard-line constitution favored by islamist president mohammed morsi. early exit polls suggest about 60% of egyptians are in favor, and that has the country s muslim brotherhood party already declaring victory. amy kellogg is live from london. she s been following it from there. amy, why are these preliminary results so controversial? reporter: well, they are controversial, gregg, because the opposition, and that would be largely the secular groups,
we know they re inside syria. there is increasing medical shortage going on in terms of the ability to treat any of the victims, whether they be civilians or rebel fighters from these kinds of airstrikes. it really boils home as much as we ve been talking about the ability of the syrian rebels to push into other cities, that the syrian air force still controls the skies and is still able to bomb, seemingly with impunity. gregg? gregg: is there any way to know, leland, whether the rebels are making headway in toppling the assad government? reporter: it certainly seems in the past couple of weeks the rebels are making strides. the videos we re seeing they re better armed, better equipped, better organized and command-and-control structure and they re able to take out a lot of syrian government positions particularly in the north. now we re seeing syrian rebels starting to move into towns that are predominantly christian or predominantly alawhite towns.
the nra comes under fire after calling for armed guards at our nation s school. charles live hirt is coming up next. heather: a dire warning from south korea. why it says the u.s. mainland could be in danger following north korea s controversial missile launch two weeks ago. gregg: as holiday shoppers grab last-minute gifts retailers, they re counting up their receipts. a winner has been declared in the battle for the u.s. shopping dollar. coming up how american-made products fared against chinese-made merchandise.
to find out what went wrong. gregg: maybe congress can get to the bottom of it. i will ian that ros-lehtinen, thanks so much for being with us. thank you. gregg: merry christmas, you too. heather: navy mourning loss of one of their own. seal team commander, joe price, died of a quote, noncombat related injury. he was 42. a u.s. military official says the death is being investigated as apparent suicide. commander price oversaw two dozen commandos and support staff conducting counterterrorism operations in central afghanistan. gregg: a afghan police woman killed an american advise soar at the kabul police headquarters. no word yet exactly how it happened. it is still unclear whether the victim was u.s. military or civilian advisor. more than 50 international troops have been killed by afghan soldiers or police this year alone.