we have a unique new year s story for you thousand. a set of twins who entered the world just two minutes apart, with you mana but managed to be born in different years. their first child, ashton parker, was born at 11:58 p.m. on december 31st, 2010. his twin sister, alisha rae, followed just two minutes later at midnight on january 1st, 2011. the twins were born at duke hospital in raleigh, north carolina. both babies are doing well despite the fact that their mother delivered them only 33 weeks. texas christian university is finally getting its props. they proved they belong among the power programs grabbing the national spotlight on national tv at the rose bowl. tcu beat wisconsin 21-19
calendar. we hear the politicians pushing their talking points each day on this matter. what you are hearing inside washington, d.c., there s the sense of how close the president and the speaker are to reaching this agreement. as eleanor points out, they are wanting both sides to feel the other s pain. thomas, it s funny you mention december 21st. that would be an ideal scenario. it s not that surprising if we are here talking about this on december 31st. they have to get through so much stuff. everybody is talking about the tax rates for the upper 2%. there s so many other issues they have to tackle. they have to agree on how much money they are going to raise from tax increases and how much obama is willing to give on the entitlement side. aside from, you know, things like the estate tax and investment and stuff like that, they have to figure out what to do about the al tier yar minimum
from a tax hike on january 1st. the senate bill could pass tomorrow if house republicans would simply let it come to the floor. despite the impasse in washington, a new gallup poll shows 50% of people still believe it is likely that president obama and republicans will reach an agreement before we go over the curb on january 1st. among the believers is conservative weekly standard editor bill crystal. i think what will happen is republicans will be faced on monday, on december 31st, with having to vote on a much worse proposal than the one they didn t give speaker boehner the majority for. plan b. do we end up going over the cliff or not? i think not. on december 31st when both party members release their voters to vote their conscience, they save americans from a tax hike. the gallup poll shows 54%
it has to all you would like it etched in stone? no one on the republican side is going to risk that. here is a news flash. no one in the democratic side. and that is not a deal. and that is the cliff that we are talking about on december 31st. we have gone over the cliff in some sense and maybe we are using the wrong terminology. we hit the cliff and gone over it on spending and debt. six trillion added to the debt and we ll see that over the 10-year period. you guys were not innocent bystanders. i certainly was not part of that. i pushed back on a number of the spending proposal this administration and the prior administration. we have gone over that cliff and now we are coming to as you said a wall. the wall is all of the tax
taxes, spending. both parties have had a pretty good time doing stop-gap things. well it s because we have a divided congress, because we have as we ve talked about before the most conservative house since the 1930s and the most liberal president since the 1906s, nothing has been getting done, so the can has been getting dangerously close to the edge. on december 31st, everybody knows that barring action by this divided congress in a short lame-duck session after the election we re going to be in big, big trouble. jenna: so they set up this system because they couldn t make meaningful agreements that was absurd. let s make absurd budget cuts that we will never implement. we are not going to layoff 2 million defense workers, that would be like crazy things like dick cheney coming back to capitol hill to try to yell at everybody, and yes, it doesn t seem so absurd, suddenly because you ve got top democrats coming out yesterday and saying, it s going to happen, fiscal cliff here we come u