martha: elizabeth, things are pretty complicated on the republican side when it comes to this. so what is the house speaker carving out what he wants he has got his work cut out for him. reporter: the speaker wants spending cuts from, quote, changes and reforms. he says the white house and congress has historically raised the debt limit in the past to find common ground solutions but there is a group of house conservatives demand they want to suffocate funds from the health care law. senator harry reid had a different impression from a meeting they had yesterday on the funding conflict. you can t talk about increasing the debt limit unless you re willing to make changes and reforms that begin to solve the spending problem that washington has. i had to be very candid with him and i told him very directly that all these things that they re trying to do on the obamacare is just a waste of their time. reporter: while both sides may be eager to blame the other for a possible shutdow
gregg: greg, what is happening on the ground in syria today? reporter: yeah, from all this talk, gregg, about chemical weapons most of the damage, most of the killing in the last 2 1/2 years in syria has to do with conventional weapons and they have been in play on the ground in syria today and throughout this week. forces and al qaeda-linked rebels were clashing in the town of mallola. a christian town, historic place north of damascus. appears government forces are regaining control there. it is a nasty fight and as with a lot of fights in that country, religion in the middle. there are new claims from the human rights watch group, the forces of the regime of syrian president bashar assad were responsible for massacres and executions in two towns in northeastern syria in the early part of may. that left again, according to this agency, almost 250 men, women and children killed. we are also hearing, gregg, of course on both sides, a lot of
elimination would be to the benefit of the united states and its friend and allies. martha: secretary kerry also is said to meet with lavrov again. they will know each other pretty well by the end of the month as they try to hammer something out. gregg: u.s. labor leaders later this afternoon will be meeting with the president. nobody is situation this meeting is about, but it comes 24 hours after the afl-cio, a group headed by white house ally richard trumks slams the president s healthcare plan as highly disruptive. the unions backed obama-care, but they didn t know what was in it. 19,000 regulations. now they know. reporter: they don t like it.
name, would be insulting to hawaiian people. martha: so the federal communications commission is now strongly defending its $2.2 billion program that has become in, known as the obama phone program. acting ftc chair mignon clyburn firing back at conserve i was that the lifeline program is a government handout and claims president ronald reagan would actually be proud of this subsidy. listen. now that i have assurance, i can call our doctor. with assurance wireless in washington you get a free phone and 250 fry voice minutes each month. now that we have assurance, we can keep in touch with our grandchildren. martha: that s nice, right? sounds like a good thing. the program was established in fact during the reagan presidency in 1984. however the cell phone part did not kick in until 2005 in the lifeline program. matt mccall, president of penn
how much spending, how much debt we re going to be able to have and get by and do. and so that is really, really critical, and that process has been gone for four years. we are stumbling from crisis to crisis, secret meeting after secret meeting and secret group after secret group, it has not worked. we ned a public discussion. then we layout how much we re going to spend and how much we are going to tax. bill: doesn t the law say that you have to have a budget? bill, it explicitly in the united states code passed in 1974 the senate and the house should pass a budget by april 15th. it should be in the committee marked up by april 1st. those have not been done. and it s just been a direct violation of law. and i ve been as you know a big critic of that. it s unthinkable. bill: from new york i ve heard you loud and clear. one more think quickly, jack lew treasury secretary.