within his own caucus down the road is yet to be seen. he is a player though at the table. and by this vote passing the house tonight, by 218 to 210, his chip is now in the game. you re right, senator mcconnell and senator reid have been driving this. but there are other senators who are intimately involved. the gang of six has played a role. three democrats, three republicans. there are a lot of meetings happening behind closed doors. as far as we know, the president has not been intimately involved in a lot of this. he may have wanted to in the last day or so. but it s been essentially driven on capitol hill. laura: ed, back at the white house, the president gives a speech today, appears to talk about cafe standards, fuel efficiency standards, wanting to raise them by what is it o2050? 20 it 5. double them by 2025. it s a big deal. laura: it s a big deal. it seems a bit odd given the severity of what s happening to
he waited until boehner took his best shots, how many of them there were, and now is he going to try to counter punch. he waited very long to do. this he will could have had his own plan, his own bill in the senate any point along the way here. he took a few shots, now is he going to try to take his best shot. laura: is ed henry with us at the white house? yes. laura: are the white house watching this? are we going to get any file photos of the family watching this vote? i mean, is it that dramatic there or are they off doing something else? not that dramatic. they are keeping an eye on it but they are not watching minute by minute per se because they realize that this is just the prelude to the real battle that s going to happen this weekend. they are essentially the boehner bill will now be used by senate majority leader harry reid as the underlying vehicle legislatively to make dramatic differences between the reid and boehner bill. to use james analogy and
bring to a close a debate on the reid motion to concur in the house amendment to s 627 with an amendment numbered 589. bret: what is happening here on the senate floor, we just had a vote on the boehner bill, it passed with a vote of 59-41. they only needed a simple majority of 51. it s interesting that the number was 59 because it is short of what is the normal number needed for vote like this. which is 60. this was a special motion made by senate majority leader harry reid. it passes now. the boehner bill is tabled. this means that the boehner bill is put aside. but just to explain, they are not killing that bill. they are going to use that bill as the vehicle by which they re going to send back a compromise that we still don t know the details of. we expect that that will be formed over the next day, and be sent back on the boehner bill but they will scrap out all the
59-41 what s going on is an argument between the senate majority leader and senate minority leader whether a super majority or simple majority should be used. let s listen in. mr. president snawbled. mr. president, i think we would all agree it s fairly routine to have the 60 vote threshold in the senate. particularly on a matter of enormous significance like this. it s really almost unheard of to suggest that a matter of this magnitude would be dealt with at a 51 vote threshold. so where are we? i mean, it s an interesting history lesson that my friend gives us about various debates we have had in the past but this is where we are right now. where we are right now is our good friends on the other side do not want us to move forward with a vote on what they re advocating. yes we do. the majority leader talk about can we have order in the senate, mr. president?
out there. this kills medicare to you are cutting off social security and cutting off veterans. to just go for anything to hold fast and don t budge at all. the problem is getting actual factual information especially about boehner bill we just passed. it has great reforms in it that people can run down the amount that s been put into it for this first year and i would like for it to be a lot higher. quite frankly getting a balanced budget amendment. solid vote in the house and senate getting real spending cap with a super majority is a huge accomplishment. that s how we got the balanced budget in the 90 s. what do you say then to congressman chaff? i like boehner the bill is a disaster. it s not serious. what do you say to your fellow congressman? you know what? we each try to hold each other to account for how we live our lives. when we vote the issue is you are accountable to the people back home and you represent what s happening in your district. we re all hearing different vo