to convince themselves of that. if we do some of the hostage language here, they have taken a hostage. now they keep calling the police and wanting to have a negotiation. and the police have said we re not negotiating. well, is john boehner robert, the only thing i can think of, is john boehner basically coming out there in a form of stockholm syndrome to the tea party and almost defending the captors that are holding his feet to the fire that aren t allowing him to negotiate and have the government running with just a clean cr. and if they were able to call an up or down vote that, would most likely go through. well, i am struck by the litany of things that we re now going to have votes on what should be open. winners and losers. right. you re rapidly but you re rapidly going to get to the point where, as you said, thomas, we should simply put a bill on the floor that says let s fund this thing for at least two months. let s just do this without any policy riders. and once
republicans not to blame. angela, that s going to be a dynamic worth watching if republicans stick together like this. this is always about party unity. unfortunately, it s not something that we want to just idly sit back and watch. this whole debacle is literally impacting american lives. federal workers, folks who were just talking about flu shots. these are things that really impact every single one of us. we have to get to a point where our legislators remember that policy riders have no place in a continuing resolution or appropriations measure for any reason. as long as those are attached to these measures, we are stuck. they don t belong there and there s not going to be any agreement on them. anna, the raw politics is democrats have seen all those clips. they know where speaker boehner was and where senate republicans were and they re convinced those guys are going to cry uncle a lot sooner than mark pryor. this is a standoff and you ve seen republicans cave on these is
top of this. this wasn t just an up or down vote on a year long extension of the principles. there were other policy riders put on top of it, things like this keystone pipeline. there were pay fors and policy riders that in the senate frankly made it too hard to negotiate to a place where it could pass. so what could pass was an extension of the payroll tax holiday for two months that was paid for. that s the negotiation that happened in the senate with the full understanding and expectation that house republican leadership had signed off on it. martha: all right, senator, thank you very much. we ll see what happens. thank you. martha: a lot going on in the next couple of days before anybody gets to take a rest. bill: a member of congress said last hour you could bowl in the capitol and not hit anyone because everyone was gone. steve forbes is with me now. steve, good morning to you and
the senate vote for a compromise package. it had a policy riding pressing the president to approve the keystone pipeline that should -ptd have been in there. but it passed it with in there. it was passed in a bi-partisan way. we reached a responsible compromise with the understanding that the republican leadership had already endorsed it. something has happened the last few days in the republican caucus that has pulled that apart. martha: we have a little bit of insight pardon me. we did get a little insight into what happened on the other side when we spoke to congressman brady a little while ago. he said the midterm election was about change. people are not going to be satisfied, they are tired of these short-term band-aid fixes that congress is doing. if you can do two months, why can t you do a year? reporter: we couldn t get a year extension negotiated in the senate because of the policy riders that were being put on
another restores a voucher pilot program in washington, d.c., and in montana, using the endangered species to protect wolves out west. you can agree or disagree with that or any of the policy riders we mentioned. but safe to say, policy is mainly what they re about, not dollars and cents. we talked about it earlier with former presidential candidate and possible future presidential candidate ron paul. congressman paul, does it make sense to you that a budget deal being hashed out right now, which is all about reducing spending, including all these riders, including one about delisting the gray wolves from the endangered species list, which doesn t seem to have anything to do with cutting spending. no, but there s not much in washington that s ever made much sense to me for a long time. so no, that doesn t make any sense. it really shows how out of touch so many people are here in washington. and how unlikely it is that we ll get to the bottom of our problems.