question wasn t asked? do you know why the press never asked the senate president why the other bills weren t moved? you did a great job in asking that one. i was going to say i think we try very hard to be balanced here. great. but why asking the democrats why they were potentially at certain points a part of this. but at the end of the day, this was a very deliberate strategy by a small part of the republican caucus. no. how many republicans voted on all those bills in almost 230 republicans. you know full well that wasn t because that they supported that. peter king was against it. i m shocked. all the moderates voted for it. because they wanted to support your speaker. [ overlapping speakers ] i m not saying it s right or defending it. house speaker john boehner said that the republicans were not going to attach defunding obama care to the government spending bill because if they
h he tries to bring everybody together. that s something i think has been an important goal for him of the these last few weeks. if he did not pursues the course he did, he didn t want it, he would have had a much more fractured conference right now. i think his stock has actually risen within the gop. the question is now does he have enough political capital and is he willing to spend it to stare down this 30 or 40 inside the tea party. what s your answer? i don t know yet. i don t think anybody knows yet. van, president obama obviously a lot of democrats really rallied to him, democrats in the house and senate stuck with him. basically one coherent message as opposed to the republicans. i wonder now if you think he feels emboldened. there are a lot of house republicans who were not happy when president obama came out this evening, gave remarks before the house had even voted. they thought it could possibly jeopardize what seemed shaky, shall we say. where is president obama now
care act went up. the popularity of government went up. so it seems to me that you step on your own message in a big way. part of the difficulty of course is getting the message out. i think you asked a great question to senator harry reid when we were doing the aspect of getting the message out that we wanted to keep the government open. we sent out over several dozen bills. you were the only one to ask the question why are they not passing that bill or any bills. in 16 days of got shutdown the senate never moved any bill to keep the government open. i know you are very good at numbers and understand basic math. the math is that over there you guys run that place. it s the house. but you don t run the senate and you don t run the white house. so you knew from the get go that this was going to be a very tough battle. and it could lead to another
speaking. and i hope genuinely he will be a part of negotiating. obviously the house will appoint conferrees and the senate will appoint negotiators and we ll negotiate. but president really needs to lean, in i think, and be constructive about helping us come up with long-term solutions to our debt. the shutdown and the debt limit really were about long-term spending. that s what this fight has always been about. and i think the president needs to make good on his campaign pledge, which is he wants to cut the deficit in half under his term. you represent peoria, illinois. i m sure another annoyed with journalists asking this question. but how has this played in peoria? my congressional district has some pretty deep heritage. it s abe lincoln s old seat, everett dirksen s old seat, bob michael and ray lahood s old seat. it s historically represented by republicans but pragmatic republicans. who work across the aisle. people expect us to work
government shut brodown. was it worth it? the end result was not where we wanted to get to. but as good as i am in math, i m even as good in knowing what the american people want, according to the poll, and also what our constitution says. and we were elected by our constituents that we re to say that the house of representatives where spending bills originate, contrary to what the president was saying during these 16 days, this is where it begins and we have a voice, too. that voice was not always articulated very well and that voice didn t always get out through the media when the media didn t ask the questions. no followup question by the way to your question. no question ever to the senate as to if you really care about the veterans why didn t you move their bill? if you really care about the parks why didn t you move bills? if you care about all these other spendings why didn t you move any of the bills? you didn t ask that question, you didn t ask that question. no one asked th