15th where over $20 billion more of these sequestration cuts take place. you have a group of moderate republicans that really don t want that to happen that will join forces and say let s bring our debt down. but let s do it in a balanced way. and that will be the real test. you don t have to make a criticism of the president. he certainly doesn t deserve criticism today of all days. he s been hit over the head saying he doesn t spend enough time working with the members of the congress. and yet, i ve never seen such unity. the party has been incredibly united. why? what s made it work so well as a unit this time? well, i think first of all, i can speak more to the senate, but we re a big tent. we have people that are conservative democrats like joe manchin.
moving forward. they will sit down and talk about a budget. we haven t had a budget in five years. is it the first president so in the united states of america with no budget, is that a possibility, chuck? i think so. it is because of the congressional and partisan. there is no accountable for the guys to work with either side. that brings the question. where is the president on this? we heard from jay carney. he is moving on to immigration. the other thing carne said. this white house doesn t like the sequestration cuts and they will try to reverse them when they come up again. this is a president who doesn t throw the ball to the other team. he treats his opponents as economies. look at george bush. the first thing he did was throw the ball to democrats, this president never did that and
need to be lifted but the risk is not zero. there could be no agreement. that five to 10 to 15% risk should scare some people. jon: well, nina, is this a case of lucy pulling away the football? have republicans essentially handed the football to democrats wanted and now they say they want more? to some extent they re changing the goalposts. they injected question of sequestration cuts. that is definitely the case. going back to the question of what is going to happen by thursday, if you take the long-term view, that is one piece of the question because it beings like any deal they re going to come up with will push back the problem another few months. so what happens to our economy? it means we ll operate under this cloud of uncertainty for another several months until we come up to another crisis again, crisis deadline. so you know, it is too bad that the sides can t come together and come up with a solution that is going to raise the sense of uncertainty, this cloud over the
senator susan collins appeared close to working out a bipartisan agreement with a six-month spending bill and short-term debt limit increase through late january. we re hearing the latest plan would actually reverse that. i asked our next guest to, up with three things they would give to get the deal done. my guest fox news contributor and radio host lars larson. all right, the two of you. i gave you ans assignment. this is the real story. we get real on this show. lars, what are the three things from the republican side that you would be willing to give up or compromise to get this darn thing done? how about an increase in the debt ceiling in exchange dollar for dollar for real cuts. of course, the democrats are going the opposite direction. they re saying they need even more spending. they want to get rid of the sequestration cuts. i m not sure that s a starter as we start there. obama care i think is going to go into action as far as i m concerned. let it go. it s a train wreck.
over the sequester is also harmful to the white house because i ve seen reporting this morning, abc news, for instance, reported that the white house is pushing for spending increases. that is entirely false. what they re pushing for is the restoration of the spending that came before these draconian short-term sequestration cuts. so that s leading people to believe that, oh, these liberal democrats, they want spending increases. no, what they re looking to do is to prevent the full effect of these sequester cuts, which were not rational and which were a budget gimmick in 2011. so lynn, we have senate majority leader harry reid and senator chuck schumer. they opened the formal talks with mitch mcconnell. senator lamar alexander as well. this happened on saturday. here s how reid described those talks. the conversations were extremely cordial but very preliminary, of course. nothing conclusive.