deputy press secretary i used to be the eyes and ears for the press secretary and i would be with the reporters all the time on the press plane and everywhere and listening to them, hearing what they would say and one i remember, who he could not stand the way president bush said, and god bless america. it drove him crazy and he d mock him all the time and i never forgot that. he s a major anchor now and you know who you are. does his name rhyme with brian williams? does not. does his name rhyme. i m not playing that game. president bush linked them and what happened to the reporters in the presence of president obama happened to me. i met him in 06 and sat across the table from him at the gridiron dinner, we laughed for hours and two years later, before the t.a.r.p. vote, i was the last in the room and went to stick out my hand to introduce myself and he said, oh, no, i
something with you. the deal was struggle between mcconnell and biden. it hassed through the senate 89-8, nin89-12. and then they went home. there s this thing called the hastert rule which means republicans won t bring republicans to the floor until they have a deal of republicans. and i was hoping they would kill it. i was hoping they would kill. and i was actually curous to see to see in progressives, ala, the t.a.r.p. vote would do that. nancy pelosi delivered the vote, one being yours. why did you vote for it? it was better than the alternative. the alternative was a massive spending that would have led to
what could happen if we end up going over the cliff even though by the time we do everyone will expect it, the market will still feel the lain. leigh, i know predictions are hard, but is this going to be a steady slide or is it going to be like that t.a.r.p. vote where you see 600, 700 points go off the market in a day? i m not sure if it will be as extreme as the t.a.r.p. vote but given that that s what happened then and that s also what happened when we with the negotiations with the debt ceiling fell through last year, that was also a one-day drop, i think we ll see something similar rather than a slope. i don t think that s going to be the case in this if we go over. joy, i m beginning to feel that this is all like deja vu all over again. it s going to be the debt ceiling again. they re going to kick the can down the road a little bit and then we re going to have the same fiscal cliff discussions and debt ceiling discussions we ve been having for the last two years. so is
could be more in the cards, you could have something that is more erratic than during the failed tarp vote. some think a market reaction is really what has to happen to force a deal the fact that no one can move and get to 218 votes in the house of representatives and 51 votes in the senate with a radical market reaction that gets peoples attention and we are not there yet. people are nut there. neil: the target of tax hikes could be changing, the talk of tax hikes is not of the that is the problem. you argue, phil, too much obsessing how far the taxes go up and not about how much spending goes down if at all. guest: it is quite obvious to anyone that studies the matter, washington has a spending problem. not a revenue problem. if you look at raiding taxes on
have democrats shocked and stunned and deeply saddened. and we will be another step closer to the fiscal cliff. this offer reinforces what my belief has been the whole time. which is boehner is going to have to allow a vote that doesn t get a majority of the majority, that is basically built on democratic votes and a few enough republicans to get to 218 in the house, not an offer where the president really risks losing a lot of democrats and builds off republican votes. the president won the election. i think the president thinks he can build that majority. but boehner s going to have to believe that it s worth it to say to his party, we re going to vote on something that a lot of us don t like. he s going to have to vote for it. and that s the kind of thing we had with the t.a.r.p. vote. it s the kind of thing we ve had with some other tough votes. but nas a different kind of coalition than the president and boehner together saying we re each going to offend the base of our party.