basically upset about the lack of any legislation to repeal obamacare or any tax cut legislation. so what s your message to him and anyone else who is worried about sort to big push in the beginning who might be concerned that it s that momentum is stalling? i think it s hardly stalling. i think it s mammoth thing to repeal and replace. there s no question the president s commitment to doing this. you heard speaker ryan how we should have this wrapped up by the end of the year. it s a big bill. it got jammed through and was very sweeping, we re talking about 15th of o/5 of our econom. we can do it swiftly or do it right. he wants to do it right. he understands how important health care is to american
that s where we are today with this worldwide commitment to be everywhere, to be in asia, to be in africa, to be in latin america, to be and i i give henry credit for recognizing that. that s very profound. and it applies at home to our attitudes to our own lifestyles. it s so great to have you in the studio. barney, thanks for being here. and i will say it as a small government conservative, regardless, thank you for your service to america. we really appreciate it and appreciate you well, i m making the government a little smaller. all right. coming up, it s the next deadline on capitol hill with less than a month to go, congressman jim clyburn jumps in on the fight over tax cut legislation. chuck todd will break down the polling from two key battlegrounds. keep it here on morning joe.
goes to strom thurmond. but we want to talk more about all of this with mark whitaker. mark, if you re a fly on the wall and i m talking about the wall in the oval office with the meeting between clinton and president obama, what is happening right now and how cordial is this relationship? first of all, i think they re probably joking about the fact that we re all out here trying to speculate about what they re talking about. it was a previously scheduled meeting before all of this tax cut legislation came forward, but the fact is they have to be talking about the current political and economic situation because there is one person in the world who knows what it s like to be a president halfway through your first term where you just lost the house and where people are doubting your leadership besides barack obama and that s bill clinton. we have a clinton in the cabinet and now back in the oval
there has been a lot of pressure on harry reid to do this in the lame duck session. what is going to be debated is why he is doing it now, before the senate takes up the tax cult legislation, because many people who are for repeal were hoping that maybe they could get those two other republicans to vote for at least starting the process if they got the tax cut legislation out of the way. that is what it is very controversial. would this be perhaps just part of the strategy, given the fact they have quite a bit on their plate, as you know, the clock is ticking before the end of the year, they needed to get this down before they, perhaps, tackle the tax cuts? that is part of it there is no question about it and it is about priorities in general. the other thing we haven t talked about, everything is related here, is ratification of the s.t.a.r.t. treaty. yes. that is important because that is another huge, huge issue on the president s priority list. and that is another thing t
gets a piece of legislation today. perhaps not with the actual analysis of its cost from the congressional budget office, what s referred to as the cbo score. that may delay it, perhaps not. the democrats and republicans in the senate are trying to get something that can actually be debated. yesterday senate democrats sent to the white house a list of requested alterations, some sweeteners and changes to the bill, to the proposal of the framework that the president and the republicans put together. the answer on that is, no. there will be no changes or alterations to the basic framework. there was a handshake deal, mcconnell said, between himself and the president. so those types of adjustments will not be allowed which means if bill does come to the floor this afternoon, the senate could conceivably vote to begin debate on it within three days which means that there would be potentially work this weekend and the legislation and, perhaps, a vote to pass it in the senate next week. then