at this meeting reid will have with president obama at the white house. perhaps reid is now getting the go ahead to present something else to mitch mcconnell or harry reid symbolically asking where does the president stand on this? he can say i went down to the white house and here is what he will do. take it or leave it. the house is doubled down on what they passed out last night. this is their extension of debt limit tied directly to a balanced budget amendment that has no possibility of passing the united states senate. would be vetoed by president obama. we are still very much in a holding pattern, richard. the house is content to wait on the senate now. everybody said we are motionless until president obama tells us what he would sign into law. that s been their talking point. harry reid is going to the white house. perhaps they could present something that would be signed into law. a very long way to go.
let s take those one at a time. balanced budget amendment, that is one thing senator mcconnell and i talked about lots of times. we have no problem with a balanced budget amendment. we have one on our side that senator mark udall worked very hard to prepare. it s ready to go. we have no problem with that. they want a balanced budget vote, we want to have one. it s odd to me, however, that for something as important as this an effort to get the bare majority they got in the house yesterday, they put in their bill that you have to actually pass a constitutional amendment before they will allow the debt to be increased. that s a little extreme, i think. we are happy to have a vote on balanced budget amendments.
they are. as of right now, there is no word mcconnell and reid have had direct negotiations nor back channel. albeit, there probably are some discussions we don t know about. they are secretive in washington. they like to keep it close to the vest. three minutes until we expect to hear from the republicans leaders. throw minutes from that meeting at the white house. viq, what do you think will happen here as the president brings the democratic leaders? is he reinjecting himself into the process? we know precious little and still less exactly how the president has been involved in the process. certainly, he s made some public appearances at key times. there was a speech on primetime that took a lot of people by surprise. to be followed by a similar address by the speaker of the house that was outside the usual state of the union, the paradigm we usually see in january. we saw the president appear yesterday after it had become clear after that balanced budget
budget balance amendment. at 3:30 you ll probably hear more from democrats. they have a press conference this afternoon, as well. the main story is we are here against the clock. there is no clear path forward. negotiations are supposedly ongoing with harry reid trying to get republican senators onboard. even in a perfect world, if everythi everything, even if is there a compromise tonight, you have that deadline tuesday. we are literally in the same position today we were in earlier this week. people don t want to hear that. what about this letter that came out where 43 gop senators signed it but four did not? what s your thought on that? does that show perhaps some compromise is afoot right now in the senate? it s interesting three senate republicans said they would not accept leader reid s proposal in
amendment had been added to the house bill by john baoehner in all of those heat hectic efforts to save face and avoid everything from crashing and burning around him to preserve this strategy of jamming the president. the only viable option would be to sign this boehner bill. when they added that balanced budget amendment, let s face it. the debt ceiling couldn t be raised until the constitution had been amended by a vote of 2/3 of both houses of congress and 3/4 of the states. we can call that objectivity a stretch. the ball is in the senate s court. we have this critical test vote at 1:00 tonight that could be delayed. i don t want to confuse people. this is bewildering enough. what is happening behind closed doors is that harry reid, the senate democrat leader has to get at least seven.