host: we are joined by former senator joe lieberman, former democrat and independent senator from connecticut. welcome to washington journal. guest: thanks, good morning. host: by my count, your ninth book the centrist solution: how we made government work and can make it work again why did you write the book and why now? make it work again. why did you write the book and why now? guest: this is a book i ve been thinking about writing for a long time now, but the pandemic and the fact that i was home and working from home, not spending time on the road gave me a little extra time to read the book. the main point is that like most americans, i m frustrated by a lack of accomplishment by our federal government, congress and the president, and i get disappointed, i get angry, and i decided that maybe i have something i could do to help a little bit, which is to talk about the way in which the things that i feel best about that i did in my 24 years in the u.s. senate all
on the fiscal cliff talks, now down to the wire. here are our phone numbers you can join the conversation online. host: here are some of the friday morning headlines. a rare back to work for congress. cliff talks down to the wi re is the headline in the wall street journal. host: that story from inside usa today. this is from the new york times. host: there is this from roll call. pessimistic asstima ever. the president summoning congressional leaders. we expect there will be a stakeout afterward. we may hear from the president and we will be following all of that as the day unfolds. it s begin with david lightman. he covers capitol hill and the white house. the best sense of what you think the dynamics will be inside the room at the 3:00 p.m. meeting. guest: for all this talk of pessimism and optimism, the only people that know are the five principles in that room and i think that is important. they are all seasoned negotiators. they went to the debt ceiling stuf
most heavily populated states, means you are seeing newcomers are not welcome, existing renters can not buy houses, our children cannot buy houses. that is not the american dream, to stand in the way of our future. host: the book is entitled american nightmare how government undermines the dream of homeownership. this is from drake cinders what land use restrictions would you approve of? guest: a buy support local homeowners imposing their own i would support local homeowners imposing their own restrictions. this is how it works in houston, which has no zoning. half of the residential neighborhoods have restrictions. if you live in a neighborhood without restrictions, you are allowed to petition neighbors, and if 75% agree, you can write covenants and restrictions for your neighborhood. if the developer says we think your neighborhood would be more valuable if we changed it, and we will pay you to change, you can vote to do that. that happens all the time. you get an
the bat the fiscal cliff, all reports are that congress can retroactively prevent the tax hikes set to begin today. it has one more day to prevent automatic spending cuts that take in on wednesday. our coverage of this class continues this morning on washington journal. if you want all along, go to c- span.org/fiscalcliff. we will begin with your take on this emerging deal. democrats republican independents remember to send us a twit a tweet at twitter.com. facebook.com/c-span. or at c-span.org. the senate voted around 2:00 a.m. eastern time. here are the senators that voted no. michael bennet, democrat of colorado, along with senator tom carper, democrat of delaware, senators grassley, harkin, as well as these four republicans, senators lee, paul, rubio, and shelby. not a boating were senators jim demint, the republican of south carolina. he is retiring. senators kirk and lautenberg as well. here was the reaction from all four house republican leaders. it put thi
guaranteed failure. we hope within the scope of these conversations we are able to move the ball forward. they will have to decide what the scope is. how much we want to fight off and shoe as part of these negotiations. that will be one of the early decisions we try and reach. the good news is that we hope that our republican colleagues have learned the right lesson from the debacle we just went through, unnecessary pain. it did not have to be that way. we are hoping that our colleagues will put down the clubs and recognize that this negotiation should be between the two budgets and no one should try to gain advantage again by threatening to shut down the government or default on our debt. if we can put down the clubs and have a serious conversation, maybe we can advance. murray,re calling pat saying that you are going to look for common ground. common ground is different than compromise. when of the areas where there might be common ground is to try to get rid of some or all