there. they got there and not a moment too soon, or perhaps a little too late, but they have got there. we re actually seeing reaction in the markets, the nikkai has rallied, we ll be back in january and february, before we say come in, we re open, i think we ought to keep the other one just at hand. i think you re right, christine romans, i can actually hear you groaning when we say kick the can down the road, we ve all been here, haven t we? like groundhog day? is it possible to avoid all of this when you have a $17 trillion national debt. if you have grown-ups who will take a look at blue ribbon panel after blue ribbon panel of debt commissions, and everybody
congratulations, washington. you ve narrowly averted a fiscal crisis of your own making again. if there s one thing you should be buying, it s stock in the countdown clocks. because by the time we put this one away, we ll have to turn it on again in february. we still have this problem with this short-term decision making and not really addressing the long-term problems. that s what warren buffett, what so many business leaders are so worried about. today, talking about so many business leaders, no one is saying congratulations. they re saying, okay, kick the can, thoughfulhopefully kick thd we ll be talking about it again in february. and also a lot of business leaders are also republicans and support a lot of house republicans. and a lot of them are very concerned about what house republicans are worried about, which is the debt, the national debt. which is almost $17 trillion. but a lot of these business leaders know that you don t solve that at the credit card, you solve that a
budget negotiations and what kind of pressures you can hold over them. but short of a gun being held to both of these parties, y all can t seem to come to any agreement. and i highly doubt that in this bill is there could be any language that would conote a gun to your heads. could you not at least move forward to open the government after 16 days and avert catastrophe, but effectively really destroy our national credit rating? could you not at least move forward with these parameters? i believe that we ve got to do something. i think we ve all wanted to avert this fiscal cliff, huge debt ceiling that s hanging over our head right now. and i also agree that these guarantees, while we ve had so many different committees and debt commissions, that there is no certainty on what will actually come out, that it will actually get implemented. one guarantee we could have,
and the democrats. i don t think actually that the president gets away with saying that the debt ceiling debate is nonnegotiatable. that the debt ceiling increase is nonnegotiable. what you will flare business and market watchers and the markets themselves in the weeks to come is we have a major debt problem and someone has to get around to dealing with it. bret: we heard it from simpson bowles and the deficit and debt commissions. and they will keep talking and that is a problem. the president is still complicit in this. if our government gets our credit rating downgraded again our government has asked for it. he is the president of the united states. we are in a fragile economy. the world is waiting to see if we are still a good bet. and that is the bottom line. we can get past this vote and on to the next but at some point the president has to engage on whether yes, the big question for business was
he sat on the debt commissions and there were compromises offered, he s supposed to be the big budget cutter. he let that thing die and he voted against it. and guys like coburn and durbin voted for it and he didn t. i ll take that as a good thing to have against him. but the thing i really have against him actually has to do with how he and governor romney have misused the declaration of independence, i m irritated that the pursuit of happiness means money. money for the rich and when they say god and nature give us our right, not government. that is a lovely thing to say as a wealthy white man. but when you sit in a body like main as an african-american woman may have made us inalienable rights of life liberty and the pursuit of happiness but we could not have them until there was a civil war that allowed a federal government to impose that those nature and god-given rights would actually be respected by our government. and i think they cannot line on the declaration of ind