protections, obama will endorse it immediately. >> smaller carmen has been a core republican principle for decades. it was not amended by the conservative movement. that is not something that is going to go away, nor should it go away. i do think a couple of things. when you are talking about people like you, you first have to listen. that is what i was saying to my friend from pakistan. something's republicans can do do not involve the size of government. secondly, two things ronald reagan said in his speeches. he gave his famous speech for

barry goldwater. he endorsed an expansion of health insurance for senior citizens. he favored a smaller plan to help people that were poor rather than create a one-size- fits-all government plan. that is ronald reagan endorsing barry goldwater in 1964. what he said at the end of the speech was he did not believe there was such a thing as the left or right, there was only up or down. all too often conservatives have fallen into the left purses' right argument. in 1976 the republican party was faced with extinction. the conservative movement was thought to be as irrelevant to american life. ronald reagan went into cpac

which could have been held in iran smaller than this and give a speech called "a new republican party." it basically outlined how he would win in four years. one thing he did was talking about how would you talk about your programs and what you want to do, do not talk about it in terms of ideology. ronald reagan at the depth of the republican party basically saying how to create a phoenix like rebirth. >> we have three questions here, here, and here, and that we will let our colleague have the last word. there are a few person -- there are a few people that started with us. i do not know if you want to raise your hands. we are grateful you can stay with us that long. >> thank you. elizabeth sinclair. with respect to dick morris and

karl rove do not need my defenses. i know it is easy to make fun of people when they have lost, but they have distinguished themselves in other ways and work hard for the campaign. as somebody who thought mitt romney would win big time and am now taking a lot of flak from all of my liberal friends and family, i would like, imichael whether he could share some of his reasoning why he thought this brilliant man thought mitt romney would win handily. >> could the panel comment on what effect this will have on the supreme court appointments that will come up in the next four years? >> the economy might be

recovering. if the recovery is not complete or if growth is tepid and slow and jobs do not come back by the time of the next presidential campaign, how will that affect the types of policies that candidates will propose? different solutions and how people might change electorally. >> i think given polling data and the uncertainty of it these days, i think there were a lot of reasonable predictions you could have made from getting barack obama to 332 would have been a reasonable prediction. getting over 304 mitt romney was within the realm of possibilities, or a reasonable person could conclude. there are lots of issues in polling now that carolina has

been following closely better generally troubling to a lot of pollsters. polling procedures are developed in a nation that had landline telephones and a population that answer the phone. we do not live in such a nation anymore. peter researchers found 9% of calls resulted in a complete interview. in 1997 was 37%. is the representative of the larger public, we are not sure. the exit poll intake has not been representative of the general public. there are questions to be asked in things to be learn further. on predictions, it is -- i think there are a lot of predictions out there. where are the eight targets it's

going? if they have done differently, you would have seen different result. the electoral college, as i say, what looks like a landslide is not a landslide in popular votes. in 2000 a barack obama got 53% of the vote. that is regarded as a solid win but not a landslide. you get a landslide of electoral votes usually when you do that. >> i do not break edge anything that michael or dick morris said about any election. anybody who does this knows how hard it is to do. i agree with michael that anything between the range he talked about was entirely reasonable and consistent with the data before us. i am an analyst and a partisan.

an analyst when i write and a partisan's heart. when i wrote my piece, i took hours to put the data together. what i concluded what i had to write, i could not write for an hour because i was sick. one thing i would like to say about our friends on the right is one i did publish it, the comments on the national review online said i should be let out of the conservative movement. one person accused me of peddling fear. i had a more favorable reaction on the dailykos than national review. >> were there as many as obscene comments as i got? >> a lot of commentators -- >> look, there is hyper partisanship on the left, there

is hyper partisanship on the right. what i did not get was an obscene comment but somebody said, i sounded reasonable. how could i work for the hacks at aei. what we need to do generally in our discussion with each other is to recognize that everybody in this discussion is an american. everybody is not a hack or a bozo or tyrant in the making was somebody trying to argue and think their way through these problems that are very difficult and complex. somebody said they were going to be a pundit that barack obama was going to win 59% of the vote than sleep 49 states. that person was not probably serious. this was the hardest election

since 1968 to call. >> i cannot resist saying that i put michael in a different category than dick morris. that aside, on the supreme court, we do not know what vacancies there will be. we have several justices in their 70's. and this world today being in your 70's does not mean you are approaching the end of your life. we also know we have had justices with health problems. we have justices that smoke too much and maybe have other vices that could have an impact. there is a pretty good chance in the next four years there will be one, too, or three vacancies. some depends on when they emerge. if you have a 55-45 democratic senate and there is a vacancy, barack obama has a little bit more leeway to pick somebody

with a stronger ideological edge and if it is a 51-49 senate or even a senate that goes the other way. i think you are much more likely in any event to get somebody who would be somewhere in the broad center of legal discourse. there are a lot of options out there. in many ways more interesting is the impact that we will see with obama having for years and maybe a little bit more of a understanding the -- curious he did not have it as a constitutional law professor of the importance of putting together nominees for appeals courts and district courts. he is really slow moving through that the first couple of years. there are a lot of vacancies. now he has opportunities to fill the vacancies. the controversy over the filibuster may be more in a

review of the bush years over executive-branch nominations. >> i think obama neutralized mitt romney on the economy this year. if it goes on for a lot longer, it is hard to know. it was interesting to me that 53% of the voters still blame george bush for the economy. you can see how he neutralized him. >> if you look at the most recent analysis of brian hart -- reinhart, looking at this downturn, in the context of other downturns triggered by financial crises and debt problems, which different from other recessions, we have come out better than others and clearly have come out better than other countries that experienced it in a global way.

if you look at the forecast, basically it was regardless of who is the president, we will sitwell million jobs created over the next four years. they may be right and they may be wrong. there prague -- provocations maybe no better than ours have been on political issues. lots of things can emerge including other economic issues like trade wars or what ever it may be. there is a pretty good chance we're going to start to see some significant recovery. there are signs out there. one part of it is another area i think the obama policies faltered, not moving rapidly on the housing market. americans' savings have been wrapped upin their homes. you will not get consumption are confidence of savings are not only taking a hit but will not come back. as you start to see home prices rise in the market shift, that

will probably bring itself a significant level of consumer confidence. that can feed on some level of growth. to be realistic, we are not going to get those levels of growth in the next couple of years if you have recovered from a typical recession. it will take longer than that. it will probably be at a lower level. >> there is one question here. >> i was wondering what the fed the divisions within the nation that we have seen, the near split that is there, the division between those people who are religious, families -- families made up without two parent families, the culture wars that are spoken of so frequently, what they bought a healing or a unifying of the

culture? as you have spoken about, with people such as the incendiary allen and grayson returning to congress not on the right side of the spectrum, but as things would be there -- mr. barone, as you are constantly looking at cultural effects and efforts, what happens within our national -- national culture? will it be healing or further division? >> hello. i walked in after he was talking about -- >> can you speak up? >> i walked in just as you were finishing your remarks.

i wondered where they were -- [indiscernible] >> can you repeat that? [indiscernible] -- norm is an institutional diamond in the rough. the closeness of -- 51-49, something like that. in a winner-take-all situation, the winner can be tilted by the tiniest group of voters.

[indiscernible] who is deciding besides the votes of left-handed -- [indiscernible] the winner-take-all has a lot of [indiscernible] god gave arabs the oil and jews the the electoral college. they were clustered in swing states in florida. so it protects all minorities. it makes them particularly in a close state enormous prizes.

the idea of who will be the leader of this perfectly good it country can be a tie and that so many tens of millions of people are really disenfranchised because they live in a boosted or wednesday, my thought was, i think it should be controversial, but if you award a federal statute, one electoral vote to the winner of the popular vote, that would eliminate a tie and would make everybody feel that if they wanted to feel that way -- it would make everybody feel they were part of the process, even if they feel -- even if they lived in a 70-30 swing state. >> he know, a couple of points that have been made. it is a rare election that is

not decided in some fashion on the margins. yet it does result in an electoral college bonus. ronald reagan got 51% of the popular vote and won an enormous surplus of electoral votes. democrats tried to make the case when the republicans swept all of the senate seats that a shift to 50,000 votes would have given democrats back seven senate seats. so what? basically, you have a tie and it moves in one direction until things in a particular way. that will always be the case. people will try to find some rationale as to why they either did not lose our why it does not mean so much. the electoral college has some really serious challenges now. we can thank god at one level that we did not end up with another 2000, which we could have easily have where you have

the winner of the popular vote was the electoral college. i must say, at one level i was deliciously awaiting the wall street journal editorials that after the 2000 election said, grow up, these are their roles. this is how it happens. it could be flipped the other way around. it is the kind of crisis that is the making. the good news for people in the 41 states is to do that have to sit back like a goose being forced said and have commercials that are the deluge upon you. i do not know how many saw the video. 22 consecutive commercials in ohio somebody put together. is a problem we have to deal with it. one is by creating a contract for college bonus for the

popular vote winner and preserve some of the features of the electoral college that we have long supported and viewed it as valuable. one other point which is, keep in mind if you talk about the popular vote and how wonderful that would be and we could avoid some of the nightmares, imagine an election like 1960. the popular vote nationwide is /one-tenth of 1%. you do not impounded just the ballot boxes in florida, you and how them across the nation. you have a army of lawyers going to florida. maybe it would be the biggest jobs program in the history of the country going everywhere and taking months to decide. it is not so great. one of the great problems is the course of culture. it is reflected in alan grayson's and alan west. you have them across the board.

we live in a culture where line brings no shame. you get caught in a lie and the lesson is you double down on it and get your own cable television show or you become a political superstar. that is something we really have to deal with on a larger level. we need a vibrant conservative republican party. we need two parties that go at each other but also recognize that most of the issues there is an enormous amount of common ground. these are not black and white questions. it has to be done at a different level. it has to be done with a different set of attitudes. i think he has -- there are others. steven a. wood that was here for a long time run an interesting piece on the future of the conservative movement. we're not talking about northeastern liberals that have no home at this point. i do not know what will happen. are talking about card-carrying

conservatives to understand if we keep on going down this path, tribalism could turn this into a country that makes all of the nice words about how we are not arrested and ballistic we are the united states into we are rich states, blue states and we're going to the mattresses. >> one way, of course, to avoid the tie in the electoral college is to have them said it at an equal number. and you might have a tie at the speaker of the house. on the valley's question. -- values question. i think sometimes we forget that the united states for most of its history has been a culturally diverse country. i think those of us who grew up to remember the universal popular cultures of the radio entertainment programs, the

movies of the 1930's and 1940's, television in the 1950's and 1960's. it was a huge advantage to presenting a popular culture that appeal to everybody. you had a period in which we had a strong universal popular culture. we do not live in that country anymore. we have 133 cable channels. we have lost the language of the universal culture. we have different values that we did in the past. the founders established a limited government with limited powers with a lot of room for a states, localities, and voluntary organizations to do society's work. they made the federal government neutral on religion. states could have an established religion, or they did not have to have won. we were going to leave religion -- the federal government was going to be neutral on that. that mostly worked, although

there were difficulties. we had something called the civil war because he suddenly got a federal government issue, slavery and the territories -- congress was given specific power to regulate the territories are you could not avoid that issue. we had civil war. one of the problems with big government in my judgment is that when you have something like obamacare, it suddenly becomes a federal issue whether or not your insurance policy should cover the $9 a month you need to pay for contraceptive is at walmart. that is less than the price of two pumpkin lattes at starbucks. it became a national issue when we had a speaker on the prime- time tv our of the democratic convention abdicating her position. a lot of people have strong views based on their personal moral beliefs are there religious beliefs on both sides of this issue, believes that are

not crazy, rational, or vicious, but they have to be different. big government makes this a national issue. the founders idea was a lot of things like this would be handled in different ways so that people could reach different resolutions nationally. the supreme court made abortion a national issue in 1973. people have strong moral views on both sides of an issue. believes that are very important in their lives. we cannot expect them to be expelled from politics and government makes the decisions. >> people talk a lot about bipartisanship or unity. i think there are types of a false unity we should talk about. one is where we pretend values are things that can be laid at the political doors. i think michael was very eloquent about why it has never

been and why it cannot be. the other kind is when one party says to the other that unity is on my terms. when i hear a lot of times people on the right, i get the impression unity will be fine as long as we are only talking about the shade of red from rose to ruby. on the left the underlying assumption has been, we really won the election -- even though you did not win the house. the unity will be the shade of blue you can accept. i think what americans want is for us to look at america as a marriage. the democrats and the republicans are the spouses and the country is the family. what you learn in a marriage is you have to listen to the other spouse. you have to understand what the other spouse's the point is even if you disagree with that. if you care more about the family and yourself, then you have to make accommodations to

authentically response to the other person's deepest desires and aspirations, even if it would be discomforting to you. we will have a rebuttal -- we will have a real bipartisanship when we can have red and blue come together and debate about the shades of purple understanding they will not get everything they want. until that happens, we will only be talking about false unity. civility will continue to decrease and political war we will continue to have. [applause] >> i would like to thank my wonderful palace and colleagues here. thank you for coming. we will see you in two years. [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2012] [captioning performed by national captioning institute]

>> president obama and john boehner talking about congress and the fiscal cliff. them live at 7:00, your calls and comments on "washington journal." >> i want my fiction to be intensely journalistic. unless you get out and look at what is going on these days, you are going to miss the things that are influencing yourself that everybody else. >> best selling author tom wolfe is live sunday from miami but ferret international. he will discuss "back to blood." he will answer questions from the miami audience. sunday at 6:00 on c-span 2. >> to these are the casualties of the spirit, the troubled in

mind, man their damaged emotionally. since it requires special therapy. headdresses is -- >> now you are deep sleep. we are going back. we are going back now. we are going back. >> one of the most important procedures is group psychotherapy. here under a psychiatrist's guidance, the patient learns something of the basic cause of his distress. >> i would like to get some illustrations of how one's personal safety would stem from childhood safety. >> i kept it to myself. >> this weekend on c-span 3's " american history tv," "let there be light."

watch this rarely seen and once censored work today at 4:00 eastern. >> the president said he has invited congressional leaders to the white house next week to discuss the deficit. he warned about the potential effects of the fiscal cliff. that is a series of tax increases and budget cuts that take effect in january if congress does act. the president addressed an audience from the white house east room. >> ladies and gentlemen, the

president and the vice president of the united states. [cheers and applause] >> thank you. thank you. thank you, everybody. thank you. thank you very much. thank you. thank you very much. everybody, please have a seat. thank you. good afternoon, everybody. now that those of us on the campaign trail have had a chance to get a little sleep, it is time to get back to work, and there's plenty of work to do. as i said on tuesday night, the american people voted for action, not politics as usual. you elected us to focus on your jobs, not ours.

in that spirit, i have invited leaders of both parties to the white house next week so we can start to build consensus around the challenges that we can only solve together. i also intend to bring in business and labor and civic leaders from all across the country to get their ideas as well. in a time when our economy is still recovering from the great recession, our top priority has to be jobs and growth. that is the focus of the plan that i talked about during the campaign. [applause] it is a plan to reward small businesses and manufacturers to create jobs here, not overseas, a plan to give people the chance to get the education and training that businesses are looking for right now. it is a plan to make sure this country is a global leader in research and technology and

clean energy, which will attract new companies and high- wage jobs for america. it is a plan put americans back to work, including veterans, rebuilding our infrastructure, and it is a plan to reduce our deficit in a balanced and responsible way. our work is made that much more urgent because at the end of this year we face a series of deadlines that require us to make major decisions about how to pay our deficit down, decisions that will have a huge impact on economies and the middle class, both now and in the future. last year i worked with democrats and republicans to cut $1 trillion in spending that we could not afford. i intend to work with both parties to do more, and that includes making reforms that will bring down the cost of health care so we can strengthen the programs like medicaid and medicare for the long haul.

but as i have said before, we cannot just cut our way to prosperity. if we are serious about reducing the deficit, we have to combine spending cuts with revenue, and that means asking the wealthiest americans to pay a little more in taxes. that is how we did it -- [applause] that is how we did it in the 1990's when bill clinton was president, and that is how we can reduce the deficit while still making the investments we need to build a strong middle class and a strong economy. that is the only way we can still afford to train our workers or help our kids pay for college or make sure that good jobs and clean energy in high-tech manufacturing do not and other countries like china. already i have put forward a detailed plan that allows us to make these investments by reducing the deficit $4 trillion over the next decade. i want to be clear -- i am not

wedded to every detail of my plan, i am open to compromise, i am open to new ideas. i am committed to solving our fiscal challenges. but i refuse to accept any approach that is not balanced. i am not going to ask students and seniors and middle-class families to pay down the entire deficit while people like me making over $250,000 are not asked to pay a dime more in taxes. i am not going to do that. [applause] i just want to point out this was a central question during the election. it was debated over and over again, and on tuesday night we

found out that the majority of americans agree with my approach, and that includes democrats, independents, and a lot of republicans across the country, as well as independent economists and budget experts. our job now is to get a majority in congress to reflect the will of the american people. i believe we can get that majority. i was encouraged to hear speaker boehner agree that tax revenue has to be part of this question, so i look forward to hearing his ideas when i see him next week. let me make one final point that every american needs to hear. right now if congress fails to come to an agreement on an overall deficit reduction package by the end of the year, everybody's taxes will automatically go up on january 1, including the 98% of americans who make less than $250,000 a year. that makes no sense. it would be bad for the economy and would hit families that are already struggling to make ends meet. fortunately, we should not need

long negotiations or drama to solve that part of the problem. while there may be disagreements in congress over whether or not to raise taxes on folks making over $250,000 a year, nobody -- not republicans, not democrats -- want taxes to go up for folks making under $250,000 a year. let's not wait. even as we are negotiating a broader deficit reduction package, let's extend the middle-class tax cut. let's do that right now. [applause] that one step would give millions of families -- 98% of americans and 97% of small businesses -- the same certainty that they need going into the new year. it would immediately take a

huge chunk of the economic uncertainty off the table, and that will lead to new jobs and faster growth. business will know that consumers are not going to see a big tax increase. they will know that most small businesses will not seek a tax increase. a lot of the uncertainty you are reading about will be removed. in fact, the senate has already passed a bill doing this, so all we need is action from the house. i have the pen, ready to sign the bill, right away. i am ready to do it. i am ready to do it. [applause] the american people understand we will have differences and disagreements in the months to come. they get that. on tuesday they said loud and clear that they will not

tolerate dysfunction, they will not tolerate politicians who view "compromise" as a dirty word, not when so many families and small businesses are struggling to pay the bills. the american people are looking for cooperation, looking for a consensus. they are looking for common sense. most of all, they want action. i intend to deliver for them in my second term, and i expect to find willing partners in both parties to make that happen. let's get to work. thank you very much, everybody. thank you. [applause] thank you, guys. [cheers] >> he said he hopes 2013 will be

the year for tax code and internal reform. his remarks are about 10 minutes. >> about 24 hours after spoke to the congressional budget office, i explained there were terrible consequences of the fiscal cliff that would come from increasing tax rates. according to ernst and young, raising the top rates would destroy nearly 700,000 jobs in our country. the members of our majority understand how important it is to avert the fiscal cliff. that is why the house took action earlier this year, to

replace the sequester with other types of cuts, and is also why of the summer we passed a bill to extend all of the current tax rates. for one year so we had time to overhaul our tax code. and that is why i outlined the responsible path forward, where we can replace the spending cuts and extend the current rates, paving the way for entitlement reform, as well as tax reform with lower rates. at 2013 should be the year that we begin to solve our debt through tax reform and entitlement reform. i am proposing that we avert the fiscal cliff together in a manner that ensures that 2013 is finally the year that our government comes to grips with the major problems that are facing us. we will bring jobs home that

result in a stronger, healthier economy, and a stronger healthier economy means more americans working and more revenues, which is what the president is seeking. this framework can lead to common ground, and i hope the president will respond today in that same spirit. as i said wednesday, this is an opportunity for the president to lead. this is his moment to engage the congress and work towards a solution that can pass both chambers. earlier this week, the president and i had a short conversation. it was cordial. i think we both understand that trying to find a way to avert the fiscal cliff is important for our country, and i'm hopeful that productive conversations can begin soon so that we can forge an agreement that can pass the congress. and with that, i will be happy to answer questions. [inaudible] >> when the president and i have been able to come to an

agreement, there has been no problem getting it passed here in the house. >> you have out what your goal of not having tax rates go up, but you did not lay out a deficit goal. what is the deficit goal that you have in mind? >> clearly, the deficit is a drag on our economy and we cannot continue to spend money that we don't have. i don't want to box myself in or box in anybody else.

i think it is important to come to agreement with the president, but this is his opportunity to lead. >> mr. speaker, going -- >> nope, you violated the rules, disqualified. >> what? >> [inaudible] >> it is clear that there are a lot of special interest to the polls, both corporate and personal. it is also clear there are all kinds of deductions, some of which makes sense, others don't. by lowering rates and cleaning up the tax code, we know that we will get more economic growth. it will bring jobs back to america. it will bring more revenue. we also know if we clean up the code and make it simpler, the

tax code will be more efficient. the current code only collects about 85% of what is due the government. it is clear if you have a simpler, cleaner, more fair tax code, that efficiency, the effectiveness and efficiency of the tax code increases exponentially. jake? >> [inaudible] more people voted for democrats than republicans. why'd you have any leverage whatsoever? >> there is a republican majority in the house. the american people reelected the republican majority, and i am proud of the fact that our team and a very difficult year was able to maintain our majority. there are a lot of races out there outstanding, but, jake, it is clear as a political party we have some work to do. i think the principles of our

party are sound. we believe in individual responsibility. we believe in empowering our citizens. we believe in the american dream. we want that dream for everyone. but how we talk about who we are as a party is clearly conversations that are underway and will continue. >> do you plan to have a vote next week about the legislation -- >> you will have to ask mr. cantor. i do not schedule the floor. >> could you talk about raising the debt limit as leverage on the fiscal cliff? >> it is an issue that will have to be addressed, sooner rather than later. >> following on jake's question, a number of exit polls tuesday night said that there were overwhelming numbers of americans, 60% or more, who favored raising taxes on the

wealthiest americans. will you be guided by that principle at all when you sit down to do this? >> listen, the problem with raising tax rates on the wealthiest americans is more than half of them are small business owners. we know from ernst and young, 700,000 jobs would be destroyed. we also know that it would slow down our economy. the number one issue in the election was about the economy and jobs. everyone wants to get our economy moving again. everyone wants to get more americans back to work again. raising tax rates will slow down our ability to create the jobs that everyone says they want. jonathan? >> what are you looking for on the entitlement side? are you talking about the growth of social security and the military?

>> listen, we're spending a trillion dollars more than what we take in. we cannot continue to do that. this is year two of a 25-year demographic bauble that was not like anyone could not see it coming. 10,000 baby boomers like me retiring every day. 70,000 per week. this is just the second year of the 25-year baby boom bubble. this has to be dealt with. everything on the revenue side and on the spending side has to be looked at. >> mr. speaker project >> no, i'm not on to call on you. i'm not blind. no, the young lady. >> thank you, on immigration, you spoke about the immigration

reform. are you endorsing the pathway to citizenship? >> i am not talking about a 3000-page bill. i'm talking about a common sense, step-by-step approach to secure our borders, allow us to enforce our laws, and fix a broken immigration system. but again, on an issue this big, the president has to lead. i think members on both sides of the aisle want to resolve this issue, the president will have to leave here. >> are you embracing the pathway -- >> i am not going to get into the details of how you get there. it is just time to get the job done. >> mr. speaker, it sounds like you are talking about setting a

framework for next year to do tax reform and entitlements, but now, with the sequester, the medicare problem, and you have spoken about this as a concept of a down payment. could you go into more what that would be? >> i would rather not do that because i do not want to limit the options available to me or limit the options that might be available to the white house. there are a lot of ways to get there. i don't really want to preclude anyone who might have a good idea about how we move forward. but it is clear, it is clear that we have to fix our broken tax system and we have to deal with our spending problem. >> what would you need to pay for the general sequester immediately, or is that part of a bigger deal? >> a nice try. [laughter] >> does calling at tax reform give you a better way of selling it to your caucus in terms of increasing revenues in terms of something that is revenue neutral? >> we have had this discussion

over the course of the last year-and-a-half. when the president and i were attempting to deal with the problem a year-and-a-half ago, there were revenues on the table. you can produce revenue and put revenue on the table through fixing are broken tax system, getting our economy going again, and getting more americans back to work. thanks, everybody.

>> congress returns next week. we spoke with a capitol hill reporter about what the house might do it up the fiscal cliff issue. billy house is the househouse speaker john boehner has appeared before the cameras every day since the election on tuesday. what is he saying about the coming work on fiscal issues? >> he is trying to set a tone of putting the onus on president obama to show some leadership. he has not offered any thing that republicans have not been offering for several months in terms of taxes and some other items. he is trying to show they are willing to talk. president obama today responded saying -- yes, let us talk. >> some news reports are characterizing speaker boehner's comments on revenues

as a softening or a change in what he said before the elections. what is the truth? has he changed positions? >> softer tone. it is the same position. the higher income rates -- or any of the rates -- will not go along with any reductions. the issue is whether or not to extend the rates that were put in place under former president bush. a lower rate -- those expire through the year. republicans say all of them -- even those for the higher income earners -- need to be extended at least for one year as they work on more comprehensive efforts to take on this fiscal cliff. >> has the speaker clued us and on how he envisions reaching an agreement with the president on avoiding or on getting past the fiscal cliff? >> he would say the house has passed a bill already that would address those things including extending the bush tax cuts but also cuts other than those that are called in the sequester reductions replacing some of those military cuts with cuts elsewhere.

the republican house ideas are to make deeper cuts into social safety net that will not fly with democrats in the house or in the senate. >> what congressional democrats and the president they looking for? >> they would say a more balanced approach. in other words -- let us at least increase those tax rates. let them increase on the higher income -- on the 2% of wealthiest of americans. that would go a long way to helping us not happen to find other cuts and items to get around this big hit of spending cuts and tax increases we're headed for. >> what is the timetable for action for all of this? >> the so-called sequester cuts hit on january 2 if not dealt with. when they would hit agencies could trickle into the year.

the bush tax cuts end at the end of the year. right around the corner is another problem -- the impending debt ceiling, our nation's ability to continue borrowing would have reached its cap. that will lead to some more battles about what cuts should be made to let that happen. >> what is more likely -- a final agreement on these outstanding issues or some kind of short-term band-aid to get past the end of the year? >> that is exactly what we have. a band-aid, a bridge, a mini bargain, a mini bar. what ever you want to call it. there is talk about crap in return for kicking it down the road six months. maybe boehner could get his troops o board with doing half of the cuts taht are called for. some conservatives, including

jim jordan, who is now head of the republican senate committee, from ohio, says -- no, no, we want to do the cuts. we are not interested in kick it down the road. if we do that, we come out of the 2011 budget control act having done nothing but increase spending and have no cuts to show. there will be battles over that. in the end, they will do a mini bargain that will get us into next year. >> you mentioned the president's invitation to congressional leaders to come to the white house to talk about this. what do you think the president hopes to achieve in that meeting? >> he will say -- hey, -- he will repeat what he said today that we won the election. we have the mandate on taxes. speaker boehner will say -- we still have more than a two-dozen seat advantage in these house. they will all come together and

say -- this is something that goes beyond partisan politics. it goes to very critical and the clock is ticking issues that need to be addressed or this country could face devastating results including perhaps another downgrade in its credit rating. i believe that is probably what they will discuss. >> billy house writes for "national journal." he is the house leadership reporter. thanks for your time. >> no, thank you. >> we will look at some of the victory and concession speeches from senate races decided on tuesday. beginning with virginia and massachusetts. >> i need some help over here. >>

>> where is sergeant robert yates today? we ended up following him after this plane ride for many months. he ended up entering himself into a program at walter reed where they used acupuncture and other techniques to wean him off of all of the drugs he was on. through this program he actually was able to walk out of walter reed on his own two feet. i really commend the military 40 dead things.

one for allowing us to tell the story. and for recognizing this problem. recognizing there is this problem of over medication and they are looking for outside ideas on how to fix it. that is sort of the whole thesis of the film. the metaphor of "escape fire"is the status quo is not working. >> more with matthew heineman sunday night at a clock on c- span's "q &a." >> the tea party express chairman amy kremer talks about the future of the republican party. then ira shapiro talks about prospects for a compromise for the fiscal cliff. later, r