you give me spending cuts, i don't crash the global economy, sound good? senate minority leader mitch mcconnell announced the same, saying "the fiscal cliff deal was the last word on taxes. now the conversation turns to cutting spending on the government programs that are the real source of the nation's fiscal imbalance." and the upcoming debate on the debt limit is the perfect time to have that discuss. perfect, the problem is not even republicans believe that is going to work anymore. >> they have got to find in the house a totally new strategy. i mean, confronting -- for example, everybody is now talking about okay, now comes the debt ceiling. i think that is frankly a dead loser, because in the end you know it is going to happen. the whole national financial system is going to come into washington by television and say oh my god, this will be a gigantic heart attack, the entire economy will collapse, you guys can't be responsible, and they will cave.

>> so newt gingrich, time to wander off the republican reservation, at least occasionally. but he is on the same page as the editorial board, which wrote "the next challenge will be the debt deadline, arriving in march, mr. boehner says he wants a dollar in spending cuts in regard to the increase. the political reverse will be far worse if the republicans start this fight only to cave in the end. you are not going to be able to take a hostage you can't shoot." but they think that even if this republicans won't really hurt the hostage, the white house will still blink just in case republicans are serious this time. and conservatives, they believe the exact same thing. that was the whole theory behind the whole fiscal cliff deal. i disagree. now, i don't think the white house has much credibility when they say they won't negotiate over the debt ceiling. they will, they negotiate over

pretty much everything. but i am convinced they won't pay a big ransom. what will the president's initiative be? he laid it out. >> my principle has been, let's do things in a balanced, responsible way. and that means the revenues have to be part of the game, in the automatic spending cuts, as well as spending cuts. now the same is true for any future deficit agreement. if republicans think that i will finish the job of deficit reduction through spending cuts alone, if they think that is going to be the formula for how we solve this thing, then they have another thing coming. >> all right, you catch that. the white house seriously, no kidding around says they will not accept a bargain in which what they got was an increase in the debt limit. so was congress, and what they get is congress simply agreeing to pay its bills. that is not their payoff.

they see it as a historic responsibility to end the dawning precedent that minorities in congress can hold up the u.s. in the debt limit. so it will be up to boehner and connor to decide the deficit package and spending cuts and revenue, or taking the whole country into default. and i don't think they will choose default. for a couple of reasons here. first, the republicans are not nearly as crazy as the tea party would have you believe. in the end, they were not even willing to go over the fiscal cliff. and defaulting on our debt would do far more damage to the economy than the fiscal cliff. and republicans are going to receive far more of the blame. remember, a lot of people thought democrats kind of did want to go over the fiscal cliff. because a lot of democrats kind of did want to go over the fiscal cliff. they thought they could get a better deal on the other side. no one anywhere thinks in particularly, the democrats, want to default. president obama would raise it,

no question, tomorrow morning if congress gave him that bill. so republicans would take all the blame here. making matters worse, even republican leaders have acknowledged we can't default. >> i would agree with the president that the national debt limit must be raised. >> we know default is not an option. >> we cannot allow our nation to default on our debt. >> default is not an option, but we'll do it if you don't do what we say? that is a little bit of a hard argument. number two here, what exactly do the republicans want to cut? they have been afraid to name specific cuts to social security or to medicare. medicaid cuts they will name. but they're a total nonstarter in the white house for obama care. so what will it be? will they force america into default on behalf of spending cuts that they can't name? because if they did name it it would be too unpopular? seems a little unlikely. third, president obama got the tax increases on the people he wanted. this is important, now he can get more money through tax

reform. and john boehner and a lot of republicans are on record offering revenue through tax reform. mitt romney ran on a presidential platform that included proposing loopholes and capping reductions. republicans are much more flexible on tax reform. most people never even heard of the debt limit and certainly didn't appreciate the consequences of busting through it. and that including many of the powerful economic interest groups in washington. now they understand it pretty well and also understand who will be to blame if we go over. the honeywell chairman dave cody is a republican, but told "the new york times" today that the whole idea of using the debt ceiling, i'll do this horrible thing to all of us if you don't give in doesn't make sense for anybody. it is not a smart way to run the country. the white house is betting that

most americans see it that way, too. and i think they're probably right. but a key part of it will play out in congress. and joining me now is congressman welch, thank you for joining us. >> thank you. >> now, you are introducing two resolutions on the debt limit. could you quickly walk me through what they are? >> well, there is two, number one, the congress should have an up or down vote on a clean debt ceiling increase so that the american people can hold us accountable if we're not going to be willing to pay our bills, number one, number two -- >> and by cleaning, spending and other things? >> it doesn't include negotiations this way or that way, if we owe the money we pay our bills. and it is not a tactic to work your will in a tough taxing and spending negotiation. but the second one i think is actually more important, the reinstatement of the gephardt rule, and repealed essentially

by newt gingrich, our earlier guest and commentator. and what that says, when congress voted on a budget, that includes say spending in iraq or afghanistan or tax cuts that president bush advocated, that by operation of accepting that budget the debt ceiling would be increased or decreased to accommodate the budget that congress voted for. so it takes out the hypocrsy, so the idea of defaulting on the bill can't be part of the equation. >> i spoke to minority leader nancy pelosi, she says in the white house she is amazed when president obama begins to speak about the debt limit. his whole demeanor changes, he becomes very hard line on it. are your colleagues standing firm on it? are they radicalized on the debt

limit deal that the country can be held hostage? are they confident there needs to be a negotiation here? >> no, i think there is zero tolerance in the caucus for using that as a tactic, and what happens is, we blew it frankly in august. we allowed a link to occur in the budget and debt limit. it led to the first downgrade in the triple a bond rating in the history of the country. and the cost, according to the treasury is going to be about $90 billion in additional interest payments over the next ten years. and by the way, here is the thing that is so dangerous. in your introduction, i agreed with your analysis. but the one thing that i think was left out is that the republican conference are actually true believers on this. they think that this is a tactic that will work for them. and they're divided into two groups in the republican conference. the folks who would vote no on raising the debt ceiling, and a larger group that would vote hell no.

and the larger debt here, i think speaker boehner knows this ultimately can't prevail. it will do too much damage. because the power to default is the power to destroy. if we have a percent increase that costs the american taxpayers a trillion dollars over ten years, but he has a conference that thinks they have the president right where they want him. that is all this talk about the leverage equation changing. so our position from the outset has to be zero tolerance when it comes to a tactic that says it is a legitimate option for america to default. >> well, congressman peter welch, we'll look anxiously to see if you can convince them they're wrong. thank you for joining us. coming up, the job reminders coming up. the fiscal cliff deal that might have been possible. it was still terrible. up next, what it should have looked like to tackle the

economic problems. and in the spotlight tonight, they're here to help me put the 112th congress into the awful perspective it deserves, but amid all the awful dysfunction in washington, d.c., there is one politician performing, even over-performing. coming up, i'll announce the most productive politician in the capitol. "i'm only human" ] humans. even when we cross our t's and dot our i's, we still run into problems. namely, other humans. which is why at liberty mutual insurance, auto policies come with new car replacement and accident forgiveness if you qualify. see what else comes standard at libertymutual.com. liberty mutual insurance. responsibility. what's your policy? ♪ i have direct deposit on my visa prepaid.

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this week, some celebrated the fact that washington finally came together and got something, finally, anything done on the fiscal cliff. but as far as the policies go, the resolution was not a huge success. up next, just what we need to be doing for the economy if we could strip away all the politics. c'mon dad!

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let's say i gave you just three pieces of information about the economy. piece number one, we have a terrible unemployment problem that is not solving itself. number two, we have big deficits that will likely become unsustainable in the coming years, but right now are not a problem. and three, the u.s. can borrow cheap. given these three premises, what sort of economic policy would you push for? what would you want to design? well, first you want to implement job creation, taxes, investment in infrastructure that we need to build sooner or later, sooner since we have people out of work and cheap borrowing. secondly, things like cutting

spending and raising taxes. now, the problem normally, those two actions create a conflict, right, the process to create jobs costs money. making it harder to erase the deficit. so how do you untangle it? well, go back to number three, on that list, the u.s. can borrow for cheap, borrow for actually next to nothing if you account for inflation. so here is the answer, which is also the answer of pretty much every single economist i have spoken to on any topic since 2008. we can borrow cheap to create jobs now while putting in place long-term deficit reduction measures of a greater amount that will kick in once unemployment fell to say, 7%. now, think about that while you hear this next bit of news from today. today we learned that employers added 155,000 jobs in december. and the unemployment rate was 7.8%. what that means is last month,

the economic recovery held steady, kept chugging along, creating 160,000 jobs a month for six months now. we survived the uncertainty of the presidential election, the economy survived the uncertainty of the fiscal cliff negotiations. the economy is moving, but not very quick. at the current trend of job growth we would not be back to full employment until 2020 sometime. that is not good enough or quick enough. so in other words, january first would have been a great time for congress to pass a great jobs bill and reduction bill. that would not happen, the fiscal cliff bill makes the economy worse in some ways, letting the payroll tax cut expire, raising taxes on the wealthy, which does a short-term effect on the economy. the tax alone will put a 0.6% growth on the economy.

are the numbers better than the recession we would have faced after a full-on swan dive off the fiscal cliff? neither number is very good. on top of that economic growth number, it doesn't come anywhere near to stabilizing the debt over the next ten years. so remember the information we gave you, the three points, we failed every single premise in this fiscal cliff deal. we did not solve our jobs problem or make it better. we made it a bit worse. we did not solve our deficit problem, we made it a little bit better. and we didn't take chance of the really cheap money that we can get. when it comes to generating policy that will actually solve our economic problems, congress failed. they failed us real bad. here to talk about the deal congress should have passed is the founding director of the budget office and a former member of the president's debt commission, the simpson-bowles commission. good to see you tonight. >> good to be here.

>> now you have served on two of these bipartisan commissions that did come to deals like the one i have outlined here. they said, do a bit more stimulus now and do a lot more deficit reduction later. as far as i can tell this is a unanimous opinion in the economics professions, why has it proved so difficult to reach on capitol hill? >> it is not just the economics profession. a good number of politicians, including five out of the six senators on simpson-bowles thought this was a good idea, too. they ranged from conservative to quite liberal. so it is not a new idea. i don't know exactly why we can't get this across. we need, right now, to stimulate the economy. we're borrowing a lot and can borrow cheaply. but i'm not worried about borrowing now. i'm worried about borrowing a few years from now when we will have to borrow more and more. we're on track to have our debt

rise faster than our economy can grow. now that spells trouble in the long run. and we don't know how long the long run is. so simpson-bowles, the gang of six, everybody has said do two things at once. don't worry about the current deficit. it is -- easy to finance. but, worry about the long run deficit, and get some things in place now that will solve that problem. and i believe that would help the economy grow. once the whole world and american voters could see that their government was functioning and had a serious plan to get us back on a sustainable budget track, don't you think they would start spending and investing and doing the things that we want them to do? >> i also want to ask you on that, the thing that i find to be the biggest mystery of this conversation. we do talk about deficit reduction, we talk about what you're just saying there, about

testifying it could have on the confidence. we talk about it a lot. we don't do a lot on it. but we talk about it a lot. actually doing anything on jobs, despite we're at 7.8 unemployment, a crumbling infrastructure around us, a lot of that is in the construction sector. has essentially gone out the window. you don't hear politicians talk about it in a serious way or put forth serious ideas. the president pretty much forget the jobs act during the campaign, why do you think that is? >> i think it is partly because the investment in infrastructure and other kinds of spending got a bad name, and for good reasons. they're associated with a bridge to nowhere, or things that don't work. the simpson-bowles commission actually had a good phrase. and that was cut and invest, do less of the things that we don't need to do that are a low priority. and save that money and invest it now in things that work. now that is partly infrastructure. i think it is partly education

and training and partly science. but we have to be really careful in what we do. and that is the thing that is really hard to liberals to think about. they think spending more is good. spending better is more. >> you said they would get a fiscal cliff deal, i was more skeptical, you were right, they got it in the end. so we're going into the fight that is probably going to be backed by the danger of the debt ceiling. what do you think will happen on the other side of it? look into your crystal ball. >> i don't know, we shouldn't have the debt ceiling. the government should pay the bills that the congress has voted to pay, right? we don't need that. in my world, i think i would advise the president to just ignore the debt ceiling. go ahead, paying the government's bills while trying to negotiate a deal for the longer run deficit reduction. but, the president is a constitutional lawyer.

he is more worried, i think that he might do something illegal, and he is not likely to defy the courts. >> no more debt ceiling, i like the sound of that, alice rivlin, thank you for joining us. >> thank you. >> coming up, if you thought john boehner's idea was the absolute worse, we now have numbers to back up your case..

just how terrible was the 112th congress? it was the worst, so bad, i'll show you why, by the numbers next. and there was one person who works in the white house who deserves a bit more credit than he gets. i'll have more coming up. [ male announcer ] the more you lose, the more you lose

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in the spotlight tonight, on january 3rd, the 112th congress of the united states of america finally ended. thank god. it was not a moment too soonment to properly appreciate just how bad the 112th congress was,

consider the record of the direct predecessor, they passed the stimulus act, the affordable care act, the dodd frank act, the don't ask, don't tell. they agreed to the 2010 tax deal, which agreed in return for the tax passage of the middle class stimulus. the laws passed were controversial, particularly among republicans, but also they were big, bold initiatives if not always fully equal to work with our problems, they perched on congress's edge to deliver solution. you can love them or hate them but they did their job. no congress in recent history has a record of productivity anywhere near what they had. what is the record of the 112th, well, it almost shut down the government, almost breached the debt ceiling and almost went

over the fiscal cliff. which, by the way, it helped design in the first place. it cut the discretionary spending, and another trillion, which everybody thinks was a bad idea. it achieved nothing of not on housing, stimulus, guns, tax reform, climate change, infrastructure or really anything. and the 112th was not only not productive, it was unproductive compared with any congress since 1948, when scholars began to keep tabs on the congressional productivity. when it ends, it will have passed 220 public laws, that is by far the least of any congress on record. the second least productive congress on record, that would be the 104th, and when you look at that that was also a congress in which republicans won a big mid-term election and tried to grind congress to a halt, in order to defeat a sitting

president. that was in fact newt gingrich's congress in the 1994 election, but that congress, they passed 330 laws. almost 50% more than the 112th. of course, raw productivity statistics can mislead. after all, the 112th congress's laws were particularly worthwhile, amid the calm of the economic growth. and slowing the rate may even be a good thing. in this case, the data misleads another way. the 112th congress was not only unproductive, it was terrible counterproductive, lawmakers created artificial deadlines and cliffs and curves, consequences and catastrophic events that were intended to spur them to act. like wylie coyote, when they set a trap the only sure bet it would explode, forces them to create yet another hair trigger contraption that they would again, fail to evade.

the near breach of the debt ceiling in 2011, in august 2011, was the most damaging to the economy. and the fiscal cliff was by far, the dumbest. but in each case, congress mainlined fear and uncertainty into a weak economy, already plagued by too much of both. in that way, the 112th ended exactly as it began. by creating a mess it could not clean up. the resolution such as it is, of the fiscal cliff, just sets up another fight in the weeks and months ahead over the debt ceiling, and over sequestration. there will be continued fear and uncertainty over the impending battle will be the legacy to the nation's economy. thank you very much, guys, as a result of such good works, the 112th congress was appropriately the least popular since they began to keep score. according to gallup, their

approval rating fell, and fell to 10% in august of that year. those are the lowest readings in gallup's 38 years in asking the questions. when rasmussen polling was asked how they felt about the u.s. becoming a communist country, 11% said they would approve. you were at multiple points in the tenure, you were less popular than communism, there was a theory in their effort to grind the u.s. to a halt, in making congress a destructive force. it was the american voters who blamed the parties in charge of the white house, leading to president obama's clear and overwhelming defeat. yet republicans were so mistrusted by the end, that despite the two years of the government, and a weak economy,

obama was reelected by a 5 million votes, and democrats won more votes in the house than republicans. but unfortunately, the polarization in congress are probably long-term political trends, and there is no evidence that they will lift any time soon, so the 112th congress was surely one of the most broken and dysfunctional in our history. while we are happy they are gone, the worst may be yet to come. joining me now is thomas mann, and norm orenstein, also the co-authors of the book "it is even worse than it looks." so gentlemen, i'm happy to have you here, you are congressional scholars, and i am not. so tom, let's start with you, give me a grade on the 112th congress, am i missing the grades, and being too hard on them? >> yes, no question about it. worst congress ever.

there is no way to dress it up or a way to pretend they really did something important or kept from doing something harmful. they were just awful. >> and norm, one of the things that -- you guys just wrote an article call tonight five myths of the 112th congress, speaker john boehner gets a lot of blame, but he was not really the guy the blame for it. explain a little bit on the thinking of that. >> well, we always talk about the failed leadership, and leadership requires followers. boehner had a problem, he was a legislator, he would have liked to have done more than they did. but if you don't have people who are willing to follow you, and that is because he has people who are way off on the fringe. they are not conservatives anymore, they are radicals. and they has a bunch of others who are far more concern border ed -- concerned about the growth and the primary challenge, we have sympathy for boehner that comes out in the article.

>> there was one view of the 112th, where you said people just did a bad job. this group of tea party radicals, that will abate. and another aspect, we're seeing the polarization, these are long run trends and will get worse as we go on. tom, where do you come down? >> well, i tend to agree with you on the latter. the seeds of these problems were planted decades ago, it is just now that they're full blossom. and they're a god-awful blossom at that. but ezra, there is one thing that could -- could prove more encouraging. and that is if the republican party takes serious its growing

political marginalization in presidential elections and senate elections and their brand, relative to the democratic party, in the perception now of the public that they are the extreme party that won't compromise, out of fear of survival over the long haul, set apart the house and those protecting safe districts. they don't want to be marginalized, as they are. they want to regain the white house and maybe some other voices will come forward. and maybe the outside community, including the business, will start to speak up and say nonsense. stop with the hostage-taking and the brinksmanship, we're not going to support up. >> so what are those changes that it takes to happen? five, the popular vote in five of the six last presidential elections. it has been a very bad year for them.

and if boehner said they wouldn't negotiate with president obama, and mcconnell saying they're trying to create the brinksmanship that they had in 2011, so if it has not happened yet. why should they be optimistic it will happen soon. >> well, you can only be cautiously optimistic, because so many of the forces will continue. the primary challenges, the people are in homogenus echo chambers, they wouldn't listen, they don't want to have everything blow up in their faces. and with a business community that was absent without leave when this debacle occurred in 2011, or a portion of it, as a wholly owned subsidiary of the republican party, we may see some differences. there are areas you can find

common ground now that barack obama is no longer going to be a one-term president. but it is going to take another couple of election defeats i think, before you get some serious change. and we'll see what happens in this mid-term coming up. >> let me ask you about president obama, one criticism, he is not lbj, and not good at working with congress. if he was, we wouldn't see this. could president obama be better at working with the congress, and how much blame do you put on him? >> almost none, i think it is a silly criticism that gets the attention of the press and of commentators, more generally. leadership is contextual, you have to have a negotiating partner if you want to make a deal. and republicans decided with obama's inauguration they would be opposed to everything, even when he gave them what they themselves supported. that made such negotiations impossible. and it is a caricature of the

past, but the present context is different. >> authors of "it is even worse than it looks." here is to hoping it is better than we expect. coming up, if your friends tell you no politician can get anything done in washington, we have the perfect comeback. the politician that is getting almost everything done these days and why. we'll reveal their name coming up. and later, i'll explain why i check the work of one person in the white house every day. one person, my favorite member of the white house is coming. wa. [ dog ] you know, i just don't think i should have to wait for it! who do you think i am, quicken loans? ♪ at quicken loans, we won't make you wait for it. our efficient, online system allows us to get you through your home loan process fast. which means you'll never have to beg for a quick closing. one more way quicken loans is engineered to amaze.

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phillips'. for a professional cleansing device? join the counter revolution and switch to olay pro-x. get cleansing results as effective as a $200 system. guaranteed or your money back. olay pro-x. after decades on capitol hill, and four years in the white house and a lot of appearances in the news magazine "the onion," vice president joe biden has developed a certain public image. you have probably heard the phrase before "joe biden being joe biden." yesterday, in the swearing in before the senators of the 103rd congress, joe biden was being joe biden. this is something we know in tv very well. we rely on it. joe biden plus a camera equals amazing.

>> i don't want to hand shake -- good to see you. you got a smile that lights up the room. >> they say the southern belle, you have done good. you have a smile that lights up the whole chamber. >> thank you. >> hey, mom, how are you? i'm joe biden, come on, mom, take a chance, ruin your reputation here. would you take a picture of this quickly. how are you guys? good to see you. guys other than my mother, the finest woman i have ever known. you are going to be frisked. >> that is a democrat, i know. >> need any help on your pecs -- anybody else want to be sworn in as a senator today? >> anybody else want to be sworn in as a senator today?

that is kind of -- joe biden doesn't drink, but that loose style is an odd mixed opinion on the vice president. as of last month his approval rating stood at 54%. the latest 40% disapproving of the job joe biden is doing. only 5% had no opinion. and in a washington poll from a few months ago, they did word descriptions of him. you got words like good, honest, great, courage. they were mentioned, so were words like loser, clown, embarrassment. and incompetent. opinions like clown and embarrassment have come to define at least the negative side of the joe biden public image. so much so that the onion has created a spoof of him who washes his car in the driveway. he has a goofy side, but incompetent? no, the difference between his public persona, and his skill

set, reminds me of the two sides of president reagan. >> well, thank you, mr. president. >> well, i hope i have answered your questions as best i could, given the very little that i know. good-bye, and god bless you. >> thank you, mr. president. >> thank you very much. okay, get back in here, all right, let's get down to business, i'm only going to go through this once so it is essential you pay attention. now, any questions? >> mr. president, you're still going so fast, there is a lot about the iran-nicaragua that i don't understand. >> and you don't need to understand, only i need to understand. >> for the past hour, we told you we would introduce you to the most productive politician in washington, but we have already. there is not a more effective vice president not in modern history.

you could make maybe a case for dick cheney's persuasion on president bush. but given the president's ability to enter into a war with iraq, that is kind of a funny definition of effective, it has been widely reported at this point he played the pivotal role in brokering the deal with mitch mcconnell, which the white house sees as a big win. but you may already know, he was put in charge of overseeing how stimulus dollars were spent. and the lack of scandal and corruption on that bill, a bill with that much money has been remarkable. cop joe did a great job. and when the white house needed somebody to work with mitch mcconnell in 2010, we're also getting democrats on board, again, joe biden was the closer, he got that deal struck. and the white house reported

that senator mitch mcconnell in kentucky and a single staff member had slipped into the office of joe biden to try to hash out the policy directly. that is what mitch mcconnell does, is go directly to the president. the "daily beast" pointed out joe biden laid groundwork for the repeal of the ban on gays in the military. and ratification of -- of arms control with russia. and in doing, he hastened the president endorsing the idea, bringing gay marriage to a wider political consensus, so go ahead and smile and laugh when you see joe biden being joe biden. >> but holy mackerel, this is the man that deserves more

credit than anyone else save the president for getting the white house's legislative agenda done.

if someone asks me the question of who my favorite person in the white house is, and i go to kind of weird, boring talk, but it is pretty much somebody you never see, whose work you never see, pete souza, the photographer whose work you never see. i am a fan, he puts up his pictures from the white house, they're great pictures, fascinating. this week he put up his favorite photos of 2012. and with those photos he left his own thoughts and descriptions of the photos, what he was thinking, and how he captured it. and which one the president thought was great.

we thought you would like to see why he thinks they're so great. and speaking of amazing people, the man you will hear reading the photo captions, he is a last word producer, who puts together the work. pete souza, so here are his best photos of 2012. >> january 24th, one of the most memorable moments was when the president hugged congresswoman gabrielle giffords as he walked out on to the floor in the chamber to deliver his annual state of the union address. february 7th, kids will be kids. after the president had welcomed lauren flemming, the ambassador and her family in the office, her brother started to play with the president's telephone. fortunately he was not able to get through to a head of state.

april 24th, we were back stage at the university of north carolina in chapel hill for the president's appearance on late night with jimmy fallon, the president let out a big laugh as he was being briefed on the segment. june 15th, we had just arrived at the helicopter landing zone in chicago, and instead of walking right to the motorcade, the president and first lady walked to the edge of lake michigan, to view the skyline of their home town. september 5th, back stage at the convention, the president listens as bill clinton delivers the speech, before surprising the crowd with an on-stage appearance together. september 14th, the president takes the hand of the secretary of state after his remarks at the ceremony, marking the return to the united states of jay christopher stevens, the u.s. ambassador to libya, shawn smith, information senator, and

security personality, glenn doherty, who were killed during the attack on the u.s. consulate in benghazi. and the president pretends to be caught in spider-man's web, who had been trick-or-treating with his father in the executive office building. i can never commit to calling any picture my favorite, but the president told me this was his favorite picture of the year when he saw it hanging in the west wing a couple of weeks later. november 6th, the president and close friends were watching election results in a chicago hotel. the president had warned everyone that it could be a very late night. and yet only a few minutes later, the networks projected that he had been reelected and the president embraced the first lady, while in the background, daughter -- sasha hugged one of her cousins, the president

reacts, december 14th, after the president was briefed on the shootings in newtown, connecticut. the president later said in a tv interview that this was the worst day of being in office. december 21th, after returning early, the president with the vice president meets in the oval office with congress to discuss the fiscal cliff. you can see all of pete souza's newly released photos on the show's website, thelastword. that is "the last word" tonight. you can read my work. >> another government shutdown show down? let's play "heart ball."

pushl push blank blaeng . >> good evening. leading off tonight, there they go again. republicans are smarting from the results of the fiscal cliff talks. so, now, they're doing what comes naturally when they don't get their way. threatening to shut down the government when the next fight comes up. two senators are making that threat and speaker john boehner says he's ready to use the debt ceiling fight to get the spending cuts he wants. also, a few days late, but the house finally voted for aid to hurricane sandy victims. you'd think a no-brainer. but they promised to punish members for approving the aid and 67% of house republicans voted no. we're going to ask an opponent of aid to confirm that one. now the senate is looking for inappropriate access.

leave it to vice president joe biden. >> hey, mom. how are you? >> good to see you. i'm joe biden. >> his glad handing yesterday has drawn snickers from critics, but let's praise the vice president for showing the world how to get it done. for being a pa. finally, michelle bachmann. we begin with the republicans threatening to shut down the government if they don't get the spending cuts they won. ohio republican just retired from the house of representatives. and fompler pennsylvania governor is an msnbc political analyst. gentlemen, i want to show you three quick things. first, in a meeting with this