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this is a loss for the american people. i am not a dictator, i'm the president. so, ultimately, if mitch mcconnell or john boehner say we need to go to catch a plane, i can't have secret service block the doorway. >> let's make it clear that the president got his tax hikes on january 1st. this discussion about revenue, in my view, is over. it's about taking on the spending problem here in washington. >> taking a stand. the white house joins the legal battle for gay marriage by asking the supreme court to strike down california's proposition 8. plus, hackling gun violence on the front lines. >> just for the record from my point of view -- >> how many cases have you made? >> it doesn't matter. it's a paper thing. i want to stop 76 -- i want to finish the answer. i want to stop 76,000 people

from buying guns illegally. that's what a background check does. if you think we're going to do paperwork prosecutions, you're wrong. milwaukee's police chief joins us to talk about his heated exchange on capitol hill. plus, the bromance deepens for kim jung-un. couple extraord nar. the basketball star bonding with north korea's supreme leader. capital dysfunction. what will it take to get washington to get something done. steven colbert, of course, offers up his solution. >> to prevent the next crisis, we just need a worse scenario. i say we suspend monkey above the floor of congress. no, an ebola monkey. and then every senator and congress person gets smeared with banana meat. if they do not reach a budget deal by the deadline, the doors

to congress are locked, the rope is cut and it is meal time in the monkey house. >> mealtime in the monkey house. good day, i'm chris cilizza in for andrea mitchell. waved the white flag in washington with millions of dollars in budget cuts set to become a reality and the country, yes, has another reason to doubt the ability of their elected leaders to solve economic or, let's be honest, any problems. joining me now for our daily fix, ruth marcus and nbc white house correspondent kristen welker. kristen, i want to start with you. president obama 36 minutes of talking after his meeting with the congressional leaders, including taking four questions, contrast to john boehner's 56 seconds of talking after that meeting. what's the tone in the room? the president struck me as pretty confident in where he stands. tell us what it was like. >> well, i think the president

knows that he has the public on his side when it comes to this sequester battle. he has a built-in bully pullet and he's using it. that's why he answered so many questions today. what struck me, chris, he really sort of used familiar talking points. a lot of what we have heard him say when he has been out traveling, selling his message to the american people. an indication that probably not a whole lot actually was, actually got done behind the doors when the president sat down to meet with members of congress. you heard him talk about the fact that he's not going to give in on this issue of new tax revenues and then signaled his strategy moving forward saying that he thinks it is public pressure that is going to move this process forcard saying he hopes that republicans will listen to their constituents in this matter and ultimately that will move the goal posts. look, the sequester kicks in today. still no progress. they had this meeting and seems

like lisening to the president, more a photo-op than anything else. >> great point. ruth, i want to, it seems to me, kristen said it looked like photo-op. feels to me like it looked like photo-op/sound bites for ten days is being too kind. let's say ten days -- >> or four years. >> right. >> so, one of the things president obama said was he said that in the wake of the last election, he probably played too much of the inside game. that he should play more of the outside game. to kristen's point, this is an outside game play. this conference he said, repeatedly, look, the american people are on my side and republicans need to catch up. is that a message that is going to work in the post-sequester role? we're almost now in the post-sequester role. so, we have 25 or so days to try to get another deal done is that message going to work? >> i don't know. i don't think so. i don't think the white house knows. they clearly made the decision,

as you say, that they needed to do more of the outside game, but how the outside game works on this congress given the set up in terms of safe districts and everything else. >> right. do they have an incentive? >> what they talk about is really quite a mystery and i think no one is clear exactly how this ends because this is not a split the difference scenario. this is a two-sides diametically opposed scenario. >> i think that's important. i think people think that this is just all politics. they just disagree in principle on the right move forward. that's why i worry about 25 days. are they all of a sudden going to find common ground? >> there is an interesting piece of common ground that could be found, i think, in terms of easing the pain of the sequester. both sides have some reason to craft a deal that eases the pain of the sequester. in other words, gives as the

continuing resolution is crafted and agreed to. gives agencies the flexibility to make these spending cuts less stupid. >> right. >> the president used the word dumb several times to describe this sequester. >> you could have a little less of a dumb sequester, but you're still going to have -- i don't think you're going to shut down the government. that's not in anybody's interest. but then we're going to get to, yes, i'm sorry to tell you. debt ceiling. >> it's like a horror movie. debt ceiling part eight. kristen, most of the conversation today from the president, john boehner was about the sequester, but he did talk about proposition 8. i want to play just a little bit of sound and what the president had to say. this is the california case on gay marriage that is in front of the supreme court. let's play what he said and come back and talk about it. >> i think that the same evolution that i've gone through is the evolution that the

country as a whole has gone through. i think it's a profoundly positive thing. so that when the supreme court essentially called the question by taking this case about california's law, i didn't feel like that was something that this administration could avoid. >> you know, kristen, in that clip the president acknowledging what we do know which is he has, this is an evolution for him, correct? >> correct. i think what is interesting about this point. if you remember when president obama first came out and said that he does support same-sex marriage, he also said that he doesn't think it's a matter that should be handled by the federal government. this marks a shift in his posture here because he's essentially saying the federal government should get engaged and get involved to some extent and, of course, filing this brief on the proposition 8 case, which really underscores that point. you heard the reporter sort of

press him on this point and say, why not just say that it should, seems like marriage should be legal at the federal level. he said, look, that's not what proposition 8 is talking about. it is specific to california. then you heard him say, if i was a supreme court justice, i would probably strike down these types of laws. but it does represent a shift on the part of the president. >> thanks. kristen, ruth, you mentioned you want to very quickly get in on this. i feel like it's going to wind out getting drowned out a little bit, but this is a huge issue with large historic ramphics as we move forward. >> absolutely. we'll hear about it when we hear the case argued later this month. i wrote an article to have the solicitor general file in. >> ruth marcus wins. that's the message. >> two quick points. the administration didn't have to file this brief. the president kind of overstated that. it is really significant that they did. they, of course, have another case involving doma at the

court. so it would be odd for them to be silent here. number two, interesting also that the administration took a sort of halfway step here. not saying that every state law or state constitutional amendment that opposes gay marriage is unconstitutional, but that this one is. i think that's the smart move. but still interesting. >> fascinating. >> could have gone further, if they wanted. >> again, real big reverberations. my colleague ruth marcus, kristen welker, thank you, guys. >> thanks. the president insisted that the american public was on his side when it comes to solving our economic problems. and that even some republicans actually do want to find solutions. >> we just need republicans in congress to catch up with their own party and their country on this. and if they did so, we could make a lot of progress. i do know that there are republicans in congress who privately, at least, say that they would rather close tax loopholes than let these cuts go through. i know that there are democrats who would rather do smart

entitlement reform than let these cuts go through. so, there is a caucus of common sense up on capitol hill, it's just it's a silent group right now. and we want to make sure that their voices start getting heard. >> joining me now, wyoming senator john barasso. senator, thank you for taking the time. let's start there with president obama. he said there is a, what he would describe as a silent caucus of people who want to come together on common sense solutions. did you hear anything, the president spoke for a little over a half hour. did you hear anything that offered you anything new or a way forward to find some of that common ground post-sequester it looks like it is going to kick into effect. >> the president when he said that these cuts were dumb and arbitrary. i agree and wanted to give the president flexibility and actually a bipartisan effort yesterday. you had max baucus, the democrat chairman of the finance

committee and senator and former governor of virginia, mark warner, wanting to give the president flexibility. but, generally, the democrats objected to giving the president the flexibility that i think he ought to have because the american people clearly, bipartisan, understand that their tax dollars are being wasted. they think about 50 cents of every dollar that they send to washington is wasted money. so, there are so many ways with overlapping programs that could be cut. there are so many ways that the government overpays people that could be saved. and that's what we need it do. that's where you need to take these cuts and give the president the flexibility to do it because he needs to find ways to take this out of the politics and just make sense for america. >> senator, i want to ask you two things. one is, number one, when the sequester was agreed upon, no one -- one moment of bipartisan. no one thought that this day would come. that it would be going into effect.

so, number one, what, if anything, does that tell the american public about congress' ability to do big things or even smallish things to avert the sequester. number two, as we look forward, we have the possibility on march 27th of a government shut down. when are real negotiations going to begin with republicans, you know, coming to the table, meeting president obama at the table. when does that happen and when should it happen? >> the president mentioned in his press conference that he'll continue to reach out to people on capitol hill. i certainly haven't seen any of that outreach by the president. he seems to want to spend his time more interested, it looks to me in terms of trying to spend fear and anxiety among the american public to try to force congress to raise taxes. but it doesn't work with me. we need to cut the spending that we know is wasteful spending that continues to go on. and it's easy to point out the

overlapping and programs that are inefficient and ineffective. but yesterday, also, there was the president's proposal to raise taxes. he called it balance. but democrats who are senators running for election, chris, in two years voted against it. you saw the senators from north carolina, arkansas, louisiana. democrats all voting against this effort to raise taxes. so, there is bipartisan opposition to what the president has been asking to get past in congress. >> wyoming senator, john barasso, thank you for taking the time. >> thank you, chris. next, what can be done to offset the impact of the massive defensive cuts in suquestration. what we don't know about the sequester's impact. this is "andrea mitchell reports" only on msnbc. look what mommy is having.

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senior military leaders are warning that american readiness is in jeopardy because of fiscal chaos in washington. here is u.s. army chief of staff on "morning joe" today. >> combination of $12 million in cuts and sequesteration and the continuing resolution doesn't put the money in the right places for us in the army. so, it's both of those. i haven't had a budget yet since i was chief of staff. i have not had a budget. >> texas republican congressman mack thornberry serves on the armed services committee and he joins me. thank you for taking the time. i want to start with what general odierno had to say. we're struggling to understand how severe and how big a deal these early term cuts as part of the sequester, particularly as

they relate to the military are going to be and how big the impact will be. can you give me your assessment? >> yeah, i think the impact will be big. one way to look at it is the part of the federal budget in defense that will be subject to sequester is about 15% of federal spending. and, yet, that 15% has got to absorb 50% of the cuts. so, it is far more disproportional on defense than any other part of the budget. the other thing, i had a four-star general tell me yesterday that it's like an avalanche. going to start and not be too bad. but one thing is going to feed on another and another and it's going to get far worse and far worse far faster as time goes on. >> let me ask the obvious question. given that, why are we, why is no one talking at this point about averting the sequester today? it's clearly going to go in effect at midnight tonight. given what you just outlined. why not? >> well, there's lots of talk

about how to avert the sequester. there just hasn't been a lot of action, especially on the senate side, to actually avert it. last year the house passed a bill twice that would replace the across the board cuts with targeted cuts in high-growth programs. and there's been a number of proposals. one was a joint house senate armed services proposal that didn't furlough or lay off any federal workers but just said as they retire naturally, you only replace one for every three that retire. and that saves money over time. so, there is a lot of common sense ideas, unfortunately, the senate hadn't passed any of them. >> now, congressman, lets me talk to you about the house. president obama in his press conference today put the blame very squarely on republican, particularly in the house leaders, saying that the pledge to not raise any revenue from tax increases is simply not a balanced approach and not what

the american people voted for in 2012 and what they express that they want. how do you make the case that he's wrong even if he was elected on a strong vote in 2012 and public opinions suggest the balanced approach is the one, as opposed to just spending cuts or just tax increases. the balanced approach is that sweet spot that people want. >> here's the way i look at it. the president was re-elected and he got a $600 billion tax increase two months ago. and there were no spending cuts with it, by the way. it was all a tax increase. so, taxes have been decided. now, the issue shifts to spending. and i'll say, i don't think there's a clamor in the country for a second tax increase over a two-month period. because the first one wasn't big enough. i don't think if someone pretends to be speaking for the country when they say that y don't think they're lisening to the country very well. now, the focus has to be

spending. the question is, are we going to cut spending in a smart way or do it in a dumb way that disproportionately hurts the military. and that's what this sequester will do. >> texas republican congressman, thank you for taking the time. >> sure. joining me now from capitol hill moments after an exclusive interview with the speaker of the house, david gregory, moderator of "meet the press." tell us what you heard. >> well, chris, by now everybody knows there's no deal and both the president has talked about speaker boehner spoke briefly, but i got a chance in this interview, which you'll hear on "meet the press" on sunday ask him what went on inside this meeting. the first one of the week with congressional leaders and this is how he responded. as we sit here friday afternoon, you emerged from a meeting at the white house. there is no deal. take me inside the room. what happened? >> very nice, polite discussion. but i had asked the president and senator reid to come with a plan to replace the sequester.

listen, we've known about this for 16 months and, yet, even today, there's no plan from senate democrats or the white house to replace the sequester. and over the last ten months, house republicans have acted twice to replace the sequester. >> in the end, you don't really see a pathway here that's open as you sit here? >> if i did, meeting at the white house this morning might have gone better. >> the meeting, the meeting did not go very well. we know that by this point. a little bit of context there because i did push back on speaker boehner. the president, of course, maintains he does have a plan. about $900 billion in spending cuts. he wants new revenue by closing certain tax loopholes. he put means testing of medicare, chain cpi, which is a reduction of benefits as part of longerterm entitlement reform. speaker boehner says, look, if that's the president's plan, then why aren't members of his own party and the senate

actually taking that bill to the floor and supporting that? that was not the guts of the bill that they tried to get passed to replace the sequester. bottom line here, chris, as you know, the speaker is not going to commit to any new revenue, even though i thought it was striking that in our interview, he said that he agrees that a lot of the tax deductions in the tax code are really a form of spending. >> david, quickly, but i'm always fascinated that you're an estu estute reader of politicians. john boehner 56 seconds long he talked after committing oing ou white house. what is his mood like? this is someone who has been on a roller coaster within his own caucus since the fiscal cliff. resolve to where he is, resign to where he is, angry, kind of more in sorrow than anger. what was your read? >> i think he's in a fairly good place.

he knows he has to take it on the chin in terms of public opinion. republicans are taking a lot of shot, 52% in our poll think this sequester is a bad idea. spending cuts, however, are pretty popular. i think he understands he has a couple things going for him. people don't believe across the board that tightening the government's belt is a bad thing. and he's also got the support of his caucus right now. raul who will be on our program on the roundtable on "meet the press" on sunday had been critical in the past. said, look, boehner is standing firm, i support him because the president is trying to use him as a tool, essentially. in their own negotiations. i think boehner feels comfortable that he is not negotiate alting wiing with the right now. he is good with his rank and file and he has problems with the public but a sense, chris, you cover this all the time, as well. the president is working the public right now. he's trying to ratchet up pressure on the republican ares. republicans are willing to accept the sequester and take

the spending cuts and all that comes with that because they're not certain that there's going to be a terrible impact on the economy. and this is just not the moment for any kind of grand bargain. that other piece of news that i think is significant, the president made this clear and speaker boehner made it clear in my interview with him. they are committed to keeping the government open, which means in several weeks, which is the next potential crisis point, they do not intend to shut down the government over the budget. there will be a budget fight that comes down the line and, as you know, the speaker wants negotiations to happen on capitol hill. he does not want to do the negotiating with the white house. >> circle march 27th. that's the date of the government runs out of money. david, thank you for running from the john boehner interview to run to talk to us about it. do not miss david gregory's exclusive interview with house speaker john boehner this sunday on "meet the press." the impacter of the sequester on everyday americans.

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prescribed by rheumatologists. >> all of this will cause a ripple effect throughout our economy. layoffs and paycuts means that people have less money in their pockets and that means that they have less money to spend at local businesses. that means lower profits. that means fewer hired. so, how will the sequester actually impact the economy? let's ask two economic experts. i'm thrilled to have both of them. greg and steve liesman, cnbc senior economics reporter. greg, i want to start with you. so much back and forth. this is doomsday. this is not bad. bobby jindal governor of louisiana said the governor trying to scare people. that is the republican argument here. you know this stuff. what are the real world impacts today's march 1st, tomorrow is march 2nd.

post sequester tomorrow. what are the real impacts in the next week? >> they will be almost nothing because the main impact will be reduce grants to various organizations, people who run head start programs and furloughs of federal workers. the federal government must give 30-days notice and very few agencies have done so yet. those impacts won't fall on us until april. we will see the hint of the economy on 0.6%. now, not great, but very manageable. better than the tax hikes we might have had. spillover impacts on industries that rely on the federal government to run smoothly. for example, if they start closing a lot of air traffic control towers and ending midnight shifts, that is going to force emergency traffic and, more important, cargo traffic to cut back on the number of flights. if there's reduction in people at the borders, for example, between canada and the united states, that is going to slow down the shipments that are very crucial to the auto industry's

supply chains. >> steve, i've been watching the market out of the corner of my eye for the whole week wondering how the market will react. it seems, i have not kept an iron clad track of it today, but it seems like the market, it looks certainly not like the debt ceiling with fiscal drops. it looks like a ho-hum event to wall street as it looks to the market. am i oversimplifying it and once the sequester kicks in, the market will move in any way, shape or form. >> at some point, chris, i don't know, three, four weeks ago the market learned to stop worrying and loved the sequester. i don't know if it's love the sequester, but certainly in itself, the sequester is not a fiscal cliff. it's not a debt ceiling show down and it's not a government shutdown. just to add to what greg said. that 0.6% of gdp probably will cost 500,000 to 700,000 jobs which is meaningful and the problem is not the sequester itself, chris. the other things that have

happened. there have been other things that the government has done. remember the fiscal cliff debate. they have raised the payroll tax back up and they did some spending cuts and that combination of things that probably dooms us to say sub 2% growth this year. so, people may not feel it next week, but it should probably show up and a little bit slower growth, maybe there's a person out there who won't get a job because of it. it will have an effect. doomsday is overrated, perhaps, or perhaps exaggerated. but there will be meaningful impacts. >> greg, i want to talk about, because this doesn't exist in a vacuum, obviously. the housing market. recovery. i don't know, maybe -- if that's too strong a word, you tell me. is there a possibility that growth in other areas upsets in some way this 0.06 impact? or not. are there other places to look to see if this austerity does go through that there are growth areas, i should say. >> absolutely.

multiple forces acting on the economy in any given time. not just a possibility, but a probability and, yes, a strong recovery under way will go considerable distance to mitigating the impacts of this austerity. just the rise in the stock market we had to date and the improvement in housing prices could add 0.7% to gdp this year. >> chris, can i just -- yeah, absolutely. >> with what greg is saying, yes, it can offset it, but you do need to achieve a certain velocity of the economy in order to bring down the unemployment rate. if you dip below that level, you're going to have a rise in the unemployment rate and that has all kinds of nasty spillover effects that come after that. so, yeah, you would have a dollar of housing over here and offsetting a dollar government. but if you end up reaching below that, worse impacts for the economy. >> can i add -- >> very quickly. >> we also have negative unexpected. gasoline prices are up. 0.2% gdp and the election in

italy raised european debt pressure on us, as well. >> i feel smarter having been involved in this. steve liesman, greg, thank you. >> we have done our job then. how much worse could these budget battles get? golly, doesn't seem like they could get any worse. barbara mikulski joins us next. milwaukee police chief edward flynn, this is "andrea mitchell reports" only on msnbc. email marketing from constant contact reaches people in a place they're checking every day -- their inbox. and it gives you the tools to create

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that's what we're asking for. >> joining me now the chief of police in milwaukee, wisconsin, eduard flynn. sir, thank you for taking the time. i want to talk about your experiences. this often gets lost in the conversation in washington. your experiences as police chief in milwaukee and how is that shaped, both what we heard from you on capitol hill this week, but your broader views about the right place for gun laws and restrictions in the country. >> well, i've been in police work for four decades. i remember when it was sufficient for a police officer to carry a six shooter. what i've seen over these decades is an increasing arms race between the police and the criminal community. that's been exacerbated by the high-capacity firearms. the mass murders that rightly tug at our heart and grasp the nation's attentions have to be responded to. but every year every city in america endures a slow motion mass murder that is, once again,

frequently perpetrated with high-quality, high-capacity semi automatic handguns and with assault weapons. this is a real challenge for us and i think it's fundamental that we start to respond recognizing that the rights of communities are every bit as important as the rights of individuals. >> now, i want to ask you, police chief, about the criticism of senator feinstein's attempt to reintroduce the assault weapons ban. that the past ban from '94 to 2004 had almost no impact on the nation's homicide rate. how do you answer that critique for people who say, it will not do what it was intended to do. >> first of all, anyone who research that is guilty of a grotesque manipulation of the facts. there were studies by the nation lt institute of justice to study this issue and what they found was a correlation. they couldn't find a causation because no one will do a

controlled experiment with assault weapons. what they found, however, over the course of the existence of the brady bill ban, the use of assault weapons in crimes decreased by two-thirds. now, they couldn't prove causation, police implemented and embraced strategies and tactics during those ten years, as well. it's foolish not to see there was a correlation and to demand, you know, perfect social science causation proof before we could say that something had an impact on phenomenon was foolish. it doesn't relate to policing. >> i want to get to one other question, which is your clash, the most publicized one with lindsay gram was over background checks. you enunciated some of this in the hearing but can you tell me why he has the wrong of it as it relates to broadening background checks? >> i've got to tell you, as a practicing police officer, recognize this, my position is embraced by the international association of chiefs of police

and the police executive research forum. i'm not an outliar here. this is american policing that we've got to do something about assault weapons, high-capacity magazines and background checks. i was frustrated because i was hearing talking points. i wasn't in a discussion. i was hearing nra talking point coming out of the mouth of a senator. background checks work. they prevented 3 million people from getting firearms illegally since the brady bill required them. 80,000 people lied on their reports and, apparently, 400 of them were being prosecuted. i'm assuming that senator gram has an idea of how to fund an additional 100,000 prosecutions a year for paperwork violations. but no one has the capacity to do that and he knows it and we know it. the issue is background checks work and they prevent the wrong people from buying guns. the ludicrous notion that we'll prosecute people for lying on a piece of paper is sophistry and

very frustrating for a practitioner to hear. >> eduard flynn, thank you for your time. >> thank you. the sequester has been front and center in washington for quite some time now, but there are even bigger budget battles on the horizon with the possibility of a government shut down looming later this month. maryland senator barbara mikulski chairs the appropriation committee and she joins me now. i want to start with a philosophical question which is no one, republicans or democrats, thought the sequester was actually that this day would come. we would be at a day where this $1.2 trillion in cuts over the next decade would come. here we are. what is a reason from someone who has spent a very long time in congress, obviously, a believer, i would guess, in the institution. what is the message you can give to the average citizen watching today that congress can do big things or even small things as it relates to the problems and the major issues facing our country on the economic front? >> well, i am horrified that we

are at this deadlock, gridlock situation. the whole idea of a sequester came out of the debt ceiling debacle where the congress of the united states was being held hostage because facing the downgrading of our american cred rating. the sequester was an idea on how we could come up with reducing our debt and deficit. get everyone to the table where we could have a mix of revenue, a review of mandatory spending and cutting strategically to reduce our debt by $1 trillion. to get everybody to the table, they said, well, let's have triggers. that came from the republicans. which was when a date certain, if we didn't solve the problem of $86 billion a year for ten

years, that defense would be cut by $45 billion and domestic spending. well, here we are, politics of delay, brinkmanship and, by the way, i'm in an empty. i want to know where is everybody so we can be working. >> senator, i want to ask you. we heard it repeatedly and we heard republican congressman from texas earlier in the show that senate democrats deserve blame here that senate democrats have not passed the budget in more than 1,400 days and that they need to take initiative. your response to that? >> first of all, the congressman is wrong. what we did was pass the budget control act immediately after the debt ceiling debacle in which what the budget does is advise on the appropriation's

committee. we are the committee that is constitutionally mandated and the only committee constitutionally mandated to deal with spending. we got our framework for what we're to spend and we did that in august and operating under those guidelines. on march 18th, we will have another budget for fiscal 14 on the floor. so, it's not what did we do or not do, it's what we're not doing on both sides of the dome and on both sides of the aisle. today we have to come up with $86 billion at reducing our debt. we want to do it through revenue. closing tax break loopholes, getting rid of tax earmarks, doing strategic spending and, yes, let's do a rigorous policy-driven review of where we are with our mandatory spending. >> maryland democratic senator barbara mikulski, thank you. up next, the strategy session.

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just two aleve can keep pain away all day. back to the news. certainly enough blame to go around as the white house and congress fail, again, to meet a deadline on a major fiscal deal. meet the second verse, same as the first. joining me now to talk about the fallout from sequestration and michael steele the chairman of the national committee which is also an msnbc analyst. i was struck, president obama was asked at the press conference today if he beared any blame for it and he said, no, he had put a deal forward and then follow-up question, shouldn't you have brought the two groups together? should you have sat down in a meaningful way and tried to hash out their differences? he, again, seemed to deflect.

shouldn't he have sat down and brought mitch mcconnell and john boehner in the day before the sequester was said to hit? this process we have gone through before. he tried the closed door notions with republican leaders in congress over the past couple of years and even if the leadership agreed with the president to make certain changes they couldn't then deliver the conference and taking a different tack this time around. and the truth is, he put this issue on the ballot in november. balanced approach to reducing the deficit that includes revenue. this was a referendum in november. the american people voted for it and apparently there's republicans in congress ignoring the results of the election. >> chairman steele, do you agree? is that the 2012 election was about? was this a referendum on the approach to reducing debt and deficit in this country? >> no, it wasn't. because the same voters re-elected a significant majority of those republicans in

the house that -- who also feel they have an agenda or mandate, if you will, from the people that re-elected them. the fact of the matter is -- >> 2 million fewer americans voted for them. >> oh, okay. so i have one more vote than the other guy. that means i won. i'm in. so it doesn't matter how i got there. you know, you want to quibble over the number of votes i got, that's fine but the fact of the matter is you have a house of representatives that united states senate and an executive branch, the white house, that are like children on a school yard right now and nobody's taken responsibility. the president talking about the sky's falling and the world's going to turn dark. you know, the senate and the house have gone home. god bless my senator. she is there on her post as she said ready to do some work so the reality, you know, chris, as you know, nobody's serious about this right now and won't be until we get to the last tick of the tock to get it done and actually going to sit down in a

room and say, how much, how much will you give up? >> you know, ben, i do want to ask about the president, you mentioned he's taken a different tack and it seems very clear and he's acknowledged this to play an outside game and he did today saying that the public needs to tell their representatives. my guess is chairman steele would agree with this. if the public wants more of president obama's approach, they need to tell their representatives. but doesn't he have to acknowledge that part of getting things passed is playing the inside game, too? that it is the sort of -- the sausage making for lack of a better word, trying to nail down the deals and can't just play the outside game? >> well, there's a conversation during the campaign that the president was criticized for at the time but it's something that he believes which is you can't change washington from the inside. i think that's why groups like organizing for action is formed because you have americans now organizing against these cuts. the issue that we have had is,

you have some republicans in congress who are more concerned about primary challenges than public opinion because the fact is the public agrees with the president's approach to deficit reduction. if you don't think the election results demonstrate that, take a look at the polling you've seen over the past couple of months and once these cuts hit, you see those lines of airplanes stacked up at o'hare, the furlough noticed go out, there's no doubt that these members of congress are going to be hearing from their constituents. >> ben labolt, michael steele, you didn't solve this in the time we gave you. we'll be right back.

and that does it for us. "news nation" with craig melvin is next. with the spark miles card from capital one,

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