in the crossfire tonight, cornell west and ross douthet.enate is getting ready to vote on the budget compromise. all signs point to it passing. washington continues to be trapped into small incremental agreements that merely avoid disaster so the government won't close. that's progress? pope francis, however, is raising the standard dramatically by pointing to the gap between the very, very wealthy and the very, very poor. the pope has said bluntly he is not a marxist, and frankly most of what he's saying is in scripture. in this christmas season, it's hard to argue jesus wasn't radically concerned about the poor. the question is what can government do that actually will help rather than hurt. i want to ask this question, cornell, something that i was struck with. we are on the edge of the 50th anniversary of the war on poverty, and it strikes me that there has to be -- if conservatives need to be concerned about the poor, liberals need to be willing to put all of these bureaucratic institutions up and look at them critically for whether or