i think it has proven difficult for speaker boehnor to do that. i've been left at the alter now a couple of times, and i think that one of the questions that the republican party's going to have to ask itself is can they say yes to anything. i've gone out of my way to say that both parties have to make compromises. i think this whole episode has indicated the degree to which, at least a democratic president, has willing to make some tough compromises. so when you guys go out and write your stories, this is not a situation of somehow this was the usual food fight between democrats and republicans. a lot of democrats stepped up. in ways that were not advantageous politically. so we've shown ourselves willing to do the tough stuff. on an issue that republicans ran on. working stiffs out there, ordinary folks who are struggling every day, and they know they are getting a raw deal, and they are mad at everybody about it. they are mad at democrats and they are mad at republicans, because they know somehow, no matter how hard they work, they don't seem t

boehnor knows that his latest proposal, which cbo has exposed as not saving as much money as boehnorhas no chance of becoming law. but the tea party doesn't know that. so boehnor has to appear to be fighting for it or something like it, fighting until the very end. and so boehnor pretends to fight for it as"h told the house republican caucus today. "get your ass in line, this is the bill. i can't do this job unless you're behind me." but tea party approval is still hard to come by for an old republican establishment guy like boehnor. >> i will not vote for this bill, because i don't think we should be raising the debt ceiling at all. we need to be doing what a business does when it becomes overextended. federal government is broke. >> to me, we can do better, it's just not good enough, and i think we can do better. >> will you vote for it? >> no, i can't, martin. >> i will not vote to increase the debt ceiling. it goes completely contrary to common sense. >>former maverick, john mccain, is not exactly maverick-y enough to risk not raising the debt ceiling, so he has rushed to mcconn

the boehnor news conference was fascinated. it seemed at the beginning he didn't want to specify a number. he said we agreed to a number on revenues. then later he said it was $800 billion in revenue increases that he and eric cantor agreed to, they then claim the president, having reached that agreement with them then asked for a bigger revenue increase, which they absolutely couldn't do. that would look like, if that's the way it played out, that would look like in the end the president making sure they wouldn't get a deal. >> we're going to have to see exactly what chris in his brief on and what we get out of the white house. but seems to me all sides, both sides, all sides, the president saying it was taxes, no-tax pledge. more on that that in a moment. also, of course, boehnor saying the white house was moving the goal post, so you have both sides. i think what has been lost clearly is a lot of trust. we've had a lot of sort of fantasy in this town about the emerging relationship between the president and john boehner and

>> well, what's breaking on the boehnor plan is the boehnor plan is broken. it's broken by the numbers and it's broken politically. that group of the -- the cut, cap, and balance crowd, that's 51 people said in the republican side, were not voting for it, would be a violation of your pledge to be part of the cut, cap, and balance group if you vote for it. so that 51 -- those 51 republican votes are off the table. lots of other republicans are said they can't go for it. the anti-tax crowd is against it, and even david addington is worried about a power in congress by this special committee, the super congress, and david addington's the guy who did all the lawyering for dick cheney to start a war without permission. there's going to be lots of republicans and democrats who are going to vote against it on that basis, leaving the numbers aside. >> howard, it seems to me we're in the zone of symbolic bills being passed around. harry reid's bill, which inconveniently for the president and the democrats, gives up any claim toward getting tax revenues in the mix, mee

boehnor has walked away.ankly, the republicans have walked intentionally more than barry bonds, and the fact of the matter is that we need to come to an agreement, the senate, senator reid, has offered exactly what they asked for. mr. cantor just said we have no taxes in our bill, he was very pumped up about that to tell his constituents to tell that the richest people in america were not going to have to pay anything towards solving this problem, but frankly the senate is prepared to offer that, because they feel very strongly the responsible step to take is to make sure america's able to pay its bills on august 3rd. >> congressman hoyer, in addition to the republican's recalcitrants on tax revenues, which the reid plan now meets and simply eliminates any form of tax revenue increase, including the closing of egregious loop holes, it seems now the republicans are intent to get democrats to cast a vote for medicare cuts and get the president to sign a bill that involves medicare cuts, because they have expose

the boehnor is on track for 30 bills.d measure is not whether or not you get promoted or how much you get done or against what odds, but whether or not everybody on your team stays on your team, the cohesiveness of your party. now, using this measure, speaker john boehner's actually been quite successful. they voted unanimously on some legislation, and he's kept internal decent to a whisper, until now. the number of republicans in the house are publicly defying speaker boehnor and his proposal for raising the debt ceiling, including the congressman who heads up a group of conservatives in the house who doesn't think speaker boehnor's plans has the votes. >> i am confident, as of this morning, that there were not 218 republicans in support of the plan. >> that was republican congressman jim jordan yesterday, but today, late in the day, starting to seem like speaker boehnor's fortunes were changing. his debt ceiling proposal was reevaluated by the congressional budget office and he pitched that plan to republicans in the ho

here's speaker boehnor saying let's do cut, cap, and balance. i mean, that's going backwards. these negotiations. >> well, listen, the president, as you mentioned, was working with speaker boehnor to try and do a deficit reduction package that was balanced, that had revenue, had tough spending cuts, ones we thought the country could live with. that was our preferred approach. that broke down, speaker walked away from that, now we have a stalemate. the president said tonight, of the options in front of us, senator reid's option is the best one to get through the default crisis. we have a lot of work to do on the deficit, but listen, there was a report that just came out on your competitor, cnn, that, you know, one of the ratings agencies is saying that if the boehnor plan is passed, it means a downgrade, that means a tax increase for just about every american and higher interest rates. as the president said tonight, that doesn't solve the problem. we need to do the smart thing in the short-term here to make sure we don't default, but also don't have it hanging over our economy.

and i think that's where boehnor and cantor are. they rode the tea party, and now the tea party is threatening to devour the republican party. >> your column published tonight on "the washington post" website the crisis already is forcibly cleaving the republican leadership from the tea party. you say that ann rand in her writings may help explain how that is happening. can you explain that? >> in her first most popular book, "the fountain head," the guy who doesn't get what he wants blows up a building. there are ann rand followers in the majority that would rather blow things up than make any concessions at all. i think quietly there are moderate conservative republicans, not any moderate republicans anymore, they are saying this is taking us all too far. they are looking at the polls, not helping republicans in the polls, but they want to govern and are looking at this and saying we can't govern this way, and i'm hoping they are thinking about saying to these other folks we can't walk the rest of the way with you. >> e.j. dionne

late tonight, speaker boehnor's office announced he's going to be re-writing that plan because it doesn't achieve as much in savings as he originally claimed it did. now, given the sort of dire nature of where these talks stand now, there's one remedy bouncing around washington these days that suggests president obama doesn't actually need john boehner at all, that he can just raise the debt ceiling on his own without john boehner and without house republicans. for weeks now, the white house and president have said they don't intend to take this sort of dramatic, uni-lateral action, but this policy is one that's enshrined in the u.s. constitution. it's part of the 14th amendment to the constitution, which was one of three amendments passed in the years following the civil war. interestingly enough, president obama cited this civil war error during his speech last night. >> we have put to the test time and again that out of many, we are one. we've engaged in fierce and passionate debates about the issues of the day. but from slavery to war, from civil liberties to questions of economic jus

>> in this sense, they say the tea party is bullying cantor and boehnor. but apparently cantor and boehnor agreed to $800 billion in revenue enhancement down there and were going to make the deal until the president moved the goal posts on them. when you get to the bottom line, we have got to have a debt ceiling increase, and you have to have budget -- excuse me, yeah, budget cuts, that's what everyone agrees on. get it done, give ourselves some time. >> the polling data that i have seen in the span of the last two weeks shows a fairly significant shift the americans would be willing to go with revenue enhancements, tax increases, if, in fact, there's a shared responsibility. >> that's what has been said for months now. they recognize the problems the country is facing, they recognize everyone has to be a part of it and everyone has to sacrifice. the problem is down here in washington, the folk who is need to get that done, aren't getting it done and continue to play games. look, michael, we're between two very difficult places right now. we either default

speaker boehnor said there was no stalemate, making the case that there was no stalemate simply because he has been able to pass some bills in the house of representatives only that address this with absolutely no possibility of passing that legislation through the united states senate. ignoring the stalemate, he ignored many of the specifics raised by the president in the president's address. to consider both of these speeches, joining me now, the host of msnbc's "hardball," chris matthews and msnbc contributor melissa harris-perry. chris, your reaction to first the president's speech. >> well, i thought the president used a couple of words, fair and balance, fox commercial, interesting, fair, then balance, then fair and balance over and over again to make a case for his position. i thought he came off as the good mother in the old testament story of king solomon who was willing to give the baby to the other mother, rather than having it killed. where the dishonest mother was willing to kill the baby rather than letting the other have it. i think he's leaning towards compromise and the