host: illinois, chris tin, democratic line. good morning. caller: hi. i was wondering what you anticipate is going to happen with the 200 bills that are presently being held up in congress. host: what are you talking about specifically? caller: they just said that there are a lot of them that are stalled. host: where did you get that? caller: national news. host: are there specific bills? guest: no. they were just commenting that there were so many. they would get so far and then get stuck. host: ok. caller: there are a lot of bills that don't make it through congress, and if you look back the founding fathers sort of intended that. they wanted the system to make it so you needed nearly a consensus for legislation to get through. when people are in power they tend to complain about that, and when they're in the minority they tend to be happy that that's the case. host: jonathan strong writes for the dalely caller reporter with that website co-founded by tucker carlson. he wrote the story about r -- broke the story about michael steele and the spending g

the united states of america when china pulls the tin cup and says we don't want t-bills, we want money? that's where we are. it's serious business. >> chris: all right, senator, your deadline for coming up with a proposal for the president and congress is december 1. which coincidently is after the election. is that a cop-out? are you, in effect, giving politicians a pass on having to say what they think about this? and preventing voters from being able to say in the election what they think about these ideas? >> as erskine and i are involved in a project, screw the american people, fool them, fake them out. i mean what is this about? december 1 has to be after the election. one of the congressmen wanted it october 1. what a c.y.a. that is! do it october 1 so then pick a part to get you re-elected. so we're going to come up -- i hope we can come up with legislative language. what do you think of that? options, legislative language. what is a cop-out about reporting on december 1 to the most important thing that effects everyone american for the next, you know, decade? what is the cop-out about that? >> i think al is totally right. it's no