. >> that coulden be truer. we have to turn from the trauma in libya to the drama in washington, the hand to hand arguments of collective bargaining rights. the one thing they seem to have in common is that no one anywhere seems prepared to compromise. in washington there's much talk of a looming government shutdown. how major, did it come to this? >> on the shutdown scenario house republicans wanted to take the mandate from the midterm elections to cut federal spending on the discretionary spendsing level. senate democrats said they weren't interesting to go as far as house republicans. today senate democrats have changed. there won't be a government shutdown. it's not going to happen. the white house is more than willing to look at these set of cuts in large measure because 70% are earmarks and 30% are taken from the president's own project to terminate projects. we're going to get a deal on that smaller matter. the larger issue about how much to cut still has to be teased out and sorted out. but the shutdown