12/30/2012 Washington D.C. 2:15PM
Harry Reid has just announced the impossibility of reaching an agreement with his Republican counterpart, Mitch McConnell in the Senate. As of 4:00 both houses are adjourned to meetings in their separate caucuses. McConnell is in a meeting with Vice President Biden on this issue.
4:03 ET John Thune, Republican conference chair just gave an update. It was pure party line no details, but confirmed the meeting between Biden and McConnell is ongoing. He sounded cautiously optimistic. His party line patter, could be an optimistic sign, as in "we have a solution that may happen, and I want to talk like a real Republican to counter those Tea Party types who will be going after us"
Both houses will be returning shortly. This can be watched live on CSPAN
WaPo has this article just up of the GOP Senate, rather than trying to find a simple fix and leave others to the future, a type of damage control, are widening the debate to include Social Security.
In 1962 I remember being at work, and my boss was talking about something about a problem with Cuba having some missiles, and at first I wasn't too concerned, "We seem to have these kind of scares all the time, and nothing ever happens"
Now we know that what I was oblivious to was being close to an exchange of thermonuclear weapons that would have destroyed civilization as we knew it. I was unaware of what was at stake, as are the vast majority of the American people now about the Cliff-Ceiling crisis that is now upon us. There is no ongoing coverage of this event, no breaking in of network programs.
Obama had previously said that he would not accept any agreement that continued the threat of cutting off double the funds of the sequestration by "hitting the debt ceiling" He also said that he would not push his constitutional prerogative of ignoring the lack of legislation and pay the existing obligations. I strongly disagree with this as I wrote in this diary A nation Destroyed by a weak metaphor.
We have come to to a point that the mass of Americans views these historic affairs of state as another reality show, or maybe sports event, and we have our teams that we root for. On this final interview on Meet the Press, David Gregory asked questions about political capital, and a wide array of controversial issues, and didn't quite get what is at stake here, which is nothing less the stability of the worlds economic system.