have start taking action. from what i ve seen, you have mentioned that you had a meeting yesterday, you think there s about ten members at this point who believe they do want to go with a clean resolution, no strings attached, get the government back open, these are republicans but you believe it s closer to two dozen and if you had an anonymous vote tomorrow you d have 180 republicans vote for a clean resolution. so how does that play when the speaker invites people of your ilk into a meeting yesterday, was he angry with you? did he respect the fact that you and a growing number of republican was tonight do this? what was that meeting like? well, basically, again, a private meeting. i don t want to give anything away other than to say at least ten people at the meeting and another 15 or so who agreed we re willing to go openly and say the government should open reopen but reluctance is to take action now to force that. i m saying we have to force it now otherwise this is going t
those bills, what happened yesterday is that they tried to pass them under a rule that required democratic support. today they re going to try to pass those bills funding veterans affairs, washington, d.c., city services and national parks with the simple republican majority. they may also tack on a bill that would fund the national institutes of health, that s after seeing headlines of children with cancer being turned away from clinical trials, but we already know that those bills, even if they do pass the house this time, are going to be dead on arrival in the senate. the white house has also said this is not a serious approach if house republicans want to fund the government they should pass the overall spending bill with no strings attached. as you mentioned that thundering anger, let s take a listen to what happened at a republican press conference held by house republicans and senate republicans yesterday. you remember we the people? the colleague who has been fighting for f
who blinks first? the president has been willing to negotiate not only this year but in the first four years of his administration. we should have had a budget by now. the other side chose not to go to conference when both the senate and the house passed a budget. we are where we are now. so it may only be for six weeks but it is a critical part of t process of making sure we fund america. so congressman garrett, part of the issue has been, of course, the clean resolution. the spending bill with no strings attached. the republicans wanted strings to derail obama care. whatever anybody thinks about the philosophy behind that it s the mechanism behind it so many people are outraged about. would your fellow republicans start getting on board with a clean bill, just a spend ing bill with no strings attached? if you listen to charlie dent, a colleague, he thinks you are
what wiabout the moderate republican who s are willing to go along with the white house at this point? there is a group of them, maybe close to 20 who are actively saying i ve had enough. to those of houston have covered them in the hallways or folks back home. he this even met with the speaker. he was concerned enough that he brought them in series of small groups. however, saying that they are willing to vote for this clean bill with no strings attached and actually pushing, demanding the speaker to bring that up are too very different things. even some of those who are the most vocal, lack of a better way to say the. they won t put their vote where their mouth is. they won t buck the leadership on the procedural votes they have to to get what they want which is that clean bill. so we re not actually seeing it yet. i will say that i talk to some privately in these halls just today who said they are going to give the speakers and the leaders a little more time but
so what will it take to get the government up and running again? well, in raw numbers, 17 house republicans would have to side with the democrats. by one count in the huffington post, 13 have already said they d pass a bill to fund the government, no strings attached. to continue to hurt our economy and our men and women in uniform, to advance those two goals, we ll fight another day. but i do think we ought to stop where we are now and go ahead and fund the government and get us back on track. now, many of these republicans face difficult paths to re-election in 2014 and could be hurt if voters turn even more strongly against the republican strategy. let s bring in a democratic strategist and former edwards communications director, john feary is of quinn-gillespie communications. john, do you have a good sense of this? how many republicans do you