Senate house negotiators dealing with a package that would fund the government through the fall of 2015. Costco shares are lower in the market after expectations missed. Mastercard boosting its dividend. First up, the latest aca enrollment numbers are out. Lets go to Bertha Coombs. Reporter good morning, carl. More than a quarter of Million People nationally signed up for National Health insurance plans through the exchanges in november, that according to the latest data from the obama administration, that brings the total to 365,000 for the first two months of open enrollment. As the administration was making fixes on the site, enrollment ramped up with more than 110,000 people signing up for coverage last month, more than four times the number of people able to make it through the system online in october. Number of key states operating on the federal exchange are accelerating, but not hugely. More than 18,000 in florida, up from 3,500 in october. In texas, the numbers are still low with 14,000 in october, up from 300, and pennsylvania up to 11,000, up from 2,200. But along with todays report from obamas administration, the current total nationally when you look at our thermometer is just over 450,000 people. Here when you start looking at some of the individual states, you see the stark differences from the big states on the federal exchange. Take a look at california. 107,000. In new york the total is over 69,000. And even in kentucky, over 15,500. Thats a lot better than some of the biggest states on healthcare. Gov and it really shows the difference with the web sites that have been work well, not to mention the real push from the local administration to really get people enrolled. In time this is going to be good fodder for secretary kathleen sebelius, set to testify before the energy and Commerce Committee at 10 00 a. M. Eastern. She has also called this morning tore t for the Inspector General to investigate the botched awarding of contracts to contractors. Thank you, Bertha Coombs. We do have a budget deal. House and Senate Negotiators adealing to an 85 billion deal. The pack and includes 63 billion of sequester relief, 23 billion in net deficit reduction. Heres paul ryan speaking on the deal last night. I think this agreement is a clear improvement on the status quo. This agreement makes sure we dont have a Government Shutdown scenario in january, makes sure we dont have another shut down scenario in october, it makes sure we dont lurch from crisis to crisis. Jim, one this evening being said, it probably going to add to gdp, maybe clears the deck for a december taper if the fed is so inclined. If you combine this with what bertha is reporting, youd think washington could be a source of good news. Im a little suspicious. The future is not up a lot. I wonder whether we are not going to be fooled again by washington. Theres an unemployment issue coming up. The reason i put it out like this is when i see ryan and mary together, thats terrific. But if i were senator cruz, if i were someone who just out of nowhere were someone who had come up and grabbed the mic, i dont know if id like the deal. It did take about 20 minutes for marco rubio to put out a press release saying the deal is no good. Kantor liked it, mcconnell is silent. Im not a political guy. But i do know from following politics that when you think that washington is going to be a help to the stock market before some sort of crisis, thats not been the way its been since 2009. Right. I mean, you have to frame it as progress. I realize its very small but for a dysfunctional government thats been unable to even come up with a farm bill, at least you could make an argument that, well, maybe we start to see some other progress . I think that theres reason to be optimistic. I always want to temper it because there are people who say 2014 coming, thats an election year. It does no one good in the republican party, i think, to be able to really embrace what would ultimately be the president. I also know that theres some senate seats in the south for democrats that theyve got to win. I dont know whether they feel that right now people want consensus in the country. I just am surprised to see that the futures arent up huge. It says that the people who are saying, you know what, this is small, its progress but there are many more stumbles. The Washington Post called it little more than a ceasefire yesterday. I like that. And there are arguments it leads to an immediate increase in federal spending, but some of the fees are taxes in a different kind of form. Well talk to Chris Van Hollen later and get his take on why the market maybe theyve already priced it in. We had this year of good feeling in the stock market. Maybe that was to anticipate the progress in washington. Again, i just think we would owe the viewer dont want to get the viewers disserved here. When we say, listen, washingtons over and then senator cruz comes on and says this is the worst thing thats ever happened and the next thing you know Huffington Post has 17 articles about cruz and we pronounce this deal done and senator cruz is very, very powerful and we havent heard from him yet, why should we think that paul ryan and murray have solved this . Is th has that been a good bet . Not in the past. Not in the past. Sequester, we get that off the table and its more spending. Anything is better than the four sequester dont they want lower taxes . Tea party . They havent bigger issues. Thats all im saying. Does anyone want to deal with stocks . Yeah, lets get to the stock market. Lets do that. Costco, they are lower right now, shares of costco. The Company ReportedFirst Quarter profit below wall street estimates. The wholesale clubs revenues were up to 425 million lets just say they grew. But it showed signs growth was slowing. Analysts had been expecting higher growth as well. Costco, theyre investing in expenses, gna growth 7. 2 i believe it was. Some of the miss analysts were saying were the result of preannounce sales shortfalls but they thought theyd make up for the weakness. Maybe they didnt quite do that by getting, you know, higher gross margin and cutting more expenses. Right. Warehouse preopening expenses. Weve been seeing this more and more when we hear stores are going to be open, that often means stores are going to grow faster. I did not think costco is that bad. Weve been fooled a lot, people say negative things and then you listen to the Conference Call and you hear the growth is accelerating or maybe theyre doing better. Interesting article in the wall street journal today. Be careful when they report. And i get up pretty early. I give kelly evans a hard time about that all the time. Basically the shelf life is only a few hours before the story is moot. I think kelly was a guy. Asa i said, listen, i cant write a story until it comes out. Then i realized she was a really nice person and i felt bad. Comp prices have come up, foreign was a factor and then the membership fee, not only are they holding on to members but theyre managing to get other members to come on board, too. Theyre continuing the job senegal did. The stock fell 118 to 111. Then found out plus five versus walmart, versus target. Lets not prejudge this. Mastercard up 3 this morning after the Company Announced a 10 for 1 split and authorized a 3. 5 billion buyback. I was talking to kayla tausche, who will join us later. The number of splits this year relative to past averages, has been low. I remember talking about salesforce. C salesforce. Com. Had Alliance Data systems on the show the other day, we will never split the stock. Why so we will never split the stock. Google and priceline, retail people want to split. Best buy auto zone was what was theyve taken the share count from 65 to 34 million over the lafour years. This religion of no splitting came from Warren Buffett. If Warren Buffett tomorrow were to announce a 10for1 split, believe me i hate to get back to that era where people were point being at splits as some sort of fundamental its changed for the positive. I mean, that was a sad day. Thats true. You take a pencil, you break it in two pieces, you have two large pencils . No. Back in the 90s, the person bringing you your meals, whatever, i hear its going to split. I agree that splits are cosmetic, unlike avon, which is clearly trouble in cosmetics this morning. But there are a lot of Retail Investors who say i dont want to buy one share. I remember when leon coop aerma came to my office in 1984 and say Berkshire Hathaway is a 200 stock, you ought to tell people to buy. I said im going to sell and it tell people to buy for 200 . It went to 100,000 that was good. I know a mom and pop who bought three shares of Berkshire Hathaway who have retired nicely on it. Go to omaha once a year. Thats what its all about. Yes, it is. I dont think thats wrong. I dont want to lose sight of the fact that he has pioneered and done many things right. If your template was to do what buffett did, you would be laughing at what mastercard did. These guys are not lightweights. Theyre heavyweights and they want more people in their stocks. The north face, you buy the jacket, but not the stock, not if it 200. People think it like a mark down. Weve had some stocks that are markdowns but unfortunately they were collapses. Well talk about joy global you get a market split, as you say. Ooh, i like that. Rite aid had one of those and sprint had a market split. Those are bad split. Nokia and lucent back from the dead. Those were split repeatedly. Those were like 7for1 splits. Except you didnt get the 7. When we come back, is discovery looking to by Scripps Networks . Later well take you to an event where spotify is set to reveal their biggest changes of the year. Again, boehner talking at 10 00 a. M. On the budget. More squawk on the street from post 9 in a moment. Thanks to you im much obliged from garage to global. On the ground, in the air, even into space. We repaid every dollar america lent us. And gave america back a profit. Were here to keep our promises. To help you realize a better tomorrow. From the families of aig, happy holidays. Well see how much theyre going to be pup the answer a lot. A number of stories out this morning, late yesterday beginning with i think it was variety. Com saying that citing the source that discovery is considering a lot of conversations overall. Its not a very large premium, would want to use largely its own stock, which is a very high multiple stock versus scripps at least versus today and then would want to go about extracting those synergies i discussed. The pitch would be to the family, hey, youre going to roll into a combined company thats going to be a lot stronger and going to benefit you over the long term. There is perhaps an expectation maybe that kind of thing can happen. With the stock running up, one has to wonder whether they at all would be interested in chasing it. I saw the story break last night, stock was immediately up 10. I said to myself anyone who knows this is going to jail. So how does it start . I dont know where the leak comes from. In this case we should point out its variety. Its variety. Com. On a week wb there the ubs ma conference i spoke zaslav. Nobody is talking about structure of a deal, nobody is talking about specifics of a deal, they are just talking much more about or i should say the idea being, hey, if we can get a low premium deal, extract all those synergies, help the familiar lip out as we think rolling into this new combined company, well do it. Its rational. Dave, your interviews have been unbelievable. The interview with bewkes yesterday from time warner, hes saying incredible things about the future in cable. You asked him, is this the end cable . He was wild about it. Theyre all talking about multiplatform devices and video viewing in all different forms and the fact that hes very frustrated that video demand has not been rolled out effectively by sun cable system. I said this makes a ton of sense to do this deal after i listened to what bewkes said. The question is do you want more leverage in the consolidated cable industry. Thats another question well probably get to at some point. In the meantime time to get ahead of the curve with cramer as we count down to the opening bell. Youre is not doing too bad either. More squawk on the street from the nyse straight ahead. In todays markets, a lot can happen in a second. With fidelitys guaranteed onesecond trade execution, we route your order to up to 75 Market Centers to look for the best possible price maybe even better than you expected. Its all part of our goal to execute your trade in one second. Im derrick chan of fidelity investments. Our onesecond trade execution is one more innovative reason serious investors are choosing fidelity. Now get 200 free trades when you open an account. In a we believe outshining the competition tomorrow requires challenging your Business Inside and out today. At cognizant, we help forwardlooking Companies Run better and run different to give your customers every reason to keep looking for you. So if youre ready to see opportunities and see them through, we say lets get to work. Because the future belongs to those who challenge the present. The weather outside is frightful but the fire is so delightful and sense weve no place to go, let it snow, let it snow, let it snow its actually bright and sunny out there. A little chilly as we start our mad dash on wednesday. The cold weather has helped a lot of you. Giii on last night, cold weather fantastic for them in overcoats. Cisco. The csco keeps moving. Citi rolls out telecom coverage. Outright sell on cisco and a buy on alcatel and nokia. They were supposed to be left for dead and cisco was supposed to be the endtoend solution, all things internet solution. This is directly saying ciscos lost its way. And the fact that the other syy went up 20 on the deal two roads. Is this the first of many analysts to come that are going to give up on this thing . I think people are starting to recognize theres a problem in management. When i went out to dream force, theyre still revering cisco. But the analysts have had it with the high buybacks, theyve had it with dont worry were not losing any router business. The analysts are giving up and this is a company that was the biggest darling. It reminds me of microsoft during the swoon. We all have microsoft now, we hate it. Cisco is becoming a hated stock. Management change. Thats in the air. Thats what they want. Hes not going anywhere, chambers. Youve been talking about that. You have not been unguarded at all. No, and Herb Greenberg on street side talking about the worst executives, John Chambers name came up. This is so different from what weve had for years and years and years. So next time they report a decent quarter, youre not going to change your tune . Yeah, if they would do it but the guidance last time was so horrible. Were going to mention joy global later. I keep thinking when you cut and cut guidance youre eventually going to beat guidance. No. The opening bell is about four minutes away. Stay tuned. A lot more squawk on the street right after this. [ male announcer ] if we could see energy. What would we see . The billions of gallons of fuel that get us to work. Wed see all the electricity flowing through the devices that connect us and teach us. Wed see that almost 100 of medical plastics are made from oil and natural gas. And an industry that supports almost 10 million american jobs. Life takes energy. And no one applies more technology to produce American Energy and refine it more efficiently than exxonmobil. Because using energy responsibly has never been more important. Energy lives here. Became big business overnight . Like, really big. Then expanded . Or their new product tanked . Or not . What if they embrace new technology instead . Imagine a companys future with the future of trading. Company profile. A Research Tool on thinkorswim. From td ameritrade. Youre watching cnbc squawk on the street live from the Financial Capital of the world. The opening bell is within a minute or two. For those fans of round numbers, our producer points out the s p this morning almost exactly 400 points above the 52week closing low, jim. Back from december 28th of last year. Not bad. The journey. I remember i was looking at some numbers, s p, was at 880 at one point. This is a tremendous journey with different players constantly shifting. A lot of news regarding the budget on the hill. Well hear from john boehner in about half an hour. Lets look at the opening bell. Down here on the big board, auto home. Well talk to the ceo about the ipo in a few minutes. Over at the nasdaq, dhx media and the characters from yogabagaba. I remember dancing the competition for those young eyeballs, jim. Gees, you want to get them hooked. You didnt box with those care terse. Im hearing stories about you boxing. Dont do that to the kids. The kids love yogaba. The war against coal continues virtually around the world, particularly the United States. This was a disaster. Estimate 367, now goes to 350. The only thing good was the actual earnings held up. So lets give them that. The actual earnings were not disappointing, but that said the secular decline in coal, follow this lawsuit from the states in the northeast that have been burned by the midwest Coal Companies because i think coals days are doomed. We mentioned costco before the bell. Urban is the third biggest gainer on the s p. They had a negative quarter previously, urban. Urban is up, its down, its up, its down. Get a consistent view, people. If you like urban, you like anthropology and you like free people, which are doing fabulous and you like the online but youre betting on the Flagship Store turning. If the Flagship Stores turn, theyre going lower, not higher. Youve watched 3m for a few weeks now. It was the lagger in the dow last week