Shooting in newtown, connecticut, communities across the nation and around the world pay tribute to the victims. And the National Rifle association speaks out for the First Time Since the attack. It proposes a controversial plan to prevent similar mass shootings. Lets go out front. Good evening, everybody. I am Soledad Obrien in forever inburnett tonight. Out front this evening, lowering expectatio expectations, just ten days until we fall off the fiscal cliff and no deal in site. Tonight president obama urged congress to broker a scaled down deal. I just speak to speaker boehner, and i also met with senator reid. In the next few days a asked leaders of congress to work towards a package that prevents a tax hike on middle class americans, protects Unemployment Insurance for 2 million americans and lays the groundwork for further work on both growth and deficit reduction. Thats an achievable goal. That can get done in ten days. Yesterday the House Speaker john boehner failed to garner enough support from his own party to even hold a vote on his plan to raise taxes for those with an income over 1 million. While we may have not been able to get the votes last night, to avert 99. 81 of the tax increases, i dont think they werent taking that out on me. They were dealing with the perception that somebody might accuse them of raising taxes. Outfront tonight, chief White House CorrespondentJessica Yellin and dana bash. Ladies, nice to see both of you. Jessica, well start with you. The president s message was short and sweet and kind of basic. What do you think is different this time around in what he is saying . Well, whats different is it is less than two weeks until the new year and the president is about to leave for hawaii, and congress is going to be gone for christmas, too, and you know there is no more effective motivator for capitol hill than pressure, and they have it right now. What the president has done today is he has laid out a scaled down version of a fiscal cliff deal, you know, keeping tax cuts in place for 98 of americans, extending Unemployment Insurance, and laying out a plan, a down payment on a promise to do entitlement reform and also made a pitch to the American People to only blame republicans if there is no deal. So it is a twopronged attack that he makes right before taking off on vacation. So right now, you know, the plan is basically to keep the pressure on, and we know both sides are planning to come back at some point after christmas and try to get something worked out, but no overt optimism coming really from the aides on either side right now. Well see, soledad. I will tell you folks right now are planning to make new years eve plans here in washington, d. C. Were not so sure were getting out of town yet. They should be plans you can cancel if case you have to go right back to work. Let me ask a question. Jessica says pressure is a great motivator. Talk about pressure last night on speaker boehner, couldnt get enough support from his own party for his plan. What does that mean for any kind of bipartisan plan they might be working out . It really does illustrate how difficult it is going to be for democrats to even achieve what the president laid out tonight, a scaled down version. The speaker himself said a couple of times today that he believes that the reason why he didnt get even the majority of the caucus to support him was because of a lot of difficulty voting to raise taxes, voting for anything that can be perceived as a tax increase. Well, what the president is talking about even scaled down version is definitely raising taxes. And raising taxes on people making 250,000 or more, at least households, so thats going to be difficult to do. Thats why reality check here, talking to democrats and republicans, it seems as though theyre going through the motions, that theyre going to talk about talking when they get back and get back from the holiday and at this point both sides are saying that they are pretty confident were going it on go over the fiscal cliff. And the president i thought had a weird moment, jessica, in his remarks where he started talking about everyone should have egg nog and christmas cookies and then think about what theyre going to do before they think about coming back to doing some kind of deal before we go over that cliff. Were talking about ten days there. Do you really think there is time for all of that . There is time to get a deal done. There is always time in washington because if they want to if they to want get it resolved, they will. Thats what we learned. There is not a whole lot of it. The expectation is on, say, maybe the 27th they will have if they have a negotiated deal quickly, they can ram it through the senate if it can be done and turn it over to the house and try to resolve something by the 31st. It could be right down to the wire. You and i could be talking on air with dana at 11 00 on december 31st unfortunately. Jessica yellin and dana bash, nice to have you with me tonight. Appreciate it. Want to get right to the political panel. Tim kearney is a senior Political Columnist for the Washington Examiner and matt lewis a senior contribute for for daily caller. Com. Nice to see you both. Lets start with you, tim. Speaker boehner couldnt even get enough of his own Party Support for what he was proposing. Strategically i would like to know what was the entire point of that and since he couldnt do that, what does that mean for any future maneuver he will try . I spent today talking to some republican members and republican staffers and they did question his strategy. They said why are we trying to pass a bill that has what they consider to be an implicit tax hike, let the tax rates expire and go up to 39. 6 , why will we pass that when we know harry reid will kill it in the senate or obama will veto it . Why go out on a limb and abandon the idea republicans never allow a tax hike for something just going to be an attempt at a strategic thing, and the reason they thought it would fail is it would involve trying to blame obama if we went over the fiscal cliff and republicans dont think the media would accept that narrative. I dont know. You would know better than i would about how the media would react to that. That was a feeling on the republicans part they couldnt successfully pin obama with going over the cliff. I never speak for the media. I speak only for myself. I dont know. It is going to really depend, dont you think . Matt, you have a column back in december that said john boehner cat herder and i was thinking the cats got the better of the speaker. What do you think that means for his future . Does he remain as speaker . Does someone else come in and take over because it is an indication he cant control his own group . Well, it certainly wasnt a vote of confidence. I think, john boehner was right. He gave that press Conference Today and said, you know, people like me, it is true, i talked to congressman and they like boehner and the problem is they dont respect him enough to listen to him and they dont fear him and it is sad if you think about it. There is a structural problem that i think is sort of implicit here. The conservative base doesnt trust the Republican Leadership, and therefore the Republican Leadership is never given the leverage to compromise, and therefore the American Public sees republicans as sort of stubborn and horrible p. R. , but imagine being john boehner, the son of a bar keeper, a bar owner, and you want to be speaker of the house your entire career and like sam rayburn and tip oneill and have all of that power and then you become the speaker and your own team doesnt even pass the bill that you want to pass. It has to be horrible for them. I heard criticism from republican members maybe they have could played it better. Even after he made the decision to pass plan b, there wasnt a lot of outreach to say what can we do, what are your concerns. There were conservative republicans that wanted amendments to be voted on on the floor and they were told, no, youre not getting these amendments. This is the way it is. You follow me. That wasnt the kind of way that tom delay, when they wanted to win a vote, they would start two or three weeks out starting to say what do we need to do working with every member f youre there late at night, serving you pizza, and he had harder measures to win over votes but there was a lot of idea the current whip operation, the leadership, doesnt have the skill to win over waivering votes. Well see what happens. Ten days and counting, gentlemen. Thanks for being with me, tim kearney and matt lewis. The nra speaks out for the First Time Since the sandy hook shootings and proposing adding armed guards to schools. Does it add up . Well take a look. A long time newtown resident comes out front to reflect on the tragedy and tell us how the town is mourning and were heading into one of the busiest travel weekends in the entire year and how the extreme weather could delay your trip even more. Thats ahead. Is a complete multn designed for mens Health Concerns as we age. 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Steve doolan of the Michigan Coalition for responsible gun owners. Mark, i will start with you. You heard from the nra a real focus not so much on guns, really talking about Mental Illness. They talked about tracking people who are mentally ill and pretty much everything, not about taking away guns but adding more guns. What did you make of their news Conference Today . You know, as somebody whos watched the organization for a while, my dad was a licensed gun dealer in colorado, i know a lot of nra members, it was a really surprising performance. The nra is usually quite smart. Then again, theyve never been under pressure like this. The truth is, it struck me as incoherent and bordering on detached from reality. Talking about things lapierre gets paid a lot of money to talk about on a regular basis. It was not the time to say things even nra members dont believe. I think it is important as we have this debate that nra members are not the washington leadership. Theyre two very different things. Nra members want commonsense gun laws. The washington leadership fights very hard against them. Youre going to see that rift widening after todays weird performance. Heres a bit what was he said from his news Conference Today, Wayne Lapierre. I called congress to act immediately to appropriate whatever is necessary to put Armed Police Officers in every Single School in this nation and to do it now to make sure that blanket safety is in place when our kids return to school in january. Is there any research or evidence that in fact arming Security Guards, arming teachers, arming administrators, would be an effective solution here . No. Theres no research that says that putting more firearms in the hands of trained or untrained professionals in a shootout is going to make anybody whos sitting around safer. But theres lots of evidence that it wont. Let me tell you a couple things. First of all, in my home state of colorado, at columbine there was a Deputy Sheriff there, there was another Security Guard nearby, they were not able to stop what happened. I can tell you the International Association of chiefs of police said earlier today they thought it was about impossible as a budgetary matter and unwise as a Public Safety matter to think the way youre going to stop the epidemic of gun violence that is killing children my sons age is to put more guns into the situation. Lets get to steve doolan from the Michigan Coalition for responsible gun owners. Weve not been able to fix his shot but he is joining us by phone now. You heard what Wayne Lapierre had to say. I was surprised. Ive got to be honest with you. That he didnt tackle any of the things that have been pitched over the last week, really, about controlling guns, changing gun laws, in any way, shape or form. Well, i have to say when i heard waynes proposal, and i watched it on Television Like everyone else, and i dont speak for the nra, i thought, how can anyone disagree with the idea of putting an armed Police Officer in every school . It seems to make perfect sense to me. It seems plainly logical. One of the things he also said was there should be some kind of a database opeople who are mentally ill, which i find it interesting, because certainly as you know, folks really dont want to keep a data base of people who are buying weapons or track those guns in general. That seemed to be completely contradictory, steve. Well, we do have the National Background check system in place now. The states report correctly those folks who have been adjudicated to be a danger to themselves or others. It seems to work pretty well. So i understand theres a terminology issue. One of the things i do is teach a class called gun control seminar. And my law students write papers every term. Many of those papers over the years have been about the fact that the category of Mental Illness is very poorly defined but generally theres agreement, im not a Mental Health professional, but the Research Says theres general agreement mentally ill people as a group arent necessarily dangerous, its a subset of folks who actually have been found to be dangerous. And the way the system works right now is if a Court Determines that an individual is a danger to him or herself or others, then that person is disqualified from purchasing a firearm. As you know, there are tremendous loopholes in those background checks. There are plenty of people who are able to buy guns and dont have to go through a background check. Mark, lets go back to you. What do you make of this proposal that Wayne Lapierre put on the table about folks, and i agree with steve, im not sure how he was defining Mental Illness and how youd even know who was mentally ill, how youd keep a database, if that would violate anybodys right to privacy, what do you think of that proposal . Well, it was an odd one that wed not heard before, so we havent had a chance to analyze it. But a couple things are important i think. The first is that we already effectively have, as the other guest from michigan said, the National Instant