It takes 60 votes to make things happen. You find yourself if youre willing to try to solve problems. Seeing whats happening in my state senate, it well not ever function with what we now have in place. It is not going to. And im going to do everything that i can. This past recess i spent a week traveling the country. I have never done that. I want to see the send function again. I want to see estivate things. The majority gets a set the agenda but the minority had their opportunity to amend. What that means is you have to take tough votes. Senator reid is unwilling to announce the he is on the land for his majority members to be in a position of taking tough votes which is what this is all about. I understand that there will be all kinds of ways that minorities will attempt to have things heard that lets face it, less think about this, the biggest Foreign Relations issue facing our nation that has come about in recent times. One that we have been dealing with for 20 years, we have something occurring in the United States senate is kept from debating that issue. That is totally reprehensible. If the president does not like what the senate and house of representatives has to say, he can veto it. I dont understand. There are some many issues that have been this way. The numbers of minority amendments that we have had in the last six months, i dont know, five or six, five or six maybe. That is beyond belief. I understand the frustration that people have been the avenues that people are taking. Unfortunately because we have someone who is willing to debate the major issues of the day. Concerned about the fact that there are no more than 40 ambassadors who have been waiting more than 100 days. When they get to the full senate and will be held up. What a you going delicate this done if anything . To your republican colleagues who are concerned, not having ambassadors and some of these countries, saudi arabia as one of them, what if anything to you doing . We want to move back as quickly as we can adjust tell whether from secretary cheri yesterday thinking me for moving the nominees as quickly through as leah. They want to get there kids in school. The kids and not coming midyear. It was uncomfortable for some members to do that, but it seemed like the right thing to do. One of the things and i dont know of this has been discussed publicly or not. At the end of the year you know because you cover these things closely with typically move out a ton of nominees. There was already an agreement before the notable November November 20th action to move for the nominees through by unanimous consent. What has happened is they take this unprecedented action, and you understand that he asked the parliamentarian that he appointed if he could do something parliamentarian said no. He then moves to override that with 51 votes. What has happened is the leader, leader mikhail has informed using other a examples which is the time to debate. Again, senator reid actually cost the state department nominees so, you know, it is unfortunate. Hopefully at some point we will return to the rules that have been long established. This type of thing has not happened in 200 years of Senate Activity or in the middle of the session Something Like this occurred. I will say, i believe that if mcconnell is the majority leader after this session is over you will see how people are able to use the rule it does mean you have to work all week long. Does not it does mean you dont work just three days a week. It does mean a you have got to use, as you mentioned, smelling of the jet fuel at the end of the weak to cause the end of a debate on a bill. There are ways of doing that. Other leaders have done it and it is unfortunate. The senator has taken the action that he has taken which has had the impact of now as having these empty posts because obviously if you understand his position, though he dislike overseeing in Russia Committee gave no push back from the United States. Why not do the things that im doing. If you dont have any push back and obviously people see the way to do even more of those things. Run down every one of those nominees. That will let the pressure of a little bit at a time because as i mentioned there is unanimous consent agreement to let these through with no. Because of what the senator did things have slowed down. Senator, you have this morning. I was just wondering if you could talk about the relations they you see between the white house and the democrats. The people back, did not enjoy it. Im not going to the but in the big picture would it be helpful to have those again . I tell you, look, i wake up every day. You have to. Okay. You know, is a brand new day. Good nights sleep. Lets go. What a privilege it is to represent people of this country. Candidly, lets face it, i represent tennessee, but the things that i am involved in i am not a parochial senator. And focus on the big issue of the day. And tennessee has gotten used to that, not because of someone like myself, but we have gotten good centers in tennessee in the past and they expect them to be involved in the big issues of the day. So i wake up with optimism. I will tell you, the dinners that we had, they were good. The president handled himself very good. Top people. He knew the policies that people had put forth. Aware of who they were. I have to tell you, he did a good job of these dinners. That led to, as you know, the group meetings. I was one of five or six senators that ended that meeting with the white house multiple times to try to achieve some type of fiscal reform. I have said this to the folks we were dealing with. I think have said this publicly. That process, believe it or not, at the end the meetings ended in august. And a very pleasant person to be around. People ask me what it is like. It was like a saturday round of golf. It was a lot of fun. It really was. Kind of interesting. Of think anyone ran down to put it in the hall. We had to quit on 15 because we had as said of. The president was busy visibly wanting to play. I enjoyed collecting 20 that he lost. But the talks broke down for us. Was evident to me that they were never serious. We put a lot of effort into offering very specific proposals i do not know if you remember, and there is no reason that you would. I wrote a detailed bill about one year and three months ago. Very, very detailed. You know, you have all these gain meetings. And i think any of us ever saw word of legislative language. Retook it upon ourselves to write a very detailed bill that addressed all of these bipartisan daunts. And i gave it to the white house, pelosi, reid, and said, look, use these. Hes had been scored. Bipartisan solutions. We used many of those in the presentations of the white house. At the end of the day in the last meeting it was evident, the last meeting that we had with them was about one thing. Is no white house really interested in doing this things in intense form of way to save medicare . And to deal with the issues are you really interested in that . And the answer was no, we are not. They are not interested. And so we left the meetings. What they did was immediately they sometimes forget that we talk to our friends on the other side of the aisle. I mean, you know, i know that we have not accomplished much together, but we talk to our friends on the other side of the aisle and immediately they got on the phone and reported in the wall street journal. I dont know if you go back and read the comments, but we said nice things. We could not get there but we appreciated. What they said was the reason we got nowhere was the republicans would not raise taxes. That was not what the meeting was about. A meeting was about are you really willing to address the issues of medicare. Today we have people over their lifetime, 120,000 as a couple in medicare taking out 359,000 out of medicare which is relevant. It does not work. People pay them for onethird of the cost. So i would say that, i would not engage in those conversations that power them because i do not think that they were ever earned i think it was optics. It was disappointing. If anything, when i left there, it broke down. Immediately thereafter we then had this eerie in crisis. Just a few weeks later the president asked us to, first of all, it appeared to me that we unilaterally were going to embark on activities. The president then asked for us to write an authorization for use of force which we did, and i was glad to do. One of the highlights of my time was working with menendez and others to craft something to pass on a vote out of the senate. Then we went down the path. So i would say and unless you are serious about solving problems. Unless you are serious about stretching your base, which i would say this president is afraid to stretch is based, appealing to the base right now has been a problem. That is why we have not had the problem to solve the major problems of the day. He is afraid of is based, not willing to take his basin to stretch it into a place where he actually reaches an accommodation with the aside. I would say, please dont do that again. Unless you are in earnest wanted to sell a problem, dont do that again. Youre better off not acting like you want to solve a problem when you really not. That breaks it down. Senator, another question. I was wondering if you know if you influence the way you gave them a lot to think about. Nothing wrong with that. I think the biggest impact on the election first of all, and has been widely reported that when i made those comments about the those that had been cast there were 1300 votes cast. And when i made those comments the local entity, the volkswagen plan, volkswagen in germany, with the volkswagen plan, by the way, made in germany cannot volkswagen, not vote light in chattanooga. But they immediately said came out and said that the outcome of the election would have no impact on whether the plant was built, the additional line was put there are not. In some ways that was a little bit of a victory. I did not like that comment coming out because i believe that the comments that i made were absolutely true. I would never let me tell you this, as much as i dont like the uaw and what they have done to our country, i would never, ever in my Public DiscourseSay Something that i did not believe to be 100 percent true, never. I would never say that. Never would that happen. It is not worth it to me. This is a Public Service to me. So the company immediately came madden said that regardless of the outcome the vote would not have an impact. In some ways that was a major victory. It was a major victory begins inside the plant the uaw was telling everyone unless they organize, unless the uaw took them over the plant was not coming near. 300 votes left. The biggest impact was those people on the ground inside the plants, employees that new, that understood that the uaw was only there for one reason, survival. It was nothing, nothing that the uaw offered them to enhance male or their families lives. The community understood full well the negative impact that they would have on our community in our ability to attract jobs. I dont know. Did the president , and on friday he said, i cannot believe people care more about german stockholders than they do the wages of the people who work in the plan. You all saw that. But i dont know. At the end of the day i think what we did was paid attention. How many people did not read the paper . I dont know. The volkswagen plan every morning, riveted around the papers trying to decide. They are reading. Every morning. Add just dont know. At think the bigger impact really was the grass roots efforts that took place within the plan where people had to in between and embrace, and form below the fact that and most employees got it. All they were was dollar signs he had been selling out there saying that they could not survive with that organizing the south. I think you know that the uaw had to sell 300 million in assets just to survive. Theyre selling investments just to survive. I dont know. Who knows. I think that Public Officials should be able to say what they think, absolutely. The only people that were condoned to officially be inside the plant was the uaw. Nine people what questions to mobile reroute time. Thank you for coming. I hope you come back. Appreciated. Thank you so much. [inaudible conversations] him they call this the most risky veterans veterans reform bill in decades. It touches on a lot of things. It is a major expansion of the a. Creates a dental Pilot Program to see if the v. A. Can in the future make it feasible to provide full dental care for veterans. It is an expansion of the v. A. Caregiver plan for wooded veterans. It increases the eligibility of instate tuition under the g. I. Bill. It loosens the instate. Esidency requirements authorizes 27 medical facility leases in 18 states, along with puerto rico. Among the other things it does, it finishes off the repeal of the cost of living exemption that congress has been chipping away at the last couple of years. It has been on the senate floor for a couple of days. What was the roadblock that it . There were a couple of things. What eventually stopped it in its tracks was there was a budget point of order made by Jeff Sessions on the budget committee. Basically, because the fiscal year we are in right now, it increased the budget by 261 million dollars. They voted 5641, four shy of the number they needed to waive that. You tweeted about that. Why did another republican support it . There were a number of things. A lot of them want to stick to those budget caps in the budget law. A number of them do not like the bill in general and just thought it was an opportunity to put that on the shelf. A number of republicans expressed concern about expanding v. A. , that would flood an overburdened system. A number expressed concern with the way that senator sanders wanted to pay for the bill. There were a number of issues. Not just the mandatory number. One of the headline grabbing issues was the issue with iran. What was that about . Basically, what republicans have been circling the wagons on in the last few days is an amendment by Richard Burke on the veteran affairs committee. It is a substitute amendment that would narrow some of those benefit revisions. It had another round of iran sanctions. More or less what was proposed by senators menendez and kirk in the last couple of months. Their contention was that it had 59 cosponsors, and they thought that it was time that a got a vote on the floor. It did not. You talked about chairman sanders. You attended his press conference. You tweeted he rejects the idea that the veterans bill was a political issue. Says it could have been a political winner for both parties. Any chance it will be revived . That is unclear at this point. The budget point of order against the bill was a pretty strong blow to the legislation. Under the rules now, because the point of order, it heads back to the committee. They have to now make corrections to the bill to comply with the budget law. Senator sanders said he will go back at it. And, we will have to see from there. This sent it back to committee. Connor obrien is a defense reporter for cq roll call. You can read his reporting it cqrollcall. Com. Follow that as well on twitter. Thank you for joining us. Thank you. President obama told president karzai there will be no u. S. Troop presence on the ground after 2015. Talking aboutng, the future of afghanistan. Live coverage from the u. S. Fridayte of peace starts at 9 15 eastern. The over Criminalization Task force was charged with improving current statutes. The new cspan. Org website makes it easier than ever to keep tabs on washington dc and share your finds the at facebook, twitter, and other social networks. Users in easy search functions. Clipsmake it easy to make and share them with your friends. You can send links to your video clips via email. Find the share tools or look for the green icon links throughout our site. Watch washington on the new cspan. Org. At a Democratic National committee meeting, Vice President joe biden urged fellow democrats not to apologize for the party policy decisions. The Vice President was critical of the gop. His remarks are 25 minutes. Mr. Vice president , on behalf i want to thank you for appearing on the beginning of seth meyers show the other night. We are proud of seth meyers. Thank you. [applause] i apologize i am late. This is one occasion i cannot blame the president. As debbie new, i usually have that as a legitimate excuse. Not today. That meeting was long over. Knows, ie chairman was a United States senator. I have to make one public admission. I still have an overwhelming prejudice to delaware. The delaware delegation asked to meet with me about an issue. I did it because my son is the attorney general. If it hurts him, i get indicted. [laughter] would you acknowledge i was joking when i said that . It is good to see you all. I know you have had good meetings that have been going on for a while. Im going to get to the point. I am here for to express reasons. I amhe president sincere. The firsone is, the 2014 election. The second one is, building the Democratic National committee inuit powerhouse that works 2016, 2018, 2020. I have committed to go anywhere because i am so tired of hearing about the demise of the Democratic Party. We are having trouble keeping up give me a break. There is no Republican Party. I wish there were. The president delivers the state of the union. Four comments. Why are we in trouble . Buddy john donal o and i ran ago, and he years is my great friend. I cant think of the time since i was elected in 72 where the majority of the American People agreed with us on every major issue we are for. That sounds like hyperbole, but think about it. Raising minimum wage, 71 . Early childhood education, 86 . Checks, 90 . Marriage equality 55 . Building the Affordable Care act instead of repealing it, 55 . Comprehensive Immigration Reform 60 of registered Republican Voters support it. 73 democrat. Ending the war in afghanistan. Before,never been there so what are we worried about . About is therried Koch Brothers and their friends bringing in millions and millions of dollars, but guys [applause] i want these guys to