Between christmas and new years. I do not know. Maybe they should finish their work. You will see some push in the next few days to get a small deal done. Viewers are fan of the process. Anything that gets done needs to be done quickly before new years to be signed into law. Today is the 27. And so you have a few days left for lawmakers to make a deal. The president s should land at some point. There is a 5 hour time difference. They have to figure out something. It seems likely will go over the cliff. It has been looking like that before the holiday, but certainly now, particularly if you remember for congress broke for the christmas break, speaker raynor was not able to get the backup plan through his caucus, so there was no pressure on democrats to try to counter that immediately. Senate democrats saying we passed a bill that raises tax rates on incomes over 250,000, we ran on this and this is what we are offering. House republicans were saying, no, we want to negotiate something, figure it out and send it to us. Someone is going to have to move. The question is, who . The president met with Senate Majority leader harry reid before going to hawaii and his offer was to extend the tax cuts for incomes under 250,000, extend Unemployment Insurance benefits, and the lady across and then delay the across the board automatic cuts that are supposed to start january 1. That seems to be a non starter with republicans. Its hard to see where we go from here. Host have they been talking over the christmas break at all . Also, one has been the role of what has been the role of senator Mitch Mcconnell . Guest the line that comes from the Speakers Office all the time is the line of communication remain open. I dont know how much talking they did as the president was in hawaii spending time with his family and the speaker was back home in ohio, i believe. I dont know that for sure. Everyone was doing their family time and not really working that significantly on something. I think there was probably some minimal conversation, but not a lot. As for the Senate Minority leader Mitch Mcconnell, i think that is a good one. A lot has been made in the past few days about him taking a higher profile role in these negotiations. While i dont like prognosticating into the future, we can look at the past in some of the previous negotiations of congress and the kind of role he has played. Almost all of these talks, whether it was about Government Shutdown in the spring of 2011 or the debt limit debate in the summer of 2011 or the payroll taxcut debate last year, those negotiations started at a level between the president and speaker but always broke down at that level and that pushed to the senate where harry reid and Mitch Mcconnell had to figure something out and get enough votes for it so they could give some cover to the House Republicans, who were joined by a large majority of House Democrats to get something done. The idea that we have come to this state is not necessarily surprising. That it has taken us so long to get there has probably frustrated everyone who wanted to take a holiday break. If Mitch Mcconnell wants to play ball, and i think theres a role for him to do so. When you speak with aids from from his office, they say we will get involved, but we would like to see some good faith offer from the majority leader. With aides from his office. Right now that process has not happened. As for for action today in the senate, its not going to be anything where they reached the fiscal cliff. But theres not enough agreement to have the rank and file members do anything. It is still at the top level leadership discussions. The senate is going to try to finish work on a sandy disaster aid supplemental bill which they have been trying to get done for weeks. They are hoping to finish that today and also trying to work on a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act authorization extension. Theres enough on the floor to keep them busy. The question is whether they will have something to vote on may be on christmas eve. On sunday Joe Lieberman indicated we would all be working new years eve. We will see that happens. Online, we have a special page set up related to the so called fiscal cliff. You could watch video of hearings and briefings. There is a live stream of comments from viewers and reporters. That is all at cspan. Org cli cliff. L it is a great resource for anyone to know the ins and outs of capitol hill. Julie watches cspan on verizon. Brought to you as a Public Service by your television provider. Dan burton is retiring from congress. He talked with cspan about his past investigations of the clinton investigation and the oversight role of congress. This is 30 minutes. How would you say the state is . It has changed a great deal. It is not the same as when i came 1983. There seemed to be more comedy. Tip oneill was speaker. I will never forget he was the first time he was on the floor raising cane with democrats. And he came down and started giving me the dickens. After that we became very good friends and played golf together. Bob michael was a wonderful leader. There was a spirit of camaraderie even though we had differences politically then that we do not have now. Now it is much more combative. I have a lot of friends on the democratic side of the aisle, very good friends. As far as working things out is not as easy as it used to be. What are some of the root causes . I think and i am not pointing fingers, when we went after jim wright, newt was the speaker and jim was forced out of office. They went after newt. The combat became very personal. That is one of the things that started this movement. Over time, i think it has become political as well as personal. Much more political and personal. She said raising cain, are you said raising cain. You will the gavel for the Oversight Committee and use that to raise the number of investigations especially of the Clinton Administration. What do you see as your legacy of that tenure . I think bill clinton, president clinton and hilary as secretary of state do not like me very much. I was chair of the government Oversight Committee during the time we were investigating whitewater and we were investigating Campaign Contributions that came from sources outside the United States and from various people. There was an awful lot to that. We had people testifying like johnny chung, they had contributed money to gain favor with the white house. There were other illegal contributions that we found. And they came into the kitchen at hong kong and said we wonder we like your president and we want to contribute to his campaign. The man who said that was the equivalent of the cia. These were people who were under oath and swore to this and we also had over 100 people take the fifth amendment or flee the country. There was a lot there. That is not to say that president clinton did not do some good things. He worked with Newt Gingrich and we got out from under some difficult financial problems but i do believe and i still believe there was some illegal activities that took place and we were unable to get the job done. Ive always said that janet reno was the greatest blocker than anybody i had ever seen in the National Football league. One thing ive learned was if youre the president and you want to protect your legacy and office you want to make sure you have an attorney general that will protect your back and janet reno, god bless her, she did that very effectively. I sent five criminals i thought were ironclad and she never moved on any of them. So i think the Clinton Administration did a lot of good things. I also think there were things that were done wrong. That should have been pursued and that is why we pursued them so diligently. I was criticized roundly, they made fun of a lot of things we did. That goes with the territory. When you want to explain to people about the investigations power of congress, how do you explain that role of congress . The congress has the responsibility to ferret waste, fraud, and abuse. Were supposed to oversee that. Most committees do not do a good job of it. When i became chairman, newt charge me with being aggressive in a number of investigations. I investigated the food and drug in restoration and the fbi and the white house and we found there were people in jail for crimes they did not commit. J. Edgar hoover knew about it. There were a lot of things that were wrong in government that were not readily known. We had our investigations and we were very aggressive. What did we do . I issued over 1200 subpoenas. I do not think anyone will ever touch that record. I am not sure it is a good record but it was when i thought it was one i thought was necessary. We wanted to get to the bottom of a lot of these things and i think it paid off. We not only put pressure on the clinton demonstration, i put pressure on the chief counsel at the white house. I know you probably heard of Whitey Bolger who was captured recently. His brother was one of the people we have before committee working on that. There were a lot of things we did. That is the responsibility of congress. The oversight of the executive branch and the agencys ies of government is extremely important. No matter what you believed, what you think, there is waste or fraud and criminal activity and abuse in any government. And you have to take a hard look at it. With that hyperpartisanship you were talking about and its true causes, did your aggressive stance for investigation contribute to that and if so, is that the price you think is necessary to pay . I think that it did contribute that. You are stepping on toes. When you go after the president of the United States, he had you had better have armor plate. They will put a stop to your investigation. Which they did. They contacted girls i dated in school, they went into everything. That is one of the things you have to expect when you are aggressive and it does cause problems. But nevertheless, i have no regrets about it. If youre going to do your job and do it to the best of your ability and live up to your commitments to the constitution, you have to be ready to take the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. What did you learn through the experience of the powers of the executive and the powers of congress . As i said before, i learned the president of the United States, if he has an attorney general that will stand behind him, there is very little that can be accomplished as far as bringing illegal activity to the fore and to justice. Richard nixon, he went to his attorney general and did not get support. That was during watergate. I do not think he would have left office. I felt we had strong evidence of illegal activities. Janet reno protected him and i think that ended up helping him a lot. But i want to point out if bill or hillary is the attention, is paying any attention, they did some good things and i think the economy of the country was helped because he worked with Newt Gingrich so there were some positives but nevertheless, i feel like there were some things wrong that we were pursuing. Were talking about president s. You served under five of them. I wonder if you could reflect on which of those president s and administrations to the best job of relationshipbuilding with congress. No question, the greatest man i ever met and the greatest president was Ronald Reagan. Ronald reagan had a heart and determination and i have that i have not seen anybody in the white house or anyone in congress since. He was a softspoken fellow who was so underrated, it was not funny. Let me tell you a story about his heart. My father tried to kill my mother when i was a boy. That is one of the reasons i never liked bullies and why was aggressive on a lot things i did. I think my father had a lot to do with it. He went to prison and my mother waited on tables for 18 years and he went she married a man who went to the grade. He went to the seven grade and worked in a foundry. I said i will take you in the front door of the white house and introduce you to the president. They looked at each other and said yes. They never met anybody in politics. 18 years later i got elected to congress and i called reagans secretary and let me see if i can arrange this. They arranged it and mom and kenny came. We parked behind the white house. We went into the oval office and president reagan came over and said, i want to tell you your son is one of the brightest young congressman we have and he is going to do great things. I know you have to wait on tables for 18 years and it worked in a foundry. And danny had to shine shoes. I know it was tough. We had those problems in my family. Isnt it great we live in a country where you can achieve anything . All i could think was, how did he know this stuff . He had had his secretary call to find out about me and my family. When i walked out of that office, i would have done anything for that man. He made my mother feel so happy. She was so happy and she carried the picture until she died. Her favorite actor was Ronald Reagan. A lesson for that about relationships for president is the personal touch . It is a big part of it but it was not just a personal touch. He had goals like the strategic defense initiative. I was the first one who defended him against a guy named al gore and tom downey. They were on the floor and calling it star wars. I went after them for about an hour. Reagan wrote me a nice personal letter the next day. He was very committed to what he wanted mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall. Once he made up his mind he was very strong in his position but he was also very amenable to dealing with people where he could. He was not so hard knows that he hardnosed that he was not willing to try to find a way to solve problems. He worked with tip oneill, a very strong democrat, in order to solve the Social Security problem and i am not sure any other president would be able to achieve what he did. Plus the Economic Growth with his tax cuts. We had 20 years of growth because of him. I think he had that real nice, soft personality, a very warm guy who knew what it was to be poor and to fight your way out of difficult things. But he was also a man who had convictions. He was willing to go to the mat if he had to. A good man. The best i knew. Does the president ial nominating process bring candidate in to this system with conviction, with the kind of skills you think it takes to be a successful president . I do not mean to disparage anybody who has run for office but i think there is too many people running for office who are concerned about politics in getting elected than doing what is really right. I feel like Ronald Reagan was one of those guys who had a commitment in his soul to do what he thought was best for the country, and not to worry about being partisan all the time and being worried about the next election. And so i think right now we have too many people that when they run for office they read the polls and they try to do what they think is going to get them elected instead of saying what they believe and i think it is time now that we need people who will speak out forcefully about what they believe, because the people of america are hungry for that. They want someone who will say clearly, this is what i believe even if they disagree but i will do my best to achieve these things and stick to it. I have people in my campaigns say i do not agree with you on this but i think youre a straight shooter and i will vote for you anyhow. Im not holding myself up as any paragons of virtue but i sense from that that people are willing to give you a chance if they think you are a straight shooter. You made reference to using for time as a way to achieve using floor time as a way to achieve policy discussions. When you looked back, you have spent a lot of time on the floor. Some members never go to the floor. How have you seen the floor as a research as a member of congress . They used to be that you could go down and get an hours special order. You could do it all night long. A guy from texas would talk about the Space Program and talk about chuck holes in his district. He covered the spectrum. They started changing it that we had quit by midnight. Which was all right. I think we have gone too far. Members need to speak their mind on personal time more than just five minutes in the morning and maybe one minute at night. Many times, there are things that need to be eliminated with illuminated with a little extra time and getting two minutes during a debate or one minute at the end of the day or five minutes in the morning, sometimes as i get it done. At ould like to see th revisited. Many members complained or hearken back to the time when members used to stay around on the weekends and go out to dinner with one another and families would get together. What changed that . I think the acrimony that started with the jim wright case and going after newt, that was a payback. I think those were the seeds for a lot of that. Were not friends any more. I still get together with some people for dinner. Very rarely is it with my democratic colleagues. I ere are some democrats ar really like, charlie rangel. There is a lot of guys that i like on the other side of the aisle and we get together once in awhile but it is not like it used to be. It should be better. Any sense of congressional scheduling practices change that . People anxious to get home on weekends . When i first ran, i spent 250,000 or thereabouts for my first campaign. Now what cost up to 2 million. Members spend an inordinate amount of time at their headquarters calling people, begging for money. I think you spend maybe one third to onehalf of your time asking people for money. That should not be the Main Objective of our job. We should be doing the job for the people instead of worrying about raising money. I do not know what the answer is. Maybe limiting the terms of the campaign, i do not know what it