A special willingness to Work Together. For our first 45 minutes we want to see about your ability and confidence and congressional leaders. Here is how you can call in this morning twoway end. Two ways. You can tweet us or send an email. We invite you to check out our facebook page. The headlines for this meeting yesterday reflect the same type of town seen in the Washington Post this morning. A picture of president obama and john boehner. The upbeat tone was a dramatic shift from recent years when the president and a gop fortified by antigovernment activists clashed repeatedly over spending and taxes. If he were to go to yesterdays New York Times, they have a listening are at least pictures of the key leaders that will be involved in this process. To show you where they stand specifically on some issues, here is the president saying he will reject any bill that extends tax cuts for the wealthy. Here is john boehner who has said raising tax rates is unacceptable and a new revenue should be generated by Economic Growth spurred by a simpler tax code and that closes loopholes and and deductions. There are some other leaders involved in this project. What do you think they will be able to do to keep the fiscal cliff from happening by the end of the year . That meeting taking place at the white house. Here is some video from it. If you are looking at that again and you want to wait and on this topic, you can call in. Your confidence on congressional leadership on the fiscal cliff. Lets hear from eloy. Caller i just have a comment. They were talking about cuts in medicare and Social Security benefits for kids. Why do we not start with their pensions . Put them on Social Security like we are. Host you speak about a specific issue. Would you think about the ability of leaders to come together . Caller i hope they do. This country is going down. Pay your share. Host fairbanks, alaska. Hello. Caller i have confidence that zero of these guys did something done. Where is our leadership . We are just going to kick it down the road. Everybody has to have free stuff. Nobody wants to take care of themselves. Host what is one thing you would say is a reason they will not make it happen . Caller they will kick it down the road. That is all they are going to do. They have been taking it down the road for 15 years. That is all they do. They have it made it. The president is leaving the country. Host some type of deal are at least the details are being worked out by congressional leaders and their staffs. There are hopes they can get this done before the december 31 deadline. Allen is from michigan and joins us on the independent client. Independent line. Caller i have no confidence in the leadership of the republicans and democrats. They are spending on more militarism. This spending on wars is a total waste of our nations wealth. They are squandering the wealth of this country instead of spending it on things people need like a Real Health Care reform and child care and education. They are wasting money on all of these wars. Stop these ores. Obama wants to get us into more wars. All of this militarism. Host white t think the mentality is different this time, or at least their ability to come to a result, why do you think that will not happen this time around . Caller obama and the democrats and republicans they all represent wall street. They do not represent the working class. The working people are being indebted with all the burdens of this country. This is not right. 98 and this country are forced to solve the problems that were operated by the 1 and 2 of this country who are getting rich off of our problems and these wars. Anybody can look at the budget of this country and see the majority of our budget is spent on militarism and wars and not on things people need. This is a crime against humanity. Host you see there on the Television Screen congressional leaders meeting after the meeting at the white house. One of the folks who spoke yesterday was Speaker John Boehner talking about the framework that was outlined in the media. [video clip] to talk about america oppose the fiscal problem, i outlined a framework that deals with reforming our tax code and reforming the our spending. I believe these remarks i have outlined in our meeting is consistent with the president s call for a fair and balanced approach. To show our seriousness, we have power revenue on the table. As long as it is accompanied by a significant spending cuts. While we will continue to have revenue on the table, it will be incumbent from my colleagues to show the American People we are serious about cutting spending and solving our fiscal dilemma. I believe we can do this and avert the fiscal cliff that is right in front of us today. Host off of twitter host joe, are you there . Caller yes, what i would like to know is it seems like none of them can come to a conclusion on anything. Why do we that start taking their pay and deducting their pay until they can come to an agreement . Or tell them all to get out of there and leave it up to the americans to vote as if we were voting to the president. Host it sounds like you do not have much confidence at all. Caller how long have we been doing this . This country has gone down further and further every year. Host you do not see willingness this time around as far as both parties are concerned . Caller i am from oklahoma, but i am kind of like the missouri state. Show me. Host another tweet from cindy jeremiah, you are up next. Caller i just had a comment. I do not think they are prepared to deal with the fiscal cliff. Before 1980, the tax system was balanced. At some point they changed the entire thing to benefit the wealthy. What they have done is taken the government workers and they have taken the private workers and made them make the stuff. They are selling stuff to the government workers that benefit the wealthy. The difference between the private sector is and what the government workers and what they make, that is the profit. That is what they do not want to balance the budget. The profit is in the interest of the wealthy. Host at the leadership level there is no interest in fixing these things because of the money involved . Caller yes, that is why you have mass poverty and food stamps. They cannot afford the things they are doing. Pour and i worked really hard. A lot of people that are poor and work really hard and they are basically making stuff for the middle class or the government class. Do you understand what i am saying . The New York Times in their up uwrite one of the people who responded mr. Day is harry reid. He talked about cornerstones or having cornerstones and being able to work something out. [video clip] i feel very good about what we were able to talk about in there. We have the cornerstones of being able to work something out. We will both have to give up some of the things that we know are a problem. We arrive at it. We all know something needs to be done. We are all going to do it now. We feel very comfortable with each other. This is not something we will wait until the last day of december to get it done. We have a plan and we will move forward on it. We will work during the thanksgiving recess. We will meet when we come back the first week. I think it is a constructive meeting. I feel good about what we were able to talk about. Host your confidence in congressional leadership. The numbers will be on the screen if you want to call in. You can tweet us. This from the New York Times. It says ohio, this is the independent line with poland. Owen. Caller there is only one person that was elected nationwide. The president campaigned on a platform to raise the taxes on the wealthiest of americans. Americans bought that idea. Willing to pay 2 , 3 , 4 more. Most wealthy people are are so willing to pay more. I am not sure why they are trying to protect the wealthy who are saying, listen, i am willing to pay a little more. The reason why is they have an obligation to grover norquist. End wars in afghanistan early. We can save 2 billion a week. Everybody pays a little bit more, at 2 , 3 more. We will also have to make some changes to the entitlement program. In everybody has to get a little. I am making less than 100,000 a year. I am willing to make a little bit more. Most wealthy people are. But we have republicans for some ideological reason trying to protect people saying, listen, i am also willing to pay a little bit more. Host what about reforming the tax code and finding revenue through that process . Caller that needs to be done. We need to raise the marginal tax rate a bit. We also need to cut medicare, medicaid, Social Security, discretionary spending, defense. Everything has to be on the table. Host is there a willingness than from at least where you sit for leaders to do that . Caller yes, i think there is a willingness on the part of the president. Maybe less on the democrats in the house. The house is really the problem. You have republicans who have pledged to grover norquist. Host democrats line. Hello. Caller i was watching on your show cspan. It is very annoying to see how divided we are as a country. We do not want to work. We have been having a hard time. We are not fighting with guns here. We are fighting with some much animosity and words. We cannot help the president. He is the president. We have a set in our mind we are not going to work with them. Where do we go from here . Host next up is lewis from pennsylvania on the republican line. Caller referring to what the gentleman just said, the working people, we are not house style. We believe in freedom which is what this country was founded upon. I feel and many people feel that our constitution is being ripped to shreds. We are not a superpower. We protect ourselves. That is what our military is for. As far as going abroad, ok, it is time to pull back the middle east, afghanistan and what not. Host as far as the leadership of congress, what do you think . Caller why do they not just get a long . There is too much finger pointing. Getting along, it means, well, why do they not stop dipping into the hardworking man and womans pockets. They get free this and free that, vacations. If i had the benefits that they had, oh, my lord, i would love for them live upon our means for 1 months one year. See what it is like not to vote your own perks. After all, they are our employees. We pay them. Go to work tomorrow and try to tell your boss what to do. Host from the wall street journal this morning. The lead story stemming from the former cia director david petra eus. In barber from oklahoma city, oklahoma. You are on the independent line. Were talking about congressional leadership and ability to make something happen as far as the fiscal cliff is concerned. Caller good morning. My thing is the elephant in the room, grover norquist. As soon as they agreed to raise taxes they probably will not get their jobs back because he has a 58 of going after these guys. Even on cspan he is bragging about taking the president down for breaking the pledge and some others. You have paul ryan who is an devotee. That is a novel, not something to build the republican platform on. I think that will be the biggest problem. Republicans do not want to lose their jobs. Host nancy pelosi announcing she will return as the House Minority leader, one of the ones at the white house just today that you probably saw. Also talking with reporters after the meeting. Here she talks about her focus that she had going into the meeting. [video clip] the speaker spoke about a framework going into next year. I was focusing on how to send a message of confidence to consumers in the markets in the short term to. We should have a goal in terms of how much deficit reduction we should have. We should have a deadline before christmas. We should scare some milestones of success so confidence can build as we reach our solutions. If we do not reach an agreement, not only will we miss an opportunity to lift the spirits and confidence in our country, we will have an economic downturn that must be avoided. We understand our responsibility there. We understand it has to be about cuts and revenue. It has to be about growth. It has to be about the future. As we cut investments and as we talk about revenue, we have to do so in a way that promotes growth and supports the future. I feel confident that a solution may be in sight. Host it is that topic of confidence that leads us to a question to you about your confidence in congressional leadership when it comes to end of your spending cuts and the related matters there. If you want to call us for the next 20 minutes or so on this topic journal cspan. Org if you want to send us an email. You can send us a tweet, too. This one from phillip it from birmingham, alabama is next. Ed. Caller thank you. Has been a long time since i called and. I think some Historical Perspective on this is worth mentioning. I voted for obama. I have a lot of respect a lot of confidence with him working with the congressional leadership and congress in solving the problem. Lets remember where this problem came from. After the fall of the soviet union and fighting communism and spending all of this military money, the 10 years or so in the 90s we no longer had that problem. President Clinton Left Office with two consecutive years of a balanced budget and turned over a now what seems like a trifle debt to george w. Bush. At 4. 50 trillion is now Something Like 16 trillion. Muster that amassed during the Bush Administration because of two and necessary wars and an extraordinary and needed a tax cut which is on the table right now. That was supposed to sunset two years ago. We had a two year extension. It will disappear on 1231. Those things are what has driven this debt up. I think he has the strength of leadership to work with congress and i feel very confident in him bring this under control and bringing us back to normalcy. Host what is the president s role in the debt . Caller his role is to lead it. Host what role did the president didin the debt . Caller he added several trillion dollars, but he added this because when he came into office unemployment was Something Like the first few months when up to 10 or so. This was all caused by the economic collapse and all the stimulus and things like that. He has added some. Plus, remember there is interest that accrues on the debt. The higher the debt is, the higher the component is interest. People understand that. We are up to 16 trillion. Looking at the democrat leadership on the debt issue and their sense of responsibility, they have done a great job. I feel very confident that obama working with all four of the leaders and the entire congress will bring this under control. He will go down as being a great president. Host this looks at the federal Housing Administration which insures mortgages. They were taking steps to shore up their books and avoid a taxpayer bailout. You may not be tired of president ial politics as of yet. I say that only because if you tune in at 7 30, you can hear senator mark rubio who heads to i o would today. He will be the keynote speaker for the governor. It is his Second Annual birthday evened taking place inside of the palace theater. This is his first trip to iowa since the 2012 election. He has been mentioned as a potential president ial candidate. You might be interested in what he has to say. You can tune into night at 7 30. Catch it on cspan radio if you want to listen to it. Later on access it through the Video Library. Amber on the republican line. Caller hello. Host why did you not turn down your tv really quick. Caller i am sorry. I am in another room. I did not realize you could hear. My name is amber. The problem has been worked on for so long that i tried to remain positive, but the political powers will be able to bring the solution to some kind of ending. It has to happen for the American Public to be successful in continuing a quality of life. That is why we need to come to a conclusion on it. So people know where they stand and know how to work on their future. I do believe we should all have a positive outlook. Host do you think our leaders have the willingness to come to a conclusion . Caller do they have the willingness . I do not know. I do not know how they are thinking. Nobody can know how they are thinking. I do believe sometimes we have too many chiefs and not enough indians. To make this a successful venture that our government has to find a conclusion to. Host dennis is from West Virginia on our independent line. Caller yes, sir. I am watching this this morning. I tell you, i personally feel optimistic about this. I feel like the president has come out to work. The congress is going to work with them. I did not vote for president obama, and i do not mind saying that. Right now we need solutions to the problems. I really think the president has offered his hand out. I think congress will work with him. I am optimistic about this. Host can you point to anything specific about the change you see . Caller there is a political thing going on here. You have the midterm coming up. I think they will be thinking about that. There are some positives involved. I think really, this was a close election. I know both parties will say it was not. The American People are really a meeting something to live on and go on and drive forward on. I really think this did not come overnight. It took me a couple of days to come around. I think this president is willing and people see it. Congress better join him and do something about this. Host there is a story about building a super pac called looking in favor of immigration reform. It will be called republicans for immigration reform. You should know tomorrow morning he is set to join us on this program to talk about the new effort. You can see his comments on the topic of immigration. That will be 7 45 tomorrow. Bill from maryland, thank you for holding on. Caller first i want to say that being a proud a West Virginian just like the past two callers, and they make me proud. I want to go on to say, these people do not realize that elections have consequences. The people have spoken. They chose president obama and his plan. These people that call themselves leaders are not leaders. They are representatives. They represent us, the people. The people need to go to was