0 the conversation from a serious discussion about u.s. policy to the realm of the ridiculous. >> so rand paul now let the senate confirm the cia director? stay tuned. and is this the beginning of a beautiful friendship? president obama invites paul ryan to the white house for lunch after dining with senate republicans at the jefferson hotel. swanky too. >> how did the meeting go? >> just fine. great. wonderful. >> i am more optimistic just from a personal standpoint. >> senator bob corker was at that dinner. what sde think? we'll get the details. north korea today threatening a nuclear strike against the u.s. as the u.n. passes its toughest sanctions yet. >> the strength, breadth, and severity of these sanctions will raise the cost to north korea of its elicit nuclear program. taken together, these sanctions will bite and bite hard. >> direct from that vote, u.n. ambassador susan rice joining us live from late-breaking details. and we'll hear from house intelligence chair mike rogers. and what's in a name? that's what stephen colbert wants to know. >> i think we should naem all of our weather events after what kind they are, plus whatever people are talking about on television at the time. today washington is blanketed in the snow-quester. tomorrow a storm covers the u.s. in drone-cicles. or a freak blizzardashian. oklahoma is still suffering the effects of -- >> good day. i'm andrea mitchell back in washington. senator bob corker was at that dinner with the president last night, and he joins me now from the hill. thank you very much. well, senator, i'm not going to ask you about the mooem meal. i know it was good. tell me about the conversation. any progress on resolving the gridlock on almost every issue in washington? >> well, you know, andrea, there is movement already taking place within the house and stat. it looks like that we may make it through this c.r. process in a pretty good manner, and budgets will happen. last night was really to set the foundation for talks over the next four or five months. i don't think anybody came away from there expecting that we're going to come up with some grand bargain over the next month or six weeks, but i do think it was helpful, and i think it's the way this country ought to operate, and that is executive branch, sitting down with legislators, talking through issues. it was a very sincere discussion. i really think it was helpful. i think people left there with a positive feeling, and hopefully it's a foundation we can build upon between now and the debt ceiling debate, which will be around ending around the first of august. >> now, you must have been specific on a couple of issues. immigration, for instance. did you get a sense coming out of that dinner that that is one issue where both sides of pennsylvania avenue can work together? >> you know, andrea, we talked about not having a read-out of, if you lshgs all of our discussions. immigration was brought up not much really. i do think there are bipartisan efforts that the president does support, that are underway, and you know, it's going to be difficult for senators on both sides of the aisle to take four talking points and turn them into legislation. i'm hopeful that that occurs. it seems to be moving along fairly well, but it really wasn't one of the major topics last night. we really spent almost the entire evening talking about fiscal issues that our nation faces, and i think it was good to get sort of touched on to see where the president was, where we were, the kind of things we wanted to see happen, and andrea, there is some commonality. obviously we need to build upon that. it needs to be much larger i think -- we have the election behind us. the president has seen that there is new opportunities to make bipartisan process on a lot of issues. and some issues that we haven't had, so there's issues. the main focus, the sole focus of the dinner last night, but also immigration reform. we just had a committee through legislation on gun violence. that's positive progress. also things like cyber security. the president is really concerned about that. he is reaching out to bipartisan members of congress on a variety of issues. >> let me play a little bit of what the house speaker -- of what john baker -- john boehner just said about the president's new policy of outreach. >> it's really kind of interesting that this week we've gone 180. now he is going to after being in office for four years, is he actually going to set down and talk to members. i think it's a hopeful sign, and i'm hoping that something will come out of it, but if the president continues to insist on tax hikes -- >> if some tax rev new to reduce the deficit, not just changing loopholes and make it revenue-neutral is some tax component to actually raise money against the deficit part of any deal that has to come out of all these talks? >> i mean, that is -- that's certainly the -- that's certainly the president's view, and that we had hoped that congress would have acted in the last month to pass, you know -- the president has put a balanced package on the table that is a combination of increasing revenues, of closing loopholes, as well as spending cuts, and, you know, the hope was that we would be able to pass that and have the revenues as part of that go for deficit reduction. now, you know, speaker boehner has -- is for tax reform. he has a view that we shouldn't use that money for deficit reduction, but what the president finds encouraging is that, you know, we're in the same universe in terms of the types of -- the types of reform that we think needs to happen. the president has been willing to join entitlement reform. we're not there yet, and the president had a really good dinner yesterday. there's a lot of differences, but some common ground at least in wanting to tackle this problem and some common ground at least in wanting to avoid the sort of governing by crisis, so both the house and senate are getting ready to take up their budget resolutions. we think this is a positive development. i think that if congress were to use regular order where they are making budget decisions, not by crisis, but by their normal procedures that we could have a good discussion with them now about, you know, putting together this kind of tax reform and entitlement reform package that would get us where we want to be in terms of deficit reduction. we've already achieved $2.5 trillion. we're going to see if there's a commonsense caucus that would be willing to work with us on that. >> jennifer, thank you very much. from the white house. >> thank you, andrea. thanks for having me. >> up next in our daily fix, marco rubio channels jayzee. ted cruz does his best henry v. bhaets going in the senate? >> north korea threatens nuclear attacks. you're watchinging "andrea mitchell reports" only on nbc. i have a cold, and i took nyquil,