Sen. Durbin: House Republicans Have Been Sidelined
DAVID GREGORY: This is what should pass for progress in Congress and Washington doing its job? Take solace in the fact that you're just talking?
SEN. DICK DURBIN (D-IL): It's a breakthrough. Hard to imagine, but it's a breakthrough. We've reached a point where the House Republicans and their leadership really have stepped to the sidelines. They're not part of this at this point. They can't agree among themselves about what they want to have done in this negotiation. The conversation that started yesterday between Sen. McConnell, the Republican Senate leader, and Sen. Reid, I think, has the promise of finding a solution. I don't want to be overly optimistic, but there's a lot at stake. It isn't just the government shutdown, and that, of course, has laid off 800,000 federal employees and denied people basic services. It goes way beyond this, as we know. If in four days we default on our debt for the first time in our history, it is going to have a dramatic negative impact.
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