Pete Sessions: “President Obama made a statement within the last hour or so. He called on Congress to act to avoid the fiscal cliff. We…”

“President Obama made a statement within the last hour or so. He called on Congress to act to avoid the fiscal cliff. We know last night the House was unable to bring forward a bill that would deal with the fiscal cliff. Previously, they passed a bill that would have solved that problem and put us on the right path, but they did not pass another bill last night. The Senate has not acted. There has been a lot of criticism of the House, that the House failed to pass legislation last night. However, the Senate has passed no legislation. The President made a little speech this afternoon, and I take it as a serious statement. But previously he made a speech on his budget plan. It sounded good. It had a lot of things in it that sounded good. I believe Congressman Ryan, the budget chairman in the House, sent it to the Congressional Budget Office and asked that they score it. A score means they analyze how much taxes are going to be raised--exactly how much--how much spending is going to be increased or reduced, and then they lay out an analysis, called a score, of what that proposal actually will do. That is what how we are supposed to consider budgets here. So they sent the President's previous speech over to the Congressional Budget Office. The Congressional Budget Office said: You cannot score a speech. Sorry. Well, you cannot score a speech. We are about to come back in next week. Maybe they will try to finish Thursday, maybe go into Friday.…”