GOP Rep. Kingston: Sequester is 'governing by drama'

>>> and we'll make it easy

>>> mika, who do we have?

>> republicans representative from georgia, jack kingston .

>> he's a guy a lot of people have talked about running for senate for the chambliss seat. are you going to jump in there, jack?

>> we're taking a good look at it. i will let you guys know.

>> i love an answer like that. an honest answer.

>> i will seek advice of counsel.

>> either be for you or against you. jack, what's happening with the sequester? you have both sides talking about republicans putting out press releases talking about how troop training is going to be damaged, national security is going to be damaged, cancer research is going to be cut. of course, the president is putting out his secretaries, talking about all the terrible things that will happen in their departments. why can't we get a deal here?

>> joe, i think we could. i think some of this is drama. seems to be governing by drama, something this white house seems to like. i want to point out this is an agreement made in august 2011 . it's just like back in high school , when your teacher said okay, you have six weeks to do your term paper. in december, we passed another alternative to it. if the senate will take that up, modify it, if they send it back to us today, we'll certainly sit down and take a look at it. we have shown in the house we think there are alternatives and why on a timely level basis we sent them --

>> you pass one, especially in november, a complete package the senate can take up. have they taken that up? have they put forward their own sequester plan in the senate ?

>> not that i'm aware of. i was interested in what senator kaine said, dozens of senators are talking to each other. they out to move the legislation and put it on the floor and send it back us to. one of my great frustrations is we send lots of stuff to the senate that dies there. doesn't get voted down or amended, just gets ignored. we have to have full engagement in the legislative branch . i think there are a lot of democrat and republicans house members that want to work something out but i think they're waiting for a signal from the white house .

>> one of the great frustrations i heard on the hill when we've gone there, from democrats and senators and congressman and the like, why are we up here? why do we come here? there's not regular order and pass our bill and senate passes their bill and come together in conference committee . get up to the crisis and three or four members get together with the president and do all our work. we're irrelevant that's frustrating and th e fact that last year congress passed 30% of the number of bills that any other congress has ever passed. senate has bewhich the place that legislation goes to die. let me just ask the congressman. i know you guys have put together other proposals but one of the key sticking points at the moment is revenues and the view of the white house that have to be revenues from tax reform and from wherever in this package and i know you'll talk about entitlements. let's assume that entitlements are on the table. from your point of view, are revenues on the table?

>> from our point of view, revenues and sequesteration are one in the same. we split it january 1st and put the revenue portion first. the president won $618 billion in new revenue because of it and now we're talking about the spending portion. these two were wrapped around each other. it was divided on january and now it's time to talk about spending. keep in mind, $85 billion is about about 0.5% of the entire budget.

>> robert, real quick --

>> let me ask one question. this may take longer, i apologize. i think you were in congress in 1995 when they came together for a deficit reduction package, even though they had just been a through a pretty nasty national election. what do both sides have to do to get to that point in 2013 ?

>> one thing that newt and president clinton had is they were focused on a deadline and they realized these things had to be done. they couldn't get away with postponing them forever and ever . back then the senate passed budget and the senate hasn't passed a budget since the ipad was invented. four years now. so, i think that we had a different sense of urgency and i think deadline. but, i'll say this. if the president will invite people, senior members to come down and talk and get to know each other and work with each other he is the ceo, if you will. he needs to be involved in this. today he's in newport news. that's not helpful. he needs to bring us together.

>> time for the white house to be transparent about who they are talking to hearing that. congressman jack kingston , thank you.