Democrats, GOP not budging from budget positions

>>> when congress thanksgiving holiday are it will have a pretty slim window to broker a deal on the fiscal cliff and indications from the opening round of negotiations, shocking, are don't bode well. let's bring in our political panel, " washington post " editorial editor ruth marcus and po pollster fred yang. welcome, team.

>> morning.

>> been around here a little bit this morning. i want to play what ben bernanke said about the fiscal cliff and get your reaction on the other side.

>> continuing to push off difficult policy choices will only prolong and intensify these uncertainties. moreover, while the details of whatever agreement is reached to resolve the fiscal cliff are important, the economic confidence of market participants and the general public likely will be influenced by the extent to which our political system proves able to deliver a reasonable solution with a minimum of uncertainty and delay.

>> ruth , the polls tell us the american people want to see congress work together on this. president obama says he wants to. john boehner says he wants to. there you have the titans of industry in new york with their rich, mahogany furniture all saying we need to solve this crisis. yet here we are a few weeks away and we're still both sides sticking to their negotiations. there hasn't been a lot on what specifically would you do. this is going to be tight.

>> it's going to be tight and everybody should brace themselves before the fiscal cliff comes the fiscal roller coaster and it's going to look dark before either it's totally black as senator mccain likes to say or before it gets done. my bet actually is on getting things done, but i have to say what's depressing about listening to chairman bernanke is how many times we've heard those words before about the last fiscal crisis, whether it's debt ceiling or something else, it really is time for congress to show it can get something done.

>> this seems to poll very well, this bipartisanship. you know it. how come there's such difficulty both sides really not willing to nudge off their sacred couch entit entitlements and taxes.

>> as ruth was saying, in addition to talking about this endlessly, we're still trying to define what bipartisanship really means for both sides. it's doing more what we want to do than what you want to do. i agree with ruth , it will get done because it has to get done. and i think rate now we're just waiting to see is last-second shot or a little sooner than that.

>> bob, you're on the hill. you obviously hear the chatter like i do. when we talk about what can get done, it seems that getting something done is a blueprint to then work on something in 2013 .

>> yes.

>> that can't necessarily inspire a ton of confidence in the process.

>> with respect to the other members of the panel, i think they're going to punt most of this, because you heard speaker boehner already talking about 2013 as being the year to get tax reform done. you can punt just about everything else. you can extend the tax cuts a little bit. you can retroactively cut the tax -- bring the tax cuts back or whatever. i just think they're going to punt on this one in so many ways. they could even, you know, punt on the idea of the spending cuts as well, the automatic spending cuts. i'm not as optimistic as anybody else about this.

>> it's what they do best. come to agreement and then --

>> punt. we'll come back with our panel shortly. but trivia time. how many members of congress lost their races for re-election in 2010 but won in 2012 ? the answer is six. all of whom lost their re-election battles take over. representatives carol shay porter and dan maffei take the top. if you have a trivia question for us, e-mail us.