Meet the Press   |  January 27, 2013

Will partisanship prevent legislative progress?

A Meet the Press panel of experts discusses whether compromise between parties, or the potential lack thereof will keep legislation on gun control and immigration from moving forward on Capitol Hill.

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This content comes from Closed Captioning that was broadcast along with this program.

>> a sense that a lot of the gun legislation is not going to be successful. immigration reform is moving at pace. they are having very constructive conversations, republicans and democrats together. the entitlement piece is going to be hard, whether the president wants to go very far on medicare. he has liberals saying don't do it, don't raise the retirement age . so how do these pieces come together here in the next three, four, five months?

>> that is exactly the question. when he even suggested raising that retirement age from 65 to 67, decades from now actually, and not affecting current retirees, the whole liberal base exploded against him. the aarp went to war against him. so he has to decide whether to take that. even the budget negotiators iss, the gang of six, said that was a nonstarter. on immigration, you see these negotiations with lindsey graham and mccain and rubio on the republican side . and durbin and schumer and others on the democratic side. they are really making progress. the president is giving a speech on tuesday with outlines. the question now is, is he going to send legislation up? that is still to be determined. and he just met with the hispanic caucus and with the senators in the last couple of days. the other thing is guns. and despite all of the hints from the white house that they are not backing off of the assault weapon ban, most people i have been talking to in recent days, inside the white house and out, agree that that is really going to be the biggest lift. but if they can get the magazines and the background checks and something on mental health , they think there is something that