We begin tonight with breaking news about your paycheck, your unemployment check, your defense job, the entire economy, you name it, all of it is at stake if the country goes over that fiscal cliff. It's a cliff that lawmakers built, they set the Tuesday deadline, they've known it was coming for more than a year. But until now, even now, they've done precious little to agree on a package of tax increases and spending cuts by that time.

Keeping them honest, the people in this building have know what's coming on Tuesday. Yet they are only returning to this building to get back to work just now. Senators came back yesterday, House members, well, they won't be back until Sunday. This afternoon, House and Senate leaders met with president Obama at the White House, they talked for about an hour. Afterwards, president Obama said he was modestly optimistic by passing House Speaker John Boehner who's had trouble getting his fellow Republicans to agree to anything. The president called on Senate majority and minority leaders Harry Reid and Mitch McConnell to work out a deal, then presented it to the House. He also laid out a scaled down mini-deal if they can't manage it.

"If we don't see an agreement between the two leaders in the Senate, I expect a bill to go on the floor and I've asked Senator Reid to do this. Put a bill on the floor that make sure that taxes on middle class families don't go up, that unemployment insurance is still available for two million people, and that lays the groundwork then for additional deficit reduction and economic growth steps that we can take in the New Year. But let's not miss this deadline."

As for the two Senate leaders, they spoke shortly after the meeting, and they sounded a bit more hopeful than the president.

"But I think it was a very positive meeting, there was not a lot of hilarity in the meeting. Everyone knows how important it is, it's a very serious meeting and it took an extended period of time as you all know,waiting for us..."

"I share the view of the majority leader, we had a good meeting down at the White House. We're engaged in discussions, the majority leader, myself and the White House, in the hopes that we can come forward as early as Sunday and have a recommendation. That I can make to my conference and majority leader can make to his conference. And so we will be working hard to try to see if we can get there in the next 24 hours, and so I'm hopeful and optimistic."

Sounds good but also sounds familiar, right? Senate Reid says a vote could happen on Monday. But people have heard so much talk about the crisis, but seen precious little action. The president tonight echoing that frustration.

"The American are watching what we do here. obviously their patience is already thin, this is deja vu all over again, America wonders why it is that in this town for some reason you can't get stuff done, in an organized timetable, why everything always has to wait to the last minute. Well, we are now at the last minute, and the American people are not going to have any patience for a politically self-inflicted wound to our economy."