All right, welcome to the Byron York Show, glad to have you, and in keeping with our

tradition of no chit-chat at the top of the program.

We're going to go right to our guest, U.S. Senator Rob Portman, Senator from Ohio,

in the House of Representatives for I think 12 years in the 1990s including the big

shutdown with the Bill Clinton versus New Gingrich.

U.S. Trade Representative, head of OMB, now U.S. Senators since 2010. Thank you very much for coming here.

Byron, great to be all with you.

So on the government shutdown, the partial government shutdown, the first big picture question, who is responsible for this?

Well, ultimately it's the responsibility of both parties to figure out how to come together

on something that's actually pretty easy to fix and that is the border.

We have big differences on things like health care and tax reform and social issues and gun control.

On this issue, actually we're kind of talking past each other.

So I guess I would put responsibility in part of the Democrats,

mostly Nancy Pelosi's and Transigence inability to work with the president

because she has mischaracterized what his proposals are, particularly with regard

to a border barrier. But also I think that you know Republicans have to figure out a way

to govern with this new Democratic majority in the House and figure out a way to

come together to find some common ground.

But at this point, you know, it's hard for the President and Republicans to negotiate with

somebody being Speaker Pelosi, who has said that there can't be one dime toward a project that she

in the past to support it, as have other Democrats including then Senator Obama and

then Senator Biden and then Senator Clinton and administration is going back to

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