i'm eamon javers in washington, where we've got a new letter now from secretary jack lew, john boehner updating the status of when it is, exactly, the treasury estimates the united states government will be unable to fund itself going forward. the new date estimated by treasury is october 17th. they say, if we have insufficient cash on hand, it would be impossible for the united states of america to meet all of its obligations for the first time in our history. >> the stakes are set and for the u.s. economy, they could not be higher. house republicans have to vote to increase the debt limit to avert a historic default. and today, speaker boehner announced his negotiating position. >> on the debt limit, we're going to introduce a plan that ties important spending cuts and pro-growth reforms to a debt limit increase. now, the president says i'm not going to negotiate. well, i'm sorry, but it just doesn't work that way. >> once again, republicans will take the economy hostage. the "national review" published the gop's ransom list. in exchange for avoiding default, republicans are demandin

he relay laid a story in which he was talking to john wayne. >> apparently john wayne said, oh, yeah, you're that guy saying all those crazy things. we need a hundred more like you. the willingness to say all those crazy things is a rare, rare characteristic. and you know what, it's every bit as true now as it was then and we need a hundred more, like jesse helms in the u.s. senate. >> that line grabbed a few headlines, because it's a provocative statement and it's ted cruz doing what he does best. but there was no real uproar. and i couldn't help but remember another republican senator from the south celebrating another notorious republican senator just a few years back. >> when strom thurmond ran for president, we voted for him. we're proud of him. and if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we would haven't had all these problems over all these years, either. >> you will recall, that was followed by total outrage and rightly so, because strom thurmond ran for president on an explicitly segregationist ticket. well, jesse helms, i guess to his credit, never ran on an explic

>> we have the thursday meeting in geneva, russian foreign minister and john kerry, both very compa -- competent. we ought to use the security council as a platform, courtroom. make our case. we will lose our case on moral grounds the minute we attack syria. as long as we can argue that we are the champions of ending the use of chemical weapons or ownership of them, we're the good guys. the minute we attack syria, we lose the status. >> can we be the champion of that after the iraq war, though? honestly. this is, not imminently after the iraq war. ten years since we started it. did we forever poison the well? >> i think we did poison the well. but i think what we have seen tonight, that is a little different. one we, have seen now. assad and them admit they have weapons. big thing in iraq going after weapon that were not there. assad said yes they're here. yes there are locations. secondly we have a president that has gone to congress. he is saying i don't need to go but i am going and he is quoted -- he actually stated that we're the oldest constitutional government in the world. and

ago was celebrating his improbable victory in which he almost single-handedly pushed house speaker john boehner to do something he manifestly did not want to do, pass a continuing resolution that would defund obama care. but ted cruz's biggest victory in his very short senatorial career could be his biggest defeat, revealing that there was an entire lake of contempt for ted cruz out there just waiting for the dam to burst. and this week -- >> this has been one of the strangest weeks i've ever had in washington, and i say that because as soon as we listed ted cruz as our featured guest this week, i got unsolicited research and questions not from democrats but from top republicans. >> fox's chris wallace may have been shocked by the republican op-ed research dump on ted cruz, but it's a sign of the time. as of this week, all of washington, d.c., is in open revolt against the junior senator from texas. >> a u.s. senator called me yesterday morning and said, i'm going to be watching senator cruz on "fox news sunday" because i don't know what his next step is. >> those who are pushing to shu