Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) outraged over president’s meeting with congressional leaders: 'defend it publicly, not these secret meetings.'

President Obama meets with four top Congressional leaders on avoiding the "fiscal cliff" today. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, House Speaker John Boehner and Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi will be at the White House for the meeting. Together, they have to figure out a plan by the end of the year, or risk automatic tax increases and sweeping defense cuts. Alabama Republican Senator Jeff Sessions is a ranking member on the Budget Committee and a member of the Armed Services Committee. Senator Sessions joins Soledad O’Brien live from the Russell Rotunda to talk about the meeting.

Sessions has expressed outraged over the meeting today and the lack of action in the administration. “We’ve gone two and a half weeks since the election, no plans have been laid out,” Session says. “That fiscal cliff is looming. We just recessed last night for another 10 or 11 days in the Congress, so nothing’s being done. You would think that the president would have a firm plan through his treasury and the commerce departments about how to handle the problem, and we’d be further along than we are today.”

Sessions thinks the problem with the meeting is that a deal will be made in secret. “We’ll be told it has to pass before the deadline or we’ll have a crisis…and it will somehow be shoved through the Congress,” Sessions says. “This is not the way the Senate ought to be operating, or the House for that matter. We should be talking about these issues for weeks, for months.” Senator Sessions thinks Majority Leader Reid should have “allowed this debate to occur” over the challenges of our unsustainable national debt, lack of economic growth, tax increases, and “defend it publicly, not these secret meetings.”

"We could have been in session today" to discuss these challenges, Sessions says, instead of discuss a "a small sportsman's bill." "It's time for somebody to say that the leadership in this Senate is not performing its duty. This country is in danger. And all they wanna talk about is small bills and secret meetings."

Sessions says he knows what he believes regarding the fiscal cliff, that more tax revenue is uneccessary, and it's possible to be control our debate by being fiscally responsible. "Others will see it differently, and we'll just have to debate that out."