Rep. Steve Israel on Pelosi, fiscal cliff compromise and LIPA

Rep. Steve Israel (D-NY) says that he hopes House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi retains her position and discusses the impending fiscal cliff and LIPA power outages.

When CNN Anchor Soledad O’Brien asks about Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) statement that President Obama does not have a mandate from the election, Rep. Israel responds, “Solutions have a mandate. This election was about solutions. People are tired of the gridlock…. Compromise has a mandate. And so we go into a new session of Congress and we go towards this fiscal cliff, again, having stated we want compromise. We want solutions. We want — and by the way, in this election, most of the Tea Party generals, you know, the icons of the Tea Party, they ended up getting defeated in this election, and so that’s the mandate we have.”

Starting Point with Soledad O’Brien airs weekday mornings from 7-9a ET on CNN.