“If there’s a gang of bipartisan Senators trying to solve tough issues, there’s a pretty good chance Mark Warner is part of that group,” Bloomberg TV host Peter Cook said yesterday in as he introduced Senator Warner on WUSA-TV and Bloomberg TV’s Capital Gains. “If there’s going to be a grand bargain this year, Warner will likely be at the center of it."

Senator Warner figures the odds for a broad, bipartisan deficit reduction deal are now greater than 50%. “The fact that we showed that we weren’t going to shut down government,  that we were going to take care of some of the worst parts of the sequester cuts, I think gives us a little bit of momentum,” the Senator said.

“There’s a large majority in the Senate who know that we’ve got to get this done,” the Senator said. “We’ve got to get revenues, we’re got to make sure Medicare, Social Security, Medicaid are sustainable for 50, 60 years, and we’ve got to do smarter cuts than we’ve put forward in the sequester.”

Senator Warner also briefly discussed his work with Tennessee Republican Senator Bob Corker on housing finance reform. “One area… that’s not been touched is Fannie and Freddie… I think mid-summer or early fall we could see GSE reform that will continue the housing recovery and make sure that tax payers are never again ‘on the hook’ for bad mortgage practices.”