12:35 pm Tue October 22, 2013  Bipartisan Group Slowed Down By
Shutdown?    This is TELL ME MORE from NPR News. I'm Michel
Martin. Coming up in this program, states and cities across the
country are facing major budget problems and so some leaders
there are saying it's time to slash public pensions. We'll talk
about that in just a few minutes.  But first, we want to go back
to the issue that dominated political debate in recent weeks,
which is the government shutdown. With the debate over the
shutdown and the debt ceiling now behind us, we wanted to check-
in with a group of lawmakers who say they are trying to put
problem solving before politics. The group calls itself No
Labels. It's made up of political leaders from both sides of the
aisle and at all levels of government. But we're joined again
today by two of the groups members, both members of Congress.
Congressman Jim Cooper is a Democrat. He represents parts of
Central Tennessee in the 5th Congressional District there. He
joins us from the studios of Va