acceptable for us not to raise the debt ceiling and to allow the u.s. government to default. we cannot threaten the united states full faith and credit for the first time in our history. we still center a lot of work to do, though, to get this problem solved. and so let me just make a couple of points. first of all, all of us agree that we should use this opportunity to do something meaningful on debt and deficits. and the reports that have been out there have been largely accurate that speaker boehner and myself had been in a series of conversations about doing the biggest deal possible. so that we could actually resolve our debt and our deficit challenge for a long stretch of time. and i want to say i appreciate speaker boehner's good faith efforts on that front.