premise. he s actually given up 100% of the position to the republicans. the c.r. is a republican document. the republicans wanted 988 billion. he said we will give you 100% of what you want on the budget. where do you negotiate after giving people 100% of what they want? tom tom tom. emily, please educate tom. former congressman, first of all the number we re talking about in the c.r. spending levels was negotiated in 2001. this was agreed upon. because i think on all of our sides we agree that $17 trillion is just a little bit high, the debt to have, that we need to start bringing it down, start bringing spending down. it s been stuck at 16.7 because we haven t been borrowing or spending money. the deficit has been coming down for a number of reasons including curbing of health care. we have a $16.7 trillion debt right now. everyone agrees we need to cut spending. so the president, yes, he s gone along with the spending levels he agreed to in 2011.
that? please educate tom. first of all, the number we re talking about, the spending levels was negotiated in 2001. this is agreed upon, because i think on all of our sides, we agree that $17 trillion is just a little high debt to have. we need to start bringing spending down. so he didn t really really? it s been stuck at 16.7. the deficit has been coming down for a number of reasons. we have a $16.7 trillion debt right now, so yes, he s gone along with though from 2011, but beyond that it s been my way or the highway on obama care. but the sequester numbers, which both sides agree is terrible for policy, but it includes that, and already caved on splitting.
meager recovery for the last five years. we tried stimulus. it has not worked. the when president obama was a senator in 2006 he railed against george bush raising the debt ceiling to $9 trillion. today he wants to raise it to over $16.7 trillion. that s adding 60% to our date since he was president. he has had a total change of mind because he realizeds it s hard he realized it s hard to make these decisions and he punts them constantly. martha: we all remember the brand bargaining which came down to a conversation between john boehner and president obama in which ithey were going to reach some sort of deal and it ended up falling apart at
agenda. a small group of people in the republican party has made up their mind that they want the captain of our ship, obama, to go down so far that they re willing to sink the whole ship. so what are they doing now? we have what is called a continued resolution. it says congress cannot agree on a budget. so why not use the last budget that we had and then up we can finally get our act together. but they say that they re not going to do this unless we cut out the funds for obamacare. craig, this is insane. it s a gimmick. no one says that it s going to pass. it will pass the house, it will fail in the senate. but they say that they re not going to pass the budget. then we come around to what we call the debt ceiling which a lot of people don t understanded, bunderstand , but that could be the biggest financial disaster that our country could ever face by telling people, sure, we open $16.7 trillion, but the
faith and credit of the united states. we owe $16.7 trillion and they won t let the president of the united states say that we re going to pay that? we owe that. and what could happen to us financially? do we hear from the corporate structure? do we hear from the business structure? no. and then when you see this attack on obama care, which is health care, have we heard from the religious community? no. we ve heard from them on the question of birth control, same-sex marriage. but what about the sick kids, those with preconditions can t get insurance and the poor. as far as i m concerned, these are not just democratic issues, they re moral issues. but unfortunately most people don t even know the names of their members of the house of representatives. let me ask you guys really quickly, because there s a deal that some conservative republicans are pushing. raise the debt ceiling for a year, delay the health care law for a year, give back some of the pentagon cuts.