for show? well, it s an exercise in each party demonstrating their vision for how you should fund the government. we re still waiting on president obama to release his own budget which will have potentially a competing vision. and adam is exactly right, it s just a matter of inches going forward and the big dernifferen on whether you want to boost investments over the long term or whether it s about cutting spending, these are big questions that lawmakers are facing. i would get in a room with a handful of guys, all men, and they would try to come to table with a deal. that s not how it works in washington. should it be at least a starting point? well, i think that they usually come together when they actually really need to to prevent something disastrous from happening to the budget or the economy.
but there is a huge question here. lawmakers feel a lot of pressure from gun lobbyists, gun rights groups and this is why the effort is so interesting. he says he s going to spend $12 million to really look at senators that might be persuadable, particularly those with strong gun rights cultures in their states and even vice president joe biden was in new york at an event over the weekend and he said, we stand with mayor bloomberg. we want these lawmakers to know both sides of the aisle that they have support. they are not going to be alone out there facing gun lobbyists or gun rights groups spending money against them in their re-election bid but really the consensus is coming around universal background checks, far more than a renewed assault weapons ban. so it will get a vote. adam, in terms of a national level, do you think anything is going to come out of congress like we saw come out of colorado? sure. i think that background checks, there s a good chance that they will be ab
0 passed through the senate really echos what president obama would like to see in terms of deficit reduction but the problem, of course, is when you match up is the senate bill with the house bill. the senate bill calls for deficit reduction through increasing taxes and spending cuts and, of course, the house bill calls for steep cuts in balancing the budget within ten years. of course, some revisions to medicare as well. a lot of differences and we have another deadline coming up. the debt ceiling will have to be revisited this summer, alex. looking forward to that. reporter: yeah, we all are. thank you very much, kristen welker. joining me right now, andy sullivan and ann palmer. ann, i ll begin with you. the president is back from the middle east. the reviews are out there. how are you getting the word in terms of how he was perceived? i think one of the key things you can look at is what the israeli press put out in the days following his first steps and throughout the e
overall surrendering. obviously, there s other big states. virginia, florida, you can do the math, adding colorado, ohio, even new hampshire. those could make a big difference. but are they adding any states from their maps or taking any states away from their maps? so far, we haven t seen a whole lot of variation in the states they re contending in. adam, have you seen that change at all in the last few weeks as we ve seen the debates come out and the polls changing? have you seen them reallocating their resources? for instance, romney moving resources out of north carolina, for instance? yeah, he did. i think you ll see minor judgments like that. north carolina is a special case where it s really looked the same for a long time. romney looks strong there. obama won it by a very narrow margin in 2008, which were, of course, historic margins for democrats. i think that s a special case and you definitely won t see major changes in states like ohio and florida. that being said, i th
republican congressman peter king of new york, who heads the house homeland security committee today is asking the white house to turn over more intelligence relating to the benghazi attacks. meanwhile, gop vice presidential candidate paul ryan told a wisconsin radio station friday to expect romney to make libya an issue again in monday s debate. it would be a tragedy in and of itself if it was just benghazi. the problem is, look around the world, turn on your tv, and what we see in front of us is the absolute run unraveling of the obama administration s foreign policy. and i m excited we re going to have a chance to talk about that on monday. back with us in washington, anne kornblut, deputy national political editor for the washington post. and here in new york, adam sorenson, an associate editor at time magazine. thank you both for coming back.