they use language that is very ill defined and open to broad interpretation. and i think that s why you re seeing so much attention to this issue. but it s still a question, katty, as to whether lawmakers want to change the policy. is the debate we re hearing with john brenner and everybody else, are you getting access to the documents? how much oversight is there? and before you respond, let me play john brennan who tried to clear the air about the difficult process. i think there s a misimpression on the part of the american people who believe that we take strikes to punish terrorists for past transgressions. nothing could be further from the truth. we only take actions as a last resort to save lives when there s no other alternative to taking an action to mitigate that threat. members of congress hate not being informed. but the downside of being informed is you then have some responsibility for the policy that s happening. we are now starting to have a discussion about the dr
unfeasible. these were issues that were not clearly spelled out by the administration beforehand. they use language that is very ill defined and open to broad interpretation. and i think that s why you re seeing so much attention to this issue. but it s still a question, katty, as to whether lawmakers want to change the policy. is the debate we re hearing with john brenner and everybody else, are you getting access to the documents? how much oversight is there? and before you respond, let me play john brennan who tried to clear the air about the difficult process. i think there s a misimpression on the part of the american people who believe that we take strikes to punish terrorists for past transgressions. nothing could be further from the truth. we only take actions as a last resort to save lives when there s no other alternative to taking an action to mitigate that threat. members of congress hate not being informed. but the downside of being
backdrop. how do you see his approach? well, i m a critic of it, and i hope he changes it with the state of the union for this reason. there s no doubt he won fair and square. 66 million votes. but 61 million people voted to fire him. and about 230 congressional districts, those incumbents don t care about emails from the president and michelle. he has to get out of the way of immigration or the deal will blow up. and the republicans in the short-term have the politics to hunker down. in the mid term elections, some of the senate races are in places where the president is unpopular. so the path he started on, which was i ve got a very broad agenda and i m going to still keep a campaign style thing of pressuring you won t work with these guys, and that will result in gridlock for the country which is horrible. if he does nixon and china, he can have storied stuff. katty, how much does he feel he has to do when he feels at the height of his confidence at the moment? he s got this k
the politics are on that. plus the sense that the president is feeling, look, i don t have an opposition to trust in that if we move forward on something like that. the president is prepared to move. he showed with mr. boehner he is prepared to do deals and to move. but he has to have a republican party that s really willing to dance with him. i know that. now everybody is talking about sequestration and all of the needs for cuts and the rest. but we have a model in the u.k. where they have they have used this policy, and their growth in the u.k. is about 1%. so we are rushing to do something in the united states that is failing in britain as we speak in terms of and britain is well represented here by katty kay. we are looking in britain at the prospect of a triple dip recession. what america needs is investment in its future. the kinds of things that the sequester will cut are exactly the kind of things that are investing in the future. r&d, education, infrastructure. and w
where it might target americans who join the enemy? again, this is no different than the policy perhaps that was in place before. we ll find out about that in the oversight that we ll pursue. all right. leader cantor, thank you for your time. i appreciate it. david, thanks. coming up, we ll preview the president s state of the union address. i ll talk with one of his closest allies in the senate, senator dick durbin. plus, our political roundtable is here with reaction to leader cantor as well as insights and analysis of all the politics behind the big issues. gun control, immigration reform, and more, that the president will pursue in his second term. joining me, democratic mayor of atlanta kasim reed. former speechwriter for george w. bush, now columnist for the washington post michael gerson. strategist mike murphy, and bbc s katty kay. as well as michael isikoff who broke the headline this week about america s drone policy. all coming up after this short commercial brea