better crafted and been bigger, we had $87 billion for infrastructure, the number one job producer of well-paying american jobs and that spurs investment. had we had four or five times that, might have had a much greater and significant boost to the economy. i think we can do those things and at the same time take care of the long term. and i think the long term is a balance of what paul says and what you say, joe. we ve got to do something about entitlements because it isn t such a long term. medicare is sound because of the $716 million till 2024. yeah. so we re running out of time. and the things that paul is talking about, those things can bear fruit, but it s going to take 5, 10, 15 years. but understand, though, this year alone, every dime that washington received with the medicare and medicaid, defense, servicing the national debt, i guess the question, paul, is how comfortable are you give us your guidepost on how comfortable you are pushing the
two paragraphs about how, well, the deficit is a longer-term problem. washington post has an editorial yesterday that quotes only the part about the deficit being a problem. and ignores the rest of it. and we ve just seen that even the washington post editorial board can t walk and chew gum at the same time. so you re expecting our political system to simultaneously talk endlessly about the long-term deficit and worry about job creation? it doesn t work that way. we need to talk about job creation right now. and my concern, ed rendell, is if the federal government is incapable of walking and chewing gum at the same time, taking care of long-term debt while creating jobs in the short term, how are we going to be able to tackle something as complex as overhauling the health care system so we make sure that we re an outcome-based system instead of a basically test? i don t think any of these things are mutually exclusive. we can do had stimulus been
this economy back to full employment. right. but the way you do that is to build a political coalition, to do something about the long-term debt have you been in the same country i have for these past years? it s our only hope. otherwise throw up your hands. doesn t that send a positive message to the markets if we say hey, listen, here s the deal. we re going to take be responsible. what we have to do in the short term to get people back to work. but in the long term, we re taking care of the long-term structural debt. who are you going to make this deal with? look, there s lots of stuff if we had a government of philosopher kings, there s lots of stuff i d be for. given the reality of our political partisan polarized thing, i want i want the president to be pushing for job creation. that should be his top priority. the only reason i m laughing is because you re about as cynical as i am about what s going on in washington, d.c. you really don t think they re ca
her tears. oh, my god. and we do that time and time and time again. it s not just policy. it s how we play the game. and we have been clumsy and stupid for too long now. sarah palin represented something to a lot of people. she was a proxy, i feel like, for conservatives, for republicans to fight the media, to fight democrats, to fight president obama in 2008. she was a way for many of them to say, look how they re treating her. that s the way we ve all been treated for all these years. and she was a great moment for them to fight back. now the question is, when you turn the page from her and she does feel like a relic from a different time, where do you go? what s the next move? can they make the leap to chris christie? is he too moderate, as people said four years ago or a couple years ago, even? we ll see. i mean, we ll see if they re willing to go that direction. if mitt romney in many ways and john mccain in many ways was too moderate for some people during that campaign, wi
neighbors like israel that are going to be profoundly affected by it. and so it s true sometimes that we don t just shoot from the hip. so richard haass, is this payback for, let s say, bill clinton doing such a great job for the obama campaign? we re speculating. people are still going back and saying the most important speech of that campaign was the one given by bill clinton, without question. that was the turning point for the i mean, i say turning point, those guys were pounding republicans who they were targeting from the very beginning, but that was really when america just, i think, turned. bill clinton captured the moment and defended the presidency. well, it s clear that bill clinton s support for the president helped his re-election both at the convention and beyond the convention. you re asking me to speculate on something i simply don t know anything about. well, that s what we do here. sorry. how long you been coming here? secretary of state leaving