suggestions that that report worth considering. and everybody is hit. spending cut across the board, social security and medicare. the tax code would be fundamentally changed. might lose mortgage rate index deduction but get lower tax rate. everybody would suffer. tom coburn is one that at least had the courage to say i don t want to raise taxes but if it s a way to have a better conversation keep an open mind. russ feingold was largely thought having an open mind and one of the more bipartisan. that didn t help this election cycle. reporter: it did not. worked with john mccain on campaign finance legislation in the past. also a fierce and proud liberal opposing the war in afghanistan and iraq. a very interesting guy who lost his election. a young guy. we ll see what happens. good to see you as always. have a good show tonight. cnn is committed to keeping you informed on all the political news. the next update an hour away. we ve heard plenty bihybrid
the topics that we re told they could be touching on, things that we have been talking a lot over the past few weeks. the economy. jobs. the president wants to offer help to small businesses. energy reform, another big thing. and campaign finance reform, legislation to disclose act. i know you have been talking about it, we have all been talking about it. this has a very important procedural vote this act is facing today, this afternoon. it s unlikely that it will have enough votes to proceed. but the president is going to be touching on these legislative priorities, and i ll tell you, as we wait to hear from him, stop me if he walks out. sure. as we wait to hear from him, it s going to be interesting to hear the tone from the president. you have probably noticed it. many people have noticed in the past few weeks, the president has really stepped up his campaign style kind of rhetoric, as we say. just yesterday, take, for example. among amid the wikileaks story that was really ev
the d.c. gun law case to the rest of the country, gun politics have disappeared so much in the natural conversation partly because of the retreat on democrats. i m wondering, sam, if you see any appetite on the part of democrats to sort of prosecute this in the court of public opinion. none at all. you ve seen not just with this case is the gun lobby s power in all three branches of government. the obama administration has been loath to touch this issue. the supreme court handed down this ruling. last week you had the campaign finance legislation that created a huge exemption for the nra. so yeah, the gun lobby is a massive entity in the d.c. there s no and fight tight on the hill do anything about it. ross, i want to ask about this poll out yesterday that had said 24% of americans i don t want to do too much here. you can dismiss these polls but i found this genuinely disturbing. which is that 24% of americans didn t know which country the president of the united states was born