acceptable for us not to raise the debt ceiling and to allow the u.s. government to default. we cannot threaten the united states full faith and credit for the first time in our history. we still center a lot of work to do, though, to get this problem solved. and so let me just make a couple of points. first of all, all of us agree that we should use this opportunity to do something meaningful on debt and deficits. and the reports that have been out there have been largely accurate that speaker boehner and myself had been in a series of conversations about doing the biggest deal possible. so that we could actually resolve our debt and our deficit challenge for a long stretch of time. and i want to say i appreciate speaker boehner s good faith efforts on that front.
companies.รง is senator menendez, great to have you here. good to be with you, cenk. all right. you re going to bring in the oil executives. my guess is they ll say they still need the, and conoco phillips said it was un-american to challenge the subsidies. how do you respond to that? number one i hope could not ko phillips will apologize to suggest that simply asking them to be part of meeting the nation s deficit challenge, as we re asking middle class, working families, families on medium income make $50,000 a year, we say to them they could we re not willing to say to the big five oil companies who will make
minutes ago we agree on the shape of the problem. the size of the problem. we are going to have to work through finding those things we can agree on and then there will be some issues that we have to agree to disagree on and it will take some time to resolve. i think the president made clear that he does not find an approach that would change medicare, as he said, end it as we know it, an acceptable way to deal with the deficit challenge. the republicans don t consider taxes on the wealthy to be an option. hard issues we have to work through. jack, talk about the june deadline the president said yesterday of getting something, and i guess that s what i m confused about. he wants congress to essentially set up another commission. i think it s our second or third one on this issue alone. led by the vice president, but obviously everybody on this commission actually will vote on what would eventually become the long-term debt plan. what is it we re going to see in june?
medicaid and things you can do on tax increases, but i think is going to be an entry level commitment for a lot of people which was the concern about the rolling size in government and debt and deficit. can he be credible? this is the challenge. the elites want to hear a deficit challenge. they are not wrong, we need to reduce the deficit and middle class americans want to hear about jobs and they are not wrong either. creating them which takes stimulus. he believes you have to do more to create those jobs, and those are two ice floes moving in absolutely different directions and he s having to straddle them. if anybody can do it, it s barack obama. let s talk about it let s talk about it after tuesday and see how he does. paul begala, michael gerson, thanks so much. up next, why two presidential speeches given almost exactly 50 years ago still have so much relevance for today s politicians. ring ring ring ring
the elites want to hear a deficit challenge. they are not wrong, we need to reduce the deficit and middle class americans want to hear about jobs and they are not wrong either. creating them which takes stimulus. he believes you have to do more to create those jobs, and those are two ice floes moving in absolutely different directions and he s having to straddle them. if anybody can do it, it s barack obama. let s talk about it let s talk about it after tuesday and see how he does. paul begala, michael gerson, thanks so much. up next, why two presidential speeches given almost exactly 50 years ago still have so much relevance for today s politicians.