the deficit and raise the debt ceiling. meanwhi meanwhile, the specter of default comes ever closer. frankly, it s the tone of these debates that has a lot of people scared and this is a guy who s scaring a lot of folks tonight. congressman joe walsh, republican from illinois, a freshman backed by the tea party. he s been known to say blunt things when criticizing president obama. these comments might just take the cake. i want to show you a video congressman walsh shot and posted to his website yesterday. president obama, quit lying. you know darn well if august 2nd comes and goes, there s plenty of money to pay off our debt and cover all of our social security obligations. i know you have a willing media that protects everything you say and do. but have you no shame, sir? in three short years, you ve bankrupted this country and destroyed job creation. you re with ee ee eer either in your head, you don t understand what makes this country great, or you re hell-bent in turn
dollar for dollar demand in terms of spending cuts, or we have to go back and look at revenues, and that s tax increases to republicans. so that s where we are right now. heather: and then coming up friday some discussion on whether it will be a short-term deal or long-term deal m the grand plan. right. so the line in the sand that the president is drawing, he s saying there will be no short-term deals. and eric cantor was trying to portray the republicans as offering some concession because the house side, the house remins have also republicans have also been opposed to a short-term deal. but cantor told the president last night we re now open to a short-term deal, and the president shut him down. heather: they re meeting again today, so there is hope. we ll see what happens. russell berman, thank you. thank you. jon: venezuelan president hugo chavez revealing new details about his cancer treatment. he went under the knife back in june in cuba. now we re learning more about his
the american people what we have to do, we have to make hard choices. what are our principles and where are we trying to go? i did not hear the amount of debt ceiling increase with it, and i presume the $2.4 trillion, but we should be doing something with the debt ceiling increase if we do it at all to bring it to a conclusion a year from now to reassess the situation rather than all of us seeking to dodge that bullet before the election in 2012. i would like to ask you that, congressman, knowing what a election year is like, why would you want to put a debt ceiling increase in the middle of it? if it is a $2.5 trillion increase we are far beyond the dollar for dollar demand that speaker boehner has made so why bring this into the middle of an e le lection year when the chanf a catastrophic mistake is heightened, and isn t that when we would wantn t to do a debt ceiling increase? well, it is $3 trillion for