a stimulus bill that s more effective for producing material for late night comedians than it was producing jobs. and a national debt so out of hand its sparked a crisis without precedent in my lifetime or yours. that was house speaker john boehner speaking after the president s address to the nation tonight on the debt ceiling crisis. joining me now, msnbc political analyst richard wolf. richard, some reporters overheard speaker boehner when he was leaving. that was his national debut as a respondent to the president on this kind of address. they overheard him saying as he was leaving that response speech of his, i didn t sign up to go mano a mano with the president of the united states. it doesn t sound like boehner was particularly confident about how his speech played out there. it is always hard when you are going up against the
about what he has proposed for deficit reduction, as well as the ideas that others have proposed, which he can support, like harry reid s latest plan that specifies the 2.7 trillion spending cuts. tim pawlenty issued this bold statement. once again president obama did not have the courage to offer real solutions to fix runaway debt. of course, pawlenty s statement ignores what the president said tonight. no, pawlenty s statement actually lies about what the president said. let s live within our means by making serous historic cuts in government spending. let s cut domestic spending to the lowest level since dwight eisenhower was president. let s cut defense spending by hundreds of millions of dollars and cut waste in fraud and medicare and make modest adjustments so medicare is still there for future generations.
taken, to make certain that we put this nation on a firm financial footing. what we do not want to do is have the nations that hold our debt, china being one, japan number two, the uk number three, and opec number four, those are the entities that hold our debt. china owns about 25% of that. what we don t want to do, lawrence, is to cap our children s future and trade it to the people that hold that debt. this is a very serious issue. it is one where we cannot kick the can down the road. what we are saying is let s get this addressed. and we are certain that we have put good plans on the you know, the president doesn t have a plan. he has yet to put a plan on the table. he has put a plan did you see congresswoman, he put a plan on the table on 6:00 p.m. on friday and in his press conference and he outlined specific cuts. today he didn t even want to
has run out the clock tonight s mini debate. we will try to put this together. come to our blog and make your point there. i m going to have to wrap it here. it s live television. we ve got some commercials to do. i have not voted for spending cuts. i don t believe in cutting medicare when millionaires get off scott-free. you just did it. you voted to abolish medicare. no, i did not. you did that. okay. thank you very much for joining me tonight. and congressman blackburn, i do have an open invitation to come back at any point to explain to me why when the debt was at $7 trillion, you had no problem no, problem voting to raise the debt ceiling without $1 of spending cuts. thank you very much for joining me tonight. come back and answer the question whenever you think you can. still ahead, let s roll it.
number two, the uk number three, and opec number four, those are the entities that hold our debt. china owns about 25% of that. what we don t want to do, lawrence, is to cap our children s future and trade it to the people that hold that debt. this is a very serious issue. it is one where we cannot kick the can down the road. what we are saying is let s get this addressed. and we are certain that we have put good plans on the you know, the president doesn t have a plan. he has yet to put a plan on the table. he has put a plan did you see congresswoman, he put a plan on the table on 6:00 p.m. on friday and in his press conference and he outlined specific cuts. today he didn t even want to bore us with the details of the plan. no, you re incorrect. he said republicans have walked away. he has in speeches but you can t put a speech on the board