ed, you can hear the chaos in the street, you see the black smoke. the egyptian military has been called out to get the protestors off the streets. in fact, yesterday cnn talked to one of the protestors who said he was beaten by riot police in egypt. he was wondering why the united states response to this has been so muted. the greatest democracy on the planet, he said, why aren t you on the proestors side even more? why hasn t the president come out and supported the protesters in a stronger way? reporter: well, because it s not quite that simple. the bottom line is that if the u.s. all of a sudden got behind these protestors, as you say, and it brought down the mubarak government, what comes next? what is behind these protestors? we don t have a clear handle right now. is it just people searching and thirsting for freedom spontaneously? are there islamic militants
question, austan this issue of spending cuts, if the president is serious about it he convened this deficit commission and has yet to weigh in, good, bad or indifferent on what that deficit commission found. why hasn t the president weighed in? the president has weighed in. he has he did set up the fiscal commission and i m glad you pointed that out. it was over the opposition of some of his critics. does he support his recommendations? he is going to address obviously it is not the budget, the bullet will come out next week but it is going to preview the budget and i don t think there is going to be any question at the end of tonight that the president s committed to facing up to these long-run fiscal challenges. austan, before i let you go i feel like the economy is in the exact same position it was about april of last year. all of these signs looking like they are positive, positive, then one problem in greece and all of a sudden, the bottom fell out here. how fragile ar
something and everyone panicked. what about the north ridge earthquake in california? that was a different story. all year long, we heard obama s critics say why hasn t the president shifted the focus on jobs and heard him tell the american people he s going to focus to getting people back to work and bringing the unemployment rate down. listen. i m proposing a number of sentences th steps that we should take immediately to provide relief for families and communities and help struggling home owners. it s a plan that begins with one word that s on everybody s minds and it s easy to spell. j-o-b-s. jobs. we ve got to work on jobs. we can t hang back and hope for the best when we ve seen the kinds of job losses we ve seen over the last year. i am not interested in taking a wait-and-see approach when it
am i missing something here? this was the right move. yeah, you are. the question is donny deutsch, why didn t he make this move two years ago? because maybe he learned. it s just like the democrats who right now are ringing their hands saying this is the worst thing ever. how can you give tax cuts to millionaires. they have been in power since 2006. nancy pelosi was elected speaker in november of 2006. if they were so offended by this. they could have fixed it beforehand. but they haven t. so why hasn t the president, though, if tax cuts are the answer to everything like we republicans have been saying since jack kemp, why did barack obama just now find religion after people have been out of work for several years. because you know what? he s learned. this guy took office. he had never really run anything in his life, it s very easy to be an ideologue and say, it would be great if the world is like this and power to the people. he learned, he s in charge and making the right
summers announced in september he would be stepping down. so this is somebody they re going to need in place, the head of the national economic council. roger altman i mentioned, came in for a new round of meetings friday. we reported that first. jean sperling, treasury aide in the running. sort of a dark horse name that s come up, erskine boles. the former white house chief of staff in the clinton years, co-chair of this debt commission. he might have credibility to come to the table. he s got some good relationships with the republicans, for example dating back to the clinton days dealing with a republican congress. the bottom line, democrats close to the white house saying, why hasn t the president announced this jet if he s making jobs his number one focus he needs a new economic team in place to hit the ground running with this new congress. ed, we ll keep on top of that. i lap to like your coat. very aun vaunt guard. no buttons. like velcro. do she have a budget for a scarf?