it s never worked. what s the alternative? one of the alternatives is actually putting out the plan that you really would like to pass. sure. and let s not kid ourselves, they re not going to pass this plan. they re going to move off of it. this is a starting point of the negotiations. go back to august when it was just the president and house speaker boehner. you got the sense that obama desperately wanted the house speaker to take that grand bargain which included raising eligibility age of medicare, which included reforming payment structure of social security in part because we needed a vehicle to get the debt ceiling raised. nowadays when you re looking at the supercommittee and its legislations there s a different tone to this. it s obama saying to boehner, if you want to get the things i dangled in front of you, you have to give me something. he knows boehner can t go back to the caucus and say, let s let massive defense cuts happen. he knows boehner is in a bind here. the exp
sure. and let s not kid ourselves, they re not going to pass this plan. they re going to move off of it. this is a starting point of the negotiations. go back to august when it was just the president and house speaker boehner. you got the sense that obama desperately wanted the house speaker to take that grand bargain which included raising eligibility age of medicare, which included reforming payment structure of social security in part because we needed a vehicle to get the debt ceiling raised. nowadays when you re looking at the supercommittee and its legislations there s a different tone to this. it s obama saying to boehner, if you want to get the things i dangled in front of you, you have to give me something. he knows boehner can t go back to the caucus and say, let s let massive defense cuts happen. he knows boehner is in a bind here. the expectation is the caucus is going to have to reach them on revenues. so the thing that s at their backs that is going to force them into
into the pier. eventually punching a giant hole into the hull. you see guys trying to save it. they are okay. you are in the cnn newsroom this saturday. i m in for don lemon. good to see you. we are following a massive storm stalled off the coast of new orleans. this ireport sent to us by andrew caylee from a suburb of new orleans. doesn t look too bad now. already power has been knocked out to about 30,000 people in louisiana. the governors of louisiana and mississippi have drayeclared sts of emergency for areas, parishes are under mandatory evacuation orders because of the threat of flooding. the mayor of new orleans today warned residents to brace for a long ordeal from this storm. up to 20 inches of rain could overwhelm the area. cnn s ed lavandera has been tracking the impact of the tropical storm all day today. tropical storm lee. he joins us now from waveland, mississippi, east of new orleans. how s it looking? reporter: well, you know, i think a lot of people reme
opportunity to do something big. we have a chance to stabilize america s finances for a decade, for 15 years or 20 years. if we re willing to seize the moment. what that would require would be some shared sacrifice and a balanced approach that says we re going to make significant cuts in domestic spending. and i have already said i m willing to take down domestic spending to the lowest percentage of our overall economy since dwight eisenhower. it also requires cuts in defense spending. and i ve said that in addition to the $400 billion that we ve already cut from defense spending we re willing to look for hundreds of billions more. it would require us taking on health care spending. and that includes looking at medicare and finding ways that we can stabilize the system so that it is available not just for this generation but for future generations. and it would require revenues. it would require, even as we re asking the person who needs a student loan or the senior citizen o
mattis arguing that the u.s. should be more conciliatory and prop up the alliance. you have the mid-level bureaucrats who are really the place where the actual diplomacy work gets done and they just don t know who to listen to. they don t know if the information they are getting is correct and promises will be followed through on. that s a significant problem in terms of getting the nitty-gritty work of diplomacy done. our nation turns their lonely eyes to you. here s what i mean. you get the task of explaining finally what the president is talking about with the balance of payments to nato. as he tells it, you would think we are making all the car payments for someone else to drive the car every day. you would think we are paying for some efemeral security, the benefits of which we never see. what is the nato payment structure.