what is wrong with you? all right. that would take forever to answer. just kidding. democratic leaders gave a 78-page manual to members of congress to help answer questions about the murky pile of sludge called obamacare. do you think they bothered to read that, too? it is called the tool kit perhaps because it was designed like tools. obama care is like kale. anybody s whose appeal takes this long to explain had serious problem. congressional panels are looking into what the hhs secretary violated laws looking for cash for the obamacarrollout. worried that americans won t sign up for the plan if they don t know about it? expansion through ignorance is big government survival mechanism. what you don t know won t hurt you until it is too late.
got an invite. is that enough? i would not think so. it is a step. they are it is not going to fool any one. the reason you are calling the bureau chiefs is because you realize you have a fundamental credibility problem. it is not camera. you will not see any of the meetings but they will be able to have heart to heart discussions with them. the question is will it be enough to save his job? maybe but they are trying to also save his reputation so that if he does end up leaving. point on the press briefing in the exchange with the reporters and the press secretary. i think still one of the fundamental questions is if is the question does the president still have confidence in eric holder? that answer was, yes. and a white house has complete confidence in any cabinet secretary until they do not. the question congress is asking, did holder lie to us. right. i want to know did holder
in one fell swoop, that cuts the deficit by more than 12 trillion. remember when someone says washington has a spending problem and in no way has a taxing problem. medicare takes deep cuts. health care form and all of the cost controls go into effect and congress freezes growth in discretionary spending. now, that is what happens if they do nothing at all, which raises the question, why does everybody think we have these giant deficits stretching? the depressings an is that the congressional budget office and nonpartisan numbers guys don t expect congress to do nothing. they expect it to do lots of things, most of them on the national credit card. in the most recent long-term budget book, they included a chart making their point. as you can see, the bottom line is do nothing. it remains relatively steady. the dotted line, the one going up, up, up, that s what the cbo
hide things that have aloud for spending cuts but not so egregious to the polarizing left and rights of both parties. nbc s luke russert, thanks for that. as we move closer to the august 2nd deadline, president obama is making it clear he has no interest to a short-term solution to the nation s debt problems. i ve heard reports that there may be some in congress who want to do just enough to make sure that america avoids defaulting on our debt in the short term but then wants to kick the can down the road when it comes to solving the larger problem of our deficit. i don t share that view. how did house speaker john boehner respond to that? with this statement saying, quote, i m happy to discuss these issues at the white house, but these discussions will be fruitless until the president recognizes economic and legislative reality. nbc s kristen welker is live at the white house with more on this for us. kristen, you know, the president also had a twitter conference today, as we ve
nothing in medicare and domestic discretionary spending basically balance the budget. the only reason it isn t balanced is cbo expects congress to make all sorts of votes to increase the deficit and the question congress is making is whether or not they will make counteracting votes that spring it back down. a part of this discussion and this debate is how active or inactive the president has been in this process, and he has said congress needs to make the first move. what do you say? congress is the only one who can pass it in the end. they have been active in recent months. they have been having negotiations. eric cantor and jon kile walk out of negotiations with joe biden. the second round is a bit of a sham, nobody s position has moved and it has a lot to do with the white house wanting to show clearly ant correctly that they are the ones reaching out. but at this point i don t think there s a whole lot more that the president could be doing. both parties are basically position