avlon, the senior contributor also with daily beast.com. my conversation with bernie sanders he said a moral outrage. do you think, john, that the liberals are being too rough on the president? well, they re definitely spoiling for a fight. they feel betrayed to a certain extent by this president. at this moment they feel the poker playing he s done with the republicans hasn t been sufficient in terms of defending their interest. that said, i think the president at this point is acknowledging the results of this election. he s trying to lead from a point of let s see where we can come forward together to put forward a proposal so the vacht majority of american people don t see their taxes go up. there will be a fight. when he announced this that was already in the cards. whether it s enough to stop the whole compromise that s where the delicate dance and game goes today. this is all still unfolding in realtime up in washington. john avlon go ahead, jess.
philosophy that you stimulate the economy especially when consumers are not engaged and businesses aren t spending. the government steps in with the stimulus bill which was roughly the same size. you let the money trickle down into people s hands and they have more money and it stimulates demand. for all of the people who said that didn t work, it did work. it did create jobs and for month after month the last few months we have seen increased demand and jobs being created. but somehow the republicans decided that didn t work so we re going to try this other business of not cutting people s taxes. i just want to remind everybody. tax rates that the republicans were arguing for are staying the same. what you are going to see is some other cuts the president didn t support. the president has cover here. because if this doesn t work he can go in and say now we ve deepened the hole and it didn t achieve what we have wanted. i m a little suspicious this may not work as well as republicans w
he wants to weigh in as well. what did you think of the president, especially the final summation, the final arguments he made in the final two or three or four minutes of his statement? that last question was fascinating. that deserves on a obama high light reel. it showed a president who was strong and defiant and making a case he had a responsibility beyond partisan politics. that seemed to be the theme throughout the press conference, that he is the last adult in washington. when everyone else is engaging in bargaining he s watching out for the american people and not going to let them get caught in collateral damage. it was a strong president, a decisive and defiant president and that last question he made the good for the incremental change. that was quite a statement. hold on. roland, i know you want to weigh in. what does it say though when the president says at a news conference that the american people were with me poll after poll after poll, yet he was unable to rally
welcome back to the newsroom. the president just gave a pretty spirited defense of his tax cut deal with the republicans. but it sure does sound like a broken promise on both sides of the aisle. and face it, reality is he s not only he s not the only one who is breaking a promise on this. jessica yellin our national political correspondent. just walk us through this, will you? reporter: first of all, let s remember what the president said obje on the campaign trail and even more recently. we have a sound of him vowing not to re-enact president george w. bush s tax cuts. end the bush tax cuts for the wealthiest americans. it means letting the bush tax cuts for the wealthiest americans expire. rolling back the bush tax cuts to the top 1%. we have to roll back. i want to roll back.
president was more visibly irritated when he was talking to democrats who still have to agree to this deal. it s by no means a done deal yet. harry reid is suggesting there could be some changes yet. but republicans say if you start renegotiating, opening up some of this deal, the whole thing could collapse. unanimously pelosi, the house speaker put out a statement a couple of hours ago that was wishy washy, didn t endorse the deal, didn t reject the deal either. it s problematic what the democrats in the house are going to do. remember this is a lame duck session, the democrats have an overwhelming majority in this house of representatives and the republican also have an overwhelming majority in the next house of representatives. and the democrats are going to lose a net six seats in the congress. and then some analysts may say this is also contradict try because this whole compromise,