cuts, not social issues like women's health and the protection of our air and water. these are important issues that deserve discussion, just not during a debate about our budget. >> reporter: interesting a spokesman for the tea party told cnn that he was not very impressed by this compromise figure of $38.5 billion in spending cuts, that while both parties are touting this as the largest spending cut in american history, the fact of the matter is, it's, in the words of the tea party, trivial, compared to the larger federal budget. in fact that cut represents far less than 1% of the entire federal budget. it gives you an idea of just how much work yet needs to be done, because there are some big, big ticket items involving trillions, not billions of dollars but trillions, like medicare, medicaid, some of the big drivers of the u.s. federal debt right now, still have to be dealt with down the road as lawmakers work soon on the 2012 budget and try and figure all of this out, so maybe there is a little bit of good news out of