financial transaction system, which was the sanctions that i helped develop that ultimately brought iran to the negotiating table originally, and much more, as well as giving authorizing a half a billion dollars more in military assistance to ukraine. so i believe that knowing that the dam cleez is over your neck is going to potentially deter putin to the extent that he has not already made a decision regardless of what we or anyone else does. are you coordinating with the white house and state department, the nsc on this? i wrote my legislation independently of them, but i am glad to see that they have, in fact, endorsed the legislation and this week as we return to the senate, i ll look forward to working with several of my republican colleagues, you know, senator portman, senator rubio, senator corden and others all
think the ice has been thawed a little bit. i think the president has more wins under his belt. a lot r more things they want to go and tout. so while people here in washington, d.c. celebrating the the first amendment, the president is is in washington, michigan, celebrating freedom of assembly. the so the word frs the president as he fund raises off of not being there tonight is why would i want to be stuck in a room with a bunch of fake news liberals who hate me, but i want my staff to be there. there s a certain amount of social desire bability of these folks. they want to get out of the playpen of the trump white house and associate with other people. and get some air once in while because i imagine they go home at night. but they re, they always have the tweet of dam cleez hanging over their head where their lives could be upended by donald trump rage tweeting something and you know, all of them that are there tonight, they re enjoying going out and getting dressed up a
dam cleez over the people with the tax increase over the next decade that would happen automatically. the republicans are quite clear. they want the tax cuts extended for everyone. the president insisted on taking them away from some people. that ll hurt the economy. he got his tax increase, but he can t claim republican fingerprints on his tax increase. well, wait a second. i mean, we re not living in the alice in wonderland world here. there is a tax increase for wealthier americans. it s literally a tax increase. well, first of all rates are up. what happened yesterday was all the tax rates went up and then the republicans and congress together took them down for some people, not for everybody. steven, does that pass the smell test? if i were to run against a republican who voted for whatever it is they just voted on and i said in 2014 my opponent voted for a tax increase, would i not be literally correct? you know, there are a lot of conservatives that are grousing to
president obama, and his ability to lead us out of this unemployment quagmire? yes, i have confidence in president obama. as the president said, and i think that as he will say tuesday, look, the congress could take up these measures currently, but it hasn t. what has happened is a morass and a quagmire in congress so much so that we had to form a select committee to deal with the deficit and put the constraints on it in the sort of dam cleez over its head. and the same thing should support job creation and growth, and the beauty is by doing that, you can lower both the deficit and lower the unemployment rate, and at the same time put america back to work. the difference being that it is not subject to the quagmire that