preferred a bigger deal that included spending cuts. a grand bargain, whatever you want to call it, that solves our deficit problems in a balanced and responsible way, that doesn t just deal with the taxes, but deals with the spending in a balanced way so that we can put all this behind us and just focusing on growing our economy. reporter: the president said with this conference, by which he meant this partisan conference, that s too much to hope for. early this morning after the senate vote he released a statement that read in part, this agreement is the right thing to do for our country, and the house should pass it without delay. we ll wait and see if that actually happens today, rick. rick: okay. so if republicans compromised on spending cuts and tax hikes for the wealthiest, what did the president give up? reporter: well, his compromise was in raising the income level protected from tax hikes from 250 to $450,000 a year for families, and more importantly, making the tax cut
for families with children. it would extend our tuition tax credit that s helped millions of families pay for college. it would extend tax credits for clean energy companies creating jobs and reducing our dependence and foreign oil. it would extend unemployment insurance to 2 million americans out there actively looking for a job. i have to say that ever since i took office, throughout the campaign and the last couple months, my preference would have been to solve all these problems in the context of a larger agreement, a bigger deal, a grand bargain, whatever you want to call it, that solves our deficit problems in a balanced and responsible way. it doesn t just you deal with the taxes. but a balanced way so we can put this behind us and focus on growing our economy. but with this congress that was obviously a little too much to
families pay for college. it would extend tax credits for clean energy companies that are creating jobs and reducing our dependence on foreign oil. it would extend unemployment insurance to two million americans who are out there still actively looking for a job. i have to say that ever since i took office throughout the campaign and over the last couple of months my preference would have been to solve all these problems in the context of a larger agreement, a bigger deal, a grand bargain, whatever you want to call it, that solves our deficit problems in a balanced and responsible way that doesn t just deal with the taxes, but deeldz with spending in a balanced way so that we can put all this behind us and just focus on growing our economy. with our congress that was too much to hope for at this time. maybe we can do it in stages.
coming from the far right wing of the republican party and be held accountable to it. let s listen to the president a short time ago before we hit the air. i have to say that ever since i took office, throughout the campaign, and over the last couple of months my preference would have been to solve all these problems in the context of a larger agreement. a bigger deal. a grand bargain. whatever you want to call it. that solves our deficit problems in a balanced and responsible way. that doesn t just deal with the taxes but the spending in a balanced way to put it behind us and just focusing on growing our economy. but with this congress, that was obviously a little too much to hope for at this time. it may be we can do it in stages. we re going to solve this problem instead in several steps. but you know, molly, it was a friendly room.
here, you know, our consumer confidence has been dropping week by week and we ll get right back into slow growth and then we ll freak out and do something more stupid. you were smirking, jonas. to get to your original question of the stock market, i think if they did nothing, but kick the can an entire year with all of these things and pushed the whole thing the next holiday season and holiday sales like this year, i think the market would go up, wall street is happy with pushing the problem down the road even though it should be addressed sooner than that. i don t think it s good for the stock market in the short run to solve these deficit problems. maybe we can keep rates 0 low and basically get money or nothing basically. steve? this is absolutely right. everybody thinks that 4 trillion dollars is going to wreck the economy somehow. these cuts are very small in terms of the overall size of the economy. plus, people lack confidence in ever having any sound fiscal policy in wa