the country is hurting the the confidence of averagerins. americans. and that s why it is important o they take it off the table not just for august 2nd, but for the next 18 months as long as n8 they can. one last question, you talk about growth.st i i want to put up the growth number ofertz last few months ls and over the last fewng months.. gdp growth was 1.9% and est goldman sachs has sailed backua in the second quarter from 2% to 1. 5%, in other words less t than the third quarter and inrtr the third quarter from three fro and a quarter percent to 2.5%. that s your idea of an economy that is growing stronger? that the economy is still a tough economy and growth slowed in the first half forgrow the reasons we said. half and if congress makes some sensible decisions right now s and lifts this cloud of dysfunction of default off the american economy, then it cann turn back the business of doing things to make the economy stronger. but this economy is healing. it is recovering. w
what we saw this week from the democrats, you talk about the white house. the democrats flew over to the white house to say, what are you talking about? you re willing to make significant cuts in terms of medicare, medicaid, social security, you are putting our political fortunes at risk? this is not what we want. you saw move on, you saw aarp. saw afl-cio. sdiu, all engaged their members to absolutely zoom in on congress with phone calls and lobbying to say stop the president from giving up everything to the republicans. one last point here. i m amazed, you heard the speaker of the house say, you know, we have moved the goal post in terms of a president who didn t want to make significant cuts who is now willing to make significant cuts. why don t republicans say, you know, we have won this fight. it s time to move on and not push the country over the edge? that s one view. we re going to take a break here and we re going to continue the conversation. one of the interesting things t
they can. one last question, you talk about growth.st i i want to put up the growth number ofertz last few months ls and over the last fewng months.. gdp growth was 1.9% and est goldman sachs has sailed backua in the second quarter from 2% to 1. 5%, in other words less t than the third quarter and inrtr the third quarter from three fro and a quarter percent to 2.5%. that s your idea of an economy that is growing stronger? that the economy is still a tough economy and growth slowed in the first half forgrow the reasons we said. half and if congress makes some sensible decisions right now s and lifts this cloud of dysfunction of default off the american economy, then it cann turn back the business of doing things to make the economy stronger. but this economy is healing. it is recovering. we will get through this and ing to get it will take more time, but that s why it is so important as the eyes of the world areyesf on us. if congress demonstrates it it will make better decisions
that would cut over a trilliont dollars in spending and raiset the debt ceiling into next year. and then there would be a mechanism for more cuts that if approved the debt ceiling would be raised past the 2012 21 election. will the president sign that into law? me pr chris, let me tell you what we are trying to do. rs first and most important we need to lift this shred of default from the economy for the next 18 months. we have to take that threatctio. off the table through the election?t t try through the election. mak but we want to make sure we can come together 1k3 lock in s some long-term savings to getous our fiscal house in order. we need to do both those things so congress can get t the back and make the economytronged stronger and get moreamericans b americans back to work. so for lack of a better o word we will call it the boehner plan, would theett. president veto that? let me step back.k there are two types of planseco. on the table now.
that, that won t pass, but you don t have the senate has done nothing. they haven t passed they haven t passed a budget. they ve rejected the president s budget 97-0. they haven t done anything, but so everyone time the house acts, it can t pass anywhere else. isn t it time for somebody to step up with an alternative plan and the thing that is striking about this, this is a very close parallel to what happened back in the clinton years, when we had the, you know, we had the partial government shutdown and that and the pattern is very similar and in that case, the republicans got all the blame and i have a sense here that there s a sense of confidence among the democrats and the white house and congress that if we end up with this sort of a situation where you simply have to close down parts of the government because there s no money, that the republicans