"What we've discovered now, Mr. Director [Jack Lew of OMB] on two occasions now, last December and now is that the Republican leadership going along with the Tea Party is able to hostage take to use the term we're both using here. "Their able to use the hostage of the government crashing, the economy crashing to get their way. How can the Ameri

"The debt limit has historically, historically been raised as a matter of course by both Republican and Democrats, both sides, without conditions. Without conditions. Ronald Reagan did it 18 times without conditions. George W. Bush did it 7 times without conditions. But, no, not this time. Not this time. For days, for weeks this Congress has been h

"I would remind all of you that this not just an agreement between the president and myself. This is an agreement between the bipartisan leaders of the Congress and the president of the United States. And all of the leaders have a responsibility, because they've all signed off on the agreement, to bring sufficient votes to make sure that it passes.

"So I said earlier, those of us who believe that government has a role for positive achievement in society along with the private sector doing things only government can do. That we're in a kind of default position now. And we have to fight back. I believe that last year, the past year, the health care bill was unfairly demonized as having been don

President Obama lays out the agreement he reached with congressional leaders to meet our financial obligations and reduce our debt in a video to supporters.

NORAH O'DONNELL, CBS NEWS: "You talked about two weeks ago, two weeks ago the President talked a lot about shared sacrifice. He talked about ending subsidies for oil companies and ending tax breaks for corporate jet owners, he talked about this was a very fair deal where he was offering 3 to 1 spending cuts and wanted tax revenues. Where are the ta

Rush Limbaugh gives his reaction to the debt compromise and how it was played out by the media. "The media knows that people who live and work in Washington crave support and praise from the media. They know it. Just like parents know that little kids love praise. So they are doling it out today."

White House press secretary Jay Carney explains President Obama's position on the debt deal that was reached late Sunday evening.

Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) on the Laura Ingraham radio program: "My opinion is we're now going to give the President almost a trillion dollars and then come Christmas time, he'll get potentially -- we'll find out the final numbers -- upwards of another, in excess of a trillion, maybe ties another $1.8 trillion. But that's on top of the other $

"Well, it's a punt where we finally got on the right subject and that was reducing spending. So, you know, that's the subject that we're on. Obviously the President has a vision for this country that is totally different than where Republicans are. And I think you're right. I mean, this was in essence -- this was a punt. And all of us who care so d

"We see this as a good step in the right direction, as a decent down payment on the deficit and as a huge change in the culture of spending. We are cutting spending. We are spending less money next year on discretionary spending than we spent last year. You haven't heard that kind of a statement before around this town," Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) sai

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"These are spending cuts that, you know, were identified largely on the front-end through the work the President and Vice-President did with the Congressional leaders. They protect things like education, like medical research and this Committee is going to be charged, again, with doing the next stage but the enforcement mechanism, obviously, we wa

"At some point in life, you have to balance the budget. Now, the President got something that was fantastic because he got the deal past the election. If he had this going on again and it will go on. As Steve [Liesman] was saying, it will go on drips and drabs. But the fact is, if this were going on sometime prior to the election he would have zero

"I hope that we can get something done. I was just told as I was getting out of this [meeting]. I hope it doesn't affect the vote over there (the House) today. I was told that Representative Cantor said that he -- look, I just walked out of here, maybe i'm wrong, but somebody just told me that Cantor said 'revenue could very well be part of what w