W.H. Cites GOP Frequently Folding as Reason They’re Optimistic About Budget

RUSH TRANSCRIPT:
"There are two things that come to mind, the first is there was a lot of pessimism at the beginning of last year when did this administration would be able to make progress on the range of priorities we identified. Considering Republicans just enjoy significant victory in the midterm elections, increased their majority in the house of representatives and gave them the majority of the Senate for the first time in a while, pessimism was welcome. Through perseverance and to try to find common ground we made progress on a range of things nobody would have previously considered possible. We got five your transportation bills last year, reforming no child left behind builds make sure we are not overtesting our students but we got a budget agreement thanks to the good work, lot of people sitting on stage right now that allowed us to ensure that we would not abide by sequester caps that would undermine our ability to invest in economic and national-security, we have the debt limit extended without significant drama or delay, we got I am at reform, we got reauthorization of the export import Maine, most of those were things Republicans were strongly opposed to. At least they said they were strongly opposed to them but yet we were able to work aggressively and find common ground with Republicans. None of the bills I just described were perfect but they did reflect compromises and Republicans who were part of the compromise deserve credit for trying to find that kind of common ground in the best interests of the country so our experience last year gives us some optimism about what is possible this year, particularly when you consider that there are so many opportunities that are for bipartisan agreement."