Barack Obama: News Conference on Congressional Gridlock

THE PRESIDENT:  Hello, everybody.  I am glad to see that all of you braved the weather to be here.  A little while ago I had a meeting with the Democratic and Republican congressional leaders, and it went very well.  In fact, I understand that McConnell and Reid are out doing snow angels on the South Lawn together.  (Laughter.)  Can you picture that, Chuck?  Not really?The meeting did go well, and I appreciate them making the trek.  We had a good and frank conversation and it's one that I hope we can continue on a more regular basis.We all understand that there are legitimate and genuine differences between the parties, but despite the political posturing that often paralyzes this town, there are many issues upon which we can and should agree.  That's what the American people are demanding of us.  I think they're tired of every day being Election Day in Washington.  And at this critical time in our country, the people sent us here expect a seriousness of purpose that transcends petty politics.That's why I'm going to continue to seek the best ideas from either party as we work to tackle the pressing challenges ahead.  I am confident, for example, that when one in 10 of our fellow citizens can't work, we should be able to come together and help business create more jobs.  We ought to be able to agree on providing small businesses with additional tax credits and much needed lines of credit.  We ought to agree on investments in crumbling roads and bridges, and we should agree on tax breaks for making homes more energy-efficient -- all of which will put more Americans to work.  Many of the job proposals that I've laid out have passed the House and are soon going to be debated in the Senate.  We spent a lot of time in this meeting discussing a jobs package and how we could move forward on that.  And if there are additional ideas, I will consider them as well.  What I won't consider is doing nothing in the face of a lot of hardship across the country. We also talked about restoring fiscal responsibility.  There are few matters on which there is as much vigorous bipartisan agreement, at least in public, but unfortunately there's also a lot of partisan wrangling behind closed doors.  This is what we know for sure:  For us to solve this extraordinary problem that is so many years in the making, it's going to take the cooperation of both parties.  It's not going to happen in any other way.I'm pleased that Congress supported my request to restore the pay-as-you-go rule, which was instrumental in turning deficits into surpluses during the 1990s.  I've also called for a bipartisan fiscal commission.  Unfortunately this measure, which originally had received the support of a bipartisan majority of the Senate and was cosponsored by Senators Conrad and Gregg, Democrats and Republicans, was blocked there.  So I'm going to be creating this commission by executive order.  And during our meeting I asked the leadership of both parties to join in this serious effort to