Just in terms of the historic record here: The Republicans were brought in early and were consulted. Remember when we introduced our framework: They were pleasantly surprised and complimentary about the tax cuts that were presented in that framework. Those tax cuts are still in there! I suppose what I could have done was I could have started out with no tax cuts, knowing I was gonna want some, and maybe that's the lesson I should have learned. But there was consultation….

It's a little hard for me to take criticism from folks of this recovery package, after they presided over a doubling of the national debt. I'm not sure they have a lot of credibility when it comes to fiscal responsibility.