Question: Thank you, Mr. President. Earlier today in Indiana, you said something striking. You said that this nation could end up in a crisis without action that we would be unable to reverse.
Can you talk about what you know or what you're hearing that would lead you to say that our recession might be permanent when others in our history have not? And do you think that you risk losing some credibility or even talking down the economy by using dire language like that?
OK. Karen Boeing (ph) of Reuters?
Question: Thank you, Mr. President. I'd like to shift gears to foreign policy. What is your strategy for engaging Iran? And when will you start to implement it? Will your timetable be affected at all by the Iranian elections? And are you getting any indications that Iran is interested in a dialogue with the United States?
OK. Chip Reid?
Question: Thank you, Mr. President. You have often said that bipartisanship is extraordinarily important, overall and in this stimulus package, but now, when we ask your advisers about the lack of bipartisanship so far -- zero votes in the House, three in the Senate -- they say, "Well, it's not the number of votes that matters; it's the number of jobs that will be created."
Is that a sign that you are moving away -- your White House is moving away from this emphasis on bipartisanship?
And what went wrong? Did you underestimate how hard it would be to change the way Washington works?
All right, Chuck Todd. Where's Chuck?
Question: Thank you, Mr. President. In your opening remarks, you talked about that, if your plan works the way you want it to work, it's going to increase consumer spending. But isn't consumer spending, or overspending, how we got into this mess? And if people get money back into their pockets, do you not want them saving it or paying down debt first before they start spending money into the economy?
All right, Julianna Goldman, Bloomberg?
Question: Thank you, Mr. President. Many experts, from Nouriel Roubini to Sen. [Chuck] Schumer [D-New York], have said that it will cost the government more than $1 trillion to really fix the financial system. During the campaign, you promised the American people that you won't just tell them what they want to hear, but what they need to hear.
Won't the government need far more than the $350 billion that's remaining in the financial rescue funds to really solve the credit crisis?
OK. Jake?
Question: Thank you, Mr. President. My question follows Julianna's in -- in content. The American people have seen hundreds of billions of dollars spent already, and still the economy continues to freefall.
Beyond avoiding the national catastrophe that you've warned about, once all the legs of your stool are in place...
Question: ... how can the American people gauge whether or not your programs are working? Can they -- should they be looking at the metric of the stock market, home foreclosures, unemployment? What metric should they use when and how will they know if it's working or whether or not we need to go to a Plan B?
Ed Henry. Where's Ed? CNN, there he is.
Question: Thank you, Mr. President. You've promised to send more troops to Afghanistan. And since you've been very clear about a timetable to withdraw combat troops from Iraq within 16 months, I wonder, what's your timetable to withdraw troops eventually from Afghanistan?
And related to that, there's a Pentagon policy that bans media coverage of the flag-draped coffins from coming in to Dover Air Force Base. And back in 2004, then-Sen. Joe Biden said that it was shameful for dead soldiers to be, quote, "snuck back into the country under the cover of night."
You've promised unprecedented transparency, openness in your government. Will you overturn that policy so the American people can see the full human cost of war?
All right. Helene Cooper. Where's Helene? There you are.
Question: Thank you, sir. I wanted to ask you, on the next bank bailout, are you going to impose a requirement that the financial institutions use this money to loosen up credit and make new lending? And if not, how do you make the case to the American people that this bailout will work when the last one didn't?
All right. Major Garrett, where's Major?
Question: Mr. President, at a speech Friday that many of us covered, Vice President Biden said the following thing about a conversation the two of you had in the Oval Office about a subject he didn't disclose.
"If we do everything right, if we do it with absolute certainty, if we stand up there and we really make the tough decisions, there's still a 30 percent chance we're going to get it wrong."
Since the vice president brought it up, can you tell the American people, sir, what you were talking about? And if not, can you at least reassure them it wasn't the stimulus bill or the bank rescue plan and if, in general, you agree with that ratio of success, 30 percent failure, 70 percent success?
All right. Helen? This is my inaugural moment here.
(LAUGHTER)
I'm really excited.
Question: Mr. President, do you think that Pakistan and -- are maintaining the safe havens in Afghanistan for these so-called terrorists? And, also, do you know of any country in the Middle East that has nuclear weapons?
Sam Stein, Huffington Post. Where's Sam? Here. Go ahead.
Question: Thank you, Mr. President. Today, Sen. Patrick Leahy [D-Vermont] announced that he wants to set up a truth and reconciliation committee to investigate the misdeeds of the Bush administration. He said that, before you turn the page, you have to read the page first.
Do you agree with such a proposal? And are you willing to rule out right here and now any prosecution of Bush administration officials?
Mara Liasson?
Question: Thank you, Mr. President. If it's this hard to get more than a handful of Republican votes on what is relatively easy -- spending tons of money and cutting people's taxes -- when you look down the road at health care, and entitlement reform, and energy reform, those are really tough choices. You're going to be asking some people to get less and some people to pay more.
What do you think you're going to have to do to get more bipartisanship? Are you going to need a new legislative model, bringing in Republicans from the very beginning, getting more involved in the details yourself from the beginning, or using bipartisan commissions? What has this experience with the stimulus led you to think about when you think about these future challenges?
What is soft ball about these questions?
