The Situation Room:
BLITZER: The Senate has delayed votes on Bush era tax cuts until tomorrow. Democrats say they want t0 put their support for extending breaks for the middle class on the record. But the measures aren't expected to pass the Senate. Republicans are standing firm in wanting to extend tax cuts for everyone, including wealthier Americans. Both sides have engaged in lots of political maneuvering in an effort to try to strike a deal before the tax cuts expire at the end of the year.
President Obama's Debt Commission failed to approve its controversial recommendations for slashing the federal deficit. But it doesn't necessarily mean bipartisanship in Washington is a lost cause.
Fourteen votes were needed to present the plan to Congress as legislation. Eleven of the 18 members voted yes -- five Democrats, five Republicans and one Independent -- while four Democrats and three Republicans voted no.
Let's talk about this with our senior political analysts, David Gergen and Gloria Borger -- Gloria, you got a chance to speak with a couple of those senators who -- who voted yes, in favor of these recommendations. And they don't see this, necessarily, as a complete failure.
GLORIA BORGER, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Right. They don't.
I spoke with Senator Judd Gregg of New Hampshire and Kent Conrad of North Dakota, both the top people on the Senate Budget Committee, and they say, look, they did get 60 percent of the votes, which was more than a lot of them thought they were going to get, but they said, you cannot end it here.
They are happy with what happened. They said they bridged a lot of philosophical divides. But Senator Kent Conrad said to me, the next thing that has to happen is that the president needs to call for a budget summit so that people don't write worthless budgets, they get together, use what the commission did as a template and actually get some deficit reduction done in this next Congress.
BLITZER: You know, they had 10 months, David, to get the job done, to come up with some sort of recommendation that 14 of the 18 members could support and submit it to Congress as legislation that the Congress would have to vote yea or nay on. They failed in that mission and now it's just a bunch of recommendations that may or may not go anywhere.
DAVID GERGEN, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: well, that's true in one sense, Wolf. It's, you know, it's a glass half full/half empty kind of proposition. But I think after the elections an given the partisanship and polarization we saw coming out of the elections, that it was a miracle they got to 11, that they got 60 percent.
BORGER: Right.
GERGEN: And again, what has been disappointing to me is has been that the president and the White House have sat on the sidelines while this has gone on. I think they could have given it a real boost during the process.
And now, with the president of Afghanistan today, he is not even meeting with this commission. Instead, he is keeping his distance and he's asking his Treasury secretary and budget director to meet with them. I don't know why he doesn't invite them to the White House as a prelude to the kind of summit that Senator Conrad is talking about.
And by the way, both Senators Conrad and Judd Gregg deserve credit for getting this off the ground and Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson deserve enormous credit for the superb job they did in chairing it.
BLITZER: The real conservatives on the panel, they hated the fact that there would be any tax increases at all, and the real liberals on the panel, like Jan Shackowsky, they hated tinkering at all with Social Security.
Well, if you don't deal with taxes, you don't deal Social Security and Medicare, you are probably not going to deal with the deficit.
BORGER: And that's the real problem. That's the real problem, Wolf, you had three leading House Republicans, one of whom is going to run the Budget Committee next year, voting against this.
Now they say it didn't go far enough. And Congressman Ryan, who is going to run the Budget Committee, said, look, I'm going to use some of this in my next budget.
But what if the president said in his State of the Union speech said, OK, step two, we'll take it, we'll use it, we need to talk about it. Would those Republicans then be a part of that summit and could they then come out with first steps here? I think they have a template they can use. They ought to use it.
BLITZER: Well, we'll see if they do.
David, you want to make a quick thought?
BORGER: I jus t-- it's an irony that this week the Congress is struggling to reduce taxes by $4 trillion over the next 10 years. At the same time, we are talking about trying to reduce the deficit by $4 trillion in the same week.
BLITZER: Yes, that's a good point.
All right, David, thanks very much. Gloria, thanks to you as well.
NBC Nightly News:
John King USA:
When we come back, we woke up in Washington to a surprise today. The president wasn't here, he was in Afghanistan. David Gergen breaks down the president's trip after this.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
KING: A white house photo there of the president of the United States. Barack Obama with the troops in Afghanistan today, a pre- Christmas holiday visit by the president that was a surprise. I checked the president's schedule every night. And last night at 10:00 at night, the president's schedule said he would be here in Washington today, delivering in a statement this morning on jobs. But guess what? Just before 10:00 last night at Andrews Air Force Base, air force one took off. It's a 13-hour trip across to Afghanistan. You see it going half way around the world to Afghanistan literally. It arrived at the air force base and touches down after a 13-hour flight at 8:35 Friday night local time there. What does he do? He has an intelligence meeting with the top generals on the ground. You see them all there. That's one thing he does. The president also takes some time while there, again, at Bagram air force base to meet with the troops. He awards five purple hearts to troops. He awards three purple hearts. And a quick phone call to President Karzai. Flight back to Andrews. When you wake up tomorrow the president will be back at air force base. Why be on the ground for just three hours? Good question for our senior political analyst David Gergen.
David Gergen, the president three hours on the ground in Afghanistan seemed clear in his speech to the troops, yes, he was there to boost morale a bit but to deliver a message to people back home in the United States who might be getting tired of this war. Listen to one of the things the president said.
PRES. BARACK OBAMA (D), UNITED STATES: We said we were going to break the Taliban's momentum. That's what you're doing. You're going on the offense. Tired of playing defense, targeting their leaders, pushing them out of their strong holds. Today we can be proud there are fewer areas under Taliban control and more Afghans have a chance to build a more hopeful future.
KING: How important is that part of it, David, talking to the audience, the skeptical American public?
DAVID GERGEN, SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: It's important, John. I think he did a much better job rallying the troops and thanking them for their sacrifices than he did persuading people back home. Americans are going to say, yes, it was nice to go to Afghanistan and thank the troops. That's an important thing to do for a president, but you're out of town on a day we get the worst economic news on the unemployment front in a long, long time. A deficit commission struggling to get a report out on the big problem facing the country and Congress trying to get tax cuts passed for next year. Why aren't you here on the home front?
KING: It seems like you're saying they seem a tad tone deaf to the politics of the moment?
GERGEN: You plan these trips out in advance. If you don't recognize how many things are going to come together on the same day.
KING: The unemployment report is always released on the first Friday of the month. The debt report commission was scheduled for weeks if not months.
GREGEN: Well, so that raises the question, does the right hand know what the left hand is doing? That's one question. I run into the cynic who says, I think we'll get the hell out of town when the report comes out, let's change the subject to Afghanistan. Come back to this, John. We both agree, I think, it's a matter of judgment on national security and you do need to do things. Be able to walk and chew gum at the same time, go thank the troops. It was important to do before Christmas. But to do it on this day and this weekend with so much going on that's so critical to the wellbeing of millions of Americans, you know, I would have voted to postpone the trip. I must tell you. I appreciate why he went.
KING: And to add to the oddness, if not the awkwardness of the whole thing, he's on the ground in Afghanistan and spends no face to face time with President Karzai. First he was supposed to helicopter to Kabul. They say dust storms prevented that. They were supposed to have face to face on a secure conference but a hiccup line stopped that. The president of the United States has a call with the leader of Afghanistan at the end of the week in which the world read diplomatic cables from U.S. diplomats on the ground says he's paranoid, erratic, can't be trusted, he's corrupt and not setting his feet into the business of nation building.
GERGEN: Given all that John don't you think he would welcome the fact he couldn't go see Karzai? Would you rather have a picture on John King of him sitting there with Karzai or talking to the American troops? I think you'd talk to the troops. Maybe they chose a day they thought there would be bad weather.
KING: We also haven't heard a word from him about the Wikileaks.
GERGEN: Exactly. I think this white house is still struggling with the aftermath of the election. They really haven't settled on what's their strategy, what are their priorities, what are they trying to do for the next two years? You have a sense they're rolling with the punches now rather that grounding control of their destiny and asserting themselves in a way I think they have to if they want to go.
KING: A lot of Democrats are nervous about that, saying where's the president, why isn't he speaking out about the unemployment, extended unemployment benefits. Why is he perhaps, many Democrats think he's in a room about to cut a deal with Republicans on taxes that they won' will like.
GERGEN: The Democrats and country are looking for him to stand up and say this is what I believe in, this is where I want to go, I'm willing to compromise, but this is have I stand on a number of issues. We have no idea on where he stands with most of what the deficit commission has proposed. He's come out with this modest proposal on freezing pay for the federal workers for a couple years. That's a tiny part of the big picture. I had thought by now we'd have a much more assertive president sort of trying to shape his destiny and the destiny of the country in the aftermath of a shellacking to be sure. You have to rebound from that and what people look for is get off the mat and take charge. Don't be sitting there on the sidelines and why are you going to Afghanistan?
KING: David Gergen, as always, thanks.
GERGEN: Thank you.