All right, I’m going to take one last question here.  Jackie Calmes.

Q    Thank you, Mr. President.  I’d almost given up there.

THE PRESIDENT:  Oh, don’t give up.  (Laughter.)

Q    You’ve correctly suggested that the media can be impatient about seeing you -- seeing both sides come to a deal, but this is your third budget, your third year of your presidency¹.  You’ve said many times that you’d rather be a one-party -- one-term President if it means you’ve done the hard things that need to be done.  Now, I know you’re not going to stand there and invite Republicans to the negotiating table today to start hashing it all out, but why not?  And since you’re not, though, what more are you doing to build the spirit of cooperation you mentioned earlier needs to happen before there is bipartisanship?

And finally, do you think the markets will wait two years?

THE PRESIDENT:  I should have written all this down, Jackie.  (Laughter.)  I’m running out of room here in my brain.

Q    I’m happy to repeat my question.  (Laughter.)

THE PRESIDENT:  Well, let me just speak to this generally.  It’s true that this is my third budget.  The first two budgets were in the midst of the worst recession since the Great Depression, so we had a different set of priorities.  And I said it at the time -- in each of those budgets, what I said was, the deficit’s going up and we are compiling some additional debt, but the reason is because it is so important for us to avoid going into a depression or having a longer recession than is necessary.

Because the most important thing that we had to do in order to limit the amount of increased debt and bigger deficits² is to grow the economy some more.  So that was our priority.  That was our focus.

This third budget reflects a change in focus.  The economy is now growing again.  People are more hopeful.  And we’ve created more than a million jobs over the last year.  Employers are starting to hire again, and businesses are starting to invest again.  And in that environment, now that we’re out of the depths of the crisis, we have to look at these long-term problems and these medium-term problems in a much more urgent and a much more serious way.

Now, in terms of what I’m doing with the Republicans, I’m having conversations with them and Democratic leadership.  I did before this budget was released and I will do so afterwards.  And I probably will not give you a play-by-play of every negotiation³ that takes place.  I expect that all sides will have to do a little bit of posturing⁴ on television and speak to their constituencies, and rally the troops and so forth⁵.  But ultimately, what we need is a reasonable, responsible, and initially⁶, probably, somewhat quiet and toned-down conversation about, all right, where can we compromise and get something done.

And I’m confident that will be the spirit that congressional leaders take over the coming months, because I don’t think anybody wants to see our recovery derailed.  And all of us agree that we have to cut spending, and all of us agree that we have to get our deficits under control and our debt under control.  And all of us agree that part of it has to be entitlements.

So there’s a framework there -- that speaks, by the way, again, to the point I made with you, Chuck, about the commission. I think the commission changed the conversation.  I think they gave us a basic framework, and within that framework we’re going to have to have some tough conversations and the devil is going to be in the details.

But, look, I was glad to see yesterday Republican leaders say, how come you didn’t talk about entitlements?  I think that’s progress, because what we had been hearing made it sound as if we just slashed⁷ deeper on education or other provisions in domestic spending that somehow that alone was going to solve the problem. So I welcomed -- I think it was significant progress that there is an interest on all sides on those issues.

In terms of the markets, I think what the markets want to see is progress.  The markets understand that we didn’t get here overnight and we’re not going to get out overnight.  What they want to see is that we have the capacity to work together.  If they see us chipping away at this problem in a serious way, even if we haven’t solved a hundred percent of it all in one fell swoop⁸（刹那间，一下子） , then that will provide more confidence that Washington can work.

And more than anything, that’s not just what the markets want; that’s what the American people want.  They just want some confirmation⁹ that this place can work.  And I think it can.

All right.  Thank you, everybody.