an important day here in

washington, d.c. the nation's debt ceiling is about to be raised. the senate has passed the vote, 74 in favor, 26 oppose. the house passed it overwhelmingly last night. the president later today will sign it into law. this will create momentum for the creation of the super committee, 12 members of congress, six democrats, six republicans, six from each chamber of the house and senate. they will then come up with entitlement reform, tax reform, all sorts of complicated issues. we're continuing our breaking news coverage here in the "cnn newsroom." gloria, are people lobbying to become a member of it? do members want to be on it it? >> you raise an interesting question, wolf. of course, one could make the argument -- and let's hear what john has to say about this -- that it could be the end of your political career to be on this commission. that's why maybe they're going to appoint some folks who are about to retire, those who are

in the gang of six like senator conrad. i think it could work both ways. the answer to your question, are they lobbying? it would be interesting to ask mitch mcconnell if he's getting any phone calls. >> a, does any senator want to be on the committee, and, b, is he being pressured to put one of the tea party members of jim demint who's been around longer to represent the tea party? have you read your e-mails? we're getting committee must do this, must rule out medicare cuts, tax care hikes. this is the next battleground in washington. it is a reminder, wolf, as we watch the signing, we'll wait for the president to sign this into legislation, the debate is not over. the volume will get turned over for a few weeks. they have two weeks do it. once the president signs it, they'll have two week deposit. the pressures on them will be extraordinary because the

president just said himself, he wants a balanced approach. he wants in the next installment some revenue increases, that means tax reform. others say don't touch medicare and medicaid. he says we'll have to touch them probably a little bit. then there eels be a debate around the end of the year in congress. guess what, you flip 2011 into 20e 12 and every congressional rarks size, scope, federal government spending, taxes -- >> that's why the markets aren't reacting. the markets -- >> they're reacting but negatively. >> the market understands that this is still a fight that needs to be engaged and will be engaged. and, of course, the president wants people on the committee who agree h w him to put it into balance which means increase revenues. mitch mcconnell and the republicans are going to say, not so much. don't forget, my question is how did the presidential candidates out there, are they calling

mitch mcconnell and saying, look, maybe we need some people to help us with our presidential races who could help republicans in the congressional races and in the presidential race. so i'm sure there's a lot of jockeying going on. >> i bet the candidates who -- most of the candidates prefer to be silent on this because you're not sure exactly where things are going go. so we do know most of the republican candidates said no. jon huntsman was for this deal. in the transition of our politics, right now john boehner and mitch mcconnell are the face of the republican party. there is no one leader. when we get around to march or april of next year, when somebody emerges as a front-runner for the primaries, that will change everything because then like it or not, they'll defer to the presum active nominee of their party. and if he has a different view, you'll see another lurch and pivot in the politics. that's the way the system works. it's sort of -- our politics will go in three and four-month

spurts. we're in the early stages of the campaign. then we'll get past the holidayses and into next year and then, wow, president obama is not encumbered. then the republican race will get messy. >> then they're going to play deal or no deal, right? because take the deal or don't take the deal. >> as much as everyone -- you know, they voted for this. as much as everyone dislikes what they've done, they have removed at least until the beginning of 200 2013 or so the cloud of doubt. the nation's debt ceiling is going to continue to be raised, and so at least that -- there's some silver lining in all of this. >> there is. >> the nation doesn't have to worry about default right now, which could have been even more of a disaster on this already strained u.s. economy. >> of course, wolf, but no one knew it was going to be a cloud since it's always been approved until this particular fight. so i think in the future, as mitch mcconnell said, this may

be the new template, and it's never going to be done on its own again. >> the only way it would ever be done on its own again is if one party totally controls the executive branch and the senate and the house and there's no filibuster threat in the senate. they have more than 60 senators. if one party has that kind of control, they could probably do whatever they want. >> yeah, i wouldn't count on that in the near future given our divided politics. you would have to have a big majority in the senate just because the memory is here. a lot of the debates when you watch them play out, they wasted. they wanted speaker baner to carry the water and in part they remember the t.a.r.p., republicans pulled away. a lot of payback in this town. >> we're going to stay on top of this story. you have a big interview on "john king, usa." you're going to interview mitch mcconnell. 7:00 p.m. eastern, we'll be watching that. gloria will be with us in "the situation room." i'll be back at 5:00 p.m. stay with us at cnn.

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hello and welcome to "cnn newsroom." i'm randi kaye. any journalist can tell you there's nothing like the deadline to focus the miechltd with hours to spare to make sure the world's biggest economy can make good on its debts and commitments is headed to the president's desk. as you may have seen live right here on cnn, the senate signed off on the plan about 90 minutes ago. and for all the anxiety, acrimony and alarm the vote wasn't even close. it was largely in line with last night's vote in the house, so with a signature from president obama, the united states will stay clear of default until 2013 at the early left. the president's pen is poised. >> this compromise guarantees more than $2 trillion in deficit reduction. it's an important first step to ensuring that as a nation we

live within our means. yet it also allows us to keep making key investments in things like education and research that lead to new jobs and assures that we're not cutting too abruptly while the economy is still fragile. >> let me remind you what this deal actually entails. between now and the end of this year it raises the u.s. debt limit currently just under $14.3 trillion by $900 billion. it also calls for spending caps designed to save $917 billion over ten years. this fall a 12-member bipartisan congressional committee will try to find at least $1.2 trillion in further cuts as a condition to raising the debt in equal amount of the still unnamed gang of 12 fails, automatic cuts will kick in. and we want to tell you this is breaking news that just came in. president obama has signed the debt ceiling bill, so that has

now gone official. jay carney, the white house press briefing, just announced that moments ago. so we can tell you it is official. the deal is signed. the deal is done. we're following the dollars, the politics, and the global fallout only the way cnn can. my colleague kate is here along with gloria. is there a huge sense of relief or maybe a feeling of doom postponed possibly? >> reporter: i think's absolutely a sense of relief. i started getting that sense last night once this compromised bill reached what was arguably its biggest hurdle, which was getting past the house and absolutely a sense of relief today as it passed the senate. this really brings to an end this fierce partisan battle and standoff that we've been seeing for weeks now, and it at least brings it to an end for a little while, we should say. we shouldn't go too far from

maybe the month of august. we should see this partisan bickering going on. when they return, they still do have a lot of work ahead of them. this seems to be kind of as we heard over and over again from leaders on both sides of the aisle, randi, this culmination and passage of this bill is the first step. first step, first step, first step is what we keep hearing. they're going have to return with this super committee to really tackle the tough stuff they couldn't deal with on the first round. >> exactly. we just told our viewers there that the president has signed this bill into law, so we know he has two weeks or congress has two weeks from that signing to come up with the members for this super committee. do we know how this is going to work or who might be on this panel? >> reporter: that's are really the question on everyone's mind. we started asking that question actually yesterday. no one's tipped their hand on who will be on the committee,

but the makeup of the committee, not only the issues they're going to tackle but the makeup is going to be have interesting and very telling. there is some thought that if this committee is stacked with some of the hard-liners with both parties that this committee is going to be set up to fail which would trigger those across-the-board cuts in spending that everyone really wants to avoid. at the same time, if there seems to be more members of some kind of -- somewhere in the line of like the gang of six senators who really sat down for a year to kind of tackle these tough issues, there seems to besome sense that if that type of senator and member of congress is put on this committee, that they could really reach this deadline of thanksgiving and come up with some good solutions. the makeup of the committee, not only the makeup that they tackle will be interesting to follow. >> kate bolduan, thank you very much. gloria, let me turn to you.

do you think this is cause for celebration? >> no. it's cause for celebration because the debt ceiling has been raised, and i believe that that needed to happen. but i think, you know, now comes -- now comes the hard part, as kate was saying. it was clear watching the president today. he took an immediate turn. he wasn't overly exuberantet about this. he said this wasn't a compromise. then he took an immediate turn, laying out his priorities for this committee. you know, this is a president who said, we're going to have to make, yes, adjustments to things like medicare, entitlement programs, but he called for reforming the tax code, which as you know is a very big job and also he called for revenue increases, taking away oil and gas subsidies and tax cuts for, as he put it, billionaires. and so it's -- you know, this is

a debate we have been having, we have had on other debt commissions, we're going have on this committee. they we've got to report in a very limited amount of time. the only thing i can say is that everybody knows the solutions that are out there. this is ground that has been covered many, many times before. you're just going to have some -- have to have some people on that committee who can sort of suck it up and make some tough recommendations, no matter what the political fallout. >> yeah. speaking of political fallout, i want to share one reresult from our cnn poll with you. 17% of the americans say in this debt debate have acted like responsible adults. 77% say they've acted like spoiled children. jay carney there at the white house says that americans are rightfully abald. those are his words. by what they saw. is washington capable of more than this? >> well, you know, we're going to have to see.

the line that we heard from the president that, you know, people voted for a divided government but not a dysfunctional government is clearly something that has a lot of resonance out there. and the people don't want to see the dysfunction. but people voted for this, you know. people don't like the bickering, but they actually voted for a divided government. they voted for a tea party caucus. they took pledges that said we're not going to raise tax. they took preelection pledges. so this is the type of environment you get when do you that. when they were up against the wall as they were here and will be in november, the feeling is that they will be forced into some kind of compromise, and maybe that's the only way we can do it these days when these folks have a sword hanging over their heads and they have the threat of the kinds of cuts that

nobody wants. so we'll see if we can force them to do their jobs. >> and just very quickly, we saw the president there immediately turning his focus to jobs as soon as this bill was passed. >> sure, yeah, absolutely. >> is this what you might call the restart of the 2012 campaign? >> yeah, it really is. nancy pelosi took about a nano second before she had a press conference in which she said jobs, jobs, jobs, jobs. not too shut. there. they have to make the case now that they -- that's the turn they want to take. and they hope -- they hope that this legislation will convince businesses to start dipping into the pots of money they're sitting on and investing again and creating jobs. but, of course, that's the standard that the president knows he's going to be judged on in the 2012 election. we have an unemployment rate of

9.2% now. we also heard the president talk about why the economy has stalled. he gave a list of reasons, including, you know, the arab spring and everything else, and so, you know, you see him kind of justifying why he wasn't able to kick start this economy the way he wanted to. >> well, we'll see if it get as kick start now, won't we, gloria barmg barger? >> yeah, we sure will. russian prime minister vladimir putin is invoking cold war rhetoric in speaking about the u.s. debt deal. he accused the u.s. of living beyond its means like a parasite on the global economy. global leaders often use parasite to demonize those who didn't work, serve the economy state. they had enough common sense to make balanced decision. hard times for residents of the rhode island town of central falls. it's filing for bankruptcy protection. the bad news was announced

yesterday by the city receiver at city hall. here's part of what he had to say about the move. >> its opportunity to provide basic services for the citizens and to meet the obligations. they've been endangered by years of unfortunate fiscal mismanagement. >> the only other thing they could do was to make major voluntary concessions in pensions and throwing out union contracts. he has no power to take such action himself. the white house has announced president obama's plans for observing the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. white house press secretary jay carney said moments ago he would travel to the three sites that were attacked, new york city, pentagon, and shanksville, pennsylvania. they may have finally taken care of the debt ceiling, but

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try capzasin-hp. it penetrates deep to block pain signals for hours of relief. capzasin-hp. take the pain out of arthritis. done when it comes to raising the debt ceiling but there's one important and costly piece of business they left unresolved before heading home for summer recess, how to fund the federal aviation administration which affects not only the faa but everyone who flies. lawmakers in action pretty much guarantees nearly 4,000 faa employees will remain furloughed for the next month and ironically at a time when the government is bickering over how to save money and cut the nation's debt, federal government will also lose at least $1.2 billion since

airlines have stopped collecting airline passenger taxes. my kol leej martin savidge spoke with the faa administrator earlier today about the hang-up and the impact. >> in a nut shet it had to do with the central air services which is not part of the faa reauthorization. that's for a broader political debate somewhere else. that's what's hanging it up. this can't go on a day longer, much less six weeks longer. we're going to suffer a lot of long-term damage. we have billions of dollars in construction money that should be going out the door that's not. >> construction projects the at airports are being suspended. in addition to faa employment, babbitt and ray lahood say it will affect them. but inspectors are being asked to stay on the job without pay. president obama has just signed legislation raising the debt ceiling, but the big issues of jobs and taxes are still on everyone's minds. what does this debt ceiling deal

mean for both? the parties are clearly divided how to create jobs and how taxes factor into growing the economy. moments ago the president called on congress for more action. >> we need to begin by extending tax cuts for middle-class families. so you have more money in your paychecks next year. if you've got more money in your paycheck, you're more likely to spend it. that means more small businesses and medium-sized businesses and large customers will have more customers and that means they'll be in a better position to hire. >> i want to bring in terry savidge. hi, terry. first i want to ask you do you agree with what the president said. and then it becomes what's the offset of the revenue. >> it's nice that the president says you don't raise taxes in the midst of a recession and lower taxes give people the

right do what they want to do. jobs is the next big focus. we e know friday is the monthly unemployment jobs or lack of new jobs create read port and we've seen it. business new orleans doens to create jobs. banks need confidence to go out and spend. now that we've got the worst of the debt crisis behind us, not all of us, but the worst of it, there is an opportunity for the economy to grow. >> some have suggested that if you cut federal spending, that isn't going to exactly spur economic growth or job growth. what do you think about that? >> well, the question is where would the money go? if we're borrowing the money or printing the money in today spend it, that's not good for the economy. take a look at gold today. a new high of $1,645 an ounce. that's the fear. that's not good for confidence in the future. so, yes, you're concerned about

the fact that some government employees will be laid off, there will be some cutbacks in spending. but the real economy, not the government economy, could likely pick up the slack. there's a lot of money already out there waiting for that spark of here's going to be the tax law, here will be the new regulations. what we don't need now is this new committee of 12 arguing the same argument that we just went through the last two weeks. they're going have to act decisively and come up with some agreements. >> what kind of agreement, though, do they need to come up with? i mean what needs to gun here? i feel like we've been talking jobs and economic growth for a long time. and now the president again pledging to fight, in his words for new jobs and economic growth. what does this super committee need to do? >> they need to get their act together and come out quickly than anyone expected. if we can get that kind of an

agreement, something that comes out in a period of two or three or four weeks and surprises everyone, it could be the spark of confidence that will ignite all the money that's sit tong sidelines. we'll encourage consumers to go out and buy the houses at bargain prices and bargain ranges and encourage the banks to lend. that's what the economy is waiting for. will they put all this camaraderie and such into action. that's what they need. >> these locng-term unemploymen plan, they were in the plan but never made it to the final bill and signed. should they have been? is that a mistake? >> you know, there will be a lot of these questions. they will be getting down to the specifics. here's one thing we've learned. the government can spend trillions of dollars -- they've done it -- and not really create jobs. the best way to take care o