cease-fire you have called for diplomatic solutions not only in israel, gaza, but also in the ukraine and iraq. to very little effect so far. has the united states of america lost its influence in the world? have you lost yours? >> look, this is a common theme that folks bring up. apparently, people have forgotten that america as the most powerful country on earth still does not control everything around the world. and so, you know, our diplomatic efforts often take time. they often will see progress and then a step backwards. that's been true in the middle east. that's been true in europe. that's been true in asia. that's the nature of world

affairs. it's not neat and it's not smooth. but if you look at for examp exampexample ukraine. we have made progress in delivering on what we said we would do. we can't control how mr. putin thinks. but what we can do is say to mr. putin, if you continue on the path of arming separatists with heavy armaments that the evidence suggests may have resulted in 300 innocent people on a jet dying and underlies the territorial integrity and sovereignty of ukraine, then you're going to face the consequences. that will hurt your country. and there was a lot of skepticism about our ability to coordinate with the europeans for a strong series of sanctions and each time we have done what

we said we would do. including this week when we put in place sanctions that have an impact on key sectors of the russian economy. their energy, their defense, their financial systems. it hasn't resolved the problem yet. i spoke to mr. putin this morning. i indicated to him, just as we say we'll do what we said we'll do in terms of sanctions, we'll do what we say what we'll do in terms of solving this diplomatical diplomatically. if he takes a different position. if he supports the rights of the ukrainians to go to their own destiny, then make sure the russian interests are addressed, that are legitimate and that -- dra drainians are able to -- ukrainians are able to make their own decisions and we can end some of the bloodshed. but the point is, bill, if you look at the 20th century and the

early part of this century, there are a lot of conflicts that america doesn't resolve. it's always been true. that doesn't mean we stop trying. and it's not a measure of american influence on any given day or any given moment. that there are conflicts around the world that are difficult. you know, conflict in northern ireland raged for a long, long time until something broke. where the parties decided that it wasn't worth killing each other. the palestinian-israeli conflict has been going on even longer than you have been reporting. you know, and i don't think at any point was there a suggestion somehow that america didn't have influence just because we weren't able to finalize the israeli-palestinian peace deal. you know, you will recall that the situations like kosovo and

bosnia raged on for quite some time and there was more death and bloodshed than there has been so far in the ukrainian situation before it did ultimately get resolved. so i recognize with so many different issues popping up around the world, sometimes it may seen as if this is an aberration or it's unusual. but the truth of the matter is is that there's a big world out there and that as indispensable as we are to try to lead it, there's still going to be tragedies out there and conflicts. our job is to make sure that we continue to project what's right, what's just. and, you know, that we're building coalitions of like-minded countries and partners in order to advance not only our core of security interests but also the interests of the world as a whole. >> do you think you could have done more?

>> on which one? >> on any of them. >> well, look, you know, i think, bill, that the nature of being president is that you're always asking yourself what more can you do? but with respect to let's say the israeli-palestinian issue, this administration invested an enormous amount to try to bring the parties together around a framework for peace and a two-state solution. john kerry invested an enormous amount of time. in the end, it's up to the two parties to make a decision. we can lead them to resolve some of the technical issues and to show them a path. but they've got to want it. with respect to ukraine, i think that we have done everything that we can to support the

ukrainian government and to deter russia from moving further into ukraine. but short of going to war, there are going to be some constraints in terms of what we can do if president putin and russia are ignoring what should be their long term interests. right now, what we have done is impose sufficient costs on russia that objectively speaking they should -- president putin should want to resolve this diplomatically. get these sanctions lifted. get their economy growing again. and have good relations with ukraine. but sometimes people don't always act rationally and they don't always act based on their medium or long term interests. that can't deter us though. we have to stay at it.

wendell? >> mr. president, republicans point to some of your executive orders as reason that they say they can't trust you to pass the legislation. do you hold yourself totally blameless in -- it appears to reach agreement with the republican led house? >> well, wendell, you know, let's take the recent example of immigration. a bipartisan bill passed out of the senate, cosponsored by not just democrats, but some very conservative republicans who recognized that the system currently is broken. and if in fact we put more resources on the border, provide a path in which those undocumented workers who had been living here for a long time

and may have ties here are coming out of the shadows, paying their taxes, paying a fine, learning english, if we fix the illegal immigration system so it's more efficient, if we are attracting young people who may have studied here to stay here and create jobs here, that that is all good for the economy, it will reduce the deficit. it might have forestalled some of the problems we are seeing now in the rio grande valley and with the unaccompanied children. and so we have a bipartisan bill, wendell. bipartisan agreement supported by everybody from labor to the evangelical community to law enforcement. so the argument isn't between me and the house republicans.

it's between the house republicans and the senate republicans. and house republicans and the business community. and house republicans and the evangelical community. i'm just one of the people they seem to disagree with on this issue. so that's on the comprehensive bill. so now we have a short term crisis with respect to the rio grande valley. they say we need more resources. we need tougher border security. in this area. where do these -- where these unaccompanied children are showing up. we agree, so we put forward a supplemental to give us the additional resources and funding to do exactly what they say we should be doing. and they can't pass the bill. they can't even pass their own version of a bill.

so that's not a disagreement between me and the house republicans. that's a disagreement between the house republicans and the house republicans. the point is that on a range of these issues, whether it's tax reform, whether it's reducing the deficit, whether it's rebuilding our infrastructure, we have consistently put forward proposals that in previous years, in previous administrations would not have been considered radical or left wing. they would have been considered pretty sensible, mainstream approaches to solving problems. i include under that by the way the affordable care act. but that's a whole other conversation. and in circumstances where even

basic common sense, plain vanilla legislation can't pass because the house republicans consider it somehow a compromise of their principles or giving obama a victory, then we've got to take action. otherwise, we're not going to be making progress on the things that the american people care about. and -- >> and on the border supplemental? >> i'm going to have to act alone because we don't have enough resources. we have already been very clear. we have run out of money. and we are going to have to reallocate resources in order to make sure that some of the basic functions that have to take place down there, whether it's making sure that these children are properly housed or making sure that we've got enough

immigration judges to process their cases, that those things get done. we'll have to reallocate some resources. but the broader point, wendell, is that if in fact house republicans are concerned about me acting independently of congress, despite the fact that i have taken fewer executive actions than my republican predecessor, or my democratic predecessor before that or the republican predecessor before that, then the easiest way to solve it is pass some legislation. get things done. on the supplemental, we agreed on 80% of the issues. there were 20% of the issues that perhaps there were

disagreements between democrats and republicans. as i said to one republican colleague down here that i was briefing about some national security issues, why wouldn't we go ahead and just pass the 80% we agree on and we'll try to work to resolve the differences on the other 20%? why wouldn't we do that? he didn't have a good answer for it. so there's no doubt that i can always do better on everything. including, you know, making additional calls to speaker boehner and, you know, having more conversations with some of the house republican leadership. but in the end, the challenge i have right now is that boehner is not able to act even on what they say their priorities are. and they're not able to work and

compromise even with senate republicans on certain issues. and they are -- they consider what had been traditionally republican supported initiati s initiatives. they consider those to somehow a betrayal of the cause. take the example of the export/import -- this is an interesting thing that's happened. i mean, this is a program in which we helped to provide financing to sell american goods and products around the world. every country does this. it's traditionally been championed by republicans. for some reason right now the house republicans have decided that we should don't this. which means that when american

companies go overseas and they're trying to close a sale on selling boeing planes, for example, or a g.e. turbine or some other american product that has all kinds of subcontractors behind it, is creating all kinds of jobs and all sorts of small businesses depend on that sale, and that american company is going up against the german company or a chinese company and the chinese and the american -- and the german company are providing financing and the american company isn't, we may lose that sale. why -- when did that become something that republicans opposed? it would be like me having a car dealership for ford and the toyota dealership offers somebody financing and i don't. we will lose business and we'll lose jobs if we don't pass it.

so, you know, there's some big issues where i understand why we have differences. on taxes, you know, republicans want to maintain some corporate loopholes i think need to be closed because i think we should be giving tax breaks to families that are struggling with child care or trying to save for college education. on health care, obviously, their view is that we should not be helping folks get health care. even though it's through the private marketplace. my view is that in the country as wealthy as ours, we can afford to make sure that everybody has access to affordable care. those are legitimate policy arguments. but getting our ambassadors confirmed, these are career diplomats. not political types.

making sure that we pass legislation to strengthen our borders and put more folks down there, those shouldn't be controversial. and i -- and i think you'd be hard pressed to find an example of where i wouldn't welcome some reasonable effects to -- reasonable efforts to actually get a bill passed out of congress that i could sign.

>> you have children getting killed. you have israelis whose lives are disrupted constantly hand living in fear. and those are costs that are avoidable if we're able to get a cease-fire that preserves israel's ability to defend itself and gives it the capacity -- [audio difficulties] >> conversely an agreement that recognizes the palestinian's need to be able to make a living and the average palestinians' capacity to live a decent life. but it's hard it's gonna be hard to get there. i think that there is a lot of

anger and there is a lot of despair and that's a volatile fix. but we have to keep trying and it is -- you know, bill asked earlier about american leadership. part of the reason why america remains indispensable, part of the essential ingredient in american leadership, we're willing to plunge in and try, where other countries don't bother trying. the fact of the matter, in all of these crisis that have been mentioned, there may be -- we

recognize we have special responsibilities. we have to have humility about what we can and can't accomplish. we have to recognize that our resources are finite and we're coming out of a decade of war. our military has been stretched very hard, as has our budget. nevertheless, we try. we go in there and make an effort and when i see john kerry going out there and trying to broker a cease-fire, we should all be supporting him. there shouldn't be a lot of complaints and second guessing about, well, it's not happened yet and nitpicking before he's had a chance to complete his efforts because i tell you what, there isn't any other country that's going in there and making those efforts.

and more often than not as a consequence of our involvement, we get better outcomes. not perfect outcomes, but we get better outcomes. and that's gonna be true with respect to the middle east, that's gonna be true with respect to ukraine. that's gonna be certainly true with respect to iraq. and i think it's useful for me to remind folks that, you know, in my first term, if i had a press conference like this, typically, everybody would want to ask about the economy and how come jobs weren't being created and how come the housing market is still bad and you know, why isn't it working? well, you know what, what we did worked. and the economy is better. and you know, when i say that

we've just had six months of more than 200,000 jobs that hasn't happened in 17 years, you know, that shows you the power of persistence. it shows you that if you stay at it, eventually we make progress. all right. i thought that you guys were gonna ask me how i was gonna spend my birthday. >> happy birthday. >> i will address two points. i will address -- hold on, guys. come on. there's just -- i have been giving you questions lately. on present nan -- brennan, and

the cia, the report has been transmitted. the declassified version that will be released at the pleasure of the senate committee, i have full confidence in john brennan. i think he's acknowledged and directly apologized to senator feinstein that cia personnel did not properly handle an investigation as to how certain documents that were not authorized to be released to the senate staff got somehow into the hands of the senate staff and it's clear from the ig report that some very poor judgment was shown in terms of how that was handled. keep in mind that john brennan was the person who called for the ig report. he's already stood up a task force to make sure that lessons are learned. with respect to the larger point of the rdi report itself,

even before i came into office, i was very clear that -- in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, we did some things that were wrong. we did a whole lot of things that were right. but we tortured some folks. we did some things that were contrary to our values. i understand why it happened. i think it's important when we look back to recall how afraid people were after the twin towers fell and the pentagon had been hit and the plane in pennsylvania had fallen and people did not know whether more attacks were imminent and there was enormous pressure on our law enforcement and national security teams to try

to deal with this, and, you know, it's important for us not to feel too sanctimonious in retrospect about the tough job those folks had. a lot of those folks were working hard under enormous pressure and are patriots. but having said that, we did some things that were wrong. that's what that report reflects. and that's the reason why after i took office, one of the first things i did was to ban some of the extraordinary interrogation techniques that are the subject of that report. and my hope is that this report reminds us, once again, that,

you know, the character of our country has to be measured in part not by what we do when things are easy but what we do when things are hard. and when we engaged in some of these enhanced intergation techniques, techniques that i believe and i think any fair- minded person would believe are torture, we crossed the line. and that needs to be -- that needs to be understood and accepted and we have to as a country take responsibility for that so that hopefully we don't do it again in the future. now, i -- i gave you a question. we have a u.s. vancouver africa summit coming up. it will be -- u.s./africa

summit coming up this week. africa with sun one -- africa is one of the fastest growing continent, in the world. you have all sorts of other countries like china and brazil and india deeply interested in working with africa, not to extract natural resources alone, which traditionally has been the relationship between africa and the rest of the world but now because africa is dproing and you have thriving markets and entrepreneurs and extraordinary talent among the people there and africa also happens to be one of the continents where america is most popular and people feel a real affinity for our way of life. we've made enormous progress over the last several years, in

not just providing aid to africa, helping countrys that are suffering from malnutrition or helping countrys that are suffering from a.i.d.s. but rather partnering and thinking about how can we trade more and do business together. that's the kind of relationship that africa is looking for. i've had conversations over the last several months with u.s. businesses, some of the biggest u.s. businesses in the world, and they say africa, that's one of our top priorities. we want to do business with those folks and we think we can create u.s. jobs and send u.s. exports to africa. but we've got -- gotta be engeauged. it gives us a chance to talk to africa about security issues. as we've seen terrorist networks try to find places where governance is weak and secure structures are weak and

if we want to keep ourselves safe, one of the things we can do is make sure we're partnering with some countries that really have pretty effective security forces and have been deploying themselves in peace-keeping and conflict resolution efforts in africa. and that ultimately can save us and our troops and our military a lot of money if we've got strong partners who are able to deal with conflicts in these regions. it's gonna be a terrific conference. i won't lie to you. traffic will be bad here in washington. i know that everybody has been warned about that. but we are really looking forward to this. i think it will be a great success. last thing i'm gonna say about this. it's been on people's minds is the issue of ebola. this is something that we take very seriously. as soon as th