now the proponents of the contract tell us we have to make these draconian cuts because the budget is so large. we have to think about future generations, so on and so on. and that argument might have a shred of credibility were not for their proposal to also spend $4.6 trillion over the next decade on lower tax rates. we're told that these tax cuts will supposedly be paid for by closing loopholes and eliminating wasteful deductions. but the republicans in congress refuse to list a single tax loophole they are willing to close. not one.

and, by the way, there is no way to get even close to $4.6 trillion in savings without dramatically reducing all kinds of tax breaks that go to middle class families. tax breaks for health care. tax breaks for retirement. tax breaks for home ownership. meanwhile, these proposed tax breaks would come on top of more than a trillion dollars in tax giveaways for people making more than $250,000 a year. that's an average of at least $150,000 for every million area in this country. $150,000. let's just step back for a second and look at what $150,000 pays for. a year's worth of prescription drug coverage for a senior

citizen. plus a new school computer lab. plus a year of medical care for a returning veteran. plus a medical research grant for a chronic disease. plus a year's salary or a firefighter or a police officer. plus a tax credit to make a year of college more affordable. plus a year's worth of financial aid. $150,000 could pay for all these things combined. investments in education, a research that are essential to economic growth that benefits all of us, for $150,000, that would be going to each million ar and billionaire in this country. this budget says we'd be better off as a country if that's how we spend it.

this is supposed to be about paying down our deficit? it's laughable. the bipartisan simpson bowls commission that i created, which the republicans originally were for until i was for it, that was about paying down the deficit. and i didn't agree with all of the details. i proposed about $600 billion more in revenue, and $600 billion -- sorry, it proposed about $600 billion more in revenue and about $600 billion more in defense cuts than i proposed in my own budget. but bowls-simpson was a sear yushgs honest balanced effort between democrats and republicans to bring down the deficit. that's why although it difficulters in some ways, my

budget takes a similarly balanced approach. cuts in discretionary spend, cuts in mandatory spending, increased revenue. this congressional republican budget is something different altogether. it is a trojan horse. disguised as deficit reduction plans, it is really an attempt to impose a radical vision on our country. it is thinly veiled social darwinism. it is antithetical to our history as a land of opportunity and upward mobility for everybody willing to work for it. a place where prosperity doesn't trickle down from the top but grows outward from the heart of the middle class. and by gutting the very things we need to grow an economy that's built to last, education and train, research and

development, our infrastructure, it is a prescription for decline. and everybody here should understand that because there's very few people here who haven't benefited at some point from those investments that were made in the '50s and the '60s and the '70 and the '80s. that's part of how we got ahead. and now we're going to be pulling up those ladders up for the next generation. so in the months ahead i will be fighting as hard as i know how for this truer vision of what the united states of america is all about. absolutely we have to get serious about the deficit and that will require tough choices

and sacrifice. i've already shown myself willing to make these tough choices when i signed into law the biggest spending cut of any president in recent memory. in fact if you adjust for the economy, the congressional budget office says the overall spending next year will be lower than any year under ronald reagan. i'm willing to make more of those difficult spending decisions in the months ahead. but i've said it before, and i will say it again, there has to be some balance. all of us have to do our fair sha share. i've also put forward a detailed plan that would reform and strengthen medicare and medicaid. by the beginning of the next decade it achieves the same amount of annual health saving as the plan proposed by the simpson-bowles commission and does so by people making changes

they haven't been comfortable with. but instead of saving money by shifting costs to seniors, like the congressional republican plan proposes, our approach would lower the cost of health care throughout the entire system. it goes after excessive subsidies to prescription drug companies, gets more efficiency out of medicaid without gutting the program, it asks the verywelliest seniors to pay a little bit more. it changes the way we pay for health care, not by procedure or the number of days spent in a hospital but with new incentives for doctors and hospitals to improve their results. and it slows growth of medicare costs by strengthening an independent commission. a commission not made up of bureaucrats from government or insurance companies but doctors and nurses and medical experts and consumers who will look at all of the evidence and recommend the best way to reduce unnecessary health care spending while protecting access to the

care that the seniors need. we also have a much different approach when it comes to taxes. an approach that says if we're serious about paying down our debt, we can't afford to spend trillions more on tax cuts for folks like me. for wealthy americans who don't need them and weren't even asking for them and the country cannot afford. at a time when the share of national income flowing to the top 1% of people in this country has climbed to levels last seen in the 1920s, those same folks are paying taxes at one of the lowest rates in 50 years. as both i and warren buffett have points many times now he's paying a lower tax rate than his secretary. that is not fair. it is not right. and the choice is really very

simple. if you want to keep these tax rates and deductions in place, or give even more tax breaks to the wealthy, as the republicans in congress propose, then one of two things happen. either it means higher deficits, or it means more sacrifice from the middle class. seniors will have to pay more for medicare, college students lo lose some financial aid, working families scraping by will have to do more because the richest americans are doing less. i repeat what i've said before that is not class warfare, that is not class envy, that is math. if that's the choice that members of congress want to make, we're going to make sure every american knows about it, in a few weeks there will be a vote on what we called the buffett rule. simple concept.

if you make more than $1 million a year, not that you have a million dollars, but if you make more than $1 million annually, you should pay at least the same percentage of your income in taxes as middle class families do. on the other hand, if you make under $250,000 a year, like 98% of american families do, then your taxes shouldn't go up. that's the proposal. now you'll hear some people point out that the buffett rule alone won't raise enough revenue to solve our deficit problems. maybe not. but it's definitely a step in the right direction. and i intend to keep fighting for this kind of balance and fairness until the other side starts listening, because i believe this is what the american people want. i believe this is the best way to pay for the investments we

need to grow our economy and strengthen the middle class. and, by the way, i believe it's right thing to do. this larger debate that we will be having, and that you will be covering in the coming year, about the size and role of government, this debate has been with us since our founding days. and during moments of great challenge and change, like the one that we're living through now, the debate gets sharper. it gets more vigorous. that's a good thing. as a country that prizes both individual freedom and obligations to one another, this is one of most important debates that we can have. but no matter what we argue or where we stan, we have always held certain beliefs as americans. we believe that in order to

preserve our own prefrfreedoms pursue our own happiness we can think about ourselves. we have to think about the country that made it possible. we have to think about our fellow citizens with whom we share a community. we have to think about what's required to preserve the american dream for future generation generations. this sense of responsibility teach other and our country, this isn't a partisan feeling. this isn't a democratic or a republican idea. it's patriotism. if we keep that in mind, uphold our obligations to one another and to this larger enterprise that is america, then i have no doubt that we will continue our long and prosperous journey as the greatest nation on earth. thank you. god bless.

you god bless the united states of america. thank you. >> good day, i'm andrea mitchell live in new york. president obama has unloaded the big speech, a cannon shot at the republican budget and mitt romney for endorsing it. he's laid out the key elements of the campaign. with me watching it as the president prepares to take questions, chris cillizza and mark halperin. let's listen in. >> republicans have been sharply critical of your budget ideas as well. what do you say to the americans who just want both sides to stop fighting and get some work done on their behalf? >> well, i completely understand the american people's frustrati frustrations.

because the truth is that these are imminently solvable problems. i know that christine la gard i however from the imf, looking at books from other countries ash the world. the challenges they face fiscally are so much more severe than anything we confront if we make some sensible decisions. so the american people's impulses are absolutely right, these are solvable problems if people of good faith came together and were willing to compromise. the challenge we have right now is that we have on one side a party that will brook no compromise, and this is not just

my assertion. we had presidential candidates who stood on stage and were asked, would you accept a budget package, a deficit reduction plan, that involved $10 of cuts for every dollar in revenue increases? 10-1 ratio of spending cuts to revenue. not one of them raised their hand. think about that. ronald reagan, who, as i recall, is not accused of being a tax and spend socialist, understood repeatedly that when the deficit started to get out of control that for him to make a deal, he

would have to propose both spending cuts and tax increases. did it multiple times. he could not get through a republican primary today. so let's look at bowl es-simpson. my differences with bowle simpson i proposed less revenue and slightly lower defense spending cuts. the republicans want to increase defense spending and take in no revenue, which makes it impossible to balance the deficit under the terms that bowles-simpson laid out unless you eliminate discretionary

spending. everything we think of as being pretty important from education to basic science and research to transportation spending, to national parks to environmental protect, we'd essentially have to eliminate. i guess another way of thinking about this is -- and this bears on your reporting -- i think that there is oftentimes the impulse to suggest that if the two parties are disagreeing, then they're equally at fault and the truth lies somewhere in the middle. and an equivalence is presented, which is reinforces i think people's cynicism about washington generally. this is not one of those situations where there's an equivalence. i've got some of the most liberal democrats in congress

who are prepared to make significant changes to entitlements that go against their political interests and who said they were willing to do it. we couldn't get a republican to stan up and say, we'll raise some revenue or even to suggest that we won't give more tax cuts to people who don't need them. and so i think it's important to put the current debate in some historical context. it's not just true, by the way, of the budget. it true of a lot of the debates that we're having out here. cap and trade was originally proposed by conservatives and republicans as a market-based solution to solving

environmental problems. the first president to talk about cap and trade was george h.w. bush. now you've got other party essentially saying, we shun even be thinking about environmental protection, let's gut the epa. health care, which is in the news right now, there's a reason why there's a little bit of confusion in the republican primary about health care and the individual mandate since it originated as a conservative idea to preserve the private marketplace in health care while still assuring that everybody got coverage in contrast to a single payer plan. now suddenly this is some socialist overreach. so as all of you are doing your reporting, i think it's

important to remember that the positions i'm taking now on the budget and a host of other issues if we have been having this discussion 20 years ago, or even 15 years ago, would have been considered squarely centrist positions. what's changed is the center of the republican party. and that's certainly true with the budget. >> mr. president, the manager director [ inaudible ] made an impassioned plea for the continuation of the united states leadership on economic issues and underscored the need for a lower deficit and lower debt. how can you respond to that? >> well, look, she's absolutely

right. it's interesting when i travel around the world at these internation international, and i've said this before, the degree to which america is still the one indispensable nation, the degree to which even as other countries are rising and their economies are expanding, we are still looked to for leadership, for agenda setting. not just because of our size. not just because of our military power but because there's a sense that, unlike most superpowers in the past, we try to set out a set of universal rules, a set of principles by which everybody can benefit, and that's true on the economic front as well.

we continue to be the world's largest market, an important engine for economic growth. we can't return to a time when by simply borrowing and consuming we end up driving global economic growth. i've said this a few months after i was elected at the first g-20 summit. i said the days when americans using credit cards and home equity loans finance the rest of the world's growth by taking imports from every place else, those days are over. on the other hand we continue to be an extraordinarily important market and foundation for global economic growth. we do have to take care of our deficits. i think christine has spoken before and i think most economic -- economists would argue as well that the challenge when it comes to our deficits is not short-term discretionary

spending, which is manageable, as i said before, and i want to repeat, as a percentage of our gdp, our discretionary spending, all of the things that the republicans are proposing cutting, is actually lower than it's been since dwight eisenhower. there has not been some massive expansion of social programs, programs that help the poor, environmental programs, education programs, that's not -- that's not our problem. our problem is that our revenue has dropped down to between 15% and 16%, far lower than it has been historically, certainly far lower than it was under ronald reagan. at the same time as our health care costs have surges and our demographics mean that there's more and more pressure being placed on financing our medicare, medicaid and social security programs.

so at a time when the recovery is still gaining steam and unemployment is still very high, the solution should be pretty apparent. and that is, even as we continue to make investments in growth today, for example, putting some of our construction workers back to work, rebuilding schools and roads and bridges or helping states to rehire teachers at a time when schools are having a huge difficulty retaining quality teachers in the classroom, all of which would benefit our economy, we focus on a long-term plan to stabilize our revenues at a responsible level and to deal with our health care programs in a

responsible way. and that's exactly what i'm proposing. what we've proposed is, let's go back for folks who are making more than $250,000 a year to levels that were in place during the clinton era, when wealthy people were doing just fine and the economy was growing a lot stronger than it did after they were cut. and let's take on medicare and medicaid in a serious way, which is not just a matter of taking those costs off the books, off the federal books and pushing them on to individual seniors, but let's actually reduce health care costs because we spend more on health care with not as good outcomes as any other advanced developed nation on earth. and that would seem to be a

sensible proposal. the problem right now is not the technical means to solve it. the problem is our politics. and that's part of what this election and what this debate will need to be about, is are we, as a country, willing to get back to common sense, balanced, fair solutions that encourage our long-term economic growth and stabilize our budget and it can be done. one last point i want to make, dean, that i think is important. because it goes to the growth issue, if state and local government hiring were basically on par to what our current recovery -- on par to past recoveries, the unemployment rate would probably be about a point lower than it is right now. if the construction industry

were going through what we normally go through, that would be another point lower. the challenge we have right now, part of the challenge we have in terms of growth, has to do with the very very specific issues of huge cuts and state and local government, and the housing market still recovering from this massive bubble and that -- those two things are huge headwinds in terms of growth. i say this because if we, for example, put some of those construction workers back to work, or we put some of those teachers back in the classroom, that could actually help create the kind of virtuous cycle that would bring in more revenues, just because of economic growth, would benefit the private sector in significant ways, and that could help contribute to deficit reduction in the short term,

even as we still have do these important changes to our health care programs over the long term. >> mr. president, you said yesterday that it would be unprecedented for a supreme court to overturn law passed by an elected congress. that is exactly what the court's done during its entire existence. if the court were to overturn individual mandate what would you do or propose to do for the 30 million people who wouldn't have health care after that ruling? >> well, first of all, let me be very specific. we have not seen a court overturn a law that was passed by congress on a economic issue like health care that i think

most people would clearly consider commerce, a law like that has not been overturned at least sense loughner, right? we're going back to the '30s, pre-new deal. and the point i was making is that the supreme court is the final say on our constitution and our laws, and all of us have to respect it. but it's precisely because of that extraordinary power that the core has traditionally exercised significant restraint and deference to our duly elected legislature, our congress, and so the burden is on those who would overturn a

law like this. now as i said, i expect the supreme court actually to recognize that and to abide by well-established precedents out there. i have enormous confidence that in looking at this law, not only tis constitutional, but that the court is going to exercise its jurisprudence carefully because of the profound power that our supreme court has. as a consequence, we're not spending a whole bunch of time planning for contingencies. what i did emphasize yesterday is, there is a human element to this that everybody has to remember, it's not -- there's not an abstract exercise, i get

letters every day from people who are affected by the health care law right now even though it's not fully implemented. young people who are 24, 25, who say you know what i just got diagnosed with a tumor. first 0 of all i would not have gone to got a checkup had i not had health insurance, second i would not have afforded to have it treated had i not been on my parents plan. thank you and congress for getting this done. i get letters from folks who have just lost their job, cob cobra's running out, in the middle of treatment for colon cancer or breast cancer, and they're worried within their cobra runs out if they're still second, what are they able to do because they're not able to get health insurance.

and the point i think that was made very ably before the supreme court, but i think most health care economists who have look at this have acknowledged is, they're basically two ways to cover people withpreexisting conditions, assure they can always get coverage even when they have bad illness. one way a single payer plan. everybody is under a single system, like medicare, the other way is to set up a system in which you don't have people who are healthy but don't bother to get health insurance and then we vault to pay for them in the emergency room, that done work, and so as a consequence we've got to make sure that those folks are taking the responsibility seriously, which is what the individual mandate

does. i don't anticipate the court striking this down. i think they take the responsibility very seriously. but i think what's more important is for all of us, democrats and republicans, to recognize that in a country like ours, wealthiest, most powerful country on earth, we shouldn't have a system in which millions of people are at risk of bankruptcy because they get sick, or end up waiting until they do get sick and then go to the emergency room which involves all of us paying for it. >> mr. president, you've been very, very generous with your time. we appreciate you very much being here. >> thank you so much, everybody. thank you. >> as you just heard, president obama again defending his

comments from the rose garden yesterday about the supreme court arguments over the health care bill. with me now, "the washington post's" chris cillizza, timeless editor at large, mark hal present and chris marcus. what a daily fix. this was the toughest campaign speech he's give tonight date, attacks the ryan budget but goes after mitt romney all at the same time. think lays out themes of the campaign to come. >> yeah, andrea. if you need a blueprint of how on the economic message barack obama's going to campaign you just got it. what's fascinating about it is the way that they cast the choice before the american public. we know elections are about choices. the way barack obama and his campaign team have decided to cast this, on the one side you have a serious plan committed to making hard choices and shared sacrifices, that being the president's plan. on the other side, in his language, you have a republican

that used the word laughable, he called it a trojan horse, creating the die naming on one side a serious person, on the other side people not serious and pull paul ryan and mitt romney in that category, not serious about the serious challenges that face us. i think that's the push-pull that certainly the obama campaign is going to be talking about from here on out. >> to use the question from one of the editors from the head of the a.p., mark, who asked about the fact that americans are frustrated with the lack of compromise, he chose to frame it as you would expect, that the republicans refusing to compromise, not that there has been a lot of reporting about the mixed signals and who is wrong between john boehner and the president who upped the anti-or didn't up the ante, all of the debates but he's framing it they won't compromise, i'm mr. reasonable and called it right wing social engineering. he said that it makes the contract -- they're trying to make the contract with america look like the new deal.

>> there's 1003 things to say about the speech. let me say three quickly. one, the president is totally immersed in this campaign. he made references to things that happened in the republican nomination fight i wasn't sure he payed attention to. he's not only processes them he figured out how to talk about them. two, a speech caused twitter to explode on the right. >> paul ryan has weighed in strongly. >> everyone on right's weighed in. i think the right is making a mistake if they think this is a speech for the democratic base. this is the speech for the middle. the president's prepared for the battle. i don't know in the republicans do and i think they're blinded if they want to take this as left wing. this audience is a great audience. this shows the white house has got a big wall calendar in chicago, you give a speech like this to the a.p., it's going to reverberate for many news cycles to come.

>> this is not the first president, republican or democratic president, who have given major speeches to the a.p. publishers and editors. this is a very big platform. >> reverberates because of the a.p. but we know this is an historical place. he could have given a speech on the campaign trail and would not get the replay throughout the week. >> it's midday, right in the middle of our program, reaching movers and shashkers. ruth marcus, you wrote a provocative column in "the washington post" about his first take on the score. the way 4 was suggesting it was inappropriate for a group to challenge the health care law. your point? >> and, andrea, you picked out the word that most rattled or concerned me in the president's rose garden remarks yesterday, which is going after unelected judges, practically he said

legislating from the bench, he didn't use those word but was sounded much like the conservative critique of the liberal you dish year i thought take two of the remarks, today's version was much more nuanced, temperate and much more tempers and a better way for a president in the delicate position to take on but not look like he's as senator mcconnell accused him of doing in a statement earlier today, trying to intimidate or bully the supreme court. so i thought today's remarks were perfectly appropriate and legitimate. >> now you're a lawyer -- >> yesterday a little bit color in you're a keen observer of the court. i'm not a lawyer. >> pretty keen. >> i know that there was some distress among other members of the core, not just samuel alito, when that state of the union speech was delivered, it was an

inappropriate platform to take on justices who were sitting there, as he knows, right in front of him. remarks yesterday were edgy, perhaps not only to the conservative majority of the court but other members of the court who doesn't like the institution to be attacks from the rose guard fun that way. >> they were very edgy. all of russ protective of our institutions. i think what was particularly of concern to me is that the supreme court, i've criticized it in columns and comments, unhappy with decisions like bush v. gore or citizens united. but as roosevelt found out when the president of the united states weighs in on the supreme court, it has to be done, pardon the use of the word, very ju dishously. it's a delicate balance and reasonable people can difficult what are the president said with the justices sitting there about citizens united. i thought he went a wee bit over

the line yesterday and could have phrased it better. in fact he did phrase it better in the remarks we just heard. >> ruth, chris, mark, thank you very much. next, inside the circus. politico's mike alan, stories you haven't heard about the 2012 republican race. ♪ ♪ what started as a whisper every day, millions of people choose to do the right thing. there's an insurance company that does that, too. liberty mutual insurance. responsibility. what's your policy?

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we've just heard from president obama. but meanwhile, rick santorum has left wisconsin, the badger state, he's going to spend the night in his home state of pennsylvania. ron mott live in pittsburgh. ron, the santorum campaign, they now face pennsylvania, their home state, on april 24th. that's the next big primary, and

the question is, there's a quinnipiac poll showing him up by six points over mitt romney in his home state. is there any talk, even as he struggles in wisconsin with, any talk at all that he would leave the campaign perhaps even before his home state primary to avoid the embarrassment of lose log pennsylvania. >> reporter: we're just starting to hear rumblings about that. if you're listening to rick santorum, he's dismissing those out of hand. yesterday he talked about a certain poll in particular here in pennsylvania, it was a single digit number separating his campaign and the romney campaign. he called it ridiculous. he said the polls that they are using for the confidence that they have a victory here in pennsylvania show him up 15 to 20 points. any suggestion that he would drop out of the race depending on what happens tonight in wisconsin seems unlikely given how hard he's pushed back at the media over the last few days. he's very frustrated by those questions that he gets out. he says mitt romney has a long way to get to 1144 and makes no

sense for him to get out at this time. he think his can win april 24th and go to favorable states in may. >> ron mott, thanks so much. mitt romney is going to be in milwaukee, receiving tonight's election result there's, anticipating a win in wisconsin that he's hoping if not wrapping up the delegate count but make it inevitable it becomes nominee. peter alexander is traveling with the romney campaign. are they feeling pretty good as they see more and more people including the party, party power brokers, sending signals he is the one? i should ask you for a reaction, initial reaction to the president's blast at the republicans just now. >> reporter: well i do have a reaction from the campaign. they put out a statement before the president spoke, before the associated press group today, and during that speech. i'll read some of it to you from a spokesperson who writes, specifically she says, as i get it up here, after piling on trillions of dollars in new debt in the first three years of his

office, the last thing president obama's qualified to lecture on is responsible federal spending words of a romney campaign spokesperson, just a short time ago. specifically, here in wisconsin the campaign, the romney campaign feels very good. they say they expect to do well today in maryland and d.c., certainly in state of wisconsin as well. they say they expect it to be closer here than some people have suggested it could be. but really they're trying to put pressure on santorum in his home state of pennsylvania where you saw ron mott is today, saying that they won in massachusetts, gingrich won in georgia, santorum should win in pennsylvania. hope to close the door on the campaign there. >> in fact, i think santorum made it very clear under questioning by savannah guthrie on "meet the press" sunday, he's got to win pennsylvania. if he doesn't win pennsylvania, floss future for that campaign. thanks so much, peter alexander. the republican primary was supposed to be a quick contest for mitt romney. it's turned into what some have

called the long slog. the new ebook "inside the circus" gives a behind the scenes look at the long republican primary battle. the split between mitt romney's campaign on how much to let the candidate let loose and clues into the two ricks, santorum and perry. mike allen joins me now, author, author, congratulations. the new reality that you and evan thomas are going to put books out so quickly that nobody else can catch up? >> well what people love about this is in this new cyclone, as we call the news cycle, books are a chance to hit pause, see where we've been, where we're going. we find out that just by sitting down with people getting them to tell their story when there's not a clock on them, not a camera on them, we find out remarkable things. you mentioned in the romney campaign, they really have been torn from the very beginning about how much to let romney be romney. as you know, they kept him under wraps for so long and then when

he came out, he was rusty. so there's a lot of people who have been urging them to open up the kimona as one said to evan thomas and me, let romney be more raw, that we're going to see the awkward mitt but they're better off to put their chips on that than have this person who winds up being overprogrammed and makes his take because meese afraid to be himself. >> you also take a look at rick perry, the reporting that he had the bad back, he had pain meds. was that do you really think responsible for his abysmal debate performance? you were i were both at the journalism club, the gridiron club last saturday night and saw a really extraordinary, a great performance, great speech by rick perry. there weren't camera there's to capture it but we know he can give a good speech. >> you're right, andrea. a real grand slam. real career rehabilitation there the other night when he was able

to joke, starting with the moment he came out referring to his troubles in debates where he said i can't tell you how happy i am to be on a stage with only one podium. that sort of set the stage for him. but what we found in our reporting was that, rick perry's heart was never in this campaign that he was partly lured into it, convinced to run, by aides who frankly needed a job. they were leaving the gingrich campaign, convinced him if he could raise the money he would do well. na turned out not to be the case. >> mike allen, there is a hard copy of it. you don't only have to read it online. "inside the circus." congratulations. thanks for being here. next the hidden campaign, the hillary project. stay with us. sorry. sore knee.

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the new gallup usa today poll numbers show republicans are being hurt badly over the debate over women's health.

a big gender gap opening up. 18 points is a big gap and it has really changed in the last month, six weeks since we've had this contraception women's rights debate. olympia snowe was there last night. it is surprising because i feel like it's a retro debate that took place in the 1950s. it's sort of back to the future. it is surprising that in the 21st century, we should be revisiting this issue and saaba fluke should have been commended, not condemned for her courage in expressing her own views and beliefs before members of congress. >> hillary clinton in her interview with me when we were overseas this week came out very strongly about this issue. what are you seeing? >> hillary has been standing up for women. that is why we wrote about her in the current issue of more. we believe in her and the future of all the things she's doing for women.

that gender gap, i think parted of the problem in that current poll that's out with gallup and usa today, we're looking at these guys and saying you're so distractible. you're going back to the things we don't care about. contraception, it's over. let's focus on the economy and jobs and all those other things. >> at the same time, women care about contraception. but they expect that it be a right. >> we don't want to relitigate it. we do not want to start all over with this. there are more important things. and i think to bring it all the way back. people thought this was all taken care of and we can move on. i think it is a little crazy. i do believe there is a little bit of a war on women and i do think that the democrats have been able to sort of capitalize on this. and then you've got rick santorum's wife saying, no, no, he isn't really going to do anything about it but it is scaring a lot of women. so time to focus on the important issues. >> what about hillary? you have in the current issue of more magazine with julianna margulies on the cover. >> a great profile. >> you had real access to her on

the road. we went to burma with her. we sent a fabulous writer. she denies she is ever going to run and she sounds like she is tired and wants to put her feet up. >> she said she has no plan. >> that's a huge opening. i talked to a lot of women now who say they were not on the bandwagon before because they felt compelled. it was if you're female, you have to vote for hillary. it made some women resentful. they now feel she has earned it and there are an awful lot of women who say i was not there before. i'm there now. go, hillary. >> a conversation to be continued. >> we're ready. >> that does it for this edition of "andrea mitchell reports." tamron hall is next. a lot going on in our next hour including that scorching speech from president obama a short time ago. many are calling at this time toughest campaign speech yet from this president. he went after paul ryan's budget while at the same time, digging in against mitt romney. a hot one coming up and we're talking about it.

plus, developing news in the trayvon martin investigation. nbc investigative correspondent michael isikoff has obtained documents that could shed more light on george zimmerman's role as the neighborhood watch captain for his community and what rules he set in place. and secret discussions. texas officials are trying to keep the conversation republican lawmakers had about the state's very controversial voter i.d. law under wraps. let's see what you got. rv -- covered. why would you pay for a hotel? i never do. motorcycles -- check. atv. i ride those. do you? no. boat. house. hello, dear. hello. hello. oh! check it -- [ loud r&b on car radio ] i'm going on break! the more you bundle, the more you save.

[ clang ] my house is where plants came to die. ♪ but, it turns out all i was missing was miracle-gro potting mix. it's got what a plant needs. even plant food that feeds them for up to 6 months. you get bigger, more beautiful plants. guaranteed. who's got two green thumbs thanks to miracle-gro? uh, this gal. boom! everyone grows with miracle-gro. the "news nation" is following big developing news. president obama's major assault in just the last hour on the republican budget plan, passed by the house and embraced by the gop front-runner, mitt romney. the president named names and in the last, how certainly did not mince words. >> proposed a budget so far to the right, it makes the contrac