mr. van holland and mr. cliburn said the talks were proceeding under the leadership of the vice president in the spirit of goodwill in a constructive way and it had a past that good taste to agreement. but neil torry distinguished representative in talks. the ranking member on the budget committee. >> thank you. then we start a leader pelosi commending the president on his decision to release oil from strategic petroleum reserve in concert, with some of our allies. as you know, as a result of the events in the middle east, there was a supply disruption that had a speculative bubble and there's a lot of speculation going on in the oil market by people making a lot of money, simply by making that clear price of oil will go up, bring down the path, put my money back in people's pockets and help get the economy moving again. i think it was a very good decision and we commend it the president on that decision. with respect to the budget talks, the vice president and all of us on the democratic side laid out two p

mr. van holland. that is not the issue. the issue is how do we work together to fix the deficit, to have fairness in our tax system, to preserve medicare, to create jobs. >> [unintelligible] >> as the vice-president has said, as i have said, and as a republican counterparts have said, we have made progress on important issues. the reality is that you have to begin a wall with the first step. we have made progress and we have to find a way to address this issue going forward. again, true to the principles i just outlined -- that is why we are continuing with that effort. the president has but a proposal on the table. he did >> i think that mister and holland is correct. it is a 1,000 mile journey that we are on here. we have taken some first steps. i do believe that everybody will agree that you cannot do anything unless you create an atmosphere in which you can have productive talks. that atmosphere has been created. we're having productive talks. we are not where we want to be. and it will be some time getting there. but i