. >> congressman van hallen, how do you see it? >> you see that as the economy is improving and more and more people are going back to work, and the policies on the economy are working, you find republicans going back to the old red meat social issues that helps to rile up their base. that's what is going on. the president put on the table a very principled compromise on this issue making sure that women would have the health care that they need, including contraception, and in making sure that people could pursue their own religious liberty. that's why groups like catholic charities and the catholic's hospital association says it's a fair compromise and accomplishes the goal of women's health as well as religious freedom. >> how do you respond to more generally of what santorum said about a phoney theology he thinks the president asident at to. >> he's questioning the president's faith, and that's a new low in politics and it has no place in our political dialogue. he should retract and apologize for that statement. >> and republi

chris van hallen and paul ryan's counterpart on the budget committee responded to ryan on the same programe way the bipartisan commissions have. we all want tax reform. it is just the republicans don't want one penny of tax reform to go towards deficit reduction. if you don't do that, it means you do have to whack seniors on medicare ask cut deep fly critical investments and in our national infrastructure, education, science and research. that's why every bipartisan group approached this is taking the back answered approach and not the approach that asks middle income americans and seniors to bear the entire burden. >> reporter: and, alex, as you may know, reality can be a bummer. especially here in washington. we are talking about the budget and the president proposed the budget and it is very unlikely that any kind of budget will be passing congress in this election year, talk about deficit reduction, will have to wait until after the election. >> at least you can put a good spin on the bummer news out there. thank you very much, mike viqueira. good to see you. >>> new report says the ob

. >>> we'll also have the conversation with paul ryan and chris van hallen. >> sunday on "meet the pressthe sense from talking to people at the luncheon that one of the things the chinese are paying attention to in addition to many other nations around the world is are we going to be able to control our debt? are we going to be able to chop it down? >> yeah, they're paying attention to that and just the lack of what they see as a lack of direction of u.s. economic policy. they see obviously people in china told me it's obvious what you need to do, you need to keep, you know -- you need to pump up your economy and you need to have a long-term plan to reduce your debt, so why don't you just go ahead and do it? >> gene robinson, thank you so much, david, we'll see you sunday on "meet the press," plus, the "new york times" is mourning the death of correspondent anthony shadid. he died yesterday covering the war inside syria. we'll talk about his legacy and more with david ignatius next. hey, aren't you supposed to be following that fidelity green line? well, yeah, but it keeps leading me bac