Q    -- say is the President feeling our pain, especially as you were a community organizer --

THE PRESIDENT:  I -- look, I definitely feel folks’ pain.
Somebody is doing a book about the 10 letters that I get every day, and they came by to talk to me yesterday.  And they said, what’s the overwhelming impression that you get when you read these 10 letters a day, and what I told them is I'm so inspired by the strength and resilience of the American people, but sometimes I'm also just frustrated by the number of people out there who are struggling, and you want to help every single one individually.  You almost feel like you want to be a case worker and just start picking up the phone and advocating for each of these people who are working hard, trying to do right by their families; oftentimes, through no fault of their own, they’ve had a tough time, particularly over these last couple of years.

So, yes, it’s frustrating.  But my job is to make sure that we’re focused over the long term:  Where is it that we need to go?  And the most important thing I can do as President is make sure that we’re living within our means, getting a budget that is sustainable, investing in the future and growing the economy.  If I do that, then that’s probably the most help I can give to the most number of people.

Jake Tapper.

Q    Thanks, Mr. President.  House Republicans, as you know, want to start cutting now, want to start cutting this year’s budget.  Are you willing to work with them in the next few weeks so as to avoid a government shutdown?  There’s been talk of a down payment on budget cuts that they would like to make for this year’s budget.

And also, I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about the attempts to get American diplomat Ray Davis freed from Pakistan.  Some have criticized the administration for putting pressure too publicly on what is essentially a weak government, and I’m wondering if you could walk us through that process.  Thanks.

THE PRESIDENT:  My goal is to work with the Republicans, both on the continuing resolution -- and for those who are watching that don’t know Washingtonese, the CR is a continuing resolution, a way to just keep government going when you don’t have an overall budget settled.  And we didn’t settle our overall budget from last year, so this is carryover（移后扣减） business from last year, funding vital government functions this year.

So I want to work with everybody, Democrats and Republicans, to get that resolved.  I think it is important to make sure that we don’t try to make a series of symbolic cuts this year that could endanger the recovery.  So that’s point number one.

What I’m going to be looking for is some common sense that the recovery is still fragile; we passed this tax cut package precisely to make sure that people had more money in their pockets, that their paychecks were larger, were provided these tax credits and incentives for businesses.  But if the steps that we take then prompt thousands of layoffs in state or local government, or core vital functions of government aren’t performed properly, well, that could also have a dampening（回潮，湿润） impact on our recovery as well.

So my measure is going to be are we doing things in a sensible way, meeting core functions, not endangering our recovery.  In some cases, like defense, for example, Secretary Gates has already testified if we’re operating -- even operating under the current continuing resolution is putting significant strains on our ability to make sure our troops have what they need to perform their missions in Afghanistan.  Further slashes would impair our ability to meet our mission.

And so we’ve got to be careful.  Again, let’s use a scalpel; let’s not use a machete（弯刀，大砍刀） .  And if we do that, there should be no reason at all for a government shutdown.  And I think people should be careful about being too loose in terms of talking about a government shutdown, because this has -- this is not an abstraction.  People don’t get their Social Security checks.  They don’t get their veterans payments.  Basic functions shut down.  And it -- that, also, would have a adverse effect on our economic recovery.  It would be destabilizing at a time when, I think, everybody is hopeful that we can start growing this economy quicker.

So I’m looking forward to having a conversation.  But the key here is for people to be practical and not to score political points.  That’s true for all of us.  And I think if we take that approach we can navigate the situation short term and then deal with the problem long term.

With respect to Mr. Davis, our diplomat in Pakistan, we’ve got a very simple principle here that every country in the world that is party to the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations is -- has upheld in the past and should uphold in the future, and that is if our diplomats are in another country, then they are not subject to that country’s local prosecution（起诉，检举） .

We respect it with respect to diplomats who are here.  We expect Pakistan, that's a signatory and recognize Mr. Davis as a diplomat, to abide by the same convention.

And the reason this is an important principle is if it starts being fair game on our ambassadors around the world, including in dangerous places, where we may have differences with those governments, and our ambassadors or our various embassy personnel are having to deliver tough messages to countries where we disagree with them on X, Y, Z, and they start being vulnerable to prosecution locally, that’s untenable.  It means they can’t do their job.  And that’s why we respect these conventions, and every country should as well.

So we’re going to be continuing to work with the Pakistani government to get this person released.  And obviously part of -- for those who aren’t familiar with the background on this, a couple of Pakistanis were killed in a incident between Mr. Davis within -- in Pakistan.  So obviously, we’re concerned about the loss of life.  We’re not callous about that.  But there’s a broader principle at stake that I think we have to uphold.

Q    How serious have your threats been to the Pakistani government if they don't hand him over?

THE PRESIDENT:  Well, I’m not going to discuss the specific exchanges that we’ve had.  But we’ve been very firm about this being an important priority.

Ed Henry.

Q    Thank you, Mr. President.  I want to go back to Egypt because there was some perception around the world that maybe you were too cautious during that crisis and were kind of a step behind the protesters.  I know that, as you said, there was dramatic change in three weeks, and some of us wanted it to go even faster than that.  But having said that, I realize it’s a complicated situation.  It was evolving rapidly.  But now as these protests grow throughout the Mideast and North Africa -- you said before your message to the governments involved was make sure you’re not violent with peaceful protesters.  But what’s your message to the protesters?  Do you want them to taste freedom?  Or do you want them to taste freedom only if it will also bring stability to our interests in the region?

THE PRESIDENT:  Well, first of all, without revisiting all the events over the last three weeks, I think history will end up recording that at every juncture in the situation in Egypt that we were on the right side of history.  What we didn't do was pretend that we could dictate the outcome in Egypt, because we can’t.  So we were very mindful that it was important for this to remain an Egyptian event; that the United States did not become the issue, but that we sent out a very clear message that we believed in an orderly transition, a meaningful transition, and a transition that needed to happen not later, but sooner.  And we were consistent on that message throughout.

Particularly if you look at my statements, I started talking about reform two weeks or two-and-a-half weeks before Mr. Mubarak ultimately stepped down.  And at each juncture I think we calibrated it just about right.  And I would suggest that part of the test is that what we ended up seeing was a peaceful transition, relatively little violence, and relatively little, if any, anti-American sentiment, or anti-Israel sentiment, or anti-Western sentiment（感情，情绪） .  And I think that testifies the fact that in a complicated situation, we got it about right.

My message I think to demonstrators going forward is your aspirations for greater opportunity, for the ability to speak your mind, for a free press, those are absolutely aspirations we support.

As was true in Egypt, ultimately what happens in each of these countries will be determined by the citizens of those countries.  And even as we uphold these universal values, we do want to make sure that transitions do not degenerate into chaos and violence.  That’s not just good for us; it’s good for those countries.  The history of successful transitions to democracy have generally been ones in which peaceful protests led to dialogue, led to discussion, led to reform, and ultimately led to democracy.

And that’s true in countries like Eastern Europe.  That was also true in countries like Indonesia, a majority Muslim country that went through some of these similar transitions but didn’t end up doing it in such a chaotic（混乱的） fashion that it ended up dividing the societies fundamentally.