Reporters Notebook: Major Garrett asks President Obama...

President Obama appeared in the White House briefing room today and took questions from the press. The first question went to Fox's Senior White House correspondent Major Garrett..and be sure to read all the way down and check out the photo gallery from the briefing today...

GARRETT: After meeting with you, John Boehner came out and told us, "The House can't pass the health care bill it once passed. The Senate can't pass the health care bill it once passed. Why would we have a conversation about legislation that can't pass?" As a part of that, he said you and your White House and congressional Democrats should start over entirely from scratch on health care reform. How do you respond? Are you willing to do that?

OBAMA: Well, here's how I responded to John in the meeting, and I've said this publicly before. There are some core goals that have to be met. We've got to control costs, both for families and businesses, but also for our government. Everybody out there who talks about deficits has to acknowledge that the single biggest driver of our deficits is health care spending. We cannot deal with our deficits and debt long term unless we get a handle on that. So that has to be part of a package. Number two, we've got to deal with insurance abuses that affect millions of Americans who've got health insurance. And number three, we've got to make health insurance more available to folks in the individual market, as I just mentioned in California, who are suddenly seeing their premiums go up 39 percent. That applies to the majority of small businesses, as well as sole proprietors. They are struggling. So I've got these goals. Now, we have a package as work through the differences between the House and the Senate -- and we'll put it up on a Web site for all to see over a long period of time -- that meets those criteria, meets those goals. But when I was in Baltimore talking to the House Republicans, they indicated, "We can accomplish some of these goals at no cost." And I said, "Great. Let me see it." And, you know, I have no interest in doing something that's more expensive and harder to accomplish, if somebody else has an easier way to do it. So I am going to be starting from scratch in the sense that I will be open to any ideas that help promote these goals. What I will not do, what I don't think makes sense and I don't think the American people want to see, would be another year of partisan wrangling around these issues, another six months or eight months or nine months worth of hearings in every single committee in the House and the Senate in which there's a lot of posturing. Let's get the relevant parties together. Let's put the best ideas on the table. My hope is that we can find enough overlap that we can say, "This is the right way to move forward, even if I don't get every single thing that I want." But here's the point that I made to John Boehner and Mitch McConnell: Bipartisanship can't be that I agree to all of the things that they believe in or want and they agree to none of the things I believe in or want, and that's the price of bipartisanship, right? But that's sometimes the way it gets presented. Mitch McConnell said something very nice in the meeting about how he supports our goals on nuclear energy and clean coal technology and more drilling to increase oil production. Well, of course he likes that. That's part of the Republican agenda for energy, which I accept. And I'm willing to move off some of the preferences of my party in order to meet them halfway, but there's got to be some give from their side as well. That's true on health care; that's true on energy; that's true on financial reform. That's what I'm hoping gets accomplished at this summit.

GARRETT: Would you agree that the House and Senate bills can't pass?

OBAMA: What I agree with is that the public has soured on the process that they saw over the past year. I think that actually contaminates how they view the substance of the bills. I think it's important for all of these issues to be aired, so that people have confidence if we're moving forward on such a significant part of the economy as health care that there is complete transparency and all of these issues have been adequately vetted and adequately debated. And this gives an opportunity not just for Democrats to say, "Here's what we think we should do," but it also gives Republicans a showcase before the entire country to say, "Here's our plan. Here's why we think this'll work." And, you know, one of the things that John Boehner and Mitch McConnell both said is they didn't think that the status quo was acceptable. And that's, right there, promising. That indicates that if all sides agree that we can't just continue with business as usual, then maybe we can actually get something done.