Charles Dharapak/AP Photo

In our exclusive interview with President Obama, I asked him if he worried that our children would not have a better life than we did.

“I am actually very confident that America is positioned to do as well in the 21st century as we did in the 20th if we make some tough decisions and we know what the decisions are,” he said.

“You mentioned earlier that sometimes I feel frustrated,” the president continued. “What I get frustrated about is when we’re not doing things that we know we should be doing. We know that if we make a concerted effort to reform our schools, put more resources into our schools, that our kids can learn. We know that if we squeeze the inefficiencies out of the health care system, that will be a relief on not only family budgets, but the budgets of businesses and on the federal government. We know that we’ve got to have an energy policy where we’re not sending billions of dollars to the Middle East everyday because we’re wasting fuel here and we’re not as energy efficient as we should be.”

The president said “there are things we know we have to do and if we do them, our kids will be fine. If we don’t do them, then our kids are going to be inheriting an America that is not as strong as its been and their opportunities are going to be more constrained.”

“The question is, can we get a political process where, even though there are arguments between left and right, conservatives and liberals, that at least things that we know we have to do, we do,” he concluded. “And right now, it feels like that we have a political argument that is divorced from the facts and what we clearly should be doing in terms of leading the country forward today. That’s the source of frustration.”

-Jake Tapper