Yesterday the Obama administration proposed a nearly $4 trillion budget for 2011. A front page analysis in today's New York Times points out that the projected deficit in the coming year is nearly 11 percent of the country’s entire economic output and may not change any time soon.

The announcement that President Barack Obama would be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize this year came as a surprise to many – including the president, apparently – and inspired criticism that his record thus far hasn't justified such an award. How can President Obama show from this point forward that he deserves the Peace Prize?  To help answer that is David Sanger, The New York Times chief Washington correspondent; and James Fallows, former presidential speechwriter and a contributor for the Atlantic.

Iran announced yesterday it wouldn't comply with a demand by the United Nations' nuclear agency to stop work on a once-secret nuclear fuel enrichment plant, and said it would construct 10 more such nuclear plants.

The New York Times chief Washington correspondent, David Sanger, joins us to talk about the latest move by Iran in its nuclear manuevering, and how the international community might respond.

President Barack Obama announced yesterday that he will soon announce his decision on our strategy in Afghanistan. When he says he intends to “finish the job,” what does he mean? Here to help us answer that is David Sanger, chief Washington correspondent for our partner, The New York Times. And to help us see what the consequences of finishing the job will be are Charlie Sennott, executive editor and vice president of GlobalPost, and Nadir Atash, former Afghan government official and author of “Turbulence: The Tumultuous Journey of One Man's Quest for Change in Afghanistan”

As America marks Veterans Day, President Obama is reportedly considering four options for increasing troop levels in Afghanistan, which he will review during a meeting with his national security team today.  David Sanger, chief Washington correspondent for The New York Times, writes in today's paper that three of the options before the president range from the deployment of 20,000 troops to the 40,000 recommended by General Stanley McChrystal.  The White House declined to specify an exact troop level associated with the fourth option, which has reportedly been added in the last couple of days.

The director of the U.N. nuclear agency, Mohamed ElBaradei, says that Iran has set a date for inspectors to visit that country's newly revealed uranium enrichment plant, outside the city of Qom. That news comes as a relief to some analysts.

But a leaked report by the agency says that Iran possesses the data to make a nuclear weapon. Is Iran finally playing ball with the U.N., or is it just telling them what it wants to hear? We ask David Sanger, chief Washington correspondent for The New York Times, for answers.

Iran continued its recent run of provocative acts by testing its longest-range missiles on Monday. That came only one day after it tested short-range missiles, and a few days after it came clean about a second uranium enrichment facility it has been secretly building. We look at what America’s priorities should be in light of these events with The New York Times chief Washington correspondent David Sanger and three Iranian-Americans: Iraj Mirshahi, Sunshine Royanian Ludder and Rudi Bakhtiar.

Pakistani Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud has been killed in a U.S. drone attack. While it's not the first time reports of his death have surfaced, the Taliban has confirmed his death. Mehsud is known as Pakistan's most wanted man and has been suspected in the killing of former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto. Does his death mean that the U.S. is closer to success in its mission to rout the Taliban out of Afghanistan and Pakistan? As the American military comes to full strength in the Afghan surge, the Obama administration’s national security team is struggling to come up with specific measurements of progress. David Sanger is the chief Washington correspondent for The New York Times, and he's writing about the administration attempt to set benchmarks for success in Afghanistan.

Also joining the conversation is Andrew Exum, a fellow with the Center for a New American Security. He served two tours as an Infantry Officer in the U.S. Army in Afghanistan. He is just back from Afghanistan where he was part of a team of independent analysts whose report is expected to help define the U.S. mission in Afghanistan going forward.

We also speak with retired Colonel Paul Hughes, who is senior program officer at the U.S. Institute of Peace. In 2003 he served as the director of the Strategic Policy Office for the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq. He believes that the fates of the missions in Afghanistan and Pakistan are completely intertwined and must be closely coordinated.

Yesterday former President Bill Clinton embarked on a surprise mission to North Korea to negotiate the release of two American journalists imprisoned there. Less than 24 hours later he is returning victorious, with the two women safely aboard his plane. How did he do it? Was the deal pre-cooked? Why did Robert Gibbs, the White House spokesman, specifically state that Clinton did not carry a private message to Kim il Jong from President Obama? To help us unravel the mystery, The Takeaway talks to New York Times reporter David Sanger.

President-elect Barack Obama is expected to introduce his national security team today. The team is expected to include the current Defense Secretary Robert Gates and former rival Hillary Clinton as his secretary of state.

Joining us to talk about what these choices mean and what they signal for Obama's national security prioirties is New York Times reporter David Sanger, who wrote the front page article in today's Times, "A Handpicked Team for a Foreign Policy Shift".