we got yesterday was a reelection campaign speech. i guess it sort of tipped it off to me this last weekend when we heard he was quote ago speech, not floating a speech, not a plan but a speech and sent his campaign manager to discuss it, not his budget directionor, not his secretary, chief of council economic adviser, but he sent his campaign manager out to announce this. we ve asked we have a good relation with the omb, our budget staff, a lot of them came from omb, we talked to them on pretty much nearly a daily basis and we called omb to find out what the new numbers, what is the plan, show us the benchmarks, the data points, they basically referred us to the president s budget and the secretary s office. so this was really a speech, not a plan, as far as i can tell. so speeches aren t plans. speeches aren t ant action. it s speeches. the president said that there was nothing serious about a budget that would cut bill: so paul ryan has not changed his tune from
far enough. he said it was in terms of health care. republicans are ready to talk about the issues, but the president in this budget missed an opportunity to do so. senator, setting aside the blame game and you were the budget directionor. you understand this probably better than most. if you can wave a magic wand, what would you advise on the issue of entitlements, would you raise the retirement age? dihave the job of budget director and that budget did include changes in medicare including means testing. that is not in the budget this year. admittedly, the deficit was $160 billion so we were in better shape. we didn t have a recession so the tax receipts were up and it s the hugest driver. we had a stronger economy and