jay carny revealed yesterday. gretchen just said it is not a tax problem it is the way they waste our money. jay carny said deficit reduction is not the goal. are you kidding? here he is. deficit reduction is not the goal here. the reason to get our fiscal house in order and the reason to pass a deficit reduction package that is balanced and allows for economic growth is to put our economy on a sustainable fiscal path which again, in itself produces positive economic benefits and revenues are part of it this. the president put forth and entitlement reforms and savings gleaned from our health care entitlement programs need to be a part of it. the president has been
or even just a few months ago. right, even a few months ago. it s positive for the president. let s hope that s progress, mark halperin, but if he s not, as you said a little earlier, if he s not in the room with these guys, if they re not trying to broker a deal in the way that any of us would broker a deal with the clock ticking, how does this change? how does this dynamic change? if the white house and tim geithner are saying yesterday there is no deal, forget about it without raising rates on the top 2%, who gives here? well, look, we ve got to give the president a lot of credit for his political smarts about what would the impact be? who would win the election? he thought he was going to win and what the impact was. one is business is on his side. as joe and steve said earlier, business wants a major deficit reduction package, and most business leaders are open to it as much on the president s terms as much as republicans . that new york times story on john boehner goes
absolutely meaningless, go ahead and support tax increases without getting appropriate cuts, corresponding cuts. and this idea that some are suggesting that they just cave because it will make things easier, no. if they cave, raise taxes and get nothing in return of substance then what s the point of being a republican? what s the point of being a republican? they destroy their entire base, they destroy the party. and it s a nightmare for them. joe, can i jump in? i m sorry, it s brian sullivan. i agree with you completely. here s the thing. i can t believe i agree with you. the republicans have got to take this off the table by agreeing with the president in part on the tax hikes. it s such a small part of our deficit problem. it s really a couple percent. but listen to us. it s dominating 95% of the national dialogue. go with it so we can move on to the big deals. yeah. republicans could declare a victory here. they could give a little bit, get a bunch on entitlements,
rodgers. thank you for coming on the show. come back, glad you re there in the negotiations talking to everybody. eugene robinson, final thoughts this block? well, you know, actually congress and the president have agreed on a huge deficit reduction package. it s called the fiscal cliff. so, you know, in my darker moments, i think we re going over it, and what if we went over it and the world didn t end? that would be kind of interesting. we d take a big bite out of the deficit and everybody s taxes would go up, but i think the sun would come up tomorrow. huh. we may find out. okay, little orphan annie. so, gene, do you think right now that s you advise the president to do if the republicans don t come forward with more specifics? if i m advising the president right now i m advising him to wait a while. and that maybe when we get closer to the date, the calendar
caused by the bush tax cuts that were never paid for. now we have an opportunity to go back and do that right. i want if there are going to be tax cuts for the middle class, they have to be paid for. but what i sort of want the audience to understand, so much of what they re looking at now is fear. the president or boehner, none of those people can say, you know what, it s okay with me if we don t make a deal. it s okay if we go off the cliff. and so they have to look like we re working at this every day. think about it this way. we ve already made a deal. yes, we have, that s right. the democrats not only does it do a great job reducing the deficit, this is the only serious deficit reduction package that s ever come out of congress. not only does it do a great job, but frankly, from a progressive democratic point of view, we ve got two out of the three things we wanted. that s a pretty good deal. absolutely. governor howard dean, thank you very much for joining me tonigh