good morning, it s wednesday, october 26th. i m carol costello joining you live from new york. president obama begins his day in denver where he ll spell out his plan to make it easier for student loan borrowers to pay off their enormous debt. he ll explain his plan at the university of colorado-denver campus. the two key points of his proposal, he wants to offer relief sooner by pushing up the start date for an income-based repayment plan passed by congress. it s set to take effect in 2014, but the president wants it to begin in january. the plan reduces to 10% the maximum percentage of income that more than 1 million current students would have to pay toward their loans. they ll also be eligible for loan forgiveness in 20 years instead of 25. the other proposal would offer a small interest rate break for borrowers who consolidate their different types of federal loans. usa today reports the outstanding student loan debt is expected to hit the $1 trillion mark this year.
either we ask the wealthiest americans to pay their fair share in texas or we ll have to ask seniors to pay more for medicare. we can t afford to do both. either we gut education and medical research or we ve got to reform the tax codes so that the most profitable corporations have to give up tax loopholes that other companies don t get. we can t afford to do both. this is not class warfare. it s math. the numbers clearly show president obama s plan. it s not a liberal idea. not at all. it s what america wants, no question about it. just look at the numbers. over two dozen polls taken this year, 64% of americans want tax increases to be part of any deficit reduction package. democrats need to hammer those numbers home. every democrat needs to go home and give their local tv and radio market just a very simple 20-second sound bite.
bunkered there, i think they had to say to people, look, we understand why you re nervous. we see that we ve got problems. but we also believe there is a way to win this election and we re beginning to try to put that in place. karen finny, you think the west wing gets it? i think they get it that they need to say they get it. i m not so i m not sure. i mean, in all honesty, i think we re going to have to see. what he says today on the deficit reduction package will be very important. will he continue to get out there and campaign for his ideas? that did him a lot on the jobs act. that s what president clinton seemed to say. look, i m not going to criticize now because he s not doing some things that i would have criticized. it sounds like he s trying to say i would have been criticizing if he s not doing the plan but i want to see him out there. that s exactly right. now that they are actually making the changes, let s see how far that goes. again, where the left is really
not willing to tackle our spending programs. we made promises that our kids and grandkids can not afford. it is time to do what we know we have to do and frankly we know the issues we have to deal with. let s do it. i told the president, mr. president, forget the next election. let s just do the right thing for the country. we can do it together, but, what we re seeing from the president s so-called deficit reduction package is more of the same. gerri: areas of compromise, very slim, possibly some of the infrastructure spending, the republicans might be willing to accept, but not an infrastructure bank. speaker boehner did not like that idea. shepard: you asked him about the threat of a double dip recession, right, gerri? gerri: i sure did. and he thinks it is a very good chance that we go into another recession here, as you know, economists put the risk of
we understand what the challenge is, and that is to give up tax preferences, inefficient tax preferences that are on the books today to hold down marginal rates for everybody. reporter: so, jon, you have three dozen senators of all stripes in favor of tax cuts. jon: all right. so tax reform, this kind of tax reform that they re talking about, does the committee have the power to make it happen? reporter: the power, the time may be a problem, but they do have the power. they have the power to order congress to do whatever it sees fit including comprehensive tax reform, even if it doesn t happen before a deficit reduction package has to be voted on in december. in fact, a former official jokes the committee has so much power, it could move christmas to august if it wanted to. now, this bipartisan group also called on the supercommittee to go big in cutting deficits aimed for clash 4 trillion $4 trillion over ten years.