Entitlement Issues News Today

$25,000 a year. married couple, below $50,000 a year. do you like it. >> i like some parts. i dont want to sound like ebenezer scrooge, under his plan, 75 million households will not pay any federal income taxes. they shouldnt necessarily pay top rate or 25 or what it is close to 40%. everyone should pay something, could be as little as one, two, 3%. everyone should have skin in the game. when someone treats you to dinner, bill, if youre not paying for it, if youre me you order three appetizers....

Election than bankrupting the country, i dont belong here. >> youre nodding your head. you agree with this? >> yes. >> tell me why. >> i would appreciate if everybody felt that way. we heard about the frustration, we heard about the polarization and we heard from the congress that theyre saying its the media. is it really the media? >> no, i dont think its the media. i think its us. its easy to blame someone else. we were elected to make these decisions for the country. if were -- if were not wi...

Couple weeks ago with the continued resolution toss keep the government going. if you think about it, greta, all this was done in the open light of an open government day. imagine what would have happened if we had burned that to either a shutdown government or a debt ceiling brink issue. none of that occurred. that might be part of the equation the s&p is looking at. but they are saying forget about what happens if your government ever closes. look at the havoc its created while they are open f...

Your pocketbook. cnns don lemon is here. don i leave it to you. break it down for us. >> what were really going to talk about, entitlement issues. they can make a mark. we want them. a lot of us are baby boomers and rely on that money. up until 2022, the federal budget is about $40 trillion. and the bulk of that, 40% of that, comes from entitlements, like social security here. you see, it makes up about 20.4% of budget. 12.8% is medicare. medicaid, 7.2%. again, social security, 20.4, medicare, 1...

Complicated tax code. when you do that, everybody does have that skin in the game and everybody gets their ox gored a little bit. >> chris: let me bring in senator warner. for you as a democrat, having a skin in the game means you take the inpalatable choice of cutting entitlements. are you willing to scale back on social security, medicare and medicaid. >> we have to do all this. otherwise if we focus the discussion as we have so far, the back and forth, in the congress, all youre cutting is 12...

Social security. doesnt he need to show leadership on that issue? i mean, isnt he the one to lead the conversation there, and should that be done now? >> well, look, i think the president has shown leadership, because i mean, all of these issues are getting conflated between, weve got the cr, weve got the budget and then obviously the entitlement issues. i think the president rightly said lets put the entitlement issues -- we have to deal with them, but lets put that aside, lets focus on the bud...

Entitle mtss? granted youd have to raise the retirement age and increase the amount of tax and change the payroll wloelding. the critics are saying the president is just dealing with the small stuff. if youre not doing it now, when is the president going to make his first move on this and will he? >> the president said it during the state of the union. he said, theres a piece of the budget about 10%, 12% of the budget. its important we rein things in and make cuts there. thats whats in this budg...

And president obama, i wanted to ask about the meeting that took place today. you had labor leaders there. they have said in an interview if medicare and social security are part of any deal that president obama strikes with republicans, labor will be against it. and i look at that and i say, how can that not be part of any deal that obama strikes with republicans? how much trouble will he have on the left selling any deal he reaches? >> its going to be hard to sell. any deal that deals with tho...

>> are you going to put the medicare reform plan, the same one you passed last year. many privately, i dont want to make that again. you are going to put it in again? >> yes, we are not backing off on any of our policy reforms. if you are not serious about taking on these entitlement issues, but b dealing with the unfunded promises you are not serious about fixing our fiscal situation. we need half of our republican side being serious about fiscal situation, if we duck this well have a debt cris...

And the ongoing saga we had a couple weeks ago with these continuing resolutions to keep the government going. if you think about it, all this was done in the open light of an open government day. imagine what would have happened if we had pushed that to either a shutdown government or a debt ceiling brink issue. none of that occurred. that might be part of the equation s&p is looking at what it is saying is, forget about what might happen if your government ever closes. look at the havoc it has...