Page 2 - Fiscal Problem News Today

Allan simpson and erskine bowles. earlier they told congress they must act. >> whats right for this country is to solve this long-term fiscal problem. we face the most predictable economic crisis in history. the fiscal path were on is not sustainable. they know it, and theyve got to stand up to it. weve simply made promises we cant deliver on. >> nbcs capitol hill correspondent luke russert joins us from washington. luke, good morning to you. whats the point of todays hearing? >> good morning, c...

Both senate leaders, mcconnell and reid, didnt like it when the gang of six got together, which was sort of, frankly, a senate version of what you guys were trying to do. if you had both members of the leadership -- now, id argue youre elected leadership to get into the majority, period. thats your job, and until that changes to getting rewarded for governing, i dont know how to fix this. but what do you do? >> you know, i think youre elected to leadership to lead. and that means doing whats rig...

Public employees, this had to do with the right to work legislation. you said something interesting. you said you chose not to pick this fight because you didnt campaign on it. and you believed if you had not made a case to voters about right-to-work legislation, that you shouldnt be trying to do it once youve been in office and in the legislative session. did governor walker, you think, lose the political fight here? >> i have no way of knowing. the taxpayers of wisconsin won. seems to me that ...

Government do more or less, one thing that was clearer is that people rank jobs and economic growth over deficit reduction as their priority. and i think that kind of -- it didnt back up republicans this week, but it made people pay attention. >> im curious about whether republicans realize that -- it doesnt seem to me that message is resonating. that is, if we dont deal with our fiscal problem, we have uncertainty, and therefore the economy cant grow. thats the line that theyre drawing through ...

And deficit down, were going to have to have a broader decision. its going to have to include both houses and both parties. right now, however, the president is the only one who has a plan now that actually reduces our national debt by a trillion dollars. we still havent seen whats coming from the republicans, but absolutely this president would like to see washington work well together in a cooperative way where we see common ground to try to solve both our short-term and long-term fiscal probl...

Republicans you have to agree to investments and research development and infrastructure. say this is the growth agenda and only way we can grow -- over the next decade. >> well, i agree with that. i think that the difficulty with that, there are two versions of that. the minimalist version do a little bit tiny, kitchen-sink things to improve competitiveness. or the max agenda, which do a you will lot of the progress stuff and deal with the medium-term tax problems on entitlements. its clear tha...

Got to agree to investments and research development and infrastructure and say this is the growth agenda. this is the only way we can grow over the next decade. >> i agree with that. i think the zakaria agenda is a good one. the difficulty with that. there are two versions. the minimalist version, which is do a little bit tiny kitchen sink things and little bit on tax reform or the max mallist one, really do infrastructure investments and a lot of progress stuff and deal with the median term de...

President who has hewn very careful to his edge that there will be no tax increases for middle-income households. i dont know how you solve americas medium-term fiscal problem without having tax reform that deals with the mortgage interest deduction. all of these sacred cows, which would involve higher taxes. >> the closing of the loophole is in effect raising taxes. >> when you call them loopholes in deductions, everybody hates them. when you say charitable contributions, mortgage interest, you...

On to this bill. this is really more notice to our side that there are some of us who are serious about us dealing with this long-term fiscal problem that we have, this unfunded promise that weve made to future generations and we simply got to get our arms around it or everything else becomes -- becomes secondary. >> congressman, lets talk about the unfunded promise. president obama says that such a proposal as yours and representative ryan would rely on the whims of wall street traders. and tha...

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