issue? senators john mccain and kelly ae aiotte aeu cues accuse the president as being m. i. a. he needs to act as the commander-in-chief and prevent the cuts, which in the words of the secretary of defense would devastate our national security. unfortunately the president has chosen not to do this. bill: kentucky rand paul has thoughts on this and is with me from the hill. senator, how are you? good morning, bill. bill: what do you think is the practical affect if these cuts happen come december 31st, january 1? well, i m one of the few republicans who actually believes that we do have to look at military spending. we ve doubled military spending over the last ten years and we need to bring the top line number down. the military sequester is pretty
paper. bill: based on that answer you hold the president responsible here clearly? i think the president needs to be very forceful about, he was very forceful coming out saying his folks didn t do it. great, that s fine. but now, mr. president, you need to say i will have full cooperation so you can look at my staff and the investigators can take the leads where they find them. given the senior level . bill: why do you believe that has not happened? well i think i they were hoping it would just kind of go away. clearly somebody had senior level access, covert access, who had access to the situation room. that was just what was publicly reported. as an old fbi agent, bill, that s a clue that they have got some issues over there they have to get a handle on. this isn t republicans. this is republicans and democrats. both committees are very concerned about the damaging leaks and these may be the most dangerous, certainly i ve seen in my lifetime, to our national security.
country and no incation of terrorist activity or security is not adequate and say it. don t say it. there is lot of things you could say. these are our friends. bill: all the headlines andrea, these are fwafs. how do you see that? i don t see them as gaffs at all. do i see giving the queen an ipod of your own speeches like president obama did a gaffe? see open mike moment as a gaffe, versailles russ gaffe. that is a foreign policy gaffe. mitt romney doesn t have experience planning barbecues in chicago like president obama does he has experience planning and putting together the olympics and actually fixing the olympics. so his criticism was well-taken and relevant. comes to, hold on, bob. sorry. point, israel is very important. he made that comment about the culture because the palestinians are teaching their children jihad. they are teaching them to hate. so when he talks about a culture, that is what he is talking about. very relevant, very on point and something that presiden
keep you guys working on thanksgiving, and possibly christmas eve and even beyond that, because that now seems to be a six-week timeframe we are going to have to get all this done. if the deadlines would help us do the right thing i d be all for it. unfortunately my short experience is when we meet deadlines we usually do the wrong thing, we kick the can down the road and raise spending. we have to make tough decisions now and i d just as soon make them before the election. i think there are things we could agree on with the president. you have to fix social security, it s out of money. you have to fix medicare, it s out of money. and we can t heap new programs on top of programs out of money. that s my main complaint about obamacare. how do you add that on when medicare is already 35 to $40 trillion short. bill: you may disagree with senator mccain on how you get there. yeah. bill: but you do agree with him on the charge of m. i i. a.,
tells me they own that, they don t. that s a practical thing. i don t blame that on the president, but i do think the democrats were so tough on the republicans, you re seeing a little bit of that give-back at this point. you don t learn that at harvard business school, you learn that in the school yard. you beat up my buddy, i m going to beat up yours. i understand why it s partisan, but i wish they d all put their knives down and get back to work for the american public. to you, that s simple. you said that in the past couple of weeks, there s a simple solution that would help the economy. the debt reduction deal. simpson-bowles commission. the president s debt reduction commission that he didn t push, republicans opposed. it s gone nowhere. i don t know the inside story. i have read the stories. it s hard to tell. i personally don t care. i wish they d split the difference in half at one point. if you read, i hope the american public reads simpson-bowles. i think it s a fantasti