Page 25 - Spending Side News Today

[ inaudible ] i think a lot of members are struggling with it. >> bret: some republicans are not happy with it. the white house turned it down. but negotiations are continuing. so where are we? bring in the panel. tucker carlson, editor of the dailycaller.com. a.b. stoddard associate editor of the hill. and sindcated columnist charles krauthammer. 14 days from tonight. by the way. >> start of the day i was feeling optimistic in a way i have not. it surprised me but it seems that things are movin...

Part? what was concerning to you? >> dana: the piece about the fiscal cliff first. you think they have had a year to work on that the democrats and republicans could come together. i think what harry reid heard last night from the democrats is we are not going to do anything. this is reported in the national journal today. not going to do anything to make any change or sacrifice benefit for social security, medicare or medicaid. that would be a condition of speaker boehner, which is if we give y...

Are we truly deadlocked on both sides? or are we just negotiating up until the 11th hour? >> i would like this think there is still good faith on the part of the president and the administration to get a deal but im becoming increasingly skeptical that is true. bill: you are? >> i think they pretty much concluded bill, this has to be a revenue issue. this will be tax increases to get a deal, to get republicans to support a deal. you will need something that addresses the spending side of the equ...

Problems absent taking on entitlement programs, reforming the programs, saving social security and medicare and doing that if we dont deal with that aspect with the spending side of it. we have not touched the problem. >>neil: you want to see concessions on the spending before you even address the revenues because the criticism from the colleagues is they have not seen that, and we will talk to a democrat shortly, and that is where you are stalled. >>guest: absolutely. if you did energy the pres...

>> well, bill you know that and i know that in part because we watch fox news, and fox news reports it that way which is the straight forward way to report it. you can find that out from the other media, but you have to read it carefully because its not apparent. all the conversation, all the discussion, all the news thats made in this whole discussion since the end of the election has been about what? its been about tax rates on the rich. >> bill: right. >> thats been the whole story. the fact ...

Math is at the center of our next story. democrats are claiming they have already voted to take a trillion-dollar bite out of the budget deficit through spending cuts. tonight, correspondent doug mckelway tells us whether that claim really adds up. >> were still waiting for the white house to identify what spending cuts the president is willing to make. >> yet again today, republicans asked where is the democrats end of the bargain. they accused democrats of ignoring the spending side of the neg...

>> well, bill you know that and i know that in part because we watch fox news, and fox news reports it that way which is the straight forward way to report it. you can find that out from the other media, but you have to read it carefully because its not apparent. all the conversation, all the discussion, all the news thats made in this whole discussion since the end of the election has been about what? its been about tax rates on the rich. >> bill: right. >> thats been the whole story. the fact ...

Graham just has his math wrong. if you look at bipartisan proposals to reduce the deficit over the next ten years like simpson bowls, they had a lot more revenue embedded in them than the amount of revenue the president is talking about and the revenue is a substantial part of trying to get a balanced approach. so to suggest that the revenue is a trivial component here is simply nonsense. with respect to the spending side of the equation the president has been really clear and actually hes laid ...

If you get $80 billion a year in tax hikes, which is what you get from raising the top two brackets back, thats in one year, that pays for government about eight days, maybe nine. so that doesnt solve any problems. the problems are on the spending side. publicly, at least, the president doesnt want to do anything about spending. his idea of a spending cut is to make the higher income people pay more for their medicare and call that a spending cut. just look at november -- october and novembers c...

Need to know whats going on and certainly the caucuses who vote on this. >> speaker boehners caucus needs to know. >> absolutely. >> i mean, do you think, for example, that the president may have given some where perhaps in relation to, i dont know, qualifying age for entitlements or some other areas they may be seeking some compromise on. >> its possible. personally, i think thats a really mistaken policy, but having said that, i mean, i think listening to speaker boehners comments, he forgets ...