forward. >> at the same time, their view is that that's not a balanced approach because if you -- if you raise taxes, you slow the economy and you also give congress more to appropriate. so they don't see that as real deficit reduction. it seems to me that the philosophical divide is so far how does the president or vice president bring it together? >> that's the purpose of the talks is to try and bridge those two things. but i think it is really hard to argue that their position is not one sided. after all, they did $4 trillion, totally in cuts including deep cuts in medicare, deep cuts in medicaid, programs that help seniors in nursing homes and kids education. that was their approach. that was a one-sided approach. what we said in the big picture is you've got to go back to the same rates for the very wealthiest americans, same tax rates that were in place during the clinton administration, but at the very least for the purposes of this conversation, for goodness sakes, let's get rid of the subsidies for the big oil companies and go after some