budget committee. democrat iic congressman chris n holl hollen. and then re-opening the search with david axelrod and ed gillespie on why his candidate gambled on a wonk who is wanting to overhaul medicare. and then risk/reward with jessica yellen. i'm candy crowley, and this is "state of the union." no surprise, president obama's campaign and other democrats are wasting no time attacking the new romney/ryan presidential ticket. descriptions we've heard thrown around so far, wrong, harsh and extreme. joining me now, former new hampshire governor and romney campaign adviser john sununu. welcome, governor, and good morning to you. >> nice to be on, candy. happy sunday. >> so let me ask you, this is certainly -- comes as a surprise to the romney campaign. they certainly knew ahead of time how this would taken. how do they move against what clearly is going to be an attempt to say, this is a man who wants to fundamentally change medicare and social security and going back to his record, which is basically seven terms in congress? >> well, you know, you've had a lot of discussion on that. i just want to point out that there's another benefit to this what i think is a great choice. and that is it's going to test the seriousness and credibility of the pundit class in washington. these are the folks who are commentators and columnists and for years have been saying, there's nobody who's trying to be bipartisan or nobody who's willing to stand up and make the hard decisions to solve the tough problems. and now mitt romney has made a choice of someone who clearly falls in that class. someone who worked with ron wyden to put this entitlement reform forward, someone who has been willing over the years to do the hard number crunching and put out specifics on what to do. and now you get what i cnsider a very hypocritical and self-indicting response particularly from the liberals who are saying this is a gamble or condemn this as a silly move instead of recognizing that this is an attempt to make the debate in the campaign worthwhile and to give the public a solid choice. there's even one very credible commentator who i think embarrassed herself by saying this created a death wish ticket. >> well, you're taking me out of context, so i know you will go back, sir, and look at that because it's not what i said. >> oh, come on. >> listen, you know, the fact of the matter is, this is either going to put it the way i put it, this is either, as seen by conservatives, going to be what begins the march to the white house or it might be what ends the march to the white house, and we can all talk about it on the 7th. and the truth of the matter is that one way or the other, we're going to look back and know whether it was a good or bad decision. so having said that, i think the estion now is, what do you do to kinof push back as kow ecrs are already ing oam election and fraly how campaigns run? >> you hope that you can at least clarify for the public where we are today. that's the first step. and we are today with medicare gutted by $716 billion by obamacare. the president stole $716 billion from medicare. that's in the law. that's now. and secondly, medicare, by the actuaries at medicare, will go bankrupt, go broke, in essence out of business by 2024. now, there's a lot of folks out there pooh-poohing that that's not a serious issue. that is a serious issue. and so the question is, you now have a choice. with romney/ryan that are willing to talk about those hard numbers and the hard choices you need, or obama/biden who for four years have run away from entitlement reform as fast as you can, have pretended it isn't there. even for four years refused to put a budget -- to fight to get a budget through the house and the senate. how can you have a president go through his entire administration without having the guts to stand up for a budget? the difference between the willingness of having people talk about issues like obama/biden or having two guys that have a reputation and a willingness to solve problems like romney/ryan. that's the choice the public has. >> as you know, the other side will push back and say, within those -- the budgets that have gone up there but that are obviously have not been pushed for and sometimes have been voted against have been ways to trim spending and medicare, they would say wiout changing benefits. but let me move you on and ask this question -- >> but candy -- >> let me -- >> those were budgets that got 414-0 votes in the house and 98-0 votes in the senate. he couldn't get a single democrat to support what he was sending up. >> let me ask you, you don't seem to think or agree with the commentary that there is risk to this choice. in fact, i would say that republicans were some of those pushing the idea that there was a risk to that saying, mitt romney is a big risk taker here. look what he did. he put someone here that's controversial. but you see no risk in this pick. >> i have more faith in the american public than those that see this as a big gamble. i think the american public, when you give them the data, when they see the fact that this country is going down the drain with $16 trillion of debt, when they see medicare and social security on the ropes and about to die if nobody does anything about it, when the young people of america realize that it's their generation that's going to get screwed by the lack of constructive policies coming out of obama, i think they're going to see this as a choice that wasn't a gamble but a choice that was a bright line on the difference of how we have to deal with things in america. >> governor, just quickly, if you look at the groups where mitt romney is underperforming, they are minorities and women. what about paul ryan changes that? >> look. i think that women always get looked at as being favorable to the democratic party, and there's always great numbers of the democrats getting better polling out of women early. but i think as you getloser to the election, women start paying attention to the details of what's there and start looking at the fact that their kids and their grandkids will be in serious trouble if these problems aren't solved. and i think you'll see that gap closing tremendously. >> governor john sununu in a place very familiar to us. i kind of miss new hampshire looking at you. thanks for joining us. >> thank you. the line says house budget committee chairman looms large on paul ryan's resume, so next we'll ask the committee's top democrat what it's like to work with him. ♪ ♪ every mom needs a little helper. that's why i got a subaru. announcer: love. it's what makes a subaru, a subaru. ♪ [ camera clicks ] ♪ it's hard to resist the craveable nature of a nature valley sweet & salty nut bar. it's hard to resist the craveable nature questions. when you're caring for a loved one with alzheimer's, not a day goes by that you don't have them. questions about treatment where to go for extra help, how to live better with the disease. so many questions, where do you start? 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[ spokesman ] when you refinance your mortgage with quicken loans, you'll find that our rates and fees are extremely competitive. because the last thing you want is to spend too much on your mortgage. one more way quicken loans is engineered to amaze. ♪ someone who knows firsthand that all these tax increases coming in our small businesses, all the mandates from obamacare and dodd/frank, someone knowing that the red tape that is choking and strangling and suffocating our successful small businesses is what is keeping us from creating jobs, from creating prosperity. this is a man who understands these things. >> joining me now is paul ryan's colleague on the house budget committee, democratic congressman chris van hollen of maryland. very familiar man, somebody that you have worked with. so far i think your colleagues in the obama re-elect committee damning him with praise saying oh, he's genial, but he's wrong. tell me what he's like to work with because so much of what america sees out there today is there's two sides, and they never get together. have you found that this is a man you could work with? >> well, look. personally, paul ryan and i get along very well. we're collegial colleagues. we have very sharp differences, and we express them very clearly. but always in a civil manner. we got together early on when he became chair and i became ranking member and said, look. we have these very deep differences, and that, of course, is what this campaign will be about, but let's try and express them in a way that actually tries to elevate the debate because people need to understand exactly what these choices are about. and i do think that in picking paul ryan, mitt romney has crystallized that choice. and i think at the end of the day when people hear it, that debate is going to help the president in his re-election. >> well, in fact, isn't this what you all have said all along this was about? the president's folks early on said it's about a choice. it's not about what's going on right now in the economy specifically. it's about who are you going to choose to move forward with it? and so if they have that choice, then this, you know, one hopes, has the essentials for a high-minded campaign which you would agree it hasn't been so far. >> well, this does have now the potential and the opportunity to make this a very sharp choice. and in picking paul ryan, what mitt romney has done is pick somebody who has an economic plan and a budget plan that is great for people just like mitt romney. it's great if you're very wealthy in this country because it provides you additional tax breaks, but it does so at the expense of everyone and everything else. seniors on medicare who get hit harder, expensive investment in our education system. so that's the choice they're making. and i think what the american people are going to see clearly are the tradeoffs involved in the decisions we make. giving tax breaks to the folks at the top is not a free lunch. it hits everybody else in the country. >> congressman, do you think there need to be big changes made in medicare? not saying what those changes are. do there need to be big changes made in medicare? >> we need to build on the changes made in medicare and the affordable care act which has been distorted even this morning by john sununu. there are additional measures that need to be taken. the president's approach and the approach that we in the democratic party have recommended is to move medicare away from a fee-for-service system which actually increases costs. it does not have enough incentives to contain costs. the republican approach is to shift the risk for rising costs onto seniors, which is why seniors will end up having to pay a whole lot more for what they get now in medicare. and we just don't think that's fair. we don't think it's fair or right to be providing tax breaks for millionaires while you're asking medicare recipients who have the median income of under $23,000 to have to pay a lot more or get a lot less. >> from what i can tell, the president in his most recent budget called for about a 7% decrease in the increase in spending on medicare. is it sufficient simply to slow that increase? because when you look at bowles-simpson that looked at the deficit and the problem with the debt, if you look at a number of economists, they say we cannot sustain these aging baby boomers and continue to pay as we are now. don't you have to cut that growth, and isn't that the conversation that the republican ticket is having? >> well, actually, you can make progress and significant progress in terms of medicare by reducing the rate of growth because the whole issue with medicare, as with the entire health care system, is that health care costs rise very rapidly. and the difference in the approaches is that the president's approach is one that says, let's shift the incentive structure in medicare away from one that pushes volume of care toward one that does value of care, whereas the republican approach doesn't address the rise in health care costs. it just shifts those onto seniors in medicare. and the results is on the republican plan, seniors get a much worse deal than members of congress do. i think that's important for people to understand what the republican plan proposes is a health care plan for seniors on medicare that does not keep up with costs to the extent that the plan member in congress have. >> the government doesn't pay as much as it does to you all when the price of the premium goes up is what you're saying. >> well, under the members of congress health plan, the health benefit plan, as health care costs increase, the percentage of support from the plan remains the same. the percentage of support, whereas under the romney/ryan plan, they disconnect those two. so health care costs will continue to rise, but the voucher seniors get will actually decline relative to those rising costs. and so seniors are stuck holding the bag. >> so after all this -- you know, more than 24 hours now of here he is and here's what he brings to the ticket and here's what he doesn't bring to the ticket and you all, you know, going after him and the republicans all boosting him up, what's changed in terms of the dynamics of the presidential race? >> first of all, the debate's been sharpened because before romney selected ryan, clearly mitt romney was pursuing a strategy where he just thought he was going to run against the president and sort of the status quo in the country, and the president's made the point from the beginning that he inherited a very bad economy. he's helped turn the corner, but we have a long way to go. and this election is about what's next? what's the future? what are the choices? and so now the republicans have put in place their plan for the future. and it's a great future if you're someone like mitt romney because the ryan plan provides not only the existing tax breaks but doubles down on those tax breaks, and it's all based on this trickle-down theory of economics. >> you don't think the ryan selection will give mitt romney some traction in the polling? >> oh, i think it will help him among the republican base. clearly there's a lot of energy and excitement among the tea party base. but this is essentially telling centrists and independent voters to go take a hike because if you look at the republican budget, the ryan budget, this is an uncompromising document. i mean, they rejected every amendment that house democrats proposed this year. and it was a take-it-or-leave-it approach. and last summer, they said if you don't take our extreme budget, we're actually going to threaten the full faith and credit of the united states government. that was the house republican approach, and that's how they've used their budget. >> finally, i just want to show you something that was in a cnn/orc poll. this is americans and what their opinion is of economic conditions. only 19% said the economy is starting to recover. 41% said seems to stabilize fully. almost 40% say it's getting worse. those are not good numbers for the president. >> well, the reality is that the numbers have been improving, but they have been improving slowly. and the president -- >> we've seen that confidence drop. >> that may be the case, but the reality is that the president has proposed a plan, jobs initiative, it's actually been sitting in the house of representatives since september. if voted 37 times to repeal obamacare, we haven't voted once on the president's jobs plan which would increase our investment and our infrastructure, our roads and bridges. and by the way, the republican plan would dramatically slash that investment even while we have 14% unemployment in the construction industry. so this just gets, again, to the choices. they're very clearly spelled out in that romney/ryan budget. and romney at one point called that budget marvelous. now he's all in. now he's 100% in so let's have the debate. >> sounds like we are going to have it this fall. thank you so much, congressman chris val hollan. the obama campaign has already adjusted to paul ryan's addition to the republican ticket. next, some revised tactics and strategy from david axelrod. 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[ male announcer ] the all-new cadillac ats. whoa! energy is being produced to power our lives. while energy development comes with some risk, north america's natural gas producers are committed to safely and responsibly providing generations of cleaner-burning energy for our country, drilling thousands of feet below fresh water sources within self-contained well systems. and, using state-of-the-art monitoring technologies, rigorous practices help ensure our operations are safe and clean for our communities and the environment. we're america's natural gas. we spent too much money. we spent money we didn't have. i think it's not just bad economics to do that. i think it's immoral for us to pass on burdens to the next generation. and in this critical time, one of the few that stood up and fought for principle and said i have ideas to get america back on track is this person i've chosen to be my running mate. >> joining me now is david axelrod, senior adviser to the obama campaign. david, thanks for joining us. >> sure, candy. good to be with you. >> i know you were with the president yesterday. and on the big day for the republican ticket. there have also been some sort of famous public scenes, exchanges between the president and congressman ryan over health care. the president went to a republican retreat once and was challenged by congressman ryan. what does the president think of him? >> oh, i think he thinks he's a perfectly genial and bright guy. he just thinks his theory is wrong. i mean, congressman ryan is a right-wing ideologue, and that's reflected in the positions that he's taken, you know, the budget that he constructed for the house republicans that would include trillions of dollars of new tax cuts skewed to the wealthy so that we're giving a millionaire $250,000 tax cuts while we're cutting college-age -- college aid for kids and research and development and a whole range of things that we need to grow. he disagrees with congressman ryan's idea that we should turn medicare into a voucher program, shifting thousands of dollars ultimately onto the backs of seniors. he disagrees with congressman ryan's view on a woman's right to choose. he would ban a right on woman's right to choose even in cases of rape and incest. he's quite extreme. a good person, genial person, but his views are quite harsh. okay. then let me ask you, so you scribe him as extreme. so i want to take you back to a december 15th "wall street journal" op-ed, the congressman wrote along with senator ron wyden who is a member of your party and is seen certainly as a moderate to liberal democrats. and the two of them together came up with a plan to help save medicare. and they wrote, "our plan would strengthen traditional medicare by permanently maintaining it as a guaranteed and viable option for all our nation's retirees." so this extreme plan has been signed on to and one of the authors of it is a member of your own party. so why is that extreme? >> well, i'd