If youre not completely satisfied, notify lifelock and you wont pay a cent. Order now and also get this shredder to keep your documents out of the wrong hands a 29 dollar value, free. Get protected now. Call the number on your screen or go to lifelock. Com to try lifelock protection risk fre for a full 60 da. Use promo code gethelp. Plus get this document shredder free but only if you act right now. Call the number on your screen now im sandra smith in for melissa francis. Heres whats money tonight. It is a simpsonbowles sequel. They roll out a new plan to slash the deficit. This time with more spending cuts and less tax hikes. It sounds great. But does it have a snowballs chance in congress . Todays power panel breaks it down. Health insurers get nauseous over Medicare Advantage cuts. The government may reimburse them less than thought which could bring a crushing blow to seniors and access to care. Aetna healths former ceo is here to explain. Elizabeth warren taking a battering ram to banks and their regulators in congress and her assault is just beginning. We have a top Bank Industry expert with the inside scoop whether war can inflict big damage to our Financial Institutions. Even when they say its not it is always about money sandra we start tonight with big news from alan simpson and erskin bowles. They used their new plan for deficit reduction. Here it is in a nutshell. It calls for overhauling the tax code and implementing the tax cuts. It cuts the federal deficit by 2. 4 doll trillion over the ten years. This is more of the white house goal of 1. 5 trillion. But the bottom line no one will be really happy because it hurts both ways. We have an allstar money power panel to break it down. Diana further got roth. She is with the formerly with the u. S. Department of labor. Joining us tonight, former massachusetts senator scott brown and fox news contributor. Welcome to all of you tonight. Great to be with you. Thank you. Sandra senator brown, i want to start with you first. This is your first time on the program so welcome. Thank you. Sandra when we look at this new plan we say, well, everybodys got to give. Everybody is going to be upset in some way. Even erskin bowles, theyre asking for the left to give even more here. I guess the big question, do you think this even has a fighting chance . Well, first of all i think it is important to reference their involvement. That theyre trying to reengage congress, theyre on hiatus. Not only literally on hiatus with a vacation but they checked out when it comes to address the real issue. We need obviously to get our debt and did he sit under control as we all know. There is no effort to work in a truly bipartisan manner. The president has not reached out to the moderates on the republican side. I commend them for reengaging. Theyre working with save the debt or reduce the debt committee. This is a new group thats been formed. So there are some things certainly i think we can find common ground. But im not hopeful that anyone is going to throw away their arrows yet and get together and hammer things out. It is very, very frustrating down there. Sandra senator, as you were speaking we were looking over some of the guidelines of this new plan. It cuts 600 billion from medicare and medicaid. It adds 600 billion in new revenue from ending exemptions and tax breaks. It cuts 1. 2 trillion in discretionary spending. Kevin, i put it to you, also the first time for you on this program, what do you make of that plan . I think the interesting thing is they moved very dramatically since the original plan in the republican direction, which i think reflects disappointment amongst the two gentleman with the fact that president obama abandoned them. He released their report and pretended it never happened. President obama has talked a good game about deficit reduction but he doesnt seem to be seriously interested in it. A sign of that his own guys are abandoning ship from him and theyre going much more in the direction of the republicans than the democrats. Sandra diana, isnt that part of the problem, were not seeing any interest whatsoever from washington . I think were seeing interest from washington. House republicans passed a bill that would cut 5 trillion over ten years. The problem with simpsonbowles is that 1. 2 trillion in cuts over ten years, congress cant even deal with 85 billion this year and is resorting to the sequester. The cuts in medicare, physician reimbursements, right now, we just had the doc fix. We have this in the law, every year physician reimbursement is supposed to be cut. Every Year Congress puts money back. 600 billion in tax reform. It is not tax reform if you raise tax rates. It is only tax reform if you keep it revenue neutral, broaden the base, get rid of expenditures. This will not work. They have clearly not been mugged by reality. Sandra senator brown, i want you to respond to this. Well roll sound of erskine bowles. He appeared on happening now on fox news earlier today. Why he thinks this new plan is important. Listen. Were asking the republicans to do some revenues. Were asking democrats to do more in the area of Health Care Reform and to make Social Security sustainably solvent. That pushes them both out of their comfort zone but it is enough to actually put our fiscal house in order and thats what we think is important. Sandra senator brown, your response . Well, listen, once again, i think theyre certainly very hopeful and theyre not giving up and theyre reengaging congress but i agree with what diana said actually. When youre looking at broading the base you, if youre going to lower Corporate Tax rates, sorry, if youre going to eliminate loopholes without lowering Corporate Tax rates it is a nonstarter. We need to do a whole host of things that are going to be not crushing the economy at a time when it is very fragile as it is. So there are certain things i think we can agree upon but right now, there is act absolute gridlock. Washington is a mess. We need to Work Together in a truly bipartisan manner as Americans First with our backs against the economic wall. We need to do it together and i dont see anything like that happening anytime soon. Sandra so, kevin, senator brown sounds very doubtful right now. Maybe the timing is a little bit different this time around . Were days from the deadline of the sequester on march 1st. Maybe now the pressure will help something get done and maybe they will take a second look at the simpsonbowles plan number two . We can hope so i think really what is going on here that bowles and simpson are tired of, you know, basically being a front for president obamas inaction and so they have come out with a proposal that, you know, sure there is 600 billion more in tax revenues than republicans would like, but it is not that bad of a proposal compared to certainly what the democrats are proposing. It is radically different from the kind of things president obama has been talking about. What it means is, the fact that the democrats, as diana said they have not been serious about this problem. They pointed to bowles and simpson with great virtue and ignored what theyre saying. Now bowles and simpson are clearly aligning much more closely with the republicans. They cut their tax increase proposal by a trillion dollars over ten. They increased their spending cut proposal at the same amount. That Kind Movement means it will put a lot of pressure on democrats to try to do something, to stop ignoring the problem. Like the senator i think they will continue to ignore the problem. Sandra diana, i see youre chomping at the bit. I think we need economic growth. That means real tax reform but there is also a lot of waste in the system. There is mass transit expenditures. 20 of the Highway Trust Fund when only 2 of americans ride mass transit there is highspeed rail. There is 12 billion a year spent on green energy programs. There is the military has to spend 27. 50 a gallon on biofuels when they could be fueling their ships with diesel at 3. 50 a gallon. There are places to cut. Sandra senator brown, i cut you off there. No, no. Sandra this is reason for you to come back and join us on the show again. Weve got to leave it there. All great points. All great points by everybody. A lot of work to do. Sandra excellent panel. Thank you all for joining us tonight. The other major money problem our governments dealing with right now is the dreaded sequester. Of course that deadline is many looking. Those automatic spending cuts are set to kick in just ten days from now. President obama is out pushing his platform. Just today he warned the cuts are like taking a meat cleaver to the economy. Listen to what he said. So these cuts are not smart, they are not fair, they will hurt our economy. They will add hundreds of thousands of americans to the unemployment roles. This is not an be a instruction. People will lose their jobs abstraction. Sandra critics say the president is resorting pure threats and our next guest agrees. Economist peter morici managed part of the federal budget and knows firsthand,000 this gets done. Welcome back to the show, peter. Nice to be with you. Sandra you wrote an article today, very controversial article, saying president obama is blackmailing taxpayers. Explain. Well, he simply singling out things that frighten taxpayers. Long lines at airports. Absence of meat inspectors and so forth. Take meat inspectors. We can keep all the meat inspectors on the job and cut the department of agriculture by 10 . The department of agriculture has the largest cadre of research economists in the world. I think the world could use fewer economists short term so we can get chicken at the safeway. And i read through our article here and, youre saying that this is such a big threat that youre saying whether a second recession occurs is already baked in the cake. Is that directly a result of sequestration if indeed this happens . Absolutely not. There has been real science that the economy is slowing in the Fourth Quarter and will continue into the first quarter. Whether we go negative or not, remains to be seen. But you know the tax increases, that the president pushed through, are at least as large as these dreaded spending cuts. Why were the tax increases not recessionary but these spending cuts are . What youve got here is a president that simply cant let go of the last nickel of big government. He has to have every last penny. What he is going to do is extort out of the American People those pennies by saying im taking your food inspectors away, i will take your policeman away, take your teachers today. Heck, teachers are paid for by state and local government. Youre hitting on a lot of great points. One of the problems, we faced the fiscal cliff at end of last year, a lot of folks didnt really know how that would affect their wallet. How that would affect their life as far as every day living. We went through and found some specific points of pain as a result of this sequestration. One in fact, is that weakens our military. Our brain room, pulled together some facts showing this reduces readiness by 2 3 of active brigade combat teams and most air force flying units, among other areas of our defense that would be cut, peter. I dont believe that, flatout. Now you may reduce readiness a bit because the when the military is not fighting it is training but how do you measure onethird, 2 3. Sandra training too, peter. They say there will be less training. I understand that. I understand that. How does a 10 reduction in that nufrs cause a onethird or 2 3 loss in readiness that is absolutely silly. Over a long period of time, if we had these cuts and we tried to maintain our present force structure we would have problems. But over the long term there are real changes members of the military would endorse. For example, keeping officers in uniform longer, instead of colonels retiring at 32 years. They retire at 35. Instead of minimum retirement at 20. Make it 22 years. You have to inhale fewer officers and smaller pension burden. Sandra talk another area near and dear to my heart, oil and gas on federal water. That would be slowsdown in development would be a possible affect of sequestration. The department of energy and department of interior process licenses. If the president wants to shut down that process, to punish the American People and to punish oil companies, something he loves to do, then he can do it but he could also move that money out of the very Extensive Research programs that those two departments. Or for example, out of solar energy. You know, and those transportation projects that, you know, railroads from nowhere to no place in illinois. Highspeed rail was mentioned earlier in the show. There are other places to take the money. Granted you have to balance the budget in each specific account. Sandra not to mention unemployment benefits, et cetera. We cant even get into all of it. Unemployment benefits . Okay. Sandra we have to leave it there, peter. All right. Thank you for joining us. It was a great article and one i think a the are of folks should read if they can get ahold he would of it. It is on fox news. Sandra turn to latest dealmaking be a activity on wall street between officemax and office deboat along with solid investor data out of germany gave a boost to stocks. The dow closed above 14,000 for the third time this month with the s p 500 hitting a fresh fiveyear high. The nasdaq gained 21 points. Next on money, brutal proposed medicare cuts suckerpunched Health Insurers today. The former ceo of aetna is here with the details and the potential fallout for seniors and getting care. Plus some of the most sophisticated Cyber Attacks ever committed against u. S. Businesses are uncovered and the Chinese Military is allegedly behind them. Which companies are next in their sights . A top cybersecurity analyst explains. More money coming up. Clients are always learning more to make their money do more. ann to help me plan my next move, i take scottrades free, inbranch seminars. Plus, their live webinars. I use daily market commentary to prove my strategy. And my local scottrade Office Guides my learning every step of e way. Because they know i dont trade like everybody. I trade like me. Im with scottrade. announcer scottrade. Ranked highest in Customer Loyalty for brokerage and investment companies. Sandra here is more on the nations fiscal woes. The government is now proposing cutting the amount it contributes to its Health Care Plan for seniors called Medicare Advantage in 2014. Its not a done deal just yet but it took everyone by surprise today, including wall street. The Health Insurance industry took a huge hit. Stocks were down across the board. Four Insurance Companies lost 1. 8 billion in market value just today. Look how this breaks out. Humans market value dropped by a whopping 788 million today. Unitedhealth group down 660 million. Cigna by 186 million and eta by about 164 million. If this rate cut does happen there could be a big impact on the industry and Overall Health care. We have the former chairman and ceo of aetna. Youre the guy to talk to on this and youve given me special privilege to call you dick and well have a conversation first of all how this is going to affect health care that is offered . Well it is going to have an impact. It will not radically change the way health care is delivered in this country but it will have an impact on one segment particularly with seniors and seniors seeking the Medicare Advantage program, which is really what this is about. And, the market expected no particular increase, but they didnt expect a cut. Sandra dick, they were really caught offguard. They were. Sandra when we looked at the fall in the stocks today, this was significant news and this was just the Large Health Care insurers that are publiclytraded and publiclytraded on the open markets. Right. Sandra what about the smaller guys, how does this affect them . Well i think the smaller guys, it is a wide diversity. Some smaller guys dont do medicare at all. Wouldnt affect them a bit. But some target it and it is a major part of their business. For them, it would be a big hit. Even with the big four, as you noticed and as you quoted, the hits were quite different. Sandra yes. Humana, concentrates a great deal on medicare. Humana really took a beating. You united and aetna, hey, not painless but they werent anywhere near as affected. Still significant cuts there. Definitely. Sandra but if you were still the ceo, how would you have handled this . Or would this have even happened . Would you have negotiated a different rate . I would cry. You dont negotiate with the government, at least not very effectively. I think that the industry is trying to get the government to consider not cutting anywhere near as much or maybe not cutting any at all. This as you said is not a done deal. Sandra no. It is open for comment. Sandra the market sees it as a real risk and thats why we have to address it as a real risk. Of course. And it is. Sandra one of your big points right now that doctors are practicing defensive medicine. Sure. Sandra are you worried about the Overall Health industry and the direction its headed . To me youre touching on what is the real root problem. The u. S. Spends more than twice as much per capita for health care as any developed country in the world. Im talking about sweden, holland, england, germany. Why . What is it so different . Is our water different or, no. It is that we have a different way of practicing medicine. Number one, doctors do practice defensive medicine. Why . Because we have a whole system of ambulancechasing lawyers who anytime somebody has a outcome that isnt exactly the way they hoped, they sue. So, well, if, i better cover my you know what, so lets order another battery of test. That contributes to the problem. And that costs money. Sandra your best guess, because we dont have much time left, does this cut happen, this proposed cut, Medicare Advantage . There will be some, some modification, about you i suspect there will be a cut and it will hurt. Sandra the market is c