deductions. rate increases. so, the rates have to go up. that s correct. i think they do. if you want to get to the number the president s talking or even close to it. the loopholes. if we can clean up the tax code, everyone is in favor of that. making it simpler, clearer and it probably won t get us the revenue number unless what you mean by that is going into deductions that will hammer the middle class and lower income folks. obviously, that s not acceptable to the president. the president has said, as you indicated $400 billion with regards to medicare savings. last week senator durbin said he thought that $400 billion figure was probably going to be more of a floor than a ceiling. most folks suspect it will be higher. where else, where else can democrats find entitlement reform savings? and how much can they find? well, a good example, you know, in the veterans program, the veteran administration program we buy drugs, a lot of them. at whole sale prices.
is, how do you do that? well, john boehner went to the white house ten days ago and said republicans in the house are willing to put revenues on the table. that was a big move, right? a big move? huh? the gop has always been open to raising revenue. governor romney even promised to do that. it seems awfully similar to what speaker boehner offered a year ago during debt talks. we have an agreement on a revenue number. there was an agreement on some additional revenues. i stuck my neck out a mile and i put revenues on the table. revenues on the table? the gop is essentially offering the same thing they did a year ago. plus, they want to keep tack rates for the wealthy the same. they want to cut entitlements, postpone pentagon cuts, and now they are putting health care on
point. they still really want that to say that they want to tax the wealthy. but i do think that there is some wiggle room from them, the top economic adviser cited at least $1 trillion in revenue, which is slightly different than the $1.6 trillion that the president had been talking about. and so i think that we may see that threshold of 250 creep up a little bit. and i also think that the administration may be looking at other ways to tax the wealthy, like, capping deductions, tax deductions, or things like raising investment income taxes, which is slated to happen at the end of the year. what did gene sperling say on that when you talked with him, downplaying it seemed like he was downplaying the idea of limiting or capping the tax deductions. that that would help enough in reducing the deficit yes, several of the president s surrogates this week were talking about really downplaying that idea of capping deductions. that there wouldn t necessarily collect enough revenue, tha
is brought under control. from what we ve seen from the president over the last week, it doesn t look like kicking the can is an option he is willing to live with. he has talked about getting a big deal, about his opening r revenue number $1.6 trillion. it looks to me at least from what we ve seen so far kick the can and not doing a big deal is not on the table. let s talk about that. obviously it s something the president wants to have for his presidency. as for speaker boehner i know they would personally like to make this time of deal. assuming the grand bargain happens, you can t get it done in a lame duck session, at least you move forward there, grand bargain, is this something that safbs the u.s. from this debt we ve inflicted on ourselves for so long, where people stand up and notice it or would there still be the naysayers out there that say it still is not enough. what do you think? i think a true grand bargain would be a really great confidence signal to markets. now i d
tax rates right now if you don t have an agreed upon number, revenue number, that both sides agree to on what should come out of the tax code changes? so if it s a trillion bucks over ten years, which seems to be halfway between the $800 billion that boehner put on the table and $1 trillion over ten years, don t you have to agree to that number first before you decide what the rate is? i m not going to negotiate this on television with you, chuck, and i don t think anyone would. we have to come up with a solution to help get our kcounty back into a financially stable condition. we have a $16 trillion debt. it is unsustainable. it s irresponsible. we need to work together. the elections are over. we need to solve these problems and i believe we will do that before the first of the year. and just to go back to the senate, you don t want a dael to come out of the senate before it comes out of john boehner?