it's never worked. what's the alternative? one of the alternatives is actually putting out the plan that you really would like to pass. >> sure. and let's not kid ourselves, they're not going to pass this plan. they're going to move off of it. this is a starting point of the negotiations. go back to august when it was just the president and house speaker boehner. you got the sense that obama desperately wanted the house speaker to take that grand bargain which included raising eligibility age of medicare, which included reforming payment structure of social security in part because we needed a vehicle to get the debt ceiling raised. nowadays when you're looking at the supercommittee and its legislations there's a different tone to this. it's obama saying to boehner, if you want to get the things i dangled in front of you, you have to give me something. he knows boehner can't go back to the caucus and say, let's let massive defense cuts happen. he knows boehner is in a bind here. the expectation is the caucus is going to have to reach them on revenues.