reduction. again, our position here. i also categorically reject the krugmanesque notion that all the participating ceos disfavor the idea of short-term stimulus and are debt scrooges. an appreciation of the position of ceos like myself combined with a more generous reading of the november election results than is common, should help inform how the president, congress and business address the challenge of short-term economic growth and long-term deficits. and it leads to the conclusion that people like me might be of some help in breaking the gridlock. jane, i think we have a consensus except for the most extreme tea party members on the right and paul krugman on the left that we all agree. we can t have david cameron s austerity plan right now. let me put a few more things on the table. first of all, the long-term debt is not static. it s getting bigger. so this mountain will be higher. i don t think anyone s arguing for zero debt ever. i m arguing and i think you
austerity plan, that would have an impact. democrats were for pouring more money into the compli with stimulus and republicans wanted austerity and jonas point is an argument against what conservatives were pushing for. brenda: all right. toby. what s the question? driving a smart car. and we did a survey of 1500 small business peoples more in the 2%, revenue or earnings of more than $500,000. i would say that the actual statistics that we got, that the it was going to make on their business was much more about health care costs, obamacare than on the marginal right going up. because the small business person can manipulate that like nobody s business and that s the advantage of taking risk and being a small business person. but on the obamacare side, we had no, probably 75% of people said that it would affect their hiring and that was a much bigger issue than just the marginal rates. todd, in fact, we re seeing many polls come out that show
even if you try to retroactively fix that middle of the year, the economic effects are very negative. so there s no interest i think on any party on going over the cliff. secondly, there are some cuts that go in automatically at the beginning of january that would be difficult to unravel, but you could, as ari said do, that theoretically. remember, the fiscal cliff is an idea that was put forward by republicans of course. as an austerity plan. i agree with ari in the sense that it s a total artifice. there s no reason why you necessarily need to have that, but railroad ama ari makes th good point that home ownership and charitable giving are two things in the tax code we want to keep in place. all economists are nearly unanimous if you raise rates on the top 2% you will shave off 0.1% of gdp. you will have no effect on economic growth if you increase tacks on the extraordinarily wealthy here. but, you know, again, this is a party that has campaigned for
at fastreliefchallenge.com. brian: quick headlines. university professors in greece joining the string of protests against the pay cuts in a new austerity plan. they ll trike strike for two days. and we can t all be born into rich families like the great billy madison.
and mitt romney standing his ground refuse to go release more taxes, calls reach a deafening pitch. today he gave another reason why he shouldn t have to. and an exclusive investigation into the risks of off-shore drilling. we went outfront to the arctic. shell has a plan to prevent the disaster like the one that happened to bp and the deepwater horizon. does it add up? let s go outfront. outfront tonight, ben bernanke says no to the addicts. addicts that are desperate for another hit of the fed s drugs. today in hearings on capitol hill, america s top banker, the chief of the federal reserve, got more negative on the state of the u.s. economy. given that growth is projected to be not much above the rate needed to absorb new entrance into the labor force, the reduction in the unemployment rate seems likely to be frustratingly slow. so what s the solution? well, in note after note from wall street economists and traders today, i read something along the lines of th