needed to do, pushing entitlement reform, medicare, medicaid, pentagon spending, bringing in the taxes that the republicans are fighting against. it sounds like at least we are getting a framework to start. he s been calling the meetings. he s been in the meetings. i find the most interesting aspect of this situation to be the personal as opposed to the political. if you look at the four principles, what the president of the united states is dealing with. nonsi pelosi, eric cantor. instinct tells you, john boehner is the best guy to deal with. it s fascinating. you look at them sitting around the table. it s fascinating. harry reid won t make eye contact with anybody. it s like when the president s
that allow warren buffett to brag. it s just not right. that system is not fair. republicans can afford to go along with cut these tax loopholes to raise more revenue. absolutely. we are, at least i can say most are for tax reform. absolutely. cut the loopholes. do it fairly and across the board for everyone. i love to hear the oil companies are making so much money why shouldn t they pay more? if you tax people because they do well, you are going to start tearing down all of industry. it s not tax policy. what john boehner said he was willing to do was go one step further than that. he was going to allow the bush tax cuts on the higher, over $250,000 a year to expire if that was coupled with the kind of tax reform you are talking about. my question to you is, does that
his side. when you see what the candidates are saying out on the campaign trail, pawlenty and bachmann and so forth, they re so dug in, they re not going anywhere. they ve signed pledges, made promises, they re not going to raise taxes or bring them back to the normal levels, however you want to put it. they re not going to do it. so pat buchanan, boehner backed off a $4 trillion goal and actually in part because the washington post was supporting that his number two in charge, eric cantor, let him know, he will not go along with it and conservatives won t as well. where do we stand this morning on a budget deal that s got to get done? actually, joe, i think we re in pretty good shape, comparatively. boehner stepped away from the $2 trillion in taxes because he wouldn t speaker two weeks from now if he d gone along with them. i think the situation where you saw boehner over the weekend or just yesterday say, i think maybe we ve got to go to the biden cuts is exactly right. boeh
boehner has been the deal maker. we were told at the white house meeting cantor was doing more talking than boehner. that tells you a little bit about the dynamic in that caucus. interesting. does that surprise you? there was reporting in a couple places that said boehner seemed deflated and was quiet. cantor seemed to be driving the bus. if that s the case, it s evidence of what really is the story. they have the power and john boehner is along for the ride at this point. whoa. part of the problem here, too, seems that weather it s iraq war, we have these big decisions to be made with a clock ticking. if we did things in a rational
to be abused by the pat buchanans of 2012 and lose their seats two years later? well, maybe. and clearly, you know, what i think we learned over this last weekend is that john boehner said he didn t want to be speaker just to have the name, he wanted to do big things, and i think what he learned over the weekend, he s not really the speaker of the house. eric cantor is the speaker of the house. is the important for these candidates who made pledges to their constituents to keep their word? well, they ve made lots of pledges and some of them are contradictory. and they also say they re really in favor of trying to fix the long-term fiscal picture for the country and get the deficit down. and one of the ways you have to do that is through taking an approach that puts everything on the table. that s what we all i actually just want to think about the policy for a second and who has behaved in a way that, again, according to a lot of people at this table, is in accordance with real