reasons it never gets to entitlements. there are all sorts of reasons that people would oppose it, but at this moment, in that capitol, he s not focused on those arguments, and he s trying to get people focused on them to focus on the actual outcome, what happens now. bret: the other thing in the boehner bill is a commission responsible for coming up for $1.8 trillion in additional cuts in entitlements, a question mark for a lot of folks on both sides of the aisle. part of the debate has been whether the ratings agencies will downgrade the u.s., the credit rating anyway. today s&p had a conference call, and here s a it s a paraphrase really of a quote. question was $4 trillion number has been circulating to stabilize the debt gdp ratio. it comes from boles simpson, embraced by president obama and representative paul ryan. actually $4 trillion won t do the trick to stabilize debt-to-gdp, but would take you far along and signal seriousness. imf, international monetary
far along and signal seriousness. imf, international monetary fund, says you need 7.5% of gdp to stabilize. we think it s more than that, $4 trillion would be a good downpayment. charles, what i read from that quote is that we re not even close to $4 trillion on either of the plans currently being debated. well, there was a plan that was over that, and that was the ryan plan, which is $6.6 trillion, but that s not in discussion right now. the grand bargain, which was going to hit the number you mentioned is also not on the table now. but i think that s really important here is that it completely undermines the obama argument against the boehner bill. its argument is it s got to be a year and a half, because if it s shorter that will call the rating that will cause the rating agencies to lower our rating, because of uncertainty. what you re hearing here is if the ratings are lowered because of what s going on here, it s not because of the shortness of
economy, and whether or not there s a resolution now, that s going to be an argument that they ll take for the next 17 months to the 2012 election. the key question for republicans at this moment is whether that s a phony argument because the timing doesn t work or whether it becomes a real argument or a more plausible argument in the minds of voters because you see some real market reactions to the kinds of things we re seeing. bret: a.b.? we don t know yet how it s going to play for the president, how it s going to play for democrats and republicans. what we saw in the last 36 hours was a complete blow-up in ñw)ñ3e republican party of the old guard establishment coming out on the record and criticizing the holdouts and the purists for holding this up. for tempting default. it really i think we don t know yet. i think we know that john boehner has been a grown-up throughout this process if he wins this vote, he finally has a team. he s brought a lot of these fishermen on board
fund, says you need 7.5% of gdp to stabilize. we think it s more than that, $4 trillion would be a good downpayment. charles, what i read from that quote is that we re not even close to $4 trillion on either of the plans currently being debated. well, there was a plan that was over that, and that was the ryan plan, which is $6.6 trillion, but that s not in discussion right now. the grand bargain, which was going to hit the number you mentioned is also not on the table now. but i think that s really important here is that it completely undermines the obama argument against the boehner bill. its argument is it s got to be a year and a half, because if it s shorter that will call the rating that will cause the rating agencies to lower our rating, because of uncertainty. what you re hearing here is if the ratings are lowered because of what s going on here, it s not because of the shortness of the extension. it will be because of the size,
the boehner plan doesn t feel like we may downgrade if it s put into effect because of the various reasons but including having another debt ceiling vote in nine months hanging over the economy. if you re hearing that from a ratings agency. forget the politics of this, does that make you defer to the boehner plan compared to a rating agency like s&p? i don t know at this point what the rating agencies are going to do. they have there s been some reporting out there about what might happen with regard to various proposals that have been out there. but i ll say this. i think the rating agencies and markets have more leverage. everybody talks about who has a leverage. the republicans, democrats, the president, the senate, the house. i think right now they are going to have leverage because they are going to bless whatever happens here. that being said, i think that gives more leverage to the house