where he laid out a very aggressive agenda. and he added to that after newtown, gun control, and he was talking about climate change back at the inaugural and a grand bargain budget, immigration reform, and he hasn t gotten any of it. so this december 15 deadline on some sort of budget talk is very important because if he doesn t get anything there, and that becomes a failure like bob said with the super committee of two years ago, this is a president who s going to be going into year two of his second term pretty empty-handed. ed, i guess my point was, the american people lost because the junkies won. we knew how this was going to end a month ago. the fact is it always ends this way. we never we never get rid of the debt ceiling. we always extend it. gridlock would have been better than this. reporter: what was the alternative? potentially go into default and see the economy crash? i m not sure what was plan b. r has to cobble together the democrats in the house and 20 or 30 re
check on these things and exactly what we re doing directly in line with the constitution. shouldn t you put a check on things by passing some sort of budget which has nothing to do with the debt ceiling. it does but they are different issues. they are different issues and i hear a lot of budget talk but the budget is not going to address the situation we re in right now. finally the senate passed a budget after 1,100 some days. harry reid dealt with it this way. the system is dysfunctional because the house has passed appropriation bills consistent with the budget that the house passes, we send them to the senate, 12 appropriation bills that s what it takes for a full year, we re not there yet. harry reid puts them in his desk and that gives them the leverage to try to run the government on the political leverage of a continuing resolution. that s where we are today. don t you think the answer is to take for the republicans to have the majority in the senate and you wouldn t hav
people just to score political points? that s the question and here with us now from capitol hill former co-chairs of the national commission on fiscal responsibility and now the co-chairs of the moment of truth project, erskine bowles and alan simpson. in the christian science monitor they write in part this budget talk in washington is again dominated by nonnegotiatable demands and a potential government shutdown or even an unprecedented default on u.s. debt in october, despite the heated rhetoric we believe that a bipartisan agreement is still possible. the sad lack of trust between two parties in negotiating on fiscal policy has been perhaps an even greater obstacle to an agreement than the deficit details themselves. however, the dinners that the president hosted with republican senators earlier this year were an important and long overdue effort at building the understanding that will be critical to getting that kind of bipartisan agreement.
government must play a role. that is off the radar in fundamental ways that s dangerous for the health and security of this nation. mike, i want to ask you, there s a lot that is going to be read in terms of how this helps or hurts the republican party. there is an effort under way to make them a more lovable, kinder, softer, gentler party. where does paul ryan budget fit into that? there are wings of you know, the republican party who say this is needed, this is where we ve got to go. this is the future. i wonder how that undermines their branding efforts, if you will? i know very little about the budget. whenever budget talk crops up, i have a tendency to want to light what little hair i have left on fire, okay? i m not a budget guy. but i am sort of a student of the human condition. and having spent many, many nights writing a newspaper column out of a big city hospital emergency room, i can tell you that paul ryan s budget could be, you could phrase it, you could put the title
that are constantly happening. it creates an opportunity for those of us who have come here with a very clear mandate from people in our districts, both republicans and democrats, that we want to see action. we want to see you guys sit down, spend some time together and talk through things. and in order for that to happen, there has to be a basic level of respect, sincere discussion, listening and consideration. and there will be things, of course, we disagree on but there will be things we can agree on and that s really where the opportunity i see that lies ahead. but congressman, i would gather on some of this budget talk, particularly well, let me ask it this way. is there any any ratio of spending cuts to tax increases that you could accept or vote for? well, the president got over $600 billion worth of taxes at the beginning of this year. we know that this town has a spending problem. we re going to have record revenues in 2013, as the economics have already shown, the eco