very difficult reforms over time alongside that. and alongside those changes and the savings from ending the wars do you specify spending cuts as part of this deal? detailed reforms that add up to $600 billion. i ll give you some examples. we are reforming farm subsidies. it makes a lot of sense. in health care, modestly increase premiums for high income beneficiaries of medicare. it makes sense. makes the government much smarter for how they buy medicine for people under medicare. those are just three examples. but there s $600 billion of examples in the president s proposals. if the republicans don t like those ideas, and they want to do it differently, they want to go beyond that, they have to tell us what makes sense for them. and then we can take a look at it. but what we can t do is figure out what makes sense for them. in terms of tax rates, in your mind, you don t have to go back to the clinton era tax rates for this to be a workable deal. well, i think you do. all
but republicans aren t budging, accusing the president of avoiding tough choices on spending and wasting time in the effort to avoid the fiscal cliff. it s not a serious proposal. and so right now, we re almost nowhere. will there be a deal by the end of the year? and what are the consequences for the economy if there isn t one? we ll ask the president s lead budget negotiator, treasury secretary tim geithner. then the view from capitol hill. are democrats as divided over cutting medicare as republicans are over tax increases? with us, two voices calling for compromise. republican senator bob corker of tennessee and democratic senator claire mccaskill of missouri. finally, our special economic roundtable. as both sides battle over the nation s fiscal health, what can we expect from the economy in a second obama term? what is the vision for an economic rebound? from nbc news in washington, the world s longest-running
we ll hear more from our roundtable in just a bit. but first, i m joined by two key voices calling for compromise. tennessee republican bob corker and missouri democrat claire mccaskill. welcome to both of you. senator, what s changed in washington? where is the room for real bipartisan to avert this fiscal cliff? does it exist? i think it does. i think we understand that this is about our country first. and it really is a time we need to put politics aside, and it s going to be painful. none of us are going to get the deal that we exactly want. but we have to keep talking to one another. and bob and i have talked this week. i m talking every day with my republican colleagues. what has to happen, though, there has to be a realization that if we do nothing, the republicans are going to have to live with the fact that they are willing to stop a deal all over a tax rate for the top 2% of this country. and, frankly, i m really hopeful that doesn t happen. and i know bob feels the same wa
let me tell you what s at stake. look, speak are boehner and we are not prepared to leave the leader mcconnell both have put economy of the united states and revenues on the table. the savings of americans, the let s just understand. savings of investors, vulnerable everybody in washington says revenues. to periodic threats by there s increasing your tax republicans to default on the rates and there s finding other ways to raise tax revenue. and the distinction is american credit. democrats have made the same important, because what threats in the past, have they republicans object to is raising your tax rates. not, including the president? there s no precedent in the your actual marginal tax rates. many decades of history of this, that s the distinction that you of what the republicans tried to have to answer, right? well, you can get there two do in the summer of 2011. ways. one of the ways is the way i you saw how damaging that was. we re not prepared to go through propose
view this the president making a truly balanced approach to not just solving this problem but really moving the economy forward. well, he has. and first of all, let s be clear. the way you get massive tax increases, $5 trillion tax increases, is if you go over the fiscal cliff. what the president has said, let s just ask higher income individuals to contribute a little more to reduce our deficit to prevent that from happening. the president has taken a balanced approach. look, we already entered into $1 trillion in cuts which we ll have to enforce and implement over the next 10 years, including, by the way, cuts in defense. you mentioned defense cuts as part of the clinton deal. that was 1993. we did the first half of the clinton deal as part of the budget control act. we re going to do $1 trillion in cuts. as secretary geithner pointed out, the president s budget contains additional cuts. and i don t think people recognize this. the president s budget over the next 10 years has