now. by the way, i don t want to denigrate negotiating in the press. all for it. i think we do have to go through this process of one public, one public. it s more the tone. we actually encourage negotiations in the press, mika. it s really where negotiations should take place. i m curious, tom, what you think of our good friend, jim demint, who we ve known and served with for a long time. he said that the republican plan put forth by john boehner would, quote, destroy american jobs. speaker boehner s $800 billion tax hike will destroy american jobs and allow politicians in washington to spend any more while not reducing our $16 trillion debt by a single penny. do you agree with that? well, i think it s important to have the fiscal conservatives viewpoint on this. you re a fiscal conservative. i know, but what i do is i look at the process and say, where are we today? what s possible? but isn t it a lot easier to
clown all in the span of a generation. when we think of great congressional leaders, we think of powerful politicians like lbj, the master of the senate, or house speakers like sam raburn, tip o neill or even newt gingrich. all of these leaders had much, much more leverage than boehner. wow! ouch! nancy pelosi was a powerful speaker. what s happened? why is john boehner a feckless herder of cats, in your words? i think some want to say that boehner is weak or that the republican freshmen are too fringy. i think there s a culmination of a few factors. one, speakers used to have the earmarks. they could kind of brag you with. you re going to get a bridge in your district. that s pretty much off the table. i think that our culture, our society doesn t respect leaders the way that it used to, and institutions. and i think that s manifesting itself in politics. but i also you also that s an incredible point. it s broken up. the internet has played into that. and also club
so chris, let s start with you. let s just assume, because all we re talking about is taxes, raising taxes on the rich. let s assume that happens. let s just assume that happens. because the question always is can boehner get republicans to raise taxes. okay, so let s say that gets that gets done. can nancy pelosi, can chris van hollen get democrats to make the significant cuts in medicare, medicaid, parts of social security to keep those programs solvent for the next 30 years? a couple things, joe. first of all, the revenue how you get the revenue but also the overall amount of revenue is very important. right. let s assume you get it the way you want. we want to build on the over $1 trillion in cuts we already agreed to as part of the budget control act. that was 100% cuts. we did that. the president s budget and his proposal calls for an additional $600 billion in cuts. he s actually specified what cuts those are.
information, and it was the same thing with the funding. now, they didn t give me any money because they supported another candidate. i know this will shock you, rattner, newt thought i was way too conservative to win a seat that no republican had won since the 1870s. but i could tell with all my other friends when i got up there, people gave them money if newt told them to give like newt controlled the money. now it s all broken up. but that sense of authority that you re talking about, i can definitely see what you re seeing wherein that there have been very disrespectful things, for example, said about the president. and it s been ugly. but then you think, it was really ugly under bush. people were extremely disrespectful to him. go back to clinton. we don t need to say any more. hasn t some of this been around? yeah, absolutely. i don t want to overplay it. this has been around forever. we ve always had challenges. but i think the internet and i think the rise of outside grou
i do think there are some unique circumstances, challenges that john boehner faces. having, in 2010, you had all of these new freshmen conservatives ushered in, and tea party, so they weren t establishment. having said that, i think this is part of a larger trend. we see a trend with outside groups. also, again, jopt to overplay it, but i think in our society, you used to work at the same job your whole life, retire with a gold watch, be married the same person your whole life. most people were. you d go to the same church your whole life and belong to a church. now the world has changed. i think since vietnam, we ve lost a certain respect for bosses and authority. i think it s not surprising that eventually that would manifest itself in our politics. we don t kowtow to leaders the way we used to. you know, back when i first ran, just looking how things have changed and how high a hierarchical it was. they sent you faxes every day. you had one basically source of