numbers, the unemployment numbers and jobs and if those show improvement, president obama is in good shape. if they she lousy job growth he is if trouble. neil: but when there is outlandish stuff with this, which is just a stunner, and we have been focusing on mitt romney and the 47 percent thing. this stood out. the most important lesson i learned is you can t change washington from the inside. you can only change it from the outside. guest: that is news to me. that is not mr. hope and change. neil: romney seized on it. how is he countering that? or the president is capitalizing. guest: i will take on his saying that he is trying to change washington. he has had plenty of opportunity to do that. i remember he had tax reform commission. he ignored it. he had deficit reduction commission. he ignored it. he had a jobs panel of chief executives that you had on the
he is 46-50 with women, upside down. and romney got a five-point bounce out of his convention. let me ask you about leadership. bill clinton passed budgets, he was a governor, he passed budgets as a gmpl he passed budgets as a president. barack obama hasn t passed a budget. the one budget he did send down, 414-0, 97-0. if you can t get one of your own democrats to support your own budget, there is no leadership. this country needs leadership right now. i think the biggest disappointment for me is that president obama should have been doing the simpson-bowles deficit reduction commission that senator coburn and conservative republicans supported as did dick durbin. he s had an opportunity to do that. mitt romney opposes that and congressman ryan, the vice-presidential candidate moved against it.
for that will welcome that. you will hear about issues that won t be faint praise on issues. megyn: there is a distinction there. we talked about how there is said to be some animus between the former president and the president. but i want to get to this. you say two legacies barack obama should not ignore. one, fiscal responsibility. that s something bill clinton can talk about with some authority. that been missing. i m a strong supporter of president obama. but when i mention this i m accused of being disloyal. but i think i m helping barack obama. he needs to endorse his own deficit reduction commission with erskine bowles as the co-chair. the national debt is now $16 trillion and it s a moral issue are using credit cards asking forour children to pay
turn. he can t sit there as democrats prior to him have and take it and take it and take it and not defend himself from vicious attacks. megyn: why did she even put that line in her speech? she would have been fine if she hadn t done it. what she was focused on again is not necessarily the fact that he s not going to engaging in combat when somebody brings it to him. what she is saying is if there is room to work together and somebody wants in good faith to come and work with us we will try and work with them. they have tried, julie, they have tried repeatedly over the last three and a half years only to be brushed aside. how is that possible when you have mitch mcconnell saying he s going to make barack obama a one-term president. how is that trying to work with him. when michelle obama said last night she is totally willing to listen to good ideas he blew off his own deficit reduction commission. he he has not met with republicans in over a year and won t even listen to the r
commission with this assumption of the commission? do you think the commission is right in recommending huge tax cuts for the richest people, the highest tax rate should go from 23 percent under the bush tax cuts to 29 percent on the richest people? for the deficit reduction commission to recommend a reduction of taxes on the rich people, as a first proposal is wrong. do you agree with the deficit reduction commission? neil: you are not try dog cover for the president saying this debt has piled up, you are in the trying to remove that issue from the table. guest: absolutely not. i disagree that he is responsible for that. but that is a separate discussion. neil: what do you mean it would cheapen the debate? guest: it cheapens the debate to focus only own one set of preliminaries by saying we will have, because that was the request of the four senators this should be a separate debate, one debate out of four, only on the proposal of this commission. when you set up one debate, what