because i think the lesson that needs to be taught for people who analyze these reports is, yes, there are things people who sign on to the total package don t like but they don t get to do it alone. so if you did get to do it alone, what kind of changes would you make in this? you know, i ve tried to emphasize the places where i agree with it and i ve tried to emphasize my strong support for fundamental tax reform, which i think is a clear priority for the country. i ve tried to emphasize taking social security and making it sound for 75 years and doing it in an equitable way that helps people on the bottom end, gives them a boost from the current program, but if you ve asked me specifically what are things i don t like? and i ll tell you. i think the domestic discretionary cuts are too big. $1.6 trillion over ten years. i would not cut defense and domestic discretionary spending by that amount. i would cut them, but i wouldn t cut them that severely. i believe the bigger problem in
need take to get this country back on track. greta: one of the things, taxes the bush tax cuts, you want to keep them for people who make $250,000. other aspects. how are you going to pay for your pledge? first thing to improve our deficit situation grow the economy and greet jobs. instead of having people go on unemployment, let s have them paying taxes by having jobs. second thing, cut spending. raising taxes defeats those objectives. raising taxes slows economic growth. cbo says we could lose 1.2 million jobs next year alone. we should be cutting spend, the root cause of our problem is not we don t have enough taxes, we spend too much. that s our emphasis and that is the cornerstone of the pledge we put out today. greta: are you going to cut services to seniors? what we propose 1.3 trillion in cuts.
need take to get this country back on track. greta: one of the things, taxes the bush tax cuts, you want to keep them for people who make $250,000. other aspects. how are you going to pay for your pledge? first thing to improve our deficit situation grow the economy and greet jobs. instead of having people go on unemployment, let s have them paying taxes by having jobs. second thing, cut spending. raising taxes defeats those objectives. raising taxes slows economic growth. cbo says we could lose 1.2 million jobs next year alone. we should be cutting spend, the root cause of our problem is not we don t have enough taxes, we spend too much. that s our emphasis and that is the cornerstone of the pledge we put out today. greta: are you going to cut services to seniors? what we propose 1.3 trillion in cuts.
and john, look, the fed meets, you know, monthly, quarterly, all the time, and we always hear, well, maybe they ll think about doing something. what could they do? well, they could ease monetarily and pump more stimulus into the economy that way. will they? i think the general expectation is that they will not. still an ambiguous situation. nobody knows exactly whether we re on the cusp of deflation, which is something that concerns economists, or in the long-term, because of our deficit situation, whether inflation will rise. whether we re headed for a double dip or whether we re just having a pause in the recovery. and i think as long as that s the case, ben bernanke has signaled that he would wait for a rapid deterioration of economic conditions before shooting more ammunition, because they ve shot a lot already. and turning to the town hall you hosted yesterday live on cnbc, it was quite extraordinary, mostly not for what the president said, frankly, but what some of his su
sports. you could because you rock! not as good as that. he did a great job. you can multitask with the sports as well. eric bolling is here with money rocks and talking about this deficit situation. it s crazy. the number came out, $165 billion of deficit spending so in other words, the government took in x amount of dollars and spent $165 billion more in july. year to date $1.2 trillion. see that arrow right there? guess what, guys? that adds to the national deficit. $13.3 trillion and that is disturbing because what has to come next is you have to pay for this. guess what happens after november? i predict bush tax cuts will have to expire because they ll have to blame it on bush again. and cut some of that deficit. it s a bad number. it s a bad number. now, eric, if the united states federal government were operated like a business, we d be we are bankrupt. basically, we are. we re broke. we re bankrupt. we re deficit spending. we re spending more than we re taking in.