the budget, you don t have the specifics, you re not prepared to lay down the specifics and not prepared to reconcile $54 billion in additional spending against $54 billion plus in domestic cuts without tax increases, without really bringing the congress into that, i don t see how this congress, this conservative congress just spends that money as much as they want to spend for defense without reconciliation on other side. in fact, when the speaker was talking to matt lauer today about the lack of specifics and the lack of entitlement cuts paul ryan said when we reform obamacare that will be an entitlement cut but that does not begin to address where the money is. here is a little bit of what ryan did say about the president setting the agenda. i see him like a chairperson like many successful presidents,
does some of the conversation change as well, josh, because the nation s deficit has been cut in half since the president took office. we just got word that the nation s deficit is below $1 trillion for the first time in five years. does that in any way change the conversation? i think it does. the congressional budget office says that debt as a share of gdp will be flat for the next decade. why would we have a grand bargain? there s no need for a further deficit reduction. republicans don t want the tax increase. democrats don t want entitlement cut asks why would they get together to reduce the deficit? the one thing that s motivating toward a grand bargain is that democrats dislike the sequestration cuts and would like to unwind them, but i don t think they can reach a deal to unwind very much of them because they would have to in order to offset them they would have to raise taxes or cut entitlements and people if they hate the sequester, they don t hate the sequester to cut
there is large concern about what the reality of this would mean. and so i do think that this is a positive step, even if it s short term, it s positive. what are you hearing, mark? what are the possibilities of some sort of at least short-term deal, and what would it look like? well, chris, it does look like the house republican leaders want to focus on a temporary raise of the debt ceiling. it would still keep the government closed, but some type of short-term debt ceiling, maybe we re talking about a couple of months. but there is one potential hiccup, and we re going to probably hear this when house republicans meet with president obama is what they actually are going to be demanding for this. as my colleague, luke russert, was reporting, they might want some type of entitlement cut, some type of spending cuts, some type of tax reform. and if that s the case and if the white house says, look, the only thing we re going to get for this is a temporary debt ceiling increase, it s
because any move on taxes, we saw what happened in kentucky with rand paul. we saw what happened in texas with ted cruz. cornyn and mcconnell, it isn t a could be if they would lose. over. done. they were asking and so and by the way, i would vote against any republican that voted to raise taxes in three months twice in three months without getting an entitlement cut. not only would i vote against that republican, i would campaign against them. i would raise money to beat them. i would call all my friends. if you were a republican and just underlining your point, and you vote to raise taxes twice or you let it happen as leadership, even if you don t vote for it or you let it happen. let it happen and you don t get entitlement reform in return, you are not worthy to represent. but this is why i m optimistic in six months. because if the cuts are going to be painful in some of these places, and i think this is sort of one of these cases where the government sequestr
authority he already has. bret: frankly, mara, the meeting friday, that could be one thing that is decided the transfer authority. it could be the final white flag that both sides say okay, let s just do this. bret: it could be. or it could be the beginning of negotiations for real deficit reduction. that is a longshot. but we have gone through the dances before. don t forget the reason we re here is because both sides fail to make a grand bargain. the grand bargain is where the president agrees to entitlement cut and republicans agree to some revenue increases. since then, we have had a series of fiscal cliffs and we ll get more of them. i just want to say something about the bigger talk. the president has been repeating in recent days, jay carney said this, he said this in the state of the union he is willing to do chain cpi and means testing of benefit. he is reminding people he is willing to do the. john boehner said the other day he is willing to close loopholes in the context