republicans might come to him on? is there some something in the middle for them to agree on? there s a bunch of things. some of them small. jobs for veterans. something that everybody can agree on. there s also some things for small business in there that they should be able to agree on. so the president may get some small wins which will help him both with his own people and also with the center but he s fine with republicans voting down a bunch of these. senate democrats are going to have vote after vote to remind people. the idea is to make people think every morning when barack obama wakes up, he thinks about jobs. he thinks about getting the country s fiscal house in order. and so they want to have votes or remind people of that. if they lose a lot of them they re fine with that mike allen, thanks so much for a look inside the politico playbook. that s a tough balancing act. thank you, mike. i think in the short run that is very good politics. it s exactly the politic
the government he is basically saying to the country they, the republicans, would rather defeat me than help you. howard, is this what progressives have wanted for a long time? get the president fighting republicans? yes. that s what we want. these guys have been totally obstructionist. it s ridiculous. everybody knows that. it is time for the president to show he cares. and he does. and everybody knows that. the great thing about it is he had a fast pitch right down the plate. yes. on the jobs for america act. right. or whatever it s called. the american jobs. as long as it has the word jobs in it is what matters. and then he follows up ten days later because the pattern has been, you know, you pitch the fastball down the plate and then it starts eroding. not this time. so i, you know all right. a long way to go. i m optimistic. i m going to mark you down as undecided. there are some who don t agree.
his request to try to think through foundations for tax reform. it was in that context that we took a look at a set of principles for tax reform, including this one. the basic principle is if you make more than a million dollars in the united states you should be paying as a share of income no less than what a middle class family pays. it s a simple principle. it s a simple principle if you all would listen. welcome back to morning joe. a bunch of us on the set here. joining us now onset former governor of new york george pataki. this is exciting. very exciting. and republican strategist mike murphy. my lord. mike! like my grandmother used to call gracious. republicans. i have been put in a bull pen. they told me i cannot talk anymore today. imthe john lackee of political discourse. i m going to let them talk to howard dean about this tax increase because governor pataki, we want to start with you. all right. because howard dean says this proposed tax increase is al
the biggest crisis which we have in domestic politics is the entilement crisis. total pass on that. on tax reform, i agree with governor pataki. the simpson/bowles plan, there is a way to find more revenue. the problem is you have to offset it with a serious commitment to cut spending. this does neither and the tax reform here has nothing to do with growth which would trade jobs and pay down the debt. it s politics. hit the top 2% because that s best on a poll somewhere. if i m worried about as a republican strategist about a campaign that s kind of cynical and demagogic i d be worried but immore worried we have a real entitlement crisis in the united states and the president isn t planning to do anything about it. let s talk about purely the politics. whether the economics are good or bad people have been saying for sometime the president needs to punch back hard. the republicans have dominated the agenda over the past year. politically, if you re a democratic strategist and your
surprising, unlike business. yeah. i think that s probably right. i think what you re seeing right now is basic competing philosophies. he believes the president brings more money into washington through stimulus we can create jobs. republicans say, free up money at the top to they call it job creators who then hire people and create jobs. these are two divergent philosophies on creating jobs being laid bare today. republicans win that argument every time. so long as they don t have candidates that drool out of the side of their mouth. but that s a big if. what are these job creators? maybe we can find out who they are later in the day. remember, if you say to yourself we re not going to tax anybody because they might be job creators then in order to get to our deficit you have to start cutting spending much more heavily and there are jobs out in that spending that are going to go away when you cut that. all right. coming up, we ll talk got to do both. got to do both.