Said this, that cuts in medicare, quote, cannot be simultaneously used to finance other federal outlays and extend the trust fund. that s your guy. and what is absolutely true is that this will not solve our whole medicare problem. we re still going to have to fix medicare over the long term, and in the meantime you can t spend the money twice? what is absolutely true and i do agree with you can t say that you are saving on medicare and then spending the money twice. what you can say is we re going to take these savings, put them back to make sure that seniors are getting help on the prescription drug bill instead of the money going to insurance reform. many health care experts vigorously dispute that the president has fulfilled the two major promises of health care, lowering costs for american families and lowering costs for
Which means, going and squeezing the entitlements of social security and medicare much, much harder than anybody is comfortable with. jenna: so this is a lesser of two evils essentially, is that the way you think about it? only have a minute, austan? simpson-bowles gave you targeted amount, said two it two or three to one cuts to revenues. and that is similar to the ratios the president is proposing here. it is similar to some of the ratios you ve seen from some republicans but if this attitude prevails tha can t be any revenue and we re not going to count past spending cuts as part of the total, only the against the revenues, then i don t think they can make a compromise. jenna: barney frank calls it a terrible policy and terrible negotiation strategy. so we ll see what the reaction is once everyone get as look at this plan which is happening now for the very first time, regardless how much we talked about it. austan, thanks. wonderful to see you, jenna.
Should think again. when it comes to deficit reduction i ve already met republicans more than halfway. jenna: texas senator john cornyn r-r i is a republican whip. what do you think about the president s proposal. it strikes me as more of the same. it s two months late and largely irrelevant to what the senate and house are doing. we ve already done our job and passed budgets out of both bodies. so the president s proposal really comes at the end of our work, and is there is no vehicle for us to really consider it. jenna: what do you think, senator, if i could, what do you think about the president s offer here to do something about entitlement reform? a lot of folks on the left are really angry about this. calling hit a betrayal, and he says he s doing it on purpose to come toward republicans. what do you think about that move? well, he obviously hit a nerve with some of the left who just don t think we ought to do anything to fix medicare and social security.
Both parties, for example, agree that the rising cost of caring for an aging generation is the single biggest driver of our long-term deficits and the truth is, for those like me who deeply believe in our social insurance programs, think it s one of the core things that our government needs to do, if we want to keep medicare working as well as it has, an we want to preserve the ironclad guaranty that medicare represents, then we re going to have to make some changes but they don t have to be drastic ones. instead of making drastic ones later, what we should be doing is making some manageable ones now. the reforms i m proposing will strengthen medicare for future generations without undermining that ironclad guaranty that medicare represents. we ll reduce our government s medicare bills by finding new ways to
Indexed. what i have said is the same thing that almost all economists say, which is the way we calculate inflation overstates the inflation rate, and that the proposal that the president has which is bipartisan proposal historically, is a better way to calculate inflation. now over time it would mean a reform of social security so there would be less money going out the door because, but it would happen slowly and happen over time. i think the divisions within the democrats are what you would expect. there are some people that say, doesn t matter how you calculate inflation, we don t want there to be less money going out the door. i think for anybody who s upset about those changes to social security, the republican budget by not being willing to have any revenue has to crush social security and medicare. that is the essence of this fight comes down to, do you want to try to do all of the reduction of the deficit through cutting of spending,