season, why is it every single year, no matter what year? well, we really shouldn t be. i argued, going back to spring, that this issue had to be dealt with. that s why in may, the house moved a bill to replace the sequester with other cuts in mandatory spending. that s why in july, the house passed a bill to extend all of the current tax rates. i ve been pushing all year for us to address this problem. but here we are, at the 11th hour, and the president still isn t serious about dealing with this issue right here. it s this issue. spending. you go back, talk about polling, most americans would agree that spending is a much bigger problem than raising taxes. he want us to deal with this in a responsible way. again, with congress, it s where are the issues that takes this long in the year, to december, to get things done?
listen, republicans want to solve this problem by getting the spending line down. and the president wants to pretend the spending isn t the problem. that s why we don t have an agreement. the chart, what i ve been saying for a long time now, washington has a spending problem that can t be fixed with tax increases alone. now, the right answer is to start cutting spending, addressing our debt. and paving the way for long-term economic growth. unfortunately, the white house is so unserious about cutting spending, that it appears willing to slow-walk any agreement, and walk our economy right up to the fiscal cliff. doing that, puts jobs in our country, in danger. jeopardizes a golden opportunity to make 2013 the year that we enact fundamental tax reform and entitlement reform to begin to
he s willing to cut spending. youjohn boehner in the briefing room has a chart. in boehner s words as we ve been given excerpts by his staff is spending. the problem is entitlements. that is what s driving the debt. you see that large red portion of that chart that boehner is about to use. you know, the question is, will he have the votes to pass whatever it is he puts on the floor, thomas? and there s an ironclad rule in the house of representatives. and that is, a speaker does not put something on the floor that is not going to pass with the majority of his congress, in this case, republicans, and anything with tax hikes on it as the president is insisting on, whether that gets on the floor or republicans, that s highly questionable. is foster friess giving you a little ankle there? foster friess, that s a name from the past.
taxes. this chart s going to look a whole lot worse. and our kids and grandkids are the ones that are going to suffer because washington is too short-sided to fix the problem. several reasons have been said that about 75% of the public believes that tax rates for the upper people earning should expire. for the tax cuts that most americans have, a lot of people say we shouldn t have to? raising tax rates will hurt small businesses at a time when we re expecting small businesses to be the engine of job creation in america. ernst & young has made it clear, if we were to do what the president is asking for, 700,000 jobs would be at risk. it s as simple as that. we ve been hearing, since late in the summer, past several years, health care, a myriad. why is it every christmas
weekly briefing. the president has not make a deal that meets those two standards but republicans have. his proposals have been anything but. he wants far more in tax hikes than spending cuts. and instead of trying to solve our debt problem, he wants new stimulus spending and the ability to raise the debt limit whenever he wants without tax cuts or reforms. it s clear the president is just not serious about cutting spending. but spending is the problem. how big a problem? well, look at this chart put together by paul ryan and the budget committee. this line is the current baseline for revenue. here, if the president got everything he wanted over $1.4 trillion in taxes, this is what that would represent. but if you look at the spending problem, you see it does nothing. nothing to solve the spending problem that our country has.