gas revenue. put people to work as soon as possible on most urgent repairs. make high quality preschool available to every single child in america. redesign america s high schools so they better equip graduates, training and equipping forces. and invest in capabilities, reduce waste in war time spending. invest in worldclass hacare including mental care for our warriors. and he throws out platitudes and the underlying economics behind that are illusional. i think that a lot of politics here, we re not funding things that are obsolete and the obvious things, there s a whole variety of things that need to be done in government today, because if we don t deal with this we will not as a country be able to invest in the things that are important. these problems are solvable. they take some courage. john: do you he see courage out there? i see some courage. i d like to see a heck of a
hacksaw approach to spending reductions that was supposed to hit both sides equally. democrats would hate cut to nondefense programs and republicans wouldn t stand cuts to the military. the theory was the cuts would be so bad there was no way congress would ever allow them to happen, but after months of deliberations, the supercommittee couldn t come to any agreement and simply gave up. so much for theory. now, sequestration was to go into effect on january 1st, 2013. as it happens, that was the same time the so-called bush tax cuts were set to expire. together, it was a supercrisis. fed chairman ben bernanke gave it a name. under current law on january 1st, 2013 there s going to be a massive fiscal cliff of large spending cuts and tax increases. the fiscal cliff was a classic example of what happens, as you just keep putting these things off and
going to pass that next week which gives us the flexibility to put these cuts in place in a better way. john: if the deal materializes or even if it doesn t, it may be that this sequester, which was supposed to signify a profound failure of government, was in fact a real, if untidy success. senator ron johnson has been saying this all along. if and when sequestration goes through, would that be a victory for the tea party? sure, absolutely. tea party taxed enough already. the federal government gets enough revenue, it s about time to lower the rate of spending, lower the size of government. this is a great debate about what kind of america do you want to have, how big a government do you want to have, things like sequester, the operation of government, raising of the debt ceiling all are opportunities to try to achieve the kind of result the american people need, just go back to the debates between hamilton and jefferson, the beginning of the country. john: do you see that as
private sector, which is you can t yell charge from your second home. john: meanwhile, congressional democrats and administration officials are fanning out across the country and they re not exactly saying the sky will fall if the sequester goes through, but close. among the things they say could happen, children exposed to lead paint, mentally ill patients untreated, uninspected meat, crops, closing of parks, more wildfires, cuts to early education, nutrition for seniors, community healthsters, small business employees, flight inspections and job training. and hurricane sandy victim. military, civilian employees, longer wait for gun background checks, fax refunds, passports, visas, epa inspections, and hospital closures and work place deaths all up, and cyber security, maintenance and terrorist surveillances down.
a bold request, give him nearly a trillion dollars. give it to him now. let him spend it on whatever he wants, no questions asked. we need to make that bill quickly and cleanly. if they didn t, paulson insisted america could be hit by a second great depression. to help the american people is the goal of this plan. john: with the stock market tanking paulson got his so-called tarp money. eventually tarp was used in all sorts of ways few had envisioned, including to bail out the auto companies. meantime, barack obama had defeated john mccain in the race to succeed george bush. during the transition, incoming chief of staff rahm emanuel mapped out a governing strategy. you never want a serious crisis to go to waste, what i mean by that, an opportunity to do things you could not do before. do you remember when rahm emanuel said in 2008 never let