the president said he wanted a deal by friday, so lawmakers met with him at the white house day after day after day. they took a break on friday, and the president pushed again. if washington operates as usual, and can t get anything done, let s at least avert armageddon. joining me now, white house budget director, mr. lou. thank you for being here. thank you, candy. we are told by sources since the white house meeting on thursday and this morning, there has been no progress. do you concur? a lot has been going on since the white house on thursday night. there has been activity, but has there been progress? there has been activity and progress on two fronts. there is substantial discussions going on in the senate between the two leaders to make sure at a minimum congress has a way to take action and avoid default on the u.s. debt. that s critical. we don t think it s enough. we think the president said clearly we should do as much as we can to reduce the defici
debt ceiling by a total of $4 trillion. but now they have discovered a desire to take a stand on this issue. the kind way to understand this is as disgusting hypocrisy. the kind way to understand this is shameless, unprincipled partisan hackary. that s the nice way to see this. the less nice way to see this is republicans in congress actually do care about policy, and they not only care about policy, they believe what they say about policy. they believe a payroll tax deduction would probably be good for the economy, right? they say cutting business taxes is good. they stay they believe it. that a lot of they believe their own rhetoric, that a lot of uncertainty in the business environment could be fatal to the american economy. the worst possible thing you could think about what congressional republicans are doing right now in this game of chicken they re playing on the debt ceiling, the worst possible thing you can think about them
issue. the kind way to understand this is as disgusting hypocrisy. the kind way to understand this is shameless craven, unprincipled partisan hackery. that s the nice way to see this. the less nice way to see this is that republicans in congress actually do care about policy, and they not only care about policy, but they believe what they say about policy. they believe that a payroll tax deduction would probably be good for the economy, right? they say cutting business taxes is good. they believe it. that a lot of they believe their own rhetoric, right, that a lot of uncertainty in the business environment could potentially be fatal to the american economy. the worst possible thing you could think about what congressional republicans are doing right now in this game of chicken they are playing on the debt ceiling, the worst possible thing you can think about them with what they are doing, with the threats they are making to cause another global catastrophe, if not another deep recess
absolutely. beyond the 17 tax cuts if the chairman had actually been paying attention in the last two years the 17 different tax cuts that president obama proposed and the democratic congress passed to support small businesses, including a cut in the capital gains tax. the compromise that we reached during a lame duck congress that made sure that we can give a payroll tax deduction to americans making about $50,000 a year. excuse me. we focused on striking a balance between making the investments that we needed to make to be able to jump-start the economy again and get it moving back in the right direction and also ensuring that we could reduce spending, and in the tax code, so that we could give incentives to businesses to be able to create jobs and be able to make investments in their own businesses again. that s been done and more needs to be done and we need to come together so much so that we ve lost 2.5 million jobs we need to do that and added a million in the la
to, to specifically target job creation in the shorter term? absolutely. beyond the 17 tax cuts if the chairman had actually been paying attention in the last two years the 17 different tax cuts that president obama proposed and the democratic congress passed to support small businesses, including a cut in the capital gains tax. the compromise that we reached during a lame duck congress that made sure that we can give a payroll tax deduction to americans making about $50,000 a year. excuse me. we focused on striking a balance between making the investments that we needed to make to be able to jump-start the economy again and get it moving back in the right direction and also ensuring that we could reduce spending, and in the tax code, so that we could give incentives to businesses to be able to create jobs and be able to make investments in their own businesses again. that s been done and more needs to be done and we need to come together so much so that we ve lost 2.5 millio