is, as you heard him say in his interview with nbc, he s very interested in trying to address this problem. and looks forward to being presented the options that he might be able to pursue. and, so, you heard that there, john. the white house press secretary keeping the cards very close to the vest. they re not talking about which options they re talking about and they had been saying for several days now that what they were really focused on were some of these administrative fixes and i talked to an official earlier this morning they are allowing people to directly enroll through the insurance companies instead of having to go through the website. that is very different than keeping the plan that you have right now. you know, this question went down the line there in the white house briefing room from reporter to reporter as everybody tried to press jay carney. what options do you mean? what are you talking about? mary landrieu endangered democrat from louisiana has a propos proposa
meeting has begun with the vice president he was appropriately respectful of how challenging an effort this was, but more importantly, how important this was for the american people and the trust that was given to him by the president and leader reid to engage with jord leader mcconnell who had heretofore, if you will, joined with the chorus of naysayers not wanting to do figure. right now we are going over what the proposal is to the american people. let me just say this. i spent a lot of time looking at the basic principles of this propos proposal. we pet last evening with the caucus into the evening on the initial details. we can claim victory that we protected the middle class. we have provided at this point
really do something, these are some of the terms that i have laid out. and i ll tell you, lawrence, my constituents are thrilled. yeah. eric cantor walking out on the president was not characterized as taking his ball and going home, but here they are doing this. it seems to me that there s not yet any specificity on how the buffett rule would be written into law. how you could write it so that a situation wouldn t occur again where warren buffett, a billionaire, would be paying a lower income tax rate than middle class employees who work for him. how would you write that into law? well, first of all the president has said that those tax cuts for the wealthiest americans absolutely are not going to be renewed, but i certainly introduced my own propos proposal, the fairness and taxation act, that would raise the rates for the highest earners starting at $1 million and ratcheting up to $1 billion. i hope the supercommittee, at least the democrats, will put
propos proposal to gut medicare and replace it with the voucher system. if luke at the town halls and look at the new york 2016 special election, their branding right now is in great peril of being, you know, hijacked by their right. was medicare a mistake, paul ryan? it s the fastest-growing program in government. it s growing 7% a year. baby boomers are retiring. if you don t touch medicare, you can t have meaningful reform. the question for administration is, do they seize on this and get a budget deal or scare people over the next two years? purely in the politics of it, was this a mistake to say why don t we made medicaid a subsidy and people can buy their own health insurance? i think tom will tell. the budget deficit is so real. people want realistic solutions and all we see are band-aids.