get back down in the right direction. we are doing it against big odds because he s got the bully pulpit in the white house. the democrats control the senate. but the house republicans are doing everything they can to steer this debate and we want in the senate, we want to have an opportunity to join them many we hope we will get that chance when the winner when the boehner plan comes our way. sean: thank you senators. michelle malkin is here. we ll get her reaction to senator reid accusing speaker boehner of caving to the tea party movement and the attacks again the tea party that took place in the wall street journal and the weekly standard, coming up. my doctor told me calcium
drafted? look, i don t think the sides are that far apart. the thing that republicans are going to insist upon is real cuts, not some of the phony cuts, not some of the gimmicks that senator reid has put forward in his latest proposal, and a pathway to get a result on entitlement reforms. that has to mean that we actually can get something done, because we all know that the biggest part of federal spending is what we call the mandatory side of the budget and that s entitlements, social security, medicare and medicaid. the boehner plan has that. the hard trigger in the boehner plan is you don t get another debt limit increase until you do this. i think the way those two can be melted together, first and foremost, we ve got to see the house vote on the boehner plan, got to deal with that one way or the other in the senate. i would like to see us pass it in the senate. you may be right, i think the democrats are unifying against it. but that is going to force us to figure out from that
that intent on destroying government and is intent on saying they don t believe that there s any ramifications for their ear responsibility, then we have to have a fail-safe mechanism. we believe that fail-safe mechanism is the 14th amendment and the president of the united states. mr. speaker, house republicans have failed to govern. failure is not an option for our country. and therefore, you leave it to the president to take whatever action is within his power by his right under the constitution to move this country forward and make sure americans do not suffer the consequences of your failure. despite these pleas from house democrats, the white house reiterated again today they have absolutely no plans to use the 14th amendment as a fall-back plan, so we wait for a deal. and as we do, the consequences of default or even near default are becoming clearer. today the head of one of the nation s largest credit agencies
fund, says you need 7.5% of gdp to stabilize. we think it s more than that, $4 trillion would be a good downpayment. charles, what i read from that quote is that we re not even close to $4 trillion on either of the plans currently being debated. well, there was a plan that was over that, and that was the ryan plan, which is $6.6 trillion, but that s not in discussion right now. the grand bargain, which was going to hit the number you mentioned is also not on the table now. but i think that s really important here is that it completely undermines the obama argument against the boehner bill. its argument is it s got to be a year and a half, because if it s shorter that will call the rating that will cause the rating agencies to lower our rating, because of uncertainty. what you re hearing here is if the ratings are lowered because of what s going on here, it s not because of the shortness of the extension. it will be because of the size,
debate would ruin christmas. it makes no sense. it s harming our economy now. you would have this hanging over the country at one of the most economically important periods of our country around the holiday season. that makes no sense. what we need to do over the next few days listen, the reid plan has twice the deficit reduction as the boehner plan does. little differentiation in terms of the spending cuts. what we don t want to have is have this hanging over our economy. it s an irresponsible thing to do. but there s an easy compromise here. i think the boehner plan today is political theater. there s 53 democratic senators and a number of republican senators who have said they won t support it. the boehner plan will be dead on arrival once it passes out of the house in a partisan fashion and we really need to work on what s the compromise here. deficit reduction will be done in two stages. first stage largely in the spending cut area. there s going to be a second discussion? washi