he s not really for that. he says so, but he has yet to put out a vision or agreement to make good on these promises. we hear the rhetoric but never see the results. and more importantly, businesses know we have to close this deficit. businesses know we can t keep spending money we just don t have. businesses budget. washington hasn t had a budget for four years. the president and his party have been in charge of washington during this time. they have not budgeted for four years. and businesses know that you can t operate an enterprise, let alone the federal government, without budgeting. let me have you respond to this other argument about entitlements, about the role of government. and the president really launched it as part of his inaugural address when he said this. we recognize that no matter how responsibly we live our lives, any one of us, at any time, may face a job loss or a sudden illness or a home swept away in a terrible storm. the commitments we make to each other
they want lives of opportunity. they want to reach their potential. and so our concern in this country is with the idea that more and more able-bodied people are becoming dependent upon the government than upon themselves for their livelihoods. we want to make sure we don t continue that trend. and when you take a look at those statistics, it s not as bad as those statistics say. people want lives of upper mobility. people want to chart their own course. they want to reach their potential. and our policies should be geared toward doing that. so no one is suggesting that medicare and social security makes you a taker. these are people like my mom, who worked hard, paid her taxes, and now is collecting the benefit that she paid for. no one is suggesting that people like my mom is a taker. but you re citing figures that of course include entitlement reforms like social security. when these statistics get cited, it leads you to think that america is gone, that we re becoming too much o
our budget. we will put a budget up that says here is our plan for economic growth and balancing the budget, entitlement reform which is necessary to save medicare from bankruptcy and get this debt under control. the president hasn t offered any of those kinds of plans in public. they tried to do back room deals, but those seem to fall apart. we want to debate it in public to contrast these visions. i want to keep up with some terms you re using here. you say the president wants to raise tax rates. a lot of the democrats i talked to and even the white house said they are willing to do tax reform where there could be additional revenue. are you opposed to any additional revenue that could come from tax reform? we offered that back in the fiscal cliff negotiations. the president got his additional revenues. that s behind us. those higher revenues occurred, and now we need to focus on getting spending down. here is the leverage question. senator schumer said we didn t just get our r
charles kranthammer wrote this in the washington post and it caught my attention on friday and i want to put on the screen. his mission is to redeem and resurrect a 50-year pre-reagan liberal ascendency. accordi accordingly, his address is his historical marker, the reagan of the left. if he succeeds in the next four years, he would have earned the title. and i so that, bob, because of what paul ryan said that i thought was so notable, is that he believes this president is more interested in political conquest than political compromise. that is the backdrop for a second term. and ryan is an important figure in this in many ways. and i think you agree. he s quite likely the future of the republican party. but if you go back three years ago, president obama himself publicly said that the ryan proposal on medicare was serious and legitimate. the president is playing and not the republicans aren t.
new york magazine blog this week, which goes to whether you want to expand the base of the party. here s what he writes. obama is arguing that misfortune can strike americans in all forms. a sdabt, a storm, illness, or merely outliving our savings. ryan s budget imposes savage cuts to food stamps, children s health insurance, and other mitigations of suffering for the least fortunate. and ryan also voted against relief for victims of hurricane sandy. by ryan s definition, if the government is rebuilding your destroyed home, you re a taker too. look, this is a straw man argument. the president said earlier that we had suspicions about medicare and taking care of the elderly and feeding poor children. when he sets up these straw men, to affix views to add ver sears that they don t have, to win the argument by default, it s not an honest debate. we want to have a safety net. a safety net that s there for the vulnerable, poor, for people who cannot help themselves. but we don t want to h