the president was thoughtful. on sudan, with jimmy carter, the president mentioning immigration, using that issue to talk about the bipartisan nature of that issue. even praising the president on education, which i didn t really expect in this. it s interesting how much of the current debate when it comes to issues like immigration, is very much the bush agenda, as president obama recognized. to say nothing of him trying to take on the social security issue without success, but trying at least. after his re-election. entitlements, thank you both very much. you remember all of that. thanks for coming out. and joining us. what would a legacy day be without some really great bush moments, here s a look back at some of the best. fool me once, shame on shame on you.
have been absolutist on that. i heard joe biden say last night, look, we re willing to i heard him say, we re willing to consider these other ideas just like we cut a trillion dollars in spending last year, but it s time to come to the table. when your position is not one more penny. that s a separate issue altogether. we re talking about social security. and we re talking about the fiscal reality of what s going to happen not that many years down the road. so it seems to me the country does deserve an answer on that from both parties, for that matter, about why not, for the next generation, move up the retirement, give them the life expectation now? why is that such a tough question to answer and not have it tied to what you re going to do with the rest of the taxes? oh, because i think even if you look at social security, the romney/ryan position has been that in order to deal with the social security issue, they will only deal with it by cutting benefits. i mean, that s been t
not one additional penny of new revenue. what the vice president said very clearly last night was that one way you could deal with some of the social security issue was to deal with the revenue part. and i thought he said very clearly that if republicans were willing to come off their position, that they could have a conversation. the president and the vice president would consider these ideas. so chris, what s the answer? let s just talk about you. you re a member of congress. you re a leader in the democratic party. would you consider raising the retirement age as a means to saving the program? what i have said, and i say it again here, is that i m looking willing to look at all constructive ideas so long as you take a balanced approach. i ve been very clear. i support the sort of balanced framework set out in simpson-bowles in terms of the mix of revenue and cuts. i think that ratio of revenue to cuts and all the other assumptions that they made in getting there is the right w
and i m told by floridians, that was an amazingly important moment. you have seen people in florida get blown away politically, remember former senator paul hawkins, blown away on the social security issue. it s still the dangerous rail to touch, the rail you don t touch. you get electrocuted. you believe the democrats will lose florida over the medicare issue? and they re the ones protecting the system? first, they ll lose florida over the economy, and they will lose florida, but i helped lead medicare reform in 1996. we trained our members for a year, went back home, knew how to explain it. the result was medicare wasn t a big problem for us. it was sauved. if you watch the nevada special election where the republicans won, the democrats tried every mediscare tactic, the republicans trumped them, and by the end of the campaign, they were doing fine on medicare. we re in a different world. i think people are more sophisticated today. and i think the fiscal problems, the huge obama
2024 and social security nine years later in 2330. we ll see a degradation of benefits from 25 to 30%. one of the most important things to do is to strengthen social security. i believe in protecting and preserving it. that s when i look at such political gimmicks such as this payroll tax cut, it s really defunding of social security and it s pushing closer to the cliff. so i think that we ve got to get americans back to work. when you look at our work force participation rate, it s at a 31-year lower at only 63.7 percen%.we re driving people toe comment on government, not driving people to open up small business opportunities and promote our business development, production and manufacturing in this country. look. if we look at unemployment, it is at 58.1%. it s the lowest since 1983. long term unemployment, the highest since the 1930s, so the numbers do speak for themselves. let me go to the social security issue. we know in the next 120 days