between sick children and disabled children. no one wants to pick between them. if you don t want hard choices, don t get involved in politics. he s known this was coming for two years, two years he could have it s actually his idea, so and he signed it into law and he s acting like it s the first he s heard of it. greta: i don t want to hurt starving children on disabled children or anyone to lose a job, however, the american people were asked to give you 2% in additional taxes recently so it s sort of hard for at least for me to understand why the federal government, those who represent the government, can t find 2%. 2.4% to take out of the increased spending. we re not even asking them to reduce spending, we re talking about slowing down the spending growth by 2.4% so if we can find it in our wallets, why can t you all find it in the budget? we ought to be able to and some of us in the house have found it, but as you know, in the summer of 2011 they couldn t do it and that
between sick children and disabled children. no one wants to do that. but if you don t want to make hard choice, don t get involved in politics. he has known this was coming for two years. two years. it s his idea. it s his idea. he signed it into law! he s acting like it s the first he s heard of it. look, i don t want to hurt starving children, disabled children. i don t want anybody to lose a job. but the american people were asked to give up 2% in additional taxes recently. so it s hard for at least for me to understand why the federal government, those who representative the government can t find 2.4% to take out of the increased spending. we re not asking them to reduce spending. we are talking about slowing down the spending growth by 2.4%. why can t you find it in the budget? lwe ought to be able to. some of us in the house have found it. but as you know and the summer of 2011, they couldn t do it so that s why sequestration was put into place. it was designed to be p
cut is. but in washington language, cut means we are not going to spend as much extra that we had planned to spend, right? we are going to slow down the growth. now spending has increased so much in washington, d.c. how does washington, d.c. get away with calling that a cut? everyone thinks it s a cut, it just means we are not spending as much extra. absolutely. we are not going to spend as much as we have been. i don t think people think we don t have enough money. i think they think we have a spending problem. i think we have a spending problem. from the time i was in congress to the time i have been governor, spending s going up and up and up. we are talking about slowing down the spending growth in washington, d.c. and we can do that. governors across the nation republican governors are proving they can do that. i am not convinced that we need to cut programs because
now we are feeling the effects of it. the president and speaker put together the deal. the president could have stopped it. house of representatives passed one, but two bills that could have stopped it and the senate has done nothing. bret: democratic senator max baucus in the middle there. white house probably saying that wasn t helpful in the talking points today. as they are continuing to talk as we are nine days out from the sequester setting in. as we look at the big picture here, the sequester in the big picture, the budget overall, where the sequester is, $85 billion for this year. 2.4%. we heard from the sequester would likely do. it is still a cut in spending growth. the government would still
comprehensive solution and most importantly, we need to collect additional revenue from the most fortunate which includes raising tax rates to where they were during the clinton years. similarly, what about revisiting simpson-bowles? a lot of people are talking about the framework, a lot of work has been done, are there means testing, further means testing of medicare, for instance, or other kinds of delayed medicare enactment, you know, sliding the age, for instance, kicks in other ways to try to down the road at least realize some real money? well, i think the best solution would be one that not only raises additional revenue, but also brings our spending under control and if you look at where spending growth is the strongest and what s going to cause the biggest problems down the line it tends to be in health care spending. thank you very much. alan krueger. we look forward to the next round of negotiations.