unanimous cheer from the right saying we are finally cutting the budget, getting back to reagan s principles, everyone, as jessica pointed out to rubio, everyone on the right if it affected their backyard they were having a fit because the currency in dc s power and it is money. you can t cut from my budget that you got to cut from somebody else s but someone else s saying the same thing. we need to restructure government somehow so this doesn t become a power-play every year or four years. it is all academic until we start tackling entitlements and trump and everyone else is so far away from that it is scary. dagen: i want to point out there trying to tackle the entitlement of medicaid. if you can prioritize and decide the role of the federal government, you might tackle the
we need him to be disruptive. if there were an area for donald trump to say i m going to do something outside the political mainstream, it s tackling entitlements. willie, back in 2009 after concerns about the price tag on the stimulus package, barack obama held a deficit reduction summit. he said we can no longer kick the can down the road on social security, medicare. that sound we ve heard for the last 20 years is kicking the cab down the road. we continue to do it. the question for a lot of people. you re right about debt in the book and the threat of it, when does it reach a breaking point where it hits my life. we hear about this in almost theoretical concerns over generations. the debt is exploding. life is going on. my check still coming from social security, medicare, medicaid. when in the breaking point? when does this become existential problem for mechanic. when it crowds out spending,
$1.2 trillion out of the budget. he said that in his speech yesterday in the rose garden. what he s done is to propose a cut in the rate of increase in spending. a cut in the rate of increase in the debt. right now total debt $16.8 trillion. at the end of the obama second term $20 trillion. that s not a cut. it s a gain. steve: that s not why they that is why, one of the reasons they probably leaked before the sunday shows, hey, the president is going to take on entitlements. when you look at what he s talking about doing, he s saying hey, republicans, i m giving you what you wanted, the chained c.p.i. thing, so you ve got to give me a boatload of tax money, even though when you look at the chained c.p.i. thing, if you ve got a $2,000 check, it would knock five bucks off. it is just a drop in the bucket. barely doing anything. you say you re tackling entitlements, tackling social security, nonsense. you re introducing chained c.p.i. which will reduce
i m not so sure that s going to happen because, again, a deal is only as good as it is for both parties. o our problem is spending, not revenue. we re willing to raise revenue, but not without deep spending cuts, without tackling entitlements and guess what? next quarter what do we face? another crisis of raising the debt ceiling. gregg: is it better to go over the cliff then, brad? i think the president believes he s in a much better position the go over the cliff. why? because there s nothing he has to do as a matter of law. all the rates go up, and then he can, he can live to fight another day with a new congress in january. okay. i happen to believe the president wants us to go over the cliff. gregg: well, that s what barrasso said on fox news sunday yesterday, the senator. dick harpootlian and brad lakeman, merry christmas, gentlemen. merry christmas. heather: so would you add toppings or o cut them? gregg: that s the line of the day, john boehner can t deliver a pizza.
this issue in any meaningful way, i just wonder, you know, do they look at it and say, well, now, it won us a presiden presidential election promising we won t touch any entitlements. but where is the for sight, looking down the road? i think people are so distrustful now of congress ability to get anything done that will change the course of where we are headed in this country long term. yeah they should be distrustful. that is part of the problem is that congress refuses to take these issues seriously. it s not just congress. remember, president obama is the president of the united states and he ran the first time saying that he was going to get in front of these issues that he was going martha: line-by-line he was going to go through every single program. exactly. if you look at the comments he made in the very first month of his presidency back in 2009 he said that the central park to getting in front of the u.s. spending problem is going to be tackling entitlements. and he