kyl were in the room with boehner and cantor, do you trust them to do it without senate republican input at this point? well, first of all, mitch mcconnell and jon kyl have been in the room for most of the negotiations and the speaker and mitch mcconnell are in constant contact. i don t think that senator mcconnell is being left out at all. and i think that certainly he is being consulted by the speaker about what kinds of things the republicans in the senate could live with and what they couldn t. because the house is a very different arm. it has different rules, as you know, and what can get through there and what s acceptable there is very different from senators. how important was this clarification from grover norquist, a lot of people including yourself, have signed this taxpayer pledge. how important was it that he said, well, the bush tax cuts, if they somehow expired, that wouldn t technically be a violation of the pledge. and he went on to say he doesn t
won t support deep cuts without increases in taxes. if you are trying to get to 2.4 trillion without any revenue, then you are effectively gutting a whole bunch of domestic spending that is going to be too burdensome and not something that i would support. david gergen is the cnn political analyst. there was a time when john boehner and president obama both talked of doing something big to change america s unsustainable economic path. what do you think? do that you think that opportunity is lost? well, a week is a long time in politics. it can be a lifetime, as you know. i think the big deal, the grand deal, the grand bargain of $4 trillion over four years is dead, it s gone. i think the chances of getting a deal at 2.5 are 2. the middle double deal, very unlikely, because the president does not want to go that high without tax increases and republicans are not going to do it. here s the question that is coming out. and that s. the house republicans are now pushing a ve
perhaps the biggest. paul ryan put out his plan. he made it clear, he lowered taxes, didn t lower taxes. just to play devil s advocate, couldn t you help to get rid of the deficit even more if you didn t lower the taxes. and he said, no, as you know that s not republican credo. the president has made clear that he believes one of the best ways to deal with deficit reduction is to raise taxes back to where they were before president bush was in office. that is a major dividing line. sometimes i feel the best way to begin this debate would to get people to agree that two plus two does equal four. thanks for joining us. grover norquist has the same message as john boehner, no new taxes. he even got 40 new republican senators and 35 republican congressmen to sign a taxpayer pledge. is this going to solve the
all. and i think that certainly he is being consulted by the speaker about what kinds of things the republicans in the senate could live with and what they couldn t. because the house is a very different arm. it has different rules, as you know, and what can get through there and what s acceptable there is very different from senators. how important was this clarification from grover norquist, a lot of people including yourself, have signed this taxpayer pledge. how important was it that he said, well, the bush tax cuts, if they somehow expired, that wouldn t technically be a violation of the pledge. and he went on to say he doesn t want to see it and all this stuff, but he still said it wouldn t technically violate the pledge and suddenly today we re hearing that s one of the two big penalties being debated. it sounds like that the republicans needed grover to say that. do you get that sense? well, i think that certainly many republican leaders such as grover or others, they re