compromise does not immediately destroy and defund obama care is he s a big sellout i ll he s thinking he s going to push this horrible budget on the country. here s what everyone misses, i think, about the paul ryan budget. now we re talking about this entitlement reform, benefit cuts. he s talking about means testing medicare. he s talking about cutting federal pensions. he s cutting taxes. and he s also talking about bringing back the key stone pipeline. the reason that won t happen is because the republican base does not want it to happen. this is the most important thing to understand about the whole politics of entitlement reform, is that the old white conservative people who show up at tea party rallies, outside the capitol, at the value voter summit, would like their social security checks, thank you very much and they would like their medicare, thank you very much. and you are not going to be able to go to them, and say remember, guys, we told you we were going to defund
agreement to turn it off. senator, i m going to open this back up to our panel. katrina, i think it s an important question sam skrks the question of sequestration, which has been sidelined and in the process the goalposts have decidedly been moved to the right. this is a strategic question for democrats. absolutely. how much will they push and how much ground to republicans they don t know despite all that polling whether they want to open the government back up. i think you re right the goalposts have been moved. almost paul ryan s numbers have become a centrist number. he s injected this back into this at a time when we thought he was we move beyond sequestration into a new grand bargain moment. you re hearing talk of means testing medicare. means testing, receiving subsidies from obama care. means testing medicare.
pipeline. blocking new epa regulations. more oil drilling. means testing medicare. repealing social services grant. so on and so on. a familiar list of goodies republicans trot out when they re feeling like they have the upper hand. if you realists like oklahoma senator tom coburn have a bit of advice for fellow republicans, if you decide to take the u.s. government hostage over the budget, you d better be ready to go all the way. let s take a listen. the only time you shut down the government is when you hit it down and refuse to open it until you accomplish what you want. but we ll fold like hotcakes. you do not take a hostage you are not going to for sure shoot. we will not for sure shoot this hostage. well, senator john boehner and his caucus didn t fold last night by voting once again to defund the affordable care act, thus ensuring a government shutdown. they ve effectively shot their hostage. it s almost as if they re demanding a romney presidency or
we ve got, of course, the one-year obama care delay. we have tax reform, keystone pipeline, of course, blocking net neutrality. pretty much every quote/unquote jobs bill we have passed this year and last, aka corporate giveaways, means testing medicare, cfpb changes, tort reform, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. i feel like they re leaving something off this list. jay carney, you got any ideas? a birther bill to attach to it. the birther bill. that s what they forgot. i don t know how they could have overlooked questioning the president s place of birth in addition to everything else that they ve ever wanted. i mean, this isn t serious, is it? no, it s not. it s the romney economic agenda. it s basically saying agree to implement the economic agenda that we would have had if we had won the last election. in exchange for that, we ll cause the government not to
who says? the basic premise because he s the president. he has to sign it into law. not the budget resolution. the president never gets to sign the budget resolution. well, the president the president will not agree to a broad budget deal that does not include balance, chris. and you know that democrats in the senate won t support an ala carte approach to this. republicans from mitch mcconnell on down said at the end of last year, they put on the table, in public, that they wanted certain things in return for revenue as part of a balanced deficit reduction deal. yeah. that included so called chained cpi, means testing medicare. the president has agreed to those in this comprehensive budget proposal. but it s not an ala carte. just as you said, you can t say i ll take what i want and we won t talk about a broader deal. that s not acceptable to the president. he will not accept an approach that asks only seniors and the middle class to bear the burden of deficit reduction