maya macguineas is the president of the committee for a responsible federal budget. know something i don't know and we are in a midst of a bright summer of meaningful legislation. >> it is not time to count on it yet because they have a lot of challenges in terms of policy. any of the real, meaningful legislation that would get done is not easy. we talk about how the deficits have come down but the truth is that the problem on the fiscal front is that the debt is on an unsustainable, up to decorate. that means when we talk about policy, we need to offset the cost or pay for it, helped grow the economy, those are not the kind of giveaways congress likes. there are a number of things that have to get done in the coming months and we can start with this lame duck where we have to get a budget in place. we have to figure out how we are going to fund the government for the rest of the year. we have a number of expired tax breaks. we will have to figure out what to do about those. looking forward, we have a depleted highway trust find. have disability insurance that on the

we've done it before, and we'll do it again. >> another question i wanted to ask is, maya macguineas,ve to keep my mayas straight here. you've written elsewhere, didn't come up so much today, about the idea of means testing as part of social security reform, and i wanted to ask you if you could talk more about exactly how that would work. would means testing social security in your view be a wealth test or an income test of some kind? and what's the justification for it given the notion that social security -- not the notion, the reality that social security is an earned benefit, not a welfare program. >> okay. so means testing, one, i would say that it is, of course, an earned benefit. we contribute to it, but part of the reason there are problems in social security is for so long people got more out of social security than they put into it and i'm completely comfortable saying social security functions as a program where not everybody is going to be able to get everything they put into it out of it otherwise it doesn't work where you can subsidize people who are low income who live

we've done it before, and we'll do it again. >> another question i wanted to ask is, maya macguineas, have to keep my mayas straight here. you've written elsewhere, didn't come up so much today, about the idea of means testing as part of social security reform, and i wanted to ask you if you could talk more about exactly how that would work. would means testing social security in your view be a wealth test or an income test of some kind? and what's the justification for it given the notion that social security -- not the notion, the reality that social security is an earned benefit, not a welfare program. >> okay. so means testing, one, i would say that it is, of course, an earned benefit. we contribute to it, but part of the reason there are problems in social security is for so long people got more out of social security than they put into it and i'm completely comfortable saying social security functions as a program where not everybody is going to be able to get everything they put into it out of it otherwise it doesn't work where you can subsidize people who are low income who li

i can, identify yourself and then -- >> maya macguineas.the previous question made me think about that. we found the results of this were bipartisan but it sounds like there's bipartisan support for lifting the payroll tax rate. is that something the president would be willing to do even though it would come in conflict with a pledge not to raise taxes under $250,000 to your? >> i can -- >> if there were bipartisan support. >> this is something you want to work on a bipartisan manner to do and he has said in the past that when given with the social security, he said on a number of occasions that bring in additional revenue from high income households is something he thinks has a lot of support and would be consistent with strengthening the program and its important features. >> one more, virginia. >> thank you. is this on? a slightly different question which is not so much what would the president do or what our policy makers going to in the near term, but what we found in the survey is quite widespread support among the general population