night's conversations with great minds i'm very pleased to be joined in the studio tonight by david stockman former united states congressman representing the state of michigan was elected to three terms before stepping down to head up the office of management and budget under ronald reagan president ronald reagan in one thousand nine hundred one he is credited with writing the reagan budget and continued his work on federal budget in three one nine hundred eighty five after leaving politics david stockman pursued a career in investment banking and joined rockstone group as one of it's really his partners he's the author of the book triumph of politics of the reagan revolution failed and his new book tentatively titled the triumph of crony capitalism would spur crony capitalism reached a peak during the recent financial meltdown it's scheduled for release next spring as our nation deals with perilous financial problems and a weakening economy certainly his insights are worth hearings and i do woodstock and welcome thank you glad to be here have you with us here. just to the moments in time r

our next viewer comment is from the ramp line last night i was joined in the studio by david stockman economist former congressman and director of the reagan era office of management and budget and republican is credited with writing the reagan budget and continued his work on federal budgeting through nine hundred five for after a few years in the reagan administration stockman turned against the promise of reagan's fiscal policies even authored a book on why the reagan revolution failed last night in fact he explained why. once we got into the heat of politics it came unstuck the defense posture got way too big the pentagon got out of control and unfortunately ronald reagan was unwilling to discipline the pentagon and he hated big government but it stuck with the potomac river secondly when we passed the tax cut in order to pass it we had a pretty and every kind of ornament and special interest gimmick and tax break in loophole imaginable there was almost like a feeding frenzy on capitol hill and so the tax bill ended up being forty percent bigger than we had tended as the deficit b

this is a pretty substantial margin to work with. >> david stockman, someone that we did on these issues you were pretty outspoken even earlier. the chairman told us five to 6 trillion should be the appropriate target for the deficit reduction over ten years. how do you get there? >> [inaudible] i want to say why but before i do that -- >> before i do that i want to thank you for recommending my book. the joint politics i wrote 1986. i don't know if it was any good but when i was run out i did write the book and my publisher gave me 800 copies to distribute to my friends and i still have 795 copies left. [laughter] so if anybody needs 1i have a lot of books. [laughter] >> i think that this ten year thing is really causing us to play a numbers game to get lost in the numbers that is resulting in her losing track of how serious this problem is because we talked about go big, no green or go sooner. but whether your during a 1.5 trillion or 4 trillion remember that is again the ten year baseline as you can see that far in the future which is $200 billion. so we are asking should we cut the d

. >> david stockman. i want to cause dissension. it's obvious when you spend 24%, taking in 15%, you need a massive new source of revenue. we're going to cut a little bit, but not much. that should be a consumption tax or tobin tax on wall street -- [inaudible] they are not doing anything that's very important or interesting for the economy right now, but what we hear instead is the great white hope is tax reform. i'd like to suggest to this group and see your reaction that tax reform at the end of tax reform is a massive swamp at the end of gulch that will lead to massive political conflict and result in even worse polarization than we have today. why? just quickly. there's supposedly a trillion tax expenditures. $200 billion is preference for capital gains and dividends. $180 billion of that is the reference for retirement. $170 billion is medical. $120 billion is homeowners and all the different visas. put that together, it's $700 billion and which part of that will you blast away? how much revenue are you going to get out of the

alan green spank, governor engler -- greenspan, governor engler, david stockman, former director of omb and senator warner who is the sitting senator and also one of the gang of six and heavily, heavily involved in this issue. so we are going to talk pretty much about anything you want. i keep saying this is one of these washington policy forums when you're willing to ask whatever question, and we want to have a rich discussion. but what we do want to focus on is where the politics and economics of this issue are right now and where they're headed, and to continue the theme that we've had in the past two panels of going big. i just have to observe it's been pretty remarkable, because i did say if people disagreed with go big, they were allowed to, but it has been a pretty powerful argument for both the political and economic arguments of why urging and supporting the supercommittee to come up with a full fix is a useful and almost necessary endeavor. so, peter, over to you. >> let me start, first of all, with chairman greenspan, if i could. the economic argument here, we've had a lot of

david stockman, and senator warner, the sitting senator and one of the gang of six, heavily involved are going to talk pretty much about anything that you want. this is one of those washington policy forums where you get to answer any question. we want to have a rich discussion. what we want to focus on is where the politics and economics of this issue are right now and where they are headed. i have to observe, it has been pretty remarkable. i saw people disagree. they were allowed to. across the board, it has been a fairly tough argument in urging and forcing the super committee to come up with a fix is a necessary endeavor. >> first of all, let me start with chairman greenspan with the economic argument. you have had a lot of discussions about going big. and from an economic standpoint, what is the right number and how quickly do we have to get there? >> it is not for dollar trillion. the reason, as everyone here is aware, there is a tendency in government to underestimate the size of the problem. indeed, if you look at the underlying economic decisions that have been made, forecas