don't, here's a bipartisan plan we would be willing to negotiate around, and that is the rivlin-domenici medicare plan. again, details would have to be worked out, you are correct, it would have to be through a two-step process. but this is a two-part plan, led by alice rivlin, former budget office director, head of the omb under president clinton, that would also include a provision for future seniors to say in traditional fee-for-service medicare but use the power of patient choice and competition to save and strengthen the program. so we put that on the table as well. >> you do not sound like a man who believes you're going to get a deal in ten days. >> i wouldn't say that. listen, it's been a roller coaster ride. i will say this -- i respect my democratic colleagues. i have an excellent working relationship with senator patty murray. we haven't given up hope. but if this was easy, the president of the united states and the speaker of the house would have gotten it done themselves. >> so what about the revenue side? i know there's now -- what's on the table inside that committee in te

the domenici-rivan task force, $6 trillion proposed over nine years, didn't get voted on. the gang of six proposed a $3.7 trillion cut. the five people you meet in heaven, $2.4 trillion in cuts. the three 10 organize deputy 6.9 trillion. >> this time it's going to be different. this time failure is not an option. >> if this super committee fails to come up with a plan that congress passes into law, that set off a trigger, automatically cutting $1.2 trillion from the pentagon, medicare providers and other programs. >> this plan calls for a tremendous amount of pain. >> it's really the new doomsday scenario. >> you can almost see the train wreck coming on this. >> jon: i wish there was a word that reflected this terrible outcome, just one word. i know the germans would have one of those. you know, they'd be like franken sticannen lager, but the train coming to destroy us if the super committee doesn't come to an agreement. >> sequestration. >> sequestration. >> sequestration. >> jon: ah. ( laughter ) failure would trigger sequestration, a process that combines congress' leas

erskine bowles and alan simpson, and the co-leaders of a separate task force, alice rivlin and pete domenici. bowles was chief of staff in the clinton white house. he and simpson want nearly $4 trillion in deficit cuts over the course of a decade. >> we didn't make $4 trillion up because the number four bus rode down the street. $4 trillion is not the maximum, it's not the ideal amount-- it is the minimum amount we need to stabilize debt. >> holman: rivlin was director of the office of management and budget in the clinton administration. she, too, urged the committee to set $4 trillion as a target. >> we must go well beyond the minimum charge of $1.2 trillion. even savings of this magnitude would leave the debt rising faster than the economy can grow. >> holman: on the republican side, former new mexico senator pete domenici called for the super-committee to tackle entitlement programs and tax reform. >> let me be blunt-- a plan that does not fundamentally restructure medicare and other health entitlements will fail to adequately address the debt crisis we face. both sides-- those who are ag

what he is talking about is certainly better than nothing. >> thank you, senator domenici. on health care, doppler project -- on health care, dr. rivlin, you testified many times that you thought the affordable care act introduced a number of important innovations. i agree with you that we need to do more in terms of modernizing the medicare system to focus more on the value of care and quality of care -- quality of care versus the quality of care. -- the quantity of care versus the quality of care. i do have a question with respect to your version of the most recent premium support plan. that is, if you are confident in the market forces driving down the prices, and if your argument is that medicare is driving those market forces, then why would you need a fail- safe mechanism? why would you need to say if you don't achieve the goal we want in savings, you have to have gdp plus one, and if it is not keeping track with the market, isn't that just a cost transfer to medicare beneficiaries? >> i think we are not absolutely certain how the markets will work. we have seen even

we study ied domenici a whole l. we looked at the gang of six. we ought to look at all of these plans and see whether we can meld them and come up with a document that will be palatable for everybody. there are things in the simpson/bowles plan that i am not all that enamored with. but there some are things i like better in this rivlin/domenici plan. there's nothing wrong with us looking at all three ofs the plans and coming up with something that i think all of us could be comfortable with. that's what we ought to do. >> congressman jim clyburn. democrat from south carolina. thanks for coming on this morning. apologies for some of the audio issues. >> thank you so much for having me. >> all right. >>> well, in the past five weeks, we've seen herman cain fade, newt gingrich surge, mitt romney do his best to stay above the fray. five weeks from now iowa republicans cast ballots in this 2012 race. between now and then, it's anybody's guest. with me now, "the washington pos post"'s chris cillizza and jonathan martin. you guys have already been crack

former republican senator pete domenici had harsh words for members who only want to do one or the other. >> they are both complicit in letting america destroy itself because we don't want to make tough decisions. >> reporter: the committee's job is made tougher by the hundreds of trade groups and corporations seeking meetings and airing ads in an attempt to protect their piece of the budget. yarp is fighting for proposed cuts to medicare. >> we are 50 million seniors who earned our benefits. >> reporter: simpson surge it had committee to ignore it all. >> people admire guts and courage. they may fight you, they may vilify you, but they will admire you. >> reporter: failure is also a powerful motivator and if the supercommittee doesn't reach a compromise, scott, then across-the-board spending cuts will go into effect in all government programs, including medicare and defense. >> pelley: nancy, thanks very much. bank of america announced a big cut of its own today. after an outcry from customers, it is scrapping plans to charge $5 a month for making purchases with debit cards. in the pres

now a short time ago the announcement was made that the government had handed its basic nation to domenici to the sea queen council of the armed forces the right is that they are reviewing that basic nation they don't find take six it until such time that they have for many of the points ahead and approve of a new prime minister one of the names being bandied about as one hundred hour by a day he was the former head of the international atomic energy agency but no clarity yet as to whether or not he will be appointed to that position when that announcement was made the crowd here started cheering certainly it is a step in the right direction but people here fear it is not enough for the government something to resign a month i'm going to cheat sheet to step aside and to this end the miniature announced today a new goal that it has. what the isolation or what this means is that anybody who might anyway is associated with the for me gyptian president hosni mubarak's party will not be allowed to stand even at any elections but people here saying that while the city is a step in the right dire

that's pete domenici, they're hearing from his co-chair, rivlin. and simpson. that hearing has been under way since about 1:30 this afternoon, continues live online at c-span.org and also over on c-span3. tomorrow morning on "washington journal" we will hear from budget committee member bill pascrell about today's discussions in the supercommittee. this morning the focus was on the future of social security. host: so let's just begin by talking about social security. what is the social security trust fund? guest: social security was set up as a pay as you go system. in other words, the taxes and benefits were supposed for approximately equal but there was always an understanding that social security would need to have a reserve. the trust fund is, if you will, the home for the reserve. the committee then arises, well, what do you do with the excess funds in the reserve and the decision that was made was that the safe thing to do was to put the reserve into u.s. treasury securities. these are not marketable securities. you can't buy them. the trust fund can't se

we had one in a license and- bolts and we had a slightly different one in the domenici- revlon. -- we had one in the simpson- bowles. we should get rid of the deductions, reduction, etc., and you will have a much more broader base for revenue. >> on the one plus two formula and on the ground forces, they need to think about western pacific, taiwan, korea, and maritime contingencies as well as persian gulf contingency's where they have operations separate from what i am talking about. this is sort of a big regional war, not unlike what we had been planning for the possibility of another north korean aggression for many years, not on like operation desert storm or operation iraqi freedom. because i just listed several different conflict and several different characteristics, one thing need to bear in mind as we cannot be too precise in our image of what future demands we place on the american military. we do need a cushion and margin for error. i talk about those two and i'm talking about a mission in which the international community collectively, under u.n. authorization, would get in

in fact, rivlin-domenici -- of spending and revenue sides of the equation. they take a balanced approach. they recognize that we need to modernize certain programs to achieve savings. they also recognize that we need to settle for an reform the tax code by cutting the pork, subsidies, and in many preferences that benefit a slew of special interest. simple math tells us that cutting 1 dollar of tax expenditure does just as much to reduce the deficit as cutting 1 dollar of programs. we have just 77 days left to complete our work. the clock is ticking. there are plenty of ideas out there for reducing the deficit that have been thoroughly debated, and we have a menu of options. so i think all of us would agree that if the committee were to fail, and i am confident it won't, but it would be not for a lack of ideas, but for a lack of political will. there are some who believe that the next election will somehow bring about a huge new medical alignment that would either allow republicans or democrats to get 100% of what they want and the way they want a. both parti

former new mexico senator pete domenici is on the panel. he has some harsh words for the subcommittee members who only want to do one of those things, not all of them. >> they're both complicity in letting america destroy itself because we don't. to make tough decisions. if the subcommittee does not reach an agreement on the cuts, they'll automatically go into effect. they'll splash funding for programs like defense and medicare if that ends up being the case. >>> it has been six weeks since the predicted traffic nightmare from the military job relocation became a reality. now, the government is kicking in some money to make road improvements to make things easier on commuters. more than a quarter billion dollars will go toward easing the commute near the naval medical center. surae chinn is live to tell us exactly where some of the money is going to go. surae, good morning. >> good morning. traffic isn't too bad here on center drive at this hour. we have seen some traffic building. some folks lining up trying to get into walter reed medica

republican budget, why don't we gather around a bipartisan plan and negotiate around the rivlin-domenici plan and not impose forms of rationing we're starting to see on our seniors now through the independent payment advisory board that president obama put in his health care bill. >> thank you for coming in. >>> up next, two senators who urged the super committee to "go big" if their deficit reduction agreement. when you have diabetes... your doctor will say get smart about your weight. that's why there's new glucerna hunger smart shakes. they have carb steady, with carbs that digest slowly to help minimize blood sugar spikes. [ male announcer ] new glucerna hunger smart. a smart way to help manage hunger and diabetes. that is better than today. since 1894, ameriprise financial has been working hard for their clients' futures. never taking a bailout. helping generations achieve dreams. buy homes. put their kids through college. retire how they want to. ameriprise. the strength of america's largest financial planning company. the heart of 10,000 advisors working with you, one-to-one. toge

domenici, $2 trillion in revenue. the gang of six, which is currently sitting senators, democrats, and republicans, said you need about $1.8 trillion to $2 trillion in revenue. so our first offer to them was not $1.8 trillion or $2 trillion in revenue. we caught hell from our side of putting an offer on the table of $1.3 trillion in revenue. and everybody said why did you give up $800 trillion? because we knew we were dealing with real bullets here. with real votes, with a real moment. not paper that you put out in a proposal. and guess what? they said no. no, no revenue. no, wait a minute. that we put $1 trillion on the table. they said no, that's too much, we won't do it. we put 950, no, too much, we won't do it. 650. no, we won't do it. then finally toomey sort of floats this concept which, as we said, the numbers don't work. so we said, okay, we'll take your money. we'll take the 250, we'll just do it in a way that's real. that actually measures by cbo that it's real revenue. and guess what? they backed off of tha

every major group before us, the simpson/bowles commission, the rivlin/domenici commission, and sittingtors all agreed you need about 2 trillion of revenue. we were just looking for one, let alone a fraction of that. we couldn't get it because the republican party wants to guarantee that the wealthiest people in the country are going to get yet another tax cut. >> i'm trying to understand because i know a lot of the supercommittee members have been coming on this show and some of the republicans said, look, we're okay with a revenue increase and we recognize in exchange for what we want, which is closing loopholes, we're going to end up with -- and obviously they wanted a lower tax rate with that. but they said explit itly when asked that mean that some of the wealthiest americans would pay more taxes when you were done wo this committee than before. it seemed like they were willing to compromise. >> they did talk about loophole closing, and they wanted that in tax reform. and there would have been loophole closing in tax reform, but they were unwilling in the total amount that would ha

he laid out a plan-- and i give him credit for this-- based on the plan that pete domenici and alex rivlin put together and that was to create two systems, we'll see which ones work. but he hasn't been willing to lay out either of those systems in a compelling way for the same reason he hasn't been able to lay out a tax reform, innate caution. rose: but he said "i'd rather stand for something than be reelected". >> yeah. . >> rose: he said "if the price of not doing anything is the price of having a second term, i'll take one term." >> well, a he's one of the most competitive people youl ever want to meet. he wants to win this election and, you know, that's fine and i'm sure he looks at the republican party and says "for the good of these people...". >> rose: does she a cynical view of politics which is right? >> i guess i go back to my original take on him. it helps to have lived in chicago to get obama which is to say chicago hasle two political cultures. it's got the lake front culture which is progressive, which is idealiic, which is hope and change. it has a neighborhood culture and t

it was basically the objective of the two commissions i served on, simpson-bowles and domenici-rivlin, and the arithmetic of this problem drives the answer. if you're going to get a sustainable debt, you have to do to big things at the same time. the curbing of the growth of entitlement programs, especially medicare and medicaid, but be nice to get social security back on a firm foundation as well, and reform the tax code so it is a better tax code. and raises more revenue. those two things have to be part of the solution, and roughly the numbers were not 1.2 trillion, it was some combination of those two things to get to four or 5 trillion over the next 10 years. a lot of us thought that that big scenario was easier than a small one. and it certainly got a lot of attention. simpson-bowles, dominici and i testified before the supercommittee two and half weeks ago, said that but there was an enormous group, baby enormous is too strong a word. there was a big group and the congress around senators warner and campus, but including senators from both sides, a number of them, it wasn't the

but even if you were to move in the rivlin-domenici direction it wouldn't preclude something like premium support. thank you, everybody, and have a very nice thanksgiving. [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2011] >> and you see all of speaker boehner's briefing on our website in the video library at c-span.org. we'll show you next the briefing by democratic leader nancy pelosi. again, the house coming in at noon eastern. >> good morning, everyone. as many of you know i'm originally from maryland and we speak in racetrack terms there. we're in the stretch as far as this -- the work of the supercommittee is concerned that democrats continue to be committed to big, bold and balanced in terms of a proposal that could come out of there. it is -- each day it looks like i don't know whether it's bargaining positions or whether they're ruling out possibilities. but let me say this, the committee has done -- has paid great attention to the need for us to reduce the deficit on both sides of the aisle and both sides of the capit