that's joe scarborough, conservative member from northern florida with whom i serve. now most people see him on "morning joe" every day. the fact is that's what he said. now, we're looking for a counteroffer because we don't agree with some of h.r. 1 as you well know. as a matter of fact, every conservative democrat, every liberal democrat and everybody in between voted no on h.r. 1, as did three of your republicans over there and susan collins, who voted for it, said she didn't like the elements in it. so what i am saying to my friend very sincerely is he can preach all he wants is we need to cut spending. we agree with that. and the issue is where do you cut it from, what impact does it have, does it sustain the economy or does it deflate the economy? does it create jobs or does it lose jobs? does it help people who need help or does it abandon people who need help? that's the issue, and what i'm saying to my friend with all due respect is we have made an offer. the gentleman wants to talk about the president. article 1 of the constitution says we need to do this. th

that's joe scarborough, conservative member from northern florida with whom i serve. now most people see him on "morning joe" every day. the fact is that's what he said. now, we're looking for a counteroffer because we don't agree with some of h.r. 1 as you well know. as a matter of fact, every conservative democrat, every liberal democrat and everybody in between voted no on h.r. 1, as did three of your republicans over there and susan collins, who voted for it, said she didn't like the elements in it. so what i am saying to my friend very sincerely is he can preach all he wants is we need to cut spending. we agree with that. and the issue is where do you cut it from, what impact does it have, does it sustain the economy or does it deflate the economy? does it create jobs or does it lose jobs? does it help people who need help or does it abandon people who need help? that's the issue, and what i'm saying to my friend with all due respect is we have made an offer. the gentleman wants to talk about the president. article 1 of the constitution says we need to do this. th

that's joe scarborough, conservative member from northern florida with whom i serve. now most people see him on "morning joe" every day. the fact is that's what he said. now,we're looking for a counteroffer because we don't agree with some of h.r. 1 as you well know. as a matter of fact, every conservative democrat, every liberal democrat and everybod in between voted no on h.r. 1, as did three of your republicans over there and susan collins, who voted for it, said she didn't like the elements in it. so what i am saying to my friend very sincerely is he can preach all he wants is we need to cut spending. we agree with that. and the issue is where do you cut it from, what impact does it have, does it sustain the economy or does it deflate the economy? does it create jobs or does it lose jobs? does it help people who need help or does it abandon people who need help? that's the issue, and what i'm saying to my friend with all due respect is we have made an offer. the gentleman wants to talk about the president. article 1 of the constitution says we need to do this. this

that's from joe scarborough of florida. budgetary committee paul ryan expressed a similar thought and he said this, literally -- if you literally think you can just balance the budget by cutting waste, fraud and abuse, foreign aid and n.p.r., it doesn't work like that, said paul ryan, chairman of the budget committee. both congressman scarborough and congressman ryan are exactly right. last week i explained why republican spending plans, barely makes a dent in our debt. that's because the spending targeted by republicans, nonsecurity, discretionary spending, only amounts to 14% of the entire budget. should we focus on that? yes. can we get to where we need to be from there? no. if you want to meet an arbitrary goal of cutting $100 billion and you want 14% done, you severely hurt education, innovation and competitiveness without making our fiscal condition significantly healthier. that's why to really get our debt under control we have to go beyond that 14%, we have to stop making the cuts that while reckless are politically

about as much -- she's like a wolf this sheeps clothing everything, you see her every morning on joe scarborough show and like 7:15 in the morning. they've picked on everything the president has done and he's been in office now just a little over two years. it took president bush two years just to get his feet to stand up and talk in front of the public. and president obama i want to compliment him. he was actually running the country military wise before the election. host: we're going to leave it there. we try to mix it up as much as possible. houston, texas. cw on our line for republicans. caller: good morning. host: go ahead. caller: i think obama is just continuing the bush agenda. kind of like the gentleman from georgia said. we have no business being in libya just like these other countries. we're no different than the roman empire and the roman empire fell. i wish mr. balm -- obama would say i'm not running nothing. goldman sachs and all the bankers are calling the shots. i'm simply the mouthpiece. if he would say that i think we could start to turn this discountry around financially and

former republican congressman joe scarborough is the host of "morning joe" on msnbc. >> hi good morning, matt. >> this is a financial game of chicken. who has the most to lose, joe? >> well, i think right now the republicans do. they have the most to lose with their base. a lot of people go back, look at what happened and say the republicans can't have another government shutdown. it will hurt them. le while bill clinton got re-elected in 1996 the republican congressman decided to shut down the government ended up getting re-elected. republicans kept control of the house of representatives for six terms straight. so i think we're going to have tea party members in the house being more interested in being true to their base than being worried about what people say in washington about a government shutdown. >> savannah talked about the potential field of candidates for the 2012 election. let's go to the gop side. if we had been talking four years ago at this time there would have been nine republicans who had either already declared or formed an exploratory committee. the new york times c