mr. walker pioneered at the gao. i just wondered given the situation that states are in, does it really make sense to ask them to bail out the federal government? by raising their tax base basically. >> well, i think a value-added tax is a form of sales tax that if you're going to have a sales tax an value added tax it's self-enforcing so you have less problems with evasion. it would not be my choice. my choice would be scaled down programs. try to minimize the increase in taxes. at the end of the day, though, if you're going to have a european-size welfare state, you have to start taxing the way they tax. they tend to tax through high payroll taxes and things like value added taxes. you can't finance all these programs with just, you know, tweaking tax rates on people making over $250,000. so there is a question of, however -- whatever level of government we're going to have, we need to finance it as efficiently as we can. the question is whether people really are willing to swallow it. in my view, it will be the le

mr. kaufman: excuse me. some things have changed. came here in 1973 working for now-vice president biden and back then if you asked the american people what do they most dislike about walkersthey'd say -- about washington, they'd say, partisan bickering. my basic reaction, i have sea said to people that today what looks like a lot of partisanship, basically senators like each other. this is not about people not liking each other. there isn't anybody on the republican side of the aisle that i don't have a positive relationship with and feel good about. what i say is there is a difference of issues. but i do have a hard time when it comes to judicial nominations, especially on the rationale. because it isn't a matter of issues. these are not judges -- we have differences about some judges. but the vast majority of judges that are still being held are judges which we all agree are competent judges. so why is it that they're not being passed out? and especially when you talk about the two areas that most americans are so concerned about. one is th that we deal with crie and we deal with in a quick manner, people are given a fair trial. if they're guilty, they're put in jail. a