and peter morici from the university of maryland, welcome to you both. >> peter, let me begin with you. there is lots of talk president obama wants to have a grand bargain in this budget process. what does a grand bargain look like to you? guest: that would put us in good shape long term. get the budget deficit down to a level where the growth in the debt essentially levels off and it is at a level where as a percentage of the whole economy is considered to be sustainable. right now we're on track to become an italy and that is to have a debt that is too big and have bond holders lose confidence. host: how do you get to a grand bargain, what do you cut? guest: the only way is to do omething about the growth of entitlement spending. doing something about medicaid and medicare which obama care has apparently not accomplished. host: what does a grand bargain look like to you? guest: spending cuts. that will be on medicaid and ked care and the social security side s. entitlements, that's the bargain. we've shown through sequestration that appropriations, defense, domestic spending can be c

jared bernstein, peter morici, thank you. weekend. >>> the democratic senators that have not endorsed same-sex marriage is down to four. senators joe donly and heidi heitkamp joined bill nelson yesterday. nelson said he would sign on to an amius brief. i'm telling you right now, the girl back at home would absolutely not have taken a zip line in the jungle. i'm really glad that girl stayed at home. vo: expedia helps 30 million travelers a month find what they're looking for. one traveler at a time. expedia. find yours. because every flake is double-toasted... splashed with sweet honey... and covered in rich double-roasted peanuts. mmm. [ hero ] yummy. [ male announcer ] kellogg's crunchy nut. it's super delicious! [ male announcer ] kellogg's crunchy nut. [ female announcer ] some people like to pretend a flood could never happen to them. and that their homeowners insurance protects them. [ thunder crashes ] it doesn't. stop pretending. only flood insurance covers floods. ♪ visit floodsmart.gov/pretend to learn your risk. a b

now are american enterprise scholar maaed din, we also have economist extraordinaire, professor peter moriciks for joining us. madeine, let me start with you. as we said, as we look at this immigration bill, you can immediately feel a reaction coming out of what happened with boston. to slow down on anything that we might be doing including student visas, including asylum, including some of the workers that we would need especially in the area of student visas who might graduate and then be productive in their economy. what are your thoughts on this? >> well, melissa, that's a great question, and thanks for having here to talk about this. the immigration bill that's before the senate right now, it's a great piece of legislation. and it would have no bearing whatsoever on the vy tragic events that happened in boston. the reality is that people who are here, unfortunately, be they native or immigrant, sometimes you commit horrific acts. but we don't base immigration policy on that. we should base it on our economic needs as a country and as well as on our feelings about the importance of famil

he wrote a editorial of this we have peter morici. he is one of our favorite economists of course. john, explain this concept to me. this is your idea. what's the idea behind this? that after a certain point it is harming the economy to pay too much tax? >> yeah. we all know that. the other point is that we have a big fragmented tax system. so i want to add up not just federal income taxes but there is federal, state income taxes, local income taxes, property taxes, estate taxes real estate transer it taxes, sales taxes. taxes you pay for your employees. when you add it up you're likely paying more than you think. the alternative minimum tax to make sure people don't end up paying nothing, we need an alternative maximum so make sure in the end we need to keep some of your income. melissa: that would make logical sense. peter, let me ask you. what is the maximum? at what point do you start doing harm to the economy? i think it is like 20%. but i think i'm a little low versus everyone else. >> well, sure think there. small businesses in new york city that mom-and-pop luncheonest on s

. >> joining us to weigh in on this is economist peter morici. >> nice to be with you. >> clayton: you comparisons. how quickly could a recovery unfold. let's look at the obama administration and president reagan. 2.1% growth. peak unemployment with president reagan at 10.8% and higher and it took about 42 months and weak growth 5.2%. when you look at recovery, peter, what strikes you about friday's jobs numbers and the charts? >> it tells me that the president's policies have failed. for the last five years they've alibied because we had a financial crisis things were worse and we can't expect to recover as we should. the reality is mr. reagan's recession was deeper and you know, we've never had a financial crisis like this and there's no history to make reference to. the reality, his policies have failed. statism has clear lessons. the decline, decay, what can i say? >> so we've had a number of recessions in the last 100 years, it seems, it's a cyclical process, but the recovery times vary greatly. take it a look at the chart. 1948. and the first year, 27 months, and the current rece