the number one item in the polls that since a report -- the bowles-simpson report -- he had that a year ago in december and he did nothing. >> why didn't they just put their arms around bowles- simpson? >> they should have -- >> why didn't it they? >> don't make me the spokesperson for the white house. >> political consultants' never tell their clients to do anything heart. >> he is the president of the united states. >> "oh, boss, you cannot do that." >> in the end, is open " groundhog day," because he showed and he didn't. he almost did something with simpson-bowles and john boehner backed out. why didn't he embraced it? he had his consultants, his constituency, say no. >> i am not an apologist for the white house, but you cannot do tax reform with one side. when you have somebody like grover norquist, who, with americans for tax reform, having every candidate sign a pledge that you will not increase revenues -- that is the position right now of the republicans. obama'sin any way, and lack of courage on this, but the position of the rebel against -- position of the republicans is that

the number one item in that bowles-simpson report was tax reform. he had that a year ago in december, he did nothing. >> why did they just put their arms around -- didn't they put their arms around bowles- simpson? .> they should have t >> he asked a question -- why didn't they? >> political consultants' never ask their clients to do something hard. >> he is the president of united states. >> "oh, that would be a mistake." >> he almost did something like simpson-bowles with john boehner, and john boehner backed out. he had his consultants, his constituency, who said it now. -- said no. >> i am not an apologist for the white house, but he cannot do tax reform with one side. when you have somebody like grover norquist, with americans for tax reform, having every candidate signing a pledge that you will not increase revenues -- that is the position right now of the republicans. i don't in any way commend obama's lack of courage on this, but the position of the republicans, and gigi, is simply this, that anything that increases revenues is an acceptable.

has conveyed the discussion we're having about simpson/bowles but you sat on simpson/bowles. >> i didhair final work product, but you had your own proposal. just tell me a little about why you didn't vote for it and what your own proposal was. >> i felt it was too skewed toward cuts. i felt that those cuts, particularly in medicare, they did a social security proposal, even though it has nothing to do with the deficit. that i proposed my own balancing the budget. it achieved the same numbers, without hurting the middle class and those who aspire to it. i have to tell you one thing, chris, i think in some ways this is yesterday's conversation. the obsession with deficit reduction right now, certainly the narrative in the country right now, has shifted so much now to jobs, the notion of the 99%, the unfairness that we have in the tax code, the way that most of the wealth now and the growth in the country has gone to the top 1%. yet we're still dealing with this issue of how we have to make these drastic cuts right now in the budget. i don't think that's where the american people are. an

>> simpson-bowles, dropping simpson-bowles was a massive mistake.damental mistake. he could have coalesced around that. he could have got -- we'd be discussing elements of simpson-bowles today, and you could argue that for a much better -- >> and had he done that, he would have avoided what turned out to be the biggest single downturn in consumer confidence and confidence in the government, which was the debt ceiling debate. >> is it also a challenge for republicans, and david you and i have talked about this before, you know, you can't tax cut your way to prosperity. you've seen tax policy can't affect economic growth either way, yet we have income inequality in this country. you have frustration. you have anxiety. what is the republican platform do to actually deal with that to create a new economy? >> create jobs, unleash the economy. if you look at 1979 and '80, substitute japan for china. substitute soft america for malaise. you've got the same situation. we need a leadership model here that takes us to a new level, shows the greatness of our c

i worked on the simpson bowls commission. it was led by simpson and bowls, superb people.agree that it would be around 23.3% of gdp. you do have to reduce entitlement spending. most of it is in medicare. medicare alone has $65 trillion in unfunded liability. $65 trillion more than we know we are going to get it from. it is not just medicare spending. you will have to get more revenues. you do not get that by raising rates on rich people, like the president wants to do. you will get nowhere near the amount of revenues that you want. avoiding taxes, instead of getting more jobs as a result, you do it along the lines of some symbols. -- since and bowls -- you dramatically reduce the rates. 9% for low income people. 15% for middle-income people. the revenue that that proposal supposes doing, by eliminating exemptions, exceeded revenue by $100 million per year, so, it can be done, it just takes more courage. we are going to have a fiscal crisis pretty soon. a big one. unless we get our fiscal house in order. the super-committee has the power to do that. there are original charg

bowles simpson dead on arrival. >> the ten of you spent months working on, this and now you have this significant dissent. >> i think we should break up these banks. >> break up every institution right now could have been destabilizing. >> you have to put your own budget together. you're sitting to be sidelines blaming others. the truth of the matter, howard... [both speaking over one another] >> gentlemen. >> jon: i think i got it. i think i got it. [cheering and applause] for god's sakes, people, now i see why you're mad at them for being muddled and incohairnts. that's your [bleeped] job. although we did pass dodd-frank. >> in just over two weeks the dodd-frank law will be a year old, and we're not really any closer to fully implementing it. >> the stuff that would have addressed the fraud, too big to fail, derivatives, from almost all of those measures were either rejected outright or watered down to near meaningless. >> an estimated 400 regulations to be written, just 38 are complete. >> jon: and those 38 were the easy ones -- no spitting, don't take your [bleeped] out before 5:0

there should have been an up or down vote on simpson-bowles.was the debt commission that he empanelled that came up with a lot of solutions that i think would have made sense to the american people. but they couldn't get it voted out of committee so it fell by the wayside and now we have the so-called super committee. >> you were the first person to ask a question following the announced killing of al-awlaki, the american-born terrorist in yemen. what did he say to you about the issue of al-awlaki's american citizenship and whether it had a role in what the u.s. did in targeting him. >> i did a poor job and questioning him on the subject. i asked about the operational side of it. i asked whether he had given the order and he didn't give me an answer to that either. the whole debate over the conditional ti of taking out an american citizen was not yet percolating. man, if there is one regret i have i wish i had asked him on that specific issue. >> his ans gave you that answer. the fact that they won't talk about any part of the operation because

like at simpson-bowles. they're playing political games. i don't fault rick.t is right. we have to do something about everything. his point about long-term investment and infrastructure is absolutely right. in the short term, we need to do something to stimulate growth. i'm happy to show this to representative kantor, but in pennsylvania, as i said, we've got a billion for roads and bridges in the first stimulus. we tracked it. jobs produced on the construction site, jobs back at the factory. 24,600 jobs from that stimulus. >> rick, you and i have different views, but also respect each other. isn't a lot of this politics? when you have karl rove saying, quote, pointing out that obama's stimulus is not a serious solution, know that it is clearly a serious solution, whether you agree or not, it certainly moves the dial in terms of jobs and development. >> sure. >> aren't they really just playing politics at the expense of a lot of people that are suffering right now? >> i' not sure they're playing politics, but it's a silly argument to say that a stimulus packag

i think the real answer was available to us in the simpson-bowles commission and had both republicansnd democrats embraced that philosophy of cutting entitlements and reforming the tax at the same time to give business confidence that we have a total commitment to our debt and our deficit and to creating jobs in this country, i think we would be much better off. and unfortunately, that's not the case. and i think looking forward for the next year we are at stagnation and i think the economy will reflect that stagnation. we are in a political cold war and i don't see anything changing until the public makes a decision about which ideology they like best in the 2012 elections. >> chris: gentleman, give me a quick answer to the final question. in the fox news poll, we asked voters, if president obama had been the ceo of a major company instead, what would you do and 52 percent said he would have been fired by now . 38 percent said he would still be in charge. bob johnson what would you do if barack obama was running the company and had the record he's had in the last two years. >> guest:

it was within his capability to push forward the simpson bowles compromise.said he wanted the fight and he began that the president has joined. there is class warfare for decades and it's not going to change. i think the republicans did feel that they are perfectly capable of continuing this. >> 68% of americans say that taxes should rise on the wealthiest people in society. 68% of millionaires themselves say raise taxes on us. paul ryan and john boehner said no. who is behind this stance? if this is not being provoked by the idea that the people want it, who is provoking kantor and boehner? >> this is a massive disconnect between the public and the parties in washington, particularly the republican party. the public wants policy makers to focus on creating jobs. in washington it's all about the deficit. there is an unholy alliance described with how the class rules in washington. the so-called cent rift deficit. they formed an unholy alliance with people like paul ryan who say they care about the deficit, about they want to cut taxes and spending and cut gov

but the simpson bowles commission talked about lower tax rates. if we did that.emember when ronald reagan lowered the rates, we had growth of 6 and 7% a year. that's how i get jobs. you need the economy to grow. you don't get shovel-ready projects that government does. those are band-aids and they never create millions of jobs. you only create millions of jobs with economic growth. >> i agree with all of the things you have in here, but the president seems to be it's my way or the highway and you are hurting the country. well, he had his way. he had both houses of congress. he forced legislation down the country's throat. made grandiose promises of what would happen, none of which did. now he says it wasn't big enough and i am going to try it again. >> part of the republican jobs plan is that we are willing to talk with the president. but the president needs to stop and desist from pass it now, pass it now. all of this campaign rhetoric and the emotions of enry and let's go get those rich people. he needs to stop that. make an appointment to come to capitol hill

tomorrow we have a hearing with simpson and bowles, alan simpson and erskin bowles, both partisan groupse the gang of six, that in order to reach a reduction deficit agreement, you need to take the balanced approach. you need cuts, yes, but you also need to have the revenue piece. so i think it will be very helpful to hear from them tomorrow. >> congressman, what do you say to aarp which is running ads, and our friend tom brokaw "meet the press" made the point, the aarp ads are basically making the point, don't take away any of our entitlements. shouldn't they say those who need them should get them, but some who can afford to give up some of their benefits should given the crisis we face? >> one of the budgets was put in the house that would have said for seniors, you have to fend for yourself in the private health insurance market with a voucher that declines in value. that's a non-starter and not the way to go. the better way to go is the way we started in the affordable care act where we began to reform the system to put more focus on the value of care and the quality of care as oppo

one more passage from this piece by alan simpson and erskine bowles. ere is a lot more to read here. it is an op-ed piece by alan simpson and erskine bowles. be big, be bold, and be strong. a democratic caller, good morning. caller: i believe that the super committee should look at recapturing welfare benefits from future tax refunds, anyone that receives welfare, and the action may be being a 10-year window it that they give them to recapture that money. i do not think that we should give this money away. one of the ways the super committee can save money is looking at welfare reform and recapturing some of those benefits in future tax refunds of recipients. host: michael, thank you for weighing in. the caller mentioned welfare. in the rest of the program, we will be featuring poverty in america. we will look at all sorts of ankles following the september report on the poverty figures. he also mentioned a program for needy families. tomorrow morning we will have a segment at 9:15 a.m. on that particular program on w. joe -- "washington journal." a call

we have almost no opportunities left to do the kind of grand bargain every bipartisan group, simpson bowlese gang of six came up with. $4 trillion deal over ten years, tax reform, revenues, deal with major health entitlements and the rest of spending. this is our last chance. i believe if the super committee is able to do that, it would create a psychological shock wave that could actually have an extraordinarily positive impact on that portion of the economic trouble that is psychological, call it 20 or 30% because nobody expect it to happen. if they don't do it, they will i'm skeptical get the $1.2 trillion, which will be harder and we're back to everybody believes we can't solve the problems. nobody will spend. business won't invest. >> you're saying the surprise will be nice. we all kind of believe nothing will happen. hold on, norm. co-chairman of the super committee democratic senator patty murray seems to understand what you're talking about. >> the public is watching us very closely to see if we can show this country that this democracy can work. i carry that weight on my shoulders

economic plan we put forward, endorsed by the "wall street journal," which was taken out of the simpson-bowles work which had been done in a bipartisan fashion, it can pass muster and simplify our tax codes to make us a more competitive anything. >> if it's not herman kane, many feel it will be mitt romney potentially as the other leading candidate. is he a liberal? is he a conservative? what is mitt romney as far as you're concerned? >> these are early days, andrea. that's why i get back to new hampshire being such an important primary. wh >> what is mitt romney to the people of new hampshire? a liberal? a conservative? >> will you have to ask whoever tracks him. >> as his opponent who do you think he is? >> i've seen three different mitt romneys a liberal mitt romney, a moderate mitt romney and a liberal mitt romney. and people here are a bit confused as others are. but that, again, is why the primary process here in new hampshire is so important. because you can't escape the reality of citizens coming after you wanting answers to their questions and wanting to know what's in your head if yo

that's why i thought the president's own commission, the simpson/bowles commission, came out with a perfectlywould have lowered rates, lowered rates even lower than reagan did while eliminating broadening the tax system. so there's a huge difference between what ronald reagan was saying and what barack obama was saying and proposing. >> but do you think it's fair to pay 15% taxes on capital gains and 35% on sweat work? >> well, people don't pay 35% on, quote, sweat work, if you're talking about that's some kind of -- that's some kind of real hard labor. >> a salaried income is 35% taxed, whereas a money income is being 15% taxed. >> i misunderstood you. i thought you meant sweat literally, you mean like being a tv host. >> i'm trying to include us all. i'm talking anyone that gets paid a salary, why should they pay a higher rate than people who get money off of money? >> most of the countries in the world, either tax capital gains at a lesser rate than us or at no tax at all. because they want people to invest their money in job creation, in technology, and our capital gains tax rates, when t