PBS Newshour 1/4/2011
Excerpts from transcript
GWEN IFILL (Newshour): So, what should be on the table and what shouldn't, in your opinion?
DIANE LIM ROGERS, Chief Economist, The Concord Coalition: Everything should be on the table.
So, Congress right now likes to talk about wasteful discretionary spending, because that sounds like the least painful thing to cut, and -- but everything, entitlement programs, Social Security, Medicare. We need longer-term reforms for those programs, because they are on unsustainable paths.
We need tax reform, because contrary to what everyone would like to believe, which is that we don't need more revenue, we really do need more revenue. It's not just a spending side problem. It's not just a tax side problem. We need help from all -- all fronts.
GWEN IFILL: James Horney, what do you think should be on the table and what shouldn't?
JAMES HORNEY, Director of Federal Fiscal Policy, Center on Budget and Policy Priorities: I think everything has to be on the table. We really do have to look at it. Certainly, revenues are part of the solution. We need to raise them, but in an efficient way.
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JAMES HORNEY: I think we can't cut it as much as people say we should. And I think the American people in fact don't want to cut those programs.
And I think, when they understand what it is that the government is doing, and the benefits that they derive from it, they will realize that, while we have got to slow the rate of growth of spending, particularly health care, we also have to make sure we have enough revenues to cover enough spending to actually meet the important national needs.
GWEN IFILL: Do Americans have the stomach for those kinds of cuts, Diane Rogers?
DIANE LIM ROGERS: I actually don't think they have the stomach for it. I think that a lot of Americans don't realize everything that the federal government provides to us now.
** They don't realize the tough choices that are ahead, that we can't just say smaller government in the abstract. That is going to impact their families. Their families receive benefits from these programs. The economy receives general support from government spending. And so I think that people have to start to -- to, you know, confront these choices and how they would affect their own individual lives.
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GWEN IFILL: In this debate about spending cuts, will there ever be a discussion? Does it naturally lead us to a discussion about raising revenues?
JAMES HORNEY: It absolutely should.
What's interesting is, we have had several high-level commissions recently, the president's Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, a bipartisan Policy Center commission that was headed by former Clinton OMB Director Alice Rivlin and former Senate Republican Budget Chairman Pete Domenici.
And both of those, plus a panel put together by the National Academy of Sciences the year before, looked carefully at this. They all concluded, we need more revenues than the level of revenues we would get under current policies.
GWEN IFILL: And you agree with this?
DIANE LIM ROGERS: We do a lot of spending through the tax code.
People think of tax cuts as just, universally, they benefit everyone broadly. But we have a lot of special government spending, special interest spending done through the tax code. And we could fill in those gaps, fill in those holes in the tax code, raise more revenue in an economically efficient way.
GWEN IFILL: Reality hits promises.
Comment on the ** paragraph above.
The problem is, it is NOT "the people" who are confronting the tough choices, it IS the politicians, and Republicans will stick to dogma no matter how it hurts "the people."
The Republicans have a long history of focusing on money and NOT the welfare of "the people." AKA: If "it" costs too much (in Republican eyes) to hell with YOU.
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