Mon 20 Jun 11 | 07:04 AM ET
The following transcript has not been checked for accuracy.
let's welcome this morning's guest host. house budget committee paul ryan. congressman, great to see you. how are you holding up? doing great. i feel like i'm on the deck of the star ship enterprise. first time i've been on the new set. we get mail here from time to time pip scott walker's ratings are down. he's not thin skinned either. you wouldn't change anything that's happened so far, but you have seen -- i guess both sides when the preside kem dem goinge don't step a step back and say why am i doing this? i could be doing something else? well, actually, because i think that, i can go do something else, see my family more, i'm willing to lose the job, then you can get good at the job. you can't be good at jobs like this unless you're willing to put about the risk in there and be willing to lose the job. if you're a politician whose number one concern is re-election, then you're not going to be good. we were just talking about that. you can't have that kind of mind set. and sadly most people do. and the other problem is demagoguery, both parties do this to each other, so we have this political paralysis which means nothing gets done. wall street journal said that is crucial. they had an entire article about how pa ral sirs is supposed to that be way, how we're not supposed to do anything all that quickly. sure, but we're having a debt crisis. at least we should have things working a little bit. the senate hasn't passed a budget in 780 days or something like that. so government needs to work a little bit. so, yes, it shouldn't be doing things so quickly and you can cite examples where either party went too fast. i would do things differently. i brought you a copy of our benlg eith budget for your reading about about you'd like. we decided we weren't going to make the same mistakes we matt last time which was we ran as fiscal conservatives and then we earmarked and did all these things that were hypocrisy. so we put out a plan, an actual plan, a real budget not only gets us to a balance that pays off the debt, it peaks in two years, goes down from there, we save our entitlement programs, we reform the tax code, our focus is pro-growth economics, job creation, reform the welfare state, so we have a safety net and not a welfare state. those are the things we're trying to accomplish. we put a real plan out there. we're hoping that that would get the democrats to come to the stable with their ideas. so you get down to that sort of adult conversation and what we're experiencing now is politic demagoguery. you go trillions in the hole every year you don't come something to fix this problem. so that creates uncertainty. i'd argue the reason we're not growing fast is government activi activism. uncertainty on debt, uncertainty on regulation because you have so much government abilitity vichl, and uncertainty on taxes. not only because of current law, but because of debt. that's not getting under control. sdwr we h jared bertstein will tell you that's bunk. but the uncertainty will you guys not raising the debt limit that's causing jobs not to be -- that they like. so the argument is roll over and give us a rubber stamp on the debt limit and keep going. depends on your uncertainty. i can't see anything happening between now and 2012. we had a currency guy on who said -- i saw him in the green room. we put a budget out there that's an actual budget. you passed it that it cut over $6 trillion in spending over the next ten year, reforms the tax code for the individualses and corporations. we do all of these things prp we were hoping that the democrats? the senate would give a counteroffer and start negotiating. they're running ads shows us pushing old ladies off cliffs. so what's left? it's the debt limit. because the senates has s has ne a budget, the debt limit is our only real opportunity to get some real fiscal responsibility. so we're using this as an opportunity to get a done payment on the deficit and debt. the democrats are saying the world would end and then you guys are saying you really are serious about about not raising to try -- just watching both sides -- but we tried the president's plan. they said give us a naked debt limit. we said we'll throw that on the floor and see how the votes go. we had a lot of democrats join fuss opposing that. would you really vote no to raise it if push came to shove? first of all, default is not our strategy. nobody wants to see that happening. but we don't want to see both political parties show the world and the credit markets that we can't do anything about spending. that we throw in the towel on america. john and i talk about this a lot. it's very simple. we're saying for every dollar of debt limit increase, cut spending by more than a dollar's worth. that's not that hard to chief. the president wants about $2.4 trillion increase in the debt limit. we propose $6.2 trillion in spending cuts. we've laid a lot of cards on stable. but if you can get $2.5 trillion in spending cuts, you'd sign off? yes. the whole purpose of these biden talkses is to get to how do you cut that spending. how do you get that extra dollar's worth of spending cuts. so we want to get real spending cuts with real process reforms that lock this and guarantee those spending cuts. we see this as a necessary down payment on getting the debt under control headed in the right direction. that will buy us time and are we going resolve 40 years of ideological differences by august 2nd? no. but are you going to be willing to compromise? because what the democrats want is between two-thirds spending cuts, one-third revenue raises. we're not going raise taxes. our economy is in such a soft spot right now -- you don't want to raise taxes on might be in a weak economy. you got to raise revenue somewhere. yes, by growing the economy. of you have to reform the tax code to get economic to get economic growth and job creation. when you raise tax revenues on paper, those grow with gdp. the problem is government spending particularly health care grows a whole lot faster. so you're putting yourself on a horrible slippery slope. that will slow down our economy even more. but that's where the sticking point is. nobody is arguing that spending cuts have to come in. we get a lot of resistance on cutting spending. that's why we're saying we in the house are going to make sure that we actually get spending under control. spending has gone up so fast lately. disdiscretionary spending went up 24% over the last two years. it went up 84% when you throw in the stimulus on top. all this sort of demand side borrowing and spending hasn't worked. the multipliers they use has been discredited. and so we want to go with what works. getting spending under control, tax reforms, and more importantly, we have this levithan on health care and centering that is putting a huge chilling effect on -- but that won't get settled by august 2nd in that. no, because the administration controls regulations. so the house can help control spending. i'm looking at ways that you can find a way to agree to raise the debt creating. if you got $4 trillion in spending cuts, a 6 -- you can say read my lips. what if there is a way by lowering corporate taxes and closing loopholes. our budget says lower the corporate tax cut to at least 25 percent by broadening the tax base. i have heard democrats say that in the last couple weeks. they're starting to sound like us on that and i'm glad. everyone the fiscal commission said for growth in america, lower tax rates across the board by broadening the tax base. we agree with that concept. why not how you get to something that you sign off on that by august 2nd either. i don't either. but i really believe we can get serious spending cuts out of these debt limit talk. i really do believe we can cut more than a dollar worth of spending for every dollar of mc. i know with can do it technically speaking. but i do believe that the political system can do that. we have the will to do that and we're pushing for that. everybody is talking about repatriation which also if you -- good idea. instead of every seven year, let's have it every day. here's the new york times, he says the last time we did this, the holiday, it benefited the 60% of bringing the money back went to just 15 of the largest united states multi-national companies. many of which laid off domestic workers, closed domestic plants and shifted even more of their profits and resources abroad in hopes of cashing this on the next repatriation holiday. so the new york times, they let this guy write the front page piece. and write in the body of the piece says that the reason they moved things offshore was to cash in on this next -- not that it's a 35% tax rate, not that it if we lowered to 25% that there would be no reason to do any of those things. and that's what you're going to get. you're not going to get anything until 2012. we have andy stern saying -- he's for repatriation. he is. i'm not going try to bother pronouncing this guy's name either. but the new york times, a lot of it went to shareholders. god bid that happens. we're looking up so much cash overseas. our tax system is uncompetitive. first of all, we have the second highest tax rate in the industrialized world. you can say ge and others, but there are lots of large corporations that pay these high effective tax rates. u.p.s. was 34%. i talked to jim mcnerney. their tax rate is extremely high. so when you talk american producers a whole lot more than our foreign competitors tax theirs, they win, we lose. it's a complicated tax code, 00. the idea that there is all these work arounds. corporations and individuals. that's what i'm trying to say. we've got washington sitting in there in washington picking winners and losers in the economy, whether it's the regulations, whether through favorable spending, or through tax code. i've been on ways and means committee for over a decade and what happens is our connected firms go and get their little carve out in the tax system which effectively operates as a barrier to entry defense over smaller would-be competitors. we don't want corporate welfare. we want to have good fundamental economic growth, free enterprise. that means we want firms and ideas and entrepreneurs to be succeeding based on achievement production, value, competition, not based on connections in 
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