Transcript: Boner on Laura Ingraham .... Delete if already posted

[Angry Dragon]

Posted on 07/11/2011 8:43:36 AM PDT by newzjunkey

Laura Ingraham: Speaker Boehner, great to talk to you.

Speaker Boehner: Laura, good to be with you.

L: Tim Geithner says there's no responsible leader who would allow this to happen but if we don't come to some deal then it could ver well happen, could it not?

B: Uh, it could happen, I just think it's time for us to get serious about our fiscal situation both the deficit and our long term debt. And I've made it clear all through this fight that we should not raise the debt limit without real spending cuts and reforms to restrain future spending and no debt limit increase unless the cuts are larger than the hike. I've also made it clear tax hikes have never had a place in this discussion and never will. The tax hikes will destroy jobs and hurt economic growth and if we don't have economic growth we'll never balance this budget. So what we really need out of this mess is to reform our entitlement programs and to reform the tax code. And I pressed the president to do both with us and he thought about it but ultimately he couldn't go there without tax hikes and secondly there was this giant gulf on the structural reforms to the entitlement programs that we really need to have. And because of those two factors there is no agreement.

Anyone that knows me and knows my record knows I'm not going to agree to a tax hike. So, in a nutshell, here's basically what happened. I've been pressing the president all year to go big and let's go do what we know has to be done. The White House said they'd be willing to look at reforms from all three major entitlement programs but in order to keep his party from abandoning him he had to have more revenues. So I told the White House that, listen, tax increases are off the table. I said if more revenues are what they have to have they ought to be looking at comprehensive tax reform instead. That's because comprehensive tax reform means broadening the base and lowering the rates and as Marco Rubio put last week, we don't need more taxes we need more tax payers, and I think broadening the base and lowering the rates will generate economic growth that means more revenue without tax hikes. Ultimately the White decided it just couldn't go there, couldn't agree to that vision of tax reform and that's when I decided on Saturday night to walk away from 'the big deal'. Now, the majority leader says the Biden group has identified spending cuts of around $2 trillion or more so, at this point, we're going to look at those cuts as a starting point. We need real reform, real cuts in spending, and we need real controls to make sure this doesn't happen again and whether it's spending caps, a balanced budget amendment, we've got to have real reforms in place to make sure once we clean up this mess it can't happen again.

L: And speaker Boehner, when you hear Democrats, and this goes from the President, all his surrogates go out and say look we need to spread the pain and sacrifice. People have to sacrifice. And they go down the road of obvious demonization of job creators in this country and it's being one for one reason and it's politics. They're trying to undermine you and your position and cast you as the protect or the fat cats and I'm sure you must've said something to the president about that and what was his response?

B: Well he just believes that there needs to be more revenue on the table. This isn't just about loopholes, this is about raising taxes in the middle of a recession and to tax the very people that we need to invest in our economy and to grow jobs. And I have been consistent about this but the president just continues to believe the rich aren't paying their fair share. And his description of the rich is any couple that makes $250,000 or more. Now if you're in the midwest that might be a reasonable number but if you're a firefighter and a teacher in New York City all of a sudden you're rich. If you've got some two-bit part in a B movie in hollywood all of a sudden you're rich. And I think we have a spending problem, not a revenue problem. We've made promises to people that our kids and grandkids can't afford. We need to deal with it now.

L: Even the Associated Press today says the president cloaks his proposals and his rhetoric in this, well, the rich need to pay their fair share and so forth but the major proposals under way—and a lot of folks don't know this—effect the small business owners and even potentially low and middle income families. You don't hear that from the president. Instead it's all about the wealthy, the rich, the jet owners and so forth and when the Associated Press say Obama and the Democrats skirt the issue on tax hikes, that's a fairly significant win in the public relations war which is part of this.

B: Well, you know, if the votes were here in congress to raise taxes, the Democrats over the last couple of years would've done it. How about even last December when they still had big majorities in the House and Senate after the election? They didn't have the votes to raise taxes and that's why the president came around and worked out an agreement with us to maintain the current rates. I made it clear to the president: there are no votes in the congress to raise taxes. Let's just forget it. He just won't go there.

L: Well the counter to this is the Republicans will come across as unserious and immature. It's either my way or the highway. That's how you see the spinmiesters already trying to cast this debate especially if it goes down to the wire to Aug 2nd. How do you respond to that? You guys are trying to protect these loopholes for all these Big Oil companies, that make billions in profits and why can't we take those off the table?

B: Well, the president is in reelection mode and as a result that's where a lot of this rhetoric comes from. I've told the president, and I've asked him, "Mr. President, let's forget about the next election. You forget about yours and I'll forget about mine and let's get serious about doing the right thing for the country." We know what the right thing is. We've got 10,000 baby boomers retiring every single day, this problem had gotten away from Washington, and the sooner we get our arms around it the better off the country will be. The best thing we can do is have real spending cuts, and have them enacted now so that we can provide some confidence to the job creators in America that we're deal with our short term and long term fiscal problems.

L: Speaker Boehner, is the president spending enough time on the economy, very briefly?

B: It doesn't appear so. I know he's trying to get this debt deal done but, let me tell you, at some point he's got to recognize that the economy is the number one issue in the minds of Americans and if we can instill some confidence in job creators we will, in fact, help created a better environment for job creators.

L: Speaker Boehner, hold firm, thank you so much for joining us.


Boner still pushing the same lies. Taxes need to be raised, the job creators have not spent any money for ten years, why would they start now??