Rep. Speier: 'Raising the retirement age is just stupid'

>> ruth, chris, stand by. i want to bring in congresswoman jackie spirit, democrat from my hometown. good morning to you.

>> good morning, richard.

>> let's talk about both sides. this is from our poll. 70% of democrats and 59% of republicans want you to compromise to make a deal. are you willing to compromise, despite what ruth was just saying that we could just go over that cliff?

>> you bet i'm willing to compromise. we have an absolute responsibility to the american people and, frankly, to the globe. because this is going to be a huge crisis economically for the world if we go over this fiscal cliff. you know, it was ben bernanke who first coined the term. and he was talking about the economy going over the cliff if we did not act appropriately. so we absolutely have to do the right thing here. now, having said that, to juxtapose medicare and social security , which are programs in which people pay into all their lives, as being the area that we are going to cut, is not where i believe the cut should be should be takes place.

>> representative, from that note, according to politico, the article we were talking about earlier, john boehner is able to move on with revenue for the cuts if john boehner says okay to a deal, will you extend the tax hikes for the rich to raise the issues on medicare ?

>> that's one area that doesn't make any sense. why should we do something that's stupid? raising the retirement age from 65 to 67, actually, only nets $2 billion. and the other costs associated with it is, maybe it's closer to $5 billion. but the other costs associated with it, in emergency room its terms of having to subsidize medicare in the states takes us to $11 billion in costs so that doesn't make any sense. we can look at other ways of making medicare work smartly. and one of the things we have 0 do it get rid of the fee for service concept. fee for service is so old school. 80% of californians are in a managed care system.

>> representative, aside from that, what else would you be willing to put on the table then that republicans are asking for right now?

>> well, i think we should look at the entire federal budget and look at ways in which we can cut areas of discretionary spending. i mean, no one's talking about the fence. and yet, that is a plump budget. i mean, we just found out from the air force that they scuttled one of their programs because it was not going to work. and it was already a billion dollars that we had spent on a computer system . and so there's lots of areas that we can look at. and i'm willing to do that.

>> i want to look at another poll number that came up from nbc/" wall street journal ," it shows that 56%, if we go over the cliff, will blame both democrats and republicans equally. when you look at those numbers here right now, what would you say to a constituent who calls you and asks why you can't work together right now? when you see some of these realities here from our poll.

>> well, you're right, i think in the end, if we don't fix this, that we're all going to be nailed. and i think we come here with the responsibility to find ways to compromise. and there are ways to compromise. within the medicare system, without doing stupid things. and i think raising retirement age is just stupid.

>> all right, thank you so much, congresswoman jackie speier of