Republicans on the fiscal cliff

>>> well, it didn't take long for republicans to reject the president's proposed solution to the fiscal cliff crisis. now harry reid says it's the republicans turn to put out their own plan. with me now tennessee republican congresswoman diane black who is a member of both the budget and ways and means committees. congresswoman, thank you for joining me. we had some reporting earlier that said don't expect any public counter prproposal from republicans. can i ask you why not?

>> well, i think, chris, that you can just look at what we did before the election. actually the medicare is what we put the plan out for and we also have a plan out there to avert the fiscal cliff and sequestration. our plans are already there. and we're just waiting for the president to come out with a plan. everything we're hearing is so one-sided. it's all about taxes and now he's telling us he wants to spend $1.6 trillion more than what he had in his budget plans before.

>> i want to play something, tom cole , a colleague was yours had to say on this show yesterday. why he thinks the republicans should make a deal.

>> if we can give the american people an early christmas present, if they can list en to the debate instead of be worried that their own taxes will go up, i think that strengthens our hand. our leverage is not tax rates . that's the democrats' leverage. our leverage, in my view, are spending cuts. the democrats don't want any domestic spending cuts. they're going to happen if there's not a deal. he doesn't want any more defense cuts either.

>> by way of context, house speaker john boehner came out, has come out and said, look, we are not in support of what tom cole is saying. tell me why the republican house conference doesn't think that's a smart strategy?

>> first of all, great respect for representative cole. he is a very fine man and he is a very good thinker as well, but i don't agree with him either on this one. we know that the proposal by the president is going to hit 1 million small business owners. ernst and young has told us 700,000 jobs because of that. that doesn't help the middle class at all. and this is very important we do protect the middle class and this is not the way to do that. stop just talk iing about taxes only. here's the thing. if you just look at what the president wants to do by raising taxes on those small business owners, about a million of them, we'll only bring in eight days of revenue to send us to fund the federal government . what about the other 350 plus days? it makes it sound like the panacea is only on one side. we need to have tax reform . we need to bring tax reform , to cut taxes and we need to reform our debt drivers which are social security and medicare.

>> i want to ask you about one other thing, it's gotten a lot of attention earlier this week. house republicans named their committee chairman for a wide variety of communities. all 19 were male. now you know as well as i do that republicans in the 2012 election struggled among women losing that vote and losing particularly among hispanic women badly. is this -- we're showing all their faces on screen. is this a problem in your mind for the republican party ? do you need more female voices in positions of leadership within the congress?

>> well, here is the position of lead leadership that is not talked about on the other side. we elected our leadership and at the head of our conference is kathy rogers. our vice chair is lynn jenkins and our secretary is virginia fox . so we have three women in the top leadership positions of our conference and yet that's not talked about on the other side.

>> well, thanks for making the point, congresswoman diane black of tennessee. i appreciate your time.

>> thank you, chris. it's good to be with you.