The Daily Rundown   |  February 19, 2013

The Gaggle: Debt debacle

The Gaggle discusses the Bowles Simpson plan and the debt debacle.

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This content comes from Closed Captioning that was broadcast along with this program.

>>> mike issues with our friends simpson and bowles . we're a fully transparent organization here. we will tell everybody, you can come into our country club here and find out what's going on.

>> wow.

>> robert, look, we do know some highlights of the simpson - bowles plan. what's fascinating to me is yes, they're coming off the lectern both sides. that sounds like what the president could support. than where congressional republicans are drawing the line now. my point is, will any republican sign onto this plan? there were some that wanted to sign onto bowles - simpson .

>> i think privately there are a couple that would. i think you'll have some moderates in the senate. i think mitch mcconnell is someone who would support quietly.

>> and maggie, i can hear the white house saying it behind the scenes now, the president can't support it. if he touches it, we don't want to ruin it, we want make a compromise.

>> lk at the immigration plan.

>> sure. guns wouldn't be anywhere without the president.

>> it becomes a very easy way to not expend too much capital. i do think that it's hard for me to see a lot of house members openly supporting this, and without this, i think it's hard for the president to.

>> a part of this plan has to do is raising eligibility ages on social security and medicare.

>> this plan has always been sort of this thing that everyone likes to talk about how awesome it is, how amazing these guys are.

>> everybody's for it, nobody supports it.

>> right. during the state of the union when the president sort of name-checked it, and a random group of people were clapping. it's a nice straw man for white house to have out there.

>> it called for this and that there was this whole, nobody if they looked at the details could find a way to support it.

>> and that becomes, as you say, this is everybody's favorite straw man. that becomes the way to dance around it.