Obama victorious on tax cuts

>> get some rapid-fire response from our panel on these stories. is president obama a comeback kid after his big victory on the tax cuts ? conservatives think so. and claire mccaskill , senator from missouri, absolutely destroyed the republicans on the senate floor for mr. hypocrisy on earmarks and for playing games with the omnibus spending bill . with us tonight joe madison xm radio satellite talk show host and ernest istook former republican congressman and fellow at the heritage foundation . joe , look at you, look at ernie smiling tonight, he got that tax cut that he was looking for. so we're -- what about this, joe ? is this a good deal for the white house ? is this a good deal for the american people ? who are the winners and the losers?

>> i guess ernie should smile. he's part of that -- he's part of that 2% that now has -- you know, a gold nugget in their christmas sock. look, i think that the president did the solomon approach on this. you had those on the left that were very upset about this. those on the far right very upset. and he basically split this baby down the middle. we all get a little bit of something there. it's over now. what concerns me is what this republican congress is going to go after come january. and i guarantee you, they're going to go after social security , they're going to go after all kinds of entitlements that's been part of this makeup of the united states since the roosevelt era. this is going to be their game plan and i hope he uses this comeback to really fight and i hope those of us, particularly on our side of the media, are prepared to protect our quarterback, sort to speak. we've got to fight back. we can't leave him out there by himself.

>> what about that, ernest, what do you think?

>> i think that the president made a shrewd calcflation we'll help him platecally because he's going to be seen as compromising. he recognized there was a brief moment of opportunity. i wish had waited a couple of weeks because then we would have had the people that have the faith and trust of the american people , those elected in the last election cycle, who i think could have made a deal that would had been better for job growth especially if it had made the lower taxes permanent rather than temporary, just setting up a future battle, but again i think you know if you're talking about from politically, i think president obama made a shrewd calculation in moving at the time that he did. i thought that it was very interesting.

>> ernie , he said that it's not politics, though.

>> ernie just showed his hand. ernie just showed you exactly why they wanted to wait a couple of weeks.

>> sure you were a better deal for the country.

>> look, you want to make -- you really want to help job growth , you've got these multimillionaires and billionaires sitting on top of trillions of dollars. now is your turn or their turn to start spending money, manufacturing, creating jobs and then we'll all be happy, won't we?

>> if we could get i received the uncertainty. i've been talking about this for months.

>> the only certain thing is high unemployment and they have money.

>> ed and joe , businesses trying to make investments that make sense for five years out or even ten years out. not just within a two-year window. so you've got removed all of the uncertainty. you certainly have not removed all of the big regulations.

>> you mean to tell me that everything that this president's done, do you think -- you think there's still a lot of uncertainty? i mean, this president has set the table for a rebirth in the economy. you think that there's still more that he can do?

>> yeah, yes. if we would have said, look, we're going to take the current tax rates on income taxes , we're going to make them permanent, we should also be doing something about the corporate tax . japan has realized that they've got to reduce their taxes.

>> all part of the plan.

>> oh, corporations that aren't paying a dime in taxes. you've got corporations that aren't paying a dime.

>> and you've got corporations paying a bundle. you have both kinds of corporations, joe . and you've got the highest corporate tax rate in the world. that's nod good.

>> why don't you say to the american people what i just said, we've got corporations that aren't paying a dime and making billions of dollars? why don't you say to the american people .

>> if you want to close loopholes that's fine but don't say that therefore you cannot lower the overall corporate tax rate. you cannot bring in some the jobs if going elsewhere in the world instead.

>> gentlemen, let's go to the fight over earmarks. this is the gop gloating about them. here it is.

>> as the most junior member for those who are not understanding what just happened, did we just win? it seems that change has come to the senate tonight with the death of this $1.1 trillion plan.

>> this may be a seminal moment in the history -- in the recent history the you said senate, because for the first time since i've been here, we stood up and said, enough. stop.

>> now, these are the same people that had all kinds of pork that was stuffed in this thing. here's claire mccaskill responding to this on the floor last night as well.

>> what's offensive to me is that we've gotten into this bad habit of trying to score cheap political points. and for senators to get on this floor and say we won and you do do this kind of stuff. and the irony is guess who has earmarks in there? the minority leader. who just voted on a moratorium for earmarks ten minutes ago. did he pull his earmarks out? no. did he any of the republicans who had voted for a moratorium on earmarks did they pull their earmarksut before in bill came to the floor? we could have eliminated a few pages so you know i just don't think the righteous indignation works.

>> joe , what do you think?

>> bingo, she shot them right between the eyes. she didn't even blink. he got them. she got them. and then the other thing is, let's just speak plain english . if you took all of the earmarks and put them together, how much would that reduce the deficit, really? this is a strawman's issue and they know it. but she hit them right between the eyes and if you look up the word "hypocrite" in the dictionary, the minority leader's photograph ought to be there.

>> ernie , you have got the final word on this one. what do you snong well, thanks. first of all, both sides constantly talk in terms of winning and losing. that's no big deal . you want to talk about hypocrisy on spending, it's there. it's absolutely there. but if you don't get ahold of the things that ought to be easy to fix, you're never going to attack the big spending that's tougher to fix. so