Norah O'Donnell asks WH: What happened to the tax revenues
At the daily White House briefing Monday, CBS News White House correspondent Norah O'Donnell asked Press Secretary Jay Carney what President Obama and the Democratic leadership got out of the debt deal, especially in light of the president's call for "shared sacrifice."
Watch the video at left. The transcript of the O'Donnell/Carney exchange is below:
O'DONNELL: You talk about two weeks ago. Two weeks ago the president talked a lot about shared sacrifice. He talked about ending subsidies for oil companies. He talked about ending tax breaks for corporate jet owners. He talked about that this was a very fair deal, where he was offering 3-to-1 spending cuts (inaudible) tax revenues. Where are the tax revenues?
CARNEY: Well, Norah, I think we just addressed this, but I'll be happy to do it again. We did not get the grand bargain up front. And we all know why, OK? There were, as the speaker himself said, $800 billion on the table in revenue as part of a grand bargain. There were tough choices made by both sides in that potential agreement that was not reached. And we did not get that done. The speaker decided he...
(CROSSTALK)
O'DONNELL : ...but you have Democrats saying he gave them everything they wanted and we got nothing.
CARNEY: Norah, I feel like I've taken this question two or three times already and I've been very clear about how that's not the case, and, in fact, we had -- we've got significant achievements.
Let's step back also. The president of the United States believes that deficit reduction is important. It is a false set-up to suggest that somehow a dollar in deficit reduction is a loss, it is a positive thing...
(CROSSTALK)
Well he does, and that's why he fully expects that the joint committee will include tax revenue as part of its consideration and its product. But as you know throughout this process, there were cuts identified through the VP-led process in domestic spending, and also in the vice, in the Presidential-led process with the Speaker of the House. And you see that embodied in the first tranche of spending cuts that are part of this deal. That is not a negative, that is a positive. As the President made clear, progressives need to understand and we think most obviously to do that deficit reduction is essential done in the right way because we need to get our fiscal house in order in order to ensure that we can do the things that we need to do, to grow the economy, make the key investments we need to make.
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