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VandeHei: Buffett Rule ‘Total Gimmickry’

MIKA BRZEZINSKI: Do you think the Buffett Rule is gimmickry?

JOE SCARBOROUGH: I do.

BRZEZINSKI: I don't.

JIM VANDEHEI: It's total gimmickry.

BRZEZINSKI: Oh, come on.

VANDEHEI: It's one percent of what you need to take care of the deficit. There's a big danger for President Obama in that they become so insanely political in an insanely political culture. Almost everything they do now is targeted at a very specific subset of voters that they want to win—everything’s going to be targeted at Hispanics and women. Watch every single day, you’re going to see some event, some message aimed directly at them—not about having a serious policy debate. He’s not offered tax reform when he could have offered tax reform; he didn’t offer budgets when he could have offered budgets. You might love the guy, and there’s many things that I get that people like about him as president, but in this season, he has made the decision to be extremely political, because they think it’s going to be a close election and that you can target these demographics. The idea that the Buffett Rule, that that is going to do anything to change the problems that the country has either with the tax code or the pile of debt—

BRZEZINSKI: They’re not—

DAN SENOR: No one expects it to be a growth strategy. So there’s no growth, it’s not going to put a dent in the debt or the deficit—it doesn’t even generate enough revenue to fund the programs the president wants. So it is a gimmick. It’s not a big idea; this president’s about big ideas—this is not a big idea.

Published under: Obama Campaign , Video