"Becerra: Well, Tavis, remember there is a guillotine waiting for us if we don’t get this done. If the 12 members don’t come up with something that Congress can support and the president can sign, then the guillotine makes $1.5 trillion of automatic cuts. You can’t decide, oh, I want this to be cut and this not to be cut – comes down.
Secondly, I think more importantly, the public has finally said what you’ve just said. We just elected you to do a job. If you’re not going to do it, then why are you there? It’s time for us, whether you’re a D or an R, to prove that we can get it done. That does require – it says Ds and Rs. As I said, to not come to the table to negotiate, saying, “You can’t touch this” or “You can’t touch that.”
I have to be ready to say, even though I don’t believe this, that Social Security has to be on the table. Social Security has never contributed one single penny to these deficits or the national debt. Some people want to cut Social Security.
I’ll say all right, let’s put it on the table. I hope that I can prevail by defending it on the merits, but if we can walk in and say, “That’s off the table,” then all of us are going to walk in saying, “That’s off the table,” and then we’ll never get it done."
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/tavissmiley/interviews/rep-xavier-becerra/?show=8837Thanks for the link.
That's a bunch of BS.