Rep. Ryan talks to Wolf Blitzer about debt negotiations

Rep. Paul Ryan tells CNN’s Wolf Blitzer that he will vote for a debt ceiling deal even if it includes tax increases. A full transcript of The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer is posted on CNN.com

BLITZER: Because the president, his supporters, his advisers, they have repeatedly said and he’s suggested that that big deal, that $4 trillion deal he wanted, $4.5 trillion, and at least $3 trillion in spending cuts, maybe more, and then some tax revenues, not necessarily tax hikes, rates in the sense of raising the rate from 35 to 39.6 percent, the highest income bracket, but eliminating some of those loopholes, those subsidies, stuff like that.

Are you open to tax reform like that, by the way?

RYAN: Not only are we open to tax reform as you describe it, it’s in our budget. What we propose in our budget that passed the House is, get rid of these loopholes in exchange for lowered rates.

Look, General Electric made a lot of money, didn’t pay any taxes. UPS, another big company, paid a 34 percent tax rate, while their competitor, DHL, paid a 24 percent tax rate.

So, we’ve got a problem here. And what we want to do is get rid of these loopholes, all of these loopholes, in exchange for lowering everybody’s and every business’ tax rates to make us more globally competitive. But that is not what we saw coming together with this big deal.

And it wasn’t a 3-1, by the way. If you run the numbers the honest way, we weren’t looking at $3 of spending cuts for $1 of taxes. It was far different than that.

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