House Majority Whip McCarthy: With Obama, it's either his way or no way

Obama's 'gauntlet' versus Rubio's GOP

House Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy responds to president State of the Union address and rising Republican Fla. senator's response

This is a rush transcript from "On the Record," February 12, 2013. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.

GRETA VAN SUSTEREN, FOX NEWS HOST: I'm here with Congressman Kevin McCarthy, the GOP Whip. And I'm being very practical. Is there anything that the president said tonight that you're thinking that's not going to happen.

REP. KEVIN MCCARTHY, HOUSE MAJORITY WHIP: There's quite a few things. He's put these big lofty goals. He has done this before in past speeches when he said he'll cut the deficit in half in his first term. He gives the lofty goals and never gives the details of the accountability to get them done. I mean, tax reform, yes, we want to do tax reform. But it's almost when you listen to what he says, it's his way or no way.

VAN SUSTEREN: How about he talked tonight about raising, let's say, for example, the minimum wage to $9 an hour, do you think that's going to happen.

MCCARTHY: I don't think that's going to happen, I don't think on either side of the aisle. We have an economy that's weak, and everything he talked about was taking more of it. When you take more out of it you provide less for those to actually give to the middle class to get higher up. It's better for people to keep more in their pockets and create more jobs.

Small business is the at lowest point in 17 years for starting new jobs, and if he raises the threshold that's higher for small businesses, $9 an hour, we go further down. And they create more jobs than anybody else in America, and that's the challenge that we have.

VAN SUSTEREN: Senator John McCain has tweeted he's disappointed he didn't speak about Syria tonight. He didn't spend a lot of time op international issues. Is that something you wanted to hear tonight?

MCCARTHY: You know what I really wanted to hear? I wanted to hear how we're both going to work together. What I wanted as kind of a first priority, the first priority of where we currently are today with the $16 trillion deficit, say a pox on both houses if you don't pass a budget. I want to see a budget passed and I want to see something that's balances.

And you've got a Senate where, how ironic, he's got the CEO of Apple sitting up with the first lady and the last time the Democrats in the Senate passed a budget, the iPad wasn't even introduced yet, and now they're on what, their third version, the mini iPad even. You can't get everything he wants to get done without first laying out a plan.

VAN SUSTEREN: The American people heard the president. They heard the response of Senator Marco Rubio and the tea party response we put on Gretawire.com from Senator Rand Paul and we've got the written copy. Go to Gretawire.com to hear it. He said "The president does a big "woe is me" over the $1.2 trillion sequester he signed into law and some Republicans are joining him. Few people understand that the sequester doesn't cut any spending. It just slows the rate of growth. So even with the sequester government will grow over $7 trillion over the next decade." Is Senator Rand Paul right?

MCCARTHY: Senator Rand Paul is right. What you're really asking is three cents out of the dollar to be cut, and this is what the president asked. Remember we went to the debt ceiling and he couldn't get anywhere this is one thing he asked. When he didn't want to do anything about it coming to the future and ignore it. Remember in his presidential campaign second debate said this would never happen. He's never done any action to try and cut somewhere else.

Even though the House, the Republicans led last term and passed a bill twice, it died in the Senate and they didn't take action. Now that it's coming to the deadline, he wants to ignore, that's kicking the can down the road. You can't do that. We spend more than we bring in. I mean, look, in the first two months of this new fiscal year, our revenue increased by 10 percent, an extra $30 billion, but our spending increased 16 percent, but than $87 billion.

VAN SUSTEREN: We have 30 seconds left. Anything he said that you just loved and you said yep, I've got to do that one?

MCCARTHY: I thought when he talked about men and women in our military, making sure they're able to do and be the very best, yes, we all agreed. I thought when he talked about looking for the future in investing and research, I'd like to invest in research further. I know that pays off. But you can't make investments if you can't plan where your money is going, and if you don't have a budget you can't do anything.

VAN SUSTEREN: Congressman, thank you very much. And I'm going to toss it back to you, Bret.