This is a rush transcript from "The Five," July 15, 2011. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.
ERIC BOLLING, CO-HOST: So, did you hear? President Obama says you are OK with them raising your taxes.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: This is not an issue of salesmanship to the American people. The American people are sold.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
Now, I don't ever recall saying go ahead and raise my taxes, Mr. President.
Bob, Obama is the one who says he is -- what did he say? He said add extra hundreds of thousands of dollars. Raise his taxes. Don't raise our taxes.
BOB BECKEL, CO-HOST: Well, you and he are in the same income range. Look, what he was talking about was the American people are sold when the polls show that they say should you tax wealthy people to help bring the deficit down? And, overwhelmingly, the American people say yes. He was exactly right.
And what Obama is saying is "I make a lot of money. I should pay some of that money -- more money to help for the deficit."
(CROSSTALK)
BECKEL: The rich get richer and the poor get poorer in this country. The rich ought to pony up.
BOLLING: But, Andrea, what about the small business owner who says, you know, I may have a good year? What about a bad year? Should we take away if it's a good year?
ANDREA TANTAROS, CO-HOST: Yes, exactly. His plan, if he doesn't go along with Republicans, would absolutely cripple jobs and the economy because small businesses need lower tax rates to help create jobs.
Look, the only reason we are having this entire discussion right now and debate over the debt ceiling is because of Barack Obama. He spent $3.7 trillion in a short time he's been in office. His budget increased the deficit.
And look, when he did finally give us a budget, it was voted down by his own party.
KIMBERLY GUILFOYLE, CO-HOST: She's right about that. He's like a teenager with a checkbook. And he's like, hey, want stimulus? Anybody need some extra money? And he's just writing checks.
But how are we going to pay for all this? We have the debt that's increasing. Now, he wants to increase the debt ceiling without making any significant cuts. And he wants to try and pull, you know, a Bill Clinton. However, Bill Clinton was able to do it successfully with a rebounding economy.
GREG GUTFELD, CO-HOST: I like -- I like the speech for one thing. Do we have the quote? When he was talk about cutting domestic spending, he said, "If you are trying to get to $2.4 trillion without any revenue, then you are effectively gutting a whole bunch of domestic spending that is going to be burdensome and is not going to be something that I would support."
He finally got it. That's exactly what we want.
(CROSSTALK)
BECKEL: Can I ask my five friends here a question. Is there some reason that you feel it's imperative to protect millionaire and billionaire from increasing their taxes? When they had a -- wait a second. Shhhh, please?
(LAUGHTER)
BECKEL: When they have had tax cut after tax cut and you want to not raise taxes on corporate jets and you want to give the oil companies continuing tax breaks.
GUTFELD: Why feed into a failure? If the programs are failing, why do they have to be bigger? It makes no sense.
TANTAROS: Why scare seniors? You know, when he threatened those Social Security checks, that is elder abuse, Bob. It's absolutely disgusting.
(CROSSTALK)
TANTAROS: Threatened senior citizens. You seem to be defending the -- I'll stick up for the elders. How about that?
BOLLING: Bob, the top less than 2 percent pay 44 percent of all tax revenue collected.
BECKEL: They ought to pay 60 percent.
BOLLING: In the meantime, 42 percent of all Americans don't pay a penny in federal income tax.
Hold on, guys. Did anyone else think Obama's speech sounded a bit familiar today? Mitt Romney nailed it when he dubbed this Jimmy Carter's second term. And the president's speech did sound a bit like miserable President Jimmy Carter famous malaise speech delivered exactly 30 years ago today.
Take a listen.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JIMMY CARTER, FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT: For the first time in the history of our country, the majority of our people believe that the next five years will be worse than the past five years. The productivity of American workers is actually dropping. And the willingness of Americans to save for future has fallen below that of all other people in the Western world.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BOLLING: You want to talk about malaise? We're living in Malaise Town right now. Under Carter, unemployment was under 6 percent. Now it's a sky-high 9.2 percent.
And guess what? Meat, up 20 percent. Gasoline, 100 percent higher than the day Obama was sworn in to office. And your home prices have begun to drop like a rock again.
And who would have thought comparing Obama to Jimmy Carter would be an insult to Jimmy Carter?
TANTAROS: Jimmy Carter is somewhere having a huge sigh of relief, that everybody thought I was the worse president. Now, Barack Obama is taking the title.
Look, I think the difference is Barack Obama, Joe Biden, they go out and they try to sell us a picture of rosiness that just isn't true. The "recovery summer" -- everything that they've told us has not come true.
So, at least Carter was being somewhat honest. But I was much better.
(CROSSTALK)
GUTFELD: I was watching that -- I was watching that video and it brought back so many bad memories. I was like 15. I had acne. I had braces, oily hair. And then the he --
TANTAROS: What has changed?
GUTFELD: Oh, you're terrible!
Then he started talking about solar power. I was going, they were talking about that, it's still here. It still doesn't work. Nothing changed.
BECKEL: You guys are unbelievable.
TANTAROS: Solar power is the worst.
BECKEL: Because you use it to tan yourself. It's not used for that.
(LAUGHTER)
GUILFOYLE: I lived in a solar house and it was one cold shower after the next, Bob.
(CROSSTALK)
BECKEL: You know, I happen to be in the Oval Office the night the president gave the speech. And, you know, the next couple of days, the American people reacted very well. The problem was he went to Camp David and fired his entire Cabinet.
But, you make it all funny of Jimmy Carter. I'm proud to have served him. He's the only guy I know that can legitimately say that because of the work he's done, 5.5 million children around the world are not dead today.
BOLLING: But, yes, also, unemployment went up from, I don't know, 5.5 percent, up to 9 percent at one point in his administration.
BECKEL: And 10.5 percent under Ronald Reagan.
BOLLING: And inflation skyrocketed. Greg points out why, because of the energy crisis. He --
(CROSSTALK)
BECKEL: If you're having a bad day -- I mean, are you kidding me?
BOLLING: I'm having a great day.
BECKEL: Do you ever accept the fact that the American people in poll after poll do accept is he that inherited a difficult -- I'm not bashing Bush. But I'm saying, give him a little bit of a break.
(CROSSTALK)
BOLLING: Wait a minute, wait a minute. Bob, he inherited 7 percent unemployment. He's turned it to 9.2 percent. He inherited, one more, he inherited $1.83-gallon of gasoline and has turned that to almost $4 --
BECKEL: It wasn't his fault.
BOLLING: Well, who else fault is it?
(CROSSTALK)
BECKEL: I see. It might have nothing to do with the fact that the Mideast up. I mean, something like --
TANTAROS: If we would have done nothing, unemployment would have went to 8.8 percent. Doesn't it sound good, Bob?
BECKEL: If he would have done nothing, employment would be north of 15 percent.
GUTFELD: There's more subtle like similarity between Carter and Obama, and that they were the media choice for presidency. I remember when Carter was running and when Carter won, he was that a wonderful peanut farmer from Georgia -- this guy out of nowhere. Nobody knew anything about him other than he was charming and new. And it sounds really, really familiar.
And both -- and that was their flaw, is that the media didn't test them. They didn't put their feet to the fire. That's why --
BECKEL: Give Carter credit. He never raised taxes during his term. Ronald Reagan was -- he didn't.
BOLLING: He couldn't raise them any higher.
BECKEL: Ronald Reagan had the largest single tax increase in history, had the largest single tax increase in history.
BOLLING: Whoa, whoa, whoa!
BECKEL: That's exactly right.
BOLLING: You can't say that. You can't just go out there and say that.
(CROSSTALK)
BECKEL: But you can say the other stuff.
BOLLING: In the course of eight years he lowered taxes. You can't say at the outset he raised them. So they went up and then they fell. OK. OK. But taxes fell on the corporate level and personal level, fell in Ronald Reagan years.
BECKEL: Payroll tax was the largest tax increase in history.
GUTFELD: Can we just say that -- can we just say that it's a lot better now than the '70 s? Because the '70s suck. The fashions were terrible, the TV was bad.
BECKEL: The music was good. I was a disco champion of Staten Island. And I want to tell you --
GUILFOYLE: Disco champion?
GUTFELD: Do you still have the pants?
BECKEL: I do, and I have the boots. They look like Kimberly's shoes. But '70s weren't bad. They weren't bad.
GUTFELD: Too much easy listening rock.
BOLLING: Can we pull up the chart, the Gallup Poll that we've been talking about all week that Bob has been denying all week. We finally have a full screen on it, where Mr. Obama, polling against anyone, Romney, et cetera, et cetera -- he is ahead. But if he polls against the generic GOPer, look at that, it's widening and the generic GOPer, the wide the margin is widening. The generic GOPer beats Obama by 9 percentage point, Bob.
BECKEL: I want to see the generic GOPer. Have him announced for president and we'll see else because --
(CROSSTALK)
BECKEL: Wait a second. The other munchkins, we forget the poll with the munchkins who are running against him. Do we have that? Do we have that polls?
Of course, we don't. Of course, we don't.
The point is a generic Republican, whatever that's supposed to mean, beats him. But when you put him up against Mitt Romney who lost jobs in Massachusetts, and destroyed jobs, he beats everybody.
BOLLING: Bob, generic is the person who ends up being the candidate for GOP. We don't know who it is right now.
BECKEL: There's nobody generic like you. I will say that.
GUTFELD: But I recently heard the use of the word munchkin. Being a small person, I'm deeply hurt. We are called little people. I've had it.
(LAUGHTER)
TANTAROS: Let me just ask you, Bob, if the election were held today -- if the election were held today, would Barack Obama win?
BECKEL: It depends who is running.
BOLLING: There you go, you admit it. There it is.
BECKEL: No, it depends who is running. If he was running against --
(CROSSTALK)
BOLLING: Guys, little fact --
BECKEL: If he was running against Dorothy, he'd lose. But the rest of them --
(CROSSTALK)
BOLLING: Mr. Carter never uttered the word "malaise." That was the media --
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