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Real estate mogul Donald Trump said Monday that he would be willing to pay a higher tax rate but most oil companies would not because they are not patriotic.

"Warren Buffet made another splash with his op-ed in The New York Times, saying it's just not right that he, a billionaire, pays 17 percent in taxes when his secretary and receptionist pay more," ABC's George Stephanopoulos told Trump. "Isn't he right about that?"

"There's many different views on that," Trump replied. "And I can also tell you that a lot of people will go elsewhere to do business if you start taxing them."

"But 17 percent isn't much for a billionaire," Stephanopolous noted.

"But you're going to have a mass exodus of business out of this country when you start taxing too high," Trump explained. "But if you go back to certain companies, Exxon Mobil, the oil companies, for us to be subsidizing oil companies is absolutely insane."

"Well it sounds like this is where you part company with the tea party and many in the House. You would be willing to close those loopholes on the oil company as part of a deficit [reduction plan]," the ABC host remarked.

"Oh, absolutely. I think the oil companies -- and I'm a big tea party fan, and the tea party loves me and I get great polls in the tea party... I think when explained to the tea party, I can't imagine anybody's going to stick up for Exxon Mobil or some of these big oil companies that are making a fortune and paying relatively little in tax. And I think we should be taxing," Trump answered.

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Rep. Michele Bachmann was asked by Chris Wallace why all of the Republicans during the debate in Iowa were so completely unwilling to compromise that all of them would not even accept a ten to one deal on deficit cuts to tax increases. Rather than admit that Republicans are now so rigid on their stance of never, ever raising taxes after pledging their allegiance to Grover Norquist and that no sort of compromise will ever be acceptable to them, what was Bachmann's response? They all raised their hands because the cuts in the deal would have been "fake."

WALLACE: Let's go back to that moment in the debate, though, when you -- and I've got to say, all the other candidates on that stage said that you would walk away from a debt deal, here it is right here, $10 in real spending cuts, to $1 in revenue increases. 10-1. Even Reagan's top economic adviser, Marty Feldstein, said that is too hard-line, that that would be walking away from a huge conservative victory.

BACHMANN: Well, I think probably Reagan would be the best example, because Reagan was going to get $3 in spending cuts for every $1 in tax increases. It ended up being $3 in tax increases for every $1 in spending cuts. That's the way it works in D.C. The deal sounds so rosy in the very beginning, and usually the cuts are illusory, they are off into future years. And of course one Congress can't bind the next Congress, and a Congress lasts for two years. So we can't bind what future Congresses can do. We can beat our chests and be really proud and say, oh, we're going to cut trillions of dollars, but we can't guarantee what future Congresses will do. That's why no one would take that deal on the Fox stage of the debate, because we all know that they're fake cuts, essentially. They sound good. They're soundbites, but they are not real.

I am about reality. That's what I care about. This is not a joke. This is not just a political game. This is getting the country back on the right track. People really are suffering, all across this state I have seen it. People want jobs, they want job growth, and they want someone who has the backbone to do it. I do.

I guess by that measure, no one in Congress should ever vote on anything that can be overturned by a future Congress or those votes are meaningless. The truth of the matter is we've got one party that is so inflexible on tax increases that they don't care how many lives it destroys as long as we never raise taxes on their rich campaign contributors.

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Alex Seitz-Wald over at Think Progress seemed to think this exchange between Paul Ryan and Chris Wallace potentially signaled some shift by him with his rhetoric on whether he'd be open to revenue increases after we ended up getting our credit rating downgraded by S&P. I would beg to differ and think it just sounded like a lot of the same weasel words we've been hearing out of the lot of them when it comes to whether they'd actually ever support raising taxes on their rich campaign donors.

While he did not draw the hard line that we've been hearing out of him that any deal has to be "revenue neutral", so much of this just sounds like the same old same old with what they consider a revenue increase in the first place and with the demands that any deal had better include "entitlement reform", I find it hard to believe that what he said to Chris Wallace here represents any real shift from what we've been hearing from this guy for some time now.

And given his track record, does anyone actually believe that Ryan would ever support tax increases in any way, shape or form? And he never says he'll support raising taxes on anyone. What he said is this:

RYAN: So if you just raising revenues to chase ever higher spending that is not good policy. And I don't think that's a good agreement. If we are convincingly restructuring these entitlement programs and getting that spending line down to meet that revenue line, then can you have higher revenue growth through more economic growth and tax reform, yes -- the answer is yes.

"Higher revenue through more economic growth and tax reform" does not equal raising taxes on anyone. It equals their same double talk that if you lower rates for upper earners and corporations, you're going to get more tax revenues coming in, which is trickle-down economics nonsense that we've been hearing from this Ayn Rand fan for as long as he's been allowed an interview on television. And tax "reform" equals lowering rates while supposedly closing loopholes, tax loopholes that can just be put right back in place later. And tax loopholes that Republicans stubbornly refused to support from day one of these negotiations over raising the debt ceiling in the first place.

I don't think we heard any shift from Ryan here on his previous positions. It's just more weasel words and double-speak trying to con Americans into thinking that we should support more policies that make the income disparity in the United States worse and that do nothing to fix our problem with the deficit or actually raise tax revenues, unless of course those taxes are raised on the middle class, or what's left of it, and the poor, or taking it out of their hides with destroying what's left of the social safety nets that are currently protecting a good deal of our elderly and our sick living in abject poverty.

I'll be glad to eat my words later if Republicans do actually agree to tax increases as part of these negotiations over the coming months, but I'm not holding my breath for Ryan or whoever gets appointed to this new committee to do so. I think Think Progress gave him way too much credit for looking like he might actually be willing to bend from the rigid stance we've seen Republicans take ever since President Obama got elected and especially since they got control of the House.

Full transcript below the fold.

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