Rep. Lankford 'not surprised' majority of Americans would raise taxes on upper bracket

According to a brand new NBC/WSJ poll, three-quarters of Americans would accept tax increases on those making more than $250,000 as a part of a deal to avoid the fiscal cliff. When the figures are broken down by political party, 61% of Republicans say they would agree with a tax hike of that nature.

Republican Policy Committee Chairman Rep. James Lankford joins Starting Point this morning to respond to this recent polling.

"It doesn't surprise me that the majority of Americans would say raise taxes but do that on someone else," Lankford says.

The Oklahoma Republican also discusses the various plans being presented by both sides of the negotiating table and whether or not President Obama has a "mandate" to raise taxes.

"In their last proposal the president put out was raise $80 billion a year in additional taxes and then it was also give us unlimited authority to continue to raise the debt ceiling and take sequestration cuts and postpone it another year," Lankford explains. "We're just saying that's not serious; we've got to deal with it right now. The crisis is real, but it's real not just in fiscal cliff. It's real in the amount of debt that we're increasing every single day, so let's deal with the real issue."