The plan also includes a trillion dollars worth of cuts now and then a second round of deficit reduction to be decided upon by a “super committee,” and this could include both increased revenues and spending cuts. If the committee can’t agree, it would trigger across the board cuts in all (most?) government programs.

Host David Gregory says he has spoken to “top figures on Wall Street” who say this is a “code red day, all hands on deck” preparing for a market shock as early as tomorrow.

Plouffe says that sometime soon, the Treasury Department will lay out exactly what will happen in case of default, specifically who will and will not be paid with the remaining money in US accounts.

Plouffe repeated the White House position that the 14th amendment is not an option for solving this crisis.

Gregory asks Plouffe if Washington’s failure to lead opens the door to a serious third party movement. Plouffe dances in his answer.

Next up were Senators Jim Thune (R-SD) and Claire McCaskill (D-MO). Thune says he wants a plan with no tax increases, spending cuts at least equal to the amount by which the debt ceiling is raised, and a path to entitlement reforms. He says in the current plan being discussed, the “super committee” could include revenue increases, but he hopes that if they do, it will be about reform which broadens the tax base and lowers tax rates.

McCaskill says, “Republicans have voted to keep giving taxpayer checks to Big Oil while voting to convert the Medicare system to vouchers. This does not compute for us.”

Thune likes the across-the-board enforcement option. McCaskill is in favor of Medicare reform which might mean that we “stop buying Warren Buffet his prescription drugs,” but stops short of turning the system into a voucher program.

In the roundtable, CNBC’s Jim Kramer says the range of concern on Wall Street about what US default would mean is staggering. We could easily see a 2 to 3% drop in the markets, maybe more, if nothing is done. He later adds that we are looking at a new recession, this time caused by government.

NBC’s Tom Brokaw adds that a “political default” is already in place. The people now have no confidence in the system. Brokaw says Gov. John Kasich (R-OH) told him the next step in this process should be real reform, not just slashing of spending. He says we mismanaged the growth of government, let’s not mismanage the shrinking as well.

Rep. Raul Labrador (R-ID) says Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has not been telling the truth about a specific compromise plan discussed last week. Labrador’s focus on the day to day details of these politics is disturbing at this point of the crisis.

A little later, former Gov. Jennifer Granholm (D-MI) makes a point about real economic growth coming from improving the business climate. You might think a fiscal conservative like Rep. Labrador would applaud this. But instead he comes back with a set of facts he brought with him about how unemployment soared during Granholm’s time in office. This was a very odd exchange. What was Labrador’s end game?

Throughout the program, Rep. Labrador showed a tendency to take small differences and turn them into ideological swords. He seemed to have no sense of the gravity of the current situation. He was like a man in a burning building complaining that the chairs were uncomfortable.

Brokaw may have been reacting to this when he pointed out that there are no political winners in this crisis. Everyone comes out looking like a loser.

Later, however, Brokaw said the tea party people did what Americans have done throughout history. They got angry, they got organized, they got people elected, and they brought about change. He said, that path is still open to anyone who doesn’t like these changes.

Today’s Meet The Press transcript will be here.

Also follow the show on the MTP Facebook page, track Twitter feeds from host David Gregory, Meet The Press, and Executive Producer Betsy Fischer, watch the midweek PressPass interview, and don’t forget Gregory’s blog.

And Geithner says we can do these things in parallel. He emphasized that there seems to be a lot of agreement around the goal of cutting 4 trillion over some time from the deficit. So this means we are going in he right direction.

Host David Gregory asked if President Obama has “poisoned the well” for potential compromise by ruling out any tax cuts. Geithner repeated that both sides seem to have the right goals and now we need to agree on a framework which will get us there.

On the Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) plan for Medicare, Geithner doesn’t like it. He says the Obama Administration wants to reform Medicare spending, but not cut the guarantee of coverage.

When asked if he would stay on the job in a second administration, he replied that he was “not going to make news on that today.”

In the roundtable, tea party leader Senator Mike Lee (R-UT) says he won’t vote to increase the debt ceiling until he gets the deal he wants. Alan Greenspan asks, “Why do we have a debt ceiling anyway?” But the question is academic at this point.

Former Governor Jennifer Granholm (D-MI) echoed Geithner’s comment that we are already starting to see the outlines of an ultimate deal.

Tavis Smiley reminds us that budgets are moral documents. He says that he doesn’t understand how every debate in this country on money begins and ends with how we can further reward the rich and more punish the poor.

Greenspan made news when he said that the crisis is so imminent that we have to allow the Bush era tax cuts to expire and get the rest of the money from serious spending cuts. This would put the tax rates back to where they were during the Clinton Administration, he says.

On the 2012 presidential race, Jon Meacham says Donald Trump represents a “populist outbreak.” Smiley says, “Trump is playing us.”

Senator Lee says Mitt Romney is the GOP frontrunner. Granholm says Romney lacks a core, and this is one reason “Trump catches on with a certain segment.”

After a commercial break, Meet The Press experimented with a new segment they are calling “Trends and Takeaways” focusing on news made right during that morning’s broadcast. I have thought about such an approach in the past, and I am glad they are giving it a try. Gregory first mentioned an Associated Press story which highlighted Secretary Geithner’s comments that the Republican leadership knows the debt ceiling has to be raised.

The segment also highlighted Tweets calling attention to “lots of dysfunction” in government and Greenspan’s comments saying the Bush era tax cuts should be ended.

I like the self-reflective potential for this segment. And it acknowledges the reality that the Sunday news cycle is often driven by what happens on Meet The Press… so why not close the loop and be the first to comment on those headlines? I think they could be a little more aggressive about promoting the Twitter hash tag at the top of the show. And then do a more thorough analysis and distillation of the Twitter comments generated during the first half of the show. But overall this is a move in the right direction.

Today’s Meet The Press transcript will be here.

Also follow the show on the MTP Facebook page, track Twitter feeds from host David Gregory, Meet The Press, and Executive Producer Betsy Fischer, watch the midweek PressPass interview, and don’t forget Gregory’s blog.

Host David Gregory says governments in the region must see us as inconsistent in our approaches to these protest movements. Rice disagrees.

Gregory asked about the investigation into attacks on CBS News’ Lara Logan in Cairo. Rice says we are pushing the new Egyptian government for answers, but nothing yet.

Gregory eventually asked Rice about the news story which has truly occupied most of her time over the last week: the US decision to veto a UN Security Council resolution condemning Israel for building more settlements in disputed territory. Remember that the US is one of only five countries in the world with the right to veto any action in the UN Security Council, but the Obama Administration has not used that power until this week. This is one of those rare occasions when the foreign policy priorities of an Administration become very real and tangible. It deserved more discussion.

Next up were Senators Dick Durbin (D-IL) and Lindsay Graham (R-SC). On the question of consistency in US approaches to Middle East protests, Graham says we should be encouraging old friends in the region to do better and working to replace old enemies.

On the budget, Gregory pointed out that the President has now submitted a budget proposal for next year, but Congress spent all week arguing about this year’s budget. Both sides say they don’t want a government shutdown to be a consequence of this debate. But it seems to be more and more inevitable. They engaged in a long discussion about the budget with no new ground covered.

On the battle in Wisconsin, Graham said the President should be more focused on DC. But both Durbin and Graham did a good job of separating out the Wisconsin budget woes from the debate over whether or not workers should have collective bargaining rights. The workers seem to have given in to the Governor’s budget requests, but the collective bargaining issue is a political matter which should be solved outside of the budget debate.

In the roundtable discussion, Gregory showed a quote from the the New York Times which said Wisconsin looked more like the Mid East than the Midwest this week. The opening discussion here was also about separating the politics of collective bargaining from the budget battle.

CNBC’s Rick Santelli was a member of the roundtable today, but I am not sure he adds anything constructive to the dialogue. In his first remarks he actually injected 9/11 into the collective bargaining discussion. Is this really the direction Meet The Press producers want to go?

The roundtable also spent quite a while chewing over the “leadership” issue on the budget process. This was more than a little tedious.

Former Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm said the potential government shut down is a lose-lose proposition for both sides. She said that the public will dislike everyone if they allow this to happen.

The obligatory discussion of 2012 presidential politics started with a New Hampshire poll showing Mitt Romney with a large lead over all rivals for the GOP nomination. But no one in the roundtable had any predictions to make or original to say.

The broadcast closed with a tribute to former Meet The Press moderator Bill Monroe who died earlier this week.

Today’s Meet The Press transcript will be here.