While President Obama is demanding tax rate hikes on small businesses, former Clinton White House Chief of Staff and Democrat Erskine Bowles  told CBS Face the Nation, "We have to cut spending."

Bowles, whose proposal to the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction is the basis for the latest Republican plan to avert the fiscal cliff, said the president's plan "won't solve the problem."

"Even if you raise the top rates back to the Clinton rates, that only creates about $400 billion over 10 years. That's $40 billion a year. We have a trillion dollar a year deficit," said Bowles. And the spending cuts offered by the president - which are dwarfed by the new 'stimulus' spending he proposes - are "not enough. We're going to have to do more."

Speaker John Boehner made a similar argument on Friday, saying, "even if the president got the tax rate hike that he wanted ... we would continue to see trillion dollar deficits for as far as the eye can see. Washington’s got a spending problem, not a revenue problem."

"We've got to have a bold decision in order to make sure we put our fiscal house in order," said Bowles. Unfortunately, the White House strategy appears to be to "slow-walk" us to the edge of the fiscal cliff.

The GOP proposal cuts spending, and protects middle class families and small businesses from tax rate hikes -- learn more about it here.