‘If we can shrink it, it will stop growing’: Americans talk debt, deficit

The mission of America speaks is to bring the real Voice of America to you, the viewer about the issues that really matter. But today, we turn the tables of it, bringing the issues that really matter to you, the American people this week that focuses on the federal debt and the consequences to the economy and the country. It’s a discussion so important that I’ve enlisted one of America’s most distinguished nonpartisan budget experts, former Comptroller General David Walker, to lend his expertise and his voice to the public debate. So get ready to listen and learn. It’s a conversation 40 years in the making, and you can only hear it right here. I’m sorry, their news? Was the debt mean to you? The debt is not an issue until it becomes an issue, then it becomes an overwhelming issue. And why do you say that? Because as long as we keep funding it, it’s no big deal. Once it hits us, and forces us to fundamentally stop being able to borrow, it will be toxic and catastrophic. What does that mean to you? So honestly, just a tool used by whichever political parties to hammer the other? Because the reality is, neither side really cares about bringing it down.
I mean, 60 to 70% of our annual revenue, go credit payments. That’s what it means. Are you afraid of it? Yes. Yes. Who’s afraid of it? Raise your hands. Okay, good. What are you afraid of?
Anybody? I’m more afraid. I’m more afraid of my kids, you know, and their kids, you know, somebody’s got to pay up. You know, with this, the way I look at it, what are you afraid of? Exactly. It’s generational. This is not going to be solved. In anyone’s lifetime in this room. Unless we really get serious. Keep going. What are you afraid of? Not being able to fund the space program? That’s your number one issue? No, but it’s a symbol. You can’t fund progressive or research or things like that, because you’re too busy paying credit paying interest payments, you could have named schools, you could have named the military couldn’t name health, you chose the space program, progress, what do you must have,
including things like social security and other other programs that are really essential for everyone? Couple more. Who else? What are you afraid of? Also, eventually, I think, eventually, the US won’t be the dollar for like oil and other resources like that. And once it’s no longer used to feed resources, then the backing the dollar is minimal, minimal, meaningless, but a lot less meaningful. Couple of you on this couch, what are you afraid of security benefits and inflation. Everything’s going like housing, everything is just going up. And it’s affecting everything. We’re trying to buy a house now. And it’s like insane.
I’m more concerned with the size of government than debt globe. Because debt is a problem, the size, the government’s like fire, the bigger gets, it creates its own weather, and it keeps causing it to grow. If we can shrink it, it will stop growing. Now, I know that I always be talking about my girlfriends and stuff about how much money we have given to like foreign countries pouring like, it’s a noun, but like we, we have this big
homeless crisis going on? And it’s like, why is it that we is giving so much to them? What is it that they want from them? I would say what is it that my state wants from them? And I just feel like we just have to pay for it at bus. I’m very concerned about my son. I’m always thinking about his future all the time. And I’m just wondering how the way his future is going to be, as he grow up as a young man, as a young black guy, somebody else? Why do you think this problem still exists? Why don’t they fix it? I feel like with the deficit, you pretty much have two solutions, cut programs or increased taxes. Cutting increasing taxes is politically unpopular and cutting entitlement programs. And anything that’s high cost is equally unpopular, because people don’t want to get rid of those things.
I agree with that. Yes. Keep going. Actually, let’s do it. The sewer vote. If you had to choose and you only get to choose one or the other, you can’t do both? Because that’s what everyone always says.
Should the focus be on raising taxes or cutting programs?
Raise your hands if it should be on raising taxes
to 467 cutting programs, the majority here.
Couple more of you. Do you think that we’re going to be able to solve this, or is it going to continue to get worse?
Worse is that’s not okay. Why worse? I think we are a country that continues to kick cans down the road. I see it every day happening and I’m also from Chicago. I’m proud of it as well, but I see the can being kicked down there. I’m moving
From.
Yeah, so I think it’s like kick the can down the road. And so we can continue to put band aids on things that really need to be solved. And we just don’t have good solutions for certain things. Now we’re gonna get something really special. Normally, I just have conversations, and you debate about it, you agree to disagree and the conversation is over. For the next 30 or 40 minutes, you’re going to get educated on this. We’re going to start with the Comptroller General of the United States of America. Dave Walker has been working on this effort for years now. He’s going to give you some some it’s going to run the show give you some information, you’re going to hear from the former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, who spoke about our debt being the greatest national security threat to America, not China, not Russia, not terrorism, but a national debt. And I’m going to show you some slides and some, some discussion points. I’m gonna turn it over to you. Alright. Thank you, Frank, very much. Thanks, all of you for coming. I appreciate it very much. Let me tell you a little bit about my background so you can decide whether you want to listen to me and what and how seriously, you ought to take it. I’m Dave Walker. I’m in the truth, transparency and transformation business. I’m a certified public accountant by training, I ran a worldwide line of business for the largest accounting consulting firm in the world. I’m a Reagan presidential appointee of bush 41 presidential appointee, a Clinton presidential appointee. And I’ve had positions in every administration, but one since 1980. And I was offered one in that one. I have run three federal agencies to in the executive branch dealing with pensions and health care. One of the legislative branch the Government Accountability Office, where I was comptroller Jolyon states and English. That’s Auditor General Chief accountability officer, the United States, CEO of the US Government Accountability Office. I’ve been a trustee of social security medicare, professor at the Naval Academy. Sorry, Frank. We’re good friends. You know, he’s West Point on navy. So that’s why we were all together except one day a year. But and then, you know, more importantly, I’m a husband, a father, and a grandfather. And why am I fighting for this, which I have been for 30 years. Because I love my country. I love my kids. And I love my grandkids. I want to give you some facts. Everybody’s entitled to an opinion. But not everybody’s entitled their own facts. And the problem is, is you have too many politicians that are myopic, short sighted, look at one issue at a time without understanding the interconnectivity, the domino effect and self interest they want to get reelected. You know, we now have politicians that are career politicians, that was never intended, the founders didn’t intend that. But that’s what we have. When I think the most important metric, I think there there are three important metrics, debt as a percentage of the economy.
All right, interest as a percentage of the budget, and mandatory spending as a percentage of spending, those are the three words. But I think the most important one is debt as a percentage of the budget. And most other countries look at that, alright, the relative amount of debt that you have as compared to your your budget. Now, there’s two things, you know, you have certain called liabilities. And the biggest liability that the federal government has is, is unfunded civilian and military pensions and retiree health care. It’s about $14 trillion. Okay.
But we have a lot of things that aren’t deemed to be liabilities, but they’re really huge obligations, like the difference between what we’ve promised for Social Security and Medicare, and the amount of revenues that we have dedicated play that, to do that, you know, that’s about 75 trillion. And when you hear the 34 trillion and debt 34.2 Right now, that’s the tip of the iceberg. And as you know, for icebergs, most of the ice is below the water. That’s what sinks the USS United States is what’s below the water. All right? And if you look at what’s above the water, which is the 34 trillion in debt, and if you consider what’s under the water,
it’s over 120 trillion. So the real number is 120 trillion, not what the politicians want to tell you, which is they try to lowball next, please, we can’t grow our way out of this problem. The math doesn’t come close to working, we’re gonna have to make tough choices on spending, including mandatory spending and discretionary spending, and we’re gonna have to make tough choices on taxes. Yeah, we want to grow the economy, and there are things that we can do to improve that. But you can’t get there. You just can’t get there. You know, the new no four letter word and fiscal policy is math. Next, now, hold on one second. Yes. So I’m looking at this. Yes, I saw this before. Now you’re explaining it.
And where are we going? Yeah.
So the new four letter word,
because this is, yeah, that’s what it is. They’re gonna have to edit this because my network will not use that language. But this is show yeah.
How are we allowing this to occur?
Because, okay, a, we’ve got dysfunction in Washington, everybody, everybody wants something for nothing. Everybody wants to keep taxes as low as possible. People don’t want to make tough choices until they’re forced to make tough choices. Let’s think about remember, some of you are old enough to know that a 1983 reform so security, you know, why will reform so security 1983 Because the trust fund, and I call it the trust the government fund, the Trust Fund, and by the way, I was a trustee associated Medicare for five years, the Trust Fund was going to go to zero within months. And what happens if it goes to zero 10s of millions of Americans would have their benefits cut immediately.
And that’s not acceptable, you know, from an equity and political stamp the end. And the other reason is,
we don’t have a constitutional requirement for fiscal responsibility. 49 of 50 states have constitutional provisions that bind their legislators to keep for mortgaging the future. We don’t, and in my opinion, is one of the things I’m fighting for. We need one that focuses on debt to GDP, not balancing the budget, per se. But we got to get debt to GDP to a reasonable unsustainable level, because that’s the only thing that will bind current and future Congress is the debt ceiling. Bad joke? What’s it done? All right, the other things to constrain spending or whatever, they haven’t stood the test of time. And so the only thing that can bind current and future congresses is a constitution. I’m gonna ask one more time. Sure. Because I know it’s our fault. All of us in this room. I know it’s their fault, roughly half a mile from here. How could we let ourselves get into this situation when we’re not doing anything about it? And they’re not doing anything about it? Because of something that was talked about before, okay. They’re focused on the next election, not the next generation, what are principles and values that will bring people together, rather than divide them apart? Because in the end, you have to make tough choices. You have to make tough choices, but you want it to be based on a goal. And you want it to be based upon principles and values that people feel comfortable with. And these were the principles and values number one pro growth, why pro growth, because if you grow the denominator faster than the numerator, you’re making progress, even if the numerator is going up on debt to GDP. All right, so you want to pro growth policy. Secondly, socially equitable, we need a solvent sustainable, secure social safety net for people who are truly in need. We need that. Okay. Now, frankly, the government is over promised, it’s over subsidized, but we need that. Okay. And that I think, brought great. Thirdly, culturally acceptable, we’re not a socialist nation, at least yet. Okay. And there’s a limit as to how much you can and should tax and still have economic growth. And still, you know,
if you will, fourthly, mathematical integrity, don’t have two sets of books don’t don’t have unrealistic assumptions. Make sure that you know, the math works. And then we’re not playing games
fifthly politically feasible. You need to pass the Senate.
You need to have 60 votes apartment, you need to have 60 votes in the Senate, unless it’s budget reconciliation, you got to pass the House and you got to get the signature of the president. A lot of people can have ideas. But if you don’t get that, you know, you’re going nowhere, right? So and the margins are close, and every election is about who’s going to control. And then the last issue isn’t it may sound redundant, but it’s really not meaningful bipartisan support, you can’t just do a cram down. One party can’t say this is what the answer is. And I don’t care what the other side says. Why? Because the American people won’t view it as being fair. And because the margins are so closely, it won’t be sustainable. If one party doesn’t cram down, no matter which party is the next time the other party is going to be in control, they’re going to do a cram down, and then we’re the ones who are going to pay the price. Okay. Who feels that they understand the budgetary process and the reasons for the debt? Well enough to take action? Raise your hands.
Okay, only five of you. What’s still missing?
Processes not transparent in the politicians of both sides law. What’s missing?
Action items that I personally can do. What’s missing?
I’m not a politician. So I can say this. I don’t think it’s just Congress’s fault. I think it’s also voters fault in general and
Um, because, yeah, they’re very short term term mind the next election, but voters also allowed to happen. And they punish people who make a bed. Hard choices, who speak hard truths. So yeah, Congress, Congress, especially it’s incredibly dysfunctional. But I think voters also allow it to happen. I think, you know, the problem is, is, you know, this information, it’s all out there. It’s in the CBO reports, it’s in
Cato Institute studies, it’s in RAND Corporation studies. The problem is, how do you get people to care? I mean, how many people after a minute started to turn this guy out, or started to think about something else? In the sense, like, this message isn’t sexy. And when you have competing, you know, 24 hour news cycles, you know, trying to care about, you know, everything from Confederate flags to Taylor Swift at the Super Bowl, how are you going to get Americans to really pay attention to a problem like this? Yeah. And I think you have to keep in mind
to become a superpower, the leading indicator on the way up. And the leading indicator on the way down, is economic power.
And all through history, whether it’s wrong, whether it’s UK, whatever, that’s the message. If you can’t put your finances in order, you will not maintain your status as an economic power, that will you will lose your diplomatic influence, you will lose your military capabilities. And you will ultimately have domestic tranquility problems. The longer we wait to solve this problem, the higher the risk, because of the miracle of compounding. When you make tough choices sooner rather than later, it works for you. When you kick the can down the road, it works against you. And that’s where we are, what are we going to do to control the just the absolute nonsense that the government does? I’ll give you an example. I’m in healthcare, the VA and the DOD has spent hundreds of billions of dollars to try to develop their own EMR, it was an abject failure, they went out to the commercial market, they signed a contract with Cerner for I forget how many 10s of billions of dollars, it is still not implemented.
It is doing a disservice to people that need it most our military and our veterans. And that’s the tip of the iceberg within that system. So again, for me, as a taxpayer, as someone who does a lot of business with the federal government, I see the absolute waste, and the just sheer number of duplicate people that have to touch every single decision, which is why nothing gets done. How do you get these, these 435 congressional members to take a bump in integrity and sacrifice when they’re benefiting from all the money applying the politics? Well, again, we have to get enough votes, enough people understand the real problems, and get somebody to come into Washington at the top. Because it’s look, we can say that all the people in Congress, but if you ain’t got the person at the top, on board, you’re not gonna get a lot done. veto this veto that you’re not gonna get it you got to get to get up to top man or woman. They have to man up and do what’s right for the country who really needs some sort of like, educational reality show or something that educates everyone about these types of topics? I mean, with your spend and the amount of money that you said, like earlier, I didn’t know that. And I mean, like a lot of the stuff you said, it’s just like, it makes me mad about how many things that we spend on that we shouldn’t be spending on. So how are we to address this? Or can we address this as a country? Or are we simply too divided? Even if the numbers are so bad? Are we too divided to be able to get this done? I feel like there are some nonpartisan things that should be nonpartisan things such as reducing government spending, or sorry, efficiency with government spending. No, but everyone says efficiency. That’s the number one word used by politicians to describe where we want to get more for less. And do they? No, no, no. I mean, they get less. He has been attempting to audit itself for several years and keeps failing. And is there a way that we can get a successful DoD audit to figure out where we’re tracking all those money? It’s not an exciting solution, but it’s something right, so come up with work, and I keep hearing about government waste. Everyone hates government waste. Well, then why don’t they get rid of it? Why does it continue? Because you don’t vote on the DOD. I mean, the exec you vote on the president. He has a whole executive agency agencies, different agencies that fall under the executive, Congress pawns their legislative responsibilities to those executives, but nobody votes on the DoD or
or DHS or EPA, or HHS, nobody votes on those things. But also government government waste, for me is a topic that we don’t address the fact that corporations, the government is paying a lot of corporations through contracts. I’ve been to the border, they’re hemorrhaging money down there. And that’s a part of a government waste that I see that I want to see corrected. Why isn’t it corrected?
i This isn’t directly answering your question. But to go back, I think that one, this the debt can be a nonpartisan issue. You know, I think if you educate people enough about it, it definitely can be nonpartisan. But I also think you need to tell people how it affects them, not how it affects the country, not how it affects not enough people kind of, they’ll care as much, but if it’s in your backyard, what what, uh, what’s it going to do to me in five years, or even today, so I think that and the other thing is, I think that then vote then policymakers need to hear from their voters, their constituents about this issue. Okay. So I went, by the way, they’ve been talking about this, and you’re not listening. They are talking about it. But I but the idea of saying you have to educate people, well, dammit, they’ve been doing it for years now. And you still don’t hear it. So clearly, either they’re doing it badly, or you’re not listening. Pick a candidate who do the right thing, because they all say the right thing. No, they don’t. But they that no, actually they don’t. They’re afraid to say the right thing. Donald Trump, Donald Trump will not say that he’s going to touch Social Security and Medicare. He said, I’ll cut spending. In fact, he’s probably not what did he do over four years? Zero actually spent more money more money. He said he wouldn’t cut it. So you’re right. Yes. He flat out said yeah. Okay. And Nick Biden, both Biden, and Trump are examples of laggard ship, not leadership, laggard ship on Social Security, because they’ve said, I won’t touch it. By not touching it, it means they support a 20 plus percent cut across the board. So I want to have a conversation with you all. I’ll moderate it, but I want you guys to talk to each other. How are you going to solve this? How are you going to make this happen? Go.
And then there’s dead silence.
Can I ask you a question first, because you see a lot of polls, where does the national debt or social security reform rank on people’s like most important issues, national debt is about fifth, okay. And social security reform is barely in the top 10. And I’m just from personal experience, as a poli sci major people tend to vote on what their top three issues most of the time number one is. Number one is affordability. Number two is immigration. And number three, is actually wasteful Washington spending, which is different than the debt. Fundamentally, I think that we cannot in this moment, the way the politics is constituted right now in this country.
You have to have on the show my political biases here, you have to have a different Republican Party. And Frank’s point earlier, you cannot have
the wall called the far left to center left and far left, the far left cannot be in the White House, which I think is less likely than obviously, Trump was in the White House. The way the Republican Party is constituted right now,
that compromise that I think is possible with some parts of the Democratic Party, there are certain elements that are stronger within the intra party coalition, that that mean, the entire right of center, Republicans have been swallowed up by Trump. Yeah, they have to get past him. Yeah. And they get past his son. But if you think that the I’m sorry. But if you think the problem, or if everybody here generally agrees that, you know, federal government is rotten, why would you keep going with the same people who are advocating generally for the same status quo? The only reason I, you know, after three election cycles now is looking towards Donald Trump, because he’s the only one that’s different than the rest of them. And like, you know, if you’re saying that the system is rotten, you can’t keep putting the same people back in place and then expect a different result. Let’s usually agree, but there’s nobody else who’s anywhere close to being credible. Nikki Haley was an interesting candidate. I personally liked Nikki Haley, but she’s gotten zero traction. on the Democrat side. I think most Democrats would agree Biden’s too old. I don’t think Biden is a bad man. I think he’s too feeble. There’s been no other Democrat who’s risen to the top. And the only reason they’re really sticking with Biden is because they know he has a record of beating Trump and at the end of the day, I pulsate to the
First person to get rid of their 70 to 80 year old nominee right now is going to win the election. Every sports to happen now. So right. So the political dysfunction is why I was talking so much about trying to find common ground. And I feel like waste is the is a common ground. I don’t think it can solve everything, but at least it would be a start. I mean, people can get mad when they hear the news reports, or people do get mad when they hear the news reports about DoD misspending money or Oh x. But there was a news story several years ago where there was a rounding error. And suddenly they sent like, it made a difference of like millions, I can’t remember exactly. To talk about this debt problem. The next time they have a debt ceiling, that comes up about raising it.
Right shows a backbone, show some result don’t give in like they do every time there’s a debt ceiling, raising it. I give it they raise it, another trillion. So we never see we never understand how important of an issue it is. And those people do not want to raise it. They don’t have the resolve to get buckled in that fight. Hold on. I have to push back on that one cuts. Do you know what happens if the United States defaults on its debt? Yeah, I Yeah, absolutely. Sure about Yeah, I absolutely understand it. So you understand the stock market is going to decline. And so in a way we have never seen before. But it’s such a as it was communicated. It’s one of the top national security issues, right, if we keep raising the debt ceiling, if we keep raising it, people, the American people look at it and say, this isn’t a problem. The problem is the issue.
GDP, the consumer confidence is gonna go down the entire Yeah, I’ll let you continue. Sorry. Just quickly, the your definition explaining about raising the debt ceiling is I don’t think is correct. The raising the debt ceiling is only paying for what we the debt we’ve already accrued. Right. So it’s really it’s it was never controversially was because it’s not really about raising the debt ceiling. It’s about paying for what we’ve
never been controversial forever and effort for years. I understand that. But wait for the people who are the debt hawks, it gives them the opportunity to present their argument, it’s not
because we’ve already spent the money. If that’s not true, if you don’t raise the debt ceiling, you can still stand up to the debt ceiling, it just means you have to run a balanced budget. So that means you have to drastically curtail other expenses. Now, the problem is, you’ll end up having to cut all your discretionary spending, because you can’t cut mandatory stuff. Because we’ve already spent that money. No, no, no, but the debt ceiling is here. You that just means you can’t borrow it exactly, but it means that you’re paying what you’ve spent. So let’s let’s ask
Correct. Can I Can I jump in for a second? All right. First, this is another example of how the politicians bullshitters. Okay, let’s talk about what the debt ceiling is, and what it isn’t. Okay. The debt ceiling is a combination of debt held by the public and debt that we owe to the trust funds. That’s the 34 point 2 trillion. All right, if we ever hit the debt ceiling, and don’t raise it, all right, we have to pay interest on the federal debt. There’s only one thing that’s guaranteed by the Constitution, the United States, the 14th Amendment, the Constitution, that’s US Treasury debt, and accrued interest. So we will never default on US debt. And so the people tell you, Oh, the Washington Monument, we’re gonna have to turn out the lights, we’re going to default. We cannot fault on federal debt. But what it means is you can’t continue to spend more money than you have. All right. And so therefore, what it would do is it would force them to make tough choices, either on spending and or revenues. Okay, so that they don’t continue to add more debt. They want to tell you, Oh, we’re gonna we can’t pay our debt payments bold they can they have to, but then even the Treasury doesn’t want to admit that. Well, we don’t know how to reap. We don’t know how to prioritize Well, you don’t know how to do much. You don’t know how to do a budget. You know, you don’t know how many times in my lifetime, 72 years. I know it’s hard to believe. But how many times in my lifetime that Congress has passed all the appropriations bills by the beginning of the fiscal year, October one take a guess for bingo for four times and 72 years, F minus. You read the op ed
to your point about waste? Because there’s two sides to that right. Because I hear you talk about DoD a lot. So obviously, that’s an area you folks if you had that power, maybe somebody else who here I’ll talk to myself there are others probably in Department of Education because I still can’t figure out
Keep pouring in more money, how can we don’t get better educational results compared to other countries? But that’s beside the hunt for efficiency. I wonder?
Is there a way the government can hire normal private enterprises hire outside auditors, a company I work for has to deal with it about four times a year. And I spent a lot of my career actually in consulting. So looking at other companies, not so much financial, but hey, these operational processes, your waste, you’re taking five hours to do something that shouldn’t take two hours, how much money is that? Right? And we even do that internally, right? We
do to the economic climate, we had to curtail our budget. So we have to look at what do we have to cut any nothing’s popped, or I lose programs that I’ve advocated for for two years. Right. So I think the way that the government like spends their money, it’s the process, that’s the problem, right? So it’s become this cultural issue. There’s no incentive to cut back. So at the lowest levels, you know, these people that are trying to, you know, advocate for funding for their programs, right, they’re going to look at their budget from the past year, and be like, oh, I need to request more this year. Because if I, you know, I’m not gonna get, you know, any more than what I got last year. So do I need it? No, that’s not the point, I need to make sure I get as much money as possible for my budget this year. And if you don’t use it, you lose it right. And you start over the next year. So it’s like, the way that the system is structured, like it doesn’t incentivize people to spend in a smart manner. It feels like at the end of the day, you know, it needs to be a movement. If you say that the budget isn’t sexy, okay, make it sexy, make it coalition. And we all talk about it and hold these leaders feet to the fire. I mean, the tipping point thing is good, but maybe if we only have one or two points that we can focus on, then they can become the American people can become more passionate and talk about this issue a little bit more. And hold these congressmen and legislators we’re talking about how to, like, penalize the federal government without hurting ourselves? Because I mean, at the end of the day, yeah, exactly. But like you, but the talking about has to be like talking to people about accepting sacrifice. That’s really what it’s about. And nobody wants to do that. And as y’all said, it doesn’t get anybody elected. Right. So I think about like the pro choice movement, that’s a passionate issue. People are very passionate about it. We’re not the same way about budget issues. Right. But you couldn’t be you know, and that’s what, that’s how we need to talk about this issue. If we want a resolution to it, we have to make people more engaged in the topic, right? And if you have people who are engaged, then you those constituents of those policymakers and the policymakers here, that the constituents are engaged, they this is important to them, that’s an incentive to get them to. Okay, how do you make the budgetary process more sexy than the Kardashians?
Person? How do you make and no offense to us making the offense taken? as awesome as being a movie star? Talking externally, but a lot of it’s internally, what are we willing to give up? Right? Not not? Who are we going to look at? Well, I don’t like this or that or this department, we get rid of that. Who here is okay with not ever getting social security so that other people can get it? Right? That’s not something that’s discussed.
I would be willing to pay higher taxes, especially if I felt like the government was spending it more properly.
With higher taxes. Nobody believes the government spends effectively, right? Yeah, but that’s what makes me get annoyed with the defund the IRS movement. It’s like the IRS is going to help get that money spent more efficiently, or help get into more tax money. I want you to pretend that Congress is listening to you right now. What would you tell your member of Congress and what would you tell the institution become fiscally responsible? Stop spending money you don’t have none of us can do that. And if we aren’t doing that, we shouldn’t be doing that. Again, you have a credit card with a $10,000 limit. The bank says, Okay, your 10,000 Guess what you can’t spend anymore? Treat the government like that?
Well, as it relates to this conversation, I’d say that the budget deficit is a nonpartisan issue. It’s a great issue to work with both sides of the aisle. It’s a win win for everyone and your constituents care about this issue even though it might not appear to be on a list in Ohio out there. Your constituents really do care so make this a win for both parties. I’d say you need to treat this like the crisis it is I think the sacrifice that will be done now is nothing compared to the sacrifice to be done in 20 years. I would say it all starts with the money so follow the money and do better about what the money
similar to that. I know it’s a lot more fun and a lot
More press if you’ve spent money on some new program, but please watch where the money is going that you already have said that you would spend and make sure that’s being spent well. I’d say you can save or cripple the American dream for my generation. It’s up to you how you want to go down in history. And there you have it. Lots of opinions. None of them easy. Lots of decisions, all of them hard. And you get to listen and learn, just as Congress does. Only you didn’t create this mess Washington did. On behalf of the team here at straight arrow News, I’m Dr. Frank Luntz. See you next time.