National Public Radio: on Tax Reform

Cory Booker: Raise taxes because quick fix of cuts wasn't enough

A: Well, look, unfortunately we've had to, but to me, I always say we're a slave to the tyranny of a quick fix. Unfortunately, whether it's at the federal level and what we're all watching right now or the local level, you just can't get out of the problems we have dug ourselves into by one solution or the other. So what do we do in Newark? We cut the size of our government by nearly 20% of our employees. We have made very dramatic cuts into overall government, because that just has to be done. But in addition to that, we have also raised taxes because the problems that we are in could not be gotten out of by one solution. There's no one trick to this. You have to have a comprehensive strategy to attack these issues. Right now what frustrates me, looking at the federal level, is that our politics is not serving the kind of nuanced complicated problems that we have; people are indulging in deeper and deeper partisanship that does not serve progress.