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Jack Carter on Budget & Economy |
A: First, the Bush administration has spent quite some time emphasizing disaster. The first time they got a chance to show off what they had, it was apparent that in a number of different ways, from a structural standpoint to the people that they had in particular positions to delivery to coordination-all of those things fell through. Second, when Bush was talking about paying for the reparations, he made the statement that it was going to cost maybe $200 billion to finance the reconstruction, that the federal government would do it all, then he did not tell anybody where he was going to get the money from. It was not only was it a bad structural thing with the wrong people in it, and mistakes all along the way in terms of the prior planning, but then, to pay for it was sort of another excuse to just foist the deficit onto our kids' shoulders again.
A: I don't. There are some things that I think you have to buy things for. There are a lot of costs that come in today that you have to fund in some sort of way. However, a "pay as you go" idea is certainly something that we need to do. If you're going to spend money in some place that you've got to fund it in some way. If you ever want to spend new money, then you had to cut another program or raise taxes.