It is my view that what is important is cutting government spending, however spending is financed. A so-called deficit is a disguised and hidden form of taxation. The real burden on the public is what government spends (and mandates others to spend). As I have said repeatedly, I would rather have government spend one trillion dollars with a deficit of a half a trillion than have government spend two trillion dollars with no deficit.
I'm ashamed of what has happened to Canada. And I'm not leaving a $1.5 trillion deficit to my kids. No chance in hell is that happening.
When George Bush came into office, we had surpluses. And now we have half-a-trillion-dollar deficit annually. When George Bush came into office, our national debt was around $5 trillion. It's now over $10 trillion. We've almost doubled it.
President Obama inherited a one trillion dollar deficit courtesy of George Bush and turned it into a three trillion dollar deficit courtesy of Karl Marx!
The deficit - the U.S. knows our deficit is too large. We are committed to bringing it down. We are bringing it down. The deficit came in for fiscal year '05 at considerably below where it was the prior year.
If you put Canada into $1.5 trillion in debt and interest rates go up just 200 basis points, you cannot provide the services to 36 million people that were guaranteed to them in the social contract they have with Canada. That's a very, very scary prospect. You can't burden this economy with that much debt. The risk you take on is insurmountable. You have to assume for the next 50 years that rates don't go up? That's insane. That's irresponsible. That's stupid.
When President Bush left office, the deficit was approximately $500 billion. It is now approximately now $1.5 trillion. In other words, President Obama has essentially tripled the deficit.
Mr. Obama denounced the $2.3 trillion added to the national debt on Mr. Bush's watch as 'deficits as far as the eye can see.' But Mr. Obama's budget adds $9.3 trillion to the debt over the next 10 years. What happened to Obama the deficit hawk?
When you look what is happening in this country with the debt, the deficit, the CBO coming out and saying once again we're going to have a trillion dollar plus deficit in 2012, the fourth straight year, and unemployment may be going back up to 8.9 or maybe nine percent by the end of the year, these are serious situations that are going.
President Bush, yes, spent money like a drunken sailor, and left the nation with a record $400-billion deficit. President Obama, however, is spending far more money than Bush, with a record $1.8 trillion deficit projected for his first year.
OK, so $1 trillion is what it costs to run the federal government for one year. So this money's going to run through September of 2016. Half of the trillion dollars goes to defense spending and the Pentagon. The other half goes to domestic spending - everything from prisons to parks. So there's also about 74 billion in there that goes to the military operations that we have ongoing in Iraq and Afghanistan and Syria.
The potential of Mexico, Canada and the United States is enormous. We have a combined population of half a billion people; peaceful trade-friendly borders that are the envy of the world; the prospect of energy independence is within reach and will change the geopolitical situation of United States; we do a trillion dollars in trade among the three countries; more than 18,000 American companies are involved in foreign direct investment in Mexico and Canada; an increasing number of Mexican companies are creating jobs in the United States.
We are worried about the size of the deficit, which is why the president is pleased that the House and Senate have followed his lead in cutting the deficit in half over the next five years.
President Obama's call for nearly a half-trillion dollars in more government stimulus when America has more than $14 trillion in debt is guided by his mistaken belief that we can spend our way to prosperity.
When you're talking about long-term deficit reduction, $4 trillion worth, entitlement reform needs to be part of it.
Man's destiny lies half within himself, half without. To advance in either half at the expense of the other is literally insane.