balanced the budget every time. i mean, that s either true or false. well, what he did do was technically bring it into balance. he borrowed $4.4 billion. he engaged in accounting shifts. he advanced payments on taxes. he delayed paying bills and he pushed a bag load of spending down to local governments. but each and every year he was governor we ran deficits and they kept accruing each and every term. we were in a deficit position from 2003 on, long before the recession. arnie carlson, great to have you with us tonight. thank you for speaking up. always a pleasure. thank you. donald trump chose cash over country when he dropped out of the 2012 race but now he says he may reconsider. i m not buying it. he s in the zone. next. as a manager, my team counts on me to stay focused.
that is the same as greece, as the countries around the world that we think are irresponsible. so we are entering into a terrible fiscal position. we have government spending that is 25% of our gdp. our government spending is $3.5 trillion. and our revenue is $2.4. so we are in a terrible deficit position that none of us could sustain. and our nation can t sustain it. and so deficit reduction has got to be fact-based. it can t be politicized. it was interesting that yesterday the wall street journal had an editorial which basically said, obama says i can tax the rich, and therefore all our problems will go away. you could take 100% of the income from the rich in this country and you wouldn t solve the problem, because of what rick said, entitlements. i m not sure that s fair now, because there s a much broader
i think these cults are totally unreasonably. is it the president, john boehner, harry reid, is it the tea party? there is a lot of finger pointing going on. so who is to blame? i heard speaker bane noehner it was not a revenue problem but a spending problem. we have lost 8 million jobs. that is a revenue problem. we have surpluses as far as the eyes could see in 2000, tax cuts, two wars, katrina. the financial bailout put us in this deficit position. we can t cure this deficit position by taking it out on federal workers or public employees. their pay, their pension, furloughing. that is not the answer to our fiscal problem. john gauge, many thanks for joining this morning. we appreciate it. thank you. a lot of u.s. businesses with government contracts will
care law. that s support around a third. it shows you how much framing the debate matters. if the debate is about whether the health care bill is the right to do, they may shift the debate. tax cuts are the fight in washington. what s fascinating is you see a split in thirds among the electorate. 29% say extend cuts. 29% say repeal cuts but only for the wealthy. the third item, repeal all of the tax cuts for the middle class and for wealthy. 28% of americans feel that way. and no one in public life is taking that position. absolutely right. that s the pure deficit position. here again the dominant republican position despite what john boehner said on sunday we heard by mitch mcconnell yesterday is extending tax cuts for all americans including those above $250,000 a year is a 29%. similar to 32% who want to repeal reform and by the way, very similar as well we tested