rate? that s achievable in washington, d.c. well, it came out of the united states senate as a republican and i saw some bad decisions being made by my former party, especially on bringing back the deficits. when i came into office after president clinton, we had almost full employment, statistical full employment. and then when the deficits came back, we had those big tax cuts that favored the wealthy and then we had the iraq war and then the prescription drug benefit. all these multimillion dollar programs, a big huge almost trillion dollar tax cuts, trillion dollar war in iraq. i think the prescription drug benefit was $800 billion and back came the deaf si. that s what i would say to the federal government. take care of the deficits. fund those programs that work, those social programs that help build the middle class, pell grants, head start, those have a proven record of working, growing the middle class.
in there like tick cheney taking shots at president obama. but the fact remains that presidents are only remembered for a couple of big things that happened when they re in office. and i think we now do know, and it s not a rush to judgment, to say that those two big things were a trillion dollar war in iraq that was unnecessary. a war of choice, as they said. and it was the wrong choice. almost everybody agrees with that now. and the worst economic recession since the great depression. and that happened on his watch. indeed. so it s very interesting watching people try to blame obama for the bad economy. you can blame him for not recovering faster. but you can t blame him watching the exit polls of the last election, they didn t do that. historians can do that. they didn t. they can t blame him for this happening on his watch. that s on bush s we know that. bush spoke with the dallas morning news recently. at the end of the interview he talks about his painting. here