increases. they cannot promise they will cut more because right now that s unrealistic. that is not cool among republicans, i know, but why ask for something you cannot get, an additional tax cut, but push for a pledge of no increase in taxes and cuts in spending. that is a realistic goal that is politically viable to most people in the country. neil: and everyone is talking about the pledge of the balanced budget amendment and agree to keep the cuts, et cetera. but only a few of the presidential candidates have signed on. what do you make of that? governor huckabee: we ought to have a balanced budget amendment. every state has it but vermont and they practice it willingly but every other state has it and it worked. especially in states where you have a mechanism to control your pending. in arkansas we had a method called revenue stabilization
it s money we have now. this neil: did you do that when you were governor? we couldn t. we had to balance the budget and you didn t have the option of reaching into the future. you couldn t even. neil: you built it into the assumption? what they did is paid for it based on revenues they expect to see saved from food stamps. you never did that. what you did, you budgeted the opposite, we never spent more than 95% of revenues and looked at it every month. if we had a month that wasn t up to it, we cut back the following month to make sure we were never at a point we had a revenue stabilization act. it forced us every month to look at where we were, where we projected we would be and to get in balance within that month. so that you don t let this thing fester out and get completely out of control. which is what happens in a year or two-year period and what happened with the federal government. it s why the fed is today putting jumper cables on the