Newt Gingrich dismissed an audience question about the the obvious choices that were needed in order to get the budget under control, arguing that the budget could be balanced by streamlining and eliminating waste, fraud and abuse.
Most of the candidates echoed Gingrich’s line, including Rick Perry, who, moments after talking about political courage, talked about how we could get more services for less money by running things more efficiently.
Mitt Romney, to his credit, said that eliminating waste and fraud wasn’t good enough, that we needed to have real cuts to spending. Of course, without having a sweeping entitlement reform plan to back it up (and conveying the sense that he’d actually follow through as president) these are empty words.
