In his interview on Meet the Press over the weekend, White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel made an interesting point when he addressed the problem of the deficit:
MR. EMANUEL: Yeah. Well, as you probably know, that there–over the last decade, the last eight years there’s been actually a–there was a surplus at one time, and now we’ve added in the last eight years $4 trillion of debt to the nation’s obligations. What you see here–and the president has always said that we must have an approach to spending money differently and respect for the taxpayers’ dollars, and do it in a more efficient way and in a different way. And most importantly, we must deal with the long-term challenges that face this country. So while he has talked about the need–and everybody I think from economists on the left to economists on the right realize that we must make critical investments at this time. And yes, they’ll add to our obligation. It has got to be coupled with a serious attack about putting our fiscal house in order. And for too long that hasn’t happened. Challenges that needed to be met, responsibilities that needed to be met have not. So from the era–from the area of, let’s just say, in the defense area. MR. GREGORY: Hm. MR. EMANUEL: On an annual basis we have about $300 billion in cost overruns. That must be addressed, and we will be addressing it…
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