Balancing budget is about priorities; GOP made wrong choices
Q: Would it be a priority of your administration to balance the federal budget every year?
A: You don't have to make a choice of balancing the budget and/or leading with the priorities that most of us feel strongly about, from health care, to
education, to the environment. And I'll just put it in real stark terms: It's about priorities. Just by eliminating the war, & eliminating the $200 billion in tax cuts that goes to the top 1%, if you add it all up, [with
$350B in cuts to military special programs], that would allow me to do everything I want to do -- my priorities on education, health care and the environment -- and still bring down the deficit by $150 billion. So, the
Republicans are trying to sucker us into this, "You either have to balance the budget and do nothing to make people's lives better, or you're going to balloon the deficit." They have ballooned the deficit with their bad priorities.
Save Pentagon spending by getting the troops out of Iraq
The defense department's gigantic. It's not just the war in Iraq. Over the first four years I think all of us are going to try to get the troops out of there. I think I can do it in the first year. We shouldn't buy into the Republican paradigm, and that
is the idea they've built this deficit up, the republicans, in order to make it difficult to do the things we need to do. You can take 20 Billion a year out of the defense department just by eliminating weapons systems. You can, in fact, cut.
Source: 2007 Des Moines Register Democratic Debate
Dec 13, 2007
More transparency for hedge funds and private equity funds
Q: The Fed lowered the discount rate for banks to address the mortgage crisis. Should they lower rates for everyone else?
A: The answer is yes. But we need more transparency, particularly with regard to hedge funds and private equity funds.
They are the ones that are causing this thing to go under. And there's no transparency, no accountability. We don't know how deep this problem is. I think it's almost as deep in terms of dollars, not liability, as the savings and loan crisis.
Source: 2007 Democratic primary debate on "This Week"
Aug 19, 2007
Invest in new programs by ending war & eliminating tax cuts
Q: On your website you say about programs for energy research, health insurance, tuition deductions--all noble goals for Democrats, but it's more money, more money. Where you going to get it?
A: First of all, we're going to end this war. It's
$100 billion a year we're spending.
Eliminate the tax cuts for people making over a million bucks --that's $85 billion a year.
Eliminate the tax break for investment on dividends--$195 billion.
We have a fancy word--a new "paradigm" [about
crime, health, and energy]: Investment in these areas saves money. But you need start-up dollars. I'd start off with $220 billion a year by the tax cuts and ending the war.
Q: But, senator, we have a deficit. We have Social Security and Medicare
looming.
A: The answer is you have to put it all on the table. We put Social Security on the right path for 60 years. Social Security's not the hard one to solve. Medicare, that is the gorilla in the room, and you've got to put all of it on the table.
Voted NO on $40B in reduced federal overall spending.
Vote to pass a bill that reduces federal spending by $40 billion over five years by decreasing the amount of funds spent on Medicaid, Medicare, agriculture, employee pensions, conservation, and student loans. The bill also provides a down-payment toward hurricane recovery and reconstruction costs.
Reference: Work, Marriage, and Family Promotion Reconciliation Act;
Bill S. 1932
; vote number 2005-363
on Dec 21, 2005
Voted NO on prioritizing national debt reduction below tax cuts.
Vote to table [kill] an amendment that would increase the amount of the budget that would be used to reduce the national debt by $75 billion over 5 year. The debt reduction would be offset by reducing the tax cut in the budget framework from $150 billion
