On the recordFebruary 14, 2011
What you are seeing is a very serious attempt to get into reducing the size of the government. I mean, we are stepping on all kinds of political toes just to say, hey, it may be a nice program, but we're in trouble. I was asked by a reporter--I believe it was earlier today--whether or not the position that I was taking on these cuts and everything was like a Tea Party position. I said, You know, I guess we all reflect, to a degree, our training. I was trained as an engineer; and to me, this is just plain math. It isn't liberal math. It isn't conservative math. It's just flat-out, this is how much money these entitlements are taking, and this is how much money is coming in. The two are equal, and we don't have any money for these things. I don't know if this is politically liberal or conservative or anything else. It's just the reality of the political deficit. Now the one thing we haven't added here--this is just this year--we haven't added the perspective of time. I think it's helpful if we take a look at what time does to this in several regards. The first is, one of the things that is happening to those little pieces of the pie is, they're growing. This has got Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security. And it shows over time what's going on without the other entitlements and without the debt service. You see that those of us--I hate to admit my age--but some of us baby boomers, as we get older, we are going to be leaning on Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid more.
