Marshall Sanford: “I think what you are really getting at is the relatively gradual nature that is being proposed. Again, what we are…”

“I think what you are really getting at is the relatively gradual nature that is being proposed. Again, what we are talking about is overall Federal spending still going up by 2.4 percent each year. To give you an idea in relative terms of where that stands, take, for instance, right now our deficit is basically 2.2 percent of the whole economy. In France, it is about 2.5 percent, and in Sweden it is about 7.5 percent. As you know, those countries have proposed cutting back on the size of their government. But what is interesting is we proposed to do this over 7 years. France has proposed to do it over 2 years. Sweden has proposed to do it over 3 years. What that means is the slowing of the rate of government that they are proposing, or the cuts in government they are proposing, are eight times as great in Sweden, and three times as great in France. So, again, it goes back to, I think, the reasonableness nature that you were getting at.”