George H.W. Bush: “The debt is an enormous worry. And for those who live and die by polls, really for the first time, the deficit and debt…”

“The debt is an enormous worry. And for those who live and die by polls, really for the first time, the deficit and debt is about number one, I believe it is number one in the polls. I'll give you an example of what we're trying to do with it. One, I'm going to try to keep the caps on discretionary domestic spending. Government is too big, and it spends too much. And right now I'm in a big fight in the Congress. The 1990 budget agreement did place caps on all discretionary spending. It did not touch the part of the budget that's growing the fastest, the entitlements, but it did put a cap on domestic spending. And now the Democrats in Congress--not all of them, thank heavens--are trying to remove the caps. They're saying this: ``We can take defense cuts now.'' And I've proposed $50 billion, and some of them are saying, ``Oh, we can do more. We'll take $150 billion.'' And that would cut right into the muscle of our defense and make us unable to respond to any eventuality around the world. But they're trying now to say, we're going to take that defense spending and spend it, defense money and spending it. And I'm saying no, we're going to keep up what they call the firewalls, the different--the caps on defense and the caps on other domestic spending. And when we cut defense by the $50 billion I recommend, we will use that to reduce the Federal deficit. And I'm in a whale of a fight in the Congress to do just that. And that is small compared to the overall size of the deficit, but it is a beginning. And again, I need your help because we are outnumbered in a fight like this. It is too easy in an election year to promise some new Government spending program. And I have got to fight it. I have got to keep the caps on, and I've got to apply the reductions in defense spending to this deficit to show the American people that we are concerned and we don't want to continue mortgaging the future of our young people. Governor Engler. We have time for about three more questions according to the watch I was given. So President Bush--this is sort of like the old ``Ask George Bush'' program that I remember from the Vice President's days--President Bush, do you have any plans for changing antitrust laws to enable a closer relationship between Government, business, and labor?”