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The deficit - the U.S. knows our deficit is too large. We are committed to bringing it down. We are bringing it down. The deficit came in for fiscal year '05 at considerably below where it was the prior year.

We're committed to working with Congress to doing what the president said he was always going to do, which is cut the deficit in half over the - over his first term.

You know, when Republicans were in charge, we doubled the debt. But, now, our concern is the Democrats are in charge and they're tripling the debt. So, really, our concern is that we want smaller government.

I really truly worry that the debt is one of the single biggest threat to the United States of America, that we're talking about a problem that is multi-trillion in its depth and I think we ought to be cutting more.

When the economy is growing, there's a lot that can be done to deal with the deficit.

The American people will eventually get hurt by this accumulated deficit. That's the problem. We have too much deficit. We have to find a solution.

I think where I differ a little bit, we absolutely have to think about the deficit looking down the road. And certainly that's something the president has said that we need to, as the economy recovers, have a plan in place for getting it down.

Yes, it is long past time we get serious about tackling the nation's ever-growing deficits. But the average American family drawn into serious debt cannot just threaten to stiff its creditors. It must cut its spending in the future, but also take responsibility for the debt incurred in the past.

One of the reasons the deficit got as big as it did, frankly, was because of the economic slowdown, the fall-off in deficits, the terrorist attacks. A significant chunk was taken out of the economy by what happened after the attacks of 9/11.