My Republican colleagues say, Let's do the cuts first. The Democrats say, Let's do spending first. I'd like to do both simultaneously.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
Make no mistake: I will work with both Democrats and Republicans to cut wasteful spending and reduce our debt in a balanced, responsible way.
We have to deal with two issues. Spending and taxes.
My approach to cutting spending as president, is to do a ten percent across the board cut of all federal agencies, and then ask each of my new agency heads to find another ten percent by drilling down. That's what you do in business to come up with approximately 20 percent cuts for the first fiscal year budget.
You've got to either say you're going to cut taxes and find some spending cuts. I think we ought to reform long-term entitlement spending in the country, but you can't out of one side of your mouth say, 'Yes, we're for tax cuts, we're for spending discipline, and we're for bringing down the debt.'
Even with not having a balanced budget at this time, I support tax cuts. That will help limit spending.
Look, I am not worried about Washington cutting too much spending too fast. I mean, the kinds of spending cuts we're talking about just right now are $100 billion out of a $3.7 trillion budget.
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.
Should we freeze or postpone prospective tax cuts and avoid any new tax cuts until we are sure we have the money to pay for the war on terrorism and the war in Iraq.
Republicans traditionally say, 'oh, we'll cut domestic spending, but we won't touch the military.' The liberals - the ones who are good - will say, 'oh, we'll cut the military, but we won't cut domestic spending.'
I want to cut - personally, I want to cut spending. Personally, I just don't believe we can continue to add to the deficit. So, actually, personally, I like the budget cap.