I worked at the White House in the early Reagan administration at a time when the deficit rocket really started to take off.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
I've had some wonderful times at the White House. I've been with Ford, Carter, Reagan, Clinton and Bush.
I was in the White House for a year and a half. Up to that point, all my jobs had been very unglamorous.
I vividly remember my first day on the White House staff. My office, of course, was in the Old Executive Office Building. I didn't rate one in the West Wing; but don't try to tell me or any of the rest of us working there that we weren't working in the White House.
I worked in the Senate in the 1970s. I worked for the Labor, Public Welfare Committee, and we had Ted Kennedy and my old boss, Bill Hathaway, and Walter Mondale.
I am a Reagan Republican.
I watched Reagan turn around the country by lowering taxes and controlling spending, and I'm applying the same principles.
When I left Washington, we actually had a balanced budget and we paid down the most amount of the national debt in modern history and cut taxes and created jobs. And I was the chief architect of that plan in '97.
When I worked in the White House for President Carter, we tried to do comprehensive tax reform and we made some progress, and other presidents have as well.
I worked in the Clinton administration.
I was in the trade field as White House fellow in the first Bush administration.