To solve the debt crisis, where do we go from here?
We go into a deep funk, that’s where we go. Everyone knows where we are. We owe $15 trillion. What is a trillion, for godsake? If you spend a dollar a second you wouldn’t get to a trillion in 32,000 years. The real issue is that the deficit continues.
Who’s to blame for the deficit?
For about 70 years the American people have sent people to Washington to bring home the bacon. Go get me the dam, go get me the road, go get me – get me – get me. And if you didn’t get it, you got thrown out on your can. Let’s start right there.
You also blame campaign finance.
They said 74 lobbying groups had hooks on the Super Committee – registered lobbyists putting the heat on every day. That’s an ugly thing to watch. The Supreme Court decision will make it ever more ugly. You’re going to spend money into oblivion and don’t touch my stuff. That’s where we are.
Should the Simpson-Bowles plan be revived?
It won’t go away. We were very specific. We knocked over sacred cows in the field. You will never get it into legislative language, but you could pull it up for a vote and say, Look, this is a plan. If they could do that, the ratings people would stay off their case.
In an election year, what else can be done?
This election year is going to be the most chaotic ever: fiscally, monetarily, things going on with the euro. Unless they do something, the people who sat on their butts and pandered to the American people will lose in Nov. It could be the greatest thing ever.