Description: Town Hall Question #3 - Economy
Candidate: Sen. Obama
Question: How can we trust either of you with our money when both parties got -- got us into this global economic crisis? ]
BROKOW: We're going to continue over in Section F, as it turns out.
Senator Obama, this is a question from you from Theresa Finch (ph).
Theresa (ph)?
QUESTION - How can we trust either of you with our money when both parties got -- got us into this global economic crisis?
OBAMA: Well, look, I understand your frustration and your cynicism, because while you've been carrying out your responsibilities -- most of the people here, you've got a family budget. If less money is coming in, you end up making cuts. Maybe you don't go out to dinner as much. Maybe you put off buying a new car.
That's not what happens in Washington. And you're right. There is a lot of blame to go around.
But I think it's important just to remember a little bit of history. When George Bush came into office, we had surpluses. And now we have half-a-trillion-dollar deficit annually.
When George Bush came into office, our debt -- national debt was around $5 trillion. It's now over $10 trillion. We've almost doubled it. And so while it's true that nobody's completely innocent here, we have had over the last eight years the biggest increases in deficit spending and national debt in our history. And Senator McCain voted for four out of five of those George Bush budgets.
So here's what I would do. I'm going to spend some money on the key issues that we've got to work on.
OBAMA: You know, you may have seen your health care premiums go up. We've got to reform health care to help you and your budget.
We are going to have to deal with energy because we can't keep on borrowing from the Chinese and sending money to Saudi Arabia. We are mortgaging our children's future. We've got to have a different energy plan.
We've got to invest in college affordability. So we're going to have to make some investments, but we've also got to make spending cuts. And what I've proposed, you'll hear Senator McCain say, well, he's proposing a whole bunch of new spending, but actually I'm cutting more than I'm spending so that it will be a net spending cut.
The key is whether or not we've got priorities that are working for you as opposed to those who have been dictating the policy in Washington lately, and that's mostly lobbyists and special interests. We've got to put an end to that.
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