What worries me about deficits. When Republicans talk about deficits, when conservatives talk about deficits, I’m more attuned. As to when liberals see a deficit, they want to raise taxes and make it even worse. And the only way to get rid of a deficit is to cut taxes and grow out of it. Every time we’ve tried that it’s happened. Now, there has to be some spending restraint at the same time, but not all that much. We had all these deficits during the 80s, I’ll never forget, I grew up hearing about this giant deficit monster of the eighties, Reagan was destroying us all — when the Democrats cared about deficits. Well, the Reagan boom kicked in with those tax cuts in ’81 and ’82 and all the way through to the mid- to late 90s, the Reagan boom, and we wiped it out. We had surpluses on paper, didn’t we? So you grow your way out of deficits and cuts. And when did this boom start to go south? With the Clinton tax increases, folks! The Clinton tax increases coupled with this phony market bubble and that’s what killed the golden goose.
And so when you hear deficits and you hear Democrats start talking about raising taxes, that’s when you need to run for the tall grass or start buying gold. When Republicans start talking about deficits and economic growth, pay attention. I’m sorry, when conservatives. I don’t trust the Republicans to limit spending, either, although there is a big battle going on between the White House and the Congress now over the highway bill. Bush has finally gotten serious about spending. He’s going to draw the line at the highway bill, and Denny Hastert is so mad about it, speaker of the House, he’s so livid about what’s happening here, he doesn’t believe anything he’s hearing so he wants to talk directly to Bush about it. There’s a real brouhaha brewing over the highway bill.
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