Iowa Public Television

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  Program: Iowa Press #3510
  Broadcast Date: Nov. 9, 2007
  

• Collection: Iowa Press: The Presidential Candidates

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Sen. Barack Obama talks about the national debt

This interview took place on November 9, 2007, at Iowa Public Television.

www.iptv.org/campaign08/

Yepsen: One of the things I forgot to mention in this little litany is Chinese officials are saying we might not want to be buying any more American debt. How are you going to pay for this? The national debt is at nine trillion dollars now and headed north. How are you going to pay for all these things you want to do?

Obama: Well, $10- to $12 billion per month, $196 billion just for next year's request alone, that's a big chunk of change. So if we can phase down the war in Iraq, that's going to start helping us on the money front. I do think that we've got to create a more efficient Washington. I have called for more transparency and accountability.

And when it comes to things like earmarks, we have to prioritize how we're spending money in Washington. And one of the things that I think is important for Democrats to communicate is, just because I'm a progressive and I believe in early childhood education spending and I believe in after-school spending and I believe in a lot of these programs, doesn't mean I don't think there's waste in government.

I just think we're spending it in the wrong places. And we've got to go after no big contracts to Halliburton. We've got to close corporate loopholes where you've got companies in the -- you've got a building in the Cayman Islands where 12,000 companies supposedly are located. Now, that's either the biggest building in the world or the biggest tax rip-off in the world, and we've got to do something about it.

Tags:

• budget
• debt
• economy
• Barack Obama
• campaign 2008
• politics
• Democrats
• education
• Iraq war

Post Date: June 4, 2008