today to pay for tomorrow. but they re out of money. so is this just a glimpse of what s to come for other cities and states facing similar deficit problems? joining us right now is the honorable bob riley, the governor of alabama. good morning to you. good to see you again. nice to see you as well. thanks. i understand back in september of 2009, pritchard, alabama, ran out of money and couldn t pay people. they did and i think that is a harbinger of things to come if we don t change the formulas of how we got there. in alabama today we re seriously considering from going from 25 years of getting pension benefits to 30 years. a lot of other states and a lot of other municipalities are having to do that today because if you look across the country today, one of the things that we realize, you can t continue to pay out more than you bring in. no kidding. and we re doing this over and over again. it s a sweet deal if you got one of those jobs. but until now, and so i under
unemployment insurance, on a whole range of issues. on state budgets. the situation s now stabilized although for those folks still out of work, it s still an emergency. so we ve still got to focus on job growth. but we ve got to have a larger debate about how is this country going to win the economic competition of the 21st century? how are we going to make sure that we ve got the best trained workers in the world? there was just a study coming out today showing how we ve slipped even further when it comes to math and science education. so what are we doing to revamp our schools, to make sure that innovation is still taking place here in the united states of america? what are we doing about our infrastructure so that we have the best airports and the best roads and the best bridges? and how are we going to pay for all that at a time when we ve got both short-term deficit problems, medium-term deficit problems and long-term deficit
industry, on unemployment insurance, on a whole range of issues. on state budgets. the situation is now stabilized. although for those folks out of work it s still an emergency. so we still have to focus short term on job growth. but we need a larger debate about how is this country going to win the economic competition of the 21st century. how are we going to make sure that we ve got the best trained workers in the world? there was just a study that came out today showing how we slipped even further when it comes to math education and science education. so what rewe doing to revamp our schools to make sure our kids can compete? what are we doing in terms of research and development to make sure that innovation is still taking place here in the united states of america. what are we doing about the infrastructure so that we have the best airports and the best roads and the best bridges. and how are we going to pay for all that at a time when we ve got both short-term deficit problems, m
irresponsible because you are already running up $1 trillion worth of extra debt each and every year. that surely, professor, that is irresponsible and has been irresponsible for the past 18 months. well, no, actually, the deficit, the stimulus spending since president obama has been in office only accounts for 10 percent of debt and our debt and deficit problems started in 2001. we raised budget spending. it was an economic downturn. we spent enormous amount on stimulus and we are literally borrowing $1 trillion each year as far as the eye can see. that is irresponsible. that is keeping us out of the the great depression and this has tarp and economic responding, the stimulus spark acknowledge kept us away from double digit. employment and added three million to five million jobs. but it is irresponsible for
we re taking right now to try to move the economy forward. now, iavn never been more confident about the future of our economy if we stay on track and we deal with some of these long-standing problems that we dn t dealt with fordecades. if we make investments and improve our education system, if we make investments in research and development, if we make investments in things like clean energy so that we ve got an energy policy that s not just tied to importing oil from the middle east but itengad start figuring how to develop our ri home-grown industries, if we have a tax system that is fair and helps the middle class and that also attends to our long-term deficit problems, if heavyulate but not with a hand, just regulate enough to make sure that we don t have a collapse of the financial system