democrats, democrats must admit that domestic welfare and entitlements must be reformed. he got applause on the military thing, david, but it s kind of what you ve been saying, everyone has to look at their sacred cows and go to town, right? everything has to be on the table, we need to reestablish, tough controls, and social security reform and medicaid and rationalize our economies and generate more revenues, we need to reduce, defense and other spending without compromising national security. as we ve talked about on thursday evening, neil, the 16 trillion dollar number low balls the problem. here is the number, my friend. the number is 70 trillion, 410 billion, 400 million. go on up, go on up, 10 million dollars a minute and democrats and republicans are to blame.
growth, maintains a solvent secure safety net and should be politically feasible at about 21 to 22 percent of gdp. maybe a little lower. but, the republicans have been part of the problem, too. they brought us medicare prescription drugs, they bought us two undeclared and two unfinanced wars, and they bought us the second round of tax cuts that we couldn t afford. so they ve got to change, but so do the democrats. that s right. you and i so many times that we can point fingers till we re blue in the face, but move on and be with the problem that we ve got. david, always a pleasure, look forward to seeing you, and seeing your interview next week and get together. i think we re going to be together and i look forward to that, neil e very good. i always enjoy our chats. david walker, and still waiting to hear from mitt romney, you know, trying to enjoy whatever tentative bounce in the polls he has. and there s time to hold on to that luster, because the conventions are back to back, b
floods in the storm ralph vamged gulf. now at seven. and live in new orleans with the latest, joen than. hi, neil, life is rapidly returning to normal here in new orleans, which benefitted from the added protection of the army corps of engineers levee stem which has undergone nearly 15 billion dollars in renovations and improvements sense hurricane katrina. outside the federally protected area it s a different story for the low lying coastal communities and in the plaquemines parish, draining flood water during a lack levee. isaac pushed water over the levee, and rescued stranded residents who ignored evacuation orders. now that the storm has passed they re anxious to return to their homes to salvage what s left. and we re waiting for the water to go down on allowed to take in a flat boat and at
2020 through more growth policy what is it now? well, if you just look at public debt, it s about 75%, when you count what we owe social security and medicare, it s 105. so if we just look at the public debt. 75, let s get that to 60% of gdp by 2020. pro growth, do more fiscal responsibilities. neil, as you know, at the end of world war ii we were at 122. we went down to the 30 s and we didn t pay off a dollar of debt. neil: does it make a difference, dave, if we get the government as a shareholder of overall spending, i think they want to bring it down and the ryan plan to i think it s close to 24, 25% now. what kind of difference would that make? it would make a big difference, in 1912, 100 years ago. the federal government was 2% of the u.s. economy. this year it s 24. in 2040, it s scheduled to be 37. i think we can solve this problem, in a way that s pro