Page 22 - Spending Side News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

I will say on the spending side, we have seen a number of stories, going back to my time in the white house, how some resources were spent, vendors, a friend of the first lady was a key player organizing a lot of the things and millions of dollars spent through that entity. these are stories we have seen trickle out over the last six or eight months and maybe worth lifting up the hood to see if there was impropriety as to those vendors. i have no reason to believe there's any impropriety. just as a passing observer. >> it doesn't sound like you would be shocked if there was something. >> not t...

Identified. those top five vendors accounted for much of the expense but they are looking at whether top donors are paying for access to the new administration, to the incoming administration. tell us about that. >> we understand that the investigation basically has two prongs, one seems to be examining the spending side of the funds and the other is on the donor side of the funds. it's not uncommon in washington to have a situation where you have donors who then get some sort of preferential treatment, but what it appears to be that investigators are looking sat whether donors got real access...

His central campaign promise. he knew full well, number one, might bring and did bring pat buchanan. and two, could end his political career. yet he thought it was critical he do it. why? >> i have rarely seen anyone agonize offer a decision as much as he did about that decision. we had rising budget deficits at the time. they were predicted to double over the next two years. he felt like he had very few alternatives but to get the best deal he could. in fact, he got a good deal from his standpoint with about $3 in budget restraint on the spending side for every dollar of revenue increases. bu...

Revenues we took in as a government set a record this year. they'll set another record next year. did we see corporate earnings drop a little bit? yeah. to be expected when you lower corporate rates. in the long run we see them go above where they were going to be. the total revenues aren't the problem. the spending side of the problem is the problem and that's why it has been the message of the president for the last couple of weeks congress needs to spend 5% less across the board next year. >> bill: two last questions here. in the minute we have left. you said something there about why voter...

With a 5% cut. get rid of the fat. get rid of the waste. that's a very, very important request that i'm making of everybody sitting around the table. >> that was the cabinet meeting yesterday. trump added some people at table could cut substantially more. the deficit is up 17% this year to $779 billion. that's the highest, the worst, since 2012 when the country was spending to stimulate the struggling economy. it is not necessarily the spending side of the equation, but taking inside of the equation. this is largely thanks to tax cuts. tax revenue was flat this year and corporate tax collectio...