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Biden: 'We're Going to Inherit $1-Trillion Deficit'
December 21, 2008 9:04 AM
How much will the nation's bloated deficit be once President-Elect Barack Obama is sworn into office?
Vice President-Elect Joe Biden told me in an exclusive "This Week" interview it could be as much as $1-trillion.
"We're going to inherit a deficit that's probably going to exceed a Trillion dollars to begin with if we don't do anything, nothing at all.
If nothing happens between now and the time we take office on January the 20th, we're going to inherit the largest deficit in the history of the country," Biden said.
The future vice president argued the nation needs a "big" and "bold" second stimulus package in the range of $600-$700-billion.
"We want to spend a fair amount of money investing in a new smart grid," Biden said.
"The ability to transmit across high-tension wires in the minds of most people in the public, or underground in these wires, wind and solar energy. You can't do that now. That would create tens of thousands of new jobs, high-paying jobs. It needs to be done and it will have a long-range payoff not just for next year and the following year, keeping the economy from nose-diving, begin to turn the nose of that aircraft up, but it will also change our energy picture. It will deal with global warming," he said. .
Biden said the focus will also be on cutting spending in addition to infrastructure spending.
"The end result, though, the money we're spending, we're going to get back three- and four-fold," Biden said.
But, he said, the Obama administration can't focus initially on the ballooning deficit.
"As President-elect Obama said, we can't worry about the deficit in the short run. We can't worry about it right now," Biden told me.
"The whole idea here is the single most important thing we have to do as a new administration, to have -- to be able to have impact on all of the other things we want to do, from foreign policy to domestic policy, is we've got to begin to stem this bleeding here and begin to stop the loss of jobs in the creation of jobs," he said.
--George Stephanopoulos
December 21, 2008 in This Week with George Stephanopoulos | Permalink | Share | User Comments (4)
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Actually the deficit is $10 trillion plus $50.5 trillion for welfare bills that are coming due because of your liberal urge to save humanity.
Your trillion dollar inheritence is what you created when Congress destroyed the housing and credit markets.
Besides, its not your trillion. It is the taxpayers trillion. As usual.
Posted by: Dave | Dec 21, 2008 7:48:25 PM
And How did SENATOR BIDEN vote on all these spending issues of the past few months!
He agreed with all ALL of it. SO YOUR INHERITING YOUR OWN MESS YOU MENTAL PYGMIE!
Posted by: Mike_C | Dec 23, 2008 7:37:49 AM
JOE ....GOT BOTOX THAT FORHEAD IS LOOKING AWESOME..... looks like you could land marine 1 on that noggin.
Posted by: Gerard | Dec 24, 2008 9:46:17 AM
Inherit? Inherit from your OWN family, you moron! The Democrats were the ones that pushed for the first 700 billion bailout, the UAW bailout and are pusing for the NEW 1.2 trillion dollar bailout! Have ANY Democrats voted to stop any of these? Let me help you Joe since your too stupid to figurre it out for yourself! NO! Inherit? And this guy is a heartbeat away from the Presidency? Where is Sarah Palin?
Posted by: Bill | Jan 11, 2009 6:21:47 PM
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