Sen. Ted Cruz calls “economic growth” the number one tool in the fight to stop the rapidly increasing federal debt.
Ahead of the state’s Tuesday primary, the GOP presidential candidate took part in a Wisconsin town hall hosted by Megyn Kelly of Fox News. Kelly gave the floor to one of several Wisconsin voters for a question on the national debt.
Carol Ross of Fitchburg, Wisconsin asked Cruz:
My question concern has been for a long time the rate of our debt that’s growing with the country. It’s approached 20 trillion as I understand recently. What will you do as President to stop this growth and to end the addictive spending our country has or our lawmakers have and to ensure our children’s future?”
Cruz told a story from 2012, when he spoke at the Republican National convention during which he spoke of the national debt.
I talked about our two little girls Caroline and Catherine. And that night Heidi and I went back to the hotel room and I pulled out my iPhone I began looking at Twitter and Paula Poundstone, the comedian, turns out she was watching that night. I guess she had nothing better to do. She sent a tweet, she said, Ted Cruz just said when his daughter was born the national debt was 10 trillion dollars. Now it’s 16 trillion dollars.
What the heck did she do? And Heidi and I laughed pretty hard, but ya know Caroline, as we talked about earlier in the show, Caroline is turning 8 in two weeks. In Caroline’s short life our national debt has gone from it’s 10 trillion to its now over 19 trillion dollars. I mean what we’re doing is wrong. It is immoral. And no generation in American history has ever done this. Our parents didn’t do it to us. Their parents didn’t do it to them.
If we don’t stop, our kids will spend their whole lives not working to meet the challenges of the future, not working to meet their priorities, but simply paying off the debts of their deadbeat parents and grandparents. I think that’s one of the things at the core of this election is we need serious leadership to fix it.
Cruz went on to address the woman’s question of how he would halt government overspending.
Now let me tell ya how we fix it. The most important tool to turning around the debt is economic growth. If you look at numbers, I’m a numbers guy, the dominant variable that impacts the federal budget is growth. From WWII to today our economy has grown on average 3.3 per cent a year. From 2008 till today it’s grown only 1.2 per cent. If we stay in the stagnate Obama growth of one and two per cent, we can’t fix these problems.
Cruz released his “Five For Freedom” spending plan last November. The plan highlights a federal spending reduction of $500 billion. According to an announcement the “proposal eliminates four departments, the IRS, and 25 programs.” On shrinking the “size and power of the federal government,” the Texas Senator said, “That means eliminating unnecessary or unconstitutional agencies.”
Follow Michelle Moons on Twitter @MichelleDiana
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