Town Hall Debate - Sacrifices: What sacrifices will you a...

SEN. MCCAIN: (Laughs.)

MR. BROKAW: We're going to have a larger deficit than the

federal government does if we don't get this under control here before

too long. (Laughter.)

We -- Senator McCain, for you, we have our first question from

the Internet tonight. A child of the Depression, 78-year-old Fiorra

from Chicago: "Since World War II, we have never been asked to

sacrifice anything to help our country except the blood of our heroic

men and women. As president, what sacrifices" -- sacrifices -- "will

you ask every American to make to help restore the American dream and

to get out of the economic morass that we're now in?"

SEN. MCCAIN: Well, Fiorra, I'm going to ask the American people

to understand that there are some programs that we may have to

eliminate. I first proposed a long time ago that we would have to

examine every agency and every bureaucracy of government, and we're

going to have to eliminate those that aren't working.

I know a lot of them that aren't working. One of them is in

defense spending, because I've taken on some of the defense

contractors. I saved the taxpayers $6.8 billion in a deal for an Air

Force tanker that was done in a corrupt fashion.

I believe that we have to eliminate the earmarks. And sometimes

those projects, not the overhead projector that Senator Obama asked

for but some of them that are really good projects, will have, will

have to be eliminated as well. And they'll have to undergo the same

scrutiny that all projects should, in competition with others.

So we're going to have to tell the American people that spending

is going to h