Town Hall Debate - Spending: How can we trust you with ou...

Question: How can we trust either of you with our money when both

parties got us into this global economic crisis?

SEN. OBAMA: Well, look, I understand your frustration and your

cynicism, because while you've been carrying out your

responsibilities, most of the people here -- you've got a family

budget; if less money's coming in, you end up making cuts.

cuts.

Maybe you don't go out to dinner as much. Maybe you put off buying a

new car. That's not what happens in Washington. And you're right,

there's a lot of blame to go around. But I think it's important just

to remember a little bit of history.

When George Bush came into office, we had surplus. And now we

have a $0.5 trillion deficit annually. When George Bush came into

office, our debt, national debt was around 5 trillion. It's now over

$10 trillion. We've almost doubled it.

And so while it's true that nobody's completely innocent here, we

have had, over the last eight years, the biggest increases in deficit

spending and national debt in our history. And Senator McCain voted

for four our of five of those George Bush budgets.

So here's what I would do. I'm going to spend some money on the

key issues that we've got to work on. You know, you may have seen

your health care premiums go up. We've got to reform health care to

help you and your budget.

We are going to have to deal with energy because we can't keep on

borrowing from the Chinese and sending money to Saudi Arabia. We are

mortgaging our children's future. We've got to have a different

energy plan. We've got to invest in college affordability.

So we're going to h