The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #61303 Message #985122
Posted By: Alice
17-Jul-03 - 09:42 AM
Thread Name: BS: Howard Dean's Blog
Subject: RE: BS: Howard Dean's Blog
Some reasons I think Dean is more moderate than the media spin portrays:
Dean stated in his July 2 NPR interview, "I think I can win, in fact, I think I may be the only Democrat that can win. And the reason for that is, that, first of all, we have 38,000 [this has grown to 195,519 signed up as of July 16] volunteers in... all the 50 states. The next person, last time I saw, had 1,300. There is an enormous hunger in this country, not just by Democrats, but by independents, to see somebody in the White House who stands up for principles that are good for the country, centrist principles. This president has moved so far right that our guys have chased after him trying to get themselves elected....Balanced budged amendment is something that is political, I've publicly said that it's not great public policy, but we may have to have it anyway because you can't trust the Republicans with your money. And that's true, this president is using Argentina as his fiscal model: borrow and spend, borrow and spend, borrow and spend. It turns out the Republicans pushed the balanced budget but they never balanced budgets.They cut taxes, they cut services, they raise your middle class property taxes, but they never balance budgets and that's why we may need a balanced budget amendment. I am absolutely determined to balance the budget, I'm a complete deficit hawk, I had balanced budgets when I was governor, and we don't have any requirement to have a balanced budget. We're the only state in the country that has no statutory requirement. We put money aside, we had small tax cuts, and we paid off a quarter of our debt, going from the worst bond rating to the best bond rating in New England during the time I was governor. Now, we're not cutting K through 12, we're not cutting higher education, we're not cutting kids-only health care. If the federal government were run like that, I think Americans would be much better off...." end quote.