NEWT:
Yeah, well, the whole point of my newsletter at Gingrich 360 dot com was that when you look at the American people, which we’ve done through the America’s New Majority Project, it’s clear the American people, first of all, are prepared to have spending cuts that are substantial or even prepared if necessary, to close the government rather than automatically increase spending. Deeply believe that the model we used in the 1990s, which was to maximize economic growth. I would argue balancing the federal budget is 70% economic growth, 30% restrain in spending. You cannot do it the other way around. And so people get this. Then they also believe that moving to a balanced budget stops inflation, which is true, and they’d like to see us get back to it. I think I’ve been working closely with Jody Arrington, chairman of the House Budget Committee, and I think that you will see a serious effort in September to bring forward a budget which would get to balance over the next decade. As you know, I helped authored the only four consecutive balanced budgets in your lifetime, and they were pure Reaganism or pure Lafferism, if you’d like. They were less spending, less spending, less regulatory friction and lower taxes. They came together, it worked. And in fact, at one point, Alan Greenspan as chairman of the Federal Reserve, actually said publicly they thought it might help pay off the national debt by 2009. And they weren’t sure. They weren’t sure how to manage the money supply if there was no debt.
NEWT:
Well, look. No, I mean, to be too practical as a political figure, not a theoretician. There’s not enough credibility today to do anything significant with Social Security. But the truth is, if you move towards dramatic economic growth, you and I have talked about this. We go back to the three and a half percent, which we ought to be at, which is the historic average that actually extends the life of Social Security and it extends the life of Medicare and allows you to have a lot more time to have a discussion about what to do next. But you’ve got to establish a really big growth rate and you’ve got to establish real control on spending. And you have to repeal a large part of the radical regulatory machinery that has been set up over the last several decades. You do those things. The economy is booming. You can have a very different conversation about Social Security. We could not have that conversation today.
NEWT:
Well, I think what’s hard about it is to is to get to explain it so that people think that it’s a very low risk. The fact is, people are very risk averse about Social Security and very, very risk averse about about Medicare. So you’ve got to have something they believe in, not just something you can argue. And that’s where, frankly, the long term pattern of the stock market, particularly if you go back to the 3.5% growth rate. Now, people are going to suddenly say, wait, you know. I mean, you could say, hey, here’s how much you’re not getting because you’re trapped. You want the whole country to get rich.
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