POLITICS
Obama: U.S. 'Out of Money'
2009-05-23 01:45pm
President Barack Obama said during a weekend interview with reporters that the U.S. is "out of money," and that the nation was operating in "deep deficits."
"...We are out of money now. We are operating in deep deficits, not caused by any decisions we've made on health care so far. This is a consequence of the crisis that we've seen and in fact our failure to make some good decisions on health care over the last several decades," Obama said, in an interview with C-SPAN.
He said due benefits and entitlements like Medicare and Medicaid were putting a substantial drain on the Treasury, and will continue to do so unless the nation addresses health care reform.
"One option is just to do nothing. We say, well, it's too expensive for us to make some short-term investments in health care. We can't afford it. We've got this big deficit. Let's just keep the health care system that we've got now," he said.
"Another that trajectory, we will see health care cost as an overall share of our federal spending grow and grow and grow and grow until essentially it consumes everything," said the president.
He went onto say the government did not want to be in the business of bailing out automobile makers, and that Washington would not seek to bail out states with massive budget deficits.
(c) 2009 Newsroom.