Debt reduction is still a very important issue for us, because we're looking at demographics. We look around the room, and we look at who might be retiring, going out five to ten years. We feel we need to get the interest expense of this government down. It's been at about $40 billion. That's when we're raising $210 billion in revenue. It's a huge amount, and if we could get our interest expense down, we'd have a lot more flexibility in spending money on tourism and health care. We believe we should reduce the debt when we can, when times are good, so that when times aren't good, we're not constrained by the interest expense.
On October 26th, 2006. See this statement in context.