Is defense spending a possible target?
You can’t look at the spending side of the budget without noticing the substantial amount of money we’re spending on national defense. Whether or not we’ll be making any recommendations with respect to defense spending is like everything else: It’s too early to tell. Q: Is it possible the commission will recommend raising taxes? A: We’ll look at the tax system as a whole as opposed to specific taxes. We’ve not had a closet-cleaning in the Internal Revenue code since 1986. We took a lot of deductions, credits, exemptions, trimmed them out or eliminated them altogether, broadened the base of taxation and lowered rates considerably. We need to take another look at the code, clean out the code and make it fairer and simpler. Q: Why is this commission even necessary? These ideas have been around for quite some time. A: We’ve got a problem with the budget past 2014. We have enormous deficits now. We need to give the financial markets around the world and in our own country assurance that we’
