Pete Domenici (the collapse)

The following quote is from Pete Domenici at 3 minutes 22 seconds into the March 6, 2011 episode of Eye on New Mexico. Nicole Brady then asks Domenici why we never hear this side of the story; to which Domenici replies: you tell me.

http://www.kob.com/article/stories/S2005349.shtml?cat=10106
Eye on New Mexico - March 6, 2011
(23:56-20:36)

Pete Domenici: The two of us worked for eight or nine months and produced what we of thought was a method of getting to where we ought to be as a people if we want to avoid what we think could be a tsunami, economic tsunami, a crash, going off the mountain; and that our economy, our dollar, could be in trouble. We could just turn into a second rate power. Now all of that, let's just put it in here for the people to know, all of that could happen because our deficits have accumulated too big a debt. The deficits are annual, debt is the sum of all those annuals. And it's approaching, it is over 14 trillion. And going up at more than one trillion a year. which means we aren't doing very well at controlling our expenditures. And expenditures are one thing but how far the expenditures exceed the tax take, that's the sum of the income tax, that difference is an annual deficit. And so we suggested, one, first we said: Is this a big problem? You bet. Everybody agreed it was mammoth. It was the kind of thing like a WAR. Number two. How would you put it together? You put everything on the table. Everything. Social Security. Medicare. Medicaid. Nobody escapes being looked at. Why? Not because we want to hurt anybody; not because we want people to march in the street, and say we violated our contract; but its because if we don't, something bad will happen to this great country. It's like losing a war to Hitler. And they say in advance: what would it be if you lost a war to Hitler? Well I don't know. We didn't.  We never lost one. But you want to try? To most of them they say: No. But looks like they want to try on this one. If we told you the debt will reach a point where they won't buy our notes...you understand, this debt is nothing more than, we gotta raise thirty billion dollars so we put out IOU’s, we announce today, and a hole bunch of people go there and bid, countries bid, and in the last 15 years we’ve been selling most of it overseas, and more than that, we've been selling most of it to a foreign country called China. Who now owns enough of those to be a 900 billion dollar creditor. That means they are owed 900 billion dollars ...American greenbacks that have to be paid so that they can mark the note: “paid in full”. And they are asking: What is with this America? We've been buying these notes because we thought it was the safest place in the world to put money. And here we hear the news is they might go broke. The Chinese are saying: What is with them? And we hear that some Chinese leaders are telling some of our leaders "we’ve come to the conclusion that your leadership does not want to solve this problem.”(20:36)

https://sites.google.com/site/erikhawkes/Home/pete-domenici

Pietro Vichi "Pete" Domenici is an American Republican politician, who served six terms as a United States Senator from New Mexico, from 1973 to 2009, the longest tenure in the state's history.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pete_Domenici