What's the higher priority: jobs or deficit. And the answer is: jobs, at least for the short term.
Q Has he chosen the need to fight the recession to create jobs as a higher priority than fighting the deficit?
MR. GIBBS: In the short term, absolutely. We have to get our economy moving again because one of the reasons that we've seen the budget deficit grow is that the economy has slowed down. We all know the extraordinary measures that had to be put in place in order to jumpstart the economy and we've seen some of the impacts of that as recently as Friday, with increased numbers in economic growth.
The President, as you heard in the State of the Union and throughout the first year, discuss the need and the necessity to get that economy moving again, and then to transition to address our mid- and long-term fiscal challenges.
I think many of the proposals the President outlines in here we have discussed -- non-security discretionary spending freeze; the President has supported and Congress thankfully passed last week a reinstitution of I think very simple commonsense rules that -- for pay as you go, that if we're going to spend money we're going to have to pay for it -- rules that were absent for a decent part of the last decade in which we saw deficits and debts skyrocket.
