The biggest thing that got us into this mess is the republican trickle down theory -- that if you give more to the rich, they'll trickle it down.
As we've seen, the more money people have the more irresponsible they get. They try to figure out how to keep more so they take advantage of tax loopholes and park their money offshore, they invent Ponzi schemes, they give themselves big salaries and bonuses, they behave recklessly.
My administration inherited a $1.3 trillion budget deficit, the largest in history. And we've inherited a budgeting process as irresponsible as it is unsustainable. For years, as Wall Street used accounting tricks to conceal costs and avoid responsibility, Washington did, too.
These kinds of irresponsible budgets -- and inexcusable practices -- are now in the past. For the first time in many years, my administration has produced a budget that represents an honest reckoning of where we are and where we need to go.
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