Trump: I’ll Balance Budget With Better Negotiation, Cutting DOE, EPA, and Waste, Fraud, and Abuse

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump was pressed on his plan to cut the deficit during Thursday’s GOP presidential debate on the Fox News Channel on Thursday.

Trump was asked by moderator Chris Wallace, “Mr. Trump, your proposed tax cut would add $10 trillion to the nation’s debt over 10 years. Even if the economy grows the way that you say it will, you insist you could make up for a good deal of that, you say, by cutting waste, fraud, and abuse. Like what? And please be specific.”

Trump answered, “Department of Education. We’re cutting Common Core. We’re getting rid of Common Core. We’re bringing education locally. Department of environmental protection. We are going to get rid are of it in almost every form. We’re going to have little tidbits left, but we’re going to take a tremendous amount out. We have various other things. If you look at the IRS, if you look at every single agency, we can cut it down, and I mean really cut it down, and save. The waste, fraud, and abuse is massive.”

Wallace then said the DOE’s and EPA’s total budgets only add up to $86 billion out of the $544 billion deficit.

Trump then stated, “[B]ecause of the fact that the pharmaceutical companies, are not mandated to do bid properly, they have hundreds of billions of dollars in waste. we don’t bid properly. we don’t have proper bidding procedures. the reason we don’t, is because they take care of all of the senators, all of the congressman, and they don’t bid. They don’t go out to bid.”

Wallace then cut in by saying that, “You say that Medicare could save $300 billion a year negotiating lower drug prices, But Medicare, total only spends $78 billion a year on drugs.”

Trump cut in, “I’m saying saving through negotiation throughout the economy, you’ll save $300 million.”

Wallace countered, “That doesn’t cut the federal deficit.” Trump then responded, “Of course it is. We’re going to buy things for less money. Of course it is.”

Wallace responded, “The only drugs we pay for is through Medicare.”

“I’m not only talking about drugs i’m talking about other things. We’ll save more than $300 billion a year, if we properly negotiate.”

Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett

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