Hillary Clinton, Presidential Candidate, March 2007:

"Clinton is making America's dependence on Chinese investors a central theme of her 2008 message. She took to the CNBC airwaves Thursday [March 1, 2007] to declare that America was undergoing ‘a slow erosion of our own economic sovereignty.'  In a letter to Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke, Clinton said Wednesday's stock market sell-off ‘underscores the exposure of our economy to economic developments in countries like China. As we have been running trade and budget deficits, they have been buying our debt and in essence becoming our banker'... She argued in her letter to Paulson and Bernanke that Congress and the president had to ‘ensure foreign governments don't own too much of our public debt.'" Source

"Clinton told [China's President] Hu she felt like [sic] a beginning of ‘a new era' of bilateral relations characterized by ‘positive cooperation.' Clinton's visit to Beijing, the last leg of her inaugural overseas trip, marked the beginning of face-to-face diplomacy between the two countries since the Obama administration took office last month... She thanked China for its ‘continued confidence in U.S. Treasuries.' China replaced Japan as the top holder of U.S. treasury debt last September, with its overall holding hitting 585 billion U.S. dollars, according to U.S. Treasury data.  Source (news.Xinhuanet.com) 

FDR's programs did not work, but new relationships forged during those years between the people and Washington remained, and they paved the way for the social service activities that now make up the Human Resources cost center. (p. 10)

Total breakaway from past disciplines began when Lyndon Johnson because president. His no-holds-barred approach to spending what he wanted, when he wanted, led to the debt we have today. (p. 349)

Defense - It approaches the humorous to hear politicians blame continued deficits on wars. Only 18 percent of the total deficits accumulated since 1941 can be fairly assigned to Defense.

Interest - The cost of money should never be a dominant number in a federal budget. It was too high in 1960 because debt was too high (some World War II debt was still outstanding), and it was even higher in 2008 for the same basic reason. The only way to substantially decrease its cost is to substantially reduce the size of debt.

Government - With some exceptions, succeeding presidents did a good job of controlling the cost of Government despite the fact that 10 percent of the accumulated deficits came from this cost center.  Generally speaking, uncontrollable external events caused the unfunded spending to a degree that would have been recoverable in a saner budget environment.

Human Resources - This cost center is the core of the budget problem. Accumulated unfunded costs represent 66 percent of the additions to public debt since 1941.  Absent this level of spending, public debt of $5.3 trillion in 2008 (estimated) would have been $3.4 trillion lower (70 percent) and Interest cost of 2008 would have been about 3 percent of all spending.

Until all federal fringes and programs are put on the table and sorted out in terms of value and priority, the federal budget is in a condition of systemic deficits for as long as presidents maintain an adequate military force. (p. 221)

"Hillary Clinton has met the enemy, and it is foreign investment. She unleashed a barnburner of a speech at a New York fundraising event the other day and reserved special salvos for China. She warned that we are ‘giving up our fiscal sovereignty' to the Chinese. Our borrowing from Beijing makes it impossible to ‘get tougher on China,' she said, because, ‘How do you get tough on your banker?'" (Source)