joining us is howard dean and tony frata. both are cnbc contributors. governor dean, i want to begin with you. we seem to become a nation obsessed with tax rates. now it's like a badge of shame to pay the minimum the government requires you to. why is that? >> part of it is because we have the enormous deficit and 60% of the deficits paid for by the bush administration. you have to cut spending and that was not done under president bush. the democrats accused of increasing spending without raises taxes. tough have a balanced budget and in the long term and the way to do it is balance revenue and spending. and that's not been done, frankly, by any either. >> you know, can we blame it all on the tax cuts, governor? >> no. 60%. the rest of it was the wars not paid for and so forth and so on. >> but a lot of that is because the economy collapsed. >> that's right. >> incomed fell and people paid less on that. >> that's right. >> at current spending with slight cuts, right, going forward, looking at the trends in spending, do you see any way that we can get o