I am willing to work with anybody who wants to have a serious conversation about our fiscal future. We're not going to do this under the threat of blowing up the entire economy. I will not negotiate over Congress' responsibility to pay the bills that have already been racked up. I don't know how I can be more clear about this.
You don't want modesty, you want humility. Humility comes from inside out. It says someone was here before me and I'm here because I've been paid for. I have something to do and I will do that because I'm paying for someone else who has yet to come.
So I analyzed that and decided I didn't want to be the president during a depression greater than the Great Depression, or the beginning of a depression greater than the Great Depression.
The last thing you want to do is raise taxes in the middle of the recession because that would just suck up and take more demand out of the economy and put businesses in a further hole.