Guessing game (II)

The following is an excerpt from the Premier’s year-end interview with Fred Hutton of NTV’s Evening News Hour on January 4th.

Sorta.

One of the two statements — either the clip from the Premier, or the follow-up question from Hutton — is genuine. The other is a complete fabrication. It is up to you, gentle reader, to figure out which one.

PREMIER WILLIAMS: As you pay down the debt it also gives you the ability then to bring it back up. It’s no different than if you paid down your line of credit at the bank or pay off your car loan, it gives you the ability to go borrow a little more, take a little more if you need it. So, that money will be used, for example, that, that surplus that’s actually going on the debt, though, will also be used to fund, you know, the settlements with the unions. I think the public sector settlements are going to cost us in the range of a half-billion dollars a year forever. So, that money will sort of go, go towards the public sector workers, which is, which is good, though, from an economic perspective because now we have this whole new infusion of eight percent and then four, four, and four into the economy and that’ll help drive our own economy, as well.

HUTTON: OK, wait, wait, wait, hold on just a cotton-pickin’ second here, Premier. Are you telling us, are you seriously telling us, that we have paid off the borrowing of the past, in order to make it easier to borrow again today or in the future? Come on, now! Really? Are you telling the people out there in NTV Land tonight that the virtue in paying down the provincial debt is that it makes it easier for us to go back into debt? Are you out of your gourd? Isn’t that the same sort of fiscal tomfoolery and incompetence that Ross Wiseman used, ostensibly, to justify crossing the floor to your party back in 2001?