Ross Perot is refusing to endorse either Mitt Romney or Barack Obama in this year’s election battle, saying he is equally unimpressed with both candidates.
The man who shook up the 1992 election by standing as a third-party candidate says neither has a viable plan for reducing the nation’s deficit, the major focus for his own runs for the White House.
“We’re on the edge of the cliff, and we have got to start fixing it now. Otherwise, we’re leaving a disaster to our children’s and our grandchildren’s future,” Perot said
during an interview with USA Today’s Richard Wolf which is to air on C-SPAN on Monday night.
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"Nobody that's running really talks about it, about what we have to do and why we have to do it. They would prefer not to have it discussed."
The national debt stood at $4 trillion when Perot sounded his warnings 20 years ago. It has since quadrupled.
He likened government spending to an alcoholic. "It's like the guy who's drinking — sooner or later, he's got to put a cork on the bottle, right? You have to have the will to do it."
He told Wolf that his hope in 1992 was to bring the debt to the forefront of the national debate even if he did not get elected. "I didn't get done what I hoped I'd get done,” he admitted.
“I hoped they'd all get busy and straighten it out. That hasn't happened yet, and this is my last big effort here."
Perot received 19 percent of the vote in 1992, an effort that many believe cost George H.W. Bush re-election and pushed Bill Clinton into office. He received less than half that in a second run in 1996.
He says that at 82, his days of running for election are now over. “I’m too old to do it now,” he admits.
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But USA Today says that Perot is backing the efforts of former U.S. comptroller general David Walker who is on a bus tour to swing states educating voters about the country’s economic challenges.
Perot also has an autobiography due out in January.
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