Romney Campaign Adviser Bay Buchanan: Obama's policies have put us 'in fiscal ruin,' says President needs to take responsibility for economy

Romney Campaign Adviser Bay Buchanan responds to Romney's claim that we don't need to expand the size of government.

See the transcript after the jump.

O'BRIEN: Bay, nice to see you. Thanks for talking with us. So, heard Mitt Romney -

BAY BUCHANAN, ROMNEY CAMPAIGN: Good to be with you, Soledad.

O'BRIEN: - after President Obama stepped out with his private sector is fine, Mitt Romney sort of did his response as well, and that actually was fairly controversial too. Let me play a little bit of that for you.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ROMNEY: He says we need more firemen, more policemen, more teachers. Did he not get the message of Wisconsin? The American people did. It's time for us to cut back on government and help the American people.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

O'BRIEN: Was that the message from Wisconsin? Cut back on firefighters and teachers?

BUCHANAN: I think if you had played his whole clip - Soledad, if you played his whole clip, what Mitt Romney said right before that is Obama has no message. His message is the same as it always has been.

What has failed in this country, what he said is Obama wants more government, more government spending, to enlarge the size of government and the message from Wisconsin is, no, that is not the answer. We do not want more government and more reckless spending? What we want is responsible government.

O'BRIEN: But he didn't say -

BUCHANAN: If you look right before that, he says what Obama wants is more government, more government hiring, more government spending. That is the message.

O'BRIEN: So, he goes on to literally say, we need more firemen, more policemen, more teachers. So his definition of more government is more firemen, more teachers, more policemen, to the point where as, you know, Governor Scott walker had to say, actually that wasn't the message of the recall section of my state.

BUCHANAN: Listen. What we have here is a president who has failed America, who has crushed the hopes and dreams of millions of Americans, 8 percent - more than 8 percent unemployment year after year. A stimulus that completely failed this country, reckless regulations that are making businesses, closing them, making them completely stagnant.

Listen, we have Americans suffering across the country. People 50 years and older -

(CROSSTALK)

BUCHANAN: - will never see another job and this man says the public sector is fine. You tell me, Soledad. This president is completely clueless about what is going on in this country or he simply doesn't care. I want to know which one, because both are leading the country to fiscal ruin.

O'BRIEN: I'm not sure he would agree with that there's no option to that question.

Let me ask you about Mitt Romney for a moment if I can.

BUCHANAN: Sure.

O'BRIEN: So he basically says he points to the firemen, policemen and more teachers as if hiring those are bad thing for the economy. Why are they not correlated with good economic growth?

BUCHANAN: Listen. Clearly every state and every locality decides on how many police, how many teachers, and how many firemen are best for their community. And the reason they can't maintain that number if they are not is because the economy, the overall economy, the money - the businesses are not there. People are falling, people are unemployed.

That is raising the cost of local and state government. And so they're not able to do all that they want. The key to that turning around is a strong economy. This Congressional Budget Office has made it very clear last week that Barack Obama's policies have put us at fiscal ruin. We are facing fiscal ruin.

(CROSSTALK)

O'BRIEN: You're talking about the - if you're talking about the fiscal cliff from the CBO.

BUCHANAN: Yes.

O'BRIEN: Having read that report it does not say that Obama's policies have done that. What they point out is congress has to get its act together or we're going to fall of the cliff.

BUCHANAN: Oh, my gosh. Please, Soledad. He's the president of the United States, the most powerful man in the world. It is his - he has to take some responsibility for the economy that his policies have created after 3 1/2 years.

Take a little responsibility. Show a little leadership and give us some answers instead of we're going do more of the same, more of the same. What's going to happen? Why do we think we're going to get a different solution unless he totally misunderstands how this economy works.

O'BRIEN: How much of a problem is it as people when they're going to turn this comment from Mitt Romney into a political ad that he's saying we need more firemen. The president says we need more firemen, more policemen, more teachers.

Is that going to be a problem? Is that going to be something that comes back to bite him?

BUCHANAN: No. He obviously wanted states to be able to hire who they believe they need to take care of communities. Those three groups are critical to society. And don't get me wrong, Obama. Those groups are hurting as well. Their families and friends are suffering as well as well out there.

They know this economy is not working and they understand where it's coming from. So this idea that Obama has no responsibility, in the own ad, he really indicts himself. He says 450,000 local, state, and governments have been being laid off.

Why do they think they are being laid off, Mr. President? Do you not understand that when the economy is suffering. We are have - the situation we're having today with the slow, slow almost no growth in the country sometimes that he is impacting, his policies are impacting what's going on in the state and local.

We need a man in the White House who understands how to turn this country around, how to put America back to work. And he proved that in Massachusetts.

Soledad, I want to correct something Stephanie said. When he was governor, Mitt Romney went into the office. The state was number 50. He took it to number 30 for job creation.

He went in there looking at a huge deficit. He had surplus. He balanced the budget every single year.

If Barack Obama could do half the job that Mitt Romney did in Massachusetts, this country could be thriving. He's, instead, running deficits, every single - trillion dollar deficits.