When a videographer asked Virginia Democratic Senate candidate and former Democratic National Committee chairman Tim Kaine how much the United States’ national debt is, he replied: “It’s sizeable.”
“It’s sizeable,” Kaine said. “But, I think we’re going to get it down. I think we will. And, I expect the Senate is going to do some good things.”
WATCH: Kaine doesn’t know how much national debt is:
For Kaine’s reference, the national debt is currently more than $14.3 trillion, according to the Treasury Department. When Democrats took control of the Senate in January 2007, the national debt was $8.6 trillion and when President Barack Obama took office, the debt totaled $10.6 trillion.
Kaine’s apparent ignorance echoes an incident in which former New York City mayor and 2008 GOP presidential primary candidate Rudy Giuliani got ripped for not knowing the price of milk or bread.
“A gallon of milk is probably about a $1.50, a loaf of bread about a $1.25, $1.30,” Giuliani said in Alabama in 2007. Associated Press reporter Phillip Rawls hit Giuliani with a story digging into the actual prices of milk and bread in a Manhattan supermarket and an Alabama supermarket.
“A check of the Web site for D’Agostino supermarket on Manhattan’s Upper East Side showed a gallon of milk priced at $4.19 and a loaf of white bread at $2.99 to $3.39,” Rawls wrote. “In Montgomery, Ala., a gallon of milk goes for about $3.39 and bread is about $2.”