[speaker001:] the budget seems to be oh on a number of people's minds and often times when peoples talk about cutting budget or wishing that the government didn't spend money here and there I hear them talk about uh cutting what they call aid to some foreign countries and people don't understand why are we give a million here or a billion there and and whether they like it or not or whether they understand it or not the government just simply develops dependencies on us uh you start giving a country uh x amount of dollars for so many years and their whole economy and their whole uh system is uh used to it and then you threaten with whatever you wish you know you would say well you're not acting right we're gonna withhold it or you're not doing this that or the other or we want our base here or we want whatever and the government's been doing that for years and will probably continue to do that for years and I'm not sure if the general public uh thinks about it that way when they start saying why did we give money here or money there and but there are some things even when we what we spend in inside the US it seems a little far fetched and not necessarily for the common good uh lot of the money for the arts seem to benefit only a few and usually those who are um rich anyway or have enough have enough money to attend those kind of functions so it's that's a a controversy of course there's only a hundred and seventy million going to the NEA but a hundred and seventy million's a bit and it's something so what would you do or cut or change in the budget
[speaker002:] well  um I agree with you on the international aid and um I don't think a lot of people realize too on we can't live isolated our world is such an international economy now and um uh especially with the problems in Eastern Europe and Russia uh I know a lot of people feel that we've given so much aid and we have so many economic problems and and I agree that we do but um it's also in our country's interest um to have a balanced world economy um sometimes it does seem like we're the ones doing all the giving um and I have to admit sometimes I have wondered if uh
[speaker001:] um-hum
[speaker002:] we run into problems which is is certainly a possibility if anyone would come to lend us a hand but um
[speaker001:] right
[speaker002:] I do think uh this is a hard area I'm there's some areas that I feel uh need a lot of work um and improvement and education comes to mind I know they are working on trimming defense um this has been such a long process that has gotten us to the point that we're in but unless they start working on it um it really it it already is is close to uncontrollable
[speaker001:] um-hum
[speaker002:] but I'm not sure exactly what practical uh steps uh could be um I wish I had some of the figures in front of me now to know the percentage um I do think one step once something you touched on in talking about the arts is that as far as percentages go I think uh money should go that benefits the most um I say uh I believe in um education and not necessarily the federal um it can be done on on different levels too because I think that's our future if we um if our education system falls behind that of say Germany and Japan and um some of the other countries we need to be able to be competitive um
[speaker001:] um-hum
[speaker002:] it's that's an area I would not want cut there are a lot of areas I think that money could be better spent I think sometimes the money they spend on studies to decide on things is way out of proportion and and of course everyone's heard the stories of the several thousand dollar hammer and um you know somewhere along the line um there've been some gross errors
[speaker001:] most of the the national or the federal dollars that go toward any project uh people tend to want accountability but they don't want the so-called bigger government so they they wanna have fewer government employee