[speaker001:] well my basic idea on dealing with the US budget as unrealistic and as it may be is to first of all put an end to these kinds of uh hidden user fees and uh um other types of uh tricks that have been used to help mask the size of this thing let's get a hold of what the real true sized of it is and then let's deal with it immediately and as quickly as possible even if it means some short term higher taxes to get it down and uh then let's try to make some reforms with the the congressional community ha ha try and make it so that we don't have this problem in the future
[speaker002:] well I have to I have to say that I would be very in favor of a situation where the revenue generation activities of the government such as the IRS are monitored and spending for year X plus one can go no higher than the revenues brought in during year X
[speaker001:] you know
[speaker002:] so that uh forget about this balanced budget this would immediately force them to say well geez um you know last year was a bad year and we've only got you know we only took in two hundred million dollars uh I realize that I'm off by a factor of about five but we only took in two hundred million even though this year is going better we can still only spend two hundred million
[speaker001:] I I just keep seeing unfortunately the problem a lot of the problem why we have this deficits balloon especially during the eighties is just because the American people bought into this notion that well we can just uh we don't need a higher taxes certainly not they get enough of our money already and the deficit doesn't seem to affect me in my daily life and routine so so what
[speaker002:] it's going to affect your kids
[speaker001:] yeah I know but you notice these people are only now starting to think ahead
[speaker002:] well I I think this has always been the case with the American public in that it's made up of a bunch of special interest groups it's only recently that special interest groups have started to exert more power
[speaker001:] um-hum
[speaker002:] uh for instance retirees they've started to up social security benefits it used to be so social security was just the final safety net
[speaker001:] yeah
[speaker002:] but it's not that way anymore uh now you've got people who have uh sixty thousand in tax free income because they invested wisely during their working years and they're still collecting social security and all of that money is tax free
[speaker001:] um-hum
[speaker002:] I'm sorry I think that um all of the investment income regardless of how you invested should be taxable and the thing is that you should loose social security benefits based on how much income you have
[speaker001:] yeah the only the only problem comes down as that a lot of people will scream and yell especially the AARP because they were yelled that well we paid for this all along was this a hidden secret tax the whole time that's our money that they don't want to give back to us now
[speaker002:] uh yeah I I I I agree I think that social security ought to be done away with and put into the uh tax
[speaker001:] um-hum
[speaker002:] and that's what it is so go ahead and put it in there and uh uh you know I mean they're treating it as a tax they're treating the money as tax revenue it's not something that they're putting aside for later use it goes into the general fund whether or not it wants to to go there that's that's were it goes and it's being used so I mean um uh my personal opinion out here in California we just instituted term limits on the uh Senate and House for the state legislature
[speaker001:] um-hum
[speaker002:] and I don't know whether it's going to have uh the affect that of course all the the career politicos here say oh my God you know you're going to have a bunch of amateurs running the state legislature well well so what they can't do any worse than the guys that are in there now and
[speaker001:] well yeah we have that out here in New York too you know with governor Mario King Mario and the legislatures are opposing parties are controlled by opposing parties which means basically every year we have a scream and terrified over the budget
[speaker002:] yeah
[speaker001:] in this state which is delayed eternally and then they want to kill each other you know
[speaker002:] well I think that what we may end up with with the term limits is you get more people involved in government
[speaker001:] um-hum
[speaker002:] you get more people seeing how it should work and I think what that will do is that will allow people to say well wait a minute we've got to compromise we've got to work on something we need more of a vision and less of uh God I'll grab my money and do everything I can