[speaker001:] uh well it's nice to talk with you um oh I guess I'll go ahead and start off with uh I think that there's two things that could be done that are procedural to uh to help the budget the first I believe in would be to give the president a line item veto um
[speaker002:] I agree with that
[speaker001:] uh I think that a lot of times the the members of congress uh when they're faced with uh the possibility of having to to cut jobs in their district by because of shutting down a federal project or something just don't have the the willpower on their own to uh to make the tough decisions and sometimes it would be best to give that over to the president who who has overall responsibility for the whole country and can uh I guess be a little bit more insulated from from uh the concerns of one of one district
[speaker002:] local politics yeah well also too often too the uh individual congressman has the uh especially if they are on on uh some of the committees that put these budgets together uh have the opportunity to slide things in that normally should not have gone in at all and the line yeah and the line item uh veto would be ideal for that I mean to
[speaker001:] yeah that's exactly right  yeah one of the the uh there's a bill pending before congress which I'm trying to remember what it's called it's something like the pork buster bill that um if approved would make it uh uh uh you wouldn't be able to um put in uh new projects and things in a conference committee or at anytime where they weren't reviewed by the regular committee that has responsibility for that and that's like what you were talking about where they slip things in at the last minute
[speaker002:] yeah
[speaker001:] and the conference committee is really the worst place for that to happen uh because no one uh uh has uh it doesn't go back into the regular committee for review after the conference committee it just goes back to the house and the senate for a final up or down vote on the whole thing
[speaker002:] yeah yeah there's another idea uh uh another uh way where the budget could uh probably benefit and this has to do of course uh it has to do with federal projects too often uh those are uh not there's no uh accountability once the uh projects are awarded to make sure that the quality is done and they end up getting stuck with billions of dollars of overlay or if contracts are put out uh no one uh is responsible or it does does not seem to be for following up that if it goes over budget it it well you know it's set up laissez faire attitude well that's to be expected we just sort of built it in well that shouldn't happen that way
[speaker001:] I agree
[speaker002:] and I think I think if there was more attention paid to uh what's being uh spent and more accountability that would help enormous enormously too are
[speaker001:] um-hum
[speaker002:] how who or how that would come about I'm not uh sure but that's an an an area that I think needs to be uh looked at
[speaker001:] yeah it it really sometimes seems that there is there's nobody out there uh watching out for uh for we the people and making sure that the money is spent wisely uh and I don't know that just sort of seems to be unfortunately part of the just how the system uh operates now uh we gee is there anything specific that you think uh uh in the way of federal programs or whatever that would be eliminated to try to cut federal spending
[speaker002:] well I think uh there could be a lot of consolidation of programs uh looking at of course there they have been a lot of talk to begin with but looking at and the the military's a big uh area that uh has taken a lot of shots recently but I I do not see the point of having four different services uh I do not see why they could not have one military service
[speaker001:] and just eliminate all that high level bureaucracy
[speaker002:] that's right because a lot of the monies are spent uh with insiding within those departments
[speaker001:] how do you feel about bringing home all of our troops from Europe and the Far East and letting Germany and Japan defend themselves
[speaker002:] uh basically I'm in I'm in agreement with that
[speaker001:] yeah
[speaker002:] uh I would think that there probably needs to be a uh monitor or not a monitor uh or courtesy you know yeah a presence but not a
[speaker001:] well we'll always have a presence there but we don't we don't need to have half a million troops overseas
[speaker002:] no well witness witness the the recent Gulf War too even with uh troops all over Europe uh it took several months to gear up
[speaker001:] that's right
[speaker002:] and so what was the point of having them to begin with
[speaker001:] um-hum yeah another area that's that I really think ought to be cut is is direct uh foreign aid