well you know we've been talking about this for quite some time uh last couple of years we've seen some near misses on runways in part again because increased traffic coming out of uh coming out of uh the the pandemic but also because we need more people working uh for air traffic control we need more people in the FAA we need more people in the TSA and you're having all of these cuts and and and and and and masing all these expenses I I I just again I want to go back to this axus article Willie
so here here is if you look at this this is where the money goes social security health uh net interest on the debt Medicare you go down all of these numbers you know FAA it's not even a DOT here so slashing air safety slashing safety for for people that make sure that that our our our nuclear uh you know our nuclear stock f is safe I mean you could go down the list there are not even dots on this budget and you know Ally I I I want to take uh two two quotes from this
axus article and then have you talked about what's going on in the hill versus Doge um as as Mike Allen and Jim vah High write when you C consider where Federal money really goes most Doge Oddities and outrages amount to rounding errors in a sea of government obligations and they do and those rounding errors that they're supposedly taking a chainsaw to they're not I mean hardly even cutting but what they're cutting is dangerous uh and then uh there's an old saying the US Government consists of a military attached to an insurance company um and and
that is true add up the defense budget add up Medicare add up Social Security add up Medicaid add up interest on the debt and you're getting close to 90% of what the federal government spends every year and so this I mean you've got theatrics with Doge but nothing that's actually going to help us move closer to a balanced budget are not increasing the Sea of debt by $3 trillion over the next decade as the Congressional budget office says and the CBO of course is regularly included in these conversations as they move forward on these kinds
of legislative pieces the CBO always has a score attached to them so we always know what it's going to look like how much it's going to cost and then how much it's going to add to the debt over time so I think it's really important the way that you're highlighting this axios piece where you basically show that doge is nibbling around the edges now one of the pieces I think that's the Common Thread here when we talk about the town halls that Republicans are now so weary and wary of actually continuing with one of the
things that I heard from lawmakers on both sides of the aisle is that after they came back from being in their home districts last week some of them having Town Halls that were publicized others just having these kinds of conversations with their constituents Medicaid was the key thing that continued coming up in these conversations and I ask Democrats if it's that voters and constituents are at an outrage point or if they're just in a questioning and concerned point and it is the latter according to most of my conversations which puts Democrats in the positions of
having to educate people about what's actually at play in these budget reconciliation talks and that's why you hear the House minority leader hakee Jeff talking like this watch the house Republican budget resolution will set in motion the largest Medicaid cut in American history it's outrageous in many ways this is a matter of life and death and so every day every week every month for however long it takes we're going to push back and do everything we can to stop this budget from passing the House of Representatives in final form and ever becoming law so of
course we saw Democrats scrambling on attendance issues that actually had been kind of a thorny issue within the caucus I had been hearing yesterday as I was on the hill that Democrats were getting a little bit annoyed that there were some really close bills that attendance issues could have forced not to pass but then of course we saw members flying across the country despite health issues to be there to try to make a show of not letting this reconciliation procedural vote pass but look on Medicaid this is going to be the key issue Joe because
the speaker says he didn't give consessions but moderate members that ultimately fell in line with the rest of the party were voicing concerns about Medicaid and that's going to be a continuous conversation Jeff Van Drew apparently had conversations with President Trump yesterday in his quest to get to yes congresswoman Nicole motakis uh also of the New York area had conversations apparently on this issue so it's an issue that maybe it's put away for now but it's not going to be for long no it's not you're you're so right and and the biggest problem I I
if you look at this Peter Baker is we're talking about Doge and the problems they're having at Town Hall meetings in Red State America right now with Doge listen to some of these numbers uh when when it comes to cutting of Medicaid Medicaid and what that would do to Red State America uh it would lead to rural Hospital closures Medicaid accounts for up to 15% of rural uh hospitals revenue and and those hospitals are already struggling as you know uh over the past 10 years 120 rural hospitals uh have had to closed down they're having
trouble getting doctors there and also as you know as you go to Red State America and a lot of cities and towns and red State America they're number one employers I I mean I I saw this when when I went went to Little Rock and uh interviewed Bill Clinton on on the 20th anniversary of his presidential uh uh Library opening up the number one employer Health Care Providers hospitals and that's in one red state after another red state so I'm saying all this just to say if these Republicans think they're having problems now with with
cuts here and there with Doge when they start talking about slashing Medicade to give billionaires tax cuts that's when as Ross perau would say the rubber hits the road and then that's when things get really tough well and you you you understand that President Trump understands that too right from the beginning 10 years ago when he started running he said Medicare and Social Security were always going to be off the table he said just the other day the Medicaid was off the table too but it's obviously not and I think that that's going to cause
uh a lot of conniptions I think you're right the trick is we're in this uh you know this Loop right if you want to be serious about tackling the deficit and the issues Joe that you're talking about you're going to have to look at the big ticket items that Mike refers to in his column but if you go after those big ticket items there's a lot of pain involved and if you think that you're pain so far with these Doge Cuts as you rightly say this is as you say nibbling around the edges the big
stuff is still to come especially if you make the deficit even wider with more tax cuts any rational uh look at the budget over the last decade or so has involved serious Cuts as well as tax increases because there's a lot of of of red ink there and if you're going to try to close that red ink you're going have to look at a lot of different things much of which would cause pain for people but that's not what this is happening here we're seeing here is a lot of uh a lot of gains politically
because we get to give tax touch to people that's always politically popular and we get to Showcase things that look uh like waste and fraud through this Doge process but really don't really am amount to much although it hurts individuals and and employees and science funding and all these other things that actually matter to a lot of Americans and and the bottom line is you haven't really solved the problem that you allegedly ostensively are set out to to tackle in the first place for
