February 19, 2025 • 39 mins
The JFK Presidential Library in Boston temporarily closed Tuesday after some staff layoffs that came as part of the Trump Administration’s efforts to downsize the federal workforce. The worker cuts started with probationary employees who had not yet gained civil service protection. Some federal agencies were warned that large workplace cuts would be coming. We discussed the impact of the Trump Administration’s move to cut thousands of federal workers.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
It's nice time with Dan Ray. I'm tell you Boston's Radio.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
I welcome back. Everybody. Want to thank my guest last hour,
Josh Kraft, candidate for Mayor of Boston. And I think
that when you look at some of the issues that
are starting to percolate in this campaign, it might be
a more interesting race than anyone, including Mayor Woo expects,
if Josh Craft gets some footing, particularly in some of
(00:30):
these issues. And I feel very strongly about the White
Stadium situation, I really do. I feel that at its core,
the people who are losing out the most are people
who live and who rely upon Franklin Park as a
an island of respite. You know, communities from Dorchester, Mattape
(00:51):
and Roxbury, West Roxbury, Jamaica, Plane, any of those you know, Roslindale,
Inner Circle communities in Boston, and for that matter, everyone
in Boston and everyone in the in the in the
suburbs surrounding Boston go to the Franklin Parks. Who would
have fabulous who we have under the auspices of John Lennehan,
who has done such a great job there over many
(01:14):
many years, and the staff that he's assembled there. The
golf course, I've never played Franklin Park, but I'm told
that it's a beautiful course right in the middle of
the city. And you have now this opportunity to do
something with white stadium which would primarily benefit kids in
the city. That's that's that's what bothers my mind and
(01:38):
boggles my mind right now. But we'll believe that for
another night. I just wanted tonight mention that at this
time last night, we were talking about the uh, the
the alleged anti Semitic teaching materials on the Israeli Israel
Hamas War that the Massachusetts Teachers Association under the leader
(02:00):
ship of Max Paige, had made available to some said,
one hundred and seventeen thousand. It's just an amazing number
of teachers. What a political force. One hundred and seventeen
thousand teachers, many of them, I'm sure are embarrassed to
be associated with that union in terms of the allegations
(02:24):
against the union. However, however, the union today decided to
withdraw those materials controversial materials. They were, in my opinion,
clearly antisemitic. I mean, if you looked at any of
(02:45):
the materials we had invited. The president of that Teachers
Association to be on the show last night. They have
declined on a number of points. They are hoping to
win somehow here in Massachusetts, either through the legislature or
(03:06):
through a ballot ptition to give teachers the right to strike,
which that should never happen in Massachusetts. All of these
teachers strikes in recent years where the Teachers' Union and
specifically the mass Teachers Association have gone out on strike,
they're sort of like testing the waters. But anyway, they did,
(03:27):
with some reluctance, do the right things, so they have
to be given credit for that. But it can never
be forgotten that they circulated these teaching materials. And I
want to thank my guest last night. We had some
really outstanding telephone calls last night, but we also had
a couple of outstanding guests, Jeff Robins and also Sarah coleb.
(03:49):
They're both with the Anti Defamation League. And I'm told
that that those two hours, and specifically the hour with
Jeff Robbins and Sarah Cobe, was circulated today a lot.
If you want to listen to that hour that I'm
hoping might have helped influence the leadership of the mass
(04:12):
Teachers Union, because I don't think I think the President,
Max Page had dug his his feet in you know,
very uh. I shouldn't say he was dug in deep.
And and I think the Teachers' Union probably said to him, hey, look,
(04:32):
this is this is We're doing the wrong thing. This
is a losing issue for us, uh and for our
reputation as teachers. So however it happened, it happened, and
I'm glad it did, and we can we can move
on from that story. But again, never forget what they
attempted to do. This was some virulently antisemitic material. You'll
(04:54):
you'll read them about it tomorrow morning in the Boston
Globe and the Boston Herald. I think it will be
front page on paid stories. Now, what I'd like to
do is talk a little bit about what's going on
at the federal government. Yesterday, at about two o'clock, people
who were on their way or arriving at the Boston
(05:16):
Public Library, excuse me, at the John F. Kennedy Library
and Museum. We're told that the JFK Library and Museum,
which I've visited many many times. I've had the privilege
of being there as a guest, as a visitor. I
actually anchored the live opening of the library back in
(05:42):
October of nineteen seventy nine when the library officially opened,
So I'm very much a kindred spirit of the library.
And yesterday apparently either someone misunderstood a communication from and
we still don't know exactly what happened, from the National Archives,
(06:04):
which apparently is the agency that runs or oversees the
sixteen presidential libraries around the country, and we're told that
there were five relatively new young people who were they
called it the term that uses interface with the public
selling tickets at the door to enter the library or
(06:27):
selling books of souvenirs at the library of the Kennedy administration.
That they were told at some point that their jobs
had been terminated. And I think I saw one picture
of a couple of these, they were younger associates, carrying
out looked like a box of their personal belongings from
the library. And no one wants to see anyone lose
(06:48):
a job. I mean, who takes any glee in that?
I hope no one would actually take joy that someone
would lose a job, whether they're a veteran of thirty
years working for a company, or whether they have just
started a job. But with what's going on with our
(07:13):
country these days, and that's going to happen, and it's
going to happen to a lot of people. So I
want to take two approaches to it, and I hope
you'll bear with me on the first approach and on
the second approach. The first approach is, you have to
feel sorry for anyone who loses a job, But a
lot of people lose the job their jobs in private
(07:35):
sector fairly frequently, fairly frequently, many people have looked at
jobs in government, whether it's at the state level, the
city level, or the federal level, as a career opportunity.
Once you get in somewhere, and in the federal system,
you become a I think it's called GS twelve or
GS fourteen, and you move up every year, you make
(07:57):
a little bit more money, and you get some seniority,
and you're there for life. You there for life, and
there comes a point in time where you're pretty protected
whether or not the Republicans are running Congress or the
Democrats are running Congress, or there's a Republican in the
White House. We're a Democrat in the White House. And
part of that is to protect people. And the Trump
(08:22):
administration has arrived with a thud. Here. They now have
been in office just a little short of a month.
I guess it was a month on Monday, but it'll
be technically a full month tomorrow when it turns February
twentieth at midnight. And they have done a lot and
(08:42):
a lot of what they've done has been controversial, and
they have made a lot of statements which have proven
to be untrue. For example, there was some comments that
I think attributed to Elon Musk and even were mentioned
by the new Press Secretary at the White House that
(09:04):
there were people receiving or receiving social curty checks who
were one hundred and fifty years old. All that's pretty
much been debunked. Is there fraud abuse? Yeah? Yeah. The
Government Accounting Office did GAO found a few years ago
that they believe that in any federal budget there was
(09:25):
anywhere between two hundred and fifty one billion and some
other figure like five hundred and thirty billion, million billion
dollars billion would be waste. So so how do you
get at that, Well, there's some of it that's waste
that's not going to cost people their jobs, but then
when you when you look carefully and you realize that, hey,
(09:50):
how many people are doing this? How many people are
in this office? You know, there are more and more
and more in more people working for the government every year. Now,
let me ask you a question, and then we're going
to go to phone calls. Let's assume you worked for
a company. Bear with me on this hypothetical. You worked
(10:11):
for a company, and let's say it was a small company,
a small company, five or ten people, and you were
producing widgets, and the owners of the company came to
the employees who were not unionized because there's only five
or ten of you, and said, look, folks, we got
(10:34):
some bad news. We're going over the books and last
year we lost three point seven million dollars and we
can't recover. We may never recover. But in order to
at least try to save the company, we are going
to have to terminate half the staff. Now, that has
(10:57):
to be a tough job, a tough mess to deliver.
But you would say, okay, I work for a company
and we're in the whole three point seven million dollars.
You know, they got to stop the bleeding. The most
recently hired employees probably are going to be showing the door. Okay. Fine.
So let's say you're in a bigger company, and let's
say that that company has a couple of hundred employees.
(11:20):
You feel a little more confident, okay, And whatever they make,
they make. And the boss comes to you and says, well,
look here, we got problems last year. We've been losing
money for many years, but last year we lost three
hundred and seventy five million dollars. Okay, and we have
two hundred employees. We can't carry We can't lose three
(11:42):
hundred and seventy five million dollars and maintain stay in
business with two hundred employees. So we're going to ask
about fifty of you. We're gonna lay you off, we
gonna terminate you. If we get back on our feet,
we'll bring you back. That happens in companies across America
every day of the week. You read it on the
business pages. What happens. Let's say you work now for
(12:07):
a huge company, a huge company, I mean a big
international company, and they say, look we lost last quarter
three point seventy five billion dollars. You know, layoffs are common.
They you can't keep losing, you can't keep losing money.
That's what happens if you work for the federal government
(12:28):
and they tell you, look, we have a debt. We
have a debt of thirty six point two trillion dollars.
We can't even keep up with the debt. We have
no choice. I listen to one person today who said
that federal workers are are the life stream of the company,
(12:48):
the bloodstream of the country. Yeah. I don't think so.
I don't think so. I think more and more things
that the federal government does can be turned over to computers. Sadly, okay,
they're not right now, child Security checks and Medicare checks
by hand anymore. So there's gonna be people who are
(13:08):
going to lose their jobs. And some of the people
are going to lose their jobs. It's going to be
really unfair. It's going to be sad. Okay. There's gonna
be people who lose their jobs who have recently lost
the spouse. There's going to be people who lose their
jobs who have a kid who's very sick. There's going
to be people who lose their jobs who maybe we're
in the military and suffer wounds in the military. I
(13:32):
hope they can they can mitigate some of those losses,
but government employment cannot be guaranteed for everyone for life.
That's the reality that we're looking at now. Call me cold,
call me cruel, call me insensitive, call me anything you want.
(13:52):
Don't call me late for dinner, but call me anything
you want. Am I making sense or no? Six ones
that opened myself up to that criticism. Six one, seven, two, five, four,
ten thirty lines are full. Two lines at six 't seven, nine, three,
one ten thirty. Be prepared, brace yourself. There's going to
(14:12):
be a lot of government employees who are going to
be shown the door, who have been shown the door,
and there may be some government services that are going
to be shut down. But something has to be done
to eliminate fraud, abuse and duplications. And I don't take
(14:33):
any joy at anyone losing a job. But at the
same time, I don't take any joy in thinking that we,
the baby boomer generation and the generation two or three
after us, are going to pass from this mortal coil
mortal or if you will, and pass on thirty seven
trillion dollars in debt to our kids and our grandkids
(14:55):
and our great grandkids, grant grand children. That's the issue
coming back on nights. You have the numbers. Let's get
it going right after the break.
Speaker 1 (15:03):
Now back to Dan Ray live from the Window World,
Nice Sight Studios on WBZ News Radio.
Speaker 2 (15:11):
Okay, let's get it going here, and I'm going to
try to move everybody a little bit more quickly than normal,
but we'll see. Let's see how we do. Matt and Franklin.
Matt first, as hour and nights.
Speaker 3 (15:19):
I go ahead, Matt, Hey, Dan, I we're just giving
you a call about it. So I agree that like
a lot of these cuts need to happen, and but
they're like really should be approved by Congress and studied
because I mean, there's like five contractors for every one
federal employee, and a lot of these cuts are going
to affect red states, like they're already cut in the
(15:41):
Park Service not hiring new ones, so it's like you're
not really saving that much money per employee, and then
like what it does to these rural and local economies
is going to like really hurt it. And you have
the hospitals talking about laying off because they're not getting
the federal funds. It seems like we're doing all this
while talking about laising the debt for trillion dollars next
(16:03):
month has cut.
Speaker 2 (16:05):
So that's the debt. That's that is the debt ceiling
that we're talking about. That's similar a little bit. So
let me ask you this. Okay, I don't know how
old are you? You selling your fully young guy?
Speaker 4 (16:18):
Yeah, I'm mid thirties, mid thirties.
Speaker 2 (16:20):
Okay, So I'm going to say, just for the fun,
I'm say you're thirty five. Okay, so you got another
at least thirty years you're going to work before you
even consider retiring.
Speaker 4 (16:29):
Right, that's correct.
Speaker 2 (16:32):
Okay, you know what the federal debt is right now?
It's thirty six point two trillion dollars. That's an extraordinary number. Okay,
extraordinary number. What are we going to do with that?
How do we deal with that? We talked, We had
Jeff Myron on Monday night at nine o'clock, great economists
from Harvard University. It's a huge number, man, What do
(16:56):
we do with that? How do we deal with that?
I mean, at different times we all had debt. You know,
we buy a house, we take a mortgage. You buy
a car, maybe you don't pay cash for do you
get a car loan? Everybody understands the car debt.
Speaker 4 (17:10):
This just reminds me of like you're a gambling addict.
You max out your credit cards and you're like, you
know what, I still have all this stuff in my house.
I'm gonna pond to go back and then if it
doesn't work out, then you lost all the services that
you had. So if I just get all this stuff,
like basically the hell of it, because I mean all
we're saving like one percent of the budget on an
(17:30):
annual basis, But then you're talking about, oh, you know,
like raise this by four trillion, cut taxes by four trillion.
It's like really not going to help things in the
grand scheme of things. And it's kind of like probably
upset a lot of people going forward, and there's an
election in two years and you have all these congress
when they're like, oh well, I mean like I have
like we're a low cost state and we have nothing,
(17:51):
but we have the national parks. Oh yeah, like none
of my low cost resident's going to be able to
jobs there.
Speaker 2 (17:57):
Well, if you look there is politics is always and
if Trump and the Republicans don't handle this smartly, uh
and and do it effectively and produce some results they
should be thrown out of office. I mean, it's a
simple that's the way it works, That's the way it.
Speaker 4 (18:11):
Went, all across the all across the board. They should
be I mean, I think only like what twenty of
them want their job a lot of elections. I mean,
that's the biggest problem.
Speaker 2 (18:19):
Most Congress we've done. We've told you before that everybody
loves their local congressman. They hate Congress, but they love
the guy that they see at the diner a couple
of times a year when he walks through and hats
you in the back. Hey, buddy, how you doing great
to see you, say to the wife and the kids
for me, will you He has no idea what your
name is, but he's patting you in the back, So
I don't know. It's it's a dilemma. You're right, I mean,
(18:42):
but I do not.
Speaker 4 (18:43):
They haven't done a lot since the last the Clinton impeachment.
Speaker 2 (18:48):
They haven't won.
Speaker 4 (18:50):
I feel like they haven't done a lot since the
Clinton impeachment. It just like every single year we're going
to like this fight with each other, and then that's
probably like the last time I really accomplished buch of any.
Speaker 2 (19:03):
When Clinton left office in two thousand and one and
George Bush took over. We had a federal debt of
about ten trillion dollars. And by the way, you know,
you know as well as I do you if you
take a million dollars, in order to get to a
billion dollars, you got to make you got to make
a thousand million dollars to get to one billion. Okay,
(19:25):
if you get to a trillion, you got to make
a thousand billion to get to one trillion. And we
old thirty seven trillion dollars. It's a lot of mone
there's a lot of money.
Speaker 4 (19:35):
And unfortunately we can't get rid of the military because
it's kind of it annoyed the whole world. So yeah,
that that's one solution there. You can't get rid of.
Speaker 2 (19:44):
No, I don't think we want to disarmed. I mean,
I don't think that would be a good idea. I
don't know.
Speaker 4 (19:48):
We'll be posting like two seconds, so what would be toasted?
I think we'd be toasting about two seconds.
Speaker 2 (19:55):
Yeah, r'd be worse than toast. Well, all right, I
got you down as you're a skin optic, but you
still haven't given me a solution. And do you want
to get.
Speaker 4 (20:05):
You about probably like a ten year budget cut or
five to ten year set in stone, like similar at
the UK austerity plan, and see how that works out.
Speaker 2 (20:13):
Okay, well, let's see if they put something like that
in place. I mean that's that someone has has said
some of those before. You Just you cut the budget
by one percent every year, there will be some harm there.
But if you keep if you're able to cut it
by one percent. It's just like in your own budget,
if you say to yourself, look, I'm going to cut
back my spending this month. What can I get rid of? Well,
(20:35):
you know, instead of having five beers every Saturday night,
I'll just have two.
Speaker 4 (20:40):
I don't know, go to the ball and spend twenty million.
That's about a solution. What's that Go to the super
Bowl and spend twenty million dollars for the afternoon.
Speaker 2 (20:50):
Well, I often people who are going to be doing that,
that's for sure. I appreciate your comment. Talk soon, Okay,
thanks Buddy, Tuck to you. Here there goes Matt Line
open six seven thirty. Here comes the news and when
we get to everybody, I promise Bill L Bill L.
Ryan and Susan coming up right after the break.
Speaker 1 (21:12):
Night side with Dan Ray ONBZ Boston's news radio.
Speaker 2 (21:18):
We're going to try to move people just a little
more quickly here so we can get more folks in.
Dylan Danvers Bill, your thoughts on what's going on with
the Doge cuts.
Speaker 5 (21:28):
Wow, I mean, you know it has to even with
it happening and they're restructuring, may not even be enough.
I mean, hopefully we can grow the economy at the
same time. You know they can. They can, you know,
get those tax cuts past and get fuel prices down
and everything else. Because but you know the fact that
they closed. They always do this basically, you know, they
(21:50):
want to show on important that you know, the world's
going to stop if you know, government work. He gets
laid off and because they want to inconvenience to public,
you know, and then people buy into it. The media
seems to love it. I mean, you got the USA
today writing stories ar it's terrible these guys got laid
off and Trump's a bad guy and Musk and or whoever.
(22:13):
And but I don't see the USA today They didn't
write any stories about the guys that got taken out
in the Keystone pipeline. When Biden came in and they
were productive citizens, all the guys in the trades when
they were out there working and all those.
Speaker 2 (22:26):
And there's also there's also a lot of newspapers that
have folded in recent years in America, a lot of
newspapers that have gone from being you know, delivered at
your front door down to just be a digital newspaper
that you get up on your screen. And I'm sure
that the payroll at the Boston Globe and the Boston
Herald is substantially different than it was twenty or thirty
years ago.
Speaker 5 (22:46):
So yeah, you know, I mean this basically comes down.
You know, let's face it, most of the mainstream media
who basically basically parts of the elites and the government structure.
They're basically another rail of the government basically, and and
you know, they support the big government apparatus, and you know,
(23:06):
the people that are out there basically, I mean, if
if Trump, I think it's you know what I.
Speaker 2 (23:11):
Think, Bill, You're throwing some of the terms around the
elite medium and all that. I think it's a little
different than that. And let me tell you what I think. Okay,
have you ever noticed the guys that the guys and
women that cover sports teams locally. They got to get
close to the players. They need the players to interview,
get you know, if if, if, the Red Sox, you
(23:33):
know whatever. Alex Bergman is the hot topic this week.
Everybody wants an interview with Alex Bergman. How do you
get those interviews? A lot of the times when you
read the sports page, you read the sports page, it's
the nice stories. There were no negative stories. It's like
someone's gonna have a great year this year. Last year
he was injured, but this year he's going to hit
(23:53):
thirty home runs, have one hundred RBIs, and he'll be
on the All Star team. So I think with the
media covers Paulic Titians, and they need access to the politicians,
and I think that's where you get this sort of
symbiotic relationship. I really do, I really do. I don't
want to be going to go into journalism and say, now,
some of them may be a little bit more progressive
(24:14):
than you were me, but I don't think they go
into it saying what I want to do is I
want to go to Washington. I want to work for
the New York Times, and I want to extoll the
virtues of Bernie Sanders. I don't think so. I think
they that's that's who they were assigned to cover.
Speaker 5 (24:29):
Yeah, but they go to the same cocktail potties Dan too,
and they just seem being able leader.
Speaker 2 (24:35):
They interact, They interact. It's the same way with the
sports writers and the sportscasters. They're they're on the road
with the guys, so they have you know, they have
an off night, they haven't dinner with a couple of
the players. What do they do say? No, you know what,
I'm a sports writer and I cannot My ethics don't
allow me to socialize with the players. I mean, it's
(24:55):
it's the same thing.
Speaker 6 (24:57):
No.
Speaker 2 (24:57):
Can you imagine some reporter or call him to saying
I refuse to interact with any politician Democratic, Republican there
are beneath me. I will cover them objectively, but I
will not interact with him. That's just the human nature.
Speaker 5 (25:14):
And in a way, you really think they would almost
like Trump with the access. I mean, the guy every
time he does something, you'll take questions for twenty minutes.
I mean probably, and well, I will say it's a
month tomorrow, right, They're probably had more access and there's
been more questions to be counted up in air time
than Biden in six months or a year. I mean,
(25:35):
he made a statement, used to run off you see
the back of his head, and he just shoot up
the back, you know, you know the guy, he just
let's see what happens.
Speaker 2 (25:42):
Let's see what I'm just trying to expect. You know,
we could. You know, if a lot of people watch
the right wing newscasts and it's the mainstream media and
it's the media elites, and it's all of this. I'm
in the media, Okay. I have friends on both sides.
I like people on both sides. But I can criticize
who I want. It's I think our job is to
(26:06):
criticize what they want. When when Elon Musk is up
there the other day saying that there's whatever the number was,
he was talking about like ten thousand people getting solid
scurity checks who are over one hundred and fifty years
of age, that was flat. That was just untrue. That
was from La La Land. I have no idea where
he got I have an idea where he got that figure.
But I found out today something really interesting which I
(26:29):
did not know. Did you know that funeral directors are
obligated to report to the social Security system when they
bury someone.
Speaker 5 (26:40):
No, I knew that because I have good close friends
that are funeral directors and I'm in.
Speaker 2 (26:45):
The line of that.
Speaker 5 (26:46):
Yeah, I didn't know that. I believe that.
Speaker 2 (26:49):
Your spouse or your family member was supposed to, you know,
return the checks and say so I learned something. So
I just think somebody fed that to Elon. I believe
I understand why there was some sort of old computer
system that whatever. Is this a fraud? Yeah? But were
there like thousands of people getting checks one hundred and
fifty years after they were born?
Speaker 7 (27:10):
I don't think, although when I read and investigated it,
although that it's still in the database does pose a
problem because other government agencies that rely on that database
and those people are still there, they still think they're active.
Speaker 5 (27:25):
So if you look into that story a little bit,
you're going to read into that.
Speaker 2 (27:29):
I just want to What I want to do is
I want to get the real facts bills. That's what
I want. I don't want the facts.
Speaker 5 (27:35):
I don't know I did.
Speaker 2 (27:36):
I read it. I fed into me by left wing
or right wingers. I want to get the facts. That's
what I do during the day. By the way, I
try to do as much research.
Speaker 5 (27:45):
And I believe the statement that I just stayed said,
I don't you during the breaks you probably talked to
Rob or whatever you playing in the show. But I
believe it's even on WBZ that statement I just said,
because I think I even heard it before I got
out of the cot tonight.
Speaker 2 (28:00):
So okay, all right, Bill, thank you much, keep talking here,
have a great night. Let me go to Susan in Cambridge,
Susan next time, nightside go.
Speaker 6 (28:07):
Ahead, Hey, Dan, I wanted to second a lot of
what your first caller, Matt thinks said and and but
first I wanted to say that, you know you said nobody,
hopefully nobody enjoys firing people. Well, Elon Musk and Donald
Trump have both said that they do. They're vehemently anti union,
(28:31):
and they have both said in the discussion that you know,
they love to fire people. So, uh now, in terms
of you know, making cuts, you know that may be necessary,
do you feel really indiscriminate? One thing that's maybe not
known is that, you know, when they talk about probationary employees,
(28:57):
those are not necessarily entirely new employees. If employees are
moved to a different department or are promoted. They are
probationary in the federal government, so you're not just losing, like,
you know, the last people in. You know, you're losing
(29:18):
people who may have some valuable experience. But the big
thing that I wanted to again going back to what
Matt said, is that sure, you can make cuts, but
then why on earth are they already asking for a
four point five trillion dollars that increase the largest ever
so that they can provide tax cuts. There's two sides too,
(29:42):
you know, trimming our debt. One is spending, the other
is revenue. And if you're going to just take away
all that revenue, then you just create a bigger hole.
And you're also going to promote inflation. I mean, massive
tax cuts are hugely inflationary. And we're kind of right
on the customer.
Speaker 2 (30:02):
Now, okay, I got the speech, and I'll let you
go for a minute fifty five, which is great, and
nothing you said to me surprised me. A lot of
it is opinion. Let's see how it works out. My
question to you is this, you are really smart, Susan.
I've told you that before, and I'm not saying that
to patronize you. How do we work our way out
(30:26):
of a thirty six point two trillion dollar federal debt.
How do we do that? When? Are you?
Speaker 6 (30:32):
Well, that's what I said, it needs to be. It
needs to be both on both sides, spending and revenue.
Speaker 2 (30:40):
And then when you just so we're talking about let's
talk real numbers. Okay, real numbers. Let's assume you wanted
to raise taxes dramatically. We have a federal budget every
year now it's somewhere around six and a half trillion dollars, okay,
and we raise little taxes somewhere around four trillion dollars.
(31:04):
I'm pretty close on those numbers. How much more do
you think we can raise taxes?
Speaker 6 (31:12):
I'm not saying that we should raise them tremendously, but
I don't think we should be cutting them tremendously either.
I mean, we really don't.
Speaker 2 (31:19):
I'm gonna agree with you, Susan, I'm gonna agree with you. Okay, Thanks,
I'll agree with you on that. Okay. So now here's
my question to wipe out this thirty seven trillion dollar debt.
How much do you think we can raise taxes?
Speaker 6 (31:39):
You know, I don't have Again, I don't think.
Speaker 2 (31:43):
Budgets of the budget. The federal budget right now is
about seven trillion dollars, and we raise taxes of all
sorts about four and a half trillion. So we'll add
another two trillion dollars to the federal debt. A year
from now, the federal debt will be.
Speaker 6 (32:01):
Thirty is not raising taxes or is that growing the
or is that the tax bas just naturally growing? I mean,
how much of that is just you know, what I'm
saying right.
Speaker 2 (32:09):
Now is that every year we come up short about
two trillion in depth in the deficit, which then gets
added to the debt. So all I'm saying, raise taxes
all you want, raise taxes till till everybody in America
pays all their money in taxes. That's not going to
do it. That's not going to do it. They're going
to have to be some severe cuts.
Speaker 6 (32:31):
I agree.
Speaker 2 (32:32):
More we're just going to continue down the line. And
then the question becomes next, The next call you and
I have is I want you to come back and
tell me what do you think could legitimately be cut?
You know, we got it gonna have to do. We're
gonna have to raise the soci security retirement age.
Speaker 6 (32:45):
Well, security is is a separate entity to the rest
of the budget. So I mean that's it's a huge part.
Speaker 2 (32:53):
It's a huge part of it is a huge part
of an additional unfunded liability. Okay, when so Scurty runs
out of money, what do you think they're going to do?
Say that's it? No more so Scurty checks. Anyway, I
want you to think about those numbers, and next time,
I want you to come back and I want you
to talk to me about areas of cuts that you
think would be legitimate, that would that actually would cut
the cut the debt.
Speaker 8 (33:14):
Fair enough, fair enough.
Speaker 6 (33:17):
I just don't think they should all be born by
personnel or the poorest, which is just.
Speaker 2 (33:24):
What I just want to know what they are. You
can tell me whatever you want. You can tell me
that we close the we close the national parts on
Sundays and holidays, whatever. You just give me some examples
of how we can save some real money. That's I'm
just looking for some examples, and I'm and I'm challenging
you to come up with some. Okay, fair enough, Thanks Susan,
appreciate it. Take a quick break coming back on night Side.
Speaker 1 (33:46):
Now back to Dan ray Line from the Window World
night Side Studios on w b Z the news radio.
Speaker 2 (33:53):
Next up is Alan new Hampshire, Al next on Nightsider.
Right ahead, Hey.
Speaker 8 (33:57):
Dan, thank you very much, if you don't mind, if
you just give me a minute, I have a solution.
I have four one zero based budgeting. We need to
return the federal government to zero based budgeting. Every year
we just increase. If there was a year, last year's
increased with three percent, then the following years one percent,
which was previously on the last year three percent. We
(34:17):
need to figure out and go back to zero based
budgeting where every office has to put a line item
in exactly what they need and why they need it,
et cetera, et cetera. This start having people bringing money back,
in other words, if it's not spent, it's return back
the way it is now. It forces them to continue
to just continue to fund. And more importantly, the second
(34:40):
part of that is, you know, because something's budgeted there's
a line item doesn't mean that it. You know, after
the budget has passed, they use it for that specific
line item. Once the budget's in, you can use it
the way they want. The second is we start looking
at Graham Runman again nineteen eighty three emergency balance budget.
We can do that the Constitution through the States. There's
(35:01):
an Article five Convention of the States. Is our founding
fathers gave us that in the Constitution.
Speaker 2 (35:07):
It's the federal Do know that's that's that's looney tunes.
That's never going to happen, all right.
Speaker 8 (35:13):
And the last case is, before there's any fraud and
there's any you know, before we go after Social Security,
we need to make sure that we take care of
the fraud. If Trump's going to go after it, or
anyone's going to touch Social Security, he needs to go
to the people after uh, he has taken care of
the fraud and the abuse, and then the people would
be more willing to take a step up and do
(35:34):
their part. But they're not going to do it when
a federal government, we don't clean out this fraud and
waste any Well.
Speaker 2 (35:39):
The problem is that that this week Musk made some
claims about fraud in Social Security which have been proven
to be patently untrue. So when you when you stand
in the Oval office and say that there's you know,
many people on Social Security who's birth dates are getting checks,
(36:01):
but whose birth dates were one hundred and fifty years ago.
He didn't know what he was talking about. There apparently
is an antiquated system where when they don't have the
birth dates of individual I guess they put it in
at eighteen seventy five and hence this were the one
hundred fifty year. So many people one hundred and fifty
some RIZK kids saw all those numbers and said, we got,
(36:23):
we got, you know, tens of thousands, maybe millions of
people who are getting jags who have been dead for
you know, sixty five seventy years.
Speaker 8 (36:33):
Point of clarification, it doesn't have to be the social
Security system. I mean. And in other words, for someone
to take a hit on Social Security, he would have
to say the federal government has done its part throughout
its government. It's looked across the board. It's fought fraud,
it's fought waste. And now you know, coming to the
American people in another fashion, raising the as you agree,
I agree with you raising rates or you know age rates.
Speaker 2 (36:57):
Now you raised, you raise you raise again. That suggests
you listen to our show Monday nine at nine o'clock
with Professor Jeff Myron from Harvard.
Speaker 8 (37:06):
It was a thing, I mean, think about it. Our
death about one hundred and twenty five thousand dollars per
person right now.
Speaker 2 (37:13):
That it's more than that, it's got about three hundred
thousand per person.
Speaker 8 (37:17):
That's the unfunded part. I agree that's crazy, though people
don't in that well.
Speaker 2 (37:23):
Again, first of all, most people don't understand economics. They
understand when they reach in their pocket and they have
no money on Thursday afternoon, they have to wait until
they get their paycheck on Friday. But the concept of
thirty seven trillion dollar federal debt that we are, oh,
that we owe other governments around the world, that we
owe ourselves, and that we're paying interest on interest is accumulating.
(37:44):
The average person doesn't have a clue. You know, if
the price of eggs go from two fifty nine to
three ninety nine, people are upset, rightfully, so Briyce eggs
have gone up a dollar and a half of the
last week. Oh my god, the sky is falling. But
you ask him about the how much is the federal debt?
I don't know. I don't know how much is it.
But they know the price of eggs, and and it's
(38:07):
good to know the I know the price of eggs.
I paid for ninety nine. I wasn't happy about that
this week for a dozen eggs, but I'm happy to
pay for ninety nine for a dozen eggs, then to
pay four ninety nine for fifteen gallons of gasoline when
I fill up.
Speaker 8 (38:22):
I thought Monday's was the most powerful your station on
Monday or your show was so powerful. It really should
be played again, and I'm so it's a public it will.
Speaker 2 (38:34):
Be played the interview with the interview, the Hour with
Jeff Myron will be played on Sunday night at eleven o'clock.
We played the best of Nightside every Sunday night at
eleven pm, so I anyone who's missed it, let people
know that. Well. I appreciate you calling your loyalty to
the program. I got around. Okay, kiss, I'm up against
the news. Here, talk to you, Talk to you soon,
call more often.
Speaker 8 (38:55):
Okay, thank you, thank you.
Speaker 2 (38:58):
Here comes the eleven. We'll be right back and let's
light these phones up. Uh. I want to hear from you.
Six one, seven, two, five, four, ten thirty. Those lines
are full. The line to the way to get through
six one seven, nine three, one ten thirty. I'm very
gratified with the number of people who have called, and
the quality of the calls. That's what's most important to me.
(39:19):
Excellent hour. Let's keep it up during the eleventh
It's nice time with Dan Ray. I'm tell you Boston's Radio.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
I welcome back. Everybody. Want to thank my guest last hour,
Josh Kraft, candidate for Mayor of Boston. And I think
that when you look at some of the issues that
are starting to percolate in this campaign, it might be
a more interesting race than anyone, including Mayor Woo expects,
if Josh Craft gets some footing, particularly in some of
(00:30):
these issues. And I feel very strongly about the White
Stadium situation, I really do. I feel that at its core,
the people who are losing out the most are people
who live and who rely upon Franklin Park as a
an island of respite. You know, communities from Dorchester, Mattape
(00:51):
and Roxbury, West Roxbury, Jamaica, Plane, any of those you know, Roslindale,
Inner Circle communities in Boston, and for that matter, everyone
in Boston and everyone in the in the in the
suburbs surrounding Boston go to the Franklin Parks. Who would
have fabulous who we have under the auspices of John Lennehan,
who has done such a great job there over many
(01:14):
many years, and the staff that he's assembled there. The
golf course, I've never played Franklin Park, but I'm told
that it's a beautiful course right in the middle of
the city. And you have now this opportunity to do
something with white stadium which would primarily benefit kids in
the city. That's that's that's what bothers my mind and
(01:38):
boggles my mind right now. But we'll believe that for
another night. I just wanted tonight mention that at this
time last night, we were talking about the uh, the
the alleged anti Semitic teaching materials on the Israeli Israel
Hamas War that the Massachusetts Teachers Association under the leader
(02:00):
ship of Max Paige, had made available to some said,
one hundred and seventeen thousand. It's just an amazing number
of teachers. What a political force. One hundred and seventeen
thousand teachers, many of them, I'm sure are embarrassed to
be associated with that union in terms of the allegations
(02:24):
against the union. However, however, the union today decided to
withdraw those materials controversial materials. They were, in my opinion,
clearly antisemitic. I mean, if you looked at any of
(02:45):
the materials we had invited. The president of that Teachers
Association to be on the show last night. They have
declined on a number of points. They are hoping to
win somehow here in Massachusetts, either through the legislature or
(03:06):
through a ballot ptition to give teachers the right to strike,
which that should never happen in Massachusetts. All of these
teachers strikes in recent years where the Teachers' Union and
specifically the mass Teachers Association have gone out on strike,
they're sort of like testing the waters. But anyway, they did,
(03:27):
with some reluctance, do the right things, so they have
to be given credit for that. But it can never
be forgotten that they circulated these teaching materials. And I
want to thank my guest last night. We had some
really outstanding telephone calls last night, but we also had
a couple of outstanding guests, Jeff Robins and also Sarah coleb.
(03:49):
They're both with the Anti Defamation League. And I'm told
that that those two hours, and specifically the hour with
Jeff Robbins and Sarah Cobe, was circulated today a lot.
If you want to listen to that hour that I'm
hoping might have helped influence the leadership of the mass
(04:12):
Teachers Union, because I don't think I think the President,
Max Page had dug his his feet in you know,
very uh. I shouldn't say he was dug in deep.
And and I think the Teachers' Union probably said to him, hey, look,
(04:32):
this is this is We're doing the wrong thing. This
is a losing issue for us, uh and for our
reputation as teachers. So however it happened, it happened, and
I'm glad it did, and we can we can move
on from that story. But again, never forget what they
attempted to do. This was some virulently antisemitic material. You'll
(04:54):
you'll read them about it tomorrow morning in the Boston
Globe and the Boston Herald. I think it will be
front page on paid stories. Now, what I'd like to
do is talk a little bit about what's going on
at the federal government. Yesterday, at about two o'clock, people
who were on their way or arriving at the Boston
(05:16):
Public Library, excuse me, at the John F. Kennedy Library
and Museum. We're told that the JFK Library and Museum,
which I've visited many many times. I've had the privilege
of being there as a guest, as a visitor. I
actually anchored the live opening of the library back in
(05:42):
October of nineteen seventy nine when the library officially opened,
So I'm very much a kindred spirit of the library.
And yesterday apparently either someone misunderstood a communication from and
we still don't know exactly what happened, from the National Archives,
(06:04):
which apparently is the agency that runs or oversees the
sixteen presidential libraries around the country, and we're told that
there were five relatively new young people who were they
called it the term that uses interface with the public
selling tickets at the door to enter the library or
(06:27):
selling books of souvenirs at the library of the Kennedy administration.
That they were told at some point that their jobs
had been terminated. And I think I saw one picture
of a couple of these, they were younger associates, carrying
out looked like a box of their personal belongings from
the library. And no one wants to see anyone lose
(06:48):
a job. I mean, who takes any glee in that?
I hope no one would actually take joy that someone
would lose a job, whether they're a veteran of thirty
years working for a company, or whether they have just
started a job. But with what's going on with our
(07:13):
country these days, and that's going to happen, and it's
going to happen to a lot of people. So I
want to take two approaches to it, and I hope
you'll bear with me on the first approach and on
the second approach. The first approach is, you have to
feel sorry for anyone who loses a job, But a
lot of people lose the job their jobs in private
(07:35):
sector fairly frequently, fairly frequently, many people have looked at
jobs in government, whether it's at the state level, the
city level, or the federal level, as a career opportunity.
Once you get in somewhere, and in the federal system,
you become a I think it's called GS twelve or
GS fourteen, and you move up every year, you make
(07:57):
a little bit more money, and you get some seniority,
and you're there for life. You there for life, and
there comes a point in time where you're pretty protected
whether or not the Republicans are running Congress or the
Democrats are running Congress, or there's a Republican in the
White House. We're a Democrat in the White House. And
part of that is to protect people. And the Trump
(08:22):
administration has arrived with a thud. Here. They now have
been in office just a little short of a month.
I guess it was a month on Monday, but it'll
be technically a full month tomorrow when it turns February
twentieth at midnight. And they have done a lot and
(08:42):
a lot of what they've done has been controversial, and
they have made a lot of statements which have proven
to be untrue. For example, there was some comments that
I think attributed to Elon Musk and even were mentioned
by the new Press Secretary at the White House that
(09:04):
there were people receiving or receiving social curty checks who
were one hundred and fifty years old. All that's pretty
much been debunked. Is there fraud abuse? Yeah? Yeah. The
Government Accounting Office did GAO found a few years ago
that they believe that in any federal budget there was
(09:25):
anywhere between two hundred and fifty one billion and some
other figure like five hundred and thirty billion, million billion
dollars billion would be waste. So so how do you
get at that, Well, there's some of it that's waste
that's not going to cost people their jobs, but then
when you when you look carefully and you realize that, hey,
(09:50):
how many people are doing this? How many people are
in this office? You know, there are more and more
and more in more people working for the government every year. Now,
let me ask you a question, and then we're going
to go to phone calls. Let's assume you worked for
a company. Bear with me on this hypothetical. You worked
(10:11):
for a company, and let's say it was a small company,
a small company, five or ten people, and you were
producing widgets, and the owners of the company came to
the employees who were not unionized because there's only five
or ten of you, and said, look, folks, we got
(10:34):
some bad news. We're going over the books and last
year we lost three point seven million dollars and we
can't recover. We may never recover. But in order to
at least try to save the company, we are going
to have to terminate half the staff. Now, that has
(10:57):
to be a tough job, a tough mess to deliver.
But you would say, okay, I work for a company
and we're in the whole three point seven million dollars.
You know, they got to stop the bleeding. The most
recently hired employees probably are going to be showing the door. Okay. Fine.
So let's say you're in a bigger company, and let's
say that that company has a couple of hundred employees.
(11:20):
You feel a little more confident, okay, And whatever they make,
they make. And the boss comes to you and says, well,
look here, we got problems last year. We've been losing
money for many years, but last year we lost three
hundred and seventy five million dollars. Okay, and we have
two hundred employees. We can't carry We can't lose three
(11:42):
hundred and seventy five million dollars and maintain stay in
business with two hundred employees. So we're going to ask
about fifty of you. We're gonna lay you off, we
gonna terminate you. If we get back on our feet,
we'll bring you back. That happens in companies across America
every day of the week. You read it on the
business pages. What happens. Let's say you work now for
(12:07):
a huge company, a huge company, I mean a big
international company, and they say, look we lost last quarter
three point seventy five billion dollars. You know, layoffs are common.
They you can't keep losing, you can't keep losing money.
That's what happens if you work for the federal government
(12:28):
and they tell you, look, we have a debt. We
have a debt of thirty six point two trillion dollars.
We can't even keep up with the debt. We have
no choice. I listen to one person today who said
that federal workers are are the life stream of the company,
(12:48):
the bloodstream of the country. Yeah. I don't think so.
I don't think so. I think more and more things
that the federal government does can be turned over to computers. Sadly, okay,
they're not right now, child Security checks and Medicare checks
by hand anymore. So there's gonna be people who are
(13:08):
going to lose their jobs. And some of the people
are going to lose their jobs. It's going to be
really unfair. It's going to be sad. Okay. There's gonna
be people who lose their jobs who have recently lost
the spouse. There's going to be people who lose their
jobs who have a kid who's very sick. There's going
to be people who lose their jobs who maybe we're
in the military and suffer wounds in the military. I
(13:32):
hope they can they can mitigate some of those losses,
but government employment cannot be guaranteed for everyone for life.
That's the reality that we're looking at now. Call me cold,
call me cruel, call me insensitive, call me anything you want.
(13:52):
Don't call me late for dinner, but call me anything
you want. Am I making sense or no? Six ones
that opened myself up to that criticism. Six one, seven, two, five, four,
ten thirty lines are full. Two lines at six 't seven, nine, three,
one ten thirty. Be prepared, brace yourself. There's going to
(14:12):
be a lot of government employees who are going to
be shown the door, who have been shown the door,
and there may be some government services that are going
to be shut down. But something has to be done
to eliminate fraud, abuse and duplications. And I don't take
(14:33):
any joy at anyone losing a job. But at the
same time, I don't take any joy in thinking that we,
the baby boomer generation and the generation two or three
after us, are going to pass from this mortal coil
mortal or if you will, and pass on thirty seven
trillion dollars in debt to our kids and our grandkids
(14:55):
and our great grandkids, grant grand children. That's the issue
coming back on nights. You have the numbers. Let's get
it going right after the break.
Speaker 1 (15:03):
Now back to Dan Ray live from the Window World,
Nice Sight Studios on WBZ News Radio.
Speaker 2 (15:11):
Okay, let's get it going here, and I'm going to
try to move everybody a little bit more quickly than normal,
but we'll see. Let's see how we do. Matt and Franklin.
Matt first, as hour and nights.
Speaker 3 (15:19):
I go ahead, Matt, Hey, Dan, I we're just giving
you a call about it. So I agree that like
a lot of these cuts need to happen, and but
they're like really should be approved by Congress and studied
because I mean, there's like five contractors for every one
federal employee, and a lot of these cuts are going
to affect red states, like they're already cut in the
(15:41):
Park Service not hiring new ones, so it's like you're
not really saving that much money per employee, and then
like what it does to these rural and local economies
is going to like really hurt it. And you have
the hospitals talking about laying off because they're not getting
the federal funds. It seems like we're doing all this
while talking about laising the debt for trillion dollars next
(16:03):
month has cut.
Speaker 2 (16:05):
So that's the debt. That's that is the debt ceiling
that we're talking about. That's similar a little bit. So
let me ask you this. Okay, I don't know how
old are you? You selling your fully young guy?
Speaker 4 (16:18):
Yeah, I'm mid thirties, mid thirties.
Speaker 2 (16:20):
Okay, So I'm going to say, just for the fun,
I'm say you're thirty five. Okay, so you got another
at least thirty years you're going to work before you
even consider retiring.
Speaker 4 (16:29):
Right, that's correct.
Speaker 2 (16:32):
Okay, you know what the federal debt is right now?
It's thirty six point two trillion dollars. That's an extraordinary number. Okay,
extraordinary number. What are we going to do with that?
How do we deal with that? We talked, We had
Jeff Myron on Monday night at nine o'clock, great economists
from Harvard University. It's a huge number, man, What do
(16:56):
we do with that? How do we deal with that?
I mean, at different times we all had debt. You know,
we buy a house, we take a mortgage. You buy
a car, maybe you don't pay cash for do you
get a car loan? Everybody understands the car debt.
Speaker 4 (17:10):
This just reminds me of like you're a gambling addict.
You max out your credit cards and you're like, you
know what, I still have all this stuff in my house.
I'm gonna pond to go back and then if it
doesn't work out, then you lost all the services that
you had. So if I just get all this stuff,
like basically the hell of it, because I mean all
we're saving like one percent of the budget on an
(17:30):
annual basis, But then you're talking about, oh, you know,
like raise this by four trillion, cut taxes by four trillion.
It's like really not going to help things in the
grand scheme of things. And it's kind of like probably
upset a lot of people going forward, and there's an
election in two years and you have all these congress
when they're like, oh well, I mean like I have
like we're a low cost state and we have nothing,
(17:51):
but we have the national parks. Oh yeah, like none
of my low cost resident's going to be able to
jobs there.
Speaker 2 (17:57):
Well, if you look there is politics is always and
if Trump and the Republicans don't handle this smartly, uh
and and do it effectively and produce some results they
should be thrown out of office. I mean, it's a
simple that's the way it works, That's the way it.
Speaker 4 (18:11):
Went, all across the all across the board. They should
be I mean, I think only like what twenty of
them want their job a lot of elections. I mean,
that's the biggest problem.
Speaker 2 (18:19):
Most Congress we've done. We've told you before that everybody
loves their local congressman. They hate Congress, but they love
the guy that they see at the diner a couple
of times a year when he walks through and hats
you in the back. Hey, buddy, how you doing great
to see you, say to the wife and the kids
for me, will you He has no idea what your
name is, but he's patting you in the back, So
I don't know. It's it's a dilemma. You're right, I mean,
(18:42):
but I do not.
Speaker 4 (18:43):
They haven't done a lot since the last the Clinton impeachment.
Speaker 2 (18:48):
They haven't won.
Speaker 4 (18:50):
I feel like they haven't done a lot since the
Clinton impeachment. It just like every single year we're going
to like this fight with each other, and then that's
probably like the last time I really accomplished buch of any.
Speaker 2 (19:03):
When Clinton left office in two thousand and one and
George Bush took over. We had a federal debt of
about ten trillion dollars. And by the way, you know,
you know as well as I do you if you
take a million dollars, in order to get to a
billion dollars, you got to make you got to make
a thousand million dollars to get to one billion. Okay,
(19:25):
if you get to a trillion, you got to make
a thousand billion to get to one trillion. And we
old thirty seven trillion dollars. It's a lot of mone
there's a lot of money.
Speaker 4 (19:35):
And unfortunately we can't get rid of the military because
it's kind of it annoyed the whole world. So yeah,
that that's one solution there. You can't get rid of.
Speaker 2 (19:44):
No, I don't think we want to disarmed. I mean,
I don't think that would be a good idea. I
don't know.
Speaker 4 (19:48):
We'll be posting like two seconds, so what would be toasted?
I think we'd be toasting about two seconds.
Speaker 2 (19:55):
Yeah, r'd be worse than toast. Well, all right, I
got you down as you're a skin optic, but you
still haven't given me a solution. And do you want
to get.
Speaker 4 (20:05):
You about probably like a ten year budget cut or
five to ten year set in stone, like similar at
the UK austerity plan, and see how that works out.
Speaker 2 (20:13):
Okay, well, let's see if they put something like that
in place. I mean that's that someone has has said
some of those before. You Just you cut the budget
by one percent every year, there will be some harm there.
But if you keep if you're able to cut it
by one percent. It's just like in your own budget,
if you say to yourself, look, I'm going to cut
back my spending this month. What can I get rid of? Well,
(20:35):
you know, instead of having five beers every Saturday night,
I'll just have two.
Speaker 4 (20:40):
I don't know, go to the ball and spend twenty million.
That's about a solution. What's that Go to the super
Bowl and spend twenty million dollars for the afternoon.
Speaker 2 (20:50):
Well, I often people who are going to be doing that,
that's for sure. I appreciate your comment. Talk soon, Okay,
thanks Buddy, Tuck to you. Here there goes Matt Line
open six seven thirty. Here comes the news and when
we get to everybody, I promise Bill L Bill L.
Ryan and Susan coming up right after the break.
Speaker 1 (21:12):
Night side with Dan Ray ONBZ Boston's news radio.
Speaker 2 (21:18):
We're going to try to move people just a little
more quickly here so we can get more folks in.
Dylan Danvers Bill, your thoughts on what's going on with
the Doge cuts.
Speaker 5 (21:28):
Wow, I mean, you know it has to even with
it happening and they're restructuring, may not even be enough.
I mean, hopefully we can grow the economy at the
same time. You know they can. They can, you know,
get those tax cuts past and get fuel prices down
and everything else. Because but you know the fact that
they closed. They always do this basically, you know, they
(21:50):
want to show on important that you know, the world's
going to stop if you know, government work. He gets
laid off and because they want to inconvenience to public,
you know, and then people buy into it. The media
seems to love it. I mean, you got the USA
today writing stories ar it's terrible these guys got laid
off and Trump's a bad guy and Musk and or whoever.
(22:13):
And but I don't see the USA today They didn't
write any stories about the guys that got taken out
in the Keystone pipeline. When Biden came in and they
were productive citizens, all the guys in the trades when
they were out there working and all those.
Speaker 2 (22:26):
And there's also there's also a lot of newspapers that
have folded in recent years in America, a lot of
newspapers that have gone from being you know, delivered at
your front door down to just be a digital newspaper
that you get up on your screen. And I'm sure
that the payroll at the Boston Globe and the Boston
Herald is substantially different than it was twenty or thirty
years ago.
Speaker 5 (22:46):
So yeah, you know, I mean this basically comes down.
You know, let's face it, most of the mainstream media
who basically basically parts of the elites and the government structure.
They're basically another rail of the government basically, and and
you know, they support the big government apparatus, and you know,
(23:06):
the people that are out there basically, I mean, if
if Trump, I think it's you know what I.
Speaker 2 (23:11):
Think, Bill, You're throwing some of the terms around the
elite medium and all that. I think it's a little
different than that. And let me tell you what I think. Okay,
have you ever noticed the guys that the guys and
women that cover sports teams locally. They got to get
close to the players. They need the players to interview,
get you know, if if, if, the Red Sox, you
(23:33):
know whatever. Alex Bergman is the hot topic this week.
Everybody wants an interview with Alex Bergman. How do you
get those interviews? A lot of the times when you
read the sports page, you read the sports page, it's
the nice stories. There were no negative stories. It's like
someone's gonna have a great year this year. Last year
he was injured, but this year he's going to hit
(23:53):
thirty home runs, have one hundred RBIs, and he'll be
on the All Star team. So I think with the
media covers Paulic Titians, and they need access to the politicians,
and I think that's where you get this sort of
symbiotic relationship. I really do, I really do. I don't
want to be going to go into journalism and say, now,
some of them may be a little bit more progressive
(24:14):
than you were me, but I don't think they go
into it saying what I want to do is I
want to go to Washington. I want to work for
the New York Times, and I want to extoll the
virtues of Bernie Sanders. I don't think so. I think
they that's that's who they were assigned to cover.
Speaker 5 (24:29):
Yeah, but they go to the same cocktail potties Dan too,
and they just seem being able leader.
Speaker 2 (24:35):
They interact, They interact. It's the same way with the
sports writers and the sportscasters. They're they're on the road
with the guys, so they have you know, they have
an off night, they haven't dinner with a couple of
the players. What do they do say? No, you know what,
I'm a sports writer and I cannot My ethics don't
allow me to socialize with the players. I mean, it's
(24:55):
it's the same thing.
Speaker 6 (24:57):
No.
Speaker 2 (24:57):
Can you imagine some reporter or call him to saying
I refuse to interact with any politician Democratic, Republican there
are beneath me. I will cover them objectively, but I
will not interact with him. That's just the human nature.
Speaker 5 (25:14):
And in a way, you really think they would almost
like Trump with the access. I mean, the guy every
time he does something, you'll take questions for twenty minutes.
I mean probably, and well, I will say it's a
month tomorrow, right, They're probably had more access and there's
been more questions to be counted up in air time
than Biden in six months or a year. I mean,
(25:35):
he made a statement, used to run off you see
the back of his head, and he just shoot up
the back, you know, you know the guy, he just
let's see what happens.
Speaker 2 (25:42):
Let's see what I'm just trying to expect. You know,
we could. You know, if a lot of people watch
the right wing newscasts and it's the mainstream media and
it's the media elites, and it's all of this. I'm
in the media, Okay. I have friends on both sides.
I like people on both sides. But I can criticize
who I want. It's I think our job is to
(26:06):
criticize what they want. When when Elon Musk is up
there the other day saying that there's whatever the number was,
he was talking about like ten thousand people getting solid
scurity checks who are over one hundred and fifty years
of age, that was flat. That was just untrue. That
was from La La Land. I have no idea where
he got I have an idea where he got that figure.
But I found out today something really interesting which I
(26:29):
did not know. Did you know that funeral directors are
obligated to report to the social Security system when they
bury someone.
Speaker 5 (26:40):
No, I knew that because I have good close friends
that are funeral directors and I'm in.
Speaker 2 (26:45):
The line of that.
Speaker 5 (26:46):
Yeah, I didn't know that. I believe that.
Speaker 2 (26:49):
Your spouse or your family member was supposed to, you know,
return the checks and say so I learned something. So
I just think somebody fed that to Elon. I believe
I understand why there was some sort of old computer
system that whatever. Is this a fraud? Yeah? But were
there like thousands of people getting checks one hundred and
fifty years after they were born?
Speaker 7 (27:10):
I don't think, although when I read and investigated it,
although that it's still in the database does pose a
problem because other government agencies that rely on that database
and those people are still there, they still think they're active.
Speaker 5 (27:25):
So if you look into that story a little bit,
you're going to read into that.
Speaker 2 (27:29):
I just want to What I want to do is
I want to get the real facts bills. That's what
I want. I don't want the facts.
Speaker 5 (27:35):
I don't know I did.
Speaker 2 (27:36):
I read it. I fed into me by left wing
or right wingers. I want to get the facts. That's
what I do during the day. By the way, I
try to do as much research.
Speaker 5 (27:45):
And I believe the statement that I just stayed said,
I don't you during the breaks you probably talked to
Rob or whatever you playing in the show. But I
believe it's even on WBZ that statement I just said,
because I think I even heard it before I got
out of the cot tonight.
Speaker 2 (28:00):
So okay, all right, Bill, thank you much, keep talking here,
have a great night. Let me go to Susan in Cambridge,
Susan next time, nightside go.
Speaker 6 (28:07):
Ahead, Hey, Dan, I wanted to second a lot of
what your first caller, Matt thinks said and and but
first I wanted to say that, you know you said nobody,
hopefully nobody enjoys firing people. Well, Elon Musk and Donald
Trump have both said that they do. They're vehemently anti union,
(28:31):
and they have both said in the discussion that you know,
they love to fire people. So, uh now, in terms
of you know, making cuts, you know that may be necessary,
do you feel really indiscriminate? One thing that's maybe not
known is that, you know, when they talk about probationary employees,
(28:57):
those are not necessarily entirely new employees. If employees are
moved to a different department or are promoted. They are
probationary in the federal government, so you're not just losing, like,
you know, the last people in. You know, you're losing
(29:18):
people who may have some valuable experience. But the big
thing that I wanted to again going back to what
Matt said, is that sure, you can make cuts, but
then why on earth are they already asking for a
four point five trillion dollars that increase the largest ever
so that they can provide tax cuts. There's two sides too,
(29:42):
you know, trimming our debt. One is spending, the other
is revenue. And if you're going to just take away
all that revenue, then you just create a bigger hole.
And you're also going to promote inflation. I mean, massive
tax cuts are hugely inflationary. And we're kind of right
on the customer.
Speaker 2 (30:02):
Now, okay, I got the speech, and I'll let you
go for a minute fifty five, which is great, and
nothing you said to me surprised me. A lot of
it is opinion. Let's see how it works out. My
question to you is this, you are really smart, Susan.
I've told you that before, and I'm not saying that
to patronize you. How do we work our way out
(30:26):
of a thirty six point two trillion dollar federal debt.
How do we do that? When? Are you?
Speaker 6 (30:32):
Well, that's what I said, it needs to be. It
needs to be both on both sides, spending and revenue.
Speaker 2 (30:40):
And then when you just so we're talking about let's
talk real numbers. Okay, real numbers. Let's assume you wanted
to raise taxes dramatically. We have a federal budget every
year now it's somewhere around six and a half trillion dollars, okay,
and we raise little taxes somewhere around four trillion dollars.
(31:04):
I'm pretty close on those numbers. How much more do
you think we can raise taxes?
Speaker 6 (31:12):
I'm not saying that we should raise them tremendously, but
I don't think we should be cutting them tremendously either.
I mean, we really don't.
Speaker 2 (31:19):
I'm gonna agree with you, Susan, I'm gonna agree with you. Okay, Thanks,
I'll agree with you on that. Okay. So now here's
my question to wipe out this thirty seven trillion dollar debt.
How much do you think we can raise taxes?
Speaker 6 (31:39):
You know, I don't have Again, I don't think.
Speaker 2 (31:43):
Budgets of the budget. The federal budget right now is
about seven trillion dollars, and we raise taxes of all
sorts about four and a half trillion. So we'll add
another two trillion dollars to the federal debt. A year
from now, the federal debt will be.
Speaker 6 (32:01):
Thirty is not raising taxes or is that growing the
or is that the tax bas just naturally growing? I mean,
how much of that is just you know, what I'm
saying right.
Speaker 2 (32:09):
Now is that every year we come up short about
two trillion in depth in the deficit, which then gets
added to the debt. So all I'm saying, raise taxes
all you want, raise taxes till till everybody in America
pays all their money in taxes. That's not going to
do it. That's not going to do it. They're going
to have to be some severe cuts.
Speaker 6 (32:31):
I agree.
Speaker 2 (32:32):
More we're just going to continue down the line. And
then the question becomes next, The next call you and
I have is I want you to come back and
tell me what do you think could legitimately be cut?
You know, we got it gonna have to do. We're
gonna have to raise the soci security retirement age.
Speaker 6 (32:45):
Well, security is is a separate entity to the rest
of the budget. So I mean that's it's a huge part.
Speaker 2 (32:53):
It's a huge part of it is a huge part
of an additional unfunded liability. Okay, when so Scurty runs
out of money, what do you think they're going to do?
Say that's it? No more so Scurty checks. Anyway, I
want you to think about those numbers, and next time,
I want you to come back and I want you
to talk to me about areas of cuts that you
think would be legitimate, that would that actually would cut
the cut the debt.
Speaker 8 (33:14):
Fair enough, fair enough.
Speaker 6 (33:17):
I just don't think they should all be born by
personnel or the poorest, which is just.
Speaker 2 (33:24):
What I just want to know what they are. You
can tell me whatever you want. You can tell me
that we close the we close the national parts on
Sundays and holidays, whatever. You just give me some examples
of how we can save some real money. That's I'm
just looking for some examples, and I'm and I'm challenging
you to come up with some. Okay, fair enough, Thanks Susan,
appreciate it. Take a quick break coming back on night Side.
Speaker 1 (33:46):
Now back to Dan ray Line from the Window World
night Side Studios on w b Z the news radio.
Speaker 2 (33:53):
Next up is Alan new Hampshire, Al next on Nightsider.
Right ahead, Hey.
Speaker 8 (33:57):
Dan, thank you very much, if you don't mind, if
you just give me a minute, I have a solution.
I have four one zero based budgeting. We need to
return the federal government to zero based budgeting. Every year
we just increase. If there was a year, last year's
increased with three percent, then the following years one percent,
which was previously on the last year three percent. We
(34:17):
need to figure out and go back to zero based
budgeting where every office has to put a line item
in exactly what they need and why they need it,
et cetera, et cetera. This start having people bringing money back,
in other words, if it's not spent, it's return back
the way it is now. It forces them to continue
to just continue to fund. And more importantly, the second
(34:40):
part of that is, you know, because something's budgeted there's
a line item doesn't mean that it. You know, after
the budget has passed, they use it for that specific
line item. Once the budget's in, you can use it
the way they want. The second is we start looking
at Graham Runman again nineteen eighty three emergency balance budget.
We can do that the Constitution through the States. There's
(35:01):
an Article five Convention of the States. Is our founding
fathers gave us that in the Constitution.
Speaker 2 (35:07):
It's the federal Do know that's that's that's looney tunes.
That's never going to happen, all right.
Speaker 8 (35:13):
And the last case is, before there's any fraud and
there's any you know, before we go after Social Security,
we need to make sure that we take care of
the fraud. If Trump's going to go after it, or
anyone's going to touch Social Security, he needs to go
to the people after uh, he has taken care of
the fraud and the abuse, and then the people would
be more willing to take a step up and do
(35:34):
their part. But they're not going to do it when
a federal government, we don't clean out this fraud and
waste any Well.
Speaker 2 (35:39):
The problem is that that this week Musk made some
claims about fraud in Social Security which have been proven
to be patently untrue. So when you when you stand
in the Oval office and say that there's you know,
many people on Social Security who's birth dates are getting checks,
(36:01):
but whose birth dates were one hundred and fifty years ago.
He didn't know what he was talking about. There apparently
is an antiquated system where when they don't have the
birth dates of individual I guess they put it in
at eighteen seventy five and hence this were the one
hundred fifty year. So many people one hundred and fifty
some RIZK kids saw all those numbers and said, we got,
(36:23):
we got, you know, tens of thousands, maybe millions of
people who are getting jags who have been dead for
you know, sixty five seventy years.
Speaker 8 (36:33):
Point of clarification, it doesn't have to be the social
Security system. I mean. And in other words, for someone
to take a hit on Social Security, he would have
to say the federal government has done its part throughout
its government. It's looked across the board. It's fought fraud,
it's fought waste. And now you know, coming to the
American people in another fashion, raising the as you agree,
I agree with you raising rates or you know age rates.
Speaker 2 (36:57):
Now you raised, you raise you raise again. That suggests
you listen to our show Monday nine at nine o'clock
with Professor Jeff Myron from Harvard.
Speaker 8 (37:06):
It was a thing, I mean, think about it. Our
death about one hundred and twenty five thousand dollars per
person right now.
Speaker 2 (37:13):
That it's more than that, it's got about three hundred
thousand per person.
Speaker 8 (37:17):
That's the unfunded part. I agree that's crazy, though people
don't in that well.
Speaker 2 (37:23):
Again, first of all, most people don't understand economics. They
understand when they reach in their pocket and they have
no money on Thursday afternoon, they have to wait until
they get their paycheck on Friday. But the concept of
thirty seven trillion dollar federal debt that we are, oh,
that we owe other governments around the world, that we
owe ourselves, and that we're paying interest on interest is accumulating.
(37:44):
The average person doesn't have a clue. You know, if
the price of eggs go from two fifty nine to
three ninety nine, people are upset, rightfully, so Briyce eggs
have gone up a dollar and a half of the
last week. Oh my god, the sky is falling. But
you ask him about the how much is the federal debt?
I don't know. I don't know how much is it.
But they know the price of eggs, and and it's
(38:07):
good to know the I know the price of eggs.
I paid for ninety nine. I wasn't happy about that
this week for a dozen eggs, but I'm happy to
pay for ninety nine for a dozen eggs, then to
pay four ninety nine for fifteen gallons of gasoline when
I fill up.
Speaker 8 (38:22):
I thought Monday's was the most powerful your station on
Monday or your show was so powerful. It really should
be played again, and I'm so it's a public it will.
Speaker 2 (38:34):
Be played the interview with the interview, the Hour with
Jeff Myron will be played on Sunday night at eleven o'clock.
We played the best of Nightside every Sunday night at
eleven pm, so I anyone who's missed it, let people
know that. Well. I appreciate you calling your loyalty to
the program. I got around. Okay, kiss, I'm up against
the news. Here, talk to you, Talk to you soon,
call more often.
Speaker 8 (38:55):
Okay, thank you, thank you.
Speaker 2 (38:58):
Here comes the eleven. We'll be right back and let's
light these phones up. Uh. I want to hear from you.
Six one, seven, two, five, four, ten thirty. Those lines
are full. The line to the way to get through
six one seven, nine three, one ten thirty. I'm very
gratified with the number of people who have called, and
the quality of the calls. That's what's most important to me.
(39:19):
Excellent hour. Let's keep it up during the eleventh
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