>> it's driven by the three big entitlement programs that are very popular, medicare, social security and medicade. that's 70% of what we spend every year, the funding of the government is about 30% of what we spend. there's been a bipartisan reluctance to tackle entitlement changes because of the popularity of those programs. hopefully at some point here we'll get serious about this. >> dana: entitlement spending. we've talked about it for a long time in this country. i read it again this morning. you conclude one of the things in your conclusion is that we have to deal with this issue. how serious is it? >> it's the most serious problem confronting us. congressional bug office, for example, shows a significant opening up of the deficit. and fiscal 2019 is gonna be a very large number deficit.