the hook for union pension funds that are potentially 160 billion dollars or more in arrears. well that s interesting, in every piece of legislation that has any nexus to the labor force, to unions, there s something in it that gives benefit to the unions. that s the democrat s way of paying back and many of them admitted it, for what they believe was the political support they received in 08. the difference is they know, the democrats know, their numbers aren t as robust after the november 2010 election. so they believe between november 2nd and when the new congress is sworn in, the so-called lame duck session, that s the time to jam this through. we believe it s dishonest and reckless and not truly representative because the american people wouldn t vote for those individuals. neil: wouldn t be the first lame duck session to do wacky things.
our banks loans to the federal reserve instead of the going to the treasury. yeah. but then borrowing money from the federal reserve and making a mark on it. it s insane. i know. so what we ve done is, we ve changed the people s motivation. until we change that motivation and we create confidence again, and some certainty in the marketplace, people are going to continue to hold things close to the chest. you can t blame them. no. the other side of this, and, look, i m just as hard on the bush administration. wasn t as bad, but it was bad in terms of regulation. we ve had 5,000 pages, 160 billion dollars worth of cost in regulations, in the last 18 months alone. that is when i travel to oklahoma, oklahoma doesn t have a lot of great big businesses but they have a ton of small and medium sized businesses. all i heard, you got to get the government every week a new regulation that requires things.
i m not in favor of silly wasteful projects. it s hard to define silly wasteful projects most of the time. times we know. secondly, this is sort of a side show. as much as i respect you and i m glad your idea is carrying the nation, the serious people will look at things like entitlement reform and defense spending and that s the show. and ear marks are not the show e and by the way, i know one man s pork is another man s vital project, but when you start building four water parks on fives miles away from water. we can agree on that. neil: we can agree on that. what we re saying is do it all. we don t have to pick and choose. adam said it, if this is a small thing, a small test, do we start talking about defense spending, social security, medicare, this is a small test. if you want to call 160 billion dollars, whatever the number is, you know, whatever the billion that these ear