gretchen: 45 minutes after the top of the hour. if you re just joining us, quick headlines. sticker shock at the pump, gas prices jumped 12 cents in the past week. national average $3.67 this morning. triple a says increased summer demand and unrest in egypt are part of the reason for the spike. a fisherman in hawaii had to be rescued after a massive fish capsized his boat. he pulled in a 200 pound tuna but his boat couldn t handle the weight. the boat flipped over. he held on to the bottom until the coast guard arrived. his boat was later thrown back with the tuna still attached. didn t want to give up the catch. look at that rescue. brian: wow. first it was combat pay now clinics for our nation s heroes are slashing their hours thanks to the defense department budget cuts which is due to sequester. shouldn t our heroes come first? pete hegseth of concerned
were 18 of them through out the world basically if you were not at a direct threat of being killed imminently you re not going to get additional danger pay if you re a member of the military. a lot of people are like wait a minute, isn t it implicit in the fact that you serve you re going to be in danger. $35 billion from 2013 coming up on 2014, $52 billion. how is that going to impact our national security? first, it s going to continue to hit another $50 billion everyear if we don t figure out how to reform the way we spend money. it s going to hit because it will manifest itself across the board in indiscriminate cuts which means it s going to hit every part of the pentagon budget including personnel and benefits and stuff like danger pay and combat pay. until the white house leads and congress, republicans and democrats put forth budgets that reflect the budget control act, or at least acknowledge it in planning, you re going to continue to hit the
being cut. does this affect our national security? joining us is pete hegseth. good morning to you, pete. this is the result of sequestration, that big, long word that had to do with the fact that democrats and republicans couldn t get their act together to come up with how to cut our deficit and now this is the end result; right? absolutely this is the end result. this is directly how d.c. washington dysfunction acts our national security. because politicians left and right are unwilling to come together and reform things that clearly need reform, whether it s the i.r.s., who anyone who has their head out of the sand knows has serious problems or whether it is the defense department where there is waste to be cut, but no one is willing to make the tough political calls to get it done. so instead cuts fall on the backs of the trigger pullers, whether it s benefits or combat pay. and the big stuff that should be reformed never gets touched. gretchen: last we can we were talking about
gretchen: it s not the first time we ve seen waste with the military. remember last year they said they didn t need certain kinds of helicopters and yet the contracts were still coming. high-level generals were saying we don t need this stuff. brian: think about this, they re cutting combat pay pore people in jordan for people in jordan and the middle east and they re saying we don t have enough money, you can t practice your flights, your f-16 and at the same time they re going to turn down a base never used. steve: what do you think about that? give us a call. friends at fox news.com. gretchen: can the government force companies like wal-mart pay more than the minimum wage? the answer is yes. is this the end of free enterprise? brian: two teenage boys chase down a suspect on their bike and save a little girl. the story is unbelievable.
about ten years ago it wasn t. we re not going to get any notice when that becomes a dangerous area. steve: so there goes out of the average troop s pocket, $225 a month. they won t get danger pay. however, we have plenty of money to pay for that s right the cupid shuffle! you ve got irs employees screen right, and brave americans defending democracy brian: that woman is dancing with a sprained ankle. so she deserves some type of combat pay. gretchen: all right. coming up steve: is that fair? e-mail us. gretchen: or twitter us. coming up, ben bernanke says he s going to keep pumping money into the economy. what does that mean for your wallet? that s with it all comes down to? we have that story. brian: then. steve: she has brains and beauty, but no boyfriend. miss usa says she can t get a date. is that a joke? brian: what is wrong with