accurate portrayal of what lies ahead for the united states? tom shatz is the president of citizens against government waste and joins us from our nation s capital. good morning to you, sir. good morning, steve. ok, you guys are famous for coming out with a list of government waste. why are you taking to the air y airwaves with an ad? this is the ultimate effect of not eliminating all this wasteful spending. back in 1986, wr grace & company produced an ad called the deficit trials, this is an homage to the particular ad that was rejected by the networks as being too controversial and at that time, the national debt was about $2 trillion. now, it s $13.7 trillion. so we ve been talking about this for a long time. one of our phone numbers is 1-800-usa-debt so this is something that we have focused on as a consequence of not addressing things like earmarks and other forms of wasteful spending. and the message in this is if we re not careful, the chinese
millions of americans watch this and start to hold our elected officials accountable so we do not go in this direction. that is the point about we can change the future, we have to. and only by gathering together to get more accountability and have everyone address this massive problem can we really prevent this from happening. neil: we are happy you debuted it here first on this show because this has been a big issue of mine and ours. what is the reaction of the other venues you plan to run? has anyone rejected it? guest: no. that is interesting. this is based in part on the 1986, the deficit trials that w.r. grace tried to air that was controversial because a younger person was holding the younger generation accountable and in 1986 the national debt was $2