hopefully, it won t last more than a couple of days. if it is longer than that, i will eat ramen and do what i have to do to make ends make. john gauge is president of the american federation of government employees. his group represents many of those who will be without work if the government shuts down. thank you for joining us this morning. you are welcome. who do you think is to blame for all of this? well, this is really political theater but trying to drive this many cuts to the federal government in the 2011 budget in the five months which are left, this will cripple agencies that deliver great service to the american public. one of our great concerns and why we are going into court is that this is not a full shutdown of the government. it is a partial shutdown. many employees in the va and d.o.d. and border protection and prisons and transportation security. they will be ordered to work
i think these cults are totally unreasonably. is it the president, john boehner, harry reid, is it the tea party? there is a lot of finger pointing going on. so who is to blame? i heard speaker bane noehner it was not a revenue problem but a spending problem. we have lost 8 million jobs. that is a revenue problem. we have surpluses as far as the eyes could see in 2000, tax cuts, two wars, katrina. the financial bailout put us in this deficit position. we can t cure this deficit position by taking it out on federal workers or public employees. their pay, their pension, furloughing. that is not the answer to our fiscal problem. john gauge, many thanks for joining this morning. we appreciate it. thank you. a lot of u.s. businesses with government contracts will
i don t know what the country is going through when we decide that federal workers are overpaid which we certainly are not and we have a pension and therefore take it away because of private sector companies spent their pension. i don t think that is the way we ought to be moving in this country. i don t think that is really where we have that is contrary to the american dream. it is a race to the bottom looks like that vote will freeze pay but not overtime or bonuses john. thank you very much. your welcome. and then paris hilton getting motors running. she is sponsoring a motorcycle race. the folks making announcement in spain. she will be at five races and
beth: of course you noticed the new benefits we get under the new healthcare law. john: what? beth: well, like 50 percent off brand name prescription drugs for people who are in the donut hole. john: really? i didn t know that. beth: you have to keep up. john: come on. i ll keep up. anncr: it s open enrollment. time to compare and review plans at medicare.gov or call 1-800-medicare.
self gifting. i like it. all right. and they stood up for us . rudy guiliani is telling congress it is time to stand up for thim. america s mayor on the lenth hour fight. would you give your social security number to a convicted felon. what in i told you your state might have done just that. john: yea, well, there you go. beth: yea, so what else is new? john: well, i just changed my medicare plan. beth: open enrollment? john: yup. i compared plans and found better coverage for me.