having balanced budget requirements and it not destroy them? states are required to balance their operating budgets, not their total budgets. states borrow for roads, bridges, schools, many things. think of all of the bonds at the state level. sure. plus the fact that states have to balance their operating budgets, even in recessions, makes it even more important for the federal government not to have to do that, otherwise you get these effects of doubling unemployment. there s one more thing. virtually every current proposal for a balanced budget requirement in the constitution includes as part of the proposal a very severe limit in the constitution for all time when the total amount of tax revenue the federal government can raise. yes. a level lower than what we raised today. what it does is a constitutional balanced budget requirement of that nature effectively constitution allizes a requirement to cut social security, medicare and medicaid because otherwise you couldn t g
the u.s. is the u.n. s biggest funneleder by far. contribute is $3.3 billion a year to finance its activities. including one fifth of the u.n. s operating budgets. half of that goes to humanitarian program. another quarter goes for peacekeeping. 20% goes for technical agencies that help the world function better. so it would have a significant impact if the u.s. cut its contributions to the u.n. the president has signaled that he is ready to reduce contributions to the u.n. by 40%. and extend those cuts to all u.s. foreign aid. total u.s. foreign assistance whether civilian or military aid amounted to $42 billion in fiscal year 2017. but compared to other countries, it s not as generous as it seems. we are the largest owner around the world account forg about 22% of foreign assistance.
systems built into the ships really makes a lot of sense. jenna: the questions come down to the ships, right whether or not we have the amount of aircraft carriers that we re used to for example in the persian gulf. we ve heard a lot about that with sequester about whether or not we are going to deploying some of those ships. there seems to be a perception with the drones, special operators out there that modern warfare as we know it with bigger army is somehow over especially considering some of the budget restrictions. what is the right expectation on that? the right expectation is that drones do a great job of providing information. in very limited situations, very specific situations they can conduct combat strikes but there is really no substitute for actual force. in terms of the navy deployments to the persian gulf and middle east we don t lack the ships, what we lack is the operating budgets to deploy them. sequestration has really taken a hit on both the ability of the navy
npr, but a lot of the local affiliates, the local stations could be hurt dearly, if in fact federal funding is cut off and how about the links. now how they re funded going forward. billionaire george soros who does not give money to conservative organizations or those in the middle and last week he gave a million bucks to media matters and attacks fox news and 1.8 million to npr to hire reporters across the country, that very day that that donation is made public, so, too, is the firing of juan williams, are they related? it s tough to separate them. and how all this went down. here is also what s interesting. they say that a third of those smaller npr stations, the local stations rely on the operating budgets from donations. and so, they happen to be in the middle of a fund raising drive. some people would say, oh, my gosh, how horrible for them. they re getting the angry phone calls from the listeners, yet, a spokesperson for npr, says actually we re on track to surpass or meet