I thank you for the opportunity to offer a few thoughts and reactions principally to the president's State of the Union and his budget message both of both of which were delivered this week. The State of the Union message Thursday night Wednesday night. I should say was my seventh as a United States Senator and I fight very hard the tendency of many of my colleagues to get so swept up in the Washington scene that they forget the real reason they're there and that is to do their level best to represent the folks back home and yet it's hard.When you're sitting there not to feel a sense of on a sense of History listening to the president of the United States in the house chamber along with all the members of the Congress the cabinet the members of the Supreme Court The Diplomatic Corps and in the case of the other night Walter Judd and it is a long long way from Collegeville Minnesota. Let me tell you in retrospect. I have a hard time disagreeing with much of what the president said. It is not hard to share his enthusiasm and his optimism about the future after all a majority of Americans in all 50 states with the exception of three thousand one hundred and seventy DieHard minnesotans shared his optimism as recently as November of this past year even his harshest critics agree.That Ronald Reagan has an amazing ability to capture the spirit and the vision of what has made America great. I also don't think the president did a bad job of characterizing the State of the Union as of February 6th 1985, but what the president didn't talk about and what I want to talk about today is the slowly ticking Time Bomb called the deficit. I'm not sure why but what will soon be a two trillion dollar national debt somehow fell between the cracks of what the president had to say for 32 minutes the other night and yet the president didn't hesitate to stand before us all and call again for a constitutional amendment to balance the budget and I don't know because I can't sit there and watch television at the same time. I don't know what you may have seen at home on television, but when the president got to the part about theConstitutional amendment to balance the budget the response and the house chamber among Republicans and Democrats members of the conservative opportunity society. And the Ada was the same a polite embarrassed laughter. So the president's budget is out of balance and the president's speech in the budget message. He sent up to us two days earlier are both out of balance in more ways than one in fact restoring balance is one of the central themes that I'd like to see addressed by all of us the president and the Congress in the weeks and the months ahead not just restoring balance to our federal budget. Although that has to be our number one goal, but also restoring balance within the budget so that all programs including the military and Social Security make their fair share contribution to eliminating the deficit and also restoring balance in how we treat government spending and what I'd like to call tax spending and it is my position that we ought not to freeze spending on food stamps until we also freeze spending on three. Lunches and restoring balance in our economy. So that farmers and business owners on the main streets of small towns and America the folks on the iron ranges of Minnesota and Michigan can also share in the economic recovery. That is so prevalent here in Downtown Minneapolis. And st. Paul and finally restoring balance in our tax system so that it is fair and Equitable and so that work and savings again becomes attractive as consumption and spending Every year in early February the president sends up the best budget message just like he did on Monday of this week and for the whole week the budget dominates the news you all in the American public have been given an education on the finances and the programs of the national government, but it is a very deceptive education because the president's budget message this year is a deceptive document. It's not like the annual report of a corporation. It's more like a Sears and Roebuck catalog or a wish book the president wishes. For example, that interest rates were lower. So the economic projections for what we call the out years in the budget show lower interest rates. I'm sure it will be of interest to all of you that he projects interest rates on three-month treasury notes in 1990 at 5% That would translate into a 7% Home Mortgage. That's what the president Wishes the President also wishes that the deficits weren't so big. So he imagines that the laws of the land mandating spending for this purpose or that need have all been repealed in the savings realized the budget. We received Monday wishes away 239 billion dollars in spending obligations in the next three years and five hundred and seven billion dollars over the next five years now Congress May well give the president all the savings that he has asked for and traditionally the congresses have done better in deficit reductions than presidents and that includes in the last four years. But we haven't passed the budget as yet and even a completely compliant Congress cannot conjure economic Miracles. The deficit is not 180 billion dollars. It will not be a hundred and forty four billion dollars in 1988. Those numbers are fictions. They are simply wishes. Because shortly after the president's budget each year, we get another document which gets much less attention. That's because it doesn't contain any letters to Santa Claus or any wishes just fact the Congressional budget Office Outlook came out this week also basis. It's 1986 projections on GNP growth averaging about 3.4 percent and interest rates at a flat 8.2% through 1990. It is its revenue and outlay assumptions are all based on current law. So where does the Congressional budget office say? We are in reality? The deficit for 1986 is not 180 billion dollars. It is 215 billion dollars. 1987 it is 233 billion dollars in 1988. It is two hundred and forty-nine billion dollars in 89 and his two hundred and seventy two billion dollars and in nineteen, ninety two hundred and ninety six billion dollar deficit and what does that mean? Well, it means that at the end of the decade the accumulated national debt will be two point eight trillion dollars. At the beginning of the decade in 1981. It was 800 billion dollars. So in one 10-year period we will have added 2 trillion dollars to the national debt. And that means according to CB o--'s Outlook that interest payments on the national debt will be about 230 billion dollars per year. In 1981 interest payments were about 60 billion dollars. So in 10 years we will have increased The Debt Service by 170 billion dollars. to give you something to compare that with a hundred seventy billion dollars is roughly today's cost of the whole social security system. It is more than enough to pay the salaries for all the soldiers all the sailors all the Airmen all the Marines and all of their pensions if they've Stockman will let them have it. Applied to income tax reduction which we all intend to do in, Minnesota. a hundred and seventy billion dollars would get the top rate on the national income tax down below 30% So you ask yourself? Why do we add a hundred and seventy billion dollars a year to our spending? Now some people say because it's we can have today and send the bill to our kids. Can I say that about a lot of things that's going on. My generation is going to have have have so my kids generation are going to pay the bill and there's nobody's kidding you about Peter Grace or the WR Grace that baby comes in the world with fifty thousand dollar bill over their head. That is a reality, but that's not what I'm talking about. I'm not talking about that here. We are talking about the things that you not your kids will have to give up if we didn't borrow two trillion dollars in the 1980's the Savings in annual interest payments by the end of the decade would be a hundred and seventy billion dollars and think of what you could do with that each year. CBO says that in 1990 interest on the debt will be four point one percent of GNP each year four percent of the nation's output will be used to service its debt now. Somebody will say no worry. We just pay it to ourselves. But that's not true anymore. We have become a third world debt her Nation just like Brazil and Mexico and Argentina and Poland ask any Minnesota farmer. The farmer will tell you that the world's capital is flowing into the dollar. And they know it because they can't sell American grain anywhere outside America because nobody can afford to buy with American dollars. Dave Stockman got into a bit of trouble earlier this week when he attacked military pensions and Barry Goldwater who happens to be a retired Reserve General said, he should be fired. But it was Stockman's comments about Farm Credit that ought to get him fired because we are about to see the end of an American institution the family farmer and his small town. Is on its way out because of high interest rates and the high dollar and David Stockman. The guy who is about to start on his second trillion dollars in borrowings is giving them a lecture on bailing out debtors and I want to know where he gets the nerve doesn't he realize that it's his debt, which makes it impossible to sell American crops on a World Market and it's the failure of the market that has caused land values to fall. In Minnesota, we have lost eight billion dollars from Farmers net worth since 1981. David Stockman lecturing Farmers is like the mugger blaming the victim for bringing money to the scene of the mugging David Stockman took eight billion dollars of wealth out of Minnesota with his 200 billion dollar annual deficit. It's a good thing is continued service does not require reconfirmation because there are a lot of folks who would not consent to letting him and his theories Rob us anymore. Now there's a great deal of schizophrenia around these days particularly in my party things have never been better. And things have never been worse. GNP grew by an astounding 6.8 percent last year inflation is under control people have jobs and Prospects and hopes. Then why did ten thousand Farmers show up at the capital of Minnesota? Because they're fearful that a lot of them won't be able to put in a crop this year and up on the Iron Range. They've seen the boom and the bust cycle many times. But today the Boom everybody else is sharing has passed them by. Schizophrenia is appropriate behavior for politicians. The recovery itself is schizoid. It's fueled by a 200 billion dollar deficit which has made the American dollar a collector's item. The value of the dollar has increased 79 percent on average against the other currencies of the world since 1981 for those who sell into the World Market like small grain Farmers, that means they have been forced to raise prices by 79 percent compared to their foreign competition, but for Industries like Steel, It means the price of Foreign imports has declined by 79 percent. Yes. The deficits of put America back to work on the average, but they have also destroyed the work. Of some very important integral segments of our economy. That's our number one economic problem today. Balance, how do you balance out this really really significant important recovery. So that everybody is brought along by what the president appropriately called the American Miracle whatever we do about the budget this year will probably be called a freeze when the president passed out his budget message. They passed out popsicles with the budget message literally so that we'd all get the message that it would be a freeze. Everybody has endorsed a freeze Rudy boschwitz campaign on a free. We have in Washington Rudy won't want me to tell you this but in Washington, we have 536 different budget plans. And every one of them is called a breathe. Because everybody likes to be a winner, so whatever we do, we will call it a freeze and everybody can go back home and say 536 times I voted for or they voted for my freezer. But you have to know that the results produced by these various budget plans are all very different. If you take the across-the-board spending freeze that the Senate Republicans are promoting. It means we freeze each account in the budget where it is now in 1985. So everything stays in the same relationship to each other in the budget. The president has a plan which is is is much different the president freezes total spending. With the exception of interest payments, which I indicated earlier have to keep going through the roof. He would stay under this overall cap by allowing some things like military defense and Social Security to rise through the cap while allowing all other programs whether it's Amtrak or Medicare or Farm price supports to go down in 1980 defense as a percentage of all spending was 22% by 1990 under the president's freeze. It will be 36 percent of all spending and if you listen to the president the other night you heard him say that defense spending in the past has been 50% of spending indicating that that is his future desire. If you also listen to him say but I don't want any tax increases, you know our problem. We are getting stronger in defense without paying for it except through debt. So defense goes up interest payments goes up Social Security goes up. Everything else has to go down to stay within an overall freeze. Now, if you set aside defense, you set aside interest payments and Social Security and Medicare look at everything else that the federal government does the FBI the National Park Service famine relief in Africa Aid to Israel Aid to Nicaragua Guatemala El Salvador. I go on and on with hundred and sixty different countries the space shuttle sending Senators to the moon or out into space civil service retirement veterans pensions, the justice department dams highways, you know, Name it all of that long list that all of you have written and said don't cut if you take all of those and one area. BL 94-142 we take all of those together. They were 42 percent of the budget in 1980 under the Reagan and Fries. They dropped a 22% by 1990. In my more cynical moments, I think deficit is president of the United States. Deficit more than Ronald Reagan has and will produce a revolution in the shape of the federal government. It is deficit that is forcing us to repeal everything else and it is not just the programs were cutting the deficit has also prevented us from doing anything new. Now, you may think there's nothing new we can do. There's anything out there that needs doing my predecessors must have found a way to spend money to do it and it's true in the nineteen sixties and the seventies State of the Union speeches were long list of new programs that senators and congressmen brought from places like Minnesota convince the president that were good and they became marching orders to the Congress. And Ronald Reagan, of course has a few pet ideas that he mentions every year. Most of them. Don't cost money to his credit and mostly he says we can't afford to do anything new we can't afford to prevent acid rain. We can't afford to protect groundwater. We cannot afford organ transplants. We cannot afford infrastructure Banks. We cannot afford Math and Science Education. Name a 1980s problem that the federal government can afford to solve there aren't any. So deficit becomes president of the United States and it's also low almost like some people may have planned it that way like they're willing to live with it because it more than a legislative strategy or honeymoons with Congress or high ratings in the polls is accomplishing the Reagan revolution in government. And that Revolution is very simply to abolish the national government. I have not supported budget freezes in the past. Even the so-called across-the-board freezes because I always thought that spending freezes were a little bit unfair because they aren't really across the board at all. And this is a with all due respect to my colleague who is a freeze expert and others because it only freezes people or programs who get their government subsidy through spending. It doesn't get to the Americans who subsidies are hidden in the tax code for instance. Is it fair to freeze spending on food stamps while we still do the three-martini lunch? I don't know how many of you are writing off this lunch today. I'll just down the street some place or maybe tonight. You're going to go to a soup kitchen sponsored by some church and try to help some needy person who does not have access except through your charity to food. Is it fair to freeze mass transit subsidies while the number of Corporations claiming accelerated depreciation for corporate Jets and luxury automobiles continues to climb What about your latest Fringe tax-free Fringe benefit? When Farmers can't afford to buy any kind of a fringe benefit, what about it? Shall we let that little tax expenditure boom while we freeze educational grants for the disadvantage. Is it fair to freeze healthcare for veterans while the employees of major corporations still negotiate first dollar coverage subsidized by the taxpayers of this country? The Wall Street Journal has been very good at attacking government spending. Second best only to the grace commission and the common theory is that everything government spends is bad. Everything business spends is good. And they're very first editorial. I will never forget around the first of December because on the back page of government spending - no Roman numeral one, which at first attack on government spending on the flip side of it was a quarter page ad from Cessna Aircraft selling single engine aircraft before the end of the year and the headline said there are two good reasons to buy Cessna Aircraft and I never got to the second reason because the first reason said big bold headline first reason to buy a single-engine, Cessna Aircraft is the IRS will give you back all your money. Then I went on to explain how you get it back. The dollars involved in these kinds of tax expenditures are not small The Joint Committee on taxation counts 106 items in the tax code like the home mortgage interest deduction or the deduction for state and local taxes. The exclusion of employer-provided fringe benefits energy credits capital gains rates all that sort of thing in 1984, those tax expenditures amounted to three hundred and twenty 1 billion dollars three hundred Twenty-One billion dollars that did not come in from the income tax system. In other words federal government revenues would have been that much larger enabling us to balance the budget in fiscal 1985. Those attacks expenditures will cost us three hundred and sixty five billion dollars an increase of forty four billion dollars in one year. That's how many more martinis you will drink or how many more aircraft you will buy or how many more fringe benefits you will jam into your Fringe benefit system while the farmers go broke. And the poor go to the soup kitchen. Tax expenditures will go up to four hundred and four billion dollars in 1986. That's another thirty nine billion dollar increase that's 83 billion dollars in private spending increases subsidized by tax breaks in the next two years that is 20 billion dollars more than the total cost of the Medicare program, which we are reducing by 18 and a half billion dollars over three years if we freeze Medicare, So if our problem is the deficit the gap between revenue and spending I just don't think it's fair to slap a freeze on only one side while allowing the subsidies to grow unchecked on the other and if I could think of a way to do it, I would propose an across-the-board freeze on tax expenditures as well as on Direct spending keep the tax expenditures at 321 billion dollars. We won't take away any of this year's or last year's martinis. We won't take away any of last year's airplane or any of last year's health insurance or any of last year's Capital Gains. We just won't let you increase it over the next two years by more than the entire cost of the Medicare program in one year. What's the bottom line on the deficit? There are some people particularly in my party that insisted. It isn't even a problem that it is good because it's pumping up the recovery while it knocks down the federal establishment. In fact, they argue that we should go on electing the deficit president of the United States until it makes Republicans a majority party. Well, maybe everything that I've learned about economic policy is wrong, but that seems to me as a republican a mighty big gamble to take So, why will and support the efforts of our Majority Leader the find a package that can get broad support and to make any real progress we're going to have to do both the across-the-board freeze and the president's proposed cut and there'll be a lot of tough choices Social Security colas things that I have championed always like General Revenue sharing because it doesn't let the federal government rip it off. It gets it right back to the folks at the local government level that's going out things that are needed in Minnesota like a farm program out the window. I mean, we can't you just can't stop and be selective in this one, you know, everything going to have to get chucked overboard or this plane is going to crash. But it's going to have to be everybody that's going to have to include defense and it's going to have to include tax spending through tax shelters. So for me, it's time to start drawing a line in the dirt. Without total participation without restoring the kind of balance that I've talked about here today. Just don't count me in on budget freezes. I thank you for the opportunity to be here. I understand. We have 15 20 minutes left and repeat the question. All right, that's her ass. Okay. Question is why not raise taxes and ask? I don't even remember who the majority leader used to be in the House of Representatives. Minnesota ask one of those guys why we don't raise taxes. The reason we're not raising taxes is very simple you give us in the government One More Dollar will find a way to buy a $700 toilet seat. I mean that's that is that seems to be the prevalent notion across this land, but if you seen Ru I mean four years into the Reagan Revolution and we are discovering more $700 toilet seats more $7,000 coffee makers no more $100 light bulbs and we ever believed existed. So I think we have to raise revenue and we have to do it by broadening the base eliminating a lot of the tax expenditures and the part of my speech which I delivered last night, which I did not bore you with today tells you that the one part of tax reform we have not accomplished so far is to tax consumption. We are still protecting your consumption and your spending and so the only way to do that in the near term is to take the tax off of work and put it on production. You could do that with a national sales tax. If you committed the proceeds to payroll tax reduction, you could pay for the entire portion of the payroll tax that is now goes to Medicare. For example, dew point eight percent in total take that off reduce the cost of going to work by that much you could pay for that with a three percent sales tax. That way you'd have everybody contributing to Medicare rather than just the working people that don't expect it to be there when they retire that is an option that you need to explore. There's no way you're going to get to 235 billion dollars with toilet seats and and the rest of that sort of thing. So, yes, you have to consider a combination of Base broadening. And a consumption tax, but the president's absolutely right when he says no new, you know tax revenues that are just more money for politicians to spend. So if you're going to explore a sales tax alternative, you have to commit it to something like payroll tax reduction. The question is about there any anyway in a freeze not to have the burden fall on on the poor and where it is legal services fall in this whole area. And those are two different issues. You can you can prevent the the burden of federal freezes from falling on the poor by not freezing the means-tested program and I think to some degree we are now finding a way not not to freeze some of the means-tested program the legal services issue, of course is a very different issue. It's whether or not the poor are entitled to the same access to the to the judicial system that the rest of us. Have and that is an issue of conflict within this Administration Ed Meese and Ronald Reagan and others do not believe that government should play any role in accessing the poor to the legal system and those of us who believe it should be done may not necessarily agree. Maybe the Legal Services Corporation isn't the best way to do it. Maybe there's a better way to do it. But that that is an idiot logical problem with this Administration that they just don't believe that government should get into the business and they have some evidence in some parts not in Minnesota, but they got evidence in some part of the country that all this money is just used to bring class action suits to harass. A lot of people for the most part. It is part I think of an effect than entitlement that is a citizen we deserve No, I'm not calling for Stockman's resignation any more than I'm going to vote against Ed Meese because I don't necessarily think he is the best person to be Attorney General of the United States. I think Dave Stockman basically represents a desire to eliminate a large part of the federal government with the exception of defense and the treasury Department and I suppose the suppose the state department what I don't like about it, and I guess I don't I just I am not one that I have not called for anybody's resignation. I didn't call for an Gorsuch has or build cases are a lot of other people that I may not have been enjoyed working with I now enjoy working with Bill Casey, but The president has an effect to live with that issue and we have to deal with the issue of deficit. I'm just very upset at Dave's characterization of the farming problem. I mean, it is too simplistic to say the farmers brought that on themselves and they didn't bring it on themselves anymore than any one of us who bought those $500 down forever to pay homes brought it on ourselves. It's the same thing. It's not farmers who shouldn't have been in farming any more than it is homeowners who shouldn't have own four-bedroom homes with two fireplaces and rec rooms. You know, we all bought into that because it was easy all you have come up with those 500 bucks and you can have a mansion. You know, it took you forever to pay for it and the farmers are no more guilty of being bad business people than we were it's just that we have subsidized ourselves up there at those hundred thousand dollar homes, and we've done that by subsidizing what we put on land in the city, but we don't subsidize land in the country. You want to World Trade Center you get it for eight or nine percent money. You want a Burger King you get a with an ID be you want housing for low and moderate income you get it with Section 208 or section to 32 or some other below market rate access into the system. That's how you keep land values up in the city. You don't have that when you go out in the country and that's why those guys are going like that. The questioner asked the senator how minnesotans will be affected by the proposed federal budget cuts. Well, I think the both the fries and the the major chunk of 16 to 18 billion dollars this year in program Cuts will substantially affect everybody in the state of Minnesota as they will affect people all the way across this country and you can start with some of the things I mentioned Medicare affects everyone the same way if you reduce some of those hospital and doctor payments, they affect Minnesota hospitals and doctors the same way to do everybody else and elimination of Amtrak just says you're going to use some other alternative form of transportation, but it says more to Wilmer and places like that then it says to other parts of the state the elimination of farm price supports says a whole lot to a whole lot of individual people all the way across this country. So I don't know that Minnesota necessarily suffers any more or less than anybody else until You come to Minnesota and look at what we're going to do to replace some of these things in the state of Minnesota and you come here into a climate in which we are caught between no more revenue and escalating increases in spending. What are you going to do about education? What are you going to do about health care for the poor? What are you going to do about a variety of these issues and Minnesota is in transition. Between holding down the spending and changing the way we spend money and for some period of time in this transition, I would expect in Minnesota. It is going to hurt some people to have these Federal cut back but in the long run a state like Minnesota will probably adjust to quite a number of these cutbacks but not to all of them if the end objective is to get the federal government out of caring for the poor caring for the handicapped caring for for the disadvantaged of any kind caring for natural resources variety of things like that. There always has to be some kind of a federal role in certain things that are intergenerational or cross state boundaries and we don't know where the deficit will cause us to stop in that regard whether we're going to eliminate everything. We're going to stop somewhere in between. What do you think should be done about defense spending other than perhaps freezing at this year's? Well, I suggest first you invest 695 in a book that Gary Diamond published called neither madman our Messiah and that will answer that will answer your question. What do you think should be done about defense spending? It suggests it suggests to you that just trying to attack the light bulbs in the and the toilet seat is not going to solve the problem. You have to go at the basic structure itself and you have to ask yourself the question. Why do we have a National Defense or what purpose and then you examine the structures that we have built to provide that defend? And I have done that and I have come to the conclusion that we are spending a whole lot more money than we ought to but it isn't the toilet seats. It is the fact that we have for Air Forces when we probably don't need any we need we need one system to run our missiles but we no longer need something called an Air Force because the Navy has airplanes and the Army has airplanes are indoor helicopters and the Marines have airplanes and or helicopters and the Air Force has airplanes and or helicopters. And whenever one of them gets a new Advanced technological advanced than they all have to have their own version. No, they can't just buy that the F-15. They got to have the F-16 or the F-18 or some other kind of thing. So it's and it's in the way the whole system is organized. It is organized to get the most out of everybody between the ages of 21 and 40 one and then pay them to go out on the market and get rich. I mean David Stockman was absolutely right. It is it's the pension system. The promote amount of the system is crazy. I mean those guys are just getting into there and women are getting into the prime of life and we tell them goodbye, you know, we don't need you anymore and it's just to the point when they'd be terrific part of our national security we get rid of them. So it's those kinds of changes that would get us an awful lot more defense for the money that we have to spend Senator some of the younger less mature members of my family regard you as close to Impossible mostly because you graduated from st. John's. I think repeat that question. Why did you fail me? And the answer is not that I want you to quit smoking your cigar. Although I think it's probably offensive to all these people sitting around you because I had to do something good. I mean something to make me feel good about myself at that particular Point going into a new year and I thought if I can demonstrate that I can not put a pipe in my mouth all the time. It'll be just fine. Now that the real reason is that I have been going around in my health speeches talking about lifestyle and how you are adding to the cost of your destruction and we are going to have to keep you alive some point an artificial heart or something artificial lung or something like that. Antedate. Is he putting out his cigar? And todate it's everybody it's all the non-smokers in their insurance premiums who have been paying for your artificial heart and your respiratory and all that sort of thing. And I'm just saying you don't have to quit you do not have to quit. I just did it because I couldn't preach lifestyle and head carry pipes with me. I felt guilty but for you continue to smoke, but we ought to increase your life insurance premium and we ought to increase your health insurance premium, or we had a decrease the premiums for the non-smokers and that's what I recommended. We do on Medicare that we have at least a dollar a month premium differential for people that don't smoke because they're not going to cost us a lot of money. Are there any sacred cows anywhere in the budget? Yeah speaking of cows. Stearns County lives off of dairy and I will do my best to protect the dairy cow from being Frozen having his utter Frozen or her utter Frozen education. Maybe know that that illustrates the fact that each of us has our sacred cows. I mean, I frankly don't think we ought to abandon rail passenger transportation in this country and Amtrak we have been working now for 10 years to rebuild the Amtrak system and we've been making terrific progress and yes, it's cost us something to do it because we let it go down so far. We took all of our money and put it into cars you could all have cars you could all have highways you complain if you can't drive from here to everywhere. Hello, we put one person per car. We give our country over to the Arabs. You know, that's what we've done and we let the rail go to pot. So some of us have been trying very hard to bring back Rail and rail passenger and in I'm going to I'm not going to be able to vote to get rid of Amtrak and so if 535 people walk through the federal budget, you know, protecting their sacred cows. It's going to be very very difficult and which is why you know, it doesn't pay to oversimplify the these deficit it's why if you don't you have to start caring about the deficit and you have to start caring about the fact that all spending by government is not bad. I don't question. Are you still a Marine Corps Reserve officer? And if you are and you become too much of a problem can present Reagan activate, you know, my son is the one that's in the Marines. I was an Army Reserve officer and I imagine I still have my yeah, I'm sure I still have my commission even though I am in active and I don't know whether he can activate me or not. I would probably claim that being chairman of the intelligence committee is too important a national public service to to be drafted back into the Army. Is that it? Thank you all very much.