CW 511 – Doug Hall – Promoting Federal Budget Transparency, National Priorities Project & 2014 Nobel Peace Prize Nominee

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For more information and links to all our great podcasts, visit hartmanmedia.com. Welcome to Creating wealth with Jason Hartman. During this program, Jason is going to tell you some really exciting things that you probably haven't thought of before and a new slant on investing fresh new approaches to America's best investment that will enable you to create more wealth and happiness than you ever thought possible. Jason is a genuine, self made multimillionaire who not only talks the talk, but walks the walk. He's been a successful investor for 20 years and currently owns properties in 11 states and 17 cities. This program will help you follow in Jason's footsteps on the road to financial freedom. You really can do it. And now here's your host, Jason Hartman with the complete solution for real estate investors. Welcome to the Creating wealth show. This is your host, Jason Hartman. This is episode number 511. 511. Thank you so much for joining me today. I am here in Jackson, Mississippi and we just concluded our Memphis property tour last night and it was a fantastic weekend and I'm with Sarah and Fernando and my mom Joyce and we drove down here last night and kind of had a good time playing Everybody's different, DJing in the car and picking the music and so forth. And also Brad, our local market specialist from Jackson, Mississippi who you heard on one of the episodes last week, I think just a week ago actually. Just wanted to give you a quick impression of the Memphis property tour and maybe a little bit about what we're going to see today in terms of properties. Our guest today after the intro portion will be from the National Priorities Project. Sarah, what was your big takeaway from the weekend? Well, I know I say this after every event, but this was the best property tour ever. I don't know if it's always the best. You know, that reminds me of what Apple says and we'll talk about it. This since Fernando used to work with Apple, every product they release. Johnny, I've on the video, you know this Fernando, he always says this is the best iPad Apple has ever done. It's the best. Of course it is. We expect it to be better than the last one, but it, but it really was. I mean just yesterday alone, I think our clients purchased about 17, 18 properties yesterday, all told leading up to the tour and the few weeks prior to about 40 properties. And so we saw some good stuff yesterday and you know, other takeaways than it was the best tour. Go for it. You know what, I'm just really proud of Our clients for taking action. We saw a lot of properties, nice neighborhoods, good diversification in terms of areas. You know, we saw some A areas, B areas. Didn't really dip into the C areas, I don't think. But, you know, our clients did well. They loved the content and the Creating wealth seminar, and we had a lot of fun. And then let's not forget about Graceland. We had a private tour and dinner at Graceland, Elvis Presley's mansion, Saturday night. So that was. That was really unique and fun. That was my favorite. Good stuff. And we had. One of our clients who was on the tour actually knows Lisa Marie Presley was still. Still amazed with the tour and loved it. So. Marissa, I'm glad you like that a lot. I know you did. You told me that. Anyway, mom, what was your impression of the tour? You can be candid on this one because you were just a moment ago when I. When I told you what the question I would be asking would be. Well, I've been on two tours now. One in Birmingham and this one. And you've only been on two of our property tours. I know you've been to a lot of my seminars and events, but only two, huh? This one in Birmingham, okay. But this was. The properties here were much superior to Birmingham. Even the B properties were. You know, the lawns, the areas were just very, very nice. And what makes you say that? Why do you think? Why did you like Memphis better than Birmingham? Just has a nicer ambiance, a nicer feeling about it. Okay, good. And that was pretty amazing. The most expensive property that we saw on the tour that one of our clients actually purchased. She had dibs on it before we got there to the property, but this house was gorgeous. It was a whopping. I know we have a lot of listeners from California, New York, the Northeast, South Florida, expensive areas around the world, too. But this property was a whopping $146,900. And that wasn't that house gorgeous? Gorgeous. Absolutely. Absolutely gorgeous. The area was just beautiful. And projected rent on that one, by the way, was still better than 1% RV ratio. It was 1595 for that. So good stuff. Fernando, you own 70 units now, and that's 50 different properties, 70 doors total that you've acquired over the last three years. What were your impressions of the.

Well, I always like the opportunity to network and meet with new people. And like Sarah says, the quality of the clients that we see is just phenomenal. And the learning that goes on and the feedback that we get and people come up to me and say, I really enjoy this. It really helped me understand the whole process. We had people that wanted to see how properties looked before rehab, during rehab, and after rehab, and they wanted to. To get an appreciation for how good of a transformation you could expect for some of these houses. I also spent some time talking to clients about my personal finances. I showed some charts on how my properties have performed over the last three years. And we went through a lot of these graphs and it was really awesome. And I got a lot of good feedback on that.

That was very enlightening. And Fernando, thank you so much for doing that because just a few days before the tour, you shared those graphs with and the spreadsheets with me. And I thought, wow, that's amazing. Why don't you share just a little bit of that, Maybe a highlight of it. Real quick, we should do a whole episode on this really with the listeners today, if you would. I know you probably weren't prepared for that totally, but. But you do have the graphs. Andy, tell us a little bit about how your performance of your portfolio has been. And, and I'll tell you why. Listeners, this is a great case study because it's such a fragmented business and it's very hard to quantify these returns because everybody has individual. Every property is an individual, and everybody has a different experience. And the, the part where you start to really see that you can kind of quantify it is when you have enough properties and enough time go by. And one more thing, someone like Fernando who is meticulous about keeping track of everything because he is, of course, an engineer. And, and so that's great. So, yeah, give us a few highlights from that real quick, if you would. And. And you presented this to our audience on Saturday and then again a little bit of it on Sunday when you did a separate presentation. Those are both fantastic, by the way.

So I think that the most interesting chart for me, and I think that many people got good information from, was one that I showed, 2012, 13 and 14 financial indicator bar chart. And it showed that my total return on gross equity divided by cash invested. So this is really, you know, my return on the bulk of the investment when you consider appreciation, principal reduction and cash flow. And the combination of all these three indicators is called gross equity income. When you divide that by the cash that I invested when I started the process, show me that my annualized return for 2014 was 23%. And I wanted to compare that with how Apple Stock did from 2012 to 2014, as it turns out.

Let's tell the Listeners. Why? Because when I met you four years ago at a bar, we didn't meet at a bar unintentionally. He was a podcast listener. He discovered the podcast and then was in Phoenix and I had just moved there actually at the time, not too long before you had contacted me and said, hey, I'm going to be there. You know, I'd like to meet you to ask some questions. You showed me your financial Independence Day plan. That's what you called it after we met. You just started acquiring properties. You only had your own home at that time and you worked for Apple and you were originally a chip designer designing potato chip. Yeah, no, the ones you don't eat. The ones you don't eat. The ones in this device with which I'm using to record integrated chips. They used to call them integrated chips. Now they just say chips. Oh, you still do. ICs. Okay. You started acquiring the properties and you really kept great track of it. But. But. Oh, that was the point. Here I am on another tangent. I need one more cup of coffee, folks, and then I'll be okay. But. But you liquidated a lot of your Apple stock to invest in real estate, right?

So I liquidated the and purchase real estate over the last two, three years. So I wanted to compare how did my real estate investments perform compared to Apple stock? And Apple had a great run over the last few years. So as it turns out, my total return when you look at this gross equity income over the cash that I invested was 23% in 2014. Well, Apple's annualized return was 13% over that period of time. So you're comparing 23% against 13% over a company that did pretty well. So I'm very pleased that I made the right decision even though Apple stock is at all time highs.

Right? Right. Yeah, that's a great point. And Apple is obviously the most successful company in the history of the world. It's an amazing company for sure. And 13% in any given year is a fantastic return on stocks. I just want to remind the listeners to keep this stuff in perspective because income property is a multidimensional asset class and the returns can easily. Well, I don't want to say easily, but you pick the right property, you have a reasonably good experience with it, with a one month vacancy per year, reasonable maintenance of anywhere between, you know, 5 and 8% of your income if you don't have a disaster, which believe me, disasters do happen. Okay, so it's not all roses by any means, but because it's a Multi dimensional asset class. And you get your return from so many areas. Just keep that in perspective. And remember Bernie Madoff? Who? Madoff. With so much money, you know that I, I mean, a name like that, like Madoff, you just had to be a crook. Okay. You know, I mean, why didn't he. They just, you know, Bernie Crook. I mean, and he, of course, as we all know, had the largest found. I mean, there may be others out there that are bigger, but the largest known to date, Ponzi scheme outside of the US Social Security system. And that's where he got the idea. His promise to investors was, look, I can get you 10 to 12% and Apple on a great year. 13%. Your portfolio, was that a great year? I mean, in your real estate portfolio. Well, maybe you don't know yet because you're only four years into this game, but you got, what do you say, 23%?

Yeah, 23% for 2014. Now, it's important to also tell the listeners that we went through each of my markets and showed the good and the bad as well.

And how many markets are you in? How many cities, in other words, are metro areas, MSAs, metropolitan statistical areas.

I mean, six different MSAs.

Okay.

So we showed how they all performed on a per capita basis, you know, the cash flow per door, and which ones I'm having more difficulty with and which ones are performing better. So it gives you. I think this came about from a question from the, from the listeners, from one of the clients in the, in the room yesterday. And we went through and showed the actual, you know, the actual returns and how it performs. So I think it gave people a really good sense of the good and the bad and the realistic expectation for what they could do if they get into the same program.

Yeah, good, Good stuff. Okay. I wanted to. So that's our impression of the Memphis property tour over the weekend. And that's kind of in review. It's now Monday morning. We're here in Jackson, Mississippi. We drove here last night, of course, and about a three hour drive between the two. With my driving, it's about 2 hours and 45 minutes. She gets there pretty quick. Now we're in Jackson, so we're about to go look at some properties with Brad, our local market specialist here. And as you heard on the podcast episode last week, where Brad and I talked for quite a while, you know, he's doing a good job investing here. You've really built quite a portfolio, don't you have? As I recall, about 117 houses or something?

Yes, we're up to about 117 total single family homes with one or two duplexes thrown in there.

It's amazing. You know, you can go to a relatively small town like Jackson, Mississippi, and here we are talking with the real estate mogul of the town, right?

I like to think so.

Good stuff. Tell us, what are we going to see today, Brad?

We are going to go look at about 15 properties. Most of them will be already rehabbed, rented, performing, and we'll look at a few that we have just finished and we're going to go look at a few that we're in the middle of working on that will be available for rent shortly.

Good stuff. Just in a nutshell, I mean, of course, most of the listeners hearing this heard the entire episode we did together last week. But what are your thoughts on the market here or thoughts on real estate investing in general?

Well, I think I like real estate investing personally as opposed to the stock market because you're in control of your investments and I think it generates, as Fernando was talking about, I think it generates higher returns than you can, than you can get in traditional investments. Concerning the market here, we have a very unique market here. Supply is basically unlimited for somebody who wants to go out and build a large portfolio. We have extremely high rents compared to price. Our prices are lower than the national average for your typical three bedroom, one bath, three bedroom, two bath home. And the rents are very strong. So it's easy to generate double digit cash flow returns in this market here in Jackson.

Fantastic. Good stuff. Well, I know that you actually moved here as I recall. I mean, the episode was aired last week, but we recorded about a month ago. So it's hard for me to remember everything. But you moved here from another city just to be a real estate investor, was that correct or. Tell me that story again.

Well, I moved here, I took a job back in 1997. I had a sales job and I was just looking for another way to make some extra money. Although I've since come to learn that there's no such thing as extra money.

What does that mean? Does that mean you're married and someone helps you spend it?

That means I'm married with four children and then every penny I. Every penny is necessary. There's no extra money.

No matter how much you earn, your lifestyle will always expand to fill the income. I'm glad you said that.

That's correct. So anyway, I took a job and I was just looking for a way to make some extra money. And you know, I had a friend A couple of friends in the real estate business, and he was exiting the business and he had 10 properties left that he wanted to sell. So I read half a book, thought it was a great thing to do, and jumped right in. And it's. I've expanded and bought and sold over 1500 homes in the last 15 years, and it's just gone from there.

And the distinction I want to make in what Brad's saying is similar to what I do. What Sarah does, what Fernando does is, you know, we're. Well, Fernando just is newly in the business of being in the real estate business. But he, he has a great investor story and then, and then came to work with us, and we're very grateful that he did. But the 1500 homes you're talking about is what you did business for your company, the company you own, but you kept 117 of those properties for your own account. So, folks, you know, when you're investing and you're thinking about this, make sure the person you're working with is following their own plan and taking their own medicine. So. Yeah, good. Any comment on that before we go?

No. I mean, mainly we're in the, you know, we are in the buy and sell business, but we, we keep the same homes, my partner and I. We keep the same homes that we sell. So I'm doing what I'm also talking about.

Practice what you preach. It's a good thing. Good stuff. Well, hey, everybody, we better get to our guest today and let's get out and look at some properties. I'm really excited about it. So do you often have four people here who are experts in the industry who are going to be critiquing the properties you show them? Is that normal?

No. I've had a few people in here over the years, but never, never this many at one time.

This is a tough audience. Brad. You better see some good stuff today.

All right, we'll be on our A game.

All right, here we go. So let's get to our guest and talk about the National Priorities Project. We'll be back with you on Wednesday. It's my pleasure to welcome Doug hall to the show. He is executive director of the National Priorities Project, which was a 2014 nominee for the Nobel Peace Prize. Doug, welcome. How are you?

I'm doing well, thanks.

Good to have you on the show.

Appreciate you having me on today.

Yeah, yeah, my pleasure. Give our listeners a sense of geography. Where are you located?

We're actually located in Northampton, Massachusetts.

Taxachusetts. That's funny that you should be located there almost. So what is the National Priorities Project really focusing on nowadays?

Well, we're an organization that's been around for over 30 years, and our basic approach is to try to make our federal budget accessible and transparent so that regular people can wrap their heads around it. It we've certainly been focusing most recently on the President's budget proposal and the various options from other sources. And of course, as we head into tax day, we've been looking at some of that stuff too, and really showing folks how their tax dollars are distributed in terms of the various programs and services that result from that.

I mean, is it it even possible for a typical regular, average Joe, so to speak, to wrap their head around the federal budget even, and then we're not even talking state and local before we get to that?

Well, I mean, certainly, you know, no human being could wrap their head around sort of all of the intricacies of it, but even just giving people a better sense of what the general buckets look like. You know, a great example is that that we get a lot of traffic on the work that we've done around international aid. And there's, you know, if you look at polling data, people think that we spend like the 20 cents on every dollar that we spend goes to international aid of some sort. And the truth is it's closer to one cent on every dollar. So it gives you a sense of sort of the magnitude of the misperceptions that are out there and the importance of giving people a more accurate sense of what the federal budget actually looks like.

Can you give us kind of that overview? I mean, I want to dive into the impact of various spending with different levels of government and so forth. But can you give us an overview of those buckets? I think that would be really interesting to the listeners.

Yeah, well, so the two sort of main buckets that we look at are the discretionary budget and then the whole budget, which includes not just the discretionary part, but also the non discretionary part, the mandatory spending. And you know, those two pieces are, they're huge and they account for, you know, literally billions, trillions of dollars in fact. And that's another great example of how it is that people have troubles wrapping their head around this. I suppose, certainly, if you're talking about the discretionary side of the budget, you know, the real big piece of that is the fact that over 50%, I think it's 54% now, of the federal discretionary budget is going to Pentagon spending, which leaves very little for things like education, infrastructure, all of those sorts of things that are critical to the well being of the American people today and into the future.

And maybe in the context of the political parties, people on the left would certainly say that we're spending too much money on war. I think people, you know, a lot of people on the right are starting to say that too. You know, people on the right would say we're spending too much money on government handouts in the welfare state. Kind of bring those into focus for us a little more if you would. And you know, talk about the welfare side.

Yeah, well, certainly I know there's lots of room for disagreement on what the federal budget should emphasize. I think that probably people across all party stripes and all ideologies would agree that if there is something like waste and fraud and abuse in the system, we should address that. And certainly if you look at the Pentagon budget and some of the sort of stereotypical examples you hear about the million dollar toilets and that kind of thing, those are great examples. But it's just sort of one piece of the puzzle, obviously. And the truth of the matter is that when you drill down, you get a better sense that there's lots of complexity to this and there's no magic answers. But at the same time. So you mentioned sort of the welfare piece of that. That's a piece of the puzzle that if we spend our money wisely at the front end, we end up having much better results at the back end. So just as an example, when I worked in Connecticut for several years, they quite literally used 4th grade education testing results to determine how much they would need to spend down the road on corrections. Just wrap your head around that. They're using the educational achievement of folks to figure out how many of them are going to end up in prison. It makes so much more sense to invest early in those kids. You know, call it welfare if you like, call it whatever you want to, but it's smart public policy and smart spending. It's not Pennywise sound foolish. Instead it's exactly the opposite. You know, it's sort of a stitch in nine in time says nine. If you want to, you know, invoke competing visions there or an ounce of.

Prevention is worth a pound of cure, as my grandmother used to say. Yeah, so that certainly makes sense from an ideological perspective. I don't think anybody's going to disagree with you there. But where the disagree comes is that people will say, well, the educational system is broken. You know, Steve Forbes was on my show. He years ago referred to the NEA as the national extortion Association. And, you know, these organizations get. They get big and they get entrenched, and they become corrupt and inefficient, and they become what one of my other guests called Iron Triangles. You know, I happen to be back, just visiting in my home state of California. I mean, the state is just a disaster. It's like the public employee unions run the state, and they're just driving it into the ground. I mean, I don't know, maybe you'll disagree with me there, but that's what a lot of people, at least myself included, think. So it's not really the concept. It's more the application. Right. Are those fair concerns in your eyes?

Well, I think they are fair concerns, but I think that it's very easy to, you know, latch onto a few anecdotes here and there and over, generalize. And I look at someone like Randy Weingarten, for example, the head of the American Federation of Teachers, and she is obviously a staunch advocate for the unions that teachers belong to, but she's also very receptive to some really constructive ways of looking at education reform. So, yes, you know, anytime that you have entrenched interests, you need to be looking for ways to, you know, get those folks out of the trench, per se. But I don't think the fact that they are unions or the fact that they are, you know, public employees, that's not what the problem is. In fact, you know, the evidence is pretty clear that public sector unions have been sort of the foundation, the backbone, the American middle class for so many people for generations. And the fact that we're attacking them now, I actually think is really misguided. And I think it also distracts in very important ways from some of the bigger struggles that are out there.

Let me run an idea by you. I'm really curious what, you know, and please just be open with me on this. You know, if my thinking is wrong, tell me. So, you know, I have no problem with that at all. So the government, the legal system, the government and its court system is really the arbiter of fairness in our society. And that's why it seems to me like, I don't mind unions in the private sector. I think they really definitely served a purpose, especially in the time where they. They arose. But should there be a union for public employees? I mean, to. Basically, those unions are on the opposite side of the table as the taxpayers. The government should be fair because it should be impartial, like it's not the government's money. So why would they have a Big problem with paying people a fair wage. You know, it's when it's kind of like the tragedy of the commons, right? When it's everybody's money, it's nobody's money. You know, I mean, I certainly see the need for union unions and so forth. You know, I'm fine with their existence. But public employee unions, that's a distinction, isn't it? Isn't that a fair distinction to make a difference between public employee unions and regular unions?

Oh, I think it's certainly fair to distinguish between those two, for sure. But what we find actually, when you look at what's going on out there in the labor market is, you know, there is quite literally a war on workers going on where, you know, we've had decades of wage stagnation and you're only now.

Well, of course we have, because they've offshored all their jobs and the tax code has kind of incentivized the companies to do that, unfortunately.

Well, there's no doubt that there's some room for changes there. And some of the trade agreements that we have, you know, signed on to are ones that have very clearly, you know, been very much in the interest of transnational corporations, but not so much in the interest of workers, you know, in our country or any other country for that matter. Those are sort of. Those are bigger conversations. I'm sure you could do a couple of shows on as well.

Totally. We could do a couple of days on that. So. Yeah, fair enough, fair enough. Okay. But so just the concept, though, on the public employee unions, that's all I was really getting at.

Right. And my sense is that we need to be looking, you know, what you so often hear are arguments that say, you know, those public sector workers, they have, you know, good retirement benefits and they have good healthcare, and that's not fair. And you know what? It's not fair. But the question then should be not how can I take it away from them. The question should be, how can I get that what are they doing right, that I'm not doing right. And some of that might in fact be, you know, looking for ways to achieve collective bargaining, whether it's through a formal union or some other mechanism.

Okay, all right, all right. I didn't mean to, you know, like, derail the conversation too much because there's some other stuff I want to touch on. So. So one of the things I wanted to discuss with you is just sort of a general statement, and that is what is the impact of federal spending at the state and local level? Just kind of a very broad general question. Just your thoughts on that?

Yeah, and I think that's a really good example of a question that not enough people have asked and certainly not enough people have answered. And there's sort of two ways I can come at that. One is to sort of think when you wake up in the morning and you turn on your water, you can trust your water's going to be safe when you go outside. When your kids go outside, they're breathing air, which for the most part is safe. That's your federal government at work and doing good work. Another way to look at it is more directly in terms of the relationship between federal spending and what goes on with your state and local government. Just as a point of example, on average in 2012, 32% or pretty much one third of every dollar in state budgets comes from the federal government. So, you know, wrap your head around that. You know, I think people have a better sense of what goes on in, you know, governments are closer to them. So certainly they might have a better sense of what's going on in state government. But I don't think very many people realize that a third of the money that they're state government is spending is really their federal tax dollars at work. Having said that, the other thing that's really quite striking is that that ranges considerably from about 20% in Alaska to 45% in Mississippi. And it's certainly not a coincidence that, you know, Mississippi is one of the poorer states. And it's actually hugely ironic that the states that are most heavily dependent on federal spending are also the states where the people most consistently take an anti government perspective.

Well, either they're like ungrateful teenage kids. Okay. Or what I don't know if you said in that statement is that doesn't that spending come with a whole bunch of strings attached? I mean, there are all sorts of mandates that come with that spending where it's this horse trading game. The federal government says, look, if you do this, and you know, in the old days it was, if you keep your speed limit at 55 miles an hour, then, you know, we'll give you some money for roads. And I mean, there are a million other examples of that that I can't think of. Maybe you can, but it's, it's not like there's no strings attached to that.

Right, of course, you know, and, and that's exactly as it should be. I mean, you know, if, if you, if you were spending anybody's money, it would be reasonable to think that the person, person whose Money that was. Would have some say in that it's coming from the federal government. I think it's entirely appropriate that we expected states will, for example, meet minimum, you know, national standards.

Right, right there. There's kind of a states rights issue here, though, that arises because when just like, you know, anybody getting money from, you know, a parent or the government, they become beholden to them. And then it's all about, you know, do this thing, bring the money to my district, and then, you know, it all becomes these, like, turf wars. And it's not what's good for the country, it's just what's good for my. My little district. You know, that's what the congressman will argue for. Right. I gotta. I gotta bring this money to my district. And even if it's totally illogical, that's why we have these airports around the country that aren't used. We have these facilities around the country because they're in, like, these nonsensical places. And they showed up there because someone lobbied. Well, they were just a good lobbyist, you know. Right.

But you know what? When you started talking about that type of expenditure, my mind immediately went to sort of the. The quote, unquote, bridge to Nowhere in Alaska, like a specific project that was, you know, 10 or 12 years ago, which to me speaks volumes about the fact that, you know, there's no question you're going to find examples like that. And that's not good. And that's not the smartest way for us to be spending our public dollars. But that doesn't mean that, you know, 80% of the dollars that are spent or 90% of the dollars that are spent are being spent unwisely. You know, you would never want to look at sort of the worst, you know, the worst performer on a sports team or, you know, the worst student in the classroom and paint everybody with that same brush. That's not fair in education, it's not fair in sports, and it's not fair in assessing the effectiveness of government programs either.

Yeah, okay. I guess that's a fair statement. So do you think that the Obama administration is transparent enough with their budget?

I think in a general sense, yes. And certainly I don't think that there's any evidence that I'm aware of that they are any less transparent than other governments. Having said that, you know, I pointed out fairly early that a big chunk of our money is going to defense. And it's a complete travesty that the Pentagon has been essentially declared unauditable.

That's for sure. You'll get 100% agreement with me on that one. And same goes for the Federal Reserve, by the way. But that's sort of a different conversation also.

Another conversation. You're right about that. You know, certainly, you know, anytime our public dollars are being spent, I think there, there is a reasonable expectation that the citizens of this country have a, at least a general sense of what that looks like. Now, that's not to say that there can't be areas where money is being spent that we don't necessarily know about. We don't need to know the intricacies of international spy stuff, the stuff you read about in novels, for example, because that's. Obviously there are legitimate national security concerns there. Having said that, it's completely bogus to, you know, redact three quarters of every single document and just label that national security. National security. You know, there needs to be a middle road.

I think you're right. And I think Bradley Manning would say the same thing and Edward Snowden would say the same thing, because the government can basically criminalize everything. You know, everything becomes classified. Everything becomes, becomes national security. I mean, that's totally bogus. You're absolutely right. It's ridiculous. You know, who gets to decide if FISA court probably, you know, gets to decide that? Everything. We'll just mark everything classified. It's all got the red classified stamp at the top. So you can't talk about anything anymore. I mean, is it really, you know, how much of the Pentagon is auditable? You said it basically wasn't. But what, what degree of transparency is there? And by the way, I don't even know if it should be called the Department of Defense anymore. I think it should be called the War Department like it was called before, because it acts more like that.

I think. Yes, I think there's no question of that. And, you know, Eisenhower talked about the military industrial complex, which has now very clearly morphed into a military industrial congressional complex. And there's lots of dysfunctions there. And it's pretty safe bet that there's lots of dollars being spent, public dollars being spent in unwise ways and in ways that not only don't make us safer, but probably increase the danger that we face. If you look at what's going on in the Middle east, every drone we send in, every bomb that we drop, that's not endearing us to the world. And the results of that, we see bubbling up as, you know, this terrorist attack here or that one over there. And those are certainly horrific acts, but they're not things that Spending another hundred billion dollars on defense or, you know, Pentagon money are going to follow either.

I couldn't agree more. But to be on balance, we have to also talk about the, what I call the government entitlement complex. So that's another one, you know, like the military industrial complex. They're both there, and there are both all these misdeeds in both of them. As we wrap up here, what else did you want to say that I. Maybe I didn't ask you. I know we got off on a few tangents here, but I thought they were kind of interesting in pursuing them. Just anything you want to talk about?

Well, you know, to me, one of the most important things is that people realize that the voice of the people is virtually the only thing that stands the hope of having as much influence over how we spend our money as the big spending of very wealthy and corporate donors. And it's because of that that we need to make sure that we're in contact with our congressional delegations, letting them know how we would like to see our dollars spent and to get a sense that there is some potential to reallocate. Just as a real quick example, one of the things that I did playing around with a spreadsheet was to you take a look at that discretionary spending budget that has things like education, veterans benefits, Medicare and health, international affairs. You could increase every single one of those slices by 50%, and you would only reduce military spending by about $200 billion, and it would still be by far the largest slice, accounting for about 36% of discretionary spending. So that's sort of one example of how, you know, we could reallocate our money to place a higher priority on something like education, on infrastructure, on the things that are going to build the foundation for our prosperity generations and decades down the road.

Doug, give out your website.

So it's nationalpriorities.org and for folks that are interested in taking a look at what's going on at the state level, I urge you to take a look at our. Our State Smart data set.

Excellent. And Doug, just one more question before you go. And it really you. You may have said it, but I just want to kind of ask you to wrap it up in a nice little box with a bow on it. And that is, what is the ideal perfect government budget overall? I mean, I know you mentioned education a moment ago compared to the military spending and so forth, but kind of overall, what's. What's that ideal budget look like?

You know, to me, in an ideal budget, you're going to see a spending pattern that both reflects the opinions, the priorities of the citizenry while also ensuring the general well being of Americans. And I think there's lots of evidence right now we're not even close to that on either of those counts.

Good stuff. Doug hall, thank you so much for joining us. Appreciate having you on.

Thank you. Take care. Bye bye.

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