the budget our state pension system pieces and servers so that's the teachers and state employees is about sixty billion dollars underfunded right now and just to give you some context so you understand what that's all about when i came into office just five and a half years ago it was about thirty five billion dollars underfunded so this this keeps going up and up and up exponentially my first year i think our pension contribution at the state level was two hundred seventy one million dollars roughly last year it was one point six billion dollars this year it'll be two point something two point two two point three billion dollars this pension contribution you can see how exponentially it's growing is going to drive money out of the out of the general fund is going to drive money from that should be going to the classrooms th have to be diverted into that pension fund it's going to hurt schools it's going to drive a property taxes it's going to drive up everything if we don't get a handle on it now we've had a couple of proposals to deal with the pension system to be honest a lot of the resistance is from the  unions they're not for it and so that presents a huge roadblock and of course the governors with the unions on on most issues so he you know he's he's been against us making any reforms to that and the simplest reform it's not the answer it's not the the end all to the reforms with the very first reform is to stop digging a deeper hole and so we wanted to have our new employees go the way for one case style pension where that the the shift in risk is goes from the taxpayer over to the to the individual just as it is in the private sector and we tried several times to pass some form of that bill we're going to try again i think next week or the week after we're going to try again but we were unable to get that through so that won't that won't take care of the unfunded liability but i'll stop it from growing and we need to we need to stop that as i said it went from you know thirty five months almost doubled in the short time i've been there it's going to double again and i'm just afraid at some point because i get a lot of especially retired teachers that will come up to me some of them literally in tears saying reckon worried about my pension why are you trying to cut my pension i tell him that's the union's telling them nonsense i tell them we're not trying to cut the pensions of retirees or even those in the system what we have to deal with new employees but i said if we don't do something with this system it can only go so far underfunded when it's going to collapse i don't want to become a detroit i don't want that it would affect people that have been retired and so we're not trying to touch anyone that's in the retired now or that's coming up for retirement we're trying to just deal with new employees people that haven't even we haven't even negotiated their contract with them yet we're just going to tell them that your pension will be like this will be more like the private sector well most people don't understand whenever the school school board and whenever the school board received their the most recent audit for fifteen sixteen year we received a charge from the state for our portion of that unfunded section of about sixty eight million dollars so whenever we're talking about a budget we're talking about something that means something to every of these kids because they won't be painted when i'm sorry to say will be gone but the kids will be stuck with double what that is now and it's very expensive now for them you know it's just really sad to see that in l a you said and to give everybody an idea on how fast this is going up the debt is going up eighty six hundred dollars a minute so that means basically i got to get this out because i've been studying this all day  twelve million three hundred fifty five thousand dollars each year it's going up and it's not i mean that's the part that the interest in that that's not what's being paid down that's above and beyond everything so i mean i said we don't do something soon we will be the detroit of state but california is just as bad if not worse you know all these states are coming in to with bigger debts think countries had over in europe that were going down the tubes and people got to open their eyes they just can't continue this stupidity i just said it's just it's just fascinating to me we have a clock here that will show that demonstrate some of the debt that much for which camera that's coming up on here but it that's demonstrates you see there the just our national debt as it is phenomenally growing by the minute and that's not the money we're paying on taxes or the interest i mean this is dead and so if we don't i mean that's nationally the state the city the county we're all in debt for everybody we're going through an assessment of appeal here pretty soon because of the fact that washington county is now into the reassessment first time since one nine hundred eighty and people are going to be spending more money for their local taxes and seventy five percent of our school budget comes from our local taxpayers unlike other districts who have exactly the opposite they only have twenty or twenty five percent coming from their local but the state gives them as a seven thousand dollars check will per student  only get about thirteen hundred dollars jack you know we watch our but we watch our debt to one of the lowest per student i think we're like thirteen thousand per student most of school districts around here in one thousand to twenty two thousand per student so we've watched these dimes as they've gone along it's terrible i mean the people social security then get a raise but you know what i was looking at through the market the other day and it's all a lie because whenever i'm looking at ice cream it's shrunk but the same dollar  when i'm looking at potato chips it's no longer sixty four ounce bag it's now the same size bag with air but it's only like forty ounces now and it just lay said so the price of everything has gone up our federal government has just ignored that so that i mean you know it's a battle that you're trying to fight and i know that but it's just very hard to imagine how we're going to sustain this many of our retired teachers also if they retired twenty years ago or twenty five years ago they have received a call and their retirements were much smaller right and they're barely making it now the teachers that are retiring now are making a lot better off or they know that and and so the retired teacher will say you know what am i going to get a call and i say when you're fifty to sixty billion dollars underfunded yeah you're  not going to get a cola until we fix this program and we i want to have a cola they need a cola because they were retired when their pensions were very small compared to today but it's not going to happen unless we can fix the system so we need their help we need the help of all of the teachers and  the state employees to help us fix the system because their unions are standing firm against fixing the system at all well they get the political funds for you know the union members who are paying dues and stuff and our supreme court certainly didn't help that situation with this latest ruling saying that that's ok you know well they didn't say that for for now that we only have eight supreme court justices so a four four decision upholds the lower court so i'm sure that will be revisited hopefully in the near future but well anyhow let's let's move beyond that elephant and let's look at the other things well i'm just going to hit you with this in corruption is the government you know people don't realize i've been telling people recently when i re back on just the short time that i've been in state government this is my third term we have lost twelve state representatives we've lost two state senators we've had two former speakers of the house sharing the same jail cell two years ago we've lost three supreme court justices we've lost our treasurer and now we're about to lose our attorney general i think it's so bad the corruption harrisburg that when one member asked another member for his cell number it takes on a whole new meaning up there so people don't realize how bad it is and we have to i think we have two members right now that are under indictment that are on the floor voting so the corruption is bad in harrisburg they tell me it's better than it was before i got there so i can't even imagine what it was like but i mean this is this is what we're dealing with and we have to we really have to clean house and we have to change the way we do business we have a lot of government reform bills and i have two of them myself that  reform the kinds of gifts that elected officials can receive that reforms the way we do business in municipalities and school boards and executive sessions and so forth to try to make government more open and transparent but the resistance from the people in office is so great we can't get them through we just done that in our school last week we just looked at gifts and things being given to the school board the administrators the teachers the staff whatever and we've now limited that for everybody the same rules across the board for you know we're looking at a twenty five dollars maximum because of the fact that you know we don't i've seen teachers and who have given grades based on gifts and wasn't here don't get me wrong but i have seen that happen and i have seen people expect that happens and i've seen him with board members and different boards that i've been involved with  get vacations and things like that because well they got a food contractor something you know and this is this is not the way government supposed to really know so we've got to stop this stuff and we but the only way to do that is set limitations that have teeth in  that if you violate those limitations then something will happen that's right ok and we're having a very difficult time to get that passed that's why we need people support they need to step up and talk to their legislators and support those government reform bills that tighten the restrictions on gifts and  relationships between elected officials and lobbyists and people that have either contracts or legislation under their review well let's see if there's something a little bit more interesting a lot more educational in god we trust gosh i'm always happy to talk about that because it's the sixtieth anniversary this year of our national motto in god we trust and it's such a great pennsylvania history story i never get tired of telling it so i just went out real quick i know now much time but our thirteenth governor james pollock before he was governor he was  congressman and he had the good fortune to take a room at a boarding house with another freshman congressman by the name of abraham lincoln they became great friends and when lincoln became president he appointed pollack the director of the u s mint in philadelphia right during the middle of the civil war when our country is so divided he gets a letter from a local pastor and says our country is divided we need the united our country we need to honor god to unite our country let's put something on our coins that on his god change paula comes up with the phrase in god we trust eight hundred sixty four it goes up through congress through the secretary of treasury abraham lincoln hundred sixty four it goes on our coins it's not our motto yet it just goes on our coins so two years ago we celebrated the hundred fiftieth anniversary of that one nine hundred fifty six it becomes our national motto under president eisenhower and it's been our motto ever since and so this year is the sixtieth anniversary we're trying to draw that out and tell this pennsylvania history story we're going to have celebrations we want to have the the schools putting up whatever municipalities putting up one of our contests we want to have everything we and we have that in god we trust license plate in pennsylvania you can get that through penn dot we have a website in god we trust they just showed that so but that's and you can go to there's free downloadable posters there's videos there's lots of information about it i want to people to go that go to that and celebrate our national motto because it's a positive influence especially on our young people when they're surrounded in this culture today by a lot of negative influences here's a real positive influence about our nation's trusting god from the very beginning from our founding all the way up in the civil war we actually recognize that and we want to celebrate that the american legion has made that one of their platform items that to honor the nationally to honor our national motto this year too so work with your american legion's work with your veterans groups in your schools and let's get out and teach and celebrate the story of our national motto you know rick this is when i was a social studies teacher ok so and this is what i call the mortar between the bricks you know we learn history through wars world war one world war two korean war vietnam if they even start about it or through presidents but it's that mortar between the bricks tells you how we got from point a to point b and what had what were the problems and this is one of the piece of the mortar that fits in there very nicely it's never going to get and i'll probably i'll probably be admitted to you right now there's probably not in one of our school books yes and that is a tragedy and is a trend i've actually tried there's also a lesson plan on that website for schools to use and teach in their classrooms also trying to get that on the in the the requirements for the state curriculum so that we teach under the pennsylvania history requirements that we should be teaching our national motto since it started here let's teach it let's let out let our young people know that to be proud of that our motto actually started right here in pennsylvania by a pennsylvania so yeah there's lots of other information on there it's should be in those books and we should be teaching our kids because they've been told we're a secular country and god's not part of anything and god is all over me and always has been a part of our government and you actually have a book i mean you have written about that and in fact all your books are available on amazon that's right i have most of the myself i have to admit that but the bottom line is you're right and inlays said the things that made america famous and the thing and things that made america cohesive at one time are the ideas that people are trying to separate us from yet you know that everything every state constitution thanks god for starting you know for whatever yes but they don't think anybody else ok and so for people to sit there and say that our judo  for an abortion in pennsylvania and we found that science is telling us and the doctors are telling us that babies feel pain at twenty weeks and so we were moving we're trying to move that threshold back to twenty weeks  fortune's in pennsylvania because that's the that's the threshold when babies are actually feeling pain and part of the way that they abort one of the procedures they use called dismemberment where they're actually taking the baby's arms and legs apart while it's still alive and legislature and watch some of those debates on monday because they'll be a lot of discussion on that now absolutely on the opposite end i was i was in my doctor's office the other day and were talking and i had mentioned to him that i was watching a you tube video  a blind woman getting a sonogram and of course she she couldn't see the screen but to show you know technology and one of the reasons why i'm a big supporter of our three d printers and things is that this doctor then in fact since she couldn't see what the baby or you know on the screen what he did was made a three d model and gave the turner field the size of a baby you know i tell you what i was crying like a baby i have to admit you know this i don't know if it's just getting older that my senses are getting more find a tune but of course when it comes to kids anything but that i said on the absolute i know so the things that are negative in our world there are a lot of positives going on and there's a lot of people helping people through different things and you know i never want the kids to think or anybody out there to think that it's just a black world because it's not there's a lot of very very bright stars out there that will will lead you if you in fact have the proper installation of the honor that you need to have to face this world and that's one of the great things about this job as you know since since becoming a state legislator i've been able to get out and see all the great people in our community that are working every day that you don't hear about but they're the the bedrock of our community and they're doing great things and and and the students and this school right here that are behind these cameras and the great things that they're doing and and the  school plays and all the things that there are lots of great people in the community and they're working in and civic groups and working in their church groups and just working to help the community and you don't get to see them too much as the average citizen because we're all busy making a living in doing those things but in this job we get to get out and see all those different things that are our communities are full of great people well and i can't disagree with them being involved in the in the township and the school district as i am it's been a riot because of the les said we like that you know there's always problems as my father would say there you're only as big as the problem that stops you that makes the real stuff so the bottom line is you know it we just keep forging along every day trying to make it better and if everybody did that and you want to throw marbles under people's feet just and to make sure you're the winner you know what you have to do is just you know help them along if they need it not you know anybody who just sits there and doesn't want to do anything i don't have a lot of sympathy for when we talked about that we're talking about the debt we talked about some of the bills that are coming up in front of you what about your taxation problem the housing the property taxes yeah the property house bill seventy six is what it's been known by unfortunately that bill failed by one in the senate one vote folks so that's how close we came so for this session it's dead but this is over in december so you know we're going to bring that bill back up in the new session and i'm hoping that the people are going to just rise up and the more they they've been rising up but the more they do that the more legislators we get on board look up close we came we missed it by one vote in the senate and i just want to see the people just keep pushing pushing their legislators so we get all of them on board and we get that thing passed so that we can have true property tax relief for our citizens many of which are struggling many of whom are  struggling to save their own homes especially when they're on fixed incomes and they're crying out they've been crying out to me and i can tell you story after story and i've been to their homes and i've listened to them talk and we've got to save these homes and we've got it we've got to control costs and government spending and keep property taxes going up no use in really think falls back on these kids because i said then this isn't going to be a death is paid off in the next twenty years i'm sorry to say this is going to be something that they're going to be paying and people are going to be wondering why their children are moving out of the state well you know why face that kind of a debt whenever the stupidity of the people before you got us into it you know even and i agree whenever i was going to school here teachers were making about six thousand dollars a year but that was the average salary it wasn't i mean it wasn't like they were making you know fifty percent of what everybody else was making that was the average but now that's not the case and as you said the pensions that they made  pittance as comparison to what they are i retired from the military twenty one years ago and the people that are retiring now my same paygrade are making substantially more than i did and with this administration they're not get any benefit either you know they're not getting these days because of the fact that all these things that happen you know we put ourselves behind the eight ball to see what else you want to talk about it for the budget is always a big item so you know just got through last year's budget that you know and i  want the people to know that we passed our budget on time we passed four budgets and fact sent four budgets to the governor he vetoed all of them didn't sign the most recent bill and he just let it become law without signing it  so that's what i wanted to talk to you about but then he said what we call the fiscal code yes and so the fiscal cuts of people know back home is this code is the instruction sheet for how money in the budget is to be spent so we decide and your family budget ok how much money do we have this year how much are we going to spend and you say in your family budget ok we have we were you know with salaries and money that we have we have you know fifty thousand dollars to spend this year fine that's the budget but then you have the instructions ok where are we going to spend that money and where is it going to go and so the fiscal code is the line by line instruction and many cases that it's not complete but there's many things it's very specific on how the money will be distributed and the governor vetoed that so  you think that gives him authority to do now is spend that money the way he wants to when i saw that the other day the funding for education just happens for by forty percent of it goes to philadelphia region that's right and what's really sad is most of their schools have been shut down and neural charter schools so therefore what he's doing is basic doing exactly that he's he is being paid by the unions to make sure the money goes back to those people that haven't been able to put an educational process together to keep it public which is really quite disturbing whenever you look at in the rest of the state the rest the entire state gets prosecuted sixty five percent of that budget this is absolute stupidity i mean this this guy is he hasn't let's go back let's go back to him making is his advertisement about he was going to make the gas and oil companies pay a billion dollars here they don't spend a billion dollars in this state a year and now he now they're spending a whole lot less because i think you pointed not that there's half of the wells or something i remember a couple months ago you pointed that out for more than that i and fact on my website if you go to a website rep sick on dot com i have two videos on  we we've we've passed this by this he vetoed the fiscal code so he thinks he can spend this money now any way he wants to spend it and he's giving most of it to philadelphia and a couple other urban schools that that he favors and the rest of the schools including this school district are going to lose money four hundred twenty three school districts are going to get less money under the under this plan than they would have under the budget that we passed and wanted him to sign with that with the instructions with the fiscal cliff so they're all going to get less money and that but except for philadelphia city of pittsburgh school districts and wanted to others that are going to get most of that most of that it and the extra money that supposed to be divvied out there so this is a prime example that those with the cash scream it's not that money talks they scream and i want to dealing with politicians especially this one you know he in fact has been in their pockets since the day before the day he took office and as this current federal minister ation they seemed to feel that they can do whatever they strings well what have they done they just handed the person over and it's just quite ridiculous i'm glad to see we're not doing that and pennsylvania because we are trying to watch but i mean before the even budget i read an article where he was spending a quarter of million dollars in magazines you know come on now we have kids that aren't getting their school lunches because of him and though he's he's out spending money on magazines you know without a budget he spent over twenty billion dollars and wouldn't tell us what he was spending it on and we're supposed to control the purse strings but he had he was spending money that wasn't authorized and we asked him tell us in detail where this money is going wow you're driving this money out when we don't have a budget and we still couldn't get an answer from this governor so we we have a lot to work out with him he's got the fall of the law and we have not been so far and that's like he said that's why whenever people think about government you know whenever our generation was growing up and somebody said i want to be president you sit and think well they have high hopes ever since bill clinton was in there you wonder why they want to become president you know so i mean like there's the whole social changes taking place that you instead of assuming that these people are good you have to assume that they're going to do anything and they're proving it and that's what's a sad thing you know even though even as you point out when they get to the supreme court you know you expect to have on a woman sitting in that position on a bill men being men and women and it doesn't seem to be taking place we've had you know you say three of them be jailed you know for doing unlawful acts this is not something that we want to society brought up to emulate so rick coming to an end of yes yes you know we have a primary coming up and you want to vote for the primary but don't forget there's a level of delegates running for delegates at the national convention at least the republican convention i don't know about the democratic one but the remember to go down that list you get this year on the national or even on the the federal level so you know for me being the ex chairman of the county party that's a that's not an easy thing for me to say but it is the truth rick once again i always appreciate