We are here with Congressman Dennis Ross from the great state of Florida and he is one of the wonderful people that we elected pretty recently to come up here and shake the cobwebs out and shake things up. So Congressman, how are you enjoying your experiences in Congress so far? I'm enjoying the challenge and believe me it's quite a challenge. It's a different way of life. We learned that a lot of the people that have been here, part of what we call the establishment, don't appreciate, I think the fact that a new people don't understand how Washington works and my response to them is that any organization such as this that has run four years of deficits and trillions of dollars doesn't work. And so it's a challenge making the change to try to show how Washington can work and that has been a daily battle. And it's moved slow. This is a very slow movie process. But I think we're seeing some very positive signs on the horizon. Yeah, speaking of, you know, you talk about the spending and the debt and issues like that, UNI had a conversation a couple of months back on Twitter about one of your first bills that you put forward on zero-based budgeting. Could you explain what that is and why you support that idea? Sure, the right now federal government does what's called baseline budgeting. They look at last year's budget for each agency or department and they say, okay, what do you need in addition to that for the next year? And they keep building almost after several years that becomes an exponential multiplier on the budget. What I'm asking for under this bill is that we start with the baseline of zero. That zero-based budgeting is the way we go about funding our agencies and our departments. Then the agency will not only have to show what appropriation or amount of money they want, but they also have to show the authority that allows them to spend that money. In addition to that, then they have to submit three amounts for their full budget, two of which have to be less than the year before. The zero-based budgeting is something that's even been recommended by President's debt commission. It's something that I think that all businesses, all households do, it would be nice to see government do it. Unfortunately, it's been slow to catch any support. We have a few co-sponsors right now, but I think a lot of people are concerned because what it eventually will do is to really show these agencies that some of what they spend, if not a lot of what they spend, is not justifiable or necessary. I know. I get frustrated when you hear about Congress is going to make cuts, but it's really a reduction in how much more they're spending. It's not an actual cut. This is one idea I think that would add a lot of transparency. No question about it. Let me also tell you something about this very frustrating. For example, I just had a bill that came up yesterday in committee and it was a pension reduction bill. It reduced the amount the federal government pays towards federal employees and congressional pensions and reduces congressional pensions so they're up parity with federal employees. It allowed for $1.7 billion of annual savings to the federal government. My argument has been, let's take that $1.7 billion, so we're now going to say it and put it towards deficit reduction. Unfortunately, now my leadership is looking at saying no, let's use that $1.7 billion and put it in this transportation package over here so we help pay for something else. So all of a sudden the cut here has become an expenditure here when the big picture is. The American people want to see us reduce our spending. They want to see us reduce our debt. Yeah, I know when your freshman class came in, there was, I think, a discussion of we're going to commit to, was it $100 billion in cuts and then ended up being an entirely different number and some of that was accounting tricks. Where do you think that got off track? Well, the interpretation of it. Now I'll tell you what the interpretation was. The interpretation was by leadership is that, well, that $100 billion was really for the whole year of 2011 and since we didn't actually get into the 2011 budget until March, by way of the CR that we passed, that we only had to reduce it by $32 billion, which in fact turned out to be like $300 million of cuts for the year. And that's just not fair to the American public. The other thing that's not fair to the American public is that we can't bind future congresses. So we can say that we've reduced the federal deficit by $1.2 trillion over the next 10 years. But now, we've only reduced it by what we have the authority reducing by December 31 of 2012. The next Congress, the 113 Congress, can ignore what we've done in cuts and can spend and spend and spend. And until we get a balanced budget amendment that forces Congress to operate within its financial means, we're never going to be able to reduce the true exposure that we seem to get ourselves in every congressional session. Yeah, I agree with you on the need for the balanced budget amendment. If you could ask people that are watching this to write their congressional representatives and support something, what specifically would you like them to encourage their representatives to sign on to? The myzerobes budget can bill. Which the bill number on that? I'll have to get that for you. Okay, I'll link it when I get it, no problem. Thank you. A balanced budget amendment bill and fiscal responsibility. We have campaigned on this. We have pounded the table on this. Where else but Washington DC is a reduction in spending and considered savings. When in fact, all it's doing is just reducing the amount we've already been spending. We need to go back to justify everything that we're doing. We have shown through the Office of Personal Management that we've got over 20% of our programs are duplication. If we could say 20% of our budget just by downsizing those programs and agencies that are duplicating it, we would save so much money. We seem to miss the mark. We love the campaign on fiscal responsibility, but we don't seem to legislate with that mantra. We've got to hold our elect to represent it up to the fire to make sure that they actually vote that way. Okay, great. Is there anything else that you're working on that you'd like to let people know about? One of the things that I am working on is chairman of the Subcommittee on Federal Work Force and the United States Postal Service. People do a postal reform bill that has been out there. Post office is going to not out of money, essentially, by this summer. They showed at least a $5 billion loss last year. It was actually a little over 10 billion because they didn't meet all their obligations. And some of that's been postponed. We've got to reform the post office. When I'm talking about privatizing, we're talking about reforming. Postal service has over 80% of its cost is labor. And those union contracts offer for no layoff buzzer, so we don't get rid of anybody. More importantly, it's 20% of their revenues have declined because of the lack of first-class mail over the last six years. We've got to bring it under control so that it is self-sustaining. And that will be a reform bill that will probably hit the floor and come March or April. Okay, great. Well, thank you so much. Appreciate you taking the time to talk with me today. Thanks, Senator.