me. one. can. believe that. their actions were silly if you would as well policy. the significance of the ryan budget and what it's going to take to beat obama in two thousand and twelve also join his side are timothy gay going for bush administration and staff and vice president of focus on the family and logan male a tour iraq veteran conscience's objector and founder of the centurion skill to discuss whether or not christians should be raising their children to join the u.s.

military well the rest of the country is freaking out on false alarms of terrorism at airports train stations and car bombs we're only freaking out on false alarms of terrorism that involve government spending cuts don't worry they're just false alarms you're watching adam vs the man. joining me now is jake gilberto adams is the man contributor and regular attendee of the infamous grover norquist americans for tax reform weekly wednesday breakfast meetings and ryan else the policy director for americans for tax reform someone thanks for being with us tonight now this is this is almost too funny because we had grover scales and we had a little bit of a misunderstanding about the timing here and this is actually the second time i

feel like i've been stood up by grover norquist the first time i was a candidate for congress i signed the americans for tax reform taxpayer protect taxpayer protection pledge outstanding document really simple we'll get into the significance of that. i was invited for the time we were in d.c. over the course of that campaign to come in and get the ones they did and it happened to be that one wednesday meeting but grover norquist wasn't there for there was some other someone like that for him as a but i'm really grateful that you're here tonight because we do have a lot of information that we want to cover and we want to get into so but first since i haven't had a chance to do so properly if you would introduce yourself mr allison tell us about what you do. well and write also on tax policy director of americans for tax reform what that means is i basically handle all of the federal health tax and as long as i handle health care policy issues i'm basically the lead federal policy staffer been there for about six or seven years now and had

a lot of federal policy issues for the most part that come across our desk so the pledge how well we've heard in the one hundred twelfth congress today we have how many two hundred forty one congressman thirty seven senators that have signed it is that right two hundred thirty seven cargo of that one so ok let's close first you just as though. it would be the first i've been dyslexic on the show but i know that it's really incredible for people i think to appreciate the significance of this impact i mean is there any other pledge or any other anything of this significance that members of congress in the u.s. senate are asked to sign they are they don't know you know it's a very simple metric and says if you elect me you don't have to worry about my trying to raise your taxes it's a very very simple and we've seen the effect that has just in the last couple of weeks where you had all the house republicans virtually all of whom are pledged to others and all the house republicans as a body corporately came together and said tax increases are off the table as part

of any of these budget negotiations which is kind of a tautology right because they've already signed the pledge so it's in individual cases or you know you have the has the record been for signers of the plan it's generally excellent it's generally very very good you have a couple of bad apples every now and again the try to squirm the way. the pledge are trying to say that it doesn't apply to them anymore but for the most part ninety nine percent of people that signed the pledge keep it because they believe it was her recent comment in washington post someone called the called grover the sharia law cleric of tax law probate or something like that right here that's that's true that was jonathan hard from coburn's office was a question a bad guy but he wanted to get a quote in and that's an easy way to do it just going through a sort of hot button word in there right but the bottom line is that it is the job of americans for tax reform to make sure that voters are reminded that the candidate that signed this pledge signed it and that they've promised to the voters i'm not going to try to raise your taxes they don't make the pledge to americans reaction from the neck the pledge to the voters that they are looking for

a job application with if you're running for congress you're running for the senate what you're doing is you're saying i want to be your senator i want to be your congressman and here's one of the things going to promise you and so it's simply our job to remind people what that promise was ok and we have a clip we like the place is paul ryan describing the obama plan to be fun right let's play a clip. it would accelerate america's descent into a debt crisis it doubles the debt held by the public by the end of his first term and triples it by the end of his budget and imposes one point five trillion dollars in new taxes with spending that never fails below twenty three percent of our economy his budget permanently enlarge the size and scope of our government it offers no reforms to save government health retirement programs and obviously no leadership. so accurate characterization yet completely accurate if you take a look at what the obama budget did back in january it said we're going to raise taxes by between one and two trillion dollars over the next ten years we're going

to do almost nothing to try to bring down the stair ganju and level of spending that happens first the late bush administration and then also throughout the obama administration we've had this gargantuan increase in government spending you contrast that with paul ryan's budget which doesn't raise taxes one penny doesn't raise taxes at all instead wants to do revenue neutral tax reform and does the hard work of trying to bring down some of the spending level that we've had over the last several years reforms the entitlements there's all sorts of good stuff here is it true it drops the corporate tax rate from thirty five percent to twenty five percent and closes loopholes so that if you do business in america you actually do business here and actually benefit from the security in the solidarity the good work force there is here to pay a little taxes that were a lot of corporations are getting out while it's revenue neutral tax reform ok so it lowers the individual in the corporate rate from thirty five percent where it is today to a permanent twenty five percent and it does a revenue neutral meaning it gets rid of a lot of the deductions and credits and loopholes that are underneath the our tax

system today so you end up with a tax system that collects the same amount of money but does so it much much lower marginal tax rates so that our companies and our families are internationally competitive ok we have another clip now we have all this up with paul ryan on the paul ryan plan. our budget is very very different first of all they cut six point two trillion dollars in spending from the president's budget over just the next ten years it puts the nation on a path to actually pay off our debt and it lowers the debt as a percentage of of the economy now until we pay it off our proposal bring spending on the federal government meaning the size of federal government back to twenty percent consistent with the post-war average and reduces deficits by four point four trillion in the first ten years alone most important our budget tackles the nation's biggest fiscal challenges head on. taking these challenges head on there is one big one missing here and i got to be honest on

a little bit surprised to see such full throated support from americans for tax reform on this when the plan doesn't even start to scratch the surface when it comes to defense spending takes a completely off the table tell me americans for tax reform has some concern about this laughing from that we are a leader we absolutely do look let's go with the paul ryan plan does it take six trillion dollars with a t out of the spending baseline over the next ten years it doesn't raise taxes it pays off the national debt within this generation and it permanently reforms the entitlements you are correct on the spending side there is one big problem with the paul ryan budget is that it does not bring defense spending down to a much more consistent maybe three percent of g.d.p. which is probably where it should be instead it kind of locks in a four to five to six percent of g.d.p. level we've expressed that concern with with congressman ryan frankly the position that he has is this is as far as he could take the house republican conference is

a whole lot of work on this what do you think is the significance of the defense budget not being particularly spent in afghanistan is escalating with obama's plans there. if it doesn't get cited it's not part of this debate one of the consequences well you know and get this is my independent research on this and my work of the were a lot of work with cato and different things and it's this is huge because right now winners we could literally cut the intelligence budget by fifteen percent keep the exact same capability so we don't lose any capabilities but just cut down the waste and reports that aren't read and we can save something like forty billion dollars over a long period of time and there's other ways i think there's just simply waste where doesn't reduce our power but it reshaped the way that we structure the pentagon research reshapes the way that we interact with the pentagon for instance cutting down the civilian workforce things like good things we don't need really need that that is crucial that the the center right really needs to pick up on and take on i think not mr ellsworth said that specifically karl ryan. his claim was that this is all we can push for within the republican caucus corrected we can't we

there's too much support within the republican party for this massive welfare program called the military industrial complex we're not going to close it for this well first of all to be fair it's not as if he doesn't touch it he adopts what president obama's own budget does on defense which is not good enough it's not nearly good enough in terms of reducing defense spending but it isn't as if he's ramping it up from what president obama wants to do they want it all on the backs of the republican caucus as we have another clip you know and we've seen a bit of a system the way the republican party leadership has been talking about afghanistan as well that what i don't want to see happen is what happened again in the one nine hundred eighty s. have to everybody we saw of the soviet program everybody left afghanistan we ended up but ultimately the taliban took control of some of the blood and showed up it became a safe harbor they create twenty something some terrorist russian it's the united states if we turn and walk away from pakistan and afghanistan where they're part of

the world generally i'm fearful. were headed for trouble down the road taking on the state department for the failure to build roads in afghanistan this is a longstanding problem and i think frankly rather than sending more combat troops if we send eight or ten but carryons of combat engineers and ship we got them to build the maximum number of roads as rapidly as possible we'd be a lot better off after all of the democrats are still riyad out iraq. surely is that obama then sent more troops to afghanistan. one reason liberal support sending troops to afghanistan is that it serves absolutely no united states national interest congressman paul you have wanted to pull u.s. troops out of afghanistan for years in fact you said on the house floor about the u.s. military efforts in afghanistan quote whose interests do we serve by continuing this exercise in futility so if president paul had been running things and troops were

already out of afghanistan wouldn't that mean that osama bin laden would be alive today absolutely not i mean he wasn't caught in afghanistan nation building in afghanistan and telling those people how to live in getting involved in running their country hardly had anything to do with finding the information where he was be held in a country that we give billions of dollars of foreign aid to at the same time we're bombing that country so it's the policy that said fall you know not having the troops in afghanistan would have hurt but we went to afghanistan to get him and he hasn't been there now that he's killed boy it is a wonderful time for this country now to reassess it and get the troops out of afghanistan in a hand-out more that hasn't helped us and hasn't helped anybody in the middle east it seems like the republican party if they're on the if you parents saw there now there's still a bit of a divide but it looks like. i don't byron's excuse here well let me just tell you

from talking to a lot of these a lot of these house republicans there's a lot of them that are highly motivated by military spending by there's a lot of former military people there's a lot of people that have a lot of military contractor friends and supporters i'm fairly confident from talking to congressman ryan personally about this this extends very issue that he pushed it as hard as he possibly could within the conference and what we've gotten is the most he could get at least this year out of the republican conference this is a little that's more of a i mean you've been working with. veterans for anything afghanistan you've been the one pushing on the republican caucus are you a little disappointed hasn't gotten to that point where we can start cutting defense spending i mean with the people that i've been pushing with yeah we're i think i think there's there's a lot of give and basically the seventy eight billion that ryan the paul ryan plan did was basically stop an increase of spending actually didn't cut sort of what stays the same that's one of the nuances i think is interesting of course of course

this is this is my my independent working order well says and the thing is i think we need moving forward is that we need real good leadership stepping up to say finding the waste the wasteful spending because there's a lot of it we don't have to lose any firepower but simply cutting down the waste i would thank you very much that was adam vs the man configured fake the libretto and ryan ellis tax policy director of americans for tax reform. when we come back our next guest some of the gag line for bush administration staff from vice president focus on the family and logan to balance ory iraq that consciousness of director and founder of this infer and skilled will help answer the question the persons who are raising their children to join the military will. fight for. food. fight.

given that we had an apartheid. i think. well. whatever the government says they're very concerned safely get ready because you give them the freedom.

you know sometimes you see a story and it seems so appalling sleep you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else you hear see some other part of it and realize everything you thought you knew you don't know i'm sorry welcome to the big picture. new web site meets twenty four seven live streaming news tells the tale about the ongoing financial hardship unlimited free high quality videos for down the. cost and stories you may never find the need. of the that is a neat little bit of. aren't just.

welcome back to adam vs the man a joining me in studio is timothy gave line special assistant former special assistant to u.s. president george w. bush and deputy director of the white house office of public liaison from two thousand and one to two thousand and eight where he helped establish the white house office of faith based and community initiatives in january two thousand and nine he became the top washington d.c. spokesman for focus on the family an evangelical christian organization dedicated to family and social responsibility in the outline of abortion in the united states also join us from philadelphia pennsylvania is logan military and iraq war veteran who left the army as a conscientious objector after deciding that he cannot be directly responsible for the taking of human life because of the say he found a century unskilled who according to their website quote take very seriously the honor and dignity of our service members while also trying to be true to the higher allegiance we are called to is christians and that since we try to remember that

god is alternately greater than our country gentleman thank you both so much for being with us and i think you will start with you concerned superior tell us about focus on the family what your current legislative priorities are and what what it is that you're working on here in washington you that will focus on the family was founded in the mid one nine hundred seventy s. . it was founded by a man called dr james dobson who in fact had intended to spend most of his professional life quite apart from public policy he was a child psychologist and in the midst of what was then the bubbling sexual revolution he found that in many quarters it was considered bad manners to to to discipline your children to say that you were going to commit to one person for the rest of your life in a happy marriage. that in fact you thought that the nuclear family was the foundation of a strong country and a strong civilization these were considered fighting words in the height of the

sexual revolution and so focus on the family put marriage family parenting to clarify the backlash that you're referring to was cultural back but it was very much so yeah yeah you know very very much so and so dr dobson put family marriage and parenting at the centerpiece the overwhelming majority of what focus on the family does is ministerial it's one of the leaders in the country on orphan care foster care adoption pro-life etc focus on the family has the top christian radio broadcast both in the united states and abroad we're heard in about one hundred thirty four countries every day by about two hundred sixty million plus listeners and we thought that was all what do you do in washington washington is the most powerful city on the planet and in fact washington preoccupies itself with issues that impact family marriage and parenting every day it does so politically it does so in the public policy process it does so in the courts it does so in think tanks

it does so in the media it does so in case street and special interests and it's our job it focus on the family to be mindful about the things that our ministry is built on so do you think those involvement or those involved you mentioned with government issues of going to religious issues for folks on the family or appropriate roles of government you know or are you. working for a less involvement overall right may just say i am a person who has spent most of my professional life in and around the beltway but i believe very strongly that politics is actually downstream from culture and not the other way around daniel patrick moynihan a great liberal and a great democrat once made a very important observation he said the principal difference between liberals and conservatives is that liberals believe that if you want to impact culture change politics first but he said the opposite is true of conservatives and if you want to impact politics and impact culture first i think right ok well logan turning to you

from philadelphia pennsylvania tell us about getting out of the army is a constant concentra subject or how your faith influence that decision for you sure well i had deployed to iraq in two thousand and four i came back and i began dating a woman whose family showed me what it was to be a christian beyond just. reading the bible and letting it sit that so i learned to to live my faith live it more genuinely and that led me to one her whether or not as a foreign service with the artillery whether or not i could perform professional obligation and also call myself a christian but i was on cults nonviolence the problem came when i found that i that nonviolence was something that was that i was called to as a christian but the. christian left i was in touch with i also felt that the military itself was a problem that i should remove myself from it that i've been in over five years i

had great respect for the other men and women i served with and i didn't want to see those relationships severed and so i attempted but i requested. and subject or which is not always done but i it did work for me especially good but ultimately when it came down to it they did not love each other weapons i requested so you try to stay in as a conscientious objector and they said no you're going to get out as a conscientious objector that's correct so i wrote it so well how does that lead to founding the centurions guild. as i was getting out my my command did not want to discuss the process that can be ideologically emotionally provocative especially because we're leading into a second deployment and so i lost a lot of the relationship that i hope to maintain and in the meantime i began getting to know a new group of people that were very active in the church very active in social justice and we began having conversations about what it means to be you know an

american citizen to be a christian the same time and we were we became very exhausted with the caricature that went along with that u.s. military is all bad or america's god's you know end of judgment in the middle east and so we in january two thousand and eight we formed just a small community of mostly men i don't think we have any women yet christian men who tried case originally the the the obligations of citizenship but also recognize that god ultimately is better than the us and sometimes that calls us to obey god rather than men but at the same time it didn't lead any of us to say that there is one way in which to obey god rather than men and so some of us went on to deploy to iraq some of us like myself applied for c.e.o. we have a pretty pretty wide diversity with a relatively small group of people trying to minister to other service members and veterans who wrestle with the deck on between faith and service you do as folks of

the family do a lot of have to say and as it's very clear from your website a lot of help for couples that are looking to start families counseling for people who are in the military and surfaced online and as i'm sure you're aware in the military are we have one of the populations of the highest rate of all sorts of family problems of wars spouses being deployed tal abuse issues with post-traumatic stress disorder troops coming home how do you think that you're. in that ministry to people who are going. those kind of military issues do you find times whereas logan points out sometimes service a ground conflict some service the country may just say i'm actually really pleased to hear you ask these questions because i know your program spends a lot of time looking at the great external and security threats to the united states the remarkable domestic fiscal road to insolvency which we just heard about

but the issues that we're talking about actually in many ways are the most important ones for the future of the united states of america the social and moral and moral decay that we have seen and principally among the families that you're asking about nowhere more so than in the american military family with long and marginal say that those those symptoms that i point out within the military are a lot about moral decay the answer is that there are good you'd be saying then the moral decay is worse in the military i would then it is in the general population what here's what i would say i would say the united states of america is a country today where forty percent of all marriages end in divorce seventy five percent of all second marriages end in divorce forty percent of all children in america are born out of wedlock i would say that that is a sign of social and moral decay in an otherwise remarkable country and what i'm saying is that the impact on our american military families is extremely serious and multiple deployed would be what you're teaching them over and i've never met my

friends or family my friends let me let me finish my point for a moment what i am saying is that we have focus on the family here from american military families all the time daily we hear about the incredible stresses that are placed on marriages with regard to multiple deployments we hear about all the social and and military stresses that are are experienced by american military families so i concur that the stresses in pressures are enormous and they are real and so what folks on the family approach to go and so the focus on the family approach. is to minister to those families as we have always ministered to all american families who are experiencing crises of these natures and may say this is the heart of focus on the family we are one of the best resources anywhere in the united states and day we have a we have a website that is family friendly to military families another to learn how to manage things advair absolutely yes yes logan having experience on the first hand

having dealt with the point you know seven deployed yourself seen other service members go through the kind of family stresses that you've seen in the military do you think the focus on the family approach is appropriate and i think it's helpful to soldiers facing those challenges. i'm not familiar enough with those on the families approach. i do think that one of the things that we need to be prepared to do as a church is to question war not in and overtly critical manner but to take it seriously enough to question whether or not each and every instance is appropriate part of the problem with the repeated deployments and more intense combat experience for the individual combat soldier is what it brings back to sammy all the damage all the statistics should just as they mention i believe are heightened for military members and suicide rates as high as it's ever been recorded in our history for seven months in two thousand and nine more there were more soldiers suicides in the work on but it's all of these in iraq and afghanistan combined

a part of it is not just ministering and. upon return. to go to the heavy moral work that they're asked to do instead of the ninety nine percent american population that does not perform that duty is a little bit of even if you if you had to say would you advise them to draw in the military would you be encouraging children that they were of age to be enlisted in the u.s. military. so i've been dissatisfied with some of the terminology to screen on the left count for recruitment i think it's it's relatively unproductive i think that recruitment counseling is more appropriate approach where in you you you trust that a child of seventeen eighteen years old is able to make informed decisions if they have the tools to do so and so what i would advocate for if i had children was which is to share with them my experience to share with them the positive skills stuff that they're going to get from the critters but also share with them the very real emotional social repercussions of serving in combat that the recruiters and

military individuals are often very reluctant to share with i think we need to be honest about what the moral and social implications are in store for those that fight for us and not too often we avoid the question because it's uncomfortable because volatile but i think conversation really needs to occur and i think that military members and children's considering military are worded that respect to say i left her ten yet what's your advice parents and children considering joining the military i would say this i'm a father of two boys fifteen and twelve i am not a veteran but my father is he's a naval of that around and i would very strongly recommend that either one of my boys or other young boys or young girls whom to be young men and young women that they do in fact consider the military if not for a career in a lifetime going to fight and i've not been without but i really i see a person coming on the show logan from philadelphia prepared thanks for joining us that was lonely terry executive officer at centurion skills and u.s. army veteran and line vice president of.