mr. bixby, good morning. >> good morning. >> a little about the concord coalition and the approach you take. >> we were started in 1982 by former commerce secretary pete peterson. the idea was to be a bipartisan public education organization focused exclusively on the federal budget and the rising debt and things that we could do to prevent that. >> mr. bixby, leading up to this point, there were concerns about a government shutdown and if that would take place. could you walk our viewers through about the concerns of why we came to the point -- why we're coming to the point of potential shutdown? >> every year congress needs to pass 12 appropriations bills to keep the government agencies funded. that total is about 30% of the federal budget, so it's important to keep in mind that there are other parts of the federal budget, too. but this is about 30% that goes through the annual appropriations process that congress gets to control on an annual basis. if they don't pass all of those bills to fu

caller: mr. bixby, i am a taxpaying american.for one, think we pay way too much on our military. we spend more than the next 8 countries combined and we have 800 military bases around the world in 130 countries and yesterday, trump stood in front of the u.n. and said we spent $700 billion this year and another $700 billion next year. people wonder why we can't get a decent health care program in this country and that is the reason why right there. we spend it all on missiles and bombs and we have enough bombs to blow up the world 100 times over. tokeep asking north vietnam get rid of their weapons. israel doesn't get rid of there's. russia doesn't. host: thanks for calling. guest: you have got the numbers right on the military budget. we spent -- eight certainly is a lot of money, it is -- it certainly is a lot of money. there is no doubt there is money that could become from defense spending. that is altimately, political judgment as to how much of the budget goes for defense and how much goes for nondefense. out the really big