William C. Baker: “It is good news, and I try and keep this fact well hidden, but I am one of the few budget analysts on the floor. For 4…”

“It is good news, and I try and keep this fact well hidden, but I am one of the few budget analysts on the floor. For 4 years I worked for the department of finance in the State of California. If I had had a little more personality, I would have become an accountant. But studying these figures, what we found out was we cannot change the way Washington does business. Over two-thirds of our budget is entitlements locked into law. That means an entitlement is when you show up at the window and you say, I would like some money, the Government shells it out. Until you change those laws, either requiring work from welfare recipients or requiring that people be citizens or making these other changes in laws, you are going to have the budget on automatic pilot. Where we have made the improvements is in the discretionary funds, that small area outside of defense and outside of the entitlement areas where we can change. But there is only so much longer you can squeeze the parts in the other areas of the budget to make them efficient. It would be like asking IBM to get all of their salary savings out of the clerical help and not to do it out of the executives or any of the sales force. So IBM has to have a more balanced view as they try and downsize their corporate structure in order to make themselves profitable. We in Government have to do the same thing. We have to change the entitlement process to make sure those people who receive a Government check are actually in need.”