Transcripts For CSPAN Washington Journal 20131211

Cspan. Ok. Com first, jeremy herb with the hill was quoted joining us on the phone. What did they get out of this . What did the two sides agree to . Some 63 billion dollars in sequester savings over the next two years. Have for defense and half for discretionary. The numbers right in between where the house and the senate each wanted. They picked a number right between the two. When it comes to sequester, the automatic spending cuts that were agreed to under the budget control act of 2011, how do they deal with it . 63 billion is restored. What does that mean . There are still some sequestration that happens. How much and when . Back somey will give of the sequester cuts, but still not all the way there. The pentagon, for instance, they will reduce sequester by 22 billion next year. That would have meant that the budget level that they are at this year would have been cut by an additional 22 billion. Is still 30 billion lower than the budget proposed by the pentagon and by the house and at the presequester spending level. So they will stop to find out how to lower spending under sequester. This will allow them to really avoid a lot of the pain in terms of types of readiness and cuts to military programs at a said would be coming in 2014 without kind of without some kind of deal. Host why did they go for two years . We have gone from crisis to crisis, all of these 11th hour deals. Id if he goes through come think we really will see that go away for the next year or two. There are still some issues i will have to be dealt with. This does not address the debt ceiling, for instance. That is coming up in the spring, even if we do get this budget to past. Wery october, and set of are always getting through cr and, if this cup pass, for the first time in a while, we would not have to worry about that, over. About that come october. We hear from military letters military zalicus from the hell. The crisis to crisis governing. Host what is not in this deal . Guest a few things. The debt ceiling is one of them. To getts had also wanted an extension on Unemployment Insurance into the bill, but that is also something that patty murray and paul ryan decided not to touch. It is a very modest deal. It is not the grand bargain that long been thought been sought. But they tried to get some agreement. They didnt really tackle entitlements. They did not tackle revenues. What they did at least find a way to come to agreement on something, osha had not been able to do before. 63 billion in sequester cuts, the automatic spending cuts are restored, and the deal prevents Government Shutdown through october 2015. No unemployment that if its extended, the longterm Unemployment Benefits. The deficit cut by 22 billion over a decade. How did they do that . Guest they found a way to cut 85 billion over the next two years. They did that in a few ways. They are making federal workers in the military pay more into their pensions. 6 billion in savings that way. They also used budget tricks to extend the two percent sequester cut for medicare spending. That is another two years. So that now last two 2023 instead of 2021. There will also be higher airline fees now as a result of this this deal goes through as a result if this deal goes through. Host why did they do that . They had to look under every renny to find a way to get money, to basically get stuff that both sides would agree to without tackling does big things. That is not the easiest task. Airline fees, obviously not everyones happy with that. Im sure travelers are now, that is now appealing to hear. But it is a way for them to get money. Paul ryan can now go to his want toce, who does not increase spending who says that its ok because this deal byuces the deficit as well 23 billion. So you will hear paul ryan saying that a lot in the next few weeks. Host what happens next . Ryan is the budget chairman. Is very wellliked by republicans. We will get the first sense over whether republicans will get well go along with us. We will get statements of support from Speaker Boehner and leader cantor. The house wants to vote on it this week to get it done. We conceived probably friday or maybe thursday. On the democratic side, too, this is not something they are excited about. Because of the Unemployment Insurance, because of the making federal workers taymor who have already been hit by sequester and the budget top democrat on the Budget Committee, there will be a lot of lobbying. Tea party groups will come out against it. Arco rubio potentially, it comment an opponent of paul rubio, an host opponent of paul ryan. We are learning that the House Rules Committee will take this later today to get it on the senateloor with the voting on an next week. You mentioned the tea party folks. Congressmaneet file tim hills host what do you make of that . Guest this shows that it will not be an easy sell despite ryans pledge that this cuts the deficit. Conservative Tea Party Republicans like the sequester. For the first time in a long while, they have fought government spending. This deal raises the level from 967 million to one point 01 2 trillion. So they are clearly not happy about that doesnt tackle entitlements. It doesnt really get what they see as the biggest driver of the debt. Call these fees taxes. That will certainly be an argument we hear from conservative critics. And, what they do on this will be interesting. Americans for prosperity, and lobbyey tried to republicans of a deal. Need democratic votes as well as republican votes to pass through the house. Host all right, jeremy herb from the hill, thank you, sir. Your phone calls now. Diane, democratic caller, what do you think . Caller i was sinking about the deal that they made yesterday. With the cuts in everything, they are not thinking about the people out there who have families with unemployment, not extending it. What do they do if we decide to go on the ballot next year and reduce their pay and let them see how they do it . And let them pay for their own insurance. How can some of the democrats go as go with such deals . People around the world are looking at america. Anything toow up help jobs back here. If they stop helping these companies that have jobs overseas or the cayman islands. We can charge them every week for those jobs overseas. They are hiding their money. Thank you very much. Host ok, patrick in photo. Is cspanod morning, never going to talk about the lawsuit that israel brought against china for state sponsored terrorism . There is a frontpage article on the wall street journal. Host if you have a suggestion for us, you can tweet us. Or you can email. But what do you think about the budget deal that was announced . Caller i would like to see c span really do an in depth defense budget. At it, Corporate America would consolidate their manufacturing. But when it comes to defense products, they spread all over the country to make sure all these senators get their they government projects to bring home to increase employment. You want to do something for the trait for detroit . Military moving some bases from the southeast into upstate new york . I would like to see how much applause or how much of these republicans that lose their defense spending for manufacturing and bases, how much they would be thrilled about defense spending than. Host do you think they should have kept sequestration in place . Caller i can remember when clinton was supposedly against america for all the defense cuts and then clintons military fought in afghanistan and iraq. I would say the first thing to cut is fdic insurance. Who has a quarter Million Dollars in the bank . The average person does not even have 10,000 in the bank. And why the federal government is guaranteeing Bank Accounts up to a quarter Million Dollars is beyond me. Thank you for taking my call. Host we will go to to james in washington. You are on the air. Caller good morning. I was just wondering how they cut the unemployed unemployment when there are no jobs out there. T kind of blows my mind what are these people going to do when there is no jobs . Will they stand in soup lines like back in the 1920s . My point and not cut the corporations tech loopholes where they are sending money off to the cayman islands. I just needed to get that off my chest. Host we will actually be talking about that, the an opponent benefits, the impact they have had on the economy and the fact that they are not included in this budget deal that was announced last night. This is what chairman paul ryan had to say when he stood next to the Senate Budget chairwoman, patty murray, last night in pressprice in their conference about what he got out of this deal. [video clip] i am getting more deficit reduction. So the deficit will go down more by passing this than if we did nothing. That is point number one. Point number two, there are no tax increases your. We areumber three, finally starting to deal with autopilot spending. The mandatory spending that has not been addressed by congress for years. This is it easy. This is the first divided government budget agreement since 1986. The reason why we havent done a budget agreement when both houses were controlled by other parties is because it is not easy to do. We know we are not going to get everything we want and she is not going to get everything they want. Host that was the chairman of the House Budget Committee talking about the deal that they struck yesterday. And talking to conservatives about voting for it. House rules committee together later today to mark this up then design a rule for florida bay. Leadership is hoping to get it on the floor in the house this week and a vote to approve it and in the senate would take it up next week. Here is how the senator majority leader harry reid react to the deal. Heres what he tweeted at yesterday. And the white house also on twitter yesterday reacting there is the white house tweet. You can go to the white house to read the full statement. And then Speaker John Boehner also putting this out yesterday in a tweet. James excuse me, david in new york, independent color. Caller good morning. Thank you for listening to my comment. One simple question. I was an actual private banker and i never set up offshore trust for american citizens because it is against the law, because the tax law says that every individual citizen has to pay income tax on their worldwide income, wherever they are in it for whatever reason. Savings account in new guinea, a company can you in kenya. Know,ations, as we all they get to park their money all over the world and not pay taxes. I dont understand why corporations have such a huge preference on skipping and avoiding taxes and american citizens like you and me dont. Host so you think this deal should have included closing tax loopholes. Www. Cspan. Org apps caller absolutely. Host that was to big of a reach. She would have loved to included that in a final bill, but it was too difficult to get to. Is it better to have this, what people are calling a modest first step . Caller i guess, you know, when you have a baby, he takes baby steps. But these guys are babies. Im so tired that they can get together on this or its too much. Like tip compromise oneill and reagan did. Nobody gets everything they want, everybody gets something. Inexcusable that everybody says oh, i cant make this deal. We have the republicans, the democrats, the conservatives, the tea party. Do your job. The end result is that you are supposed to have a budget every year. We are not supposed to have sequesters and lay off people and have all this other business. To beerybody seems apathetic and accepted. I find it disgusting. I would fire every single one of them if i was chairman of the board and get a new group. Host ok, david. Jim in gainesville, texas. Caller what i wanted to say is in therepresentatives house, on both sides, but particularly the conservatives, will accept this. I hear callers talking about corporations having some tax and manages for off shoring their funds. Listen, that is a Pretty Simple fix, allowing repatriation. The people who are calling do not seem to understand you cant. Orce companies to do things the largest resort that way. They are there to protect their interests. But we can make it attractive to bring the money back and bring money back to grow the private economic engine. Host all right, jim. On twitter and then jim tweets in. And the House Minority leader, nancy pelosi for the democrats, tweeted this out. She had this to say. And as you heard from jeremy herb from the hill newspaper, it will take out democrats and republicans to pass the steel. Senate Minority Leader Mitch Mcconnell had this to say. Cheryl, boulder, colorado, democratic caller. Caller i have two comments about this. The first is i think they really ought to be ashamed of themselves that they are not talking about restoring Unemployment Compensation. People whoamps for cant get a job because there are no jobs. Secondly, i think it is really ironic that they are not willing forake away the tax breaks people who own private lear jets. They will slap ordinary air fees everyith higher time they fly. That is really of seen. Thank you. Host on the farm legislation, we learned yesterday that they were unable to reach a deal on the fiveyear farmville, which includes stamps. There is a big difference between the house and the Senate Negotiators on how much savings they want to get, how much cuts they want to make to the food stamp program. It seems that they will take this back up in january when they returned to keep negotiating on a larger farmville legislation. On aof the deal that larger farm bill legislation. Reformsof the deal that pensions for federal employees, the wall street journal says this deal includes 12 billion in pension changes. The proposed changes would on civilian3 employees hired. 30 in 2014. So this is for new employees. So this is what the budget chairman said to say about this and how the two sides came together on it. [video clip] question what we are asking for here, they are hardworking dedicated people that we respect, but it is only right and fair that if they do something more toward their pensions just like the hard working taxpayer pays for their pensions in the first place. I want to add some to do that. If we did not reach an agreement, we would be at sequestration levels very shortly and many of the same people would be facing furloughs, layoffs, and uncertainty. We have brought certainty back to all those people. Murphy andwas patty paul ryan talking about the new deal. Mark in philadelphia, the mccrea caller. What do you think . Caller i think it is the triumph of the military industrial complex. Some of the biggest drivers against sequestration is grumman and going and general dynamics. They are fighting people in the field over to take a pension increase, and executives at these big companies, general dynamics, sitting back in their offices are going to get their money back and they will get their big fat bonuses, you know. And then what will they say to our military personnel who are taking a pay cut . Thanks for your service. What a bunch of hypocrites. Thank you. Host kristen in alaska, independent color. Caller hello, good morning to you. I have a really good idea about how to solve a lot of problems in one budget deal. This is what you do. You have a lot of corporations that are leaving the states because of the tax burden. And you cant get mad at the corporations because, if you are a holder of stock in a corporation, it has to read evidence. So it has to make the wisest decisions. If it can get a better tax system in another country and, at the same time, save on labor, that is what you want to do. But heres a way to get them all to come back and still get the tax money. This is what you do. You take the Corporate Tax rate and put it at zero percent. This is not only going to bring a bunch of Companies Back that have moved overseas, but it will also give a great incentive to start up new corporations. And then, you take the Capital Gains tax and you raise it up to the income tax level so you will get that money back from your shareholders, right . On the Capital Gains. All the money that would have been taxed at of the corporation in the first phase. It will just come out of the dividends from his shareholders. And at the same time, you are starting new corporations. You are bringing old corporations back. This creates jobs. It stimulates economy. People make money. And you still get the tax revenues out of it. Host rand paul tweets this. We are talking about the budget deal that was struck and announced by the two principles hop on capitol hill, paul ryan and patty murray and they held a press conference last night. By the way, if youre interested in the details of this legislation, it has been posted on the Budget Committees website so you can go to house. Gov, senate. Gov, and you can get a summary as well as a text of what is in this legislation. Although in the gritty details forthcoming. The video, you can and you canspan. Org see how they were able to strike a deal and what exactly is in it. The wall street Journal Editorial Board weighs in on the agreement in their pages this morning. They say the question for republicans is what happens is this fails. It means more turmoil, more evidence that the gop cant govern and the risk of another Government Shutdown. By contrast, this deal pushes the budget debate past next november and lets republicans focus on obamacare and its many ills. Tim, the credit card. Caller tim, democratic caller. Caller i think they will just go for the twoyear deal. Host you think they should do it, tim. Caller i think theyre going to. Host do you think they should . Caller theyre just tired of the shutdowns and the fussing and findings. As a compromise, i think they are to go for. Host what do you think of the deficit reduction component . Not Social Security or medicare included in this. Caller well, they will probably deal with that later. Host and you think they should . Caller they will probably deal with that later when he gets serious. Host ok. Chris, springfield, missouri. Caller thank you very much. I agree with the gentleman although i dont favor paul ryan. I think it took a lot for him to step up to the plate and at least start to compromise. Youve got some are at least you developed a plan and somewhere to start. It seems like everybody before who has been talking today is throwing their own piece out there, which is what it seems that is what you have to do with any kind of compromise, when two people disagree like that. Whether it is divorce or anything like that, you have to have somewhere to start and that is what i really like to see this thing starting. It eases me as a businessman. It gives me a chance to look on the road two years and then my budgets and plan what i have to do without having to worry about three months later somebody will pull a blanket out from underneath me or something. So i do agree. Im glad to see that these two parties have family come together and started somewhere. Bs, it is not good for both sides, but i agree with what the wall street journal said. At least its a bad budget. If anybody has invented a home or anything, there are some sacrifices, some giveandtake and that is what this country is about. It is about time we started acting like adults instead of children. Why is your business dependent on having certainty from washington . Caller i developed some software that would help a lot of ideas anding patents and copyrights and all and stuff here in it has all that stuff. It has been very difficult and entrepreneurs dont want to invest in new products and things because of this anxiety over what will happen in the next six months. Or 3nvest 2 million million in a company that i dont know whether or not i will even be able to use the tax leverage or anything like that . It causes so much uncertainty with a lot of new companies and , which thisovation country needs to start doing. We need to start investing in new technologies. We need to start dealing in new factories. Like the gentleman said, bring back ideas about Capital Gains and corporations and start rebuilding this country, start you have an idea now, in the next two years, about our infrastructure, at least you have a budget. You can sit down and you can find your way through the pack. Host all right, chris. We are talking about the two year budget deal announced last night. It is expected to come up for a vote in the house this week and then the senate will take up next week. They could be readying the bill tonight, later today in the House Rules Committee. First over on the house side, the democrats will huddle and the republicans will huddle and see where the votes are for this deal. We are getting your thoughts on it this morning. Going outside of washington to see what you think of it. We will be back to your phone calls in just a minute. But in other news, a new leader for gm. Replaces akerman, becoming the first female ceo of a major maker. And more on the nsa Surveillance Program saying that the nsa is using internet cookies to find their targets. Thea reporter says that cookie doesnt typically contain personal information, such as someones name or email address, but it does contain numerous codes that enable websites to uniquely identify a persons browser. So this is likely to come up today when the nsa director, keith alexander, will be testifying before the Senate Judiciary committee. We will have coverage of that starting at 2 00 p. M. Eastern time on cspan 3. A a program that program note for a, Kathleen Sebelius up on capitol hill today, 10 00 a. M. Eastern time. Will ben 2, she testifying before the house energy and house commerce subcommittee. Larry in texas, republican caller, what do you think of this budget deal . Toler well, i am trying understand what he was saying about the veterans and the military. Are totally and permanently disabled veterans and our terminally ill veterans, where does that leave us and would do we stand and where do we stand . Host where do you stand . Caller i am a totally disabled veteran and i want to know where that leaves me as far as my benefits, my medication and my needs. Host under this budget deal . Caller yes. Host i think the costofliving provisions are for active military. Again, go tomore, senate. Gov and go to the Budget Committee and they have the text and the summary right there if you are interested in reading the legislation. Steve in oklahoma city, democratic caller. Yes, the first thing i wanted to address, one of the earlier callers had said about lowering the Corporate Tax rate, the companies should do their jobs ship their jobs out for cheap labor. It has nothing to do with taxes. Yes, we have a high rate of taxes but the companies dont pay. There are so many loopholes that they end up paying really low amounts. Look at mitt romney. He pays 15 a year, more than nobody. Everybody pays more taxes than that. New deal, i think it is ridiculous. They dont have the unemployment included in there. But that is the whole deal. With people keep voting republican and those are the things i go after. It is like the farm bill. The farm bill is being held up because republicans want to cut food stamps when there is another option. There are big subsidies that go to the billionaire farmers and we are paying their insurance premiums. They wont cut that, but they will cut food stamps. Every time you look at what the republicans do, it is always the least christian thing. We will cut food stamps, benefits, retirees, pensioners, vets who have been injured, the disabled. As who they go after and it is all about making sure that taxes go taxes never go up because that attacks the people that line their pockets. Host all right, steve. A previous caller mentioned president obamas handshake with roe castro yesterday in south africa. Of the the front pages newspaper this morning. The had shaq the handshake with castro gives fuel to critics. It proved distracting for the president as he attended that Tribute Service along with many other world leaders. Secretary of state john kerry was asked about that handshake at yesterdays hearing on capitol hill before the House Foreign Affairs committee. Heres what he had to say. [ video clip] [video clip] ladies and gentlemen, today is about honoring Nelson Mandela and the president is at an International Funeral with leaders from all over the world. He didnt choose who was there. They were there to honor and mandela to honor mandela. And we appreciate that people will of the world from different walks of life who appreciated mandela and were friends came to honor him. Said,k, as the president i urge you to read his speech or see it if you havent read it. As the president said in his speech today, honoring Nelson Mandela, he said we urge leaders to honor mandelas struggle for freedom by upholding the asic human rights of their and would you say that role castro is upholding basic no, absolutely not. Host that was secretary of state john kerry popping about the handshake that president obama had with raul castro at yesterdays tribute to Nelson Mandela. The secretary of state was also there to testify about iran lawmakersand asking to not go forward with the new round of sanctions, to let this deal that the u. S. And others brokered with iran, given more time to play out. Heres what he had to say. [video clip] we are asking you to give our negotiators and experts the time and space to do their jobs. That includes asking you, while we negotiate, that you hold off opposing hold off imposing new sanctions. Im not saying never. I just told you a few minutes ago. If this doesnt work, we are coming back and asking you for more. Im just saying not right now. Let me be very clear. This is a very delicate diplomatic moment. And we have a chance to address peacefully one of the most pressing National Security concerns that the world faces today. Implications of the potential conflict. We are at a crossroads. We are at one of those really hinge points in history. One path could lead to an enduring resolution in the ernational committees international communitys concerns. The other could lead to hostility and potentially to conflict. And i dont have to tell you that these are highstakes. We have an obligation to give these initiations opportunity to succeed. And we cant ask the rest of the p5 plus one and our partners around the world to hold up the rare hold up their end of the bargain if the United States will hold up their end of the bargain. Host secretary of state john kerry will be meeting with senators to talk about holding off on those new round of sanctions along with rotary secretary lew today on capitol hill. The headlines today in the wall street journal says that a key senator will delay iran sanctions. That is tim johnson from south dakota. Offas committed to holding on a new round of sanctions. So that is the latest on the deal. Also, in other news, Washington Times reporting that the high court is likely to allowed the obama cleanair rules, affecting coal power plants. We also learned yesterday that a familiar face will be returning to the white house. Is a veteran washington operative hired by the white house as a new Senior Advisor and will work to push executive actions and advance president obamas policy goals, including more vigorous and dermatol enforcement. People familiar with the appointment say that he will be joining the white house in january. Back to our topic here for all of you this morning, getting your take on the budget deal reached in washington yesterday. Roger in forney, texas, independent caller. What do you think of it . Theer i would like to tell callers who are demanding an extension of the Unemployment Benefits to instead demand that the federal government enforce our immigration laws. 11 million to 20 million illegal aliens who are working in this country illegally, the job market would look much better for americans. Sumter, what you think . Is china a communist country, yes or no . Host what do you think . Caller last time i looked, it was a communist country. Host what is the point youre trying to make . People are making a big deal that obama shook castros hand. But we deal with china and that is a communist country. Host all right, jim from illinois, republican caller. Caller good morning, i just tuned into cspan. Thanks to your coverage, i now know that they reached a deal. The tagline you have of the 63 billion in automatic cuts being restored, whether or not i would like or disapprove of this deal, for me, it depends on whether or raises or lowers the amount of deficit spending we have. That will contribute to the national debt. Right now, we are very fortunate in that we have record low interest damons. Interest payments. So it is not costing the u. S. Budget a lot of money relatively speaking to service that debt. But if Interest Rates go back to distort norms, i believe the numbers ive seen are such that the size of ours ending for Interest Payments for those people that for countries alone us money, will rival the size of the pentagon budget or will be the third or fourth largest spending component. My concern is the debt. It, so, jim, if you missed chairman paul ryan addressed that yesterday. So did patty murray, the Senate Budget chairwoman, saying that it brings down the deficit by 22 billion over the next decade. They do that by asking those in the military to pay more as part of their cost of living also that federal employees, new federal employees come have to pay more into their pension. Are a goodhink those start. Did they mention how much the sequestration would be bringing deficit ifvel of the this deal had been reached and they continued with sequestration . Host how much it wouldve if they had continued with sequestration . Caller right. Will this new debt result in a greater deficitreduction or a lesser deficit reduction over this time . Host let me show you real quickly fight can what paul ryan had to say about the trillion dollar figure. So for 2014, the budget is one trillion. The budget chairman was asked about this yesterday. Reduction and the fact that they are taking away some of that sequestration. Heres what he had to say. [video clip] i know we are getting in the weeds here. 2014 and12 billion for a trillion for 2015. Why would republican support that . The budget i passed last session with near unanimity in the house was for 1019. The budget number that we fought for in the last session would not be heating until the year 2017 under this agreement. This is why think House Republicans should be supporting this. Host jim, are you still on the line . What do you think . Caller i will prefer to see an even lower level of spending because, as i say, my concern is the debt. I am a republican, but i was very dismayed by the lack of budgetary restraint during the bruce years. The bush years. To make him a that was one of the visible failings. Because we will reach a point as the size of the overall budget grows and the size of the debt grows, we will reach a point where the system will be really strange. And if we have another large session, that will put a lot of pressure on everyone. My concern is all the entitlement programs that people are much more dependent on will really suffer. There will be a real crunch. Host all right. We will leave it there. We also want to tell you about other news that was made yesterday. Rule waslled volcker approved. Emily stephenson joins us on the phone. Emily, what is the volcker rule and why does it matter . Guest thank you for having me on. So the volcker rule is really essential part of the 2010 dodd Financial Regulation overhaul. Banks cant make risky trades with their own money, a sickly. Basically, the their own money, basically they basically, the idea is that they cannot rely on federal debt. Be able to use their own money that can get them into trouble. Host so this was proposed as part of doddfrank. Why is it just being approved now . Guest that is a great question. It has been three years since doddfrank passed and it took a long time to get this thing finalized. I think theres probably two things that are important to know about the genesis of the volker rule. The first thing is that the rule alsoroposed in 2011 but it proposed a lot of questions on how it should work. First of all, how banks need to be allowed to buy and sell stocks and bonds and things, that there clients can buy from them. Establish that from making it with their own money. So there are a lot of questions in the proposal the regulators had to work through. And they got like 18,000, letters and some of them are hundreds of pigeons long hundreds of pages long. Yet the thing that is important to note is the jpmorgan london whale situation in 2012, for j. P. Morgan lost billions of dollars off of one guy trading madendon, really sort of regulators rethink the way they were working on this rule. Said thate, jpmorgan those trades would have been allowed under the volker rule and i think that is something that regulators really wanted to address. So they wanted to look at the way they were approaching the rule. Host why is it called the volker role . Why is it named after paul volcker . Who is he and how long is this rule . Federalhes a former reserve chairman and he is the person that sort of came up with the idea for the rule. Doddfrank and push for it to be included. The rule with all the instructions to the banks is oddly like 950 pages long or Something Like that. Complicated . Are there carveouts . Caller it is really, located. That is a really good question. One thing interesting about the volker rule right now is that we have the final rule, but we dont really know how it will be applied. So we still have to wait to see how the Federal Reserve and fdic Bank Examiners will look at them and see if they are in compliance with the rules. We will have to wait to see what the instructions to them will be like on how it will be enforced. President obama yesterday put out a statement saying this it will make it illegal for banks to use caller they have severe budget crunches. Under doddhole lot frank. They said they cannot do with the funding they been having. So theyve been asking for more money. As you know, that is the fight with congress. Host thank you for your time. Up next, we will return to our discussion on this budget deal. What was not included was an extension of Unemployment Benefits. We will talk with christine ellens. Christine owens of the National Employment law project. With will talk we will be right back. The other thing that we could to to test whether roosevelt made a difference or not to the way history turned out is used my counterfactual history test. Suppose the alternative for wilke,nt not robert but suppose the republicans had nominated charles lindbergh, who , who great aviation hero was very isolationist and quite sympathetic to hitlers germany. President lindbergh and instead of a president roosevelt, history would have turned up quite differently. I doubt that he would have made the preparations that roosevelt made. That, after japan attacked the United States, that he would have oriented the war toward europe rather than to keeping it focused just on asia. That sense, frank one roosevelt made a big difference. Sunday, 7 30 eastern and pacific, part of American History tv, this weekend on c span 3. It is a rare constant in american political life if you look at congress in 1901. Less than 2 of members came from workingclass backgrounds. They got into politics and eventually wound up in the congress. Flash forward to the present day. The average member of congress spent less than 2 of their career doing Service Industry jobs are manual labor jobs. So this is something that really hasnt changed. Lots of different aspects of the political process, cable news, the rise of senate elections, the decline of unions, all of this is happening. One of the constants during the last 100 years or so is that working class people are not getting elected to political office. Does it matter that there is a socioeconomic disparity between most elected officials and the citizens they represent . Acholas carnes looks at whitecollar government sunday night at 9 00 on afterwards. In january, mark levin will take your calls for three hours sunday, january 5 through all part of the tv weekend on cspan 2. Whatnline, we want to know your favorite books were in 2013. Throughout the month, join other readers to discuss the notable oakes published this year. Washington journal continues. Is here,istine owens the executive director of the National Employment law project here to talk about Unemployment Benefits. We learned last night that a deal has been struck for the budget for two years. It does not include the extension of the Unemployment Benefits. What is your reaction . Nearlywe are extra disappointed and we are extremely concerned about the 1. 3 million unemployed workers who have been unemployed for more than six months through the week between christmas and new years will face an abrupt cut off of their Unemployment Benefits. There are hundreds of thousands of families that rely on these benefits just to get by. Duringy is it happening the holiday season, which is painful, but it happens at a time when we are entering the hardest time of the year for most families in terms of providing heat, maintaining their households and the like. So it is a cruel blow to hundreds of thousands of long term unemployed host workers in this country. What type of Unemployment Benefits are we talking about . Guest we are talking about the federal Unemployment Compensation program. They have used up all of their state benefits and still have not been able to find a job. When that happens, up until now, go oner has been able to the federal program. Depending on the state, they between 14igible for and 47 weeks of additional benefits from the federal government. Host how did we get to this point that they are expiring . The background . Guest this program was adopted in june 2008 good it has been renewed 11 times since then. Sometimes it was renewed for a month or two and then another vote for renewal, but that is how we have had 11 renewals. Since then come increasing opposition to the program over the last couple of years and how we got to where we are today quite frankly is that House Republican leadership simply wont allow a vote on extending the and implement benefits. I think that if there were a vote in the senate, the extension would pass. I know that, in the house, there would be some republican support for it. So it is possible that we would get it in the house, but we cant get a vote in the house and Speaker Boehner says that they house will adjourn at the end of this weekend members will go home. So that is why we are where we are. The hope had been that it would be included as part of this budget deal could it didnt the deal. It didnt make it into the budget deal. A votect there will be on the medicare doc fix. At a pointwe are where, unless the house and the Republican Leadership allows a vote, 1. 3 million workers unemployed workers will run out of benefits. Host is the economy still in a recession . Guest the economy is not formally in a recession. Millions of people feel that we are still in recession. The economy has been growing slowly for several years now and job growth actually began again in february 2010. But we still have very high and employment. We have an Unemployment Rate of 7 . If we add to that rate all the millions of people who have dropped out of the labor force or chosen not to enter the force , largely because they dont think they can find jobs, we would actually have more than 10 unemployment. So that is an extremely large number of people who are officially unemployed plus those who would probably work if they could get jobs but they are not looking because they dont think they can get jobs. Host here is a headline from the Huffington Post recently about the latest job report. It several democrats about extending benefits. They said that congress has never before allowed benefits to expire when unemployment was higher than 7. 2 to since the Unemployment Insurance has been created, congress has never cut back on these benefits when unemployment was over 7. 2 . Below that. So why is it necessary to extend it again . Guest there are several reasons for that. The Unemployment Rate itself is not a magic number that should determine what happens. We have more than 4 million longterm unemployed workers. The numbers continues to be at fairly at extraordinarily high levels. The rate of one and the rate share of the, the entire workforce that is unemployed, it is still more than twice as high as it is. T has been and we have a very low rate of Labor Force Participation. That means that people who say that they want to work and theyre looking for work. Unemployment has declined. It has fallen from 7. 9 at the beginning of the year to the most recent rate of 7 . But most of the decline is because people are opting not to join the labor force. They are choosing not to try to work. Again, if we added those people back in, unemployment would really be above 10 . So the 7. 2 figure really isnt meaningful in the context of why we need this program. We still have three officially unemployed worker for every job opening. And that doesnt count all these people who have left the labor force. So we still have a very tight economy for longterm unemployed workers. Host the budget deal does not include an extension of benefits. We are hoping that that will still happen. Willes not, wilson people still receive unemployment from state governments . Guest yes, people will get their state benefits. Unemployedbecomes after the end of this year and who is eligible for benefits from their states will continue to receive them. People who are currently receiving the federal benefits or who reached the end of their state benefits who will no longer have access to federal benefits. And by the end of 2014, that number will be more than 3 Million People. If you are currently receiving Unemployment Benefits or you are unemployed, we want to hear from you. You can call in. Sharon in pennsylvania, democratic caller. Because i amalling severely affected as a result of these benefits being cut. And i havetrades been looking for a job for eight months and it is very disheartening and dismaying to me that a lot of employers are reluctant to hire somebody like me because of the simple fact that i wont be there. They see my application in my skills and my qualifications and they are reluctant to hire me. I am forced this morning to look at jobs at service stations. We want somebody who will be here for six months. They are not looking do have somebody who will be there temporarily. You can see from my application this is only a shortterm transition to me. Is very difficult and that i will be homeless after a short of thecause i am one ones whose benefits will expire on the 28th. I have no place to stay. I am dependent on myself. I have no car insurance. It hasnt stopped expired. Tree with very little options. And i am actively look for work. So, i am just hoping somebody, some type would have of understanding in regard to peoples situations such as mine and maybe set step in and help us. We really are looking for work. People have no heart whatsoever to cut us off. That is my situation. When you go to a job interview, do they ask you about Unemployment Benefits and do you think that works against you . Yes it does. Ller i have my Associates Degree and im actively looking for work. I am an electrician. I recently graduated from a Vocational School a couple years ago. That most people want you to have five years of experience. How do i get the experience if you do not ring me in and teach me the handson experience i need. A job. Cannot find all right. First, i am sorry about your situation. There will be more than 100,000 other pennsylvanians who will lose federal unemployment coverage if congress does not act to renew it. Situation simplifies several things. One is that he has skills and education. He is actively looking for work. That is true of most longterm unemployment workers. He says the fact he is himployed itself is hurting and his job search. That is certainly true. Longterm unemployment workers who contract us tell us it is like a catch22 in order to get a job. You need to have a job. The longer you go without having a job, the harder it is to get a job. That is because of employers concerns about someones skills but a lot of it is just because people make assumptions about the longterm unemployed. Why have they been unemployed so long and can they really do the job . What we most need is for employers to open up their doors to longterm unemployed and give them opportunities. James on twitter says, first question on the job tests, have you ever been on unemployment . Pennsylvania, a republican caller. Hello. If they do not extend these Unemployment Rates, unemployment it will go down. Unemployment will be down. Take them off the unemployment role. How will it work . What will happen to the Unemployment Rate if the benefits are not extended . It is likely that the justloyment rate let me say, it is possible the Unemployment Rate will continue to decline. Havingson is because benefits actually keeps people actively engaged in looking for work. Lookinghey have to be for work in order to get benefits. Second, they have the resources they need to look for work and pay for Auto Insurance and afford public transportation, pay the cost of reproducing. Esumes losing access to Unemployment Benefits will have the effect of pushing more people out of the labor force. They will not have the means they need to continue to look for work so many will just give up. That lowers Labor Force Participation and reduces the number of people who say they are actively looking for work and they are officially unemployed. Tony, your next. Independent color. Thank you. Good morning. My benefits are about ready to run out. I live in a touristy area here at the beach. Our coastline is motels, restaurants, gift shops, and what have you. Would be think there jobs everywhere and there are. Ourproblem we have here is president of the chamber of commerce goes to washington and says the people who live in the area, working evil, do not want these jobs very these 10 an hour jobs are just going on applied for. This is such a lie. They have brought in all these hard toand it is so compete with russian kids, israeli kids, chinese kids now. They just went and asked for people. Al this is a lie and a bad one. It is a horrible thing that we have here and we have got to come eat with this. That is it. Our local media, you call them and it is a recall. Councilman is like a brick wall. He will not even step up for us. Tony, i am sorry for your situation. Carolina has been hard hit in terms of jobs lost. Tonys point that unemployed workers would like to have great jobs with great pay and would like to be able to do what they had been doing in the past and earn what they had earned. They will take almost any job they could get. There are a number of barriers for them to get jobs. In an area heavily dependent on work,m, and seasonal there are plenty of barriers. There is an assumption the long term unemployed are not able or willing to do these jobs. A tweet guest the research does not suggest that is the case. The reality is most people who become reemployed after a time of unemployment and up taking a job at lower pay anyway. Older workers. R the research does not suggest longterm unemployment is people from taking a job. 260 nineenefit is dollars a week. Just a little bit over 1000 a month. That is less than the average housingpends simply on alone. There is no real incentive and the Unemployment Program to keep people from looking for work area work. Senator rand paul was quoted recently as saying, and a tweet i would suggest maybe they need to go through a time of longterm unemployment. Rand paul is wrong. People do not get 99 weeks of Unemployment Benefits. I wish senator paul would talk to some of the longterm unemployed workers we have talked to who just listened to the three that testified last week. Adults, one of them 67 years old, the other in her 50s. The other in their 50s. All had longterm careers in the workforce. One was a microbiologist and one was a skilled electrician. Years, they lost their jobs for a variety of reasons related to the economy. They are desperately looking for work. They want nothing more than to go back to work. That is what the workers who wete us last night saying, cannot believe this is happening, it is all we have to rely on, we want jobs, but until we get jobs, can we not get this a sick means of support . You are referring to last week before the Democrats Holding a hearing with those by unemployment and hearing about extending these benefits. However, we heard from the white house and from nancy pelosi last night in a tweet saying they endorsed the budget deal and not holding it up over extending Unemployment Benefits. Are they pushing hard enough for it . Guest we hope they continue to push. We think there will be forcing the vote. Senator murray pushcart in the negotiations. They had a choice. They wanted to roll back some of. He sequesterimposed cuts Republican Leadership absolutely refused to put revenues and new taxes on the table. We believe democratic leadership in the senate and house and white house are deeply committed to renewing Unemployment Benefits. We know a number of republicans are deeply committed to doing so. A vote inial there be the house. If speaker banner has to decide to keep the house in session longer or bring it back in, that is what he should do. Davide it next host next. Independent. Morning. Ood i just wanted to say, i have sincen unemployment february and i have found little jobs here and there. On weeks i worked, i did not sure unemployment. My issue isly the employers i have interviewed to abouthave talked unemployed employment opportunities, they seem to want for even the small frontline supervisor jobs, they want a bachelors degree. That whenf those ones i started working back in the started sleeping a floor in a furniture factory. I dont myself up to a directors job. I lost my job because of mismanagement in the company i work for. Not of my own doing. Myork for two companies all life, one for 20something years and another for 18 years. Host are you offered the opportunity to get technical training, to go back to school . Caller some. I have looked into that. I fall into what i have called a black hole. I am 53 years. Of age. In between being a young man and an older man. Folks that want younger folks in the workforce now. It is just frustrating. Rand paul, bless his soul, i know he is a good man, has he ever been on unemployment . How does he know we are not out here seeking jobs and just want to sit on our butts all day . We are not. Again, theyve it is the example of what is going on for the longterm unemployed. He has been in the workforce since the 70s. He has worked his way up and he will do almost anything and is encountering barriers that are probably arbitrary and unnecessary. The interesting and is in this half of just under relatively recent College Grads actually working in jobs for which College Education is not required. As we have moved more and more toward a low wage service retailbased economy, what we have is a Skills Mismatch that goes in the opposite direction from what some people sometimes talk about. We have a lot of people in terms of formal education, have more than what they need for their jobs. Will the state and federal governments pay for people like david to go back to school . Guest it is very state to state. Some have robust programs that combine with the opportunity for training and continue to be on unemployment while youre getting trained so youre not having to actively look for work. I do not really know what north carolinas o graham is. It is the only state in the nation that has gone off of the federal Unemployment Benefit Program and has also cut back on the weeks of benefits workers theget here in my bed is state program with respect to jobs training is not a very robust one. Questionnaire talking with the executive director of the National Employment law project. Longterm Unemployment Benefits set to expire december 31, it is an extension of them, not part of the budget deal announced last night by paul ryan and Senate Budget chairwoman patty murray. Thisouse looking to get deal ready to go for a vote on the floor this week. You have heard they will also try to do a vote on the so the medicarex, reimbursement for docs, and you hope they include with that the extension for Unemployment Benefits. There needs to be a docs fix. I hope that does not get held up. Are depending on that and more important, millions of seniors. Otherwise, there cost will go up. There needs to be a docs fix. But there should be a fix for unemployed workers, too. There is no reason why they cannot attach the expansion of federal Unemployment Benefits to the doc fix. Tweeting and about so far not an extension of these benefits. Expect a new wave of homelessness and another says, for those who can find jobs guest we need to raise the minimum wage. Much of our job growth is in the low wage sector. We have seen over the last 30 shift toward, a more lowwage employment. Job, workers in lowwage the median age for a lowwage worker now is 45 years old. Many of them have kids. That is crucial to helping boost the economy. Can only have resources to him back into the economy if they have benefits. Lowwage workers need higher pay in order to have more resources to pump back into the economy. The federal minimum wage, you can see how it has gone up over the years. 1996, it was cluttered dollars and . 75. Chucky in richmond, virginia, a democratic caller up next. Good morning. Thank you for cspan. This is the season of giving. What do we get from our congress . Taking away benefits to the poor. You have got the Unemployment Benefits expiring on december 31. They take away the food stamps. You cannot balance the budget on the backs of the poor. You give companies billions of dollars in tax relief and all that stuff. It is ridiculous. Another issue about unemployment, i am an electrician, a carpenter, mechanic, but i cannot even find work in virginia because all the Companies Want to hire illegal nobody is talking about how many illegal aliens are in this country working, but americans cannot even get jobs. That is really sad. Got it, chuck. Chuck, you are from my home state of virginia. I have family who live in richmond. The Unemployment Crisis brings out a lot of feelings around who is to blame. That people who are looking for work are to blame. I think what is to blame right now for the crisis facing long term unemployment workers is that congress is not scheduling a vote on renewing the benefit for these workers. I would say to all of the colors that what we also need is more focused on, how do we create good jobs in the country, how do we provide incentives for employers to hire the longterm unemployed. How do we provide the training some may need in order to move into different careers, and how do we make sure our jobs pay living wages to all people who work in them . I think that is a challenge that we as a nation facia and face, and that we owe it to each other in this season of giving to try to rise to that challenge. Group put together this graphic that shows the impact of not extending the Unemployment Benefits. What are we looking at . Guest by the end of this year, 1. 3 million longterm unemployed American Workers who will lose their Unemployment Benefits if congress does not act. Then going into next year when people start running out of is nobenefits and there additional federal benefits to fall back on, another 850,000 by the end of the first quarter. Other work i believe the Labor Department has done shows the number rises to just around 3 million altogether by the end of june and by the end of the year, it will be roughly 3. 5 million. Economicas been the impact of the Unemployment Benefits on the u. S. Economy at large so far since they have been extended in 2008 . What will be the impact if they are not extended out into thousand 13 . Let me start with the impact on people. Since the program was first enacted in 2008, almost 24 million americans have received Unemployment Benefits. That is a lot of american families, it includes 19 million children in those families. Those benefits have reduced the poverty rate in 2012 alone by 2. 5 . 2. 5 million more americans would in 2012len into poverty but for Unemployment Benefits. Overall, since the program was created, it has kept more than 11 million americans out of. Overty the people who receive these benefits altogether have gotten roughly 25 billion in benefits. They spend their benefits in the local economy. The estimates range from about of gdp percent in terms growth. We know the estimates are if this program is not renewed, it will cost us 240,000 jobs next year. Democratic caller, brooklyn, new york. Morning. Ood i really appreciate the conversation about Unemployment Benefits. Most ofeen unemployed this year. I worked once this year in the previous year, i work pretty much the whole year. Two different jobs, working in the security field. To for a while, unemployment, poverty, what is wasting in washington, 24 billion because of a shutdown, it all comes to me as, our politicians on both sides are out of touch with the average person. In the 1980s, i remember minimum wage. Hour back in the 80s. 1984. Now, it is seven dollars and change. Poorhing is wrong, because people are being forgotten. I really do not want to be on unemployment. I would rather be working. There are millions of people who would rather be working. Well, we can make more money with less. I am 53. I do not look 53, i do not sound 53, but when they say, what are you looking to do . I put my date of birth on the application and they crunched the numbers and this guy is 53 and maybe people will not want to work with them and they want to work with someone younger. I think, like you are saying, there has to be an incentive that is done from employers to motivate them to hire. Inhave to be more creative how we apply for work and how the government is connected. Something has to be done. It is not like it was in the past where you submit your resume. Everything is different now. How do we change . In this environment. Good pointsd makes in terms of incentives for employers to hire the longterm unemployed. Eliminating the job application requirement that really become proxies for age discrimination, or whenr date of birth you finish school or things like that. Employers should voluntarily and affirmatively give the longterm unemployed a chance. But if they are not willing or able to do that, then the long term unemployed should have Legal Recourse for being kept out of jobs simply because of their longterm unemployment. I want to point out several of our callers noted they are in their 50s. Ng the longterm older longterm unemployed, older ones are disproportionately represented. Some in the 50s, i do not think of them as being an older worker, but Many Employers do. In that situation, they are facing a double whammy of being unemployed and being an older worker. There is no question age discrimination is alive and well in the workforce. We are talking with christine about federal unemployment, longterm benefits, expiring on december 31 unless congress acts. It is not part of the budget deal announced last night. James of texas, what do you think . I have a couple of questions for christine. If you consider the people who have quit looking, it is almost 12 , and i was wondering, if she could tell us in specific terms and not generalities such as, we need to learn to create more jobs, how big lies in almost 12 million or more people to compete for the same number of jobs that are out there is going to solve the unemployment problem in this country when you are increasing the number of people looking for work. I would also like to know who it is that funds her project. Is it the taxpayers, lobbyists got the weirdest her group had her money get their money from. I would be happy to answer the second question first. Like most nonprofit organizations, our funding comes from a range of foundations and small private employers and a lot of individual donors and we have a lobbyist on staff. We are not any different from any other nonprofit organization. Question about how legalizing undocumented workers will make a difference, it will make a huge difference. That is because as long as there are 11 Million People or whatever the estimates are now, in this country who are working without legal status, they are very vulnerable to exploitation and abuse. Very vulnerable to being forced to work at sub minimum wages, it and working conditions that are illegal in terms of safety and health, sexual harassment, and the like. Exerciseafraid to their right to complain because if they do so, they risk being deported. This has an impact across the entire workforce. It is not just on those individuals. It also pulls down wages and working conditions for everybody. If we legalize the status of undocumented workers and the fear of retaliation is removed and they can enforce their rights and their advocates can enforce their rights, this will help lift rate lift wages. Lifting wages will create jobs because it will boost peoples capacity to spend. This is an economy based on consumption. The more people spend, the more jobs will be created. We will be better off as a nation if we legalize undocumented workers. We will go to our line for republicans. Ed, unemployed. Caller good morning. The discussion has gotten around to what i wanted to talk about. Inm caught in a squeeze terms of expiring benefits at the end of this month and age discrimination. You are talking about people in the 50s. I am 61. I have been out of work for a couple of years. Due to corporate downsizing. It is girl out there. Aally brutal if you are in certain age category. I am out of the point where i can collect Social Security. But, that is just the facts on the ground. As you pointed out and your guest pointed out, the longterm unemployed, i have to believe when she said they are disproportionately represented by older workers. Right. The reality is, older workers, workers over 40 and 45, are less likely to lose their job in the first instance in a downturn. When they do lose their jobs, they are more likely to become longerterm unemployed. That is a function of age discrimination, a functioning part of, because of their tenure in the workforce, they are more likely to have higher wages, considerable it. So, there may be a mismatch between what employers think they are willing to do and what they are in fact willing to do. There are a variety of reasons why it is tougher for older and unemployed workers to become reemployed. This is a real crisis. One of our witnesses last week was 67 years old erie he is a skilled electrician and has an doing it for 40 years. It is the heart and soul of who he is. He loves his work and does it well. He is old enough to be on Social Security, but he wants to be working. But it is very difficult for over for older workers, including very skilled older workers, to get new jobs. We are talking with the executive director for the National Limit law project. Previously, the director of Public Policy from 20012000 eight. Randi, you are up next for our guest in wisconsin. Republican caller. Hi. Caller good morning. You are talking about the jobs and stuff and to get these people off unemployment. Christine, you should be in the oval office in front of president obama saying, line. Opened up the pipeline. Pipeline. Open up the thesaid at the beginning of program, if somebody is off on unemployment for a long time, employers are likely not to hire you. You read the article of what of what paul of what rand paul said nu said he was wrong. You have to give up your cell phones and cable tvs so you can be out looking for a job. So many things you could be you areher than what doing up here, complaining. We will get a response. Assessment ofdys the unemployed and the choices they are making is just completely wrong. We heard from someone last night who said, i will lose my home. Unemployment is the number one cause of mortgage foreclosures. We heard from one of the witnesses last week who literally just a day or two before the hearing had finally gotten a job after applying for hundreds. She said she was on the verge of losing her home. Two orare not having three color televisions and expensive data plans and the like on Unemployment Insurance. They are trying to hold on by their fingernails to their homes and health care, which theyre having to provide on their own because they are no longer employed, keeping their kids in school, to having adequate nutrition for themselves and their children. They are trying to get by. They are not living in the lap or being unwilling to forego things they do not necessarily need. You have to have a phone to look for a job. You want more information, you can go to their website or follow them on twitter. Christine owens, thank you very much. We will continue our conversation about the budget deal announced last night with senator ron johnson, republican of wisconsin. Marcos mother jones magazine will be here to talk about gun deaths among children aged 12 and younger since the sandy hook shootings one year ago. First, a news update from cspan radio. A military partnership is taking place in the middle east. A summit meeting in kuwait was wrapped up by agreeing to establish a joint military command, paving the way for tight security coordination as iran pursues outreach efforts. The News Agency Reports the military partnership was one of several initiatives agreed to. Back here on capitol hill today, the senate plans to consider president obamas choice of u. S. Court join the of appeals for district columbia. The Associated Press says her nomination was freed for a vote after democrats changed the luster rose last month. Senate approved two of the president posses nominees. Patricia was confirmed on the search it circuit. The senate against their day today at 2 00 p. M. Eastern. Watch live Senate Coverage on c span two. He set the house comes in this just in, time has named pope francis the 2013 time person of the year. Who editor, nancy gibbs, met pope francis in rome last a newwrites, rarely has player on the world stage captured so much attention so quickly. Those are the latest headlines on cspan radio. This is a train depot. Trains. St holding in you can imagine the hustle and bustle of all the activities here in the campaign. You had tables and desks and phones going off and letters coming in and out of the area. She was helping run the campaign from this small building. This is where Rosalynn Carter helped organize the tea the peanut brigade. It was an offshoot of the high Neighbor Campaign technique used during his run for governor. It was basically a way to get the word out about jimmy carter using volunteers, going doorto door, shaking hands, giving out literature, and spreading the word. It was a method so effective it helped get the presidency. See it saturday on cspan at 7 00 p. M. Eastern and monday, we will start our encore visitation of season two, Edith Roosevelt to grace coolidge. Host we want to welcome back to our table senator ron johnson, a republican of wisconsin and a member of the House Budget Committee. The hill newspapers as the budget deal is sealed. It . Guest n off on the deal is well struck between the chairmans. Both good people trying to come to an agreement. What we did in terms of the actual Conference Committee is we held a couple of hearings, which were also somewhat useful. The first hearing were opening statements. You generally wont roll your. Yes to shut down the government. I think the federal government does enough harm to our economy that was the first thing i think the chairman got from that first hearing, to try to do something that will prevent a Government Shutdown so we do not harm the economy further. A second hearing, we actually had the Congressional Budget Office director the process of that meeting was, how do you define the problem. To get a simple answer to one question. I tried it with treasury secretary lou and the acting omb director. They have never had it in them to admit the fact it has no value. You have to first of may you have a problem and then properly define it if you are going to move to real solutions. The director finally admitted you have an asset in social trust funds. That is offset by the liability from the treasury department. The federal government has no monetary value. Anyone telling you it is solvent in 2000 2023, it is not. We are already cash negative. Social security will hemorrhage 12. 7 trillion and will pay out more benefits it takes in in the payroll tax and medicare is worse. Guesthost are you a yes or a n . Guest this is brandnew and i want to take a look at it. Operating in good faith to avoid a Government Shutdown. Paul had a problem. Do not have enough votes to just pass a clean resolution of budget control. That is what it looked like to me. I want to look at the real details. I am disappointed we are not able to live by the budget control caps on. You only address the convention congressional area side. Work showing all the government. There is, even the Discretionary Spending accounts. There is a lot of money we could save in the federal government. We do not yet have the will and government to do that. That is other peoples fault. Folks have written a letter to the House Speaker saying, keep this act in place. Go ahead with the next round. Guest we have enormous problems. When i was at the white house coming to areas of agreement, i was looking at this not as a tenyear budget window, which are magically understates the size of the problem, just 30 years. We have a baby boom generation retiring. A demographic problem. Other than the first 7 trillion, somewhere between 56 and 170 trillion dollars of deficit. I am sympathetic with conservatives of the house but i am sympathetic of what paul is trying to do, lets not have a Government Shutdown because longterm, if you will solve our nations problem, it comes with economic growth. But harming the economy and must do everything we can to grow the nations economy. Ofanother house member, part the tea party group, treated this. The only good aspect of the budget deal guest if conservatives are going to finally enact house if that does start saving Social Security and medicare for future generations, we need to be as unified as possible. From my standpoint, i am one of those fiscal conservatives. Going around killing my Powerpoint Presentation to over 10,000 citizens in the state of wisconsin. That is a lot of citizens. I do not sit sugarcoat the problem. Enormous financial problems. The only way we can actually start solving these is we need get into a position where we can enact them. We will not do it if we are dividing ourselves. The other side refuses to knowledge the problem. Im closed doors, president obama admits the high the problem with medicare is for will getlar, people three dollars in benefits. Publicly, he says medicare just requires modest reforms. I am sorry, a program thats million a day, 1 trillion 10 years in the future, takes in a dollar and spend three, that is what we are dealing with in washington. One style of the aisle refuses to knowledge the problem and will not work with us. Any of the negotiations, what is the first thing you hear out of the democrats mouth . It is off the table. It sounds like it is not like it is politicallys popular to talk about these programs that we acknowledge the problem and we are willing to work with anybody in good faith to solve longterm basis. We do not have the willing partner on the other side. Or republicans willing to put tax revenue on the table . Guest they have already gotten it. I am disappointed in millions of americans realize they are not being protected and it is not affordable. He had about 1 trillion in tax increases in the healthcare law. The fiscal, with cliff deal, yet another 700 billion. In the budget control act, we got about 2. 1 train dollars of spending restraint. We have done one simpsonbowles. Have you noticed it is not enough . The long addressing term deficit. It is spending. If you want revenue government, grow your economy. I know have i have thrown in the numbers. Of thehe trough recession, when revenue really declined quite a bit. Today, this year, in fiscal year 2013, the one that just ended, we raised 669 billion more in economic growth. Per year. There was no tax increase. That was just economic growth. The tax increase, president obama got the fiscal with 10 years. Average out, 60 billion. Economic growth, i think you can prove, is 10 times more punishve than trying to success, which i think arms economic growth. The budget deal ups spending and perpetuates waste and takes pressure off of government to be more efficient and effective. Tom has done a phenomenal to working with the office really identify areas of duplication. Different jobs Training Programs spending 31 billion per year. You would save tens of billions of dollars doing that. He has identified all kinds of waste and duplication in the Defense Department. Know exactly where thomas coming from and i agree if we could just establish the cap. It takes two to tango. We have one side of the aisle that just want to spend money. They are not worrying about the longterm fiscal situation. We are mortgaging the future of our kids. Shares, 54,000. It will be 75,000. Your pretty young. I cautioned young people, you want to add 150,000 for your parents share and 150,000 your grandparents share, because the debt is not going away and it will be on your back in the backs of your kids and grandkids. You have not decided how you will vote on the budget deal. When will you make the decision . Guest we will see what harry reid does. I do not think the house needs a whole lot of advice from senators. I respect the position paul is in. Desk this is deal not his solution. He has shown it. He had to try to negotiate something. I will let the house do their work and we will see what happens. Sympathetic with both sides, but i want to look at the details. we are learning the House Rules Committee is likely to take this up today at some point. The budget deal to get it on the floor as well as with a three month extension of the medicare reimbursements for doctors. Greg is a firstyear for the senator in kansas city, missouri. A republican caller. Hi. You are on the air. Good morning. Yes. There is overwhelming evidence proving [inaudible] told you be real willing review the evidence and adjust concerns echo demanding a new investigation . This audio faded in and out. There is a group of people out there that do not think the investigation of the 9 11 terrorist attacks with adequate enough by the federal government. Do you have an opinion about that . We pretty well know what happened there. Im willing to take a look at the evidence to matter what the situation is. One of the true rules of the house is robust oversight of the federal government. From my standpoint, i think we know what happened in 9 11. I am concerned about our National Security, part of the problem the house is dealing with, as well. I know the white house is concerned about the defense to permit. These threats are real. I am pretty highly sympathetic with people in armed services. Oncern about the readiness. There are plenty if managed properly, we can have an effective defense that addresses the security situation and Security Issues facing the nation in a more costeffective way. He referred to this is the 3 billion in automatic cuts that will were restored under the budget deal, saving the pentag n pentagon and some domestic programs. Defense between we plus of other Discretionary Spending and that is really where you can find it. Both accounts, you can find real duplication with proper management, with prioritize appropriations. Of the untold story. Senator harry reid in control of the senate over the last two years has not passed even one appropriation bill. That is the primary role of congress to authorize government activity and funded. In the senate, we have not a one not passed appropriations bill. Lets go to karen, a democratic caller. Caller i set i think senator johnson needs to go back to where the problem began. That is when president bush was has as hasand been said, they put the wars on the credit card, the Medicare Part d on the credit card, and them getting their increase in revenue, no, they finally let the bush tax credits expire. So i think he needs a reality check and instead of them having their dog and pony shows, which i watched cspan all the time, they need to legislate. Guest i was not here then. I was back in wisconsin running a factory land providing jobs. I understand numbers. We have increased our debt by six joy in dollars in just the last five years. The wars in total cost 1. 5 trillion. Are they a part of that . Again, that is over 12 or 13 years. Are they part of that increase deck for it deficit . I am taking a look at, here is the situation today and it is utterly unsustainable. Our projections, and we have gone to budget experts and outside think tanks, they said we are still too low, what we are shown 170 in deficit spending. 28 chili dollars the second decade and 71 trillion the third act aid. Let me put that in perspective. The total net private asset base of the United States today is 96 joy in dollars. So that is a problem there heidi 6 trillion. So that is a problem 96 trillion. Is a problem. We have to get serious. I am a problem solver. The first step in solving any problem, it you have to admit you have one. There are far too few people here in washington willing to acknowledge it. You have to do find it and that is what im doing with a 30 year budget window. Independent caller. Caller two quick questions and one, and most people are asking themselves right now. Yesterday, one congressman ryan when commerce and when congressman ryan they were going to take pensions from retirees. Ilita i picked up on that late and it has not come out yet but it will. I would like to know why. And i want to know why they were chosen versus how come the pensions of the retired federal politicians,ke the like the senators and the congressman who are retired, how come they are not taking from their pension . Thanks for the question. I am concerned about that as well. Conservative, the defense of the nation is number one. The finest among us who stepped up to the plate, we need to support those folks in training when they are on the field and when they come home. Can you explain what is in this deal . Is happening is apparently a little more contribution to pensions of people in the military, but also for new federal employees. Hearings. Ld there are multiple studies showing federal workers on average are compensated higher than private sector people. That is a problem. We all want to make sure any publicsector worker is fairly complicated compensated. In business, you learned the concept of benchmarking against competitors. We have to do the same thing to the federal government. In terms of total cost for benefits for federal workers, 34,000 range for public officials, and for private sector workers, it is midteens. 15,000. That is out of whack. Startedportant we dressing that. The political realities of the negotiations, apparently, as paul would have liked to have addressed the overall federal employees situation, but, what democrats ares, not that supportive of defense spending and there will continue to be cuts in defense spending coming from the Defense Department in terms of dealing with their budget. Budgetary caps. This is one recommendation they had. The negotiators decided to go the Defense Departments recommendations on that one. Host when you look at key dates for budget negotiations, it looks like they may meet the december 13 deadline here of coming up with a deal. The house and senate go into holiday recess next week. The current continuing resolution expires the 15th. A secondyear of sequestration would begin that day as well. February 7 is one of the key dates where the government hits the next debt ceiling. A tweet guest i do not believe so. The estimates are we will basically raise 80 of all federal dollar expenditures through revenue. Expenditures already covered by revenue. Social security is more than 20 of federal revenue. We have Social Security trust fund bonds. Have no value in terms of monetary. Here is one area they actually have value. If you do not raise the debt ceiling, they are presented prevented. They can sell those bonds to fund Social Security. There is no reason at all to ever default on any obligation. Certainly, a true debt default is just defaulting on our debt. There is no chance of that happening whatsoever. There has been an awful lot of scaremongering. Part of thee on the administration of this president. We should not do that. Here are pieces of legislation prioritize spending. If, at some moment, when the president comes to congress thatg for the authority, lets describe what an increase in debt means. Robust debateve a and ought to hire a ties spending. That would be one ease of legislation. Another when it comes to continuing resolutions, if you do not have appropriation bills passed, there is a great piece of legislation. He and the Government Shutdown act. I would love to see the house passed past that. Pass that. Give 190 days to come up with an approach the appropriations bill to fund it. If not, drop one percent. It is not a pretty ross s but a fiscal discipline and when we are bankrupting our nation, we thisa fiscal discipline on political process in washington. Sea of tranquility wants to know this i am a manufacturer. I really do believe in process. You have to have a good process if you want to produce a product right now the process is utterly broken here. What i would have done this is my proposal for the last funding fight we had. House leadership and said, what we ought to do is pass a continuing resolution in july, asked them for a oneyear delay of health airlock Health Care Law. Buteeds to be repealed lets ask for a delay. We look like political geniuses had that been our approach, rather than to force them to defund. Having it in my mind the democrats probably would not support that, the final point was, the and Government Shutdown at. Government shutdown act. I wouldve had the house passed the automatic shutdown bill to get by these Funding Crisis ease and put a lot of pressure on the appropriators, on the process to actually do their job. Have not passed an appropriations bill in the senate in two years. Most americans do not understand it is impossible to convey the dysfunctions here in washington dc. Host republican line, bill. Caller thank you for taking my call. I am really concerned about the unemployment as well as the cut that will bring back. That will bring back. Lets say, for instance, there is the largest retail dealer in the United States out there and they are adding all of these machines that they do not have to pay for the employee and they do not have to pay for the insurance and the race and the Retail Industries are going sky high and everything else. You could buy an apple pie that was at last years price, one dollar more in one year. Prices are going up on everybody else. Being restored. How will they affect the Retail Industry today for employment and stuff like that . They are getting away with a lot of that, taking five or six people off the line and maybe a Department Store or something. And not having to pay the taxes. They do not have to pay the insurance. The wage for the person, whoever they are. Guest thanks for the question. In general, when you have got the federal government through the Federal Reserve trying to manage monetarily this gross fiscal mismanagement, so we are keeping industries artificially low, so what you are doing is making capital incredibly cheap. That is not a good thing. Thing but itood has not worked. What it does do is when you make capital cheap, it makes it easy for businesses to move toward robotics. When you have other Government Policies that increase the cost labor, one of the things continue to increase unappointed benefits or make it difficult employers to actually Unemployment Benefits or make it difficult for employers to actually pull their weight. You have all these things for workers that make it difficult and it is a disincentive for people to hire people because they realize once you have got them on the payroll, it is difficult to get rid of people that are not doing a good job. We have to make sure we make america an attractive place for Business Investment and expansion and job creation. That now, we are not doing without Regulatory Burden, high tax host well hear from sara. Go ahead. Been senator, so ive im a libertarian by Party Affiliation and philosophy. I magerd in economics many years ago and ive kind of been in economics all my life. Ive also been interested in monitoring our mobtry system and trying to understand how the fiat Monetary System works. I came across a theory also called as functional been fi professor named ray who has written probably the most recent writer on this idea. You say youre an accountant youve been in manufacturing, you seem to understand finance a lot better than i do. While this is somewhat disconcerting to my world view, i think its something you need to understand about how a fiat Monetary System actually works. I cant put any holes in this thing and it helps explain things in a much more realistic way than the way weve been dealing with finance. All our finance laws are based around hard money which is something i kind of like but you cant apply hard money to a fiat Monetary System. So i would like you to look into this. I would like to hear what you have to say. First, its incredibly complex as you pointed out there. There arent truthfully that many people who completely understand. Its all theory, based on whats happened professor in th things do always do change. From my standpoint i wish the Federal Reserve only had a single mandate, which is preservation of monetary stability. We should really be looking at prices. One of the issues that the Federal Reserve has been grappling with is deflation, which is probably more harmful than actually inflation. But in dealing with it in printing all this money we certainly enable the fiscal mismanagement and create asset bubbles. We did in the housing market. Take a look at right now the stock market. Im not saying thats a bubble right now. Take a look at valuations, probably not that far off recovering from where we are. But the Federal Reserve has got a tough job. Partly due to the fact that he has this dual mandate. I wish they would solely concentrate on just the stability of the monetary value of america. I think that would simplify their task a whole lot. Going back to 2 budget deal. Caller thats generally the way washington works. Its always easy to lets spend today and pay for it tomorrow. If you are doing Structural Reforms thats why i want to get into the detail. This is how certain are these reforms . Thats a tradeoff im willing to take a look at and consider because that really is the longterm driver. That is the mandatory programs. Weve got to reform them because theyre unsustainable. So if you can trade true struct ral reform for the mandatory Spending Program and part of the political compromise you have to make, thats reality. We control, conservatives, republicans control the house we dont control the senate and presidency. So if youre going to accomplish something, make a step in the right direction. I think thats what paul would argue now. From his standpoint this is better than nothing. Thats an open question. I have to consider. Are we better off just sticking to the budget control act caps and forcing that fiscal discipline . I guess i sort of tend to that. But i understand what paul is trying to do here. We have got to start moving the conversation toward the definition of the problem, it really is the mandatory program. Weve got to get democrats to acknowledge the problem. Host sounds like you might be leaning in the no category. Guest ive got to see what harry reid does to it. Let the house work and when it comes to the senate thats finally deciding. Host from twitter. Guest i would consider it a fee. And if youre going to raise revenue in the federal government, user fees is not a bad way to do it. If you never fly in an airplane, should you have to pay the fees that make flying that airplane possible . I think thats a legitimate argument. The same way with infrastructure spending, the highway trust fund. It one of the functions of government. Who should pay for that . If you dont own a car should you really have to pay for the infrastructure . I think you should because you need highways to deliver food to your grocery store. So in general, i would tend more toward user fees assessed to the people utilizing the service and certainly if Airline Traffic is one of those things, it pays for the t. S. A. Security and thats a whole different subject whether thats effective. Host on health care. Ahead of todays hearing with h. H. S. Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, were learning about new numbers this morning. It says that the federal Health Insurance marketplace quad rupe 8d in the month of november with the number of enrolees. Is it working . Well, it should have been working from day one. Only the federal government could take 31 2 years to spend almost 1 billion and not have a functioning website. Ive heard experts say the type of site that health care. Gov is would have cost between 5 10 million in the private sector. I believe those figures. Whats going to happen not only have millions of americans lost their health care, those individuals on the individual market. Again that was a massive political deception, massive political fraud saying you can keep your Health Care Plan and doctor, they had to know it. They were being dishonest or disengaged or totally unaware of what this Health Care Laws effect would be. Once we get the website up and running and it should be up and running what youre going to find is employers, when they have their plans renewed and start seeing these 40 increases, if their employees now have a functioning exchange to purchase insurance from, youll see employers starting to drop employerbased coverage in the tens of millions. Thats where youre seeing these estimates of 80 to 100 million americans losing their employersponsored care being forced to purchase inshunes through the exchange. Thats what it was always designed. Get everybody on the government system. You might qualify for subsidies but it will no longer be taxadvantaged. Thats what we really need to do as we start moving toward real free market reforms obamacare is going to fail. One thing we have to do at a minimum is equalize the tax treatment for individuals who purchase their insurance and those who get it through their employer. Host according to these new numbers, the administration has not changed their goal of getting 7 Million People into the marketplace coverage by the end of open enrollment in march 2014. Let me go to d. N. A. , democratic dan. Caller i have a couple comments i would like to make. One is on the Health Care Law he claims it needs to be repealed and what not. I wish the republicans would have said the same thing about part d, the prescription deal that was a big sellout to the drug companies. I mean, they didnt have to negotiate with the government. They could charge what they want. If you ask me, that was fraud and a give away right there. Host senator. Guest first, i wasnt here and cant say i disagree with you. Right now what were seeing wisconsin for example, if youre a 27yearold male, your premiums are going to increase by the 124 . If youre a female 27 years old theyre going up about 78 . So patient protection, Affordable Care act is doing neither. Were seeing millions of people lose their coverage and we do not bend the cost curve down we dramatically increase it. Because weve mandated all these coverages which automatically drive the cost of health care up. From my standpoint what we should do is try and do everything we can to preserve freedom and choice in health care. Its a bill im working on right now. Relatively simple elements. One thing we should immediately do is repeal all these mandated coverages. Give people the freedom to purchase whatever Health Insurance plan they want. If they want to buy obamacare plan, fine, let them. I dont think many would because those plans are dramatically more expensive than what happened just which was available just this year. Under the private sector insurance. Again, our system wasnt perfect but was a whole lot better than going to be under obamacare. Host let me go to republican caller. Caller thanks for taking my call. I have one general observation and then another more specific point. The general observation is that i think democrats at the ballot box they depend on increasing government dependence. So they dont have incentives for reducing that. Second, is more of a specific point about how the phrase tax revenue is used. You were asked earlier, senator, whether republicans would put tax revenue on the table. That is an ambiguous question that also biases the conversation in favor of democrats. Tax revenue is always on the table. We dont have to get republicans to put it on the table. The question is whose policies will bring in more tax revenue . What we need to talk about are tax rates. When you were asked that question about tax revenue what was meant was are you willing to raise tax rates. Guest i understand. Caller but thats a different question than tax revenue. Guest and of course thats what i tried to point out, republicans realize we need more revenue in the federal government because were not living within our means. But the best way to raise revenue is through economic growth. Thats what i was trying to point out. From 20092013 weve increased revenue in the federal government by 669 billion without a tax increase, with economic growth. So we need to do everything we can to grow the economy. I think its relatively simple what we should do, weve got to reduce the Regulatory Burden which is the cost to comply with regulations, a figure thats larger than all but eight economies in the world. We also need tax reform. And we need to utilize our resources. If we do it on public lands that would result in royalty revenue to the federal government as well. Theres commonsense things we can do to make america an attractive place for businesses that would raise more revenue than raises tax rates which punishes the success which is a disincentive. Host a tweet here. You said at the top this was negotiated between paul ryan and patty murray. And its going to go right to the house floor and the senate floor without the committees looking at it. Guest the answer is you cant. Theres no doubt about it. Its hard to convey how dysfunctional washington, d. C. Is. The power primarily resides in the chairman of committees and their staffs. And for example, fiscal cliff deal, i think we got the final language of that at 1 36 in the morning we had to vote on it at 1 deln 39 in the morning. So, no, im not here defending this place. I came here to try to limit the federal government. Theres my message. Believe what your eyes and ears are telling you about the federal government. It is dysfunctional, it is broken, its ineffective. With that on the table ask yourself, do you really want the federal government to continue to grow . Do you want its influence and control over your life to increase . Do you really want it taking oifer your Health Care Decisions . I think thats a monumently bad decision. Until we get more americans electing other officials here that have that same viewpoint, the government is going to continue to be broken and have very harmful effects on our economy and on individual americans blives. So the house was likely to take this up this week, the senate could follow suit next week. And we will see how the votes happen then. On some other issues that i want to get your take on. Yesterday, the senate voted to approve mel watt to head up the federal Housing Finance agency and then patricia ann millet will be a federal appeal judge. Guest that was power grab by senator harry reid and i think president obama fully supported to it. Although they were opposed to it when they were in the minority. President obama feels probably the only thing he can do is through the regulatory agencies, basically regulate through legislation. He needs the d. C. Circuit court that will ratify those regulations. So kind of katy bar the door. Im highly concerned about the regulatory state as it currently exists much less the direction were going to be moving over the next three years. Thats what its about is be able to pass the d. C. Court so president obama can jam through these regulations and its not going to be helpful to the economy by any stretch of the madge nace. Host you also sit on the Foreign Affairs committee. So the top democrat senator tim johnson of South Carolina who heads the Banking Committee said he will now hold off on introducing a new round of sanctions against iran. A good idea . Guest i dont think so. We should have pass add more stringent set of sanctions. I hear all these things about crippling sanctions. Theyre really not. Irans economy is about 500 billion. The sanctions themselves had maybe about a 10 effect on that. What we should have done is strengthen the sanctions until iran came to us and really begged, ok, uncle, we give in. Were going to give up our Nuclear Weapons program. Which is what this is all about. Theyre not doing that right now. Im not satisfied by any stretch of the imagination. Host theres also another headline. What do you think . Guest the president of the United States in those type situations, those are pretty big symbolic gestures. And certainly if i would have been president of the United States, i would not have done that. It signals things that i dont believe he should have done. Now, as a normal human being sure you shake peoples hands. But when youre president of the United States, you have to understand what a gesture means when you bow to dictators, when you shake the hands of dictators when you pat them on the back. Thats a problem. And i think the president of the United States needs to be fully aware of what those normal minor gestures mean to regular people but for the president of the United States it actually means something and i dont think that was a good idea. Host senator ron johnson, thank you for weighing in on these issues and talking to our viewers. Guest i enjoyed it. Host coming up next, our series continues with mother jones investigation into the number of children killed by guns since the handy hook shootings one year ago. Well take that up next after this news update from cspan radio. Its 9 17 eastern time. The ashiana airlines captain who crashed a boeing 777 in july is telling investigators in his statement that he was stressed out and very concerned about attempting a visual approach because the runways automatic Warning Systems were out of service due to construction. The report was released earlier at the start of a daylong National Transportation safety Board Hearing into that accident. The jet crashlanded after approaching low and slow in an accident that left three people dead and more than 150 people injured. And more reaction to the budget deal reached by negotiators yesterday. Tom coburn speaking earlier on msnbc says the agreement fails to address wasteful spending. That is inflating the federal debt. He went on to say that he cant support the deal because it doesnt go far enough towards deficit reduction and doesnt attack duplication in federal programs. Turning to the Health Care Law, h. H. S. Secretary Kathleen Sebelius in a blog post earlier says she is asking for an investigation into the administrations botched rollout of health care. Gov. She says she is asking the departments Inspector General to look into the contracting process, management, and performance and payment issues that may have contributed to the flawed launch. Meanwhile, a report released this hour says nearly 1. 2 Million People have selected a new health plan. The announcement coming as secretary sebelius heads to capitol hill to testify before the house energy and commerce committee. Or can hear live cover here hear it live on cspan 2. This is the oldest building here in plains. If you can imagine in 1976, the hustle and bustle of all the activities here in the campaign, you would have tables and desks and phones and letters going off. And ms. Rosen was here helping run the campaign from this small building. This is where Ross Lynn Carter helped organize the peanut brigade, an offshoot off the high neighbor technique used for his run for governor, basically a way to get the word out. It was a method so effective that it helped him get elected to the presidency. Host in our last hour of the washington journal, on wednesday we take a look at recent magazine articles as part of our spotlight on magazines series. Today were taking a look at a new investigation put out by mother jones looking at the number of children killed by guns since newtown one year ago. Joining us from San Francisco is mark, Senior Editor. Lets begin with whats the number . How many children have been killed by guns since the sandy hook shootings . The number is at least 194. We gathered this data from looking at local and National News reports over the last 12 months. That was the number of cases we were able to find. But we also know that understates the problem. Many of these cases never appear in the media at all. O its at least that number, 194. Host how were these children killed . Guest there is a mix of the type of cases. Its roughly split between homicides and accidents. Its slightly more homicides than accidents. But the accidents in particular are striking because many of these cases are occurring in the childrens own homes. And theres some homicides in the homes, too. Thats one of the most striking patterns we found in this data set, 127 of these 194 childs deaths had taken place in their own homes. Host and 72 either pulled the trigger themselves or were shot by another child. Guest thats right. So in many of these cases, you have children getting their hands on unsecured firearms and playing with them or pointing them at other kids and accidentally shooting and killing themselves or others. Host what does that tell you . Guest well, i think its a pretty clear indication of a problem that a lot of gun owners are not storing their firearms safely. And this is an issue thats discussed quite a bit in the debate over guns and gun regulations. Whether or not there should be guidelines in the law requiring gun owners to store their firearms in a safer manner. And i think this is the reason. Although, i should add that this is a fairly poorly understood problem. There isnt great data on gun deaths in general and on child gun deaths in particular. And it would seem that if people understood the scope of this problem a little bit better that there might be more of an effort perhaps to regulate what gun owners are required to do in terms of keeping guns stored safely in their homes. Host why isnt there great data on this . How were you able to find the data that you found . Guest we looked at news reports. The question of deficient data is an interesting one. I think its been fairly widely reported that research into gun violence is an area where there hasnt been a lot of clear work done, especially in recent years. And part of the reason for that is that the government, the federal government is essentially not allowed to research it. The gun lobby, the National Rifle association and others, have pressured congress for decades now to essentially stop researching the gun violence and defund it and as a result of that we dont have great federal studies of this issue. Host what was the did you get a response from the National Rifle association and her pro gun groups guest not yet to this particular study. But certainly in general to the gun violence reporting that ive done at mother jones weve heard quite a bit from that side of the equation. And theres a lot of pushback on what we do. But the guns issue is an extremely emotional and polarizing one and the politician of it tend to be somewhat disconnected from the reality of it. My role as a journalist is to gather information and gather data and report on facts. And thats what weve really tried to do with this project o ill lume nate the problem of violence. We did a year Long Research into the mass shooting. I think that people on all sides of this issue, gun owners and gun control advocates alike would agree unanimously that we dont want to see two and threeyearold children pulling triggers of guns and killing themselves and killing each other. So the first thing you need to do with a problem in order to stop it is to understand it. And in order to understand it you need better information and better data. Thats part of what we try to do with this project. Host what has the nra said about your investigations . Guest well, i dont know that i want to get into sort of repeating their arguments about what weve done because i dont think that they hold much water, to be honest. But essentially they try to downplay typically downplay the issue of casualties from guns and the danger to children. Theyve done that repeatedly. Youll hear things thrown around like children are in more danger from choking on their dinner and things like that. But the data that they cite ironically is the federal data that is somewhat lacking on this issue, that in a sense they helped create because of defunding government research. So if you start to dig deeper into the issue of gun violence and look at the degree to which it is harming people in our country, you can see that its a serious issue. Ive talked to a number of pediatricians for this story and they characterize it as an almost routine problem. They see this day in and day out, injuries and deaths to children from guns. Thats not a message that the n. R. A. Wants to see out there. Its not good for business. Host we have a tweet. Guest thats a good question. I dont have an answer to it. But i can say from the data set we worked with from this year that the majority of the guns that are used in the accidents appear to be owned by gun owners who have them legally. Eople who have consealed carry permits and own long guns and for hunting and those types of things. But its not clear. We werent able to gather that level of specific information in terms of legal versus illegal guns in the equation. Host and we have a tweet. Guest well, i think thats a question thats up to policy makers. To some degree it seems like its an issue of education of gun owners. But the two tend to overlap. For example, there is research that shows that medical doctors talking with their patients about the risks of firearms tends to increase the level of safety that gun owners exercise in their homes. And yet we have an example of the battle over gun regulations going right to that. In florida in 2011 there was a law passed the socalled docks versus glocks law which forbids doctors to talking to patients about firearms. So you see the political struggles over gun control and the need for better education. Host were talking with mark follman at mother jones. 194 kids killed since the sandy hook shootings one year ago. An investigation that the magazine did into gun accidents, homicides and suicides that fatally involved children. Well go to thomas in pennsylvania, independent caller. Caller my question is this. In all these discussions about gun control, i hear no one talking about punishment. A hand gun does not kill anyone. Its the Person Holding the hand gun. Ive been a gun owner for over 50 years. Im a vet. I use my gun in a responsible way. But no one talks about the punishment. I believe we have 22,000 rules right now regulating our gun ownership. One of them passed in the 80s was if you own a hand gun in a felony it was a mandatory federal prison term of five years. No one has ever received that. Host lets talk about liability. Guest well its an important question in this discussion. With this investigation in particular with the child gun deaths there was some pretty stark data that we found which is that in the majority of these cases in the accidents, very few adults were had been held criminally libel. Of these 72 cases in which children pulled the trigger killing themselves and or others, we were only able to find four in which adults or guardians were held criminally responsible. Thats about 6 . So it seems pretty clear that the law in this situation is not doing much to respond. Host you also found at least 52 deaths involved a child handling a gun left unsecured. Guest thats right. And that goes even more directly to laws that would regulate the negligent storage of firearms. There are only a handful of states that have strong laws covering negligence with respect to children and guns. Theyre 14 and the District Of Columbia has these laws. But even so its not clear that the laws are in use much. We couldnt find more than a smal handful of prosecutions from the year in these cases. Host of the 72 kids that pulled the trigger killing themselves or others, three were by suicide, two by homicide, three unclear. Nd 64 accidents. By gun accidents. And then when you take a look at the 52 cases where adults left guns unsecured, of those 48 were gun accidents, one was a homicide, two were suicides, and one unclear. Lets go to john in new jersey. Caller good morning. I just want to just a couple of headlines. That would be they said 194 kids were killed. Where were their parents . Number one. I think we should get some responsibility there. You dont know what your kid is doing in this room . Theres guys walking in with black coats, hats, guns and all that. Where are are their parents . How many kids are starting to take drugs now in this country . Not how many are getting killed by guns but how many are taking drugs . Host and nick tweets in. Guest well, so that sentiment is a fairly common response ive seen to the investigations weve done on the gun violence. Certainly we have multiple types of problems in our society, social issues. But those are different issues. I think its to downplay gun violence in that way is it begs the question, well, are we going to consider this a problem or not . I think the intention of those kinds of statements is to say, well, thats less relevant because there are fewer gun deaths than say Car Accidents. But the fact is we have a lot of gun deaths and injuries in the United States around 30,000 people a year die from guns in this country. And hundreds of children are killed and thousands more are injured and hospitalized. Thats what the data that we do have so far tells us. Thats the significant problem. And its a problem that far exceeds any other affluent developed country in the world. Theres no other country that has this level of gun violence. Host how did you define children . What ages are these kids . Guest this study looked at ages 12 and under, kids is the and under. Host so these are not teenagers. Guest if you add teenagers, the numbers go up quite a bit. So we did include teens in terms of kids getting their hands on guns and pulling the trigger. We included in that set, in that study kids ages 1317. So we looked at minors in terms of kids getting their hands on guns but the deaths are all kids 12 and under. And the average age of the victims is 6, the same age of the kids who died in sandy hook and newtown. Host do you know the race of the kids . Guest that is something we did not look at categorically. As i say in the story on mother jones, one of the problems with our study or one of the limitations of it is that in many cases the specific details are unclear and thats because the media barely registers a lot of these cases. Theyre just a blip on the local news media raid dar, a couple paragraphs and thats it. Sometimes the details arent there. Anecdotally i can tell you that its mixed. We see these cases in inner cities in tiny rural towns. Its a broad swath of children and its all over the country. These cases happened in 43 states. Host and we have a tweet. Guest there are some cases from those places, from chicago and other cities. But i think its important to point out you do hear that kind of argument, too, this is only a problem we see in our inner cities in chicago and detroit and washington, d. C. Thats not true. What the data shows us is that there are many cases like this happening in small towns in states all over the country. And the problem is actually the worst or was the worst this year in the south. There were 17 of these cases in florida, there were 19 in texas. A number of them in small towns. So its not just the cities where we see this issue. Host we have a tweet. Guest as i was saying earlier, thats a common argument we hear when people look at our investigations. But, look, how many kids dying from guns a year is enough to be relevant . I think thats really the question we would have to ask here. We know that there are at least 200 a year dying, there are thousands more being injured and hospitalized. I would i guess i would challenge those folks who are saying that to talk directly to the parents and families and friends and colleagues of all these people and ask them if its enough people to be relevant. Host do you know the economic background of the kids . Guest again, i would say that anecdotally looking at these cases its mixed. You do tend to see more cases of working class people, poorer people. As i said earlier, i think there is some degree an issue of education in here. Parents not necessarily presumably not understanding the level of danger theyre exposing their Young Children to by having an unsecured gun in the house, leaving a hand gun lying out on a table or in a drawer, loaded, under a mattress. We see a lot of cases like that where kids are just going into a room where a gun is laying around and getting ahold of it. Host this number that you have, the 194, since the sandy hook shootings, were coming up on the anniversary of the newtown shootings. Were any of them have there been another mass shooting involving children . Guest i dont believe theres been one with children of this age. There have been several Mass Shootings since sandy hook in which people have been injured and killed. There have been shooting ram packages in schools. Now, we define mass shooting in our investigation with a certain set of parameters. You hear that term used rather loosely in the media but we used f. B. I. Guidelines and some other criteria to define a mass shooting as four or more People Killed in a public place where the motive seemingly is indiscriminate mass murder. Those types of cases we havent seen another one since sandy hook with children. But there have been shooting ram pags and including in schools where kids have been shot. The most recent example is the case in neved where you had a and this is in our data set because the shooter was a 12yearold. Took a gun to a middle school, shot several people, killed a teacher, wounded students, and then committed suicide. Host the number 194, you put names and faces to those numbers. If you go on line to mother jones. Com, they have an interactive Photo Gallery of the 194 victims. You can see their names, the incident, the age, how it happened, et cetera, if you go to mother jones. Com. American hero tweets in. How do these numbers compare to other countries . Guest well, thats a question i cant answer. I think clearly those are different situations than the one were talking about here. Those are essentially war zones. And no doubt a lot of children are injured and killed in war zones. Its a different kind of a problem. Host can you compare it to other countries . What the data set that you looked at. Guest as i said before, there is research that shows that the u. S. In terms of the gun death rate for children is far higher here than any other affluent western society. There was a study by the Childrens Defense Fund recently that showed that the gun death rate here for children and teens is four times higher than that in canada, which is the second closest country and many other countries are far lower than that. Germany, great britain, the u. S. Is 65 times the rate of child gun deaths. Host well go to amy in michigan. Caller i was just thinking that guns should be manufactured such that you have to log in your Social Security number before anything happens. I mean, or a pin number after your Social Security number. And then otherwise, if you get that, the gun locks, and it doesnt shoot. Thank you. Host mark. Guest well, i think thats an issue that a lot of people have thought about as a way to try to alleviate the gun violence problem, that the idea that we should have stronger controls on how people get weapons and how they use them. Its certainly a relevant question. Theres some i think technological challenges with locking up guns with trigger locks with personal identification on guns but its something that the industry itself has looked into and then stopped. The gun lobby again, the n. R. A. And others when those types of measures are on the table they tend to have a kind of scorched earth approach to stopping them. They see any type of regulation like that as a major threat or at least thats how they describe it to constitutional right to own firearms. So those types of measures have not gotten much traction if at all in most levels of government. Host well go to mark next. Caller good morning. I first want to thank you for clearing up the issue of the ages of those who were in your study. Here in the Baltimore Area we know that many times you can have a 15, 16, or 17yearold who can be a very tough and streethardened gang criminal. So to call those children or kids is a stretch. But anyway, let me get on to the point of pop culture. I think what we need to do as a nation is address the Popular Culture of violence and the Popular Culture of settleling scores by using firearms. When i was growing up, if someone made you angry, you would get into a fist fight with them. Now . No, you take a gun and you shoot that person. Host mark. Guest well, its certainly an important and an interesting question thats come una lot in the debate about gun violence. How and whether pop culture influences the issue. Do video games cause gun violence . Et cetera. Thats a question thats been asked in many ways. We did an extensive story. Again there comes down to research. Theres no defensetive research one way or another showing whether violent video games are actually causing gun violence. But its an interesting question and i think its an important one to ask. Host wall street journal headline this morning on video game impact bills have been stalled. Barbara in west virginia, independent caller. Caller thank you. I would like to ask you about the law that i heard this morning that what you thought about it, about new jersey passed a law to make it mandatory about registering bb guns. And also, i would like to say that it just seems like it keeps getting greater and greater, that the Obama Administration wants to get rid of a lot of our guns and take our freedoms and rights away from us. Its in our constitution. Another thing that was brought up on the tv this morning about him shaking hands with a lot of the evil like cuban leaders, stuff like that. And i just feel that evil shakes hands with evil. I would like to hear your comment. Guest well, ill comment on the guns issue. The lawyer pointing to new jersey, im not familiar with having a chance to look at that yet. But as far as the idea that the Obama Administration is trying to take away everyones guns, theres just really no truth to that. The discussion of guns and gun regulation earlier this year in the wake of the sandy hook massacre was about having a different system for background checks. And its a policy that the population of the country overwhelmingly supports. Polls show that nearly 90 of people at least at that time were in support of having more stringent background checks for gun buyers. And thats what the debate was about. It wasnt about getting rid of guns or taking away peoples guns. There are roughly 300 million guns in this country and theyre not going to be taken away by anyone any time soon. Thats just not reality. Host New York Times report this is morning. Denise, newark, ohio. Caller i just think that no matter what is done or what is said, there can be discussions until people are blue in the face. You cannot legitimate morality from mentality. Now, the morality issue goes to, as long as somebody can make a buck off of a violent video game or a violent movie, theyre going to. And then youve got the mentality issue of it that people that might be mentally unstable feed on this sort of thing. And while it may not have a direct cause it still, it heightens their awareness and i just dont think youre ever going to be able to legitimate either one. Legitimate either one. Host we legislate either one. Host the issue of violent culture in the way that it mixes with people who are mentally unstable is interesting. We did see in our study there are some strong patterns of the people who are carrying out these types of crimes, many of them have Mental Health issues and there are a number of cases where they are consuming violent media or making reference to it. However, its important to note that theres a very complex set of factors playing into the question of motive. And what enables a person to go out and commit a mass shooting and why they do it is a very complicated question. I think we have to be careful about attributing cause to violent media, for example. Host Washington Times reports this morning. Well go to illinois. Independent caller. Caller the lady in hoy. I would like to give you one retired Police Officers perspective. We encourage people, especially the young people, to be afraid and think they can go out in the street and shoot people if they carry a gun they can be available for any threat. Most people have never even been in a fist fight and i taught selfdefense my whole career. And its unfortunate that we have this idea that pulling the gun on somebody is just something you can do naturally. I have taken many officer safety courses and it doesnt work like that. People need to be aware that carrying a gun, youd better be prepared physically and emotionally or youre going to get yourself hurt. I thought you should know that when youre talking to people about this subject. Host youre a former Police Officer . Caller yes, i am. Host ok. Guest well, a related issue there i think is the degree to which its become more and more permissible in the United States to carry guns in public. There have been scores of laws passed in the last several years. Weve documented this also at mother jones. Allowing more and more people to get consealed carry permits and to carry guns and more and more places publicly, in restaurants and bars, on school campuses. So i think thats worth considering in that light, too, that you have a lot more people in the last handful of years Walking Around with guns. With permits. Host does Mental Health play a role in these numbers that were seeing from your investigation and the number of children that are killed . Guest Mental Health specifically isnt a data pont hat we have with this study. There were anecdotally there were some cases where we saw parents who seemingly were quite disturbed whether or not they had Mental Health is an open question. But in the cases that were homicides, one would think that thats a strong possibility. There were 60 cases in which parents shot their own children to death and 50 of them were homicides. In some of the cases that were talking about domestic disputes that turned violent, et cetera, but i cant comment directly to whether or not or to what degree Mental Health played a le in these 194 childrens deaths. Host in Washington Times this morning. So one year after the sandy hook shooting, the white house announcing a boost of 100 for the mentally ill. Lets go to debbie in florida. Caller i was just wondering why cant we make the government more responsible for creating a gun that has a single finger print access that can be registered to the Police Department . Guest well again, that question goes to the issue of regulation. Stricter regulations in terms of who can own guns and how. Its technologically possible to do Something Like that. Politically it seems almost impossible in terms of what weve seen in the past the debate over to what degree the government should be involved in controlling who can get a gun and who cant. Host we have a tweet. Guest well, the n. R. A. Does have an Awareness Program for children. They have had for many years. Where they emphasize Firearm Safety and responsibility for children. However, when it comes to the wider discussion of requiring gun owners to lock firearms up when theyre not in uses to keep them out of the hands of children to store them responsibility, the n. R. A. Isnt having any of that. They see that as an encroachment on gun rights. Thats an interesting paradox that they promote responsible use of guns by kids and teaching kids how to use guns in a way thats safe. On the other hand, they fight vigorously against the datadriven policy ideas that would protect kids more, including a lot of these kids that have died in their own homes when theyve gotten their hands on guns that are just lying around. Host kentucky, republican caller. Youre on the air. Caller the crimes against our children in america have been great such as the one we saw in indiana where the child was brutalized by his parents and buried under a slab of concrete. Do you believe there might be less crimes with guns in the United States if we had more laws to protect our children and the guns that are being used are probably being packed by their parents. And the treatment they are receiving in their home might ave something to do with it. Guest it sounds like the question is whether or not more laws would help stop this issue. Im not sure that i have the answer to that. Im not a policy maker. But i think we do see that this is a significant problem. This is something that happens essentially daytoday. Several times a week on average. And so its the type of issue where if we saw people dying from Car Accidents on a regular basis like we did or a lot of people getting sick from Secondhand Smoke from cigarettes, the policy makers and the government does have options to change regulation to try to tamp down on the problem based on research. Host wyoming, richard. Caller good morning. Ive been out shoveling snow so maybe these have already been covered. But you mentioned the program. Are you in favor of Firearm Safety training for children in school . Guest well, again, im not a policy maker. My job isnt to make policy rememberedations. As a journalist, my job is to gather information and data on issues that we think are important to study. And so looking at the danger to children from firearms is what was at the center of this project. As for what should be done in schools to protect children more, i mean, thats an issue that certainly has been on the table prominently since sandy hook a year ago and theres been an intense debate about whether or not there should be more firearms around schools to help protect kids. The data doesnt support thats a good idea. When you have more firearms around the risk to children goes up. Host mother jones complete add new investigation looking at the number of children killed by guns. Since the sandy hook shootings a year ago. 194 is the number. Thats our spotlight on magazine for you today. Mother jones. Com if you want to read the article. Die an in oregon. Caller good morning. Thank you mother jones. I am a contributor. And i get a lot of information that i would normally not get from your magazine. Im calling about the recklessness that is not being addressed. I hear all these people calling in and saying its the parents and everything. I believe one of the children that was shot is probably in your study and she was with her mother in an Apartment Building on the second story, and somebody with a gun used it as a crutch and it shot through, it went off and shot through the building and killed the little 3 or 4yearold girl. Just a darling little girl. It just made me want to cry. That is because it is so easy to carry a gun around in this and nobodys safe. And people just dont seem to want to address that. Can you comment . Thanks. Guest well, i think that speaks to the basic issue of safety and Public Safety with firearms. We have a lot of firearms in this country. The more firearms you have around the more likely it is that youll have injuries and deaths. Thats just a basic fact. Where the issue gets more complex is that we have a strong gun culture in the United States as well. A lot of people who are responsible gun owners, who exercise their right to own guns and finding the right balance between Public Safety and peoples right to own guns is a challenging problem. Host well go to craig next, iowa. Republican caller. Caller when all is said and done, americans of all ages will still be defenseless sitting ducks because that fivesecond window is not being addressed where the gun perpetrator points his gun and starts to pull the prigger. We need to e trigger. We need to equip so many people with a technology that will totally incapacitate the gun predator and it doesnt have to be a gun. Host mark. Guest im not quite sure what the question is there but i think the notion if i understand correctly, the notion that we need more guns to stop gun violence is well, its lets just say thats an interesting way to look at it. The data show that is when you have more firearms around, the danger to people in the vicinity o to the firearms goes up. Host do we know what types of guns were used in these accidents, homicides, suicides . Guest to a degree we do. There are a number of cases where we dont have that information because either Law Enforcement authorities didnt share it or the news reports didnt cover it. But there were i believe it was 76 cases where hand guns were involved. That was a larger number than long guns. I think there were roughly 30 plus long guns used in these accidents and homicides. So again we see the biggest problem with firearm accidents and deaths in the United States is with hand guns. Thats also true with Mass Shootings. Our investigation at mother jones into that showed very strongly that hand guns were semiautomatic hand guns with high capacity magazines were the weapon of choice for mass shooters. There are a lot of hand guns in the United States. Its roughly half of the 300 million, i think 45 or so. And again, we only have approximations of those types of statistics because firearms are not tracked closely in this country. Its essentially been forbidden by law. So we dont know exactly how many guns and who has them but we know that there are tens of millions of hand guns out there and they are the source of the problem both in terms of accidental deaths for children and Mass Shootings. Theyre the primary weapon. Host mark follma in, the Senior Editor at mother jones. A special report on the rise of Mass Shootings. You can find the reporting on mother jones. Com. Thank you sir for your time. Guest glad to be with you. Host the house is now in for their legislative session. Live coverage here on cspan. T washington, d. C. , december 11, 2013. I hereby appoint the honorable john j. Duncan jr. To act as speaker pro tempore on this day. Signed, john a. Boehner, speaker of the house of representatives