Transcripts For CSPAN Washington Journal 20140811

Should the u. S. That is harder in terms of 2011 . A special line this morning for iraq war veterans. You and keep up with us on your social media pages, twitter, facebook, or email us. To very good monday morning you. This debate was playing out on the sunday shows yesterday. Among those participating, the former u. S. Ambassador to iraq, james jeffrey, who was on face the nation yesterday. [video clip] that is why general austin recommended that they stay on. We would have had a better equipped iraqi army with better eyes on the problem and be would have been able to do certain commentaries. Most importantly it was psychological. We would have had a stake, cared more what malik he was doing, and had more leverage to change it. Right, this is an iraqi issue, but it would have been better if we could have had had troops. Hehe mentioned host reed,ned senator jack from rhode island. He is a Senior Member of the Senate Armed Services committee. Heres what he had to say yesterday. [video clip] it was president george w. Bush and Prime Minister malik he who agreed that all forces would leave a rack. Say that president obama could have negotiated around that, but once president bush and president malik he declared all forces would be out, it was difficult, although the president tried to have a forining force their training, equipping, along the lines of what we are proposing in afghanistan, but once the decision was made in 2008, our troops were leaving in 2011. Has it contributed to the situation here . Not been our presence or lack of presence, but the i. Litics of malik h the collapse of mozilla was not a result of a lack of equipment or personnel, it was leadership collapse. In order to put the situation right we had to begin at the core, leadership in baghdad. Iraqi leadership working together in a unified way to defend and protect their country. For more on the Current Situation in baghdad and what is happening around the country in iraq right now, we want to turn to a Bloomberg News pentagon correspondent joining us by phone. Good morning. Caller good morning. Host we want to start with baghdad. To beingf terms like thrown around. What is happening in that city . Caller the reports are very fragmented. There is not a lot of major News Organization coverage because major News Organizations dont have a major presence there at the moment. It is confusing but it will add to the notion that the Iraqi Government is not waiting for focusupport and we should on aiding the kurds. Clearly malik he is holding on and that will strengthen the resists of u. S. Citizens and we strengthen the resistance of u. S. Lawmakers. You say he is waiting out the legal deadline to form a new government. Can you explain what is happening there and what the legal status is . Caller it is very unclear. Parliament was meeting this weekend. Decision laid the out in the recent elections. This timetable was endorsed by millions of iraqis. You get the sense that this is a final thumb your nose at the sunni population, the United States a defiant guy who has been a good ally of ours for number of years, but these may be his final throes of resistance, his final way of not going quietly into the night. It has military and political implications. Host cappaccio anthony cappaccio, where are the strikes, what are they talk targeting now . Caller the strikes of petered out. We have not had announcements and yesterday morning. It looks like seven or eight different strikes. They put out these announcements, but you have to listen to them carefully. They put out a series of different strikes in the northern area. Is mys pretty interesting sources are telling me that 90 to 100 planes are circling sorties,th various tankers, navy, and air force aircraft looking for targets of opportunity. Releases so far have been talking about hitting individual target. Mortar positions, artillery trucks, telling you that the United States is a pretty good teacher of what is on the ground. Of it is such that they can pick out individual fleeing or stationary targets almost at will. We have air supremacy over there. No air defense threat, but people need to realize we are not providing close air support. The u. S. Is taking out individual targets that the year the refugeesning in the mountains. Ofestament to the investment lands dollars and tactics over the years, but also to the 50 or so intelligence flights that have been going on for the last month and a half, where we are getting a pretty good picture of the ground. Earlier you mentioned the Kurdish Forces bringing gains. Have gainedy control of two towns in a rack that the militants had previously captured your cowhat does this strike mean for the kurdish fighters there . Caller this is the first time has gotten isil its nose bloody, more or less. The best way to get to these groups is to shake their confidence. It is hard to tell from sitting in washington about this, but i think in the next day or two we will get more information about areas wherein the the u. S. Has been striking. Imply that does this the United States or a rack can dislodge them from the gains they have made in the last month and a half. Those will be painful and long. But technical victories on the ground, targets here and there, bloodying their nose at letting the free ride of going through, bordering and hitting with artillery, it may be over at the moment. Yesterday we saw lawmakers and former diplomat talking your pastng troops in iraq 2011. Just lawmakers and diplomats, or are you seeing that at the pentagon . This isat caller history. Bush laid this out. Obama and that the government from 2011 could not agree. Going into iraq in the first place doesnt feel like it is part of the debate. Blaming the Current White House rather than the Bush Administration for going in in the first place. The armory that we left had spent 25 billion in building up the military. Another 400,000 or so local police and national police. A huge force against 10,000, albeit a powerful force. You have to wonder what we got for the investment. Should we have stayed or not . , thanknthony cappaccio you for joining us this morning. Caller thank you. Host should the u. S. Troops have stated a rack past 2011 . John mccain tweeted over the weekend the real story of to as failure foreignpolicy story. He wrote that along with lindsey graham. Nowhere was the failure more pronounced than over the debate of whether to maintain a limited number of troops in a rack past 2011 troops in iraq past 2011. Host thats the story that he linked to yesterday. We want to get your thoughts on this debate. Keith this morning, a democrat calling in from the skiing, michigan. Muskegon, michigan. Caller mainly what we are doing over there is a bush cleanup. Maintainjust trying to what was done by the last administration. Trying to maintain what we started. Like your comment, from the bush years. The warring factions over there, the different tribes and everything is basically what prevented us from being able to keep troops in there. Malachi maliki made sure we could not stay in their. Russia plays a big part in this because of syria. Allow prudent to have control over their, saying we wanted better relations with russia obama tried to allow putin to have better control over their, saying he wanted better relations with russia. Obama allowed him to step up with the syrian situation, but who tune is basically a stake in the grass. Boudin putin is basically a snake in the grass. , at the sameates time if russia is doing so much over there that is just basically disrupting the entire region. The situation in syria, something that Hillary Clinton recently touched on. Heres the story from todays financial times. We are asking you to weigh in on whether u. S. Troops should remain a rack. That should have remained in a rock should have it remained rackrock remained in he remained in iraq. This on our Facebook Page from youwant to hear this morning. Like we said, a special wireless morning for veterans of the war in iraq, 2025853883. Dan, good morning. My overall view of obama in the last year, he should have done this like a month ago, ok . In general the immigrant thing i live in atlanta. They poured a bunch of them in here. 300,000 to get them to speak english. Stay on iraq for me. Do you think the situation could have been avoided if troops had stayed on the ground . Caller i do, but like the person in front of me said, you would have had to keep up egg force on the ground forevermore. Joe is calling from woodbridge, virginia, republican line. Oddly enough, as a republican, i agreed with joe biden way back when, when we had in troops 150,000 troops in the country troops in the country, it would have been a more stable place. As far as the troops staying, i think we should have left at troops in the country. I do not agree with your guest. Obama campaigned on ending that war. It was ever an option for the Obama Administration. I believe we should have boots on the ground right now. Isis is a disgusting and inhumane terrorist group. If we dont fight them over there, one day we will be fighting them in the streets of the United States of america. Host on the issue of partitioning, we will be talking about that in our next segment. We will be speaking with retired colonel ben connable of the Rand Corporation. We will be talking to him about that subject and what is going the ground. John, arlington, virginia, good morning. Lets face it, when president bush made the agreement for everyone to get out by 2011, it was going to be hard for obama to say well, maybe not. Obama would not give up on the Legal Authority over there. We were not going to accept it and that was the end of that. Second, the kurds are not 100 angels on this. The kurds grabbed cure cook kirkookcure cook , which is a time bomb. I wanted to get onto mrs. Clinton. The president said that part of the problem in libya was that we did not followup. The fact is that when you try to overthrow a government, like we did in iraq and like Hillary Clinton supported in syria, you dont know the consequent. That was proven in libya and iraq and i dont see why would not have happened in syria. It is a tough situation. No one is an angel over there. If you are going to do it right you have to put three quarters of one million soldiers over there. Jodi on twitter says host we especially want to hear from a rack war veterans. We have a special line for that. We will go to the line for democrats now. Tom, good morning. Caller thank you for cspan, thank you for the opportunity to talk. From the perspective of a former republican, i used to be a moderate reaganite, but there is no such thing as a moderate republican anymore, so i am a democrat now. I voted for mr. Obama because he said he would get us out of iraq. ,t is not the president s fault pulling the troops out, when president bush that arty set up the timeline. If we were going to let that , we could not force our will. Is i do think it we need to stop trying to be an empire in the world and just bring our troops home. Thank you for letting me make my point. Congressman alan grayson echoed some of the comments that you just run up. As we said, senator john mccain is one of the leaders in this discussion. He was on state of the union close to guest today. Heres what he had to say on this subject. [video clip] obviously when the president proudly announced that the last combat troop was out of a rack, it was not a matter of whether we will win, it was a matter of whether and when he would be leaving the power with the conflict winding down, all of which turned out to be false. There is a vacuum of leadership throughout the middle east. The fact is that there is no leadership and that decisions have consequences. Our failure to leave a residual force and the announcement that we are leaving the area in a vacuum of leadership, especially in that art of the world, we are paying a price for it. Host senator john mccain, yesterday, member of the Senate Armed Services committee. We have that line for former iraqi veterans, tim is, when in on it this morning. Tim is calling in on it this morning. Kept troops in iraq past 2011 question mark caller i wanted to 2011 . Isler my comment essentially all about this whole smart power thing. When Hillary Clinton came in, yes, there was going to be a new dawn you were new dawn. There was going to be this smart power, which is an oxymoron. Lets go down the list. Libya, that was good. Syria, that was good. We are still waiting on north korea. When you think about the stabilizing effect of american foreignpolicy and the lack of understanding at the state department, it is appalling. You ask some of these folks if this is containment or isolationism. Selective engagement . Some piece of a detente strategy . Some part of a cold market theory . What is smart power . Like Everything Else the answer is it is complicated and i guess you will have to get an advanced degree to understand it. The reality is that in less than seven years america has less prestige and their position in the world has slipped and it is time for a lot of folks to really think about this. This is not some bone some Bumper Sticker slogan. Before they start putting people back on the ground, they need to use the calculus that is available. Value of the object . What is the amount of prestige we are willing to actually sacrifice . Maybe figure out the value of in object and then maybe terms of the magnitude and the political effects of the strategy you can look at these things because quite frankly it seems to be easy to pontificate in congress, but the reality is we have a lot of people and it is obvious there is a critical misunderstanding of geopolitics. This in our next segment morning we will be talking about some of the strategy here. Want to show the front page of the New York Times today, showing an american jet landing on the flight deck of the carrier of the george h. W. Bush in the persian gulf, where some of these operations are being flown from. Also today in the washington , a piece by the president of the kurdistan region of iraq, looking for an expansion of the airstrike in the kurdistan region. Is essential that we receive support from the United States and other friends immediately. Every day they wait rings destruction and horror host bob is waiting, florida, good morning. Caller we never should have left. We should have cap the troops. We should have taken over the country. The oil tax should still be given to the American People. The arabsld war ii were all on the german side. They lost the war. Do we still not have all of those oil funds . I believe that our country should take over. And make a democratic government. All the funds of any war that we take part in will be paid for by those countries. Thank you. Host that was bob, in florida. Fred, independent line, good morning. Caller good morning, washington journal. Cspan. As a retired colonel, i trained Army Soldiers and air force airman. Let me tell you something, this is why we are the greatest military in the world, our people love their country. It is in their sole. You cannot train train people in iraq and afghanistan to have a heart and a love of country and honor. You cant train those things. Thats why these people took off their weapons and ran off. We could stay over there for 20 years training those people, but if they dont have those characteristics and, they will never stand up and fight for their country. We are wasting our time going back and forth on training and advisers. Those are euphemisms for babysitting. Do we have to go over there and babysit the people we spend so much money to train . Aboutpeople talking leaving soldiers or they dont want to fight for their country, they shouldnt have a country. Thank you. Host a veteran on the subject of veterans from the war in iraq. Washingtonom todays times. The government is paying three times as much in disability ,ayments as it did back then with more troops severely injured than in previous conflicts host one other story in the paper on veterans issues, from the washington post. D. C. Memorial for gay veterans is being planned, planned for construction at the Congressional Cemetery in washington, it will consist of three granite panels host there is a picture of that memorial, a rendering of the memorial that covers that story. It notes more if you want to read on that story, that is the federal page of todays washington post. Your thoughts on this debate, the debate the played out on the sunday shows yesterday, should u. S. Troops have stayed in a rack . Stayed in i rock stayed in iraq . Dan, turn down your tv and go ahead with your comment. Yes, i dont think the troops should have stayed in a save norio malik e, who would not give them protection. About john mccain and lindsey graham, one thing should be understood. John mccain ran for president in 2000. The people rejected him. He ran again in 2008. The American People rejected him. He needs to quit trying to be president. He keeps running around trying to be president , hes not president , hes a senator. Thank you. Host from our twitter page go to michael, waiting in morris though, pennsylvania, on the line for republicans. Good morning. Of course we should have left a residual force. The little girl from tennessee, your guest from bloomberg, they are still trying to blame george bush. For years obama has bragged about trying to bring the troops home. Now obama is blaming george bush for bringing the troops home . You cant have it both ways. Who brought the troops home . Obama, or george bush . David, from jonesboro, republican line. David, good morning. I think that we should have obviously left the troops in iraq. Understand it,te actually, when they indicated that they would be going home. Trying very hard to make us believe that things that we had seen and heard her family. I dont understand why he is so hellbent on doing that. Its obvious that they could around 13,000 troops. Thats what the military wanted. The question is why is it that obama did not want to leave them there . One, you wanted to lower the defense budget. Another, i think you wanted out. Dont think he cared. He is a politician. He is very good at domestic things, giving speeches, but does military stuff he doesnt like. The other people the National Security agency dont know what they are doing and it concerns me. A few pieces of domestic this morning, and morning, protests follow the shooting of a missouri teenager in st. Louis. Campaign 2014 of news out of hawaii, still waiting for results in the senate race out of hawaii. Votes,g on just a few the winner of the fiercely contested primary vote in hawaii may be determined by voters who were unable to cast a ballot after sites were damaged tot so, we will continuing watch the results of that senate primary. Is calling in from milwaukee, wisconsin, line for democrats. Robert, good morning. Not. R absolutely i am a vietnam veteran. We stayed there for many years. , wehe beginning, 64, 65, 66 lost 65,000 troops. Why would we go to iraq and stay there . We should not have been there in the first place. Now the warmongers are saying to obama you should not have done this and that. Hey, we should not have been there in the beginning. I have tosically what say. Thank you, have a blessed day. Charles is calling and on the line for independence from wisconsin. Thank you. Humans are quick to send children to members war. Then when you come back conversation changes. Yes, we should have brought the troops back home. The same incident that took place right now would have taken place later because until people learn to take care of themselves , they are always going to have the same situation over and over again. The mentality of people must change when it comes down to life and death. It is not always about war. We understand war, but it is not always about it. Thank you. Californialican from , dana rohrabacher, writing over the Unitedd States must confront the threat. Georgia, republican line, thank you for calling. I enjoyed your program, always. I have two comments. One, we really dont need to be there. Those people have been killing each other for thousands of years and will continue to. As far as st. Louis this weekend where the young man got killed, i feel bad that he was killed, but there is no reason to protest other peoples businesses because he was killed. This country has no standards. Appreciate it. Thank you. Host other stories going on around the world, this story from the washington times, on a 75yearold spanish priest, the first patient evacuated to europe with the deadly ebola virus, the first european to be treated with that experimental drug. Tested on monkeys, it had never been tried on humans until this month. According to august 6 figures, about 1800 cases of ebola had , nine hundred 61 deaths have been reported in west africa. The New York Times, also writing about the ebola epidemic, their Editorial Board writing apart from inflicting a staggering human toll, the spread of the virus has laid bare how unprepared host if you want to read more of their opinion, that is in. Odays the New York Times matthew, idaho, democratic line, good morning. Caller host how are you . Host good, go ahead caller how are you . Host good, go ahead. Caller kurdistan, we basically built that society. Not completely at in the last 15 to 20 years we have had state over therepersonnel and they have done it certain ways every step of the way. Help toe down to control baghdad because we could not keep the sunnis and shiites from killing each other. They have been on our side every step of the way and now they are in trouble. For us it is not an issue of whether we should have gone in in the first lace, these people have been on our side and done what we asked them to do. To leave them hanging out there, i think, is really disappointing. I feel pretty good about what the administration has done, but they need to be more robust. The administration has earned it. Host do they have more responsibility to kurdistan rather than baghdad . Absolutely. The shiites are trying to get their act together to get rid of malik he, we think. You dont know the state of the sunni tribes. You dont know what the ratio is there. The kurds have been in lockstep with us the entire time, doing what we have asked them to do to improve the situation. Attacks them, to not be there in a more robust way, it just sends a bad message to everyone in the region. It is unfortunate and disappointing. Matthew, stick around for our next segment, we will have a retired officer talking about the very issues you are bringing up. John, tulsa, oklahoma, good morning. Good morning. R the concept of leaving troops, hiding troops, sending troops, is very simple for the American People. John mccain, lindsey graham, heres the question i have to ask you. Raise taxes, or send troops . If the American People want to do these kinds of things, someone has to pay for it. Well, we are supposed to pay for it, those are our troops. So, raise taxes. Host one more tweak for you. Tweet for you. Host that is all we have time for the first segment this morning. We will discuss the options of the u. S. Has in iraq. Discuss keyll trends in the recovery of the u. S. Job market. We will be right back. [video clip] break,e congress is on primetime features a wide range of political views and topics. This week, a debate on americas greatness, veteran health care, and objectives for Disease Control and prevention. We take a history to are looking at the civil war. Prime time, monday through friday, let us know about the programs you are watching. Call us, 2026 263400. Like us on facebook. Follow us on twitter. Watch American History tv in prime time. Join the cspan conversation, like us on facebook, follow us on twitter. Debates of what makes america great, evolution, genetically modified foods, u. S. Health care, Student Loan Debt, and campus assault. Voting rights, fighting Infectious Disease, food safety, the history to her, sights and sounds from americas important places. The old or possibly join the conversation, like us on facebook, follow us on twitter. Washington journal continues. , from theconnable Rand Corporation, retired military intelligence officer, iraq. G us to discuss is the air campaign so far working . Guest so far right now it has a tactical purpose, to protect the civilians trapped in the mountains and to prevent isis from penetrating to a relatively secure area in the north. And it looks like it is succeeding in stopping the Islamic State now from moving. What is the larger strategy here . Have startedat we bombing, now that we have entered into central combat with them, what is the longterm plan . The president articulated the trueof an iraqi problem, to an extent, but if you are killing people there has to be a longterm purpose behind it. Right now i feel there is still an open debate about what the longterm strategy is. Host you did not support the idea of airstrikes in iraq . Why was that . It ties back into what the president said. This is an iraqi problem. Norio malik he has been unable to articulate longterm solution for sunni uprising. Because they are completely disenfranchised, because the government has been unable to show them a different path forward and show them an alternative, they will probably just keep fighting whether they it we are bombing or not. Headline today, talking about the Bombing Campaign going the heavy fighting makes it host what happens when some of these targets start to dry up . When the u. S. Does not have more targets to bomb . Butt a great question, even trickier, we are not even sure that this longs to i asked i. S. They are linked to the baath party. We may accidentally or nonintionally be bombing groups. There may be a point where this dries up, but right now we need to be very considerate of who we are killing. What affect does that have on the Sunni Community . I would guess that most of them do not support malaki i. S. Written before the divisions exist within the. Slamic state can you talk about it those divisions still exist and if they can be exploited by the United States usher mark United States . . Guest the real divisions that we want to focus on are the ones between i. S. And other groups. If we can do that, show the sunnis that there is another way forward, we might be able to help tear them away. Can you talk about your experience on the ground . You were in country there. I have stayed in touch with a lot of those folks by email and phone. They have made it clear that they do not want to separate from the rest of the rock the rest of my rock the rest of rack the rest the the rest of iraq. The problem is there is no alternative for these folks. Host ben connable will be with us for the next 40 minutes or so as we continue to discuss the. Ewish and in iraq you can call in with your questions and comments. Host a look at how the sunnis are viewing the campaign right about thean you talk relationship to the kurds . This is a fascinating opportunity. Up until about three weeks ago we would have assumed that the kurds were back to declaring independence and that the Iraqi Government appeared to be moving further away from supporting them. Now that we see that they have been incapable of protecting their own people to a certain extent, the Prime Minister is coming in the support. There might be a realization within the community that there is still a to stay within the iraqi state, good news for people who vision that whole and its future as a successful future. That is a positive step. An opportunity. It can still fall through. Nobody envisioned that i. S. Would be half an hour away from them at any point in this year. Host what about the people saying that iraq should be about separating . When you guest when you talk with the sunni, you realize why they dont want to be a separate country. They tend to view themselves as iraqi first. Some of them believe that they should control the iraqi state. View, that, that kind of believe propelled them forward to try to stay within the state. There are few resources within the provinces, like embarq on the Natural Resources in the country, this would impoverish them permanently. The how do you bridge divide between sunnis, shia, and kurds in the new government formation in baghdad . Guest i wish i knew. The trick is having a Prime Minister with a vision for the whole state. It will be difficult for some of them to recognize that they are a minority. It may be many decades in the coming. But right now it does not look like the Prime Minister has that vision and we are hoping that either he will have a 180 degree shift in perspective or that someone else will come into print to persuade him. Last 24 hours we have heard the term coup being thrown around in baghdad. Guest that is strong language. , it looksster malaki like he won the election. Coup. D not call that a to the irrational mood to make sure he retains power in a country like that. It is not necessarily what i would want to focus on. Ben connable is with the radcom Rand Corporation. Dd on twitter wants to know more about the random or parisian. Can you explain more about these think tankoups groups, she asks . Dont thats funny, we think of ourselves as think tanks. We are supposed to be providing objective, nonpartisan viewpoints on deep, longterm problems. Host [indiscernible] what do you do there what do you do there, specifically . Guest intelligence issues. Calling in from charlestown, rhode island, the line for republicans. Good morning. This is where the problem started. Bremmer went over there and the first time he was there he kicked out the sunnis running the government and they did a pretty good job. Malik he gets in there, he is a shiite. He is aligned with iran. The sunnis were a buffer for us. They were the more congealed, the more democratic art of all of it rack. I dont think you should be bombing them now. I really believe that malik he just has to get out of there. He is turning the country upside down. We could not negotiate with him. We couldnt do anything with him. I believe the sunnis are the backbone of a rack, really. I will take my answer off the air. Guest those are great points. The Prime Minister really blew his opportunity to bring with the shiatate on top with 60 of the population. He really had an opportunity to show the sunnis and the kurds that they had a place inside a new state. He has done everything to further their sense of disenfranchisement. I am not sure that the answer is , but i think state the leadership could do more to be inclusive. Host was there a straw that broke the camels back in terms of losing the sunnis . When did the Prime Minister lose their conference confidence . In his shoes. Ot i was there at the time. Army was probably serious. Law, it hasnto really kind of followed the iraqis past the border. Is still using the process to disenfranchise the sunni political movements. He has actively sought to fracture the political leadership. Movementsent protests he has moved very aggressively the military and Security Forces to physically fracture the heart of the population. Is next. Gon steve, independent line. Good morning. My question about the kurdish minority, if we give arms to the kurds, isnt there an issue potentially where they kurds inr way to the turkey . How would that work . Guest a good question. The turks and the kurds have been on a path towards effecting reconciliation is years. It would be hardpressed to take any weapons that we give them to employ them against isis. Giving them weapons is not the same thing as arming them. If you can someone a rifle, you need to spend months training them. Kurds probably know how to use a rifle, but when we talk about advanced artillery and other types of complex weapons that require service, that is not something that you can simply do overnight. The effectiveness not only against isis but the turkish targets is limited. Host alan is on the line for independents. Good morning. Caller good morning. Thank you for taking my call. I have a twopart question and i think they fit together. The first part, your opening remarks, you made the comment seemeds. That malaki unable to find a way to bring all of these groups together. That cause me to ask is he unable or unwilling . The second part is it seems to me that we are willing to spend anything, any amount, to build democracy in iraq. That maybe a me rack does not want to accept the democracy we are forcing upon them. Am i wrong . I will take my comments off the air. Great questions. First of all, if you look at the , heory of Nouri Almaliki grew up and became who he is under an oppressive system. He was the oppressed minority in iraq for a long time. There is a certain amount of survivor mentality that comes along with that. Unable or unwilling . He is probably both at this point. He may not be the right person to carry a rack forward carry a rock forward carry you rock iraq forward. Ry they all have the potential to represent themselves about living under brutal dictatorships. One palestinian negotiator once said that if you dont think that arabs can be part of a democracy, you are racist. Im not sure well, i would take it that far. All people are capable. How much should be invested . The iraqis are capable. The definition of democracy in iraq may look different than the it shouldtes, but include the protection of minorities, which is not strict rebuilds into the constitution at this moment. A fundamental problem with the state there. These comments from the New York Times, starting at the top. That . You agree with [video clip] broken system and the politicians are beholden to constituencies that really are not even clear paralyses. Per pluralities. As are badly fragmented there for the leadership is also fragmented on the dont know who they represent or if they represent in the body. I recently spoken to sunni tribal leaders who say they have very little corrosive powers and thats true of many of the shia leaders of the have to make some bold statements and many of times those statements dont make sense. Host if you talk to people since the u. S. Air campaign . Guest theyre all very busy right now. Host we will talk about this for the next hour or so. In herndon,abdullah virginia, good morning. Caller thank you, cspan. My comment goes to lindsay graham. John mccain has been defeated. Obama wants to end the war but that had consequences. Ther comment is [inaudible] people like myself who have cell mosts obama remains the popular president in the United States in my opinion. To make sureicans they reach out to minorities more. Otherwise they will not when a general election. Host he brings up lindsey ,raham and senator john mccain two senators have been who have been critical about the decision to pull troops out of iraq. Its a question with her viewers this morning should the u. S. Have kept forces in iraq beyond 2011 . What are your thoughts . Guest i think it couldve gone either way. It could have failed if we kept forces there. We couldve been drawn into combat. There could be people criticizing the president for that decision as well. I dont think there was probably any good decision there. If we had kept troops there, we would have also had a more senior title x military presence with his the department of defense authorized military presence which would have allowed us to have authority over the iraqi military. Not only is there no political solution presented but they are not being offered anything at the tactical level. Theres a difference between counterinsurgency and counter guerrilla warfare. Counterinsurgency shows that the but thent is legitimate Iraqi Government has been in engaging in counter guerrilla warfare. Thats the campaign the iraqi army is conducting now. Perhaps if we had been there, we would have been able to influence that. Host on the question of whether we should have left their lets troops there, should the u. S. Have looked toward other decisions as far as pulling out an whether to leave troops . Guest in 2010, we published a study where we look at the dynamics of insurgency. The one thing that rang true across most of the cases we looked at was that the insurgency never really ends il the group that causes the root causes of the problem are addressed. S the disenfranchisement of theunni is the issue. Nothing was addressed when we left, i think we would have a plate have some kind of we would probably have some kind of fracture down the road. Host matt is up next in concord, New Hampshire on our line for independents. Toler good morning, i want make a quick statement pel one said you break it, you own it. We went to iraq on false pretenses and gave them trillions of dollars worth of equipment and training. Now we have isis with the most advanced tanks in the world in their possession. How can these people who are supposedly terrorists, uneducated, anil is right, how can they get a tank and run it . It blows my mind that we are now bombing our own equipment. The republicans run around and claim we are broke and that the country is bankrupt when we gave away trillions of dollars. I live in the state of New Hampshire, one point 4 million population, we have 600 Homeless Veterans living in the woods. Its about time the United States starts leaving their own democracy back. I appreciate what the Rand Corporation does and i read a lot of your reports. I firmly believe you are an intelligent person and you are rational and the Rand Corporation as a whole is very nonpartisan. I agree with that. We sent our toys and girls over there and they come back with massive scars. I helpthese homeless these homeless vets and they live in the woods because they are frightened and scared and society does not accept them anymore. Why dont we just let iraq and the middle east kill each other and when they are done killing each other, maybe we can straighten it out then. I served in iraq and i have many Close Friends who are veterans and many of them suffer a great deal. I certainly sympathize and i will leave it at that. In terms of the armor, i did not know that they had seized abrams tanks. Thats a also billion they are concentrated in one director division for the most part. From what i have seen in open source reporting and on youtube videos is that the is fighters have seized t55 tanks or versions below that. Those are not the most advanced tanks and their typically versions of those tanks that are really barely functional. They dont have advanced sightings of a are fairly easy to use and operate. Their use across the african continent and the middle east by the regular fighters. They do present a good target. Is fightersl running these tanks . Humvees werms of the have seen, are these the most advanced humvees that have been on the battlefield . What do we know about the specific u. S. Equipment . Marine, thisetired is kind of funny because they are all kind of mediocre. Humvees are just trucks. You can slap any kind of armor you want on them and put any weapon you want on them. At the end of the day, they can be taken out with midrange arms like machine guns. Im not that concerned about the equipment they have. Even if they had advanced tanks, we can deal with that. Thats not the problem. The problem is population and interaction with a population. The problem is the support they have. Not theer of gravity is armor and the equipment and technology, its the people. Areong as the sunni disenfranchised, thats what we have to work on. Host from columbia, south carolina, on john and our line for independentss. This guy does not seem to see the forest for the trees. He is talking about sunni and sh kurds and almaliki. These are the trees. Are trying to kill christians on the mountaintop. The Intelligence Committee should wake up to that. Were a country of open borders. In about two weeks, we will have 100,000 people surrounding a 100 yard football field and how easy a target is that . These people have to concentrate on stuff like that, thank you. Clearly, we are doing everything we can. The islamic people are killing shia and sunni. They are doing it across iraq. They have probably killed for mark hello muslims than they have christians. I take your point, it is something we are concerned about. That was the trigger for the president to act. Yet i think we should be equally concerned about the fact they are killing muslims. Its not because we want to invest ourselves in every single problem around the world. Stepping back here, there is a much bigger question, not much the not just the unity of a wreck but what the instability in fracturing of a rock visa tiddle east and how would i affect the United States not only from the issue of Oil Production but also simple instability and the impact on the global economy. There are hundreds of thousands of u. S. Citizens that live across the middle east that we would have to help protect. American embassies and consulates across the middle east as well that would be vulnerable to extreme violence. Host can you talk about the iraq he army the iraqi army . Guest parts of the iraqi army collapsed. It was the parts operating in the north. Some reports say there was infiltrations by sunni into the army which is possible. Iraq he army is held together in southwest. This is an army that was purpose built to include all of the different ethnic minorities and setcs and bring them together. It was supposed to be functional. That has failed in the north and to some extent it appears to have succeeded in the south. Over time, as the army is used to defend baghdad and the shia areas, it will become increasingly a shia army and we hee seen reports of iraq Army Vehicles flying black flags which is a shia flag so that was very off putting. Host is baghdad itself still under threat . Guest i dont think baghdad is under threat for direct assault by ice is right now. Its a defensible city. The sheer number of shia there would make that a difficult proposition. They might have some success in western baghdad across the river. The concern is the amount of panic they can cause by approaching the borders of baghdad and the degree to which they can infiltrate suicide bombing, individuals are trucks into the city to conduct damage and destabilize the government and most importantly, their ability to disrupt operations at the Baghdad International airport. If they shut that down, that is not only isnt alec that is not only a symbolic indication. Host what are the nicest targets that your most what are the isis targets are most concerned about . If they destroy the dam in mosul they can kill a lot of people. We conducted a Hydrographic Survey in 2003 and look at what that would look like if they blew up the dams. It would not destroy the whole country but it would be fairly catastrophic. That is a real issue, whether or not they will do anything with those dams. Host michigan is next on our line for democrats, good morning. Caller good morning, my question to the kernel i hear a lot of people support the war especially people like john mccain and lindsey graham. If the American People wanted war, white dont they reinstitute the draft and reach consensus for all americans . I will take my answer offline. Guest the draft does exist. You can register for the draft and right now we dont need to call people up for service to a compass the mission we are conducting. We have sufficient volunteers on active duty to a compass those missions. I dont think it is practically necessary. The point is that that would force the u. S. Government and pull everybody in and ensure there was National Support for what we were doing there. That r problem is what is war . Are we in a war in iraq or are we simply taking military action . That is a semantic but complex question. Host heres a question from twitter i think the only objective we have now is to protect the civilians and ensure the is does not penetrate up to into erbil and im not sure we have a their operational or strategic objective beyond that. D. C. , onm washington, our line for independents, good morning. Are you with us . We will hold off another question from twitter thats a great question. Unfortunately, the answer is no. My discussions with thesunni leadership is they dont even of a sunni leader capable representing a sizable portion of the population. The shia is held together by negotiation. They all disagree with each other at fundamental levels. S are fairly unified but you look at the separation between all three groups and it becomes even more complex. Unfortunately, right now, the answer is no, there is no man or woman who will come forth. Host lets go to washington, d. C. Again. Good morning on our line for independents. Caller good morning, gentlemen. My only comment is how seriously [inaudible] blowback . Be a the same people now are calling us back into help in this humanitarian crisis, they are the ones that let us in there in the first place. People have concerned themselves who are antiwar and are supporting the government and the president. Again. Tate your question caller if you can comment on blowbacks in general. Guest blowback inside the United States are in iraq . We will go with inside the United States. Guest iraq has always been a very controversial place for the u. S. This predates the 2003 invasion. We have been involved there for decades. So has iran and russia and so have a lot of other countries. Thatis not something americans take lightly. Most people have hardened viewpoints. Some of those may be changing but this will always be a controversy. Host there is a headline in the wall street journal lets go to alex waiting in alexandria, virginia on our line for independents. Caller good morning to you and thank you for taking my call. The invasion of iraq was the biggest policy blunder of the United States since world war ii. That said, one issue that canopy nor is the nefarious role in iraq. Withe past eight years, the iranian meddling in iraq has caused a lot of problems in that country. There has been a domination of all the seats of power. If United States wants to find a way to resolve this crisis, it has to demand the removal of Nouri Almaliki as Prime Minister and second, i think the eviction of the iranian regime. Pound gorilla 600 sitting next to iraq, those problems will continue. What would you like to say about this . Guest thank you. In terms of removing the Prime Minister, if he is the democratically elected leader of iraq and we established that democratic process, we would be hardpressed to call for his removal without upsetting the idea that this whole process that we give lies for and gave treasurer for to put into place is now faulty and we simply dont like Nouri Almaliki. I think thats something we want to avoid. I will leave that up to the president and National Security staff to figure that out. In terms of ironic, absolutely, they have played a disruptive role there. Iran and iraq have a long and very ugly history. The iranians have been in iraq undermining the Iraqi Government for a long time. To be fair, the iraqis have been doing similar things to the iranians. Im not sure what we can do right now about iran. We are in the middle of a deal with them to dismantle their Nuclear Power development process. This conflict has given the United States an opportunity to find Common Ground with iran and we are right nowhe same foe in the Islamic State. Its an interesting dynamic. Host florida is next on our line for democrats. Caller good morning, i want to thank you for your service. To many of the military personnel that did serve over there in iraq and what their feelings are about the situation . What is their feeling as to whether they feel going back with the people that are being murdered with the situation where they would feel strongly about serving in another war but a military land operation of some sort to protect these individuals. Thank you. Guest does a very good questions. As a veteran of the iraq campaign, i have emotional sentiments about the campaign. I have to separate that in my current job. I will say that my colleagues are concerned about what is going on there. The way we try to discuss it is if is we gave the iraqis a chance to stand up and have a cohesive democracy and unfortunately as of now, they have blown it. I think that perspective allows toand my fellow veterans look at what happened there and say it was not all and then. We give it our best it was not all in vain. We gave it our best shot. Theres always hope in iraq will continue to evolve as time was forward. This will not stop. There is an interesting perspective about mutually occurring exhaustion. Theory is that to groups that are fighting, the sunni and example, they are not going to solve the problem until they are both exhausted and they meeting the common point for fighting. When that happens, you can have real negotiations were you come to a real lasting and naturally occurring stability. We clearly have not hit that point yet. How do we let this go . You can apply this to gaza and israel. Earlier we had a caller ask why dont we let them fight it out . Its an option it might be a path to reach that mutually occurring exhaustion but what would the cost be . In iraq where people have access to weaponry and have a proclivity to extreme violence, i think the results could be disastrous. We are faced with some very difficult host an concerned whether that spills across other borders. Guest it already has. The Islamic State is not operating in iraq alone. They dont see the border, literally. That theot believe treaty border between iraq and syria exists. State islamic depending where you draw the border, they dont see these borders. They are operating in lebanon and they already have support in places like the philippines and indonesia. They are growing and they are across borders. Host fredericksburg, virginia is next on our line for independents. Turn your television down and go ahead. Caller hi there and thank you for taking my call. Collateral damage if an individual as individuals who are not involved in we kill them striking those who we believe are involved, do those individuals who are not involved , i think you called collateral damage, are we liable . Can they sue us . Are they able to sue us for killing their children and families . Thats a very good question. There is a lot of analysis on the laws of land warfare. The geneva accords are referred to quite commonly and you can look those up online. I think thats a distinct possibility that we would be liable. However, you could interpret get a whole bunch of different ways for it we want to do Everything Possible to reduce the possibility of collateral damage. The problem is, its impossible to eliminate it completely. When we drop in number fire a weapon, theres a possibility we could kill innocent civilians. Host indianas next on independent line, good morning. Caller good morning. A couple of questions and comments rules of engagement you said you served in iraq. Why such ridiculous rules of engagement . It is as if we dont want to win, we want to stretch this out the same way with the vietnam when we had rules of engagement. Power,ed the vietnamese 30 caliber weapons and they use them on this the same way we are doing here in iraq, afghanistan. Where is the napalm . The tug about the caves in iraq and how hard they are to get to. Napalm. Its like you want to have a game. Either go and do it or forget it. Know about thee rules of engagement that the u. S. Has put on this new mission in iraq . Is clearly a structured and very cautious and very careful top level targeting ever using the most advanced intelligence surveillance. Theyre not going to drop a bomb now unless they are 100 confident that what they are striking is an is target. Simply taking the gloves off and killing everybody tends not to work when youre trying to get people to support you or the government you are supporting turns them against you. Does often cost u. S. Lives and its a terrible tradeoff and thats why counterinsurgency is so difficult. Int but go to carol waiting st. Louis, missouri, on our line for democrats, good morning. Caller good morning, i have like four parts didnt iran build an airport insadr city before the end of the war . Since its a global economy, how Many Oil Companies have interests in curtis dan kurdistan . I think we are protecting them. You said you believe the turks theok kurds, what about peshawars . Know about the airport in sadr city. Its a dense urban area and i dont know if thats the case. , youompanies in kurdistan can see which companies have concessions across iraq and there is quite a few and its a good thing that they are from all over the world and many countries are invested in the security and stability of iraq over the long term. Peshmerga is the name for the semiofficial kurdish army that is ostensibly under the control of the government of iraq. Its not really but there is very little chance that they will turn and fight turkey at least not successfully. Host north carolinas next on our line for democrats, good morning. Im a military veteran myself. Storm. N desert we news was talking about had an opportunity to kill Saddam Hussein back in desert storm and when colin powell and general schwarzkopf and the forces there said the decision was not to take him out because we did not want to have a situation where we had to stay there and have to babysit and renew their would be up breakdown of all the factions wanted to take over this country and we supported Saddam Hussein during the 70s and 80s when there was a rift between iran and the sunnis and the shiites. After 10 years of this last war, andut a shiite in there that was probably going to be an issue again that the sunnis would rise up again or rebels would rise up again. My third question is, why are we always putting our troops at the tip of the spear when it comes to making decisions that happen in the middle east . We do it alone and we never have the british allies in it with us. We are stretching our shoulders to stand. Our soldiers to stand. Too thin. Point, when are we going to give the responsibility over to our allies . There have been other questions intelligent support. The United Kingdom and other allies, 60 countries provided troops, money, and equipment and lost a significant number of soldiers in iraq and afghanistan. I think our Coalition Allies have been in error side. They may not advertise it as much. Want you to comment on Scott Howells column in todays washington times. Guest my belief is that if you provide people with an opportunity for democratic orresentation or protection inclusion in the state, they will not support groups like is in a group like them will become simply a terrorist organization that can be dissected and killed. That is the best hope is that the government of iraq will provide that hope to reduce disenfranchisement to the sunni population and the kurds. You can check out the Rand Corporation at rand. Org. Up next, discussion on the current economic condition and job market in the United States and how it is impacting the economy overall. Ofare joined by harry holzer georgetown university. The Computer System is designed to help manage Social Security Disability Programs does not work and we will talk about that program later. First, news update from cspan radio. The head of iraqs National Shiite alliance in a Statement Today says it has chosen an alternate an alternate nominee for Prime Minister in stead of incumbent Nouri Almaliki. Aljafari says they have a new nominee to unify the country against the growing threat of radical militants. Almaliki has is insisting that his party, state of law which is part of the alliance, should select a nominee. Senior u. S. Officials say the Obama Administration has begun providing forces directly to Kurdish Forces. The u. S. Previously had insisted on only selling arms to the Iraqi Government. The officials would not say which u. S. Agency is providing the arms but the cia has a starkly done similar arming operations. Turning to u. S. Politics, the Koch Brothers are looking to make inroads with hispanics by joining in an effort to offer english lessons, health checkups, and courses to help spanish speakers earn high school diplomas. The effort is called Libre Initiative which pushes the idea of limited government and Economic Freedom but also is offering tutorials on u. S. Immigration law and giving away easter baskets. Those are some of the latest headlines on cspan radio. This month, cspan present makes americat great, evolution, and genetically modified foods, issues spotlight within the books had veteran health care and irs oversight and Student Loan Debt and campus sexual perspectives on issues including global warming, voting rights, fighting Infectious Disease and food safety and our history tour for showing sights and sounds from americas historic laces. Find their tv schedule one week in advance at www. Cspan. Org and let us know what you think about the programs you are watching. Call us. Or email us. And likeconversation us on facebook or follow us on twitter. Washington journal continues formerarry holzer is a economist at the Labor Department joins us to discuss the Current Trends in the u. S. Job market and how those trends are impacting the economy overall. The latest job report is somewhat hard to read, more than 200,000 jobs added that the Unemployment Rate is taking up from 6. 1 to 6. 2 . Give us your 30,000 foot view of the job situation. Guest overall, i think it is getting a little better. I think the improvement is starting to gain some steam. We have had six months in a row of job growth, of over 200,000. Compared to previous recoveries, that is not spectacular but its better than we have experienced in this slow recovery. There is some increase in speed but the uptick in the on employment rate might happen because so many people dropped out of the labor force. They got discouraged and were not finding anything of those people might start to come back. When youre out of the labor force, you dont count as being unemployed. When you come back in, you do count. Even as the labor market gets steam, we might see the on employment rate ticked up a bit and thats not necessarily a bad thing. Host where the problem areas in your view . Guest people are starting to pace andut the overall if we continue to stay in that range per month. Will we pick up speed or will we have another stumble . We have had false hopes several times in this recovery before. Will the good news continue is the question . The other thing people worry about is not just quantity of jobs but the quality of jobs created. So far, a lot of the jobs have been retail trade and the lowend of the Service Sector and those are often the lower wage jobs that we lost in the downturn. Will better paying jobs come back not just in the professional sectors and health care but also in the places where people without ba degrees can get a good job in construction and manufacturing or some parts of health care for technicians. A lot of the job so far have been part time. The quality ofat jobs and how much they pay as well as the quantity. Host we will get into that in this segment of washington journal. President obama touted the latest job creation numbers. Heres a bit of what he had to say. [video clip] this morning, we learned that our economy created over 200,000 new jobs in july. That is on top of about 300,000 new jobs in june. We are now in a sixmonth streak with at least 200,000 new jobs each month. That is the first time that has happened since 1997. Over the past year, we have andd more jobs since 2006 our businesses have created 9. 9 million new jobs over the past 53 months. That is the longest streak of that sector job creation in our history. Host is this something to be optimistic about . Is this a reminder of how deep the jobs hole was due to the Great Recession . Guest probably a little of both. The recovery has been slow. We are now in our sixth year of recovery formally. The recovery has been modest at two percent growth in gdp per year and jobs have been in that range of new job creation for so long. 200 you finally hit the 300,000 range, you get excited about that continues. In previous recoveries come you sometimes had 3400,000 per month. That is much better, its an improvement and we hope it stays at this level or maybe goes up a little bit. Host are americans optimistic about these numbers . Theres a story from Yahoo Finance that talks about the recent polling. Guest there is clearly some pessimism there. Things goingerent on. There is often a lag between when a recovery starts to pick up speed and to pick up steam and that like my prayer role might play a role but there are longterm trends in the economy but dont have anything to do with recovery from the recession. That trend is towards lower wages and mourn difficult times, lower earnings for people that dont have at least some higher education. That is a somewhat separate issue. People worry about their kids not doing as well as they did. Some of what effects that is the longterm trend of the economy. I think people are feeling it from both ends, the shortterm recession based difficulties in the longerterm trends. There is some legitimacy to both. Host even if job numbers are looking good in recent months, these other factors are the drags on the economy . Guest they can be. Forces Like Technology and globalization are starting to have a huge effect on the job market. In the long term, those are good things. They enable us to buy products for cheaper and have higherquality products. In the short term, it might cause people to spend less money. I think maybe that has contributed to the slow pace of the recovery so far. Host we are talking to the former chief economist of the u. S. Labor department and a professor at georgetown university. We are talking about the job market and the u. S. Economy overall. I have a special line for those who are unemployed. You can join the discussion if you are unemployed. Otherwise, the other numbers are on your screen. We will start with tim calling in from palm desert, california on our line for democrats, good morning. Are you with us . I dont think we have 10 but we will go on to anthony in clearwater, florida on our line for independent good morning, the dismantling of our infrastructure over the last 20 years, i want to know there is this new transglobal partnership and transatlantic agreement partnership. How is that going to affect the jobs in the United States and is it going to be a partnership or will it be a new Global Governance that people have to supersede their individual rights for . Guest im hoping itll be a partnership. Areal trade is another where its mostly good for everybody especially over time. In the shortterm, some people will lose their jobs when we allow in cheaper imports. And we have strong job creation and other parts of the economy, thats ok. We can do some stuff to help workers who lose their job but overall global trade is good because it increases our exports in the hope that both of these things will happen. When you say some people will is the uniteds, states on the losing end as far as the shortterm jobs. Guest people in export industries get more jobs and people and industries where there are imports coming in might lose them. We should probably do more to help. Maybe we can help them get new skills and make that transition and give them better support in the shortterm. I am the net balance will be positive from those actions and sooner rather than later. We have a line for the unemployed. Morning, i just happened to be looking at the labor statistics. I have been looking for the outonal average which comes to 293,000 people that file for unemployment. I would like to know how the president of the United States thinks that there are jobs being created when there are so many ple that are statistically its factual filing for unemployment and we are saying there are jobs being created. People that file for unemployment on the for for the first time, is not factored in. To me, thats not creating any jobs. Guest it turns out that is always the case that even when the economy is at full employment county always have new jobs being created and all jobs being destroyed. You have businesses being shut down or reorganizing. You have startups in business and businesses expanding so you will have some of that when the economy is really strong. Or people filing for unemployment sounds like a big number. Its actually not a bad number. During the depths of the recession, that number was over 400,000. The fact that is under 300 rows and, most economists of view that as a positive sign as long as the economy is creating other jobs in other places to pick up those workers. Host since we are delving into the numbers another number from the july report is 3. 2 as longterme unemployed. Talk about that number a little bit. Guest the quick answer is we should be concerned about that. This recession and the slow recovery has created a lot of longterm unemployed which is defined as being unemployed for six months or longer. Thats a problem because those people have more difficulty getting back in. The number has gone down over the last year or so and has gone down as a percentage of the total unemployed. Its hard to tell how much of that because people are dropping out of the job market. The large number of longterm Unemployed People is definitely a concern and those people will probably need more help than others getting back in the market and finding new jobs. Host what was that number before the Great Recession hit . Guest before the recession hit, i dont know the exact number but we measure it by a fraction. 20 or inwas usually that ballpark. It jumped up to over 40 at the depth of the recession. I think out of the somewhere in the low 30s. That is improvement. There is still too many people in that category including some who are not captured by that number. Host mark is up next from ohio on our line for democrats. Caller good morning, i wanted to ask you you hear tons of economists talking and what gets me is they very rarely mention we need growth in this country and thats understandable, but they never , especially with the republicans, they say you need nine percent growth per year. They never mention the toll this has on the Natural Resources it takes to keep that sort of economy going. That is what really concerns me. I dont understand. At that rate, the Natural Resources dont have a chance to replenish themselves and keep the economy going and keep some natural land growing that everybody enjoys for relaxation which you need from this crazy world. Please answer that point. Guest the important issue is how we balance our need for economic road with our need to protect the environment and deal with Climate Change which is becoming a more serious problem all the time as well as some of the issues you raise. We need both. We need to have Economic Growth to create more jobs for these unemployed workers and we need to do more to protect the environment. Those things are not necessarily an object if you have the right policy. You can have a carbon tax or have other kinds of zoning to protect the lands. That encourages us to have smarter growth and cleaner growth. It does not destroy the environment and does not lead to more Climate Change. Poisonous politics at the federal level have kept us from doing important things. Almost every mainstream economists i know, republican or democrat, favors some kind of a tax on carbon which would encourage us to have growth that is less carbon intensive. It would produce damage to the environment. , theics that are poisonous power of the Tea Party Movement on the republican side has limited our ability to do smart things like that that would protect our Economic Growth but shifted in a greener direction. That is how we could have some of both. It takes smarter policies. Host plenty of debates about that topic that is playing out on capitol hill in recent months. Lets go to wisconsin on our line for independents, good morning. Caller i believe the best Jobs Creation program would be the complete elimination of the Corporate Income tax on american profits but only tax profits made outside the country. This would be so simple. It would eliminate some of cost and burden on our economy. Guest i would not go quite as far as you would on that. If you just eliminated the Corporate Tax completely on domestic production, you would lose a lot of revenue and despite the problems of that tax now, that is relatively progressive tax. Who are shareholders upper income people, the part i agree with very strongly is our Corporate Tax structure is in need of reform. Right now, we have very high Corporate Tax rates compared to the rest of the world with a lot of loopholes. Some, his payload that tax and some Companies Pay a lot less. But does encourage the flow overseas. Of smartome kind Corporate Tax reform that brings those rates down at the same time we close out the loopholes and we do with this issue that people call in version Work Companies are moving enough of their production overseas that they can get out of paying american taxes. Smart Corporate Tax reform i think should be pretty high on our policy agenda now. Host from twitter that leads to the cover story of this weeks Christian Science monitor that story includes a chart talking about the uneven recovery which shows the change in net worth per household from 20092011 for the lower 93 of americans, the change in net worth has gone down four percent for it the wealthiest americans, it has gone up 28 . Guest thats an important issue. You are looking at the quantity of jobs created an overall growth versus who benefits is the issue. And whose incomes and assets are going up. We have a huge inequality problem and it seems to be getting worse all the time. Some people dont regard inequality is a problem at all. They say as long as you have equal opportunity, we should not worry about the inequality. We dont have equal opportunity. We should do more to try to get it. I think inequality is very troubling at this level. People lost a lot of wealth in the 20092010 downturn. Lower to middle come lower to middle income americans, most of that value was in their homes and we have only recovered 40 of that value so far so those people continue to take a big hit where higher income americans have most of their wealth in stocks and bonds. They have bounced back very nicely. Is one more example of things going very well for the rich and not nearly as well for the middle and lower income americans. I think we should worry about that more than we do. Host heres the cover of the Christian Science monitor. We are talking with harry holzer, former chief economist at the u. S. Labor department and is with us for the next 20 minutes or so. We have a special line set up for those unemployed americans. To jeff in arkansas on our line for independents. Caller i was wanting to know what percentage of the population is directly dependent on Government Spending for their livelihood. The first category would be state and federal and local employees and people working in an industry dependent on Government Spending and people who are on some board of some form of federal assistance . Dont have the exact numbers at my fingertips but the answer is probably the number of people who get some kind of government benefit mitt romney talked about the 47 . The number is probably in that range but lets be careful. You are lumping together apples and oranges and bananas when you do that. All of the elderly in this country get Social Security and medicare so immediately those folks go in a category. Disability, folks either working for the government now or have worked in the past and have some kind of government pension or veterans getting their health care through the department of defense. When you add up all those categories including current government employees, you probably get a number in the ballpark of 50 . Before we get upset about that number, i think a lot of those need to be separated. Some of those are categories that most americans would say thats reasonable for them to get the compensation they are getting. If we are unhappy about that number, we should think carefully about who we want to take off those rules and how to do that. Host idaho is next on our line for republicans, good morning. Morning, my name is john. I run my own business for 25 years. When nafta was voted in, i have 13 employees. Free trade is good for big corporations but you asked the American Public right now free trade is killing our economy and is killing our jobs and its destroying the infrastructure of the small communities in america. People like you and our representatives that make these trade deals and study these numbers dont understand the big problem. You can ask a republican or democrat or independent. When it some real help out here. We are not really getting it. You have any input for me or my family and my little business . Ever involved in putting together a trade deal when you work to the Labor Department . Was involved in some efforts to help in a workers who became unemployed as a result of that deal. Sympathy for the call. Intime you have an increase international trade, some people get hurt by that. Some businesses will get hurt by that including some small businesses. At the same time, other businesses get help. Trade usually increases our exports as well as our imports. It makes our economy more efficient overall. There has been hundreds of studies on this by economists. Traditionally, trade tends to raise Living Standards. But there are adjustment costs and people who cant get hurt and those people need more help like the unemployed workers who might need new skill training to help them get back on their feet. We also have to make sure that the Playing Field is more level. There is a criticism that is reasonable for some people. Because countries like china, their currency is undervalued, that tilts the Playing Field in their direction. They end up doing more of the exporting and we end up doing more of the importing. I would be sympathetic to some efforts to try to level the Playing Field and get the currencies more in line with what they should be. Maybe you would see more exports going on and that balance between exports and trade with positive effects of these new trade agreements that would become apparent. There are shortterm costs that we should do more to help people who bear the burden. Host from twitter i have signed a Public Statement by economists supporting a federal minimum wage increase gradually lifting it to 10 per hour. Thatognize as an economist you force businesses to pay a higher price. Dozens and dozens of studies have been done on that and some studies find small negative effect in some studies find a zero effect. Bump theis if you federal minimum up to 10 per hour, you will see some job loss. The Congressional Budget Office to their own report and set up to 500,000 jobs could be eliminated over three years. That is about two months worth of new job creation spread over three years. To a higher minimum wage, it would benefit 1624 billion workers. There is a tradeoff. I think the number of people in a fitting is much larger than the number of people losing their jobs. I would make that trade but i would do it cautiously. Hour minimum wage in seattle or san francisco, i would be reluctant to endorse that. Host next on our line for democrats, good morning. Caller thank you for taking my call he. I believe the trade agreements are the heart of our economic problems in this country. It absolutely does no good to have cheap products when people do not have decent jobs to be able to buy the products. Part of the problem is freetrade versus fair trade. Our competitors like china, they dont have epa requirements and things we have to follow here. What do you think the impact is of trade deficits with other countries . We are constantly losing this trade war. Diso, the impact of having hi these is with regards to jobs and open borders in this country. I think their experience with trade is that it improves the Living Standard of our inpetitors and the elite this country but not the common person. Guest i sympathize a little with your comments. Now you go to an agency and you can work all over jersey, but to make 100 per diem as a substitute, you have to work in trenton. I got my license to be an independent Insurance Agent and i went an hour from camden, new jersey, the licensing helped me. Im 58. Im a personal caller. Its hard to create leads as an independent insurance agency. When i first started working in the 1980s, i worked for prudential. They trained us how to do the job. Guest pats story, first of all, its moving and every time a job ends or gets in trouble, pat finds another pathway to make it. But for about nine years, folks like pat have been swimming against the tide. It reflects the situation that some of the problems were due to the recession, and others were due to longerterm trends. What do we do about that . Again, we try to help those transitions and its interesting because we send a lot of people to college in america, including community colleges. And sometimes a lot of people drop out and dont finish and then people like pat finish. Pat did everything right. She finished, got a degree in a field that seemed to be growing. And even that sometimes isnt enough. The American Economy isnt fast and an area with strong job growth one year can be shedding workers a year or two later. Its hard. The only thing i can say is that policy has to work harder to help people like pat in the short term help them get into college and get those degrees in the highdemand field. But once she finishes, we need to have more assistance getting her into the job market. If she cant get Health Insurance through the job, thats why obamacare is important. Really, theres very good numbers right now, so the government helps subsidize people like pat. We can help people get the skills they need, then help them transition to new jobs. If theyre still in low wage or low benefit jobs, we can help supplement them. I dont think we can stop eliminating those jobs. Technology and globalization are very powerful sources. Even if we wanted to, we couldnt stop it from doing that if we tried today. The world were going to live in, a very dynamic world. And the best thing we can do is try to help workers make the transitions and if they cant get the jobs, provide supplements. Host in the usa today, charles coke writes in that piece, we should eliminate the artificial cost of hiring Government Policies such as obamacare have provides us incentives hire two part time people instead of one full time person to do the same job. Guest mr. Coke is not exactly a neutral observer on this topic. He has very, very strong views. Were mixing apples and oranges together. I believe as the economy picks up more steam, employers when they create jobs will be more willing to commit to fulltime employment and the higher wages and benefits that entails. Its funny he provides obama care. Now, it may be that some businesses are anticipating that in creating parttime jobs in advance. Theres a lot of Different Reasons for those numbers and if youre going to say to eliminate obamacare, as an economist, i was trained to look at. The cost. Thats something to keep watching. I will not blame obamacarr for all the growth in parttime work. I dont think thats warranted by the facts. Im hoping this recovery picks up steam and more part time workers will get more full time jobs. Host only a few minutes left. Harry holzer with us from georgetown, university and the Labor Department. Caller first of all, your speaker is totally out of touch with whats going on in america as far as obamacare. Its evidence that employers are hiring people 29 hours per week or less. Period. Take a look over the last four years the number of total part time jobs versus full time jobs created. I think maybe youll wake up and figure out what obamacare has done to the labor market. Host if you want to respond. Guest mike, frankly, i think youre overstating your case. It might well be that obamacare is leading some jobs to become parttime. What im trying to tell you and maybe you should be better in touch with the 10 Million People who are now insuranced. Why is america the only Major Industrial country in the world with a massive industrial population. Other Industrial Company has figured out how to provide insurance to its population. I understand that there might be some costs to that. In the world i live in, theres always costs as well as benefits. And some of the growth of part time doesnt reflect that. If that continues to be the case, maybe loosen the employer mandate at some point. My sense is that every problem somehow gets attributed to obamacare, and i think thats out of touch as well. We have to be honest. But americans need to be insured and we have to do more to rein in those costs. Host now we have michael from kansas city. Caller my thing is commonsense in anything people do, its just a shame people dont use commonsense. Host what do you mean, michael . Caller you know, in life. You talk about all these people unemployed and all this stuff. Commonsense tell you dont shut down the government. Just do what you supposed to do. You know, you got its just commonsense. Guest i think commonsense is a commodity we do need a little more of. And theres one point that i think is correct, we often do stupid things like government shut down, the refusal to think of other things. Some of these problems really are complex and difficult and the world is changing very rapidly and keeping up with those changes i think is a big challenge. I think more commonsense in this town would certainly help. Host montgomery, alabama, eric is calling on our line from democrats. Caller my question, its kind of twoparted. For one, i would like to ask, does the inability of congress to be able to act on the American People, has that negatively affected our job market and do you forsee any action on raising the minimum wage, tax reform, or the new bubble of Student Loan Debt . Guest you know, eric, i think that the paralysis in washington right now, that clearly hurts the economy. It makes inequality worse. I think raising the minimum wage modestly, gradually, things of that nature would help. Its hard to get anything done in this town. I mean, we have this crisis of children flowing over the border. We have to do something about that and the paralysis in congress, Congress People left on vacation without being able to do anything sensible on that. So its hard to be optimistic and see how were going to come out of this election with a for functional congress than we have right now. And thats a big source of concern. I dont think were going to go back to one party. Maybe in 2016 if we elect a president and two houses of congress from the same party and there are other concerns about that happening. Its discouraging. Host has the u. S. Economy learned the lessons of the Great Recession or are old habits starting to come back in . Guest youre talking more about the housing and Financial Markets where big bubbles developed and when they burst, we had a massive recession. We learned some lessons from that. I think the frank legislation does some things right told correct that problem. I fear that in some places, legislation may not have been Strong Enough or theres some latitude for it. Right now, banks are required to come up with these plans with how they would be resolved. Fdic and the Federal Reserve recently rejected a lot of their proposals as not going far enough in the restrict direction. But a lot of these problems still exist, banks that are still big to fail that we might still need to bail out. But theres still time to correct that and i hope the Federal Reserve remains strong. Harry holzer, always enjoying you coming by. Thank you. Guest thank you. Host its 9 16 eastern time. An update on the conflict between israel and gaza, a new cease fire is allowing talks between israel and hamas. The lull in violence is allowing palestinians to leave their homes and shelters. There have been long lines in atms. In afghanistan, possible war crimes which occurred during military operations in the country. Amnesty says it investigated ten incidents during which 140 civilians were killed during u. S. Military occupation. The st. Louis county Police Department is in charge of the investigation by the shooting death of an unarmed black man by a Police Officer in missouri. John gaskin who serves on both the st. Louis county and national barred of directors and the naacp says they will ask for another investigation. Those are some of the latest headlines on cspan radio. Host were taking a look to see how your money works. This week were joined by steven on the ground on the ground to take a look at a Computer System. Guest this is a Computer System that helps the Agency Process disability claims. So when a person first applies for disability benefits. There are 54 separate agencies across the country and each one has their own individual Computer System. Six years ago, the Social Security administration embarked on this plan to replace all 54 of those Computer Systems with one massive system that would help them process applications coming into the system and track them as they worked their way through the system. Host so on the benefits of what this was supposeded to do, were they going to be financial, wait time reductions, what was it . Guest really all of the above. Right now, if you apply for Social Security benefits, there are long delays and inefficiencies in the process. This was supposed to increase accuracy of judgments, make the whole system more efficient. Host so nearly 300000000 later, why . Guest it doesnt work. The agency cant say when it will work or how much it will ultimately cost. A few months ago, the agency hired an outside Consulting Firm. They realized they had a problem and had spent a lot of money on a system that wasnt working. So they did an internal report, the report was finished in june. And essentially they found a Massive Technology program with no one in charge. No Single Person responsible for getting the job done. They found they didnt give the contractor enough details throughout the process on exactly the kind of capabilities that they needed. And there wasnt enough what they called shared risk. This is meaning that the contractor got paid even though the system doesnt work. And so there werent enough incentives across the whole project management to ensure that this thing would get done. Host what are the similarities youve seen between this and the high profile problems with healthcare. Gov . Guest they never rolled this out. This system is still in the testing phase. After six years and almost 300 million, its never actually been employed. So youre not seeing the results in the public. Host were talking to Steven Ohlemacher of the associated press. Hes been following this investigation into the Social Security administrations disability it Program Investments of about 3 hundred Million Dollars and six years and its still not working. If you have questions or comments as we go through his story, give us a call. How was congress made aware of this and how much oversight are they bringing . Guest im told that the House Oversight committee is looking into this. They found out about this. Im not sure who tipped them off initially and they actually got ahold of this report. Theyve requested information from the Social Security administration about this contract and this project and theyre looking into it. Host and what has this meant for Carolyn Colvin . Guest this comes in an awkward time for her. She took over last year when the former commissioner finished his term. The Social Security commissioner serves a sixyear term. So if she were to be confirmed, she would serve beyond the obama presidency. So right now shes going through that process. The last week that congress was in session in july she had a confirm maciol hearing. This issue was mentioned but not talked about. Host so is this the Biggest Issue shes going to face or whats on her plate . Guest theres a lot. This is a big deal. This is almost 300000000. But when you look at how massive Social Security really is, 58 Million People get Social Security benefits. Now, most of those are Retirement Benefits. Thats almost one out of every five americans. About 11 million get disability benefits. Last year, Social Security paid out over 6 hundred billion dollars in Retirement Benefits and 140 billion dollars in disability benefits. One of the problems with the Disability Program is that the finances are in the secure right now. In two years, the trust fund is scheduled to run out of money and at that point disability will only be able to pay about 81 percent of benefits. So if congress were to do nothing, that would result in an automatic 19 percent cut. Congress can do a simple fix. Social securitys supported by payroll taxes, 12. 4 percent payroll taxes. A portion of that goes toward Retirement Benefits and disability benefits. Congress could redo that formula and transfer money from the retirement system to the disability system. Theyve done it before and it wouldnt be that big of a deal except for the fact that anything touching a hotbutton issue like this in this congress, not necessarily easy to do. Host we have steven on the ground ohlemacher with us the next 35 minutes or so. Were going to take your questions and calls. Glenn is up next from new jersey. Good morning. Caller good morning. Id like to know why these contractors are getting paid if it doesnt work. Guest thats a good question and that is, in fact, an issue that was brought up in the report done by the consulting form. They talk about shared risk, if this doesnt work, who has to pay. And they said the contractor is a large Government Contractor out of maryland. The report that i read does not specifically fault the contractor although does raise the issue that maybe Social Security would want to think about switching contractors although the agency tells me theyre not currently doing that. So the way the contract was set up, they were getting paid even though the system wasnt working. Host renea is next from oklahoma. Good morning. Caller hello. I have a question. Im a person that is disabled. Not of my own doing. And through this conscious its never to be revisited again. Because of this, i get my disability. But when i ask questions about it and how its formulated, i find out that its a 1940 formulary for a median family of four being utilized. How does that convert to a 2014 income . I dont get it. Maybe you could explain it. Guest im not sure about the 1940 formula. But when you think about how Social Security benefits are calculated, you start off with the basis for how theyre calculated for retirees. For them, you get wages over the course of your lifetime and the agency then takes your 30 years of your highest wages and averages it. They bring those up to today and they come up with an average monthly wage and then apply a formula to that to determine it. They replace about 40 percent of wages on average when you retire. So you take that and if you get disabled and if you get disabled and youve been working, the Social Security administration uses a formula, say youve worked more than ten years they make a calculation to figure out what your earnings would be over your career and use a formula to come up with your benefit. Granted, its not much. The average disability benefit, 1 thousand 446 dollar a month. Its not enough to get rich on. Host will this affect people filing for Retirement Benefits . Guest no. This is all about the Disability Program. Applying for Retirement Benefits is a much simpler process. Once you decide youre going to retire, when you reach 62 is when youre eligible for early retirement or right now the full retirement age is 66, its a simple calculation. They have a history of your wages, determine your benefits. Disability is much more difficult to figure out if someone qualifies for benefits or not. Last year, 2. 6 Million People applied for benefits. This system is getting swamped. Only about a third got approved. Part of that is the standard is really high to get disability benefits. The law says you have to be disabled for at least a year or projected to last at least a year or result in death and it has to be so severe that you can find no job in the u. S. Economy anywhere. Thats a really high standard. Host up to new york, dan is calling in. Good morning, dan. Caller good morning. I have two questions actually. The first one is i understand the Social Security income cap at 1175 seems a bill whats being done to root out fraud, waist, and abuse in the fbi that seems to be rampant. Guest when you pay Social Security taxes, if you make more than 117 dollar more a year in wages, theyre only taken out of wages, then any amount that you make above 117 thousand dollars a year is not taxed. Thats set up originally, the system is not meant to be your entire income for a person when you retire. So for people who make more than that, you might expect that they have other Retirement Income coming in. So their taxes are capped but the amount of benefits are capped as well. If they were to take away that cap, it wouldnt entirely erase the deficit but it would erase a big chunk of it. Now the question is if theyre paying more in taxes, do they get more in benefits reducing solvency as well because the program would be paying out even more money. And the way the system is set up, if youre a lower wage worker, more wages are replaced by Social Security benefits when you retire. Its a social insurance policy that helps people stay out of poverty when they retire and if youre making more than 117 thousand dollars a year, youre probably not going to be in poverty when you retire. So theyre not getting as much of a return on their money and thats an issue thats come up and a lot of democrats in congress have talked about the need to perhaps raise that cap. Republicans have been less likely to do so. Host ken is on our line for democrats. Good morning. Caller good morning. The six and a half percent payroll tax that funds a larger Social Security fund, with this disability Social Security fund, one of the solutions is to take a small percentage of the six and a half percent and reallocate it to the disability and apparently that would shore it up another 20 years to make it about in line with the larger Social Security. Is the political opposition against that, that they dont think its fair that people that work should support people who dont work even though quite a few people on disability really do need to be on. Even though there is always fraud and abuse. Or is that not really a fair gripe because theres really no tax increase. Its simply a reallocation. How do you compare that with something that happened 19 years ago in resolving a similar problem when they simply took a transfer payment from the larger fund separate from the payroll tax piece . Guest first of all, the amount of money that comes out of your pay is actually 12. 4 percent, and it funds the entire program. Its supposed to be 6. 2 directly from your pay and your employer contributed 6. 2 percent. Congress will tell you youre actually paying the entire 12. 4 percent because you pay the employer share through reduced wages. So right now about 85 percent of that goes to the Retirement Program and the rest goes to the Disability Program. Theres no real opposition to redoing that formula. If you look at the trustees that oversee Social Security just came out with their report a few weeks ago and said the Disability Trust fund is scheduled to run out of money in 2016 and the Retirement Trust fund is to run out in 2014. If they were combined, they would both run out together in 2033. Congress doesnt work very well unless theres a deadline and theyre forceded to do something. Some folks really want to see these programs shored up for the long term and thats more than 20 years because when youre looking at this many people, they would like to shore up these programs sooner rather than later and some people would like to use this 2016 deadline for doing, shoring up the Disability Program to tackle the larger issue. So its not so much that theres opposition, its just a debate over using that deadline to work on bigger problems. Host what about people who want to see the Case Processing system come online . Theres a chart from one of those reports you were talking about on the delays showing consistently theres been a 24 to 32 month estimate of the time remaining on the creation of this system, that happening in 2008, 2010, 2013, still 32 months away. Guest one of the recommendations that came out of that report, the consultants told Social Security, you know, you need to have so many in charge, one person responsible for this entire project. And so they appointed an assistant Deputy Commissioner to be in charge of the program. I asked her that question and she couldnt give me an answer right now. They said that they dont know exactly when this program, this whole system is going to be up and running. Host are there estimates of the final cost . Guest no. Well, the answer is no, there are no estimates and right now theyve already spent 288000000. So i would say that the 288 million. So i would say the likely road is pretty strong. Host charles is in north carolina. Charles, good morning. Caller good morning. Thank you for taking my call. I just had a comment on it projects across the board in the federal government. I think the federal government has one of the worst it records in the world for completing projects and annually, they know that billions of dollars are wasted in it in the federal government and why this one project is being investigated by a subcommittee when they know that theres enormous waste in the federal government with it that theyre so bad at. Host your assessment . Guest if you think about it, the federal government is a huge purchaser of it. You know, there are Computer Systems that run massive agencies whether its health and human services, the veterans affairs, healthcare. Gov, Social Security administration. So i do think there are problems across the government that theyve found and the reason why theyre looking at this one is because this is what congressional investigators have found and i feel they feel they have to start somewhere. Host cathy is in maryland. Good morning. Caller good morning. I have a comment and then a question. My comment is my husband and i have who been together for over 30 years filed our taxes this year the same way we always do with the same accountant that weve had for 14plus years and low and behold, someone had already filed our taxes for us and gotten our refund. Now, my husband and i both work very hard and were just everyday, middle class americans, so i want to know is excuse me, im a little winded if the irs cant even process refunds from Everyday Americans whom theyve been processing, my husband and i have been doing this for, like i said, over 30 years, then how do we expect the Social Security administration to run any program, especially like the new Obamacare Program . And ill take my answer off the air. Guest first of all, im very sorry that happened to you. I cover tax policy as well for the associated press. This is a growing problem, identity theft. One of the problem things these people do is if they can get your Social Security number and your birthday, what will happen is early in the filing season, soon after the irs starts taking tax returns, they will file a fake return in your name, get a refund, and when the legitimate person tries to file their return, it will come back. Identity theft is a growing problem. Host is that an improper payment . Guest yes. Its in the billions of dollars. I cant put an exact number on that. I can tell you that its a growing problem. Its a problem theyre trying to address. There are any number of issues involved in this. A couple of them are the irs takes great pride in turning around and issuing refunds quickly. And often they issue refunds before all of the paperwork comes in from your employer, bank, broker. And only then after that paperwork comes in do they realize that theyve issued a false refund. So theyre taking steps to try and shore this system up and try and get faster reporting from your employer and bank but as long as theyre trying to get you your refund quickly, they dont have the ability to get this kind of thirdparty reporting, theyre going to have this issue. Host nancy is on the line from missouri. Caller yes. I have a question and a comment. The question is this the irs tells you that at 52, you can retire but then they put a limit of it on 15,000 you can make over the Social Security you get. And youre left practically living on welfare and food stamps if youre 62 if you have no kind of a pension or anything. And we baby boomers are retiring and a lot of us dont have pensions to live on and so we are going to have to live on just the 15 thousand dollars if we retire at 62 or we could wait until were 66 and collect full amount or we can wait until youre 70 and get 138 percent. Why dont they just take the limit off the 15 thousand, let us wait until were 66, collect Social Security 1 hundred percent, and or wait until were 70 and collect the 138 percent and let us have something to live on whether than having to go to welfare or food stamps. This is getting to be a thing where were retiring at big amounts and what is the government going to do . Guest she raises a very good issue. I look at some of these numbers and more than half of all people applying for Retirement Benefits do so at the earliest possible moment that they can, when they turn 62. The way the system is set up, you get full benefits, 1 hundred percent of the benefits youre do if you retire at 66. But you can retire early and start taking benefits at 62. Theyre reduced benefits because youre taking them early. And what people really need to do is do a real hard calculation. How long do you think youre going to live and how much money do you think youre going to need as you grow old. Some people have no choice but to take benefits as soon as they can, you lose your job, cant find another. Others are perhaps retiring early because they dont realize theyre going to live another 25 years. And there has been some talk about raising the retirement age again, either raising the full retirement age or the early retirement age. Theres a lot of opposition to that on capitol hill. Folks like us, i sit at a desk or a run around the capitol for my job. Others workout outside, physical work. Its not always easy for everyone to work until youre 69 years old. Thats a very difficult issue that they have to address and people have to be honest with themselves about how long they think theyre going to live and how much money they are going to need after they retire. Host arnold is calling from new york. Caller good morning. Im speaking from the reference of someone who has been involved in Public Service for a very long time and the biggest problems why were having the problem here but in the rest of the government in terms of procurement in all phases. That is government workers are looked upon as a liability and not a resource. The people that do the hiring from the government have to know more than the contractors and the consultants that they hire because they have to prepare contracts and request proposals and be able to coordinate the work of various contractors. They have to be experts in technology, legal, and be able to supervise the contrac contracts. The bottom line is they have to be more knowledgeable than the contractors they hire. Thats the base of problem. Congress feels that they want to hire and pay people who are superior in their ability. Guest yes, that is a problem. One of the things that they, the Consulting Firm pointed out was as they went along, there wasnt enough scrutiny going on with the contractor. They didnt give details on what they needed, didnt have a Single Person overseeing the broad scope of this project, and hes absolutely right that the agencies need to have people who understand these projects, their needs, and can oversee those projects. Host and how much competition was there in this contract in the Actual Development of this contract was this how Many Companies were bidding on this contract . Guest i dont know. I wasnt around when this contract was first awarded. I read some of the documents about that. I dont know that it was a competitively bid contract. I dont have any information on that. Host pat in new york, good morning. Caller good morning. Thank you for having me. Two points really. One was a question. Does the regular Social Security caps that go to people who are retired, retired workers, are those caps going to be affected by people who will not be able to get disability from Social Security in the future . Thats the first thing. The other thing is shouldnt this is something im thinking. Shouldnt contractors and industry be directly involved in supporting disability for people who worked for them . I mean, i could see under fdr in the past this might be a ruling or a law where contractors would be more responsible. And the question of how many of these disability claims are actually valid . 60 minutes aired that possibly 30 percent of the people who claim were claiming falsely and i can see this because people are starving in these parts that they were showing in West Virginia who need money because they cant we have a problem with imbalance in this country and who are the managers and the people who are supposed to be in Congress Looking at these equations and trying to balance things the proper ways. It seems like a headless government in this country. Guest when you first apply for disability benefits, you go to a state agency. Twothirds of those are denied. If you get denied the, you can reapply to the same agency. If youre denied again, then you can appeal to an Administrative Law judge. This is different than a regular judge. An administrative judge who works for the agency and they make a determination on your case. This whole process can take more than two years. Administrative law judges interestingly tend to appro approve about half the cases they get. Sometimes people start off with disabilities that get worse over time and so perhaps they can really be disabled at that point. Other times, there may be flaws in the system they need to look at. One of the big reasons so many more people have been applying for benefits, and we see this every time theres an economic downtu downturn. This number has been growing, demographics. You are more lakely to get a disability if youre 50 to 65 years old as opposed to younger. That huge group of people approaching retirement age moved into that this year. Theres that reason. Historically, more women have been in the work force. This is not a new phenomenon. Going back 20, 30 years, those female workers now qualify for benefits if they get disabled. That has increased over time. And also what has happened recently, this surge with the economy. You know, if you think about it, a lot of these people probably arent qualified to get benefits when the economy goes bad but some people may be disabled, may have a Good Employer that has accommodations for them, get laid off and have nowhere else to turn. Host got a few minutes left. Becky is in michigan. Good morning. All right. Well go to bruce waiting in illinois. Bruce, good morning. Caller good morning. I might have gotten my question answered while i was trying to call in. Guest do you have another question, bruce . Caller yeah. Im trying to ask it. I was laid off in 2009. Im 59 years old now. I have disabilities, and they keep getting worse. But youre saying that applying for disability could be a twoyear process. I have no income. My unemployment ran out two years ago. If it werent for the fact that i live with my mother and am her care giver, i wouldnt have a roof over my head. What are we supposeded to do . Where do we turn . Youre a reporter and it seems to me there should be an investigation into these people between the ages of 55 and 62 that have been laid off are terminally unemployed but still need to try to file for unemployment. Guest theres a couple of things here. When you first apply for benefits, that initial application phase lasts on average a little more than 100 years. Thats not quite a year. Now, only a third of those people get benefits. So if youre one of those folks, you obviously get approved sooner. Theres an issue though, someone whos been laid off. Like i said, the standard for getting disability benefits is very high. The Legal Standard is a disability expected to last at least a year or result in death and be so severe that you can find no job in the economy whatsoever. And thats a very high standard. Its not necessarily the job that you had before. Its any job in the economy. Host lets go to mary in north carolina. Good morning, mary. Caller yes. I am 53 years old and on disability. It took me six years to get disability. I was denied twice and went before a judge and in two weeks, i got disability. I didnt have a lawyer. I kept immaculate notes on everything and when i got my they had me having an alleged anyeurism. I had a huge one and i had to have it coiled with 19 coils and a stent. Host is that one of those claims that would be processed under this new system . Guest yes, it would be. The way the system is set up is to hand it will claims that go through handle the claims that go through state agencies. It would extend to cases that are appealed to Administrative Law judges. Its a multistep process if youre denied, you go to a state agency. Host lets go to harvey in virginia. Good morning. Caller good morning. My question to mr. Ohlemacher is why cant the congress of the United States of america replace the cash in Social Security if they withdraw and replace them with treasury notes or reserve notes of some sort basically worthless paper . Id like to know why they cant replace that . Ill take my call here. Guest thats a great issue. I hear this a lot from folks who talk about is the trust fund really real. In 1983 when congress revamped Social Security, they created a system where they paid more in taxes than their benefit would be and this trust fund built up. What did they do with that money . They did what you might think they would, they bought treasury bonds. Theyre special bonds in the Social Security trust fund. So when the rest of the federal government, however, as we know has been spending more money than it takes in. So weve been borrowing from private investors, foreign governments, our trust funds. One of the first places they go is the Social Security trust fund. So the rest of the trust fund which has been running a huge deficit borrowed that money from Social Security and spent it. So is it really there . Its there in the sense that the Treasury Department has 2. 8 trilli 2. 8 t the rest of the government owes that money to Social Security. So you might say thats just one part of government owing it to another part of the government. Thats true. A different way of looking at that is that as long as theres a balance in those trust funds, the Social Security administration has the Legal Authority and application to pay full scheduled benefits. Those trust funds are still growing even though right now the system is taking in less in tax dollars than they are giving in benefits. Those trust funds are start to shrink unless Congress Starts to act. In 2033 or 34, theyll run out of money and the system will have to survive on those incoming taxes. The problem is that as long as theres a balance, the agency has the legal once those balances go to zero, they can only pay benefits supported by payroll taxes meaning a significant cut in benefits. Host and whats next for this disability Case Processing system when it comes to congressional oversight . Guest the folks at the House Oversight committee tell me that theyre looking into this. Theyve made a request to the agency for communications regarding this contract and regarding this computer program. I dont know that theres going to be hearings but i wouldnt be surprised. Well see where that leads. Host thank you so much for joining us today. Guest thank you. Host thats our show today. Well see you tomorrow. Meanwhile, have a great monday. National captioning institute] [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2014] [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2014]