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them take on as well. here's why you can let us know. for democrats, call (202) republicans, call (202) 748-8001. for independent --independents, call (202) 748-8002. media, post a social @cspanwj is how you can reach us on twitter. if you like to send us an e-mail, you may do so at journal@c-span.org. the paper this morning highlights two main activities for congress. they are the debate that's going on currently over the nuclear deal over iran's nuclear program , and the profitability -- possibility was shutdown in government when it comes to spending the congress has a on between now and the end of the year. here to explain is nancy ognanovich of bloomberg. she is there congressional reporter. it morning. -- good morning. let's start with the iran deal. can you tell us where we are? the main thing here is that it seems as if president obama has the votes he is going to need in order to get that deal approved. but it's going to be a very contentious process. with the house only being in basically 10 days this month, it's going to consume a lot of airtime. and also the senate will consume a lot of time on the iran deal. i'm reading that the opponents of the iran deal are likely to max out the debate, especially some of the republican presidential candidates in the senate. what they are all saying is that in all contributes to a tosening outlook for bill extend government funding at the end of the month also. because it consumes a lot of time, and some people want to use the iran deal to attach language to try to block this agreement. host: there is something being discussed call resolution of disapproval. what is that? guest: best to prevent disagreement from going through. to try and prevent the white house from getting this thing through the house and the senate. that activity will take place in congress. when it comes to the iran deal on the senate side, he talked about the support the president has. does he have enough support as far as preventing a veto or supporting a veto should it come to that? guest: i don't believe that the concern at this point. come sinces that they went out for break, it just seems like he has solidified enough support to get that deal. host: on the side of the shutdown of congress, we talked about how the iran deal could pick up a lot of oxygen. where are we as far as a potential shutdown? morning, we this are not very far seems. it doesn't seem as though there has been very much progress during this break to resolve issues related to appropriations like the breakdown of defense spending versus nondefense spending. the white house and republicans in congress have a different opinion on that. republicans want to increase some funding for defense. beyond what's allowed by the budget control act. the white house isn't opposed, otherey also want to have programs as well. that hasn't been resolved. the goes to appropriations. when you go beyond that, they haven't resolved what's going to be attached to the money bill, the so-called anomalies that would be attached to it. but also, there are those contentious writers that are still out there like the one we saw before the break, to defund planned parenthood. republicans in the house and senate want to try and use the cr for that. addition to that, there are some republicans who might want writer -- cr for a rider to block the iran deal. at the lot to deal with between now and september 30 when the government's funding runs out, especially when the house is only going to be in session for about 10 days. what's the expected showdown between republicans and the house and senate, and what leadership wants to see as far as a government shutdown? both leaders on both sides of said they don't want to shut down to happen. all year long, senate majority leader mcconnell has been very clear he doesn't want to government shutdown. he says there will be a government shutdown. he says the government is not going to default on its debt. when the united states gets to the point may be in late november or we've exhausted are borrowing authority. boehner is basically in the same camp. they have to deal with conservatives in their caucuses who have said that a government shutdown is really good politics for us. our base likes government shutdown. in the end, when it happened two gettingo, wind that reelected and not only that, we got majorities in both houses. so they have to deal with that factor. and try and convince others in the party to come along with them and get the short term build on. year, a stillthe going to have to try to get through a full year appropriations bill to wrap up fiscal 16 appropriations. that's going to be really difficult. and that will be a cliff in december. have a cliff september 30, you have a cliff in november. onbetween you have a cliff transportation spending. at the end of the year you have a cliff on total appropriations provisionsg tax known as tax extenders. host: that's nancy ognanovich from bloomberg talking about what's going on in the senate. your publication puts out something called the hill watch. what is that. guest: we do this throughout the year, especially after congress has been in recess, and they are coming back for a new work perio d. we give an overview of what the main issues are, and we also have very detailed descriptions of some of the bills that are moving, and whether prospects are. host: you can find out online. talking aboutch the work the congress has to do when they are back for break. thanks for your time. guest: thanks for having me. host: iran may be your first preventing a government shutdown might be that as well, maybe you have other issues you would like congress to tackle. ,emocrats, call (202) 748-8000 republicans, call (202) 748-8001 , independents, call (202) 748-8002. we start with daniel in bloomington, indiana on the independent line. the morning. caller: good morning, pedro. i would like to say on typically a republican caller onto the show in the morning. record, i noing longer welcome in the republican party in my county. it's only until the next primary. my priorities for congress very -- vary. focus on we need to the issues surrounding enron deal. the senate, both sides republican and democrat, have to be representative entirely when in negotiations, such as enron deal. -- and iran a deal. isnsportation spending almost like a balanced budget. we have not had a consistent funding for almost 20 years. that has to be done soon. finally, what i'm going to address on the phone with you is national security. the common defense has to be intertwined with our national security, otherwise, we are extraordinarily vulnerable. thanks for taking my call. daniel from indiana starting off. bob for minnesota, democrat line. caller: thanks for taking my call. i think they should avoid a government shutdown. they've been doing this every time they can. it damages the country when they do that. i think that the money in politics has a lot to do with it. i do believe that someday the voters will ultimately find a way to get big money out of politics. there's one thing people could do to expedite the problem. if you just -- whenever they start airing political ads on tv, all you have to do is hit your mute button, and every time they play a on tv, hit your mute button. the television networks would get the idea pretty soon, if people stop listening to all of their solicitations. thanks. host: michael in south carolina. on the democrat line. good morning. caller: good morning. my complaint with congress is about the immigration situation. if you're welcoming immigrants, that's fine. anybodycongress or for to come and try and set 11 million people, or 12 million immigrants that they say are going to be legalized or assimilated -- what about the people that are already looking for housing, trying to rent the can't afford houses? as competition for those people to get those places that are available. jobs, everything. every benefit is pushed up on that. you could share that equally. bring in immigrants and make in thist 30% live neighborhood, 30 in that neighborhood, 30% in this occupation without occupation, not just take all the lower occupations, the ones that people are barely making a right now. on -- giveendent away your thing first. bring the rest of the country up, then start allowing new people to come into your house. don't have your family put down and put out of the way because you are trying to get votes. you are trying to assimilate these people, but you don't live where things are going to begin away. that's a problem. i want congress to consider the people that are here. priority forp congress. the numbers are on your screen, you can respond on twitter as well as gary did. only 10hy is the house days in this month, they've been gone for a month. should lock the men until they do something. richard from south carolina, democrat line. you are next. can you hear me? host: yes, you are on. iller: my main priority is ,ish republicans in congress and boehner, would stop the nonsense about government shutdowns. every time we turn around, they want to do it. they are getting sicker. they think it's a good idea. they must think it's a good idea to collapse the economy and destroy a nation. stopt wish they would acting like a bunch of little five-year-olds out on the playground if they don't get their own way. host: we are asking folks about the top priority for congress. democrats, call (202) 748-8000, republicans, call (202) 748-8001 , independents, call (202) 748-8002. of ang at the possibility shutdown, usa today gives a little bit of historical context saying the normal congressional budget process involves the house and senate passing 12 separate spending bills to various agencies and programs run the government. host: gary from troy, montana. good morning. caller: i'd like to tell everybody that iran is going to get a nuclear bomb. and we won't go to war with them because when they have a nuclear bomb, they will have the delivery system to hit the united states. that's all i got to say. host: what do you think congress should do about it? caller: what can they do about it? we don't want to go to nuclear war, do we? how can anybody trust a lies?ent that the bill isn't any good until all the side deals are done on it. host: from gallatin, tennessee. immigrant line, this is larry. -- independent line. caller: i like to see congress stay in session longer. seems like they control the amount of time they stay in session. -- i look atuldn't it as hoodwink the american that there thinking is so much stuff that got to do, all of a sudden it all just falls on them. tos month they have 10 days handle this legislation. this major legislation. before they go on break again. it amazes me. maybe it would help if congress was paid by the day, they stayed in session versus a year's salary. host: do address this issue with your legislature? you call them, write them a letter, express your concerns? caller: all the time. i've got a blackburn republican. they are in charge of both the house and the senate. do? do you i don't know. it just is frustrating to me. i'm retired now. when i worked, i worked 40 hours a week. and over time. it wasn't unusual for me to work six days a week. i'd be happy if they worked five days a week. host: that's larry from tennessee talking about the length that congress is in, and their workload. that may be an issue for you. you for it some mention the iran deal, some mention the government shutdown, some mention immigration. those could be top concerns for you as congress returns. if you want to give us your thoughts, democrats, call (202) 748-8000. republicans, call (202) 748-8001 . independents, call (202) 748-8002. chris from twitter says wednesday speaker boehner says that will not be a government shutdown, you can be assured there will be a government shutdown. new bethlehem, pennsylvania. republican, this is james. james, you are on. why thei'm wondering republicans are standing around, not doing anything on benghazi, where hillary clinton and the hussein could have had people coming from different basis, help those people out, and maybe save their lives. but they said stand down. go and nobodyet talking about that? court that supreme they said was attacked, but then it turned into a law -- why didn't they take until obama you laws and that obamacare would not have gone into effect? the main things they've done and let go, you think everybody in the supreme court should be impeached, kicked out, and put other people in. they let too much garbage get through in this country and make laws that shouldn't be done. journal," wall street taking a look at the store you have been hearing as far as syrian refugees and other parts of europe, seeking asylum. that's the photo in the picture of the wall street journal this morning. story go to usa today, a about the obama administration and considerations they might make when it comes to refugees saying. administration is opening the door to the possibility of allowing more syrian refugees into the united states. host: adding the white house did not suggest a time frame for the president musthe establish the annual refugee ceiling before october 1. host: jennifer from boise, arizona, talking about your top priority for congress. caller: it's jennifer from bullhead city. host: my apologies. caller: that's ok. my tough rarity for congress this year would be not taking the 20% away from people with disabilities. that's not really being talked about. i little upset about it. i only get $1000 a month. i worked hard all my life. my daughter rolled my car, i had to buy a new car. i had to make payments on that. andhe time i get done, barely eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches every day. and they are giving $5 billion iran,ia, $165 billion to and countless others with billions of dollars being spent crap.b -- when their own people -- i'm going to starve. they will literally kill me if they take that 20%. and i'm not the other one. i think that's what they're trying to do. they are trying to kill us. host: for those people who may not be following this is close to you. 20% of what? caller: social security disability, is all over the news. to getcans are trying this bill passed where social security disability is going to be cut by 20%. itally, they were getting from retirement or unemployment. now they don't want to do that anymore. was,se what happened obamacare was funded with the social security disability money. and that's why there's not enough money in the kitty for us now. month --ty receive a how much do you receive a month? caller: i started at eight something, and now it's $1005. one of the things i mentioned, i didn't get my back pay. you know how to give you the back pay because you have to wait three years? i never got it. judge said you either take it now or you are going to deny you without it. host: jennifer, what is the nature of your disability? caller: i have herniated discs in my back and my lumbar. i have herniated discs in my neck. i got in a car accident. boiseit's jennifer from talking about the so security disability program. diana from wisconsin, democrat line. caller: i would just like them to do their job. they have many, many bills sent to them that are just piling up. when you talk to some congressman, they will say -- they don't even discuss anything, they don't bring it out on the table. you don't talk about it. they just wait until the end, and make people feel like they are crushed for time it. they are trying to dismantle federal government anything. people should beware of what they are doing. they just want to privatize everything. they are dismantling little by little like the caller you just talked to -- people are noticing all the little things they are doing. one of the things i wish they would stop doing is getting into women's business. religion has no place in politics. people's personal beliefs on what they think for abortions or birth control or whatever has nothing to do with running this country of ours. i wish they would just do their job, take their pay for doing their job. otherwise, get the hell out of capitol hill. they have no business being there, they are just a bunch of kids that don't even know what they are doing. if they do know what they are doing, they are trying to mess with us. stories about a potential government shutdown include the possibility of bringing in the topic of planned parenthood. this is the "new york times," saying publicans are threatening to refuse a vote for any spending bill that provides federal health-care money to planned parenthood after a series of article video service this summer. -- surfaced this summer. host: move the planned parenthood money to other women's health clinics that do not provide abortion services. it's not just good policy, it's good politics as well. bill from new york, good morning. what is your top priority for congress? caller: i wanted to call and say i'm for the iran deal. the great deal for us. and it's a great deal for israel. i do think that then yahoo! is in cahoots with obama on the deal. i think he is simply posing these against the deal. and by doing so, he is outside the deal and offers an insurance policy should iran not abide by the deal. but clearly, the deal benefits is real. at the same time, and in yahoo! will be appeasing his right wing conservative people in israel by doing so. i think he is really in on it. i know that sounds crazy. that's the smart thing for them to do. host: what leads you to believe that? caller: think about it. the iran deal clearly benefits israel. it's a sensible way to try and get iran not to develop a bomb. israelsame time, if agree with the deal, they wouldn't have the license to strike iran should they infringe upon the deal. he's outside the deal, in a position to police the deal. i think that obama recognizes that as well. think about it. host: jim is next up in newberry, south carolina. republican line. caller: good morning, world. the government shutdown is my concern. my concern is that the naming of it very we've never had a government shutdown. if we do, it would be a disaster. what it is is a government cut back. we should have those constantly ongoing. i wish we could look at our it hase, because meanings. in starts wars. we have not had a government shutdown, it won't have. we need to have a lot of government cutbacks. that's my only comment. host: do you think those cutbacks will take place this time around? caller: i hope so. it should be an ongoing thing to begin with. the government is entirely too big. it's too out of control. host: vivian in tennessee on our democrat line. you are next. caller: good morning. i was calling for three quick points. you're talking about cutting the government down. they say they don't want government in their business. but when disasters come, who do they call? the first responders. men and women need their wives and husbands to come in and help. the second point. they promised jobs. they haven't done anything. they haven't paid us anything. all you hear about is benghazi. iran. what about the citizens in the united states, homeless? week whotting $203 a have family to support. they have elderly people -- i need -- i knew a lady eating dog food. country's doing everything else for everyone else but they're not think about our people. people, we have the power in the vote, no matter how big rich every put the ads out day, it's up to us to get out and vote. republican, democrat, independent, think about this. get out and vote. thank you. host: "washington times," takes a look at the presidential race. on top of the republican ticket, how it might affect a down chicken republicans. specifically donald trump. this is steven dimon saying he is not only shaking up the gop presidential caucus, he was a dominant theme for republicans back home. the trunk campaign is to report endorsements, and some pundits are warning that mr. trump of the top of the gop ticket would be deadly to the prospect of some of the down ticket candidates. host: more about that in the "washington times," this morning. will be 2016 politics our discussions about 15 minutes later on at about 8:30. we talk about congress coming back and some of the details we have been talking about with the reporter. that will be at 8:30. for now, your top priority in congress. democrats, call (202) 748-8000. republicans, call (202) 748-8001 . independents, call (202) 748-8002. we will hear next from dan in missouri, marble hill missouri. public in line. -- republican line. caller: i appreciate your tremendous tos have the american people be able to voice ourselves and come up with new ideas is what it's all about. -- with go back to the the first priorities of the leaders of this country is to protect this country. that's it. number one. we are in a sequester. we did that to ourselves. we're playing games with iran. putin talking about in the next 10 years they will nukes, they are going to do whatever they do. they are playing the game they play. and yes, the israelis are in it too. it's not all real. this is gamesmanship. we shouldn't get ourselves -- we to the point that can make ourselves unhealthy believing too much of this stuff. it will be straightened out. the war is coming. there will be a reckoning. that's what i wanted to share with you. the most important thing this country has to do is defend itself. thank you for the opportunity. host: that is dan from missouri. this is rick from twitter. he says the top priorities to rebuild upper structure. congress should help the president restore jobs and stop holding their breath and stomping feet. orpond on twitter, @cspanwj on our facebook page. carl from maryland, you are on. caller: good morning. i am for the government shutdown for one major reason -- it doesn't matter which party is in control. that any time either party has some type of leverage so people can compromise worked together, i'm 100% for it. it just seems lately that if one party doesn't get their way, then everybody just starts crying. i just wish people could work and get the whole nation to move forward. that's it. the idea of aort shutdown because it helps people make decisions like that? could you clarify? caller: in any type of negotiation, you want some type of leverage to try and get at least something that you want from your side to happen. have any type't of working together or negotiations, that it just becomes a one-party nation. i think that's the frustration that i see in this country. we're just not working together. we're not even speaking to each other. host: did you support the last government shutdown? caller: i did, however, nothing got resolved. things've hoped that would have gone resolved, or things would've gotten negotiated and both sides win. i just don't see that happening often these days. host: massachusetts, this is john in pittsfield, massachusetts. caller: thank you for taking my call. i'd like to ask congress to revisit our energy policy. frome to see us move away coal and natural gas and uranium to generate electricity, and move us to a new source of energy, thorium. proven to be an safe reactor, with no one in the 1950's. the reason we didn't go with thorium was because we needed bombs, nuclear bombs. with thorium, you can't get a nuclear bomb. revisitcongress should the energy policy area did this rarer,elp us with the getting rid of toxic coal ash, which has thorium minute. ad we would be able to have much cleaner, carbon neutral source of electricity. this goes right to the question about iran having a bomb. have aere asking iran to thorium reactor instead of a uranium reactor, we wouldn't even be worried about iran having a bomb. it's all about the reactor. the type of reactor. china are about to have a thorium reactor in about five years or so. and this is technology that was developed in the united states. so we're going to be buying reactor from china now? i think the future of electricity is the rim, and i think the united states government's congress should be addressing the research and development and regulations around these new reactors. host: that's john in massachusetts. alton drew from twitter adds this to the conversation saying congress is a representative body, not executive or operational body. why do we extend them to work 12 month the year? harold is next on republican line. caller: i watch your show as much as i possibly can. congressman one to watch this war, they get a feeling of what's out there in the real world. congress has been labeled a do-nothing congress for years. they haven't accomplished anything. john boehner just sits in his office every day sipping whiskey thinking how to stick it to president obama. we keep voting these new people but it's going to be 10 or 15 years down the road until you clean it out. nothing is getting done. it's been this way for years. go, let's sayou in another world that congress is effective in working in getting things done. what would you want to be at the top of their list to consider? caller: for the people, by the people. it's not about sticking it to each other, democrats and republicans. host: specifically, what would you like to see them consider? caller: i like them to revamp obamacare, think that would make it better. i like them to take more care of the people in this country. instead of spending billions and world, i'dross the like to see them do something about immigration that stealing all the jobs and raises. things are getting worse and worse. , just on$20 trillion illegal immigration, not on the wars. it's a do-nothing congress, it's been labeled that for years. no one can deny that. it's been labeled that for years. host: josephine is in new jersey, joining us on the phone. we are asking people about their top priority for congress. what do you think? caller: i was really addressing the woman who called in about social security disability and her indication thinking that it had to do with obama care. it had nothing to do with obama care. this was done by ronald reagan and tip o'neill in the 1980's. those were the old days, when they compromised when they had issues to resolve. they took money from medicare, which was solvent, and put it into social security, which was not solvent. they all knew, they all agreed that in the future, it would make medicare go insolvent. they knew that. they understood it. they kick the can down the road. this is all to do with budgets. the republicans are taking the position, especially the tea party, the they could resolve it instantly, the medicare funding. but what they didn't want to do was what reagan and tip o'neill did -- moving money from allimator column b -- column two column b. it's like with a mortgage. you don't plan to have that kind of money spent, but you do. you take money from someplace else, and you handle the budget accordingly. it's the same idea. they do not, and they refuse to take money from anywhere else. they would rather spend $1 billion on one airplane then put it in the medicare. so get your facts straight. it all started way back in the 1980's. they knew it was coming. just like so security can be remedied very quickly by them raising the cap, contributions to social security. it's all doable. when they say we are broke, we don't have the money, no, it isn't. it's like a family. you make priorities. is a $1 billion plane your priority? or are the human beings that live in our country need to be taken care of our priority. it just a matter of where you want put your money. since they believe that war and airplanes are priorities over human beings, that's why we're in our mess. host: josephine from new jersey. twitter says we need to change the tax code. it isn't fair to the middle class which is most of us. jacksonville, florida. john on democrats line. you are next. caller: good morning. screener about iran, but there so many issues. i want to say that commerce is broken. our government is broken. it just appears that this is by design. nothing has been done as far back as i can remember. congress could never agree on anything. we have credit -- president second star wars, look at the bush and administration would always war started. his continuing under obama. we break these countries and then we send money to ease their problems. if you look at the mainstream media, they talk about the crisis that's going on in syria. yeah, because we started these crisis is. by design. we're going to constantly send .oney overseas it's confusing. but the average american is suffering. but have no job, our veterans come home from these wars and they are not take care of. which is broken. i think the top priority of congress is to actually get these numbers out of congress and say go back to running the country based on the constitution. because you started with the iran situation, or at least want to talk about it, what do you think should happen there? because ofhink that all the wars we have been involved in, we've lost our position and influence in the middle east. bombwill have to get a because we can't stop them anyways. so be it. i've called the show before and said that america has been involved in iranian politics for the longest, since the 1950's. they've done the same thing in egypt. this is what you get. you can't stop them. well, maybe it might be a deterrent. for other countries in the middle east to start more wars. host: houston, texas. roger is up next. caller: ok. is alle with congress the government waste. in the fraud the goes on. the irs, the post office, you name it. the state department. they all have waste, there's no accountability. when it's time for the budget, they all want more money. within those three departments, specifically what waste are you talking about? out howthe irs gave many billions of dollars in fraudulent payouts this year? and then when they go to congress for their budget cover the need more money. wasteds is ok, will you $10 billion, obviously, you don't need that money because you are just throwing it away. we will start your budget from there. and who's the guy that spent $10 billion worth of checks out? he's still got his job, he still doing it. what's to stop them from sending $10 billion out next year? blowtate department, they money, they all blow money. they always to money and lose money. if it was their money, they would keep a closer eye on it. but it's our money. so they just throw it away like his concavity. the just -- like it is cotton candy. that just burns me up. no one has ever lost a job over it. if you are a business and you blew $50 on a deal, you would lose your job. billions, and they just keep letting them do it. nobody says nothing. host: roger from texas. the last call on this topic, ron from eagle river, wisconsin. caller: i would like to see congress finally end the war on marijuana. they are putting people in jail, i've had friends of mine in their own home, they came in and busted them. it's crazy to continue this while some states are going ahead and reducing penalties and getting rid of the prohibition. it's all prohibition, and it's costing us lives in this country for no reason, other than people in washington have got their heads up their butts. thank you. on that topic. we will focus on campaign 2016 in the next one. the boston globe editor shira center will talk with a list of elements in the campaign, the upcoming debates, recent polling, and advertising. taking a look at that situation. later on, stephen denis will join us. he's going to talk about commerce's agenda, which would talk to little bit about this morning. you can talk to him about specifics. and also what happens now that congress has returned from their summer break. yesterday president was in boston not o
New-yorkUnited-statesMontanaEagle-riverWisconsinMissouriTexasBloomingtonIndianaIranChinaFlorida general. >> snow and traffic across oklahoma and texas. it could get worse this week with some areas expecting up to three feet. good morning, welcome to aljazeera america. i'm stephanie sy. >> i'm del walters. president obama calling it an act of pure evil, the beheading of yet another american hostage by isil. >> aid worker formerly known at peter was kidnapped more than a year ago in northern syria. evidence of his death can be keen in a new video released by isil on sunday. aljazeera america is choosing not to show it. >> he is a former army ranger. he was remembered in his hometown of indianapolis. it comes as more u.s. airstrikes pound kobane near the syrian border. there are reports of fierce battles with peshmerga forces. >> reactions of sorrow and outrage from around the world for a young american man who wanted to help as herrens. he converted to islam while in captivity, changing his name. >> this morning, peter's parents are grieving over the murder of their son, a former u.s. army ranger turned aid worker. his family says they are heartbroken and released an audio recording of him. >> i was able to share a little bit of hope and comfort with some people. >> in a video released by isil sunday, the 26-year-old kasig like james foley and steven sotloff and two british aid workers was beheaded in a syrian desert by a hooded man speaking with a british accent. the white house confirmed and president obama condemned the killing, calling it an act of pure evil by a terrorist group that the world rightly associates with inhumanity. his parents had pleaded for their son to be released. he was captured in syria in october of last year, while delivering relief supplies. >> our heartaches for you to be granted your freedom so we can hug you again and then set you free to continue the life you have chosen. >> his father read this final message from his son. >> don't worry, dad, figure down, i won't go down thinking anything but what i know to be true, that you and mom love me more than the moon and the stars. >> but freedom never came for kasig. his dealt according to the executioner because of u.s. forces in iraq. secretary of defense addressing troops in california said u.s. advisors are getting an early start on training iraqi forces in anbar province, part of the strategy for fighting isil in iraq. >> we're in the process now of opening four training centers in iraq, where we will train and equip along with coalition partners. >> now, of course, stephanie, despite these videos that have been coming out, the white house says it's not changing for affecting its trajectory or game plan in iraq or syria. >> speaking of the video, can you sort of describe for us how this video is different from other isil videos we've seen featuring western hostages? >> unlike past ones, it doesn't show the actual murder, just the aftermath, and at the end of it, stephanie, it doesn't threaten to kill another hostage specifically, something that has happened in past videos and in fact has indeed happened in subsequent weeks. it also gives a location of a town in northern syria, it's the name of a magazine, a glossy magazine that isil is putting out as propaganda. it's symbolic. it's the scene of a final battle, of end times, essentially. this has a lot of references that are significant to the creators of the video. >> what can you tell us about the other american hostage who is still being held by this group. >> there's a young woman in captivity. her family has asked that her name not be shared by the media to protect her. we do know that she's 26 years old, just like kasig, an aid worker trying to help people in syria. she was not directly threatened in the last video, and it would be a first for isil to kill a western woman through this sort of media use. >> libby casey for us in washington, thank you. >> let's go live in baghdad this morning. what do we know about the other 12 people killed by isil? >> there are 80 captured across syria we don't know about. isil don't really release the names of the syrians or ires that they capture. for them, the western hostages that they have are a big value deal for them. it's something they can get publicity out of. they feel they can't get publicity out of the syrians, so they kill them en masse. >> kasig was a muslim convert. are sunni's worried they could be targets besides the fact that they're from the same sect as isil? >> they are targets. if you don't agree with isil's ideology, you are simply killed or asked to lee the town or you're put into slavery. this is isil's tactic. that's what they do. the gravest sin is the sin of denying your faith. you have to believe in isil's faith, isil's version of that faith. if you have anything else, free thinking, even if you disagree on very simple things, you're therefore declared an enemy, so sunnis are being targeted and not just in iraq, in syria and any territory they've been in. whether it's been the group in egypt that have pledged allegiance to them or other parts of the world, it's the same i'd yelling that permeates, agree with them, you're right, if not, you will die. >> coming up at 7:20, we'll talk to retired army major mike lyons about what the killing says about the status of isil. >> the so-called 20t 20th highjacker is offering to testify on behalf of september 11 victims. he has written to federal courts in new york and oklahoma claiming to have inside information that will support terror funding suits against saudi arabia. so far, no defense lawyer has taken him up on his offer. is currently serving a life sentence. >> investigators in ukraine clearing the wreckage of malaysian air flight 17 where all 289 passengers were killed after the flight was brought down. remind us why this crash was the subject of such a huge controversy. >> controversy because of the sheer number of civilian deaths and the accusations and counter accusations as to which side was responsible for bringing this plane down. the wreckage now lies in what is separatist-controlled part of eastern ukraine. that's what's made it so difficult for the investigators and international monitors to cooperate and get the kind of agreements and safeguards they needed to start removing the wreckage. they have done so as of the last 24 hours or so, pieces of the wreckage being brought out, taken to kharkiv. they'll be taken to the netherlands where investigators will try to determine exactly the cause of its explosion and its coming down in ukraine. >> petro poroshenko saying he is ready for the resumption of total war. in what can text is he making those statements? >> in the context of an increasingly difficult and strained situation on the ground. was, nato and ukraine accuse russia of sending further troops across the border. poroshenko himself issued a decree over the weekend talking about ending state services, ending back was es, as well. now he says he doesn't want war but that his forces are in a better position than a few months ago and that the ukrainian side is ready for a resumption of what he calls total war. >> vladimir putin talking tough from russia. we are live on the ground in donetsk, thank you very much. >> a palestinian bus driver was found hanged overnight. this was the scene outside a university just a short while ago. palestinian protestors burning tires, throwing stones, claiming israel was behind the death. nick schiffron is in jerusalem. good morning. there are two very different accounts of what happened to this man. what are you hearing? the family of the 32-year-old said that he was murdered by israeli jews. on the other side, israeli police telling me that they suspect no foul play, translation to that, they believe that he committed suicide. his body was found hanged inside his bus in a bus depot not very far from here. it was discovered by a fellow bus driver when he was supposed to start his route last night. right now, there is an autopsy being done by israel police with the palestinian coroner present and everyone is waiting the results of that autopsy not only to figure out how he died, but also because there is a lot of tension on the streets over his death. >> what has been the reaction on the ground to this? >> as you showed already, there have been protests, almost immediately after he was killed, palestinian media reported that he had been murdered and that sparked protests in east jerusalem between palestinian protestors and the israeli police. these are neighborhoods that have long had tension, but especially in the last few weeks, a lot of tension, a lot of protest, but really, this kind of incident can take simmering tension and make it boil over. it's important to note that no matter what happens, no matter what comes out of that autopsy, in fact, there might still be a protest because there's a lot of mistrust between palestinian protestors and the israeli police. they might not believe the police if they confirm that he was murdered -- >> suicide yet -- >> rather if they confirm -- >> there have been a number of isolated killings. are either side taking steps to end this cycle of revenge? >> i think leaders on both sides to a certain extent have backed their own constituencies. president abbas has called on palestinians to defend themselves if israel restricts prayer access to the mosque. on his side, prime minister benjamin netanyahu has vowed strong police responses to any protestors. i think it's important to note of what happened thursday night a very critical decision made by u.s. secretary of state john kerry, netanyahu, and jordanian king abdullah. that is when israel lifted restrictions, age restrictions on prayer in the mosque. since then, these tensions we've been talking about over the last few weeks have reduced, but an incident like today, even if police say that he committed suicide, you see the tension, you see the fighting on the streets. there will be clashes today and that is a sign that the tensions still exist, no matter what the police say today. >> nick, thank you. >> doctors are saying that surgeon stricken with ebola in sierra leone is now in critical condition. he is receiving treatment in nebraska. he is a citizen of sierra leone but he lives and works in the u.s. health care workers hope to save him with experimental drugs they've been using. we are tracking developments from atlanta. what more do we know about the doctor this morning? >> well, good morning, we know he is in extremely critical condition, much different than the other two patients successfully treated in nebraska in omaha, so the weighs is very nimble right now. they're not sure exactly where this is going to go as the 44-year-old surgeon lice in nebraska. >> dr. martin saleyah is fighting for his life at the nebraska medical center. he was working in sierra leone when he contracted ebola. >> he is extremely ill, possibly even more ill than any of the patients that have been transported from western africa to the united states to be treated for ebola up to this point. >> he arrived in omaha over the weekend. medical workers carefully moving him on an enclosed stretcher, unlike other patients, he was too sick to walk on his own. >> we're geared up a understand ready for whatever's coming down the pike. >> nebraska medical center has already successfully treated two ebola patients, a missionary who contracted the disease in loy about her i can't and a freelance t.v. cameraman who caught it in the same country. that is encourages news for the doctor's son. >> he's a very strong guy emotionally and physically, he's strong. i have no doubt that he will come out victorious from every disease or sickness. >> it is unclear how he contracted ebola. he is a citizen of sierra leone but lives with his family in maryland. the doctor is also chief medical officer at a methodist hospital in free town, but it is not an ebola treatment unit. earlier this year, he talked about why he was called to work over there. >> i firmly believe god wanted me to do it. i knew deep within myself that the people of this part of freetown needed help. >> now the doctor is the patient. >> the surgeon's family is expected to pay for the evacuation from west africa. that's about $200,000. the reason why? he he's not a u.s. citizen or u.s. government aid worker. >> what can you tell us about this new health scare this morning that emerges from mali, screenings ramping up on people traveling from the united states. what can you tell us about that? >> first, the centers for disease control and prevention has about a half dozen workers in mali right now. they are ramping up their folks over there. they're going to send some more in in the coming days and as of today, any travelers coming in from mali will be screened for fevers, the same way any travelers who have been coming in from sierra leone, again knee and liberia have been. it's not an epidemic in mali but they are monitoring enough people in that country so the big airports here where some of those people come in every single day, 150 passengers daily from those west african countries will be monitored. >> thank youvich. >> in ferguson, missouri dozens braved freezing temperatures to protest michael brown's death. it has been more than 100 days since the teen was shot by an officer. protestors marched and chanted, others lied down in the middle of the street. the protestors want the grand jury to indict officer darren wilson. the decision is expected in days. we are live this morning. there are fears that once the decision is announced by the grand jury, there will be violent demonstrations. what is the town doing to get ready? >> that's right. people are just hoping for the best. it is the dominant tappic of conversation, on everybody's minds. they're very worried about it. they don't know what the decision will be, what the effects will be. yesterday, the churches, many of them changed sermons to reflect what has happened in ferguson in the past and what may happen in the future. the main message, not surprisingly coming from churches with one of love and reconciliation but also pointing out that what happened here in the summer could happen in any town across the whole of the country. one thing rewarding the timing, the schools will be given three hours notice if the decision comes down on a weekday. >> interesting. we are also now hearing from the mayor of ferguson. what's he saying about the grand jury process and what comes after this decision? >> i think one of the things this you have to remember is that ferguson really is any town, u.s.a. we're in the area where the rioting took place and it's been badly beaten up. there are very, very nice parts of the town, a beautiful, historic downtown, but also rewarding racism, it is any town u.s.a. when it comes to that. the malaysia said the town he grew up in, loves and now leads has become embroiled in this battle over racism. >> the hardest part has been seeing the community that i grew up in, the community that i loved, that i've committed to serving and i've been on the city council for almost 10 years now, to see it embroiled in this kind of racial tension. >> the mayor also says that the police force here was simply ill equipped to deal with these issues, issues he says the united states as a country has been dealing with for 400 years. >> the mayor seemed completely off guard. we'll have more on that interview later. the st. louis dispatch released a video showing officer wilson just hours after the shooting. can you tell us how michael brown's family has reacted to this latest leak? >> great journalism from the local newspaper, the dispatch. they not only had that video, but also information about the radio traffic from the police and the e.m.s. on the day of the shooting, the ninth of august. they worked out it was only 90 seconds from beginning to end, the whole incident. the brown family were quick to respond, speaking through their layers, saying that in their view, the injuries seen on officer wilson in this video clearly point out that they were exaggerated by the ferguson police force. they say the radio traffic shows that there was clearly no link between what happened when michael brown was shot and the earlier convenience store robbery, and they say that the whole system is rigged in favor of law enforcement and not citizens and say it must be changed. they say they are looking to the decision from the grand jury with great interest. >> john, thank you. >> this morning, the state department updating a security protocol that follows another suspected hack attack on the department's computers. the email system and some public websites had to be shut down. officials saying no classified documents were compromised but admit there have been several attacks on u.s. government systems. chinese hackers are suspected. >> snow is moving across the country and could hit the northeast with up to three feet. >> we are tracking all the latest cold weather, this latest cold snap. it is ugly out there. >> it is not a great start to the weekend. behind me, you can see a live shot from columbus going on here. they are dealing with the morning commute in snow. it's not just columbus, we're talking about cleveland, cincinnati, into parts of pennsylvania, as well. this is going to be a major problem if you're commuting. the airports are beginning to go down, whether it be rain or snow across the area. you can see right here as that snow is pushing through, now this is a front. when the front pushes through, we are going to be seeing better conditions in terms of the precip but we are going to be seeing unfortunately colder air moving in. here in the northeast, we are looking at heavy rain showers boston to new york, philly, one and a half hour delays, laguardia, one and a half hours delay. we are going to see more airports with delays. if you have travel plans, it is going to be an issue. the three feet of snow is across lake huron and lake erie and is going to be the worst we have seen all -- >> you did say three feet. >> or more. or more. >> we'll keep that on our radar. >> world leaders are condemning the murder of an american aid worker. >> did his background as a former service member make him a target? >> president obama gets closer to taking action on immigration reform. we'll have the republican response. >> hill sides collapsing in italy and switzerland after flooding. several people there are still missing. >> $62,500,000,000, the big number of the day. >> two pharmaceutical giants set to join forces in a megamerger. >> $62,500,000,000 is the price tag for the merger of two pharmaceutical giants. >> the maker of botox is selling itself. mergers have been fought for months. there's a fear valiant could cut its research pipeline. >> a combined $15 billion in sales, the combined value could top $123 billion. >> president obama is condemning isil for killing another american hostage, confirming his death. after evidence of his murder was seen in a new isil video, and we are choosing not to show that here at aljazeera, the president called kasig's death an act of pure evil. >> mike lyons joins us. these are not just a few isolated acts. there are thousands of isil soldiers and we are seeing mass murder on an unimaginable scale. what prompts men to follow an idealogy that rapes women and beheads men in this day and age? >> it's tough to answer that question. in a lot of ways, these are young men looking for guidance, i guess. in this days, this kind of video serves as a recruiting tools, talking about the history of isis and where it began, where it's going, goes through the disgusting beheading ceremony. >> they're attacking sunnis, as well, fellow tribesman. >> all i can say is that these are just desperate people that really now at this point just look like they relish killing and has some macabre attraction to it from a young man's perspective. >> general martin dempsey has said the battle is starting to turn against isil, beiji is back in iraq government hands. the brutality of this video, as you described it, is it an act of desperation, are these guys on the run? >> i think so. i think if you look at the video, as i unfortunately had to do, it's not as professionally done witness especially towards the end. it's cobbled together pieces from other video. they're not out in the open. there are differences. they show some of of the faces of the islamic terrorists inside the video that we haven't seen before. it is definitely different. they don't have the same space and time to move and create what they were creating before. >> kasig, a former army soldier working with aid, trying to save people there. did his former position as army ranger make him a more valuable hostage? >> it did. the united states is not going to pay hostage ransoms for these situations. they're losing these journalists as they take people out and they're losing some of their leverage. they've got a recalculate what the value of these people are at some point. >> mike lyons, thanks for your insight, as always, good to see you. >> three feet of snow, now the south is dealing with snow and the threat of severe weather. >> kevin. >> we are looking at snow. this was actually snow taken yesterday in parts of texas. it was the first snow of the season. it was actually on sunday. if this happened this morning, we would have been dealing with major commute be problems, but just the dusting was very slippery. you can see the accidents here across north texas. as that snow pushes away, we are now dealing with severe weather that is moving across the southeast, and in that severe weather, we are looking at tornadoes that are coming up here across parts of louisiana, mississippi as well as now into georgia. >> serious situation there, kevin, thank you. >> the conflict in ukraine taking center stage at the g20 summit. >> vladimir putin leaves early after taking serious heat about the role of russia's fighting. we'll talk about the leader who called out putin. >> the pope making plans to travel to the united states in 2015. >> asking tougher questions of nfl doctors, what was being looked for in surprise inspections. >> a rude fan grabs a football at the bengals game. what cincinnati is now doing to make it right. that's one of the stories caught in our global net. >> you're looking live at kobane, syria where u.s. led coalition airstrikes were carried out sunday. the battle there continues between isil and opposition fighters. good morning, welcome to al jazeera america. ahead, we're speaking with former attorney general roberto gonzalez. what does he think of the president's plan to push through immigration reform with executive orders. federal investigators show up at nfl stadiums asking team doctors about drugs they give to players. >> we'll hear from the mayor of ferguson, missouri. he said it doesn't matter what the grand jury's decision is. >> a former army ranger was delivering human aid in syria when he was kidnapped. the president called his beheading an act of pure evil. >> a doctor in critical condition. he was working in sierra leone when contracting ebola. he's the 10th patient to be treated in the u.s. >> cleaning up the debris in ukraine four months later. investigators recovering what they can from makes airlines flight seven that crashed four months ago killing all onboard. russian separatists are blamed for shooting down the plane headed to australia. >> an emergency meeting being held tailed after bird flu was discovered in the netherlands. dutch health officials said it can be transmitted to humans. it was detected at a poultry farm. all the hens had to be killed. >> there is a new interim leader in burkina faso this morning. a committee named him to take the position. he's the country's foreign minister. he will name a prime minister soon, but will be banned from running in next year's elections. burkina faso has been in limbo since protests forced the long time president there to step down last month. >> peace talks with fark rebels, the president calling the abduction unacceptable and demanding the general's release. the rebels said they would stop kidnappings when peace talks started two years ago. the rebels say that only applies to civilians, not the military. >> president obama is gearing up to make public his immigration reform plan. it could come this week. >> republicans seem to be pulling back on one specific strategy to stop it. the sunday snow circuit was anything but rhetoric about this. it was filled with it. >> absolutely, big names from both sides of the i'll were out in full force to defend their side of the immigration debate. while republicans are threatening different options about how best to respond to president unilateral action, one thing they will not consider is shutting down the government. >> with the president threatening to go it alone on immigration, the debate is turning into a showdown between republicans and democrats. >> this president right now is choosing friction. >> the real story here is a speaker who won't pass bipartisan immigration reform. >> while the senate already pass add bipartisan bill, it's been held up in the house with speaker john boehner vowing to fight the president tooth and nail. >> i've given up on mr. boehner on this issue. if he wants to step forward and make some explicit promise that the house of representatives is going to move on comprehensive immigration reform now in this lame duck session, then it's another story. without that, the president should move. >> and move he will. the president already has a policy in the works to allow millions of undocumented immigrants to stay and work in the u.s. the president making it quite clear he will take executive action if congress does not. >> that's bog to happen. that's going to happen before the end of the year. >> republicans see he that statement as fighting words, which is why a group of conservatives have been pushing to make their own moves that could lead to a government shutdown. leaders moved away from the strategy. >> shutting down the government doesn't solve the problem, my concern is what happens if we shut down what could be a record legislative accomplishment that's there for the taking if the president would choose cooperation instead of conflict. >> absolutely republicans should do what they can to force the president to follow the law. >> democrats including the president insist this political problem has an easy fix. >> if he doesn't want the president to act, take the senate bill, amend it, change it, put up your own bill. let's get back to doing our work instead of just blaming the president for everything. >> the federal gridlock prompted some states and cities to tackle immigration issues on their own. recently, colorado became the 10th state to offer driver's licenses to undocumented immigrants. it's now also the 17th state to offer them discounted college tuition instead of the much higher out of state fees. >> thank you very much. >> coming up, we'll be talking about president obama's immigration plan with former attorney general alberto gonzalez. does president obama have the legal grounds to take action and what should republicans do in response. >> a bill to start construction on the ketone xl pipeline inching closer to a vote. the house passed a measure with a two thirds vote, the white house saying president obama is likely to veto those bills. >> fighting in ukraine casting a shadow over the g-20 summit in australia. russian vladimir putin left early sunday before the event wrapped up, saying he wanted some rest during a long trip home, but several leaders threatened more sanctions over russia arming russians in ukraine. amy knight is an author specializing in russia and the satisfactory jet union. thank you for joining us. i understand that putin was scheduled to leave early from the summit. why was he even invited to the g-20? he was uninvited to the g7 earlier this summer. >> i think that probably european leaders and the united states saw this as a possible opportunity to address some of the really pressing issues that russia, you know, russia has a very important role. >> as it was, he was completely stone walled it seemed by the leaders and harper was the only one to call him out saying i'll shake your hand, but get out of ukraine. does it surprise you it was prime minister harper? >> it's interesting, because of course canada doesn't really have a military capability, and so it's interesting that the only leader, only western leader was harper. i frankly was a little bit disappointed that obama and tony abbot and others didn't really call a spade a spade. >> what does that say that they didn't step up to the plate? after all, there was all of this talk when the flight went down, the tanks moved in but when it came time to con front him face-to-face, what does putin walk away thinking if harper is the only one to confront him? >> that's a good question. i think again, it reinforce the putin's apparent view that he's immune to western criticism and that it really doesn't matter. the only issue, of course, is the sanctions and there is talk that they are going to make the sanctions stronger. that should worry putin, but thus far, i don't think it does. >> poroshenko said this morning he is ready for total war again. my question, just being devils advocate, is kiev and poroshenko doing enough to address concerns about folks in ukraine who worry they are being disenfranchised? >> i don't think kiev is a position to do that much more right now. i think russia would like ideally for the eastern part of ukraine to become autonomous, but naturally, kiev's leaders are not willing to do that. that's pretty much what the separatists are demanding. as long as the russians are arming the separatists, it really makes it very difficult for kiev to do much more than to try to hold its own militarily. >> it is as they say a sticky wicket. >> yes, amy knight, thank you for your expertise. >> "real money"'s ali velshi traveling to document a grab for land and resources in the arctic and troops lining up for battle from both sides. >> it's a routine nato exercise in military readiness but demonstrations are force like this have taken on a new urgency for the west. here, beside the mountains in romania, these soldiers are training for battle, just a seven hour drive from ukraine. >> despite good relations with russia, nato uses its command center to be nato's eyes and ears in the sky when it comes to russia. >> norway runs that operation from its military headquarters, which it recently moved 600 miles north to buddha, becoming the only country with a military headquarters inside the arctic circle. one big reason for the move? to keep better tabs on russia. >> you can watch more of the series, the new cold war tonight. it airs at 7:00 p.m. eastern, 4:00 p.m. pacific time right here on aljazeera. >> pope francis will be making his first trip to the u.s., the announcement coming overnight. the vatican says he'll travel to philadelphia next september for the 2015 world meeting of families. the trip is expected to include stops in washington and the united nations in new york. >> investigators in san jose are investigating what sparked a massive fire at century's old catholic church. it caused significant damage to the building. 100 firefighters rushed to put out the flames, one suffered a mine injury. >> officials at dupont investigating the cause of a chemical leak, four workers were killed, a fifth injured. a chemical used in pesticides leaked from a involve. officials say the incident raises questions about protocol. >> one accident like this is one accident too many. that's why there are strict regulations on the books, regulating the chemical and other chemicals used at this plant. now are those regulations strict enough? were they enforced properly? how did the company respond to those regulations? >> dupont saying they're not sure why it took two hours to contain the leak. >> the d.e.a. putting the nfl under the microscope, wanting to know if the league doctors are giving players prescription pills. >> at least three teams received surprise visits from federal agents. john henry smith is in the crow's nest. tell us what it's all about. >> in what has already been a year full of black eyes for america's most popular sport, the national football league may have another embarrassing scandal. federal agents showed up to question and inspect the medical staffs of at least three nfl teams, among them, the san francisco 49ers, tampa bay buccaneers and seattle seahawks. the d.e.a. said these checks were part of an ongoing investigation into claims by former players that teams illegally gave them over a number of years unlimited access to prescription pain killers. the d.e.a. said agents questioned several teams doctors, asking them if they had any controlled substances in their possession. >> they are random checks to key physicians as they travel -- controlled substances across state lines. >> you guys can carry controlled substances -- >> a d.e.a. spokesman says no arrests were made sunday, but any team personnel found in violation of the controlled substances act could face discipline later. the nfl said our teams cooperated with the d.e.a. today and we have no information that irregularities were found. >> let's look at some of the other stories caught in our global net. a football interception actually making headlines from the new this time, look at that. the defensive play was made by a rude fan in this days. a bengals player threw a football to a cincinnati fan following a touchdown, only to have it seized by the same fan that used -- he couldn't give it back to her by the way. the team said they are going to sign a separate football for that fan. he is holding on to the ball. >> that's when the fight started. >> so korean science terrorists, you'll like this, trying to bring back a wooly mammoth from the dead. concerns have been raised. scientists believe -- by the way, these are artists renditions. they believe he they can be used. it raises shades of jurassic park. if they bring it back, it would automatically be considered endangered. >> it is a slippery slope, what's next, dinosaurs? >> unveiling a 1970's retro 737. seventy years flying under the qantas logo. john travolta said it holds significance to him. >> he uses those planes and has his own 727, wimp he flies for human missions around the world, so he's very familiar with the plane. he used it, it was the one that bought him back in the days of one of the movies, i don't remember what it was -- "grease." >> president obama vowing to go it alone on immigration reform but does he have the right to use his executive power to get it done? we'll as former attorney general alberto gonzalez when he joins us. us. >> >> bono and cold play's chris martin headlining a new band to raise ebola awareness. we'll have a special sneak peek. >> time now for one of today's discoveries. an ancient sight uncovered near the turkey, syria border. the site has dozens of hieroglyph panels and ancient sculptures. it's now guarded by hundreds of forkish soldiers and tanks and within ear shot of recent airstrikes against isil. despite the danger, archeologists would like to open the site to tourists by next spring. >> the president could announce an i am allegation plan this week. alberto gonzalez is currently the dean of the belmont university school of law and joins us this morning from nashville. thanks for being with us. let's cut to the choice. if president obama uses executive action to push through immigration reforms, is he breaking the law. >> i'm not prepared to say that he has the authority to do what it's reported that he's going to do. back in marsh, 2011, he did tell an audience that he did not have the kind of authority to do the things that is being reported. i begin with the constitution, article two, section three requires that the president take care that the laws be fatefully executed. he has a duty to enforce the law -- >> you're a legal scholar. if this were president george w. bush and he wanted to do exactly the same, would you tell him that he had firm legal footing? >> again, i don't know exactly what the president's going to do. he's made promises before and failed to care through about immigration. let's see what he proposes. the difficulty to challenge what the president is going to do in the courts is he does ever discretion in enforcement of the laws. he can decide how to enforce the law. it's that discretion that would present a challenge to anyone who wants to challenge his actions in the court. >> your former boss george w bush wanted to pass immigration reform and found a hostile congress. was there talk back then of using executive action? >> no, we really thought it would be more appropriate to work with congress for a long term solution, which is part of the problem with executive action, it's only a short term solution. everything can be removed, undone by the next president, can be undone by a statute passed by congress. i think we need a long-term, permanent, comprehensive solution to an immigration problem that meets our economic needs and national security needs. for that reason, i think it's ill advised for the president to take action at this time, when we've had recent elections, new congressional leadership. i think the president ought to give congress an opportunity to address this problem in a permanent way. >> let's talk about the real world, the real political world. when faced with a do-nothing congress, either republican or democratic, do the ends justify thence? >> again, you're talking about a do-nothing congress from the past. we've just had elections. we are going to have new leadership in the house, in the senate, we're going to have the republicans controlling both houses. i think the president ought to go to the american people and say this is a need for our country to have a permanent solution and then it falls squarely on the shoulders of congress. if congress doesn't pass it, doesn't do anything within the next few months, the president is in a stronger position to take executive action. to do something now when we've just had these elections to me is short-sighted. >> i want to get your opinion on something else in the news, that is guantanamo bay. there have opinion successful trials of gitmo detainees on u.s. soil and that was the objection when there were the military trials, saying if they were tried in the u.s., there would be repercussions. is it time foul in your opinion to bring those gitmo defeignees back and try them here? >> i have never been one who said that with respect to terrorists, the only appropriate disposition is military commissions. in the appropriate days, our criminal courts could be the right place. military commissions could be the right place, perhaps detaining someone indefinitely could be the right solution for the united states. it depends on circumstances. clearly our courts have been the appropriate place to bring certain individuals to justice. i continue to believe that they may not be the right venue for certain high-value detainees that may pose a very serious security risk. at this juncture, that would not be the reason i would want to close down guantanamo and bring everybody into the united states. these are not american citizens. once you bring them into the united states, there are rights that attach that may make it very difficult to bring these individual to say justice. >> it sounds like you are saying guantanamo should be closed. >> president bush wanted it closed. he pushed it to try to find a solution to close began to know mow. he did not want to be the world's jailor indefinitely. we couldn't provide for him an adequate solution, an adequate alternative and that's the exact problem that president obama has faced, even though he announced when he took offers that he was going to close guantanamo bay. the reason he hasn't is because there is not an adequate solution. an adequate alternative. >> former attorney general alberto gonzalez, thanks for being with us. >> mudslides ever killed four in switzerland and italy. two women were killed when their house was destroyed by a well of mud. in northern italy, a man and his granddaughter died. two days of torrential downpours caused flooding and mudslides. more rain is in the forecast this week. >> we turn to kevin this morning. >> we're going to get away from the snow for one moment. i want to take you to california. we are dealing with wind imagine. we have red flag warnings in the area, gusts here have been up to 50-60 miles an hour. that was yesterday. today we expect to see maybe not as strong, but we do expect to see winds being a big problem here as well as just to the north, we are looking at freeze warnings from nevada. >> some of music's biggest names gathering to raise awareness and cash to fight ebola in west africa. >> u2 and bono releasing another version of "do they know it's christmas." ♪ ♪ >> man, i remember that song. it was recorded in 1984 to help relieve famine, but the updoubtedly ribs are stirring controversy. >> some claims listeners are misguided about the facts and say it unfacial targets other countries in africa. >> there was plenty of reaction on twitter. tonight, we're reaching out and touching your lyrics are inappropriate, given you can't touch people with ebola. >> the african continent should sue the rest of the world for slander and defamation of character. >> charity combined with ignorance is dangerous. >> a washington faceoff over the key stone pipeline. >> the house has said yes over the president's objections. will the senate follow suit? >> a hat that belonged to napoleon bonn part. the price tag is fascinating. >> i want the schools to want me >> no matter what... i'm still equal... >> what if you had a brilliant mind? >> i want to get into a competitive school... >> but life has been a struggle... >> black and latino kids... they feel shut out of these schools and shut out of the opportunities that they offer >> and you only have a solitary chance to turn your world around >> the way to get entrance is through taking one single exam... >> testing under fire an america tonight investigative report only on al jazeera america >> fault lines brings you an eye opening look at what life is really like under the taliban. >> i'm actually quite nervous >> from girls attending school, to enforcing sharia law. >> they rely on the local population, and so they need to win the hearts and minds of locals to be able to fight. >> fault lines, al jazeera america's hard hitting... >> today they will be arrested... >> ground breaking... they're firing canisters of gas at us... emmy award winning investigative series... special episode this is taliban country only on al jazeera america >> fight back! >> anger and anticipation in ferguson, missouri. protestors remembering michael brown as police prepare for news from the grand jury. will it indict officer darren wilson for brown's death? >> when my sons ran out of ammunition, they stormed the house and executed them. >> life after isil, an exclusive left of the town liberated by the iraq army after it was obliterated by isil. >> the nfl intentionally overdrugged their players to get them out on the field when they were hurt and shouldn't have been playing. >> a federal investigation into the nfl, why three teams got a surprise inspection by the d.e.a. after sunday's games and it has nothing to do with steroids. >> a simple solution to a very complex problem, the ancient technique used to protect premature babies around the world. the united nations makes a new push for action. >> good morning, welcome to al jazeera america. i'm del walters. >> i'm stephanie sy. this morning anticipation is building in ferguson, missouri, protestors taking tole streets sunday were lying down in memory of michael brown as a grand jury movers closer to a decision. >> we are live in ferguson, missouri this morning. you've been in the city for a few days. what's it like on the streets? >> good morning. it is the topic that is on everybody's lips, they are nervous about it. they're concerned. they don't know when the grand jury decision will come. they don't know what it will be and they don't know what the effects are going to be. members of the community here are hoping for an indictment, because they say they want officer wilson to be subjected to due legal process. while there may be people in the area itching for a fight with the police, pretty much everybody who lives in ferguson is hoping that that doesn't happen. >> fight back! >> protestors took to the streets near ferguson, marking 100 days since 18-year-old michael brown was shot and killed by police officer darren wilson. demonstrators laid in the street pretending to be shot. this comes as the community and the country waits for a grand jury to decide whether it will indict officer wilson. >> at any moment now, we can expect to get an announcement if they're done with their work, which i suspect they're getting very close to being done with. >> police records were obtained, audiotapes and this surveillance video showing officer wilson in a white tee shirt leaving the police station heading to the hospital two hours after the shooting. before the shooting, police were tracking a robbery suspect. >> it's going to be a black male in a white tee shirt. he took a whole box of cigars. >> wilson asks if the officer needs help. >> 21-25 or 22. >> later, officer wilson reports his location. >> 21, put me on -- >> after some of the press conferences we've seen from government officials, i worry that we're getting back into this mindset of them versus us. >> at the catholic church in forego isn't. >> i believe ferguson is the new bethlehem. >> the homily focused on the impending grand jury decision. >> you can't go back. that is not just forego son, extends across the country. we have a hard time owning that. if we have it's just your problem, we can put the lid on and go back to normality. >> it can heal, but it needs to be done from the inside, i don't think it needs to be done from the outside. you need people together. >> schools will be given three hours notice should the decision come on a weekday. >> we are learning more about how the grand jury is processing -- or progressing, rather. can you explain? >> yeah, i can. we -- the st. louis county grand jury, there are 12 grand jurors, selecting from the same pool that goes forward for jury trials here in this area. they don't meet every day. they meet when it's convenient for all of them to get together. they're paid 18 bucks a day including expenses. when they've heard enough evidence, they will deliberate and vote in secret. they need nine votes out of 12 for an indictment. although they could meet as late as january, officials who are close to the case tell us that they expect a decision sometime in mid november to late november, which is why we are here now. >> john, thank you very much. >> coming up in 30 minutes, we'll talk to the mayor of ferguson, missouri about what he wants to hear from the grand jury. we'll speak to a local activist about the situation on the ground. >> the state department is checking computer systems after a hack attack. public websites had to be shut down. officials say no classified documents were compromised. there have been several attacks in recent weeks on u.s. government systems. chinese hackers are suspected in those attacks. >> president obama is condemning isil's killing of an american host taj, michae peter kasig. we are choosing not to show the video. the former army ranger was delivering human aid in syria when taken hostage more than a year ago. libby casey is in washington this morning. what are the u.s. and its allies saying about the death of another western hostage at the hands of isil? >> reactions of condemnation, outrage and sorrow coming from around the globe. the confirmation came from the white house that it was indeed kasig. president obama put out a statement on air force one last night. he called this an act of pure evil by a terrorist group that the world rightly associates with inhumanity. secretary of state john kerry for his part praised kasig for trying to help the innocent. it wasn't just american officials speaking out. here's what australian prime minister tony abbot said: >> look, we all know that the isil death count is utterly barbaric, utterly barbaric, and beheadings are part of their stock in trade. this is a death cult. it can't be dignified with any other title. >> kasig served as an army ranger in iraq, but at the time that he disappeared, a little more than a year ago, he was working on humanitarian aid, trying to help syrians when he disappeared in the northeastern part of the country. his parents had been pleading for his freedom since then. >> did isil give any reason behind the killing of kasig? >> well, his murderer talked as they have in past videos in four other videos that show the murders of westerners that this is in retaliation for american efforts in iraq. the u.s. and its allies for their parts are undeterred and not changing their game plan based on these videos. in fact, just this weekend, defense secretary chuck hagel said that the training of iraqi forces in anbar province by u.s. forces has been sped up, happening faster than anticipated. this comes at the request of the head of cent com, central command which oversees operations in the middle east and in advance of 1500 extra american forces going over to keep working on the training and helping aid the forces in iraq. >> libby casey in washington, thank you. ♪ >> kasig was remembered sunday at a vigil in his hometown of indianapolis. in a statement, his parents said their son lost his life because of his love for the syrian people, and his desire to ease their suffering. >> this morning, iraq forces saying that they have killed isil commanders near the turkey-syria border, local kurds defending kobane with the support of u.s. led airstrikes, those forces pushing isil out of another town. the fighting has left a trail of destruction. we have an exclusive report. >> with nowhere to go and nowhere to stay, had isil fighters took the town in june, they shelled in discriminately, destroying her house. the men in her family tried to fight back, but without backup, they were overrun. >> isil affected us in the early hours of the morning. they swept the houses of the village and looked for those resisting them. when my husband and two sons ran out of ammunition, they stormed the house and executed them. i managed to escape in an underground hole. after two days, i got out with my grandchildren only to see that our house was burned down and isil had taken our car and electricity generator. >> she becomes too upset to talk, but her cousin tells us what happened next. >> we have lost 22 men from our family. we have been displaced for more than three months. our family has been scattered, some to the north of iraq, others to the south. outside of kirkuk, after the village was liberated, some of us came back, but only to see devastation of what used to be a peaceful suburb. >> she and her three remaining grandchildren now lived in the bathroom of this bombed out shell. in september, iraq's army came in to fight isil and retake the area. more shelling scarred the town further. >> with so much focus placed on winning the war against isil, very little thought has been given to what happens next. the iraq army attack is to go into a town, clear it of isil fighters and hold the town. what that means for the remaining residents is they live in squalor. the ones that come back and take a look at what's left wonder what happens next. >> graffiti still covers the wall. although the suburb was hardly well off before the war, it was at least functional. children explore the wreckage while the duties returning here to assess the damage feel despair. they have no idea when they can rebuild, return home or what help the government will give them. >> aljazeera, baghdad. >> the stability still a distant prospect in the fighting over the weekend, isil fighters nearly shut down syria's largest oil field. >> pope francis will visit the united states. the leader of the world's catholics announced he'll visit philadelphia next september. that's for the 2015 world meeting of families. the trip is expected to include stops in washington and new york where he'll visit the united nations. >> you might want to add mali to the list have nations that have to undergo screenings because of ebola. seven new cases have been confirmed there, raising fears it could spread. a doctor in extremely ill condition in nebraska. we have been tracking the latest developments from atlanta. what do we know he about the doctor's condition this morning? >> we're told that he is fighting for his life. as far as the condition of the surgeon that was flown from mali, we're also told that he is much more critical than other patients who have come in from west africa. this is a scenario for him that could go either way. let's listen to his son. >> he's a very strong guy emotionally and physically, he's strong. i have no doubt that he will come out victorious from every disease or sickness. >> a strong guy, but, you know, ebola is very serious once it gets into the body and starts to break down the immune system, so this morning, he is in extremely critical condition, according to the university of nebraska medical center and we're hoping for the best for him. >> this report of a new outbreak in mali, do we know if they are connected to the others in western africa? >> it appears that they are. the first one in mali started with a nurse, the second one with a 70-year-old man and now the family members that were taking care of him are being monitored. it's the outbreak, the case studies that they're looking at, just like the c.d.c. does, trying to do the contact tracing to make sure that this virus does not expand like in sierra leone, guinea and liberia. american officials also looking at mali seriously, the c.d.c. amping up the amount of people that they have in the country to take care of that situation and then also the u.s. officials here monitoring anyone who comes into the u.s. from mali via an airplane, so looking at their fever, whether or not they've been around anyone with the virus and not taking this at all lightly. >> the doctor saying he does not know how he contracted the virus, as well. robert, thank you very much. >> back in this country, dangerous snow hitting the southern plains this weekend, drivers in oklahoma skidding along slick roads and highways sunday. much of the state was covered, up to four inches came down. >> cold temperatures lead to go a freezen water fountain. it is day five of below freezing temperatures in kansas city. that is the longest stretch since they started keeping records 127 years ago. >> we have a live look. here's columbus, ohio, you can see the snowy commute starting up there this morning. that massive system is now making its way toward the eastern seaboard. >> kevin has been tracking the storms, messy, early this year. >> it is early and it's going to cause a crunch on the budgets of these towns with the snowplows. i want to take you over here and show you in ferguson, missouri, we are looking at 17 degrees. the frontal boundary has pushed through. behind it, we are dealing with the very, very cold air. not a lot of snow, of course, but all this behind it is well below average cold air. i want to show you the northeast, here along the seaboard, we are dealing with rain, laguardia, new york and philadelphia with delays here, but it's going to be the lake effect snow with the really big problem. we're going to be dealing with snow in this area accumulating by tuesday, really over here to the south, maybe about two feet of snow. up towards the north, it is going to be 30-36 inches, locally 40 inches of snow. >> those are dangerous temperatures. >> those are very dangerous temperatures. you don't want to be outside and not prepared. >> thank you very much. >> we are following breaking news right now. this is a live look in kobane, syria. a massive explosion, possibly two of them just moments ago. we're working to confirm exactly what they were. there were u.s. airstrikes in kobane yesterday. we'll bring you the latest as soon as we get it. >> he gave up his life trying to help others in the middle of a war zone. >> it wasn't the first time in the line of fire. we'll look at what peter kasig was doing before beheaded by isil. >> some parents are fuming in florida. the school drill that sparked a change in protocol for the local police department. >> the lava has stalled and there are no homes in danger right now. that didn't stop the river of liquid fire from putting on a show in hawaii. >> a pit stop at a bore from the g20 summit. just a video captured by our citizen journalist. >> zero toll honest, police in dublin accused of using excessive force tackling a woman who approached a car carrying the prime minister. demonstrators were speaking outside one of his speaking engaugements. they wasted no time getting her away from the motorcade. >> a rather happy encounter with german chancellor angela merkel. she took a beer break in australia ahead of the g-20 summit, visiting the bar and posing for selfies with those outside. angela merkel just dropped into brew ski. >> plucking two people from the waters north of l.a. after their boat capsized. they were hospitalized with hypothermia and expected to make a full recovery. >> friends and family of the president remembering slain hostage peter kasig. he traveled to lebanon back in 2012. those who worked alongside him begged isil to spare his life. >> he helped save the lives of syrians wounded in the war, that is what peter kasig was doing in lebanon for about a year before he decided to help those living inside syria. he left in october, 2013, only to be captured by the islamic state of iraq and the levant. a week ago, his friends added their voice to an international campaign to persuade isil to release him. they were hoping that the fact that peter, who changed his name, converted to islam in captivity would have helped spare his life. even his close friend, a arian had hope but now is lost for words. >> what i should say to his family, that we are sorry because your son die in my country, and when he came to help my people and who tell him that those who killed them say they are our protectors now, i don't know. >> while in lebanon, peter volunteered with humanitarian workers. they used the media to try to tell peter's captors about how he helped the syrian people. it didn't do anything. the beheading video showed a masked man who didn't refer to peter as an aid worker. he he identified him as a u.s. soldier. >> some of these people knew kasig well. those who didn't, know of what he did for their revolution. they believe it makes no difference for isil if a person is a charity worker or not. >> they are doing this company muslims, they kill anyone they feel is against them. most likely, they would kill me, as well. they are giving a bad image of islam. >> kasig was a former soldier, but that is not how he will be remembered by his family and friends. >> at an early age, our son was inspired by his grandfather to do humanitarian work. when he saw the suffering of the syrian people, he went to turkey and founded an organization to provide aid and assistance. >> kasig was not the first western cap active to be murdered. there were four others before him, but unlike in their videos, kasig didn't speak, and isil showed what appeared to be a mass beheading of at least a dozen syrian soldiers, as well. this is a group the united nations has accused of committing war crimes in areas under its control. kasig and the soldiers are unlikely to be the last victims. aljazeera, northern lebanon. >> let's go to michael kay, a retired lt. colonel in the royal air force and former advisor to the british ministry of defense. this time, isil went further, behead ago dozen syrian fighters, as well. are we seeing mines of desperation now on the part of isil to do something graphic to get the world's attention? >> i think everything isil has done, del, since we've heard about them is desperate. i think this is a specific piece of desperation. kasig was a good man and had a huge heart. we've got to look at what's gone on beforehand, and isil are in discriminate, killing should not knee, shia, christians, jews, ensleighing women and children from the yazidis. they are raping, sub. >> gating women. everything they do is brutal and inflicting terror. what we are seeing now is something more akin to isil bang cult rather than a terrorist organization. it is in a place where the prophet humid said judgment would come. i think that is significant. i also think it's significant the fact -- these brutal tactics that isis are using are interesting, because clearly they're terrible, brutalizing, but what they also do is cement the perpetrators, so when they are committing these acts, they are almost committed to the cult. we know from previous reporting how difficult it is for those people that have been tempted to come in to join isis from europe and all over the world, those people have realized how wrong it is and want to escape have found it hard to do -- >> we've got breaking news to get to. i want to ask you one more question, how this affects the larger battle. we showed our audience live pictures of two major explosions in kobane which we can surmise are more possible u.s. airstrikes. after feel low was killed, there was an uptick of airstrikes. would you expect that? >> air strikes are about dynamic targeting, so they use two primary key factors. the first is time sensitive intelligence, wimp will be sucked up from the airborne drones and the other guided munitions. that strategy will not change regardless of who gets beheaded. it's all about where are isis on the battle field, what aircraft do we have in the vicinity, what munitions can we place on them without having too much collateral. >> what does this say about the isil strategy that doesn't cause the world to fear them, but to want to eliminate them. do they understand their own tactics work against them. >> sadly, we've become numbed. we remember when the first video with james foley came out, the whole world was disgusted by it. peter kasig's is clearly disgusting, but we're slowly becoming to accept that this is the norm. there's another, there's a final u.s. hostage that isis have that we know about. we don't know and name the woman. isis is trying to get $6 million for her. what this says is that the process of financing through ransoms is now coming to an end, so they're going to ever to source new areas of revenue. we know that coalition airstrikes are targeting oil refineries, that is a source, a significant source of revenue. >> they've got beiji. lt. colonel michael kay, like i said, we are trying to get to breaking news. >> that breaking news sad this morning. we are getting news that the surgeon being treated for ebola in nebraska has died. we are joined live from atlanta. what else do we know, robert? >> just literally a little over 10 minutes ago, we talked about how fluid the situation was for the patient, and unfortunately, the doctor has passed away. the university of nebraska medical center in omaha confirming that. let's give a little bit of the details. he arrived here in the u.s. just this past weekend in extremely critical condition, things were not looking great, but the doctors thought that maybe he had a fighting chance, but they say that they put him on a kidney dialysis, they monitored his signs, his vital signs, he had respiratory failure. they gave him zmapp, so clearly some of that experimental medicine has come into play. we're told, led me read fro from his wife, we're very grateful for the efforts of the team led by dr. smith. in the short time we spent here it was apparent how caring and compassionate everyone was. we are so appreciative have the opportunity for my husband to be treated here and believe he was in the best place possible. clearly the staff of the university of nebraska medical center in omaha distraught over this, many of them putting out statements in the press release, saying every member of the team has been personally affected by the doctor's passing. not a good sign for the situation in nebraska. clearly we feel for his family and they did all they could up at the university of nebraska to save the surgeon from west africa. >> when he was admitted, he was said to be in extremely critical condition. robert ray live in that he didn't, thank you very much. >> pledging calm in an eye to the future. >> no matter what happens, the city's going to work to move forward. >> the mayor of ferguson, missouri sitting down with aljazeera america. what he expects when the grand injury decision comes down. we'll talk to a leader of the community about the situation on the ground. >> several nfl teams get a surprise inspection by the d.e.a. what federal agents were looking for, and it wasn't steroids. >> just ahead, we'll talk to the mayor of ferguson, missouri about the michael brown case. >> molt 10 lava in hawaii, homeowners aren't too concerned at the moment. >> bono canceling his gig on the tonight show because of something that happened to him in new york central park. >> president obama is calling it an act of pure evil, isil's killing of american peter kasig, the former army ranger spent more than a year as a hostage delivering aid in syria when he was kidnapped. >> a surgeon with ebola has died, he was being treated in omaha. he was working in sierra leone when he caught the virus. he lives and works in the u.s. but is from sierra leone. he was the 10th ebola patient to be treated in this country. >> dutch investigators are picking up debris from malaysia airlines flight 17 at a cramped in donetsk in july. the fighting in donetsk meant the crash site was too dangerous for recovery efforts. we are live in donetsk now. why did it take so long to get to this point? >> because it has crashed where it has, in this separate controlled area where a lot of fighting has taken place. even during the ceasefire of the last couple months, it hasn't been entirely safe, there is still fighting around the airport in donetsk and the international observers, the dutch investigators have had to get cooperation from the local authorities here and get safeguards that they can work with enough speed and security to get this stuff out. the plan is to get some significant elements of the plane first to kharkiv, a ukrainian controlled town and on to the netherlands, where they aim to start fitting pieces of the plane together once again and they hope that will aid in determining exactly what brought it down in july. >> when it comes to the conflict, both ukraine's president poroshenko and vladimir putin have been giving interviews that seem to be raising the stakes. is that region getting close to all out war again? >> well certainly that is the concern of many here. they've both been speaking, both men to german media. president poroshenko of ukraine saying that his forces are in a much better state than five months ago, and that they are ready for a return to what he called all out war. saying he doesn't want that to happen, but russia can't be trusted to abide by any agreements. president putin saying that he doesn't want to see the ukrainians ethnically cleanse eastern parts of ukraine and says that he is willing to stop, russia will stop ukraine from annihilating as he put it its opponents in this area. that combined with what nato and ukrainians have said has been an in flux of russian troops across the border, wimp obviously russia denies leads many to realize this fragile ceasefire wimp has been breached every day in certain flash points could be close to collapsing in a much more widespread way. >> ukraine has stopped funding state institution in the breakaway areas at this point. harry in donetsk, thank you. >> all this week, real money taking a closer look at russia's relationship with the west. we traveled to eastern europe to document the new cold war. you can watch the reporting tonight at 7:00 p.m. eastern, 4:00 p.m. pacific. >> the national football league may have another scandal. >> sunday after their games were done, three teams received surprise visits from federal drug enforcement agents. john henry smith is in the crow's nest with more details. good morning. >> good morning opinion the feds are focusing on weather locker rooms have become pill mills, providing prescription drugs to players. the three teams investigators spoke with are not the sole focus of their investigation. minutes after the san francisco 49ers walked off the field, federal agents the team physician. he was asked one question. was he in possession of controlled substances like prescription pain killers. >> he's our team physician. he said no and that was it. >> these are random checks to team my significances as they travel to see if anybody is transferring controlled substances across state line. that's all the information we have. >> later the d.e.a. confirmed they had visits with the 49ers and tampa bay buccaneers, the seattle seahawks also confirmed they met with federal agents after their loss in kansas city. according to the washington post, a d.e.a. spokesperson said sunday's activity is part of an investigation spurred by a lawsuit brought by 1200 former players. the suit alleges nfl teams illegally provided players with a seemingly limitless supply of pain killers to keep them ready to play. >> they were literally given pills game day or shots on game day. they were given pills to recuperate on the flight home. >> the nfl intentionally over drugged their players to get them out on the field when they were hurt and shouldn't be playing. >> the d.e.a. said its agents searched bags and requested documentation from the teams' medical staffers to ensure they were in compliance at the controlled substances act saying only doctors and nurse practitioners can dispense drugs only in states where they are licensed. >> everything's registered here in the state of new jersey? >> i couldn't tell you that. >> a d.e.a. spokesman said no arrests were made sunday, but any team personnel found to be in violation of the controlled substances act of 1970 could face discipline. an nfl spokesman said our teams cooperated and we have no indication that irregularities were found. >> another big story we are following this morning, ferguson, missouri getting ready for the grand jury decision in the michael brown case. several protestors marking 100 days since brown was shot and killed by police officer darren wilson. america tonight sat down with ferguson's mayor, james knoll, iii. >> what do you hope the grand jury does? >> i don't care one way or the other what the outcome is, as long as it's the legal and fair outcome under the law. no matter what happens, the city's going to work to mover forward. >> what has been the hardest part of this for you? >> well, the hardest part has been, you know, seeing the community that i grew up in, the community that i love, the community i'm committed to serving, i've been on the city council for 10 years now, to see it embroiled in this kind of racial tension, to see this kind of uproar. i've never seen any kind of racial frustrations or strife. i've never seen this kind of outcry, i've never seen any outcry, really. we're a community that seemed to buck the trend when it came to white flight. >> how can you be the mayor of ferguson and be surprised that this exists or that people are this upset or feeling this way when you've lived here your whole life? >> well, i think let's be clear, too, ferguson's a community of 20,000 people, it's a metro region of 2 million people. we're only a mile and a half from the city of st. louis which has a very long and storied history of racial division, racial politics, racial strife. you haven't seen that permeate the suburbs over the past decades. >> what would you say has been your worst moment or the most difficult part of this whole process? >> you know, there's been a few times where i felt like ferguson was alone and therefore i felt alone, not personally, but, you know, as the leader of the community. the issues here transcends ferguson. they're not just county issues, not state issues, there are national issues at play. a small police department and city staff is not equipped to deem with the issues that the united states hasn't dealt with for 400 years. >> you can watch the full interview this evening on "america tonight" at 9:00 p.m. eastern. >> lets go to a democratic committeewoman joining us. give us an idea of what's happening there as the grand jury is considering its decision. >> as cold as it is here, it is hot in the minds of the people here. there is a lot of anxiety. the participation is a lot to deal with. people want to know what will be the outcome of this grand jury indict. it's stressful, tense, many people are on edge, but we just wait. >> what are you doing in preparation for this decision? are you partly of any of the potential protests and the organization of those? >> well, yesterday, we saw a very good direct action take place. it was very peaceful, marking 100 days since mike brown had been killed. those are the kinds of actions that i'll be supporting, telling people about, direct actions that are peaceful, well organized and thought out. the best thing i can do, i get a lot of people asking questions. one, i can just stay calm. i don't see the rumor mill until the indictment will come down. we tell people stay calm, stay smart. sometimes the best thing we can do is stay indoors. we're at the point in time right now where there will be people who are going to try to hit the streets to be violent, and we have to take that into consideration. >> after michael brown was killed, we heard people from outside ferguson came to your city and they were the ones stirring up trouble, tainting the process. do you expect the same? >> i expect people to do that again. this is a huge international story. so many people feel connected to it, even in social media, people all over the globe are participating. i've met people from all over the world here. i think there are people in town looking to do that and there's a message. they won't be welcomed, just like they weren't welcome before, but if you're from here or from out of town with that behavior, it won't be welcomed here. >> is there a sense that that type of behavior will be inevitable if the grand jury decides not to indict this officer? >> can you say that again? >> is there a feeling that it's inevitable that there will be violence if officer wilson is not indicted by this grand jury? >> well, see i'm disappointed that we're at the point where we're expecting violence to take place. >> yeah, yeah. >> to me, that's disappointing. i think that there's a stronger message that we should not just expect violence, we should be prepared for it, but it shouldn't be an expectation that that is going to happen, so hopefully, calmer heads will preveil and people understand that we can get a lot further through non-violent action in trying to get justice. >> patricia, thank you for your insights this morning. >> a florida middle school apologizing to parents and students. they were outraged after police stormed the school without warning on thursday. the police were carrying assault rifles when they burst into classrooms. school officials say it was just a drill. the teachers and student thought the school was under attack. >> i'm panicking, because i'm thinking that it's, you know, a legitimate shooters coming. >> it makes me feel better as a parent knowing that they're taking the precautions that they should be. >> any drills that are conducted at the any schools from this point forward will be without firearms displayed. >> the terrified students started sending text messages to their parents. the school officials defending the drill, saying the element of surprise is important to their assessing their capabilities. >> a vote on the key stone pipeline is set to hit the senate floor tomorrow. >> friday, a similar message sailed through the house. even if it passes, it's controversial, probably dead on arrival when it arrives on the president's desk. >> there's already talk about the president vetoing either piece of legislation that lands on his desk. there are a couple of reasons for that, but we'll get into that in a minute. let's remember, this is widely seen as political maneuvering by both parties. mary landrieu is fighting for her seat against bill cassidy in louisiana next month. they are the authors of both bills. cassidy in the house, landrieu in the senate. democrats have fought against the pipeline for years. some see this as a chance to boost her chance are winning over voters in that pro energy state. >> the point is this is a cynical attempt to save a senate seat in louisiana. if the democrats were serious, we would have voted on this years ago. this thing's been hanging around for six years now. >> this is not as simple as getting through both houses of congress. even if the bill passes in the senate, when though vote on it tomorrow, president obama will most likely veto it. the state department is still reviewing a proposal since it crosses international borders. a court case is still pending in nebraska over the root of the pipeline. >> controversy in washington, hard to believe. thank you very much. >> premature births, the number one killer of babies around the world. a technique could save countless lives. >> we are live in senegal with the story. >> a hat once worn by napoleon stems at auction for more than $2 million. the history behind the head wear. >> a quote: who had that to say, after the break. >> these are live images coming from kobane near the turkey-syrian border. smoke is rising in the air from the latest round of she willings there. kurdish fighters are fighting isil for control of the town. that brings us to this morning's quote. who said: >> our big quote is from peter kasig. he wrote that in a letter to his parents while he was in captivity. he said if he died, at least it was while helping those in need. president obama is calling his killing an act of pure evil. >> the biggest cause of infant deaths around the word is premature births and accounts for more than a million deaths each year. the united nations is observing tailed at world premature birthday. the majority of those deaths take place in the developing world and doctors there are trying out you a message that's offering some hope. >> good morning, yes, there is a new message called the kangaroo method. it's inspired by the animal from australia. that animal carries its baby in a pouch on its body. this is a message that's now used for mothers and to treat premature babies here and is proving to be quite effective. >> two days old, barely a kilo each, these twins were born too early. >> we haven't given them names yet. i love them so much. i hope they make it through. >> because their bodies are not fully developed, they have problems breathing and feeding. they can quickly develop dangerous infections, preterm births are the worlds leading cause of newborn deaths. those who survive often suffer a lifetime of disabilities. the odds of a health key life are already against them. this is called the kangaroo method. the u.n. believes carrying preterm babies like this can drastically increase chances of survival. >> it's a natural incubator. kangaroos are known to carry their newborns in their front pocket to ensure healthy growth. >> it was in vented by a south american doctor in columbia. he wanted to free up incubators in the hospital and his busy medical staff so encouraged mothers to hold their babies tight and give them breast milk exclusively. skin to skin contact is not new in africa, but placing a baby on its front is. >> it wasn't easy. we had to convince people to adapt to the method. mothers and the families had questions. we explained how underweight babies need body heat to grow. >> the method was introduced in senegal 16 years ago. premature babies are three times more likely to survive. >> take a look at this latest figure. over 1 million babies die within the first four weeks of life. this is a conservative estimate. the u.n. said most deaths happen at home and are unaccounted for. >> the u.n. and aid judgencies admit progress is slow. in senegal, they are intro do thing the kangaroo methods out of the hospital in villages where people need this the most. here in africa, there's a saying that goes a bit like this, it takes a village to raise a child, and the united states nations believe that this method is most effective in the countryside where there are no doctors, no hospitals and they're hope to go spread the message throughout not only the countryside here in senegal, but throughout west africa. >> sometimes with babies, it's just the simplest things. thank you for that report in senegal. >> these are the new images of the lava flow in hawaii. it is moving very, very slowly. officials say one breakout is moving toward a cemetery. lava's burned a house close to the ground and now doesn't pose immediate threat to any other homes, but it continues to move. >> there are tornado watches in effect across the south right now and a few funnel clouds may have already touched down. >> kevin has been tracking this latest outbreak of weather. good morning -- >> this is not what you'd expect this time of year, but the storm system is so strong that we are seeing tornadoes across much of the gulf coast. i want to show you where they have been spotted so far this morning from the overnight hours, louisiana, mississippi, as well as into the panhandle of florida. this is the area that we're talking about. this is the frontal boundary associated with this huge system, all the way up here towards the northeast. this is what we're looking at now. what we're really concerned about is the bright red tornado warning right here. as you can see, alabama, george george, as well as florida, we are looking at tornado watches. what i do expect to see later on today is this is going to start making its way more towards the east. south carolina could be a problem, as well. as you can see, severe weather into the florida region and we are going to see delays in atlanta because of the storm system pushing through there. >> kevin, thank you very much. >> it has not been a good week for bono. the rock legend needs surgery on his arm after falling offer his bike in central park. the injury is forcing him to cancel a planned appearance on the tonight show. just last week, the door fell off a private jet he was traveling in near germany. some of his luggage was sucked out the door. nobody onboard was hurt. >> collectors shelling out money for a hat, once worn by napoleon. >> it's one of only a few left in the world. >> napoleon conquered much of europe and did so wearing were you ever these, his famous hat. it was sold to a south korean collector for $2.2 million, almost four times more than its estimate. the black felt is a little weathered by age and use, no one has actually worn the hat since it was received by the leader as a gift. >> there are very few of his hats left, approximately 120 of them. today, we can document 19 of them and 17 of those are in museums, so this is unique. it's completely symbolic. >> it's part of a napoleonic collection belonging to monaco's royal family. they are having a clear out making way in their palace. >> he has the silhouette, you know, with this hat, which was the only hat to be that size, because at that time, the position was to wear the hats, and he was very unique to have this look. >> the collection contains dozens of treasures originally owned by napoleon. many were ceremonial or gifts, others like the hat was saved from the heat of battle. the sale will make millions for the family and it proofers the lasting fascination around the world for france's controversial emperor. >> sort of like wearing a baseball cap sideways. >> kind of. >> a giant bust of napoleon took in $900,000 and a pair of his stockings sold for just over $40,000. >> i hope they were laundered prior. that's it for us here in new york. >> stay with us for the latest breaking news including news out of nebraska this morning, the doctor dying of ebola. we'll be covering that story throughout the day. from doha, intense negotiations now on hold, because a top general has been kidnapped in columbia. >> columbia's government puts peace talks on hold. this is al jazeera from doha. and escaping isil, we'll meet the iraqi woman who survived. and israel police after survive
JerusalemIsrael-general-IsraelMethodist-hospitalMississippiUnited-statesNevadaAlabamaAustraliaSyriaNew-bethlehemPennsylvania system. once it tracks the eastern seaboard it will be cold enough to only snow. there you see the rain/snow line well to the south and offshore by early tomorrow. by tomorrow 9:00 a.m. we expect a good amount of snow accumulating. there's south jersey and delaware. notice how we're on the edge of this system. not everyone will see accumulating snow. only parts of the area. either way it's not coming at a good time. coming up we'll take a closer look at the timing. who can expect the most snow and how much you can expect depending where you live. >> tomorrow morning, snow could lead to school closings and lays. go to nbc10.com. nbc 10 will contact you with your child's school closing information. and speaking of the weather, new at 5:00. a growing problem in this winter's bit ircold. we're talking false alarms. >> first departments across the area of getting emergency calls but when they alive, there's no smoke or fire. we explain what it is about. >> reporter: fire departments at ben salem have to make calls at locates, they have to make the call bus they've been a distraction and perhaps dangerous one in this area. >> not a matter of if it's going to happen it's when it's going to happen. >> reporter: when it's happening is not what they need to be doing. >> the fire departments don't want out on broken sprinkler pipes they want resources in tact for more serious accidents. >> reporter: firefighters had to evacuate elderly residents from 75 apartments in gloucester last week when a frozen sprinkler pipe flooded three floors and firefighters had to say there for three hours. >> we had to evacuate the people out of there until the sprinkler system gets repaired because we can't have them nonpro ekt itted. >> reporter: frozen sprinklers are trigged at many area fire departments they worry being at the wrong place at the wrong time >> we've had a lot of them but it hasn't been back-to-back-to-back. we could have two, three truck on a broken sprinkler pipe. >> reporter: firefighters are begging anyone with sprinkler systems to get heat to them. >> next week, it will probably get worse, looking at the weather, before it gets better. >> reporter: firefighters fear the brief through and refreeze this week creates a nightmare scenario. live in bensalem, nbc 10 news. now more information on the gas explosion. one of the workers is now oust the hospital. we're hearing new 911 calls from yesterday. a police car dash cam caught that explosion on tape. 15 people were injured including firefighters and gas workers. take a listen to one of the 911 calls placed by a man who lives on a different street from where that explosion happened. >> i got an explosion inside of the house. i don't know what the hell is going on. >> so you heard an explosion? >> oh yes big time. >> today, investigators revealed they believe gas leaking from a two-inch main made it along the water line from the street to the home's basement and they say that is what caused the house to explode. busted in the 'burbs. dozens of people under arrest. >> all part of a so-called drug ring with ties to colombia. a tip from a loved one led to the areceipt. deanna durante has the latest. >> reporter: there wasn't enough evidence for them to get from the phone of the suspected drug dealers but the evidence came when a loved one of an addict contacted police giving them very specific information. . i was supposed to go down for the federal jury thing tomorrow. seems i've been arrested here which i don't have absolutely any reason why. >> you don't sell drugs? >> no. >> you don't do drugs? >> no. >> warren said he may miss the court date because he didn't have $50,000 bail after he bought drugs today. >> my client does not know him. >> reporter: police say they've been tapping phones and watching suspected drug dealers make sales in montgomery county. they confiscated drug cash and gun, some of them loaded. despite dea intercepting phone calls from colombia. that's not evidence to begin wire taps here. that game after a relative of an addict was able to give police solid information to the drug supplier. >> we got anonymous letters and we've been able to do thing was that information as well. it's important people know that. but the more information that someone can share with us, the more likely it is we can do something and use that to gather more information and ultimately be able to get a result like this where we can shut down two major operations. >> reporter: some told us they had no idea why they are in jail now. one man had his face covered and police did not find drugs on him. they would not say how much was recovered but would put them out of business. for some of them the bail ranged 500 thousand. others 50 thousand. they're all scheduled to be back in court march 5th. some asked the judge to lower the bail amount, so they can have more access roaming around the prison, not so they could be freed. deanna durante nbc 10 news. chris christie's 128th town hall brought in hundreds in moorstown. he calls pay back the problem he has to tackle now and won't raise taxes to solve it. he said pension paybacks will mean health care givebacks by state employees. >> ten years from now, we could be in significant, significant trouble if we don't change this. that's unfair to the teachers in this state. that's unfair to the police officers and the firefighters and public workers in the state. >> christie said 65% of pensions in the garden state go to teachers. coming up at 6:00 we'll hear from voters in the town hall thought of the governor's plan. in the next half hour pennsylvania governor tom wolf announced big business news. what he do d to help out keystone state companies looking to expendand. that's at 5:30. supervisors develop to wipe gun laws off the books. last night east norton supervisors repealed two laws allow hunting in the township and one regulateing guns in the park. a new state law passed last year gives the groups the right to challenge illegal gun laws. pittsburgh, philadelphia and harrisburg has already been sued under the new law. the vice president of a company that sells silicone, took stand today. the person ordered silicone for his company 18 times. he was charged with the death of a woman who flu to philadelphia for the butt-enhancement. closing arguments are expected to begin in the next two weeks. listen to this a police officer on routine patrol witnessed something you have to see. one minute coasting down the highway and light snow falling and next the dash cam camera captures this. you have to see what happens next. >> cold hard cash from snow removal to missed work days and school day, winter is a costly time of year, wait until you see how much the national price tag attached to winter is expected to be. and racing up his legal skates. former flyer eric lindhynn cross is headed to court. compromise? middle ground? does it really look like we're holding anything back? longhorn's dinner for two for $29.99. choose two of 7 entrees. like the grilled portabella sirloin or the parmesan crusted chicken. plus two sides, two salads & a shared appetizer or a dessert. it's a deal without a single concession. longhorn steakhouse you cant fake steak. and for lunch try our new tavern steak sandwich or get any of our steakhouse lunch combos starting at $7. this is nbc 10 news. i'm meteorologist sheena parveen. big weather system moving in and will move in to parts of our area. not for everybody. i'll show you the typing and how much show you could expect. >> an ohio man is lucky he didn't lose his life after thrown from the car during a crash. take a look at amazing dash cam video last month in clearly. his suv slid into another car on a snowy interstate. he was ejected. you can see him there on the ground. he landed on the highway in front of the state trooper's car. he was able to walk away from that crash. but police charged him with reckless driving. at least 14 people were hurt when 40 cars collide in maine this morning. heavy snow was falling between new port and bangor. the three students on board were not hurt. crews closed about 30 miles of the interstate for several hours. new information on driver who left his truck on railroad track, triggering a computer train to derail into los angeles. an attorney nor jose sanchez ramirez said his client did everything he could to get the truck off the track before the crash. but the train is equipped with new technology that paid off. it had a new design that disbushesdisbush disburses the energy away from where the passengers sit. we hear from one man who was there at the time. >> everything went everywhere. i definitely thought we could die. >> 30 people were injured in yesterday's crash. four critically. sanchez ramirez is charged with leaving the scene of the accident. three help living in new york city are under arrest tonight charged with conspiring to help isis. and one has ties to our area. one suspect arrested at jfk airport, headed to tourkyurkey. they were going to launch attacks in the u.s. under isis order. >> they made statements that can f they were not able to go that they would seek to acquire weapons here handgun machine-guns and seek to attack very specifically police officers. one of the suspects here in the philadelphia area federal officials say they deducted the plan while monitoring a pro-isis website. >> we have a developing story in washington. time and money are running out for the department of homeland security. now several democrats agreed to a republican plan to fund the homeland security department and say they'll do it without the immigration provisions opposed by president obama. home security budget is set to expire friday midnight if congress doesn't take action. now it's up to the house where conservatives are pressuring leaders to stand firm. they caused the delay absurd. >> it is even absurd to be having this conversation. it is even absurd that i have to spend a very, very large part of my work week simply defending paying our people to work. >> if there there's no deal by friday. tens of thousand of tsa worker border patrol agents and others could be forced to work without pay. >> an aid to president obama said benjamin netanyahu's plan is destructive to u.s.-israeli relations. he's going to voice his concerns bye a nuclear agreement between u.s. and iran. susan rice said the trip is injecting partisan ship into a relationship that should be above politics. >> secret service may soon fly drone over washington, d.c. the agency is not saying what the drones will be doing, except to say that they will be flying over areas. they are typically restricted such as the white house and u.s. capitol building. the exercises are carefully planned and coordinated with other government agencies. they will be tightly controlled. speaking of drone, paris is on edge after a second straight night of missysterious drone flight over the city. the first was after midnight monday over the american embassy, the second over the eiffel tower and bastile. police couldn't tell if it was one, or who even controlled it. >> the thing with drones you could pack it with explosives with a detonating device and ride it into a large group of people. >> france upped security nationwide. flying a drone without a license in france is illegal and carries a one-year prison sentence and $80,000 fine. roman polanski testified in a closed courtroom in poland this morning. the judge is considering a request to extradite him in connection with a sex conviction. he pleelded guilty to unlawful sex with a 13-year-old girl flu fled the u.s. the night before he was to be stepsed. so far, polanski avoided extradition by traveling only between perhaps, poland and switzerland. don't legalize marijuana. voters in the district approved an initiative in november making it legal to possession small ams of pot for rec cee aceal use. congress passed a bill seeking to stop the initiative from going into effect. did c.'s leaders say they can move ahead because the initiative was passed before congress took action. republican leaders and congress are depd maing downs showing how much money has been spent to change the city's pot laws. it's official right now. boston has reached a triple digit milestone. >> more than 100 inches of snow has fallen on the city so far this season. boston hit that mark overnight after the city got a dusting and that record comes in behind the 1995-96 winter season when the city got more than 107 inch the of snow. boston's next chance for snow into tomorrow night. >> there's a lot of costs associated with winter storms as you imagine. add up salt snow loss of business accidents and damage to homes. they predict it's near the $5 billion mark. new england's record-breaking snowfall would account for 40% of that bill. last winter cost the u.s. $5.5 billion. >> that's amazing. and you know what here at home another round of snow is moving in. >> not everyone will get hit by this storm. sheena parveen joins us when will the snow start falling? >> unfortunately during the morning commute tomorrow. not a good time. that's why we cy say first alert weather out for tomorrow morning. accumulating snowfall and impacting the morning commute especially in new jersey and delaware. those are the areas we expect the snow to be falling and accumulating. here's a live lookout near the art museum. we still have snow on the ground. of course snow and ice out there, too. but we were warmer today. philadelphia right now, near 40 degree, believe it or not. this is 15 degrees warmer than we were yesterday at this time. a little progress today with the temperature, they will be going downhill and we go into the rest of the week. there's that big area of moisture. we have snow and rain. currently it's around the southeasten southeast southeastern part are of the country. it will track the eastern seaboard and tomorrow morning we'll be on the snowy side. temperatures will be too cold to support anything but snow. up to trenton, parts of new jersey 8:00 tomorrow morning and this includes camden and parts of burlington county. snow moves closer to philadelphia. closer to i-95 if you're traveling from wilmington to trenton. early 8:00 snow phauing. 10:00, snow still falling and we could have a separate ban through parts of lehigh valley. that's possible by 10:00 a.m. and through the afternoon we clear out even more. as far as the totals are concerned we could see an inch close to philadelphia. trenton, wilmington further south through south jersey and delaware we expect more on the way of snow. here's new jersey and delaware. 6:00, 7:00 in the morning. snow starts to move in a little earlier than phil area. there you see darker colors around sussex county. rehoboth beach. we see it accumulate. 8:00 9:00, snow continuing in the jersey shore. through delaware at 9:00 a.m. then we go closer to 11:00 and noon. finally we see the snow tapering after and it clears off as we go through the afternoon hours. by the time this is all over. we could see 2:00 to2 to 4 inches. sussex county we could see 3 to 6 inches. tonight we're seeing light snow developing south of the philadelphia area. sunrise mainly 22 for the low in phil. 15 north and west. tomorrow morning snow the heaviest south and east of phil. mostly new jersey and delaware. temperatures stay in the 20s. friday back in the mid 20s. single digits starting off saturday and the next chap of snow could be parts of sunday but also the middle of next woke week. two u.s. astronauts took part in a 6 1/2 hour space walk outside of the space station. their mission to install power and data cables. considered an extremely complicated task. by the end of their third space walk on sunday, the astronauts will have routed more than 700 feet of cable on the outside of the station. it is a childhood rite of passage every time it snow sledding. this downlehill fun may come with a cost in delaware. why these kids facing a hefty fine. and they are in need but the winter creates special challenges ahead. how meals on wheels doesn't let mother nature get in the way. how can i avoid maintenance fees? why would you want to avoid them? because i don't want to... you know what? i'm gonna bring my maintenance guy in here to tell you all about it. roddy! so, uh, without your fee your checking chamber can't run smoothly. every time you put money in it causes, uh...deposit friction. gotta get some fiscal lube on there. 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[ male announcer ] avoid monthly maintenance fees at td bank with a minimum checking balance of just $100. td bank. america's most convenient bank. we know distracted driving is a major problem on the roads but apparently distracted walking is putting us in harm's way as well. researchers in new jersey say nearly half the workers in new york city cross busy intersections with the don't walk sign flashes. we're looking down at an electronic device. a state park in delaware issues a warning to sledders. >> stay off the dunes or expect to pay the price. the problem is the state park in lewis sussex county. a group of teenagers spent sledding on dunes. they uploaded their adventures on youtube. that video went viral. residents say sledding on dunes has been happening for decades but park officials say it hurs the structures of the dunes. >> it's been done for i don't know how long. years and years. >> dunes are protected for a reason. this is coastal defense for storm, bad weather rkt high tides. >> you can see the damage that's done once the snow melts. if you're caught sledding you face a $250 fine. . we have details about the gas explosion that leveled a house in new jersey. christine is live with more for us. christine? >> i'm sorry, just minutes ago, i talked with the home owner where the explosion happened. as he was assessing damage. >> neighbors are trying to fix their homes as well. i'll have a live report when we come back. >> he's not played for the flyers for years but why he's now filing a lawsuit against a former referee. >> tomorrow on nbc 10 news today. there's more snow on the way for some of you. . your hour by hour forecast to show you how much snow to expect before you head out the door. >> plus the cold weather is having an effect on the summer rentals at the shore. what this mean force your favorite vacation spot. i may be a pizza maker, but i know a few things about dessert. like chocolate, and more chocolate. introducing papa john's new double chocolate chip brownie. delicious...decadent. served warm, for just $6. better ingredients. better brownie. papa john's. this is nbc 10 news. right now, at nbc 10 news at 5:00 the large system is already dumping snow on several states across the south and it's now headed our way. >> take a look at this. a brief break for the cold encouraged this runner to get in the morning jog along kelly drive. the mild temperatures won't last long. they will drop again tomorrow morning. nbc 10 look at meteorologist. sheena parveen. this will not coat the entire area? >> not the entire area. but it's not coming at a good time. the timing is for tomorrow morning. it will impact the morning commute especially if you live in sports of new jersey and delaware. >> what we are talking about is accumulating snow for new jersey and delaware mainly. i think we'll see it for other parts of the area too. here is a look again in the southeast. pulling moisture in the gulf of mexico. you notice there's rain and snow in the system. we'll be cold enough to support snowfall. future weather here shows as we go into the next 24 hours, this system its to our south but gets closer by midnight and early tomorrow morning, we are talking about snow through parts of the area. notice how we're on the edge of this system so not everyone will see accumulating snow. the best chance is south jersey and delaware to see some of the highest amounts. coming up we'll see a closer look at the timing. we look at snowfall totals and when we expect it to clear out. >> thank you. >> authorities believe a cracked gas main and spark triggered this massive house explosion in ocean county yesterday. nbc 10 obtained 911 calls from neighbors right after the blast rocked the entire area. >> i got an explosion inside the house. i don't know what the hell is going on. >> so you heard an explosion? >> oh yes bigtime. >> that man lives on a different speed in stafford township. yesterday's past injured 15 people. two gas company workers invest investigated the gas leak were the post seriously hurt. one in critical condition. >> investigators believe gas made its way along the water line from the street into the home's basement. >> as it built up you have utilities in the basement. your furnace, your hot water heater that september out sparks. one of those sparked explosion. >> authorities are trying to figure out what caused the crack in that gas main. broken windows debris they are absolutely everywhere. all you have to do is take a look at that video. the force leveled one home and damaged many others. >> today people in theovercy shore down rocked bite explosion were back at home trying to clean up. we're book with more. christine? christine? >> i spoke with a man who owns this. he department want to talk on camera but today he walked through his property with investigators. neighbors returned today to assess damage to their home. >> behind the yellow tape is where the home used to stand now it's marked as evidence. today's crews comb through the debris debris, a mattress couch and billiard ball is scattered through the neighbor. >> i don't think anybody else realized how bad it is. >> some say the destruction is eerily familiar. >> if anyone has to deal with the sandy storm that's how it looks and feels. everything is destroyed and gone. >> onlooker after onlocker walked and drove by to take pictures of the damage. the home eners next door can't live in their house. they stopped to pick up what they could. lynn thomas lives two blocks down. she's waiting for her h insurance company. >> because they need a structural engineer they come out friday. they will tell me what they are willing to do and we'll go from there. . this morning she came home to find broken walls and cracked ceilings. >> what did you think? >> holy smoke! you know? not much you can think. we're okay. my dogs okay. >> thomas suspects severe structural damage, the house will have to come down. >> now what? >> build another house. >> you'll build from the ground up? >> if i have to. i'm not pitching a tent. >> thomas' father built this house. she lived it for more than 20 years. but now she's leaving. >> you're not going stay here? >> no. hell know. i wouldn't do that. i'm phrasesy but not stupid, you know? >> most of the neighbors we talked to said gas and electricity is back on today. they said that's a relief because they don't want any broken or frozen pipes to add to the damage. reporting live in stafford township. christine maddela, nbc 10 news. coming up the search for suspects as they robbed a teenager in broad daylight. this is surveillance video investigators believe they are also teenagers. it is right near eastern state penitentiary. robbers got away with the boy's cell phone. pennsylvania governor tom wolf said he has a plan to rebuild the middle class. he unveiled his ram in our area. randy gyllenhaal has the story from bethlehem. >> we are open for business in pennsylvania. >> governor tom wolf speaking to a pro-business crowd announced some big business news. a major cut to the corporate income tax from 10 down to 5% which is huge for companies looking to expand. >> we try to attract companies from pennsylvania but too many of them look at that rate and wouldn't even give us a look. >> for year pennsylvania had the second highest corporate tax rates in the country. just this week florida's governor rick scott came to town trying to poach pennsylvania companies by offering them lower taxes and lots of sunshine. >> what your new governor is doing is not good for business. that's when people lose their job. >> today's announcement would make pennsylvania a top competitor against states like florida. >> we're business friendly compared to florida. >> governor wolf wants to lure new companies here with promise of lower taxes and new investment into manufacturing and education. >> pennsylvania is a great place to do business. i'm just making it better. >> the plan could bring new corporations to places like allentown, bethlehem which is building lots of new office space. space. >> the governor reveals the entire spending plan. we should learn more how much the tax cuts could cost. in new bethlehem. randy gyllenhaal, nbc 10 news. evans is expected to speak at tomorrow's board meeting. saying he will advocate for improv proofing infrastructure. some stars talked about their success at an online talk show at comcast center. xfinity hosted a live stream show featuring several innovators and entrepreneurs. it focused on challenges and successes on pushing boundaries and film. get ready to hit the gas harder if you plan to travel through delaware. the state's speed limits being raised only on interstate 95. next learn how fast you'll be allowed to go and why. and from ice to court. former flyer eric lindros wants an ex-rep to play him $3 million. which he says the official checked his reputation into the board. at 6:00 governor kiss ty announced his new budget plan. coming up how changing state finances impact your family's money. also she beat cancer once now again fighting the balance th battle of her life. coming up what she's doing to help other children like herself. now, lindros is taking action to clear his name. he filed a defamation lawsuit against the huffington post and former referee paul stewart. he claims his reputation was damaged by a column written by stewart in the post last year. he wrote about his poor relationship with lindros and an incident which he allegedly tore up charity posters stewart asked him to sign. in the column stewart writes quote, a flyers equipment manager told him about the posters. when eric found out they were for you, he tore every one of them up, end quote. paul stewart nor the huffington post commented on the lawsuit. >> this summer delaware stretch of i-95 might move a little quicker. deldot wants to raise the speed limit to 65 miles per hour. this son the north and southbound lanes on the maryland line and i-495 split. the study shows despite the current 55-mile-per-hour speed limit. most drivers are already inching up near 65. they believe the higher speed limit would reduce accidents and give state police extra time to go after more aggressive drivers. most drivers we spoke to today said they would be okay going 65 on 95. >> for the most part i see people flying past anyway. might as well put it at 65. >> at least for the time being there's no plans to raise the speed limit from the city of wilmington on up to the pennsylvania state line. >> you might remember this guy months ago. he was hailed a hero for helping to find a missing philadelphia girl abducted right off the street. >> he was supposed to be rewarded for his effort bus that hasn't happened. why he has not seen any money. >> and we're also tracking snow. that impacts parts of the area for the morning rush. i'll show you the timing of the snow and who can expect the most of it. >> plus fire fly has its head liner. the legendary act will perform at this year's music festival. compromise? middle ground? does it really look like we're holding anything back? longhorn's dinner for two for $29.99. choose two of 7 entrees. like the grilled portabella sirloin or the parmesan crusted chicken. plus two sides, two salads & a shared appetizer or a dessert. it's a deal without a single concession. longhorn steakhouse you cant fake steak. and for lunch try our new tavern steak sandwich or get any of our steakhouse lunch combos starting at $7. here's some stories making head lines right now. investigators say a cracked gas main triggered this blast in ocean county yesterday. the blast damaged nearby houses and injured 15 people. two gas company workers were the most seriously hurt. one remains in critical condition the other released from the hospital earlier today. a drug ring bust snap nabbed dozens of suspect. the arrest put 32 drug dealers out of police. police say some from blue bell, plit ott meeting and philadelphia. we are tracking know right now. this is the same system that is bringing serious winter weather to parts of the south. not everyone in our area will see accumulating snow. >> sheena parveen is tracking this. what are we looking at? >> we are looking at the morning hours. some of of us will see accumulating. we have first alert weather out because of this for tomorrow morning. accumulating snow will impact the morning commute. this will be in new jersey and delaware. we see some snow getting close to the philadelphia area. we expect snow around philadelphia. as far as today, temperatures rebounded nicely from the cold we've seen recently near the mid 30s. lehigh valley and mid 30s mainly in south jersey and delaware. come tomorrow morning, things are changing once again. there's the weather system in the southeast. we have snow and rain with it. it's picked up a lot of moisture as it moved into the south. a lot of moisture from the gulf of mexico and will track up the eastern seaboard. we'll be cold enough to support the snow side of this. it continues to move along the eastern half of the country and that will give us snow come tomorrow morning. as we go through time this storm system moves in for the morning commute hours. notice how the rain-snow line stays well out to sea. closer look at some of the hardest-hit areas tomorrow morning. that will be south jersey and delaware. 6:00 a.m. we see snow moving into these areas. the heaviest still saying south. sussex county has the highest totals. 8:00 in the morning, still seeing snow for much of the jersey shore and also delaware. so this will be the longest duration of snowfall. that's what we expect for the morning commute. it will be sticking, too. temperatures will stay below freezing. 10:00 in the morning still seeing snow falling and accumulating and by noon should start to see it lighten up by the afternoon. we start to see it clear out more. as far as total weise could see 3 to 6 inches. further north into parts of south jersey 2 to 4 inches but lower amounts as you get closer to the philadelphia area look at this area. from wilmington to trenton. 8:00 a.m. you see the snow starting to move up. by 9:00, 10:00 in the morning still looking at lighter snowfall but still expettinging it to be sticking. by the afternoon hours that's when we see this all clearing out. we expect an inch from wilmington to trenton. even suburbs in parts of new jersey. those higher totals will stay to the south. definitely a concern for the morning commute south and east of philadelphia. font, light snow south of the area. 15 north and west. then tomorrow morning snow during the commute, the heaviest staying to the south. 26 to 29. we are dropping for the daytime highs. >> we are going to be back in the 20s. we'll stay cold as we head into friday. tomorrow we have single digit temperatures in the morning and track another rain and snow next week. we'll have a closer look at tomorrow's snow. let's warm up, though. talking drills and key elements of spring training. >> especially this season. ben revere was one of their best hitters. we find out why he thinks he can do better this season. >> reporter: ben revere had a career year last season and he did it through a lot of pain. he had screws in his foot trying to push their way out. boy, was it painful. >> kind of like a bad nightmare. one screw going towards my nerves in my leg. that's what was causing so much pain. luckily i didn't have nerve damage. >> ben hat three hits. he had 184 of them. but he has bigger goals this year so big he's flipping out in the comcast sports net promo shoot. >> definitely trying to help the team win. >> do you have a goal in mind for stolen bases? 60? >> jimmy rollins was traded to l.a. jay rolle and ryan howard will talk to him about being a vocal leader this year. >> i would love to. i would help any way i can to bring the trophy pack home. >> in clearwater florida i'm jon clark for comcast sports net. >> i'm nbc 10 with this digital exclusive story. police hailed duane fletcher as a hero to find the woman in this video being violently abducted off a germantown street last year. detectives said he should get the $47,000 award but months later he has not seen a penny. >> nbc 10 did some digging. he should get some of the money but we're asking why. that's not the only problem. tap in right now to hear the full story. and a ground breaking in philadelphia's stinger park. preparing for a half million dollar renovation. the mayor said it's the city's kids who benefit and he had some help from them today tabbing about the work. >> when i came into the office seven years ago i said philadelphia will be the number one city in america. looks like we have two press conferences going on at the same time. it's fine. we'll work it out. he has things on his mind he needs to express. today's announcement is a part of making the green city part of what he wanted it to be. an -- >> the little guy in the front with his mom. no word on when these renovations will begin. >> very cute there. >> very excited. >> when the weather is this cold, so many people rely on a very important service. >> we'll show you how meals on wheels makes sure no one is left out in the cold. local meals on wheels chapters are credited with getting food to people in need. >> what happens when the weather presents that food from being delivered? we tell you what one chapter is doing about that. >> the winter can bring a lot of challenges for meals on wheels organizations. for one the snow and ice can deter volunteers from getting out and delivering food. >> parts of montgomery and philadelphia counties they are working around that. >> there's a sand witch salad. >> along with every hot meal delivered. meals on wheels hands out a bag lunch. when the weather is bad they try to add extras so clients won't go hungry. >> this time of year volunteers have rock salt with them to make it safer to navigate the icy sidewalks and ahead of the recent storm they doubled up on delivery so their clients would have enough food to get them through. >> volunteers were not coming through because of delivering. because of the ice or snow. do you have that problem? >> we have a little bit but we're fortunate because we have a core of volunteers who drive in anything. >> a lost them are homebound. >> during this type of weather they see very few people. volunteers. may be the own ones they see each day. that connection is very important. >> that connection helps clients make sure they are safe and warm. they even check safe heaters to make sure they are used correctly. coming up next on nbc 10 news at 6:00. the fight to save a 10-year-old girl with cancer. >> she got news not once but twice. what she's doing to help others battle cancer. >> snow is moving up from the south and will arrive in parts of the area tomorrow morning. what will see the most snow and how it impacts the morning commute. >> plus we've shown you this house explosion caught on tape. now nbc 10 obtained more video that captures the aftermath and frantic search to help one of the victims that's next on nbc news at 6:00. wednesday's child, 12-year-old zaviana is a smart and outgoing young lady passionate about p art and music. she loves to write add come up with raps but she really enjoys going skating so we headed to the skate palace in ashton, pa. when it comes to family she knows what it is looking for. >> a mom, or mom and dad. kids around my age, something like that. >> zaviana is this week's wednesday's child. . >> announcer: 10 news starts now. >> we begin with a live look at nbc 10 first alert radar. you can see the big winter storm hitting the south right now. by tomorrow morning. parts of our region could see some snow as well. >> this was the scene across parts of the south this afternoon. let go to nbc 10 chief meteorologist glenn "hurricane" schwartz. >> some parts of the region may not see snow at all but could be the morning commute right? >> the bulk of snow that falls could be the morning commute. that's part of the reason we have first alert weather day. tomorrow morning and accumulating snow will fall in at least part of the area. implanting the morning rush. low visibility. some slick roads, specially in southern areas. delaware extreme south jersey. this is a very large storm. a lot of moisture with it. you can see in the blue here that snow, northern mississippi, alabama, georgia the blue is indicating the heavier snow. it's snowing hard no northern georgia. the track of this storm will be well south of us. we're not going to get buried by it but there's plenty of moisture on the northern side and it's coming in during the morning rush and that's why we're pretty confident that at least delaware and south jersey will get snow out of this. more of the exact timing. snow totals and who gets what in
ArkansasUnited-statesAlabamaOcean-countyNew-jerseyDelawareWashingtonDistrict-of-columbiaNew-bethlehemPennsylvaniaMexicoMontgomery-county your thoughts on not only what could happen if the government shuts down but your thoughts on if it should or not reviewed here is how you can reach out to us -- or not. here is how you can reach out to us. @cspanwj on twitter. facebook.com/cspan. and you can send us e-mail, journal@c-span.org. newspapers highlight will happen over the next couple of days. from the front page of "the post " -- joining us to give us a sense of what could happen, the leadership editor of "roll call." thank you for joining us this morning. let's start with the house. s speakere boehner has regarding the short- term funding bill. guest: republicans are scheduled to meet at noon today. i think that is going to be a pretty important meeting. they have to decide as a behind ae, do they get specific alternative to send back to the senate? they have some choices here. they could just take up the senate bill, put it on the house floor, and it would probably pass with mostly democratic support. a lot of republicans would not vote for it because it doesn't the fund -- doesn't defund obamacare. or they could polut on a rifle shot, something smaller like a delay. there are things that they could considerably do -- conceivably do. harry reid has said they are not going to accept anything that is related to obamacare. of,e is also the question even if they do agree on something and can get it through the house, whether they can get it through the senate. once it gets over there -- the way the senate works, anyone senator ken delay it till four days -- anyone sentence her -- any one senator can delay a bill for days. entirely clear that a bill would be fund by the president and can get through the senate. host: some of the papers saying ted cruz and mike lee have been meeting openly with house republicans. (202) 737-000 guest: absolutely. there were house republicans on the floor cheering on ted cruz and the company. it does not take that many votes on the outside to really handcuff the speaker. if he wants to pass something that has a republican wish list item on its he is not going to get any democratic votes. he is going to need republican votes. if 18 or 30 republicans are sort ,f in this defund or bust mode that limits speaker boehner's options. conceivably he could go into that meeting at noon today and say, we have three choices. we can all agree to do something that we think can pass the , we can let the government shutdown and be blamed for it, or i can put the senate bill on the house floor and see where the votes are. we have to decide which would go. host: i suspect part of this thinking, he has to figure out which group he has to appeal to the most. guest: i think that is right. there are a lot of republicans in the house who are not happy with ted cruz, not happy with his strategy, who want to keep the government open, who want to at least have some kind of vote --have their constituents their conservative constituents feel like they doing something about obamacare. i guess that is where a lot of republicans are. they want to see something done that shows there fighting obamacare. they also do not want to shut the government down. i know the speaker really does not want to shut the government down. he has been resisting this idea of having some kind of shut down of obamacare for over two years. it is not clear how strong he is as far as being able to put something on the floor that could potentially have its own conference -- have his own conference turn against him. this they connected decision to the future of the speakership as far as john boehner is concerned. guest: absolutely. this is the one thing that congress, despite all of the crazy we have seen in the past couple of years, the one thing they have been able to do and, sometimes making it past the deadline, they have prevented the government from shutting down. there are a number of --servatives who certainly who have been agitating for a tougher stand. close toer came pretty losing his speakership this year. they had a number of defections when voting for the house speaker on the floor. you cannot lose that many more. a problem for the speaker, if he wants to stay .peaker for much longer he is caught between two very difficult positions. isther very important issue how do you deal with this bill and in a few days how do you deal with the debt ceiling bill? that is potentially a bigger issue for the economy. an even bigger issue for john boehner. if that bill goes through clean as the democrats are demanding, that would be a bigger problem .or the speaker if you pass a clean debt ceiling bill, that is potentially a lot more problematic. host: stephen dennis covers leadership in washington and talks about the latest. your thoughts on it possible shutdown, we stand two days now. -- on a possible shutdown, we stand two days now. our first call is from michigan on the democrats line. good morning. caller: thank you for taking my call. when i tuned in this morning, it was a breath of fresh air. rocky called the republicans out. all he did was ask them one question and he scurried back into the darkness. it is just sad that a few people think they can hold our government hostage like this. the american people are tired of it. we are tired of them messing with the economy. up next republican line of from fort lauderdale, florida. caller: i'm beginning to think we ought to look into dividing this country up. want to livee that off each other and live in one part of the country and all the people that want to pull their the people that want to be victims and think nothing is therefore -- their fault can live in one part of the country and people who take personal responsibility can live in a different part of the country. thinking of people that if the government cannot do it it cannot be done is going to kill the spirit of this nation. became great because of what obama wants to did say and it became great because of what he isn't doing. host: let's hear from thomas in san antonio, texas. caller: i do know that once you have rung up a bill you must pay that bill. that is common sense, basically. is a faction of our government that basically is theg things because of president of the united states. we cannot function in a situation where we could affect a world economy in a negative way because of this. there really is only one solution, that solution is 2014, put people in office that will , thatmise and negotiate will look forward into the future. the president of the united states said it is first state of the union address that it is time we represent our constituency instead of our own stuff interest -- our own self- interest. thank you for taking my call. host: off of facebook this morning -- there are the social media aspects. the president's short statement on issues not only concerning iran and syria but also talked about what is currently going on in congress when it comes to passing the short term spending bill, when it comes to the debt limit. here is talking about the congressional dispute with congress and specifically talking about what our reporter referenced earlier, the future decision on if or not to raise the debt limit. [video clip] >> i will not negotiate over congress's responsibility to pay the bills that have already been left up. voting for the treasury to pay america's bills is not a concession to me. favor, not doing me a but is simply carrying out the solemn responsibilities that come with holding office up there. can be more how i clear about this. nobody gets to threaten the full faith and credit of the united extract political concessions. no one gets to hurt our economy and millions of innocent people just because there are a couple of lawsuit not like. -- of laws you do not like. i'm not going to start setting it president -- setting a precedent not just for me but for future presidents where one chamber in commerce can basically say each time there needs to be a vote to make sure the treasury pays its bills, we are not going to sign it unless our particular hobbyhorse get in fast -- gets advanced. host: democrats line. comment onanted to how i see this as corporations ruling. i see this as the insurance companies and those companies that are tied to them, with their corporate greed, they don't want things to change when they have to use more money for the people. jobs are laying off people. all that is is greed. people allow it and they go around and say that we're cutting our jobs and started at the president. we should be angry at the corporations. we should be putting laws in place to keep that kind of stuff from happening. they do not care about america. the care about the bottom line, which is what capitalism is all about. i am all for capitalism. it has been reined in up until the last couple of centuries -- not centuries, but decades. i think people are except the -- are upset about the wrong thing. they should be getting corporations in check. >> from louisiana on our republican line this morning. good morning, go ahead. rumors onre a lot of the internet as far as what is true and what is not true. i do know for a fact that there are some groups that are exempt from the individual mandate. i've heard there are other i've heardon't know, it is a violation of the faith faith to have individual mandate because it is considered -- whether that is true is neither here or there. if any group is exempted from the individual mandate, why can't i sue the federal it's not forr -- to have one group under equal protection of the law. you cannot have some groups subject to a law and some that aren't. i don't know how the federal government can get away with picking and choosing who gets the mandate. what president obama says he is cutting the deficit more than it has ever been cut in the past 30 years, people need to realize that the deficit was running at $300 billion when george bush was office -- was in office. obama runs at up to $1 trillion and cuts it down to five hundred billion dollars. he is still spending more money than george bush. he has spent more money in five and a half years than george bush did in eight. he calls george bush responsible. --the new york times op-ed from brooklyn new york on our independent line. just calling to say that i don't think that the government should be taking hostage like this. cannot let them do terrorism. they did -- they deliberately did not negotiate with the democrats all year long so that when these point came up, the debt ceiling and continuing resolution to keep the government funded, they now have rough -- now have leverage points. even if president obama wanted to, he cannot given to them. when the next president comes in, whoever is in charge, this is what they are going to do. this will be the new norm. you cannot govern like that. as far as the last cover -- the last caller from louisiana, this is what happens when you let influence those people with their rhetoric. that is aobamacare, solution, a republican solution. that is what it is all about. everybody poll their full weight. host: mark is up next on the line for democrats. sayishou they just come together and keep the government running. they can always debate these issues after. this is a big law, this health- care law. take a lot -- there are a lot of thugs in. they need to work it out, anyway. it is not going to be ready to go right away anyway. instead of closing the just come together here and work this out and then to -- and then have your debates after that. the thing on my mind, i have to ask myself and i am sure every other american has to ask himself the same question, should every american be entitled to have health -- healthyucca insurance? the answer is yes. everyone of us should have it available to us. that is all i want to say today. host: some of the computer issues connected with the wool out of the health-care law -- with the roll out of the health- care law, some of the issues saying -- here is carl from pennsylvania on the republican line. caller: good to see you on saturday again. i was just wondering whether or not the white house and harry aboutre just feeling bad the rest of the world being jealous over us being exceptional. the white house will spend us into oblivion and make the world happy again. i don't know if that makes sense but that is the way i feel host: it. host:how did you come to that conclusion? --the way i feel it. host: how did you come to that conclusion? caller: watching c- span every morning and watching other shows. hear next from kurt in wilmots, ohio on the independent line. caller: first of all, i would like to say that i really appreciate c-span's coverage, being able to watch some history being made over the past week or two, we appreciate it. i am calling is the attention for a government shutdown. some of the services that they are offering that the government provides for the citizenry, i am wondering if they are going to be able to continue it if shutdown. for instance, with the fbi be able to continue to smuggle half $1 trillion worth of dope it to the country? what the white house be able to fund back and train al qaeda? would the epa be able to continue shutting down plants outside of law? would eric holder be continue to be able to continue smuggling weapons -- be able to continue smuggling weapons to the cartel in mexico? will hear next from shirley in detroit, michigan. i'm hoping they don't shut down because there are too many people in america that either work for the government or are either the disabled. i don't know how many americans are fed up with this particular type of congress we have. they are a total embarrassment to this nation. ted cruz down there in texas got up there and talked for 21 hours about why he wanted us to defund obamacare. look at how many americans in this country needed to have health care insurance. the bill don't realize that you can go to the hospital for a day and you may have a $10,000 or more ill and if you don't have insurance -- or more bill. if you don't have insurance, you are going to get something in the mail saying you have time to pay it back. i have never, in my life, have seen this type of congress that allows these people to get in at 2010 -- that is when the mainstream got in there, in 2010. it is not about you, me, any of your relatives among no one from the east coast or west coast. it is time for every american to stand up and get serious about these men and women that are elected and being sent to this congress in d.c. because we need people who are intelligent. host: we are going to continue on on our calls. you heard from the president previously. we now hear from the house republican conference chair delivering the weekly address and the republican response. she discusses the republican plan among which includes increasing the debt limits while addressing issues of spending. [video clip] >> the best way to preserve the full faith and credit of the united states is by strengthening it. coupling an increase in the debt limit with efforts to rein in spending is common sense, so much so that it has been used by presidents from both parties. 1985.ent reagan did in five years later, president bush reached a budget deal with a democratic congress that included a debt limit increase. president clinton reached a similar agreement with a democratic majority in 1993. finally, president obama himself worked with republicans on a large deficit reduction deal tied to the debt limit in the summer of 2011. it has its flaws, including the ofuester the president biased and insisted on. it has cut spending. -- the president has devised and insisted on. it has cut spending. he wants to take the easy way out. exactly the kind of foolishness that got us here in the first place. as we know, it is hard working people like you who will ultimately pay the price for business as usual through higher taxes, higher prices, and fewer jobs. to reiterate, every major episode reduction effort of the last dirty years has been tied to the debt limit. this time should be no different. host: let's hear from read in union, washington. i first want to say my biggest frustration and listening to c-span is all of me" people. give try to keep what you made from it radical government to redistribute it. rand came from communist russia. she says greed is when someone else want something what you have. the democrats wanted to flip this nation to 51-49. . will vote for a paycheck from the treasury, we will move towards socialism. this is about the left trying to change the face of this nation, the president is to radical, the leftist radical. i want to remind america that the republican party was founded as a split from the whigs. .hat party was status quo our nature has been a center- right nation. the president is the one obstructing everything. the people voted the house. time, c-span.the but i am really tired of this "gimme gimme" people. the hell with the debt our children have. host: here is claudia on the government -- on the independent line. you have people with their homes, they lost their homes. [inaudible] that's how dysfunctional the white house's. obama says he wants to work with them. why aren't they working with them? host: a couple of international concerning iran and syria. it was iran in which president obama made a phone call to the president of iran, talking about their nuclear program. the white house sending out a tweet of a photo of him on the phone, this is him speaking with the iranian president. the conversation took place yesterday. the papers wrote about it today, including "the financial times." this is the lead story -- we will talk about what happened concerning syria in just a bit. jackson, mississippi, democrats line. i am concerned about the alito summit in washington dc. -- the elitism in washington dc. i would make sure that they have responsibility again. [indiscernible] greg from kentucky, republican line. caller: i heard different people have their different opinions and my situation is basically i work at the national guard. this particular shutdown, i don't go to work on tuesday. i have a family to take care of. i understand people have certain opinions as far as how the budget should be. her years keep raising the budget and spending more. they need to come up with an agreement. i don't agree with certain portions of the health care but the budget is everything. if this was a business, the business would be shut down. host: paul from texas on the independent line. -- pauline from texas on the independent line. caller: everybody wants to rant and rave about the republicans. we have a president who should be a leader, which he is not. he goes out on the campaign trail and get the american people worked up, cutting down those republicans that don't want to do anything. he is the one who is saying he will not negotiate. it is going to be my way or the highway. right now i can understand why the republicans won't work with a democrats and the president because ever since he got and you have the house and senate with the democrats, this whole health-care bill did not exist. they passed it the wrong way. the supreme court supported it but not the way it was written because it was supposed to be for the common people. they told us the whole time that it was not a tax. guess what, when it had to go to the supreme court they argued it was a tax. when they say the supreme court supported the health care bill, that is not totally true. syria is the other international story we talked about -- secretary of state john kerry went to the microphone and talked about this, here's what he had to say -- [video clip] time sincefirst serious civil war began the security council is spending -- is spelling out in detail what syria must do to comply with its legal obligations. rejectannot select or the inspectors. syria must give those inspectors unfettered access to any and all sites and any and all people. we also wanted a resolution that would be enforced. again, that is what the security council has adopted. we are here because actions have consequences. and now, should the regime fail to actual there will be called quinces. -- they'll to act, there will be consequences. -- failed to act, there will be consequences. ago, when the syrian regime would not even acknowledge the vast supply of chemical weapons and say they existed, this outcome would have been unimaginable. thanks to our friends and partners around the world, many of whom are here in this room. the security council was shown that when we put aside politics for the common good, we are still capable of doing big things. host: bbc also highlights the other conditions that are part of the decision made yesterday, saying the un's resolution condemns the use of chemical weapons it does not attribute blame -- john from texas hold line. -- john from texas on the republican line. caller: i want to thank you for given the people an opportunity to express themselves. i think it is time for the states to take their power back from the federal government. there needs to be formed a state convention. the way i understand it, it takes 32 states to overturn a bill that the federal government has passed. i believe this was done with prohibition. theed to do more study on fourth and fifth amendment. it is one of those that allows the states to come together for a state convention. i believe it was prohibition that federal government passed and the states overturn. through in theo states can come together with a convention. if there is somebody out there who is read up on the constitution, tommy where i am wrong and where i am right -- tell me where i am wrong and where i am right. how can we get it together? host: gary dance off twitter -- here is bill from georgia. good morning, are you there you go -- are you there? let's move on to stephen from virginia, democrats line. caller: good morning. the government should not shut down. it just does not make any sense. tea party and republicans just have to get their act together. you should not negotiate obamacare. what they need to do is work together with the democrats. the democrats have already negotiated enough. tear republicans and the party, we always go to the edge of fiscal cliff, the deficit, sequester. they still do not want this president to win at anything. what they need to do is step up to the plate, play ball, get and no moregether, negotiations. let us move this country forward and will or for the people -- and work for the people. when the government shuts down, it is a lot of jobs involved. host: a couple of stories for you, the united nations putting out a report looking at global warming. in "the wall street journal" -- if you go to the new jersey paper, the star-ledger, their lead story is taking a look at state judge decisions that same- sex couples have a right to marry in new jersey -- don in atlanta, georgia, republican line. caller: how are you doing? host: fine, thank you. caller: i was in the service for quite a while. i realize how the government spends on what they want or what they need. [indiscernible] idea, if we want budget [indiscernible] congressman,ry be in their office there because it is a pleasure. no payould take a cut or at all because they are all rich for at least a month or two. there would be no reason why they have to put this on our shoulders. host: "the detroit free press" this morning, their headline -- the story goes on to say that it was a combination of ride and public money that will go towards that. one more call, here is jim from connecticut, on the independent line. if you think your health care isn't that great, why would you revise it and say we're going to be separate from everybody else? we are going to put it off for another year or so, we are going to be exempt. that is my first point. my second point is harry reid and everybody else has to stop calling the tea party "terrorists." what is wrong with a smaller government? us "tea baggers," during the debate we were called "astroturf," that doesn't solve anything. harry reid refused to bring is the budget and bring up obamacare on the senate floor. that is what people do not realize. a real leader like president obama should be, they should say we are going to put it back for another year. the house and the senate said, you know what? we are not going to fund this. the american people should not be a part of this. we are going to be putting it off for another year. thank you for your time. we continue on with this conversation. out guest joining us for it will hurt from "the washington times." you heard house speaker boehner conferencing with his caucus. charles hurt will be on for that discussion. ther on we will a dress ongoing investigation at the u.s. naval yard. joining us will be rear admiral john kirby. i wanted to talk about our newsmaker program, which you can see on sunday. moniz on the major climate issues and the role of those issues in the obama administration. one of the things he did talk about was how the energy department could be affected if the government shuts down. [video clip] >> we may see a government shutdown of a couple of days. how does this affect the energy department? >> this is obviously a very serious concern and we are still hopeful that what we view as an unnecessary disruption will not occur. having said that, we are planning for the eventuality. this will have significant impacts. i should say the department of energy, viewers may not be aware of the scope of their activities. we have major roles in national security, nuclear weapons, nuclear proliferation issues, and we have a lot of classified information to protect. essential security functions that we will have to maintain. on the energy and science side, it is the same story. we will try to maintain central activities -- for example, we also manage the strategic reserve. we have emergency response responsibilities should in other superstorm comes. -- should another superstorm comes. be ready to respond to what our national security or major impact events -- while we try to curtail things. we are not going to be traveling to conferences, for example. i cannot give you specifics right now, it will depend exactly on how this unfolds. unnecessary as an activity that impacts our delivery of services to the public. we will hope as best as we can. >> "washington journal" continues. host: joining us as charlie hurt, political columnist. the house meets to consider what happened with the senate bill. what does john boehner face? guest: he faces a fractured caucus. we have conservatives want to dismantleis mental -- the motives this opportunity to mantal,lthisare -- this opportunity to defund obamacare. they want to pass a clean bill. then you have a large group of people that don't fit into either camp, who would like to see something taken out of -- some advantage made out of all of this. either more cuts or there are some that would like to see fewer cuts, even some among the republicans would like to see some of the sequester cuts that have been remarkably effective in terms of changing the trajectory of spending. they would like to see those decreased. going to be a noon caucus meeting for republicans. i imagine it will be fairly bruising. host: toward mr. boehner? guest: not necessarily animus directed towards him but it is a very difficult situation. i have no idea how it is going because the two parts are pretty far apart. he has to walk out of there and come up with something. i don't think he is going to put the senate bill on the floor as is. he is going to do something to it but whether he goes and puts but she defund obamacare -- whether he goes and puts the defund of obamacare in it or delay it for a year, that is up to the senate. i think it is an interesting -- that would be an interesting play. it puts a lot of democrats in a difficult situation with all of the bad news and headlines of obamacare. it could put democrats in a tough position. they might actually have to vote for it. i think a lot of americans, it might make sense to them. president obama has made it very clear that he does not intend to sign anything like that. that is basically the whole that ted cruz races. even if democrats went along with its -- with it, they stuck to pass it. he changed it in a lot of ways. instead of talking about a fiscal fight, which i think republicans would have been on a very firm ground, they talk about the success of sequester. recall, it was all doom and gloom. it was going to end, people were going to be starting in the streets. and that did not happen. president obama referred to this. it changed the directory -- the trajectory of spending. in my opinion we need to do a lot more. but still, it was the first time they decrease the funding. the problem with the ted cruz you basically have the three branches of government -- ofu have the executive government. you have the executive who likes this bill. you have the supreme court who says, we are out of it. house who wants to defund it in the senate which is still democratic. you need to change the senate and change the white house in order to get rid of obamacare. you can nibble around the edges by doing a postponement or easing some of the more onerous aspects of it. you still have an election problem. republicans have to address that. host: you can talk to him about possible plans from the house speaker. numbers are on the screen -- senator cruz still speaking yesterday, looking towards the house in the future. here's a little bit of what he -- to say, talking about expressing hope that house numbers don't listen to their constituents about what they want. [video clip] >> we have had numerous conversations but at the end of the day all members of the house are elected by the people in their districts. each member of the house has a responsibility to listen to .heir constituents am confident that if the house listens to the people as they did last week it will continue to step forward and respond to the suffering that is coming from obamacare. host: he started by saying we have had numerous conversations. definitely still trying to influence what is going on. he and his crew have been working diligently to lobby the house. you have this curious dynamic here. conservatives in the house are scratching their head about it. bill to killsed a obamacare are over 40 times. it was 39 times they have passed a bill to kill obama care and sent it over to the senate where it dies. you have a lot of conservatives in the house who are sitting ted cruz and other republican senators are coming to the house, telling them what they need to do about killing obama care. these guys are sitting here saying, how may times have we voted to kill obamacare? yourroblem we have is in chamber. you need to lobby your republicans and your democrats. it is kind of an upside down situation. host: off of twitter -- there's nothing the democrats have to do about it. they can sit back and enjoy the show. what we are seeing with all this -- and i applaud ted cruz. what we are seeing here is a very honest debate among republicans. the reason it is so nasty is so nasty andis -- some ofense fight, - these debates are nothing we have ever seen in our time. what this is, i think, is they have displaced a lot of their problems. both parties have a lot of housecleaning to do. i think republicans are a lot farther along in that process. while it is easy and enjoyable for democrats to sit back and is goings, i think it to be painful and who knows how much longer it is going to be. i do think the result is that you have a more honest, more caucus that isn more in touch with the voters and you had five years or 10 years ago. democrats have the same problem. they just haven't begun cleaning the house. think there is an appetite among house republicans to lead a shutdown happen? guest: i don't think anyone sees it as anything particularly good. it never really happens, even when you do shut it down you wind up opening it back up and giving everybody back pay. it doesn't change anything. spending thectual problem is what conservatives want is they want to make stopess -- the government being so big and spent so much money. the sequester is the first hiccup in the right direction that we have experienced. i think that is a great fight for republicans. this, not so much. host: calls start with district heights, maryland. here is tony. to make two quick points. what the house republicans are doing is completely illegitimate. the affordable care act was passed using the same representative democratic process we have had in place for 200 years. it is easy to forget that for most of the history of this country, being born a white maple -- a white male was an achievement or a credential of some kind. these are people, you can see it in their faces, using their voices. they seat with resentment because the president of the united states is black. if barack obama, who is a moderate-- a textbook democrat, there's nothing radical about it. if he were white there wouldn't be a problem. comment is a ridiculous to suggest this -- it is not worth acknowledging. , io think it's interesting would be interested to know what tony things about the fact that for a lot of americans, the election of president obama was an achievement, it was a milestone that a milestone that a lot of people were very proud of. and for a lot of people, they thought that comments like that would become the were and further between. that is obviously not the case. i do not think five years ago, a caller would have made that remark. i think tony might want to consider that. shriek point,its louisiana, wayne on our republican line. caller: i'm glad to talk to you, c-span, good morning. i want the government to shut down because i'm tired of the democrats. watched this down, i them do it, they pay people off, backdoor deals, all kinds of stuff, even our own senator in louisiana sold us out. i want us to go bankrupt, i want the country to go downhill to get the democrats off our back. people in this country are suffering. they are suffering right now. and obama has caused at all. he has destroyed our energy program and everything else. we are in dire, straits right now in this country. and american people are realizing little by little, and i do not see anybody in washington trying to help us out. i am for the republican party. thank god for them. and to hell with the democrats. guest: well, i think that is a perfect event will of what the frustration that we see among republicans. unfortunately for them, it would make a lot of people feel really good just to set the government down and -- shut the government down and move on. the problem is, as i pointed out, republicans are not very good at fighting this fight. they are terrible at it. they wind up losing elections over it. they feel a lot better, i would caution that it would be a whole lot smarter to -- and this is what democrats do very well, they stick to the fight that they do, and they often do very well. if we were over here talking about the sequester, talking about cutting the government, republicans would be on a much firmer footing than -- trying to do something that is not going to work. ether bomb went off in the senate, and for some reason the defined looking back into the senate, and harry reid got everybody -- everybody voted for in the senate, it is still not going to get approved. you still have to have the president sign it. it is not going to work. it is good at ginning up a lot of good outrage about obamacare, which i am all in favor of, but it still does not work. host: how much of what is going on in the house republicans is dealing with perception from the public? guest: i think almost exclusively, pedro. one of the reasons that this has gotten so caustic among republicans is that ted cruz has done a very good job of drawing attention to this and reminding people who already did not like the bill why they don't like it. theirey have been calling representatives in the house and in the senate. and literally lawmakers say they take phones off the hook because it is just -- and people are really mad about it. i share their anger about it. so that is where a lot of lawmakers i think feel painted into a corner, even though they want to make the argument that well, ok, then it still does not work. they are getting -- that is not good enough, i think, for a lot of callers. i understand the frustration. it is real. host: california, dennis, independent line. caller: hi, how are you doing ? host: great. iller: i am 65 years old, and have been studying politics since i was 16, and i have never seen anything at all like we are experiencing today. i think everybody needs to dttle down, take a god ang deep breath, and think about what is going on. i hear these arguments, and the first thing that really bothers me is oh, my children and my grandchildren have to pay all this debt, and in my case, maybe my great grandchildren, but hey, you remember world war i? we are still paying for that. at least we did until the last veteran died. i mean, come on, think about this. this is a government for the people and by the people, and it costs money. a prettyat is irresponsible view of things. us inis a fascinating cnbc about what happens when interest rates go up, which then verbally have to do, right now the fed has kept interest rates artificially and amazingly low, and one of the reasons is because of their own debt. when those interest rates go up, 7%, soon, they go up to 10%, 15%, so very soon, we are going to wind up paying 90% of every check that goes through the federal government, every bit of taxes that comes out of your paycheck that goes to federal government, 90% of that is going to go to servicing the debt. and that is going to leave 10% to run all of this. it is not going to work. it will not work for a long. know, makingt, you very dramatic, drastic cuts now while we still have some control of things is going to be a lot , you have to make cuts under a scenario, then you do have people wondering the streets starving. they get very ugly. host: the house budget chairman, at thean, had a hearing cbo, and basically said you look at reagan, carter, they have all had these moments where they have had to deal with these debt limit and use them up for a larger fight on spending issues. is there a difference this time around? as far as waging a battle around this kind of thing? guest: yeah, there is. i honestly think that ted cruz and some of the senators saw the opportunity to generate a lot of animosity toward obamacare, which is great. too --hink that it was you know, republicans do not like to admit this, but we had an election last year, and it was pretty much about obamacare, and a lot of people do not like mitt romney that much, but they really do not like obamacare, so a lot of republicans stuck with mitt romney because of that, but it was not enough. that,en republicans lost you get back to the drawing board. ted cruz very much change that dynamic here, and neutered publicans'-- republicans' ability to win something real in this fight. because the sequester stays the same in the senate budget. guest: we hope. but honestly the way this thing has been so blown to pieces, even are real efforts -- some of these republicans that are involved in some of this -- that would like to see the sequester turn back because it would mean more money for them to divvy out mainly to defense and things like that. that is terrifying. the idea that not only would republicans not make further achievements on the one good , or any ofhave done these people have done in the past several years, the idea that not only would you not advance the achievements further but you might even lose ground? you'rethe world -- coming to another government shutdown, these people have run out of money yet again, they come to congress and say we need more money, we have run out of money again. you arenotion that negotiating from a point of strength at that point, but somehow they managed to do this where they wind up in a position of weakness. that is not good for them. host: charlie heard from the "washington times" joining us. call from maryland. caller: i have a few quick questions, and i have a already, mr. hurt, you run up that we had an election last year, i keep hearing mr. cruz and all this in the american people need to speak, the american people did speak last year, and they said ok to obamacare. the supreme court said ok to obamacare appeared either not know why the remote party wants horse. beating this dead you can saying they have certain things with the sequester. outme ask you, they carve that the republicans did in the --se with the food cans, food stamps, are you aware of the list of republicans who voted for farm subsidies not only for them but for their families while they cut food stamps for the poor, the elderly, and for veterans? are you aware that they have also refused to appoint people to conference so that the budget could be worked out so we would not get to this point? it all looks like it is predestined to come out this way. 413 plus filibusters in the senate, but the american people are supposed to be stupid and not understand that they're trying to nullify this president -- host: caller, thank you. guest: i feel like she has highlights -- i feel like she highlights perfectly what has become this leviathan problem in washington. you have all of these special interests, and obviously the food stamps and the farm bill stuff -- you know, these are massive interests, but the only way -- throughout history, the only way you have been able to get these things through is by smashing them together so that everybody gets a little piece of the pot. it is a disgusting way to run government. it is a disgusting way to take money from hard-working americans and distributed among people. unjust, way to -- it is it is dishonest, and i think it is why people are so deeply fed up with the entire system. host: here is rotted from north carolina, republican line. caller: i wanted to ask mr. hurt, all the conditions on passing this bill really don't chip away at the entitlements. it seems like the keystone pipeline or a one-year delay would be far better, simply repeal george bush's prescription drug benefit and go forward with the obamacare because the simple he was not a conservative risible by george bush with the prescription drug benefit. guest: that is why so many republicans hate the republican party is because when republicans ran the tables, that is one of the things that they got. republicans will make the argument that well, we achieved all these savings because of the worksat medicare part d -- whatever. it is still adding to the entitlement space him and the caller is exactly right. this is another tricky thing about this effort to defund obamacare. if we wind up shutting the government down because through this defund obamacare strategy, if that is what you want to call -- many ofll wind up the most onerous parts of obamacare continue to go on. into -- asy sneak entitlements. nobody is really talking about that. the one thing that is going to remain alive after a shutdown will be part of obamacare. host: nancy pelosi yesterday responding to not only efforts on the short-term funding bill, vcr, but also talking about the future fight coming with the debt limit. here is what she has to say. [video clip] is the full faith and credit of the united states of america, and the other is a priorities debate on spending and saving and growth. everything the republican's are talking about, whether it is not lifting the debt ceiling or making because they want to make without any investments that we we lose oneking -- million jobs as it is with their 988 sequester number, some say 1.6 million. i will be my usual conservative self and say one million on that subject, i most defensible number. so this is silly. maybe they did not get some orientation on how serious the work is that we do here. , they are a manifestation of what president washington cautioned against put he left office, which political parties that were with their own government. that is what we have wagging the dog, the tail wagging the dog of the republican party. host: charlie heard. guest: -- charlie hurt. when: i was get uneasy politicians talk what the divisive business -- the divisiveness in the history. hassince the civil war tension flared -- that is not exactly right. we have always had a lot of tensions in congress. it is not like we are on the verge of some civil war or something like that. nancy pelosihat also earlier in the week was talking about how in terms of theing spending, said that cupboard is bare, meaning that here in washington, we simply have no more cuts that can be made. i do not think anybody walking around this place would think that we really don't have anymore to cut. there is plenty more to cut. i think we have had enough of nancy pelosi's conservativsmism to last us. host: clarence in arizona for charles hurt. i am a 60 one-year- old vietnam disabled veteran, and i can tell you it is not the same country is what i fought for. -- i have been listening to all of this, and it is ridiculous. on my disability, there was one good month the government shutdown, i did not get my check, but that happens. time, ippens again this would be all for it if they get obama out of the office. i'm surprised he has not been impeached by now. he has not kept his promises, he has lied ever since he has been has done, he everything he possibly can to run this country down, so i don't see why he is there. that, while they got the government shutdown, maybe they can take and get some of the people over see now out of the government. perfect example of the problem the republicans have, and that is they have a very enthusiastic base of people that want to see obamacare abolished, president obama drummed out of office and all this -- none of that works unless you actually get votes at the polls and managed to do it constitutionally. host: what do you make of the strategy on the debt ceiling attacks in this long list of demands of legislation that would increase the debt limit? thet: in theory, i like strategy very much because a lot of the demand are sensible. obviously they're not going to get them all, but it allows them to cherry pick, to sort of negotiate. the argument can also be made, and it is a smart one, that when you put, when you ladle too much of that, too many demands, then you do not get taken quite as seriously. then again, republicans in their negotiating skills have shown taken to terribly seriously about anything lately. it has also been rendered somewhat of a moot point because -- we are sitting at talking about defining obamacare by not really defunding it. host: at one point, you probably heard, the debt limit was opposed to be the real fight and then take the pass on the cr. guest: i think if house speaker john boehner had his way, and eric cantor, that is exactly what we would be discussing right now because people get the idea that your kid comes back to you 18 times and says i have run out of money again, and at some point you say ok, we have a problem here, we need to address it, we need to get at the root of the problem here. i think most voters, most independent voters, they get that. they get the notion that ok, we cannot keep doing this. it is a winner. republicans actually one on this last year, which obviously means it is a slamdunk winner. host: and the stakes are higher when it comes to debt limit discussions. guest: absolutely because it does point out the systemic problems that are going on. hurt joining us, talking about issues concerning not only be short-term funding bill but the debt limit and other things dealing with the house and the senate. the house meeting today, john boehner meeting with the caucus at noon today. jackie from leesburg, virginia, democrats line. caller: good morning third i cannot tell you how frustrated i am that was again we have another conversation about the debt ceiling, the sequester, the continuing resolution. it is frustrating. quite frankly it is interesting. i have a question and a comment. i just want to say that for a few years ago, i used to work for home depot, and i did take advantage of their part-time -- i was a part-time employee, and i took advantage of their insurance, and it was expensive and it was not very well cared to a lot of people who think that the affordable care act for those type of companies that remove that insurance is such a big deal -- it is not. actually it is a great step in the right direction for a lot of our time employees who have that insurance. my question is -- how embarrassing this is to a lot of our other foreign leaders around the world who look at this process and look at people like ted cruz, who will stand on the senate floor for 21 hours and watch our congress vote 40 times to repeal a bill that is already law, what kind of impact, what kind of precedence does that say to other leaders around the world that say the u.s. cannot even get their act together, they are not the right people to do business with. we're going to test and challenge everything they say and do. guest: i guess i had not really , orght about any of that particularly do not think it is that big of a deal. did the yesterday, a lot of people had a lot of fun with this notion that president obama had opened the chain of negotiations with iran, and the big complaint among republicans in the house is that's he won't -- he refuses to negotiate on the debt ceiling, again, if we were talking about the debt ceiling and of this other stuff, they've had a lot of fun poking that heim in the fact refuses to negotiate with republicans in the house about the debt ceiling, but now for the first time since 1979, we are negotiating with iran. host: according to the wall street journal, majority senate leader harry reid, during the senate until monday afternoon, that would narrow the limit of time for any volleys between the chambers. guest: that is what is going to be the real interesting thing, john boehner has to present in together. he is going to be under immense pressure to do that. he could come up with something that the senate loves. or he could come up with something a lot more complicated. if it is something more collocated, then it is going to go back to the senate, and harry has sente deviously --rybody home so that exactly to do that, to narrow the window of opportunity. it is kind of like in football when you're trying to run out the clock, whoever is ahead is trying to run out the clock and take their time. that is what harry reid is trying to do and trying to get to the point where they will have time to do virtually nothing more than simply approve --either vote something up or down, and then he is banking on a fact that if it does go to a shutdown, it will be blamed on republicans. indication,s any that is probably a safe bet. host: one of the possibilities is short-term, maybe a week or so -- guest: that seemed to gather a lot of momentum during the week. for some reason, and i do not know whether -- it could be in the throes of the game -- but it seems that people on the hill are talking less about that and more about the fact that they -- they actually need to come up with a solution that is going to work. know, as wellou as anybody, this being washington and full of politicians, they love the attention. they love everybody -- much like the caller just mentioned, finding this sort of embarrassing around the world. these people love to have cameras on them, they love to be talking at the microphones. and nothing like a big drama like this to come out, and they love at the lessman to come in and come up with a solution -- at the last minute to come in and come up with a solution and save the day. that happens 95% of the time here. it is hard to see how happens this time, but it usually does. kimberly from washington, pennsylvania, republican line. i am a 50-year-old working woman at minimum wage, part-time, and i was diagnosed with press cancer in 2008 before ,bama was elected again, ok actually, elected the first time. but i am tired of hearing my countrymen tearing up our president who inherited this mess. he did not make this mess, he , henot cause this debt received this when he got the job. everybody in congress, everybody in the government, they work for us. they are not doing their job, they get fired. but we pay them to screw us basically. enough is enough. either you can't do your job -- get out. guest: well, it is a fair point that she makes, and certainly again the reason so many in the republican base are so frustrated with republicans is exactly what she is talking about where you had this galloping, out-of-control debt that even before president obama was here, even when republicans ran all the tables here in washington. but it is completely incorrect to suggest that president obama -- that we have not seen a massive explosion in spending and debt under this president. thean, i do not have all figures in front of me, but it is an undeniable fact that it has gotten exponentially worse under president obama. host: there is a story in the "washington post" highlighting issues connected with the launch of exchanges next week. how does this contribute to the overall discussions that we are hearing about the president was the health-care law on capitol hill? we have seen a number of the stories talking about glitches and problems as they are described. guest: because obamacare is not going to be defunded this week, despite the promises that are being made, i think that it has a little bit less of an impact, but this is part of the drumbeat , very negative stories that are coming out. you are hearing real stories about people losing their jobs, real stories about people being kicked off of insurance, real stories -- and of course health cost continues to go up. in real stories of people having their hours cut from full-time to part-time so the companies are not responsible for their health care. -- rightat amounts to now if there was a vote, polls areest that most voters against obamacare, which these two i think a very interesting possibility, which is this notion of the laying it for a year. i think a lot of democrats, particularly in the senate who face tough elections next year, would be hard-pressed to not vote for that. the president has a ticket he has no intention of signing anything like that. laid aemselves have you lot of aspects of obama care because of these problems, because of the glitches that were not anticipated. so i think that somewhere deep down there might be some relief in some quarters of the administration if they did just put it off. , think everyone would agree whatever this is, it is a monumental undertaking, and clearly it really did not -- people up here did not really read the bill before they pass it. host: moving into 2014 then? guest: that is the key. if they delayed it a year, by a year, they mean a year and, like, two months to get it after the 2014 election. you and i both know it would never be implemented two months before an election. michael,e is harrisburg, pennsylvania, independent line. caller: good morning. it isicans keep saying hurting the people, it is hurting the people, when this is not even -- not everybody is even aware of it. we don't even -- the whole public is aware, it has not even been ruled out yet, but everybody should know what is happening. they arele find that all big business people, and they know that every new thing that you are rolling out has its negatives and positives. never discuss anything that is positive about obama care. what is discuss is negative, negative all the time. host: caller, thank you. guest: one interesting thing that is overlooked in all of this is when president obama got very narrowly, but he got it through, he was very careful to make sure that none of it took effect before he face reelection in 2012, which is kind of why we're in this predicament now. i think they would probably agree that even under the rosiest of scenarios, it is going to be deeply unpopular at the beginning. so president obama did not want to have to face reelection with that going on in the country. so he kicks it until now. the problem is that then you have democrats in congress who are facing reelection, and they don't want to have to run for reelection with this going on. again, we are talking about the troubles facing the republicans. 12 months is a long time in politics, and you know, let's say although this does take effect and it really is as bad , theerybody thinks it is republicans could wake up in october next year and be looking at a very different playing field with the upcoming elections. host: here is one more call, barry, south carolina, democrats line. caller: thank you for the opportunity. i love c-span, by the way. i have a few statement than a couple of questions. i will try to get it quick because if i don't the phone will get cut off. the first thing i want to say is today is my birthday. guest: happy birthday. caller: i appreciate that. i was thinking about all my birthday wishes, and i was thinking that if i told my wife that i am not going to pay the bills until all my birthday wishes are taking care of, how would she react. the second thing i want to say is about the national media and , they say it is robbins or obama. it is not. we should take care of our bills. the third thing is about ted cruz. he did a 21 hour stand up, and right after that, he voted for the cr. i do not understand that. vote against obamacare, vote against the cr. my first question was to your promisesbout the false made by conservatives and collecting money and fundraisers stating that what they're going to do is defund obamacare, what do you think about that? my last question is he was saying something about delays, a one-year delay. what happened in years past when it was passed, why did they approve the bill instead of trying to delay it and try to take the a lot the table? guest: that is a very fair point that the caller makes about not approving the bill. it is the nature of politics --e right now is that conservatives have really good ideas about health care. but you would not know it because the revolt against your are not doing a very good job of proposalsout those for cutting health care costs and things like that. go,ar as the false promises it is a crocs on both of their houses. crux on both of their houses. it would be quite a contest to see who is worse around here about making false promises. host: as far as rich as, i know it is a bad strategy, but -- guest: whatever i say will wind up being somehow wrong, but i -- i think john boehner wind up sending something back that nobody is mondayith, but come night, it will be down to the wire, and somehow they will arrive at some grand bargain, and it will have once again "saved us" i guess from ourselves. host: charlie heard with the "washington times." guest: thank you. host: joining us to give us the latest in the u.s. navy will be rerouted moral --rear admiral john kirby. a self funding agency operated about a billion dollars of a deficit in the last fiscal year. city bus details on the u.s. -- to give us details on the usps, john reilly of the "federal times" will be along later to explain as "washington journal" continues right after this. ♪ >> who is to say what the cleveland clinic is doing has anything to do with obamacare? well, madam president, the answer to that is -- who is to say? the cleveland clinic is to say. a spokesperson for the cleveland clinic said "to prepare for health care reform, cleveland when it is transforming the way care is delivered to patients." she added that "$333 million would be cut from the clinic's annual budget." >> we know that there are things that are happening right now that we're getting paid less by private and public payers. insurance companies are paying us less, medicare is paying us had anequestration effect on hospitals, the nih funding decreasing has had an effect on our research, and so we had to decrease our costs still further. and all of this goes into trying to change how health care comes together. it is not one single thing that a, it is not one program, it is a whole series of things that we were doing starting back 5, 6, 7 years ago,, mating in when we in wayne- culminating we decided the changes would be so significant on how we would get paid that we had to be even more stringent. >> cleveland lennay kekua so because group on the future of clinic head tilli because group on c-span's "q&a." >> had a path, it would have nullified laws limiting women's rights. they would no longer be subjected to wage determination that persists even today, and symbolically, women would have been recognized -- and this is even more important, i think -- both as mothers as well as as workers. and the biggest irony of this story is that it was a well organized, articulate campaign of activist women who engineered the defeat of the e ra. >> the backlash against the women's liberation movement animal-rights -- equal rights a minute. sunday at 1:00 eastern on c- span3 american history tv. "washington journal" continues. ant: a discussion about update on the navy yard shooting and joining us for that discussion is rear admiral john kirby with the u.s. navy, serves as the chief of information. thank you for joining us. guest: thank you for having me, pedro. host: since the navy shooting took place, as far as the investigation is concerned, what is going on? guest: we just announced what we call a jack manual --judge advocate general manual investigative. it will be headed by john richardson, director of nuclear reactors, and that the investigation will be on a fairly tight timeline. in addition to that, secretary mavis has ordered four rapid reviews right in the wake of the shooting. one was on physical security at our bases, one was designed to set at a little better sen of aaron alexis and a time in the navy, one is to the degree to geth contractors have in touch with the navy when a clear and employee, and another is a writer view on security clearances in general and how the process is supposed to work or how that is supposed to change. that will fold up into a review that secretary defends hegel ordered last week. mavisare due to sedentary on the first of october. one authority complete, we took a deep dive into aaron alexis' career. the other three are due on october 1. , so therehelp inform are several different reviews and investigations. host: you said aaron alexis' career, does this include his problems as well? guest: not as mental health issues, but he was a reverse -- a reserve sailor from 2007 to 2011, and we dissected those four years to get a better sense of what chris taylor he was, what kind of behavior issues did newly -- did he have, that the navy had to deal with. security, how did he manage to get in as easily as he did you go guest? guest: because he wasn't authorized navy contractor --king on our defense working on our bases, he had a card that allowed them to get on the base, i have one, too, and he had a building pass to get into that building, building 197, so he had access to the base in the building. host: does you have to pass through some kind of magnetometer or some kind of thing -- in the house of congress community go through metal the sector. guest: because of the access he has, and i have to go through deeper layers of security other than the car to get on base and the access into the building to another swipe card, but no, he had to have had authorized access. host: are there questions about the future of that process because of what happened? guest: absolutely. because of the rapid review we are doing now and the broad review on security access and clearance in general, we are going to be taking a look at that. do there need to be any changes in the physical asks us that we allow to our facilities? but we need to be careful, too. you have to bouncy security concerns versus access. you don't want to be so restrictive and have so many constraints that business shuts down, that you have got long lines of people trying to get into a base just to get into work everyday. the work of the navy, the work of the military has to continue, therefore you have to strike a very delicate balance between access and security. host: as far as the security clearance, what questions are going to have to be asked? guest: we know how he got his clearance and how it got -- how it was able to stay in effect when he left the navy, and of course we believe that helped him get his job at the experts. what we're looking at -- does the security clearance issuance policy and program need to change? right now, security clearances held to do -- is designed to rets, notect sec safety. we are looking back and try to determine whether you are going to be a blackmail threat, and other words, if somebody going to try to use your pass against you to get secrets? it is not designed to protect physical safety. designated change? that the criteria need to be amended? highlights, the usaf, was once an arm of the federal government, was spun off into the predecessor in 1990. meeting revenue goals after is bought out in 2007 by providence equity partners for 1.5 million dollars, so some of the questions will be directed how does this firm do business. guest: i think so. you have to take a firm hand with u.s. isp or do you sis to do the background investigation checks -- with usis. the average length of time on national security clearance check with over 120 days, but bring it to 2013, under 40 days now. guest: is that too fast yo? is a conference of enough? host: have you had direct discussions with usis? guest: not in the navy, no. this is a contract by opm, and edit of their purview, not the navy. the navy got information from aboutho got it from usis mr. alexis in particular. we use the information we got from opm to determine eligibility and eventual approval of security clearance for an individual. these are discussions that opm needs to have with usis. host: rear admiral john kirby talking with us in light of the navy yard shooting 30 your questions are welcome on one of four lines this morning. (202) 585-3880 for democrats. (202) 585-3881 for republicans. (202) 585-3882 for independent. and for those of you retired or active navy, we want to be your thoughts as well. (202) 585-3883. this is froml, joe, california, public in line, good morning. caller: good morning. i am a retired engineering officer for the united states navy. i can confidently tell you that -- --t: i think the caller caller, are you there yo? i thinking him appeared earners -- i think he hung up. ernest. caller: i tried to get through on the other part of the program. i got in on the independent line. i do not know if i'm an independent or democrat. we have completed that section. we are talking about security of the navy yard. did you take calls on the other? host: we will. none the less, as far as your investigations go, talk a little bit about the process, i know you have the forward snap reviews, longer reviews going on as well. what is the coordination now between you and the aragon and the department of defense as far as putting together information? guest: the secretary of defense and his staff, he also conducts a deeper dive and review, investigation into all of this. i might add, and i forgot to add this earlier, we are staying closely aligned with the fbi, who is leading -- code leading the criminal investigative. we are integrated and plugged in with all these investigations, criminal investigation and investigation that is going to be done by secretary defense hagel. it what we're doing start a support and a conflict with those. morning, silver spring, maryland, democrat line. caller: thank you so much, pedro, and thank you, admiral. what i'm wondering is if the navy or any of the other u.s. intelligence agencies have discovered anything concerning s aboutxis' statement being targeted with electromagnetic frequencies. jesset a big fan of ventura, but he even did a program on that, and i know there is a lot of information online. i am wondering, you know, if that might -- even if he did have some kind of mental illness, if there might not be some credibility to his statements. thank you very much. guest: thank you, ma'am, for your question. that is really more of a question for law enforcement to deal with. the fbi has been looking into his recent past here and what led him to this horrific crime. in cas is certainly supporting cis it certainly supporting appeared we in the navy are not targeting that issue with the investigation that we are going to do. that is really more of a fact- finding it from -- fact-finding investigation about the scene into what we can do to help prevent that. clearly from -- and i am not a psychologist, but it clearly looks like mr. alexis had mental health issues, but i do not know that we are in a position that we could accurately try to depict for you or for people what exactly was going on in his head. host: what about the fact that he has a serious past misconduct issues but was able to get the clarence he did? guest: we talked about that earlier this week. his conduct issues in the navy were not serious, really, when he went at the things to nonjudicial punishment for, they were fairly my note -- barely minor. only one nonjudicial punishments took and i was drunk and disorderly -- and that was drunk and disorderly conduct. this was an average sailor, certainly not a superstar in the navy, but there was no indication by his conduct that he was going to be capable of this kind of horrific crime. from so that was lynn silver spring, maryland. amex call is peggy from miami, -- our next call is peggy from wyoming, democrat fund. caller: i have a son who is mentally ill, and they say it is is that people who do the shooting, i guess mentally ill is a bad person? no, they are not bad. they cannot just get the help they need. this man reached out for help, and he never got it. .nd it is so hard at the current of a mentally ill person, we don't approve of things that happen, but they are mentally ill, and they need help, and it is so hard for us to get help for them, and it is so hard for them to get the help because when we go when and we try to get help for them, we are told well, they are unadulterated, they can help an adult,s -- they are they can help themselves paradigm sorry, but they cannot help themselves. you fora'am, thank that. let me express my deep admiration and gratitude for what you are doing for your son. hard that imagine how must be for you, but also how courageous you are for trying to seek that help, and i would completely agree with you. certainly nobody in the navy or the military wants to label folks that have mentally -- mental issues or mental health issues as bad. as a matter fact, one of the things we're working real hard on as we come out of 10 years of war is to encourage our troops, regardless of tier of service or how long may have been in or how many deployments they have made, if they believe they need to seek mental health counseling, that they do that. we have to work very hard at removing the stigma that is attached to mental health issues inside the military. this came up earlier with respect to the security clearance issue. -- howstion was asked could summary with mental health issues be given a security clearance? one of the things we want to make sure we do is not hold a security clearance over somebody's head as they try to seek mental health care. we are working real hard at that. we want our people to come forward and to admit that they are struggling with something and to seek the help and not have to worry about the risks to their career or their clearance as a result. there is a fine line that you have to walk there, and as i told pedro, we're going to look at the whole security clearance issue and whether we need to change criteria, but one thing we don't want to do is discourage people from seeking the help that they need. again, my thanks for what you are doing for your son, and my best wishes for you and your family. ness asked on twitter -- is the military reevaluating using private contractors and private screening services? guest: we are going to look at the whole process heard secretary hagel and secretary mavis have made that clear. i would not want to judge what those would lead us to, but we believe it is healthy right now to review the whole issue of security clearance is and how they are granted, how they are renewed and i'd frankly under what criteria they are remote. host: can you do it in-house? guest: we are going to look at it next. host: washington, d.c., up next, this is joyce. caller: thank you for taking my call. i'm concerned that the way contractors and employees should be fully screened before bringing anything into the government buildings, that includes bulk items, such as what the shooter had on him. i don't think that employees or consultants should be given abbreviated screening. i think they should be screened as we are screened at the airport. it may take a long time, but that is the way the world has become. i just think that should be looked at when you are looking at the whole -- when they went into the schools, kids coming in with those long coats on and the long guns, we are going to have to get away from -- my point is, we need to get away from those abbreviated screening because that is the way the world has toome, and it is an assault the people that are honest people. they have to treat everybody alike. that is all i have to say. guest: thank you, ma'am. we are asking ourselves those hard questions right now, as i described with the different reviews that are going on. there is one specifically aimed at the physical security to our installations and facilities. we're going to ask those same tough questions. but you also have to find a balance between proper access and 100% security. it is very difficult to get 100% secure him even on a military base, simply because the work of the navy has to continue, which means they will have to be able to get onto the facility, their ships come into their offices to do important work. so we have got to find the right balance here so that we do not completely shut down a date with the work. but your point is well taken, and it is very much one we will be looking at. host: the inspector general released a report looking at issues on the navy's of the these -- looking at security issues on the navy securities. rapid gait did not effectively mitigate the access control risk of contractors accessing navy installations. first, what is rapidgate? guest: this is a system that we use for lower-level untracked or access, people who do deliveries, that kind of thing, not people like aaron alexis. -- this system that the ig report refers to is not the same contractor system or just read that mr. alexis was signed up under. this is for much lower level access to our facility. we are reviewing this ig report very carefully right now and is determining what, if anything, we need to do a little bit better. we certainly recognize with security, it is a very dynamic rosses, we want to always improve. rapidgate is a system which lower-level contractors are n short term, temporary access, i would not say accelerate, but an easier manner than having to come -- let's say, you are delivering water to , instead of having to come in and sign a get a visitors pass for every sale they do you deliver water, it will last for 30, 45 days, this rapidgate system allows you to have access for the temporary period of time while you are doing this fairly mediocre contract work. host: is that is a walk in, could they drive a vehicle in? packages? could be bothou to make a be all that. but the system is designed to adapt to the type of deliveries or the type of work eight contractor is doing. it is just at a lower level. the findingsl of in the ig report, and again, we're are still looking at this, it would not have prevented the --ack on the host: so aaron alexis -- guest: he had a common access card, the same card i have, because he was layered -- he was cleared and designed to help us refreshing upgrade, some of the networks at the navy yard. host: and that is more evaluation to get that kind of access. guest: absolutely. his access it not come under the system. next call from north carolina on our line for military. this is gary. hello. caller: hi. was in as gary, and i mental health clinic on a base in panama city. i had bipolar issues and did russian -- and depression issues. i got on a base with a regular dod card. i would go to the appointments, get my prescriptions and things like that run on the base. with my issues, i would never consider ever raising a weapon to another person or harming another person, and hearing all this about a person with mental health issues -- it just really scares me because i don't consider myself in that category, but i'm afraid anybody else might. guest: sir, thank you again. i will also offer my thoughts for you and thank you for being able to talk about your mental health issues. and for seeking that help and actively going out there and trying to get it. to the previous caller, i would say the same -- we do not want to nor would we ever think of trying to label people who are struggling with mental health issues as bad or sinister or evil. i think we need to be broken or for your before we start -- i think we need to be real careful here before we start drawing conclusions on mr. alexis and what happened. clearly the indications are he was struggling with internal demons. the fbi's investigation is active here and we do not need to get out ahead of accurate we certainly should not -- the matter what the outcome of this investigation -- get into a name-calling or labeling game when it comes to people with mental health issues. we are coming off of in years of war. we have many troops that are struggling with ptsd and dramatic brain industries -- industry -- injuries. we want them to seek the help because they need to get on that with their lives. many continue to serve with their uniforms in the country. thank you for what you do. host: host: 52 convicted felons received access to navy installations. guest: we will go through the review -- report carefully and quickly. we will be able to talk about it soon. we take the report seriously. we thank them for the work they have done to point out areas where the system might be able to be improved. where there are gaps, we will close them. we will get better at this. it isthis chart says installation contractor vetting. say three lack the resources to do so and six lacked capability. guest: we are going through the ig report. we will assess what we can do better. security is a dynamic issue. you will always learn ways to improve. to the degree we have made mistakes, we will own up to that. policyho initiated the that trained servicemen are not allowed to carry their sidearms on base? guest: not everybody in the military is issued sidearms. that is a common misunderstanding. i have been trying to fire a rifle and pistol, but that does not mean i am issued one every day when i go to work in the pentagon. on a normal, daily basis, the and areple armed supposed to be armed are those working in security jobs. these are guards and other security officers on a base or facility. sailor, airman, marine, coast guard men, or soldier carries a weapon every day. there would be no need to do so. our next call for admiral john kirby. caller: this is a great program. i want to commend admiral kirby for trying to strike the proper balance. thelast couple of callers, gentleman from north carolina and the two ladies, the one with the sun with a mental illness, the shooting of gabrielle giffords or the recent tragedy in the navy yard, the thread of folks with mental illness and guns we have been dealing with this for 20 or 30 years. we've got to have common sense dealing with folks with mental illness. the aclu has had many lawsuits. doctors: psychiatrists are free to report this to proper authorities when they are dealing with. in aurora, he told the psychiatrist what he was going to do. lawguide is not reported to enforcement or anyone out of fear of lawsuits. this has got to change. we are putting innocent people in harms way we allow folks with mental illness to carry guns. it is crazy and it needs to end. do more people have to die? guest: what you are getting at is not so much how we treat people with mental health issues but the reporting requirements and trying to perceive whether an individual is a threat to himself or others. that is another step. it is not about getting help for mental health. it is trying to assess if someone is a threat. that is a more difficult thing. it is something we will be looking at trying to learn lessons from the case. were there moments when we or his employer had indications he was a threat and whether those bots were reported --thoughts were reported. it is a difficult balance to strike. it is, where do you draw the line? how do you make the determination? we are all going to look to see if there are things we can do better. host: michael asks off of if possession of personal defensive firearms is being considered for personnel on base. guest: those wearing or possessing firearms are those trained to do it and their job requires them to do it. we still believe that is the right approach. i do not see any change to that governs the degree to which more people have the ability to carry firearms on base. host: bill, a retired navy man from philadelphia, good morning. in 1960 when i went in the navy, i was in the ceremonial honor guard in the at the anacostia receiving station. i had to go through a background check. in boot camp, i found out the fbi was at my house. had to go through clearance because of our closeness to being around the president and all, so i went through quite a background check. after that, i went on the ship and became a corpsman. when i went to shore duty at a hospital, i became a psychiatric technician. all through my process in the beingry, i know i was vetted no matter what i did because of what my jobs were. aware of what the situations were with mental health when i became that. somewhere along the line, people have said ronald reagan closed all of the mental hospitals. john f. kennedy was the person who started that. i do not know the bill but he wanted everyone released from mental hospitals. ronald reagan only closed the empty hospitals. people have nowhere to go anymore. in philadelphia, there used to be several mental health facilities they could go to. today that is limited. people are stigmatized by mental that nobeing called matter what it is. i suffer from depression. i have been treated for it and am very happy. this is the point of it. people who stigmatized these i cannot believe in washington, d.c., if they vetted that there are people who do not have backgrounds in mental health and possibly criminal backgrounds. host: we will leave it there. your: thank you for service and being courageous enough to seek help yourself. i will go back to what i said before. we take mental health issues seriously in the military. the army has done a superb job trying to get after this problem with so many soldiers after 10 years of war. we are all looking at this very hard. there are mental health facilities and services available to our currently and the v.a. is also looking at this very hard. they do a terrific job. i cannot speak for the history, but i can tell you across dod and in the v.a. there is a sharp focus on mental health issues and helping veterans and those currently serving to get the help they need. we are being mindful of the fact that there can be a stigma attached and we're doing everything we can to remove that. from there is a quote employer of aaron alexis. it is saying, how will they improve security when everyone in the government is being asked to do more with less money? economize whent it comes to safety and security. even with talk of the shut down next week, there will be accepted activities that will still be allowed to go on. those are safety of life, protection of property. we do not economize when it comes to physical security. host: even with sequester cuts? guest: even with sequester cuts. we are not going to penny pinch on trying to protect our people. host: new york, jeff, democrats line. caller: good morning. hello?, host: you are on. go ahead. caller: i want to make a suggestion that it would be a to search through mr. alexis' rebuttal statement. i'm hearing a lot about his misconduct. ien i was in the military, served in the army from 1980 to 1982, i was made the fall guy in an administrative setting. i was the only clerk. way we were set up, it only required one clerk. i went to the unit after going to administrative school. i thought the administered of systems were in shambles. . was made the fall guy the one month i was in the unit, ands made the fall guy replaced with a transferee. host: what would you like our guest to address? caller: i would like you to address what brought him to the state of meltdown. guest: we do not know. the investigation is ongoing, the criminal investigation. i would not begin to speculate what was going to mr. alexis' mind. we took a deep look at his time in the navy. an average towas below average sailor who got in a bit of trouble but nothing so serious that would indicate he would ever be a harm to himself or others. that is what we were responsible for looking for in his time in uniform. that is what we found. host: the next call is on the republican line. caller: thank you for taking my call. my suggestion would be similar to having a policy of no weapons in and out. i know most of the military cards have a microchip or something. my suggestion would be on base if we had designated areas for those personnel that are authorized to carry a firearm, that they get them from a locker thatan access code prevents individuals that do not have the necessity to have a fire on base -- firearm on base to have one. that would mean screening and checking at the gate if you do not have one of those cards. ie mental health thing, appreciate the compliments made. on the other hand, what is to say a normal person or average joe is not going to do something because you do not know what will make someone snap at any given moment sometimes even over the smallest issues? on base, limited access to those who have necessity for a firearm. guest: thank you for the two points you made. we are looking at security on basis. there are already restrictions to firearms. we will look at this and whether we have policy gaps we need to close. your other point on mental health is a good point. we have to be careful we do not rush to blame on any one factor. we need to let the investigators finish their work. we've got to remain mindful of not stigmatizing the whole issue of mental health. host: a couple of questions about sequester. the government executive magazine posted a story yesterday talking about ray made mabus talking about sequester. guest: the biggest effect is long-term readiness. we are working hard to make sure our forward deployed forces have all the training, materials, readiness they need to do the job requested of them. they areking sure ready for the missions they will be assigned. when you get beyond those, it gets hard. the next two or three years it will be difficult to maintain a higher level of readiness to meet all of our missions effectively and efficiently. that is our biggest concern. it is not just about training. it is about maintenance. it willster continues, have an effect on our procurement ability to buy new ships and aircraft. that leads to long-term readiness problems. host: there are production delays that have contributed to major cost increases to the program to build aircraft carriers. if sequestration remains the law of the land, it will have an impact on our ability to contract new work on ships. it could delay the start of other ships that have not begun to be built yet. i am not an expert on the f35 program. host: will the sequester have an impact on teacher purchases? --future purchases? guest: it will have an impact on just about everything. a quick comment and question. for mostto point out of us on bases, we are .ivilians even the active-duty working in systems command are civilians or come to work in civilian clothes and are not armed. there is a security force and all of that. it is the same setup on every military base. i wanted to ask a question with regards to the history of firearms on military bases. there is a lot of information flying around after this event. some of it links to previous policies that have been repealed or revoked. one was clinton's changes to firearms on base in 1993. i thought i would ask this. personal have experience or could elaborate as to how policies have changed on military bases over the years with regards to carrying firearms. guest: thank you for your service. i am afraid i do not have much history and knowledge about that. i would not begin to try to speculate about how policies have changed over time. we are looking at all aspects of physical security on base. host: when will you have your full assessment of security? guest: the quick look secretary mabus ordered is due october 1. i expect we will be able to speak about that and whatever policy changes might emerge as a result of that soon, in the next two or three weeks i would guess. there is a longer-term, deeper jag investigation that will probably take many more weeks to complete. host: our guest has been admiral john kirby talking about navy yard security issues. in our final program, we will look at the postal service, concerns about funding issues. our guest will talk about the proposals being aired as part of the future of u.s. postal service. of the "federal times." we will have that conversation as "washington journal" continues. >> the book tells the story of a nuclear weapons accident in damascus, arkansas, that occurred in 1980. i use that story as a way of looking at the management of our the firstapons since nuclear device was invented in 1945. i hope to remind readers these weapons are out there, that they are still capable of being used, and there is probably no more important thing our government does than manage them because these are the most dangerous machines ever built. subject has fallen off the radar quite a bit since the end of the cold war. you do not want to hear together -- nuclear weapons and accidental detonation. control" on sunday night. the online book club is reading "this town." get involved on facebook and twitter. wife guyent wilson's just 17 months after he took office. just over a year later, he remarried. on the first lady's heirs at 7:00 p.m. eastern. >> warren would stand on the top step with her behind him. this was a perfect backdrop for the campaign. it show the human side of the hardys. they did not live in a mansion. they lived in memorial -- a normal house like most of the people who came to hear him speak. she was a visible part of the campaign. she was always near him on the front porch when he was speaking. she gave interviews to magazines, especially women's magazines. she alternated between being the to being theian homebody, the wife, the caretaker of the candidate, so she knew how politics work. the first lady sunday night at 9:00 eastern. host: our final guest is sean reilly. there have been two hearings taking a look at the postal service, particularly its finances. can you give us a sense of the condition? guest: it is pretty bad. last year it lost $16 billion. this year it is still expected to lose around six dollars billion. that condition is not expected to improve. host: what are the causes for the loss of money? guest: in a word, the internet. the postal service has suffered electronic diversion. instead of sending a letter, people can indicate by e-mail. they will typically not use the postal service for things it has been served --used for in the past. first class mail has always been the big moneymaker. over the last seven years, that has steadily declined. they have managed to make up some of that lost through increased packing and shipping, but it has not been enough to offset the loss in first class revenue. host: does the postal service received federal money to keep running? guest: a tiny bit to help serve veterans and the blind. it receives no taxpayer money for operating expenses. it is supposed to be self- supporting. host: where does the revenue come from? guest: it is an odd hybrid in the federal government. it is a federal agency. the employees are federal employees. but it is supposed to be self- supporting. it is supposed to at least break even if not make a profit. in 2013, it took in about $65 billion worth of revenue. 2008, 70 five dollars billion. $69 billion. guest: the revenue took a big hit in 2008 and 2009 and has never recovered. leadership hopes revenue stabilizes around $65 billion. they are in a precarious situation. next month they have to make a $1.4 billion reimbursement to cover workers compensation payments. they estimate they will have five days of operating cash on hand. you have over 500,000 career .mployees there would be a risk of running out of money in a week or two if not able to pay employees and suppliers. they think that is a precarious situation. us toour guest is with talk about the postal service until the end of the program. if you would like to ask line for, we have a democrats, republicans, and independents. you can also send us tweets and e-mails. let's talk about liabilities. 2012 taking a look at the debt at the end of the fiscal year, $15 billion. workers compensation billion.es, $17.6 guest: that is long-term liability. this is one of the most contentious issues around the postal service. one of the things congress attempted to do in 2006 is you have an enormous workforce getting older that will retire. the government is responsible for covering health insurance for the retirees. the idea was to create a fund that would cover the cost of future retiree health care. the postal service was about to yearn about $5.6 billion a to cover the future liability. this was unfortunately timed legislation. 2007, revenue started to fall off the cliff. the postal service has been able to fully pay three annual installments. the next one is due on monday. it has already made it clear it will default on that one. it has only made three of those payments. then congress cut the payment in 2009. they say they do not have the money to do it anymore. in 2011 and 2012, they defaulted on the payments. they will default this time. that liability still shows up on the balance sheet. most of the six dollar billion loss is a paper loss due to the retiree funding obligation. host: it is a quasigovernmental agency, i guess is the best way to describe it. theyivate companies, retool and make decisions to get the best bang for the buck in terms of cost and revenues. how much flexibility does the postal service have to make its own's decisions -- own decisions to be fiscally in a good way? guest: not as much as leadership would like. they have done aggressive cost- cutting. two years ago, we had a plan to reduce the processing by half. next year the goal is to have it around 230 plants. they have around 32,000 post offices. they tried to begin closing about 3000 mainly in rural areas. they got so much pushback from congress that last year they went to a different agenda where they are reducing the hours of 13,000 post offices, putting many under the leadership of part-time postmasters. they hope to save a lot of money that way. they have tried to negotiate with the four major postal new wage scales that paid new workers less than current workers make. say theyoint, they have done all they can on their own. they need help from congress. they need to get rid of the retiree obligation. they need to restructure the benefits program. they want to transition new employees away from the current federal pension program that gives you a defined benefit and make it more like the private sector where you have the equivalent of a 401(k). host: congress will have to give them permission to do that. guest: that goes back to the hearings we are talking about. one was on the 19th and one was this thursday. in between the hearings, we had the postal service announcing it was seeking an emergency rate increase. the point of the hearings was to provide a comprehensive view of the situation. republicans and top introduced bipartisan legislation that would give the at least allow-- it to make a start on what it is trying to do in terms of restructuring to retool as a much more competitive organization. host: we will talk about that in detail. let's take some calls. gary from maryland is on the independent line. caller: good morning. you kind of hit on my question. how much money has been made from the postal department back to congress? or the employee's pay the same social security and health care taxes a normal person plays -- pays? guest: i believe so. one example is medicare. says theaster general postal service and employees have paid in well over $25 billion into medicare. they are not getting full benefits from that. that would be one objective of making medicare the insurer of first resort. when you ask about how much they paid back, i do not understand. they have contributed about $18 billion into the fund for future retiree health care. is there something else you were thinking of? host: he has left us. we go to amy from toledo on the democrats line. go ahead. caller: i was wonder whether the post office would consider going down to a four or five day work and helpave pensions the people who give the most to our society. are you going to go after the smaller packages and partner up with amazon or something to generate more business? i know everybody loves the forever stamp, but how much is that costing america when people afford them and use them long- term? host: are you with the postal service? caller: no, i used to work in shipping. we assisted the post office when they had the problem with the powdery stuff. we partnered with them. with security issues for the postal service, when i worked around port authority, if you had a contractor on port authority property or at the postal service, do you have a known employee shadow the contractor for safety purposes like they do with port authority? they started doing that after 9/11. guest: i will take the questions in reverse order. postalt know if the service has employees shadow contractors. if you go into headquarters, you have to be escorted. i assume they take appropriate security precautions to protect employees and the public. theour earlier questions, postal service is trying desperately to make changes to its current work schedule. terms ofriority in cost cutting is to stop saturday mail delivery. earlier they tried to implement this on their own. saturday mail delivery would have been history by now, although saturday package delivery would have continued. hasress since the 1980's inserted an annual prohibition to the appropriations bill that requires the postal service to continue six-day mail delivery. congress reasserted its authority and told postal service it cannot do it. i am not suremps, i have seen analysis of what that is costing versus what it is bringing in trade i think the idea is to keep the first-class mail volume as high as it can go. the price of a stamp has only gone up by a couple of pennies since they introduced it. my guess is it probably is not costing that much. they probably see it as a net plus. host: richard is on the republican line. caller: i am glad i was able to get through. i understand the problem for the employees. i do not know how much they make , but they make more than i did when i worked. i would say you have to live within your means. there is only so much money out there. is continuously zapping us taxpayers. i have five post offices within two miles of my house. to theo down the road new bethlehem post office, the hawthorne post office, there are five of them here within two miles of my house. maybe you could do away with some of them and make one central or have a distance theseed as far as how far post offices should be. i understand it would be a problem because of the way you would have to restructure the mail. [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2013] -- host: thank you. guest: they have tried to close post office is seen as redundant or not profitable. 80% of them did not bring in enough to cover operating expenses. congress has been resistant to eliminating or closing post offices. these are important institutions even if people do not use them as much as they used to. they still did not want the post office to go away. host: perspectives on junk mail. one says to get rid of it. another says it is the only thing keeping the post office alive. guest: it is certainly helping. just look at your mailbox and see what percentage is junk mail or first-class mail. it has become an important revenue stream in keeping their finances propped up. it has some and growing as robustly as packaged mail. deliver -- consider political mail, in the last election they made a special attempt to grow revenue in that area through direct mail for candidates and political parties. they grew that into the business essentially. it is important for them. what congress wants to do with junk mail, are they a stakeholder in the discussion? guest: they certainly have a voice in this. the postal service has an advisory committee made up of the mailing industry. the junk mail players are part of that. host: sylvia from tennessee is joining us on the democrats line. 2006, the lame-duck republican congress passed a law which forces the postal service 75 years of health benefits and pensions in a 10- year window. billionounts for $5 each year the postal service has to pay. what the restrict postal service can do in the form of making any money. this was all an effort by the republicans in the lame-duck congress in 2006 to break the fedex service so ups and would have all the business. privatizething was to the postal service. guest: this goes back to the , the requirement the postal service pay into the fund to cover future retiree health care benefits. was to make sure these benefits were covered for the next 75 years. it was seen as a step in prudent fiscal management. the reason the schedule was so aggressive, why you are trying to fund 75 years in 10 years, was they wanted the bill to show it would have no net impact on the federal deficit. they had to offset some other expenses incurred by the bill. this was a way to show they would be producing revenues that offset the deficit. 2003, there were over 29,000 employees. 22,000., 5 why did the numbers shrink so much? guest: this is another step the postal service has been taking through the use of attrition, early retirement programs, they have been aggressively cutting the workforce. they have managed to avoid layoffs. they have been using just about every other tool at their disposal to reduce the workforce. they want to get it down to around 400,000 career employees the next couple of years. they are doing everything they can to bring it down. as recently as 2000, it was 800,000 employees. that gives you an idea of the magnitude of the shift. host: joe joins us on the independent line. caller: i want to talk about junk mail. the gentleman was talking about how they make money on junk mail. junk mail is subsidized. the rates are cheaper than we pay for first-class. it is cheaper to mail a big brochure than it is to mail a postcard. junkere was any profit in mail, ups and fedex would be delivering it. if the federal service -- postal service cut out junk mail or charge them the same we pay for first-class ale, they would not have financial problems. so good, why not charge the first-class people the same thing they are charging the junk mail? because they cannot do it. there is no money in junk mail. we are wasting energy from the post office. 99% of the stuff printed in the beautiful brochures in suppan the trash --winds up in the trash. the exacto not know pricing mechanisms for standard and junk mail. it is not as profitable as first-class mail. the postal service has a calculated strategy. their argument is even in the age of electronic medication -- communication, there is still value of putting rigid paper in front of a potential customer. a lot of my junk mail goes in the trash can we do look for the catalog and occasionally make a purchase. it continues to be an important source of revenue for the postal service that is growing a little bit if not just holding steady. there is an argument that the postal service is subsidizing the cost of that or the products are not carrying their full weight. under the proposed price increase, i understand rates for standard mail would go up. host: here is an idea to increase customers. on about cutting money spent things like supporting racecars? made: back in 2000, they an ill-fated venture into sports marketing. they spent around $41 million sponsoring lance armstrong's cycling team. now they are trying to get the money back now that armstrong has admitted he was consistent sleep -- consistently doping during that time. the justice department on behalf of the postal service intervened and wants the $41 million in sponsorship fees returned with damages amounting to another $20 million or so. i believe there will be a hearing in november on whether the suit can proceed. the postal service is trying. they have stopped the kinds of programs they stopped -- tried back then. it is not clear if they got much benefit from the exposure. host: democrats line, you are on with sean reilly talking about the postal service. caller: you mentioned earlier the republicans have been trying there would be good fiscal management for the postal service. pointyou were making that or the republicans were making that point, there has been no attempt to ensure the court system was physically prudent or that the army or navy work. we know of all kinds of problems in the army and navy. the constitution of the united states says to not only provide post offices but post roads. my concern is they are not doing that. the attempt has been to to providehis opportunities to ups and fedex. the idea we will privatize everything the government does and turn it over to profit- making entities. if congress were meeting its responsibility under the constitution, they would be isuring the post office is -- do not have any knowledge of any situation where the congress has funded the postal roads. guest: that is an interesting question. most ofal service for its history was like any other federal agency. in 1970, congress decided it was not tenable anymore. they spun it off as a sort of hybrid agency that would be part of the federal government but was supposed to be self- supporting. the argument the postal service is making now is congress needs to decide if it wants to continue down that road and give them the freedom to innovate so it can survive as a self- supporting entity or bring it back under the federal government and make it a taxpayer supported institution again. the ranking member laid out his priorities for postal reform. let's listen to what he has to say and you can expand on the proposals he's making. [video clip] threeill work with priorities in mind for the postal service should look to cutting cost. they have got to. theuld congratulate postmaster general on what he has done so far, but he has a way to go. we should look for more revenues, not just through price increases but through ingenuity, waysdeas, new markets, and that do not unfairly allow the postal service to compete against the private sector. we should look to the taxpayers as the last resort. host: this is tied to legislative efforts. fill in the details. the bill, i think they would argue that is what they are attempting to do. they want to give the postal service the ability to expand into new revenue lines. there are a few things they can do grandfathered in from previous efforts. the postal service has cut costs significantly. they want to do it more. general'sster argument is it does not want to become a ward of the taxpayers again. it does have a line of credit with the treasury. it has maxed out the $15 million limit --billion limit. if they cannot repay it, it becomes a liability for the taxpayers. buts attempting to do this, it has done as much as it can in terms of reducing costs and enhancing revenue as possible under the current legislative framework. that is why they are pleading with congress to act. only is this the legislation that looks at the postal service specifically? guest: there is a house bill that came out in july that would allow the postal service to go to five-day mail delivery. the senate and house bills will provide some relief on the retiree funding obligation. it will not eliminate it, but it would defer it for a couple of years and stretch out the payment schedule so it is not as aggressive as it is now. both would allow the postal service the opening to begin theoring moving away from structure of the federal employees benefits programs. they have some similarities. this is a congress that only acts in a crisis. service egos of management steps is doing better than it was a year or two when they were concerned about running out of cash. they have enough to tide them through. it is better than where they were a year or two ago. as long as the postal service can pay its bills, i know the consensus from a lot of folks is congress is not going to move. host: republican line. caller: let me tell you where i stand for starters. i exclusively use the united states postal service or all of my packages and parcels because i am proud of my country and i am not a fancy man. i sent five cards a year to relatives and close friends. i'm also a cigar aficionado. senator coburn is pushing the envelope when he criticizes the postmaster general. i think this guy is doing fine. i elected this man. i want to know what you think is the problem. this guy has a twitter account. he is communicating over the cheapest means possible. i have a good relationship with my mailman. let me get a sense of your stance. you seem like you are playing both sides. guest: i'm trying to provide an overall perspective on complicated issues and where everyone is coming from. if the postal service had more people like you use the postal service, perhaps it would not be in the shape it is in. there are long-term structural changes in the economy and with the internet where people do not need to use the postal service as much as they did in the past. the agency is still operating under a regulatory framework and expectations that go back decades. host: brenda from virginia, independent line. caller: good morning. i think we can draw a parallel from the postal service to landline phone service. landline phone service has always been a private utility have beenut they under regulations to provide landline service all over the country like the post office has to provide daily mail delivery six days a week everywhere. what has happened is as the havenet and cell phones changed the demand for land mines, we subsidized the provision of land lines to anyone who wants this through taxes on our phone system. i think it is unfair to expect the postal service can continue forrovide six-day service first-class mail anywhere in the country. guest: i think that is an excellent analogy. i know many people who no longer have land lines. they have given them up in favor of cell phones. requiredl service is to provide universal service all over the country. it might not make sense from a business perspective to deliver mail to nome, alaska, but the postal service has to do it. that is a cost it has to bear. if it were a completely privatized industry, it might find some way to avoid it. host: what about the notion of door to door delivery? would that change perhaps? guest: both the house and senate bills would allow the postal service to go to cluster boxes where you do not get your mail delivered door-to-door. you have five or six mailboxes on a stand on the street and you have to walk a few hundred feet to pick it up. makedea would be to delivery more efficient and reduce the number of carriers. host: we are having a discussion about the postal service. here is andy from michigan. caller: i am a postal worker facing retirement after 38 years. i think what people do not we are our own business since 1970. we are still mandated by government not to make profit. there is a question on the table as far as $75 billion of our future retirement fund that has been given to congress. there are a lot of people that depend on the postal service. i feel like the republican party is out to destroy it. guest: i cannot speak to the republicans, but the argument is they are trying to keep it viable. on the parte desire of both parties to keep the postal service viable and able to survive into the future. host: bill is up next from ohio on the republican line. caller: has congress considered paying for all of its free mailings? host: what do you mean? caller: congress gets a certain amount of free mailings each year. you are referring to the privilege. it is free to congress supported by taxpayers. i believe there is language in the house and senate bills that would end this kind of thing for political mailings. the franking privilege has been a controversial topic in the past. is less important now because there are other alternatives to the mail in terms of getting in with with his vigilance -- constituents. host: let's hear from the postmaster general on thursday. [video clip] is a fundamental question to be answered about the future of the postal service. will the postal service be given the authority and flexibility that enables it to continue as a self funding entity? i believe everyone wants the answer to be yes. the postal service can be affable and pay down its debt. you can continue to provide secure, affordable, and reliable, universal service. it can continue to meet the needs of rural america. it can continue to drive economic growth. it can continue to be a great place to work. if given flexibility and authority to adapt, you can meet all of these goals without becoming a burden to the american taxpayer. the choice is simple. greater flexibility now or massive taxpayer exposure and service degradation later. host: what is the likelihood they get that flexibility? guest: it is going to be tough. was not covering the postal service when the 2006 bill passed. i understand it took 10 years to get that bill through. there are serious efforts to begin another round of reform that began two years ago. we can mark our calendar's for 2020. i do not think it will take that long. it is a steep climb. service has backed away from the cliff it was heading towards a couple of years ago. as a result, the pressure is off of congress to act. are soer issue is there many constituents affected by the postal service. they have many employees with four unions. there are a lot of different players. it is hard to get everyone behind a bill that is going to require some sacrifice from all of them. host: this is to just eliminate saturday delivery. bill from weston, ohio, republican line. caller: i have already been on. host: apologies about that. bob on the independent line. caller: i am in a partnership with my brothers farming in ohio. we also have a retail business i started in 1981 with 700 plus customers, farmers, turf and lawn, pet feed, the whole thing. i have to accept change in my business. i am 66 years old. i'm always dealing with change. i pride myself with common sense. common sense says if you want to take care of the employees and make the post surface be on its own, it is simple. you deliver the mail every other day six days a week. it will not disrupt my business. it will not disrupt what i mail out every day. one day will not make a difference. it will solve everybody's problem. it is a commonsense change. should be done. guest: the postal service would like to eliminate saturday mail delivery. i do not think they have talked about trying to go to every other day delivery, or perhaps it may make sense down the road and is something to consider. host: how have the unions reacted to the process? guest: they say they have sacrificed. either through the contract negotiation process or arbitration, they have given up a race is. -- pay raises. iny have seen increases benefit costs. the postal worker may not be laid off but may have to travel a significant distance to work at another plant. they say they are doing quite a bit for the postal service. in other argument is preserving saturday mail delivery, they say one of the vantage is the postal service has is it does deliver every day but sunday and that is a competitive advantage it needs to preserve. michigan, democrats line. caller: i want to have you comment on the law that changed in 2006 that makes the postal service uncompetitive. i heard after that, they lost 95% of their contracts for packaging to fedex. along with that came lobbyists money to get the contracts to ship the postal packages. my understanding is the postal service only handles 10% of the government packages after that law. of course we will be uncompetitive when you stick a five dollar billion medical payment on them every year. letsh the government would my company fund our benefits that far in advance. guest: thank you. i am not familiar with the particulars of the postal service contracting efforts in that regard. the postal service has a close relationship with fedex and ups, both delivering packages and using their aircraft to transport postal service packages. it is more of a symbiotic relationship than you would expect. host: bob from colorado on with sean reilly talking about the postal service. the house comes in a few minutes. bob from colorado, independent line. caller: i am on the republican line. i wonder if the federal employees will be subject to obamacare. that is my question. guest: a little bit off-topic. obamacare is meant to provide for -- insurance for people who do not currently have insurance. federal employees do have insurance. there was some language added by republican senator charles grassley a couple of years ago that provide -- requires congress and congressional staff to participate in the exchange is set up under obamacare. the question is whether the government will continue to subsidize those and provide the same contribution to the premium cost it currently does. for the most part, i do not think federal employees who already have insurance will be required to participate in obamacare. host: what is the next step in the process? guest: the next step on the senate side will be to try to wheree bill to a markup the committee will consider it, make changes, and vote it out to send it on to cap --action by the full senate. i have not gotten direct words from either senator's staff. they may try to do that in the next couple of weeks. said there is something in there for everyone to dislike. it should happen quickly. from "federallly times" talking about the postal service. the house is coming in to take up the continuing resolution bill passed down from the senate without the mechanism for defunding of the health-care law. john boehner is going to meet with the caucus at noon today to debate the next steps. stay close. here's the house of representatives. the speaker pro tempore: the house will be in order. the chair lays before the house a communication from the speaker. the clerk: the speaker's room, washington, d.c., september 28, 2013. i hereby appoint the honorable chris stewart to act as speaker pro tempore on this day.
VietnamRepublic-ofArkansasUnited-statesLouisianaAlaskaCaliforniaSyriaRussiaWashingtonDistrict-of-columbiaNew-bethlehem you talk about growth and you look at the state and evidence. and what are growing role are immigrants playing in the country? >> first of all, when amity called me and asked me to come here to dallas to speak, i leapt amthe opportunity, because i an admirer of george w. bush. thank you for the invitation. thunder a little bit when you talk about four percent growth year it i would add to what you said, that i do not think we can accomplish four percent growth without immigration. it is a precondition to get to that higher growth rate. it may be too low. we are in the fourth leader -- year of non-recovery. there is no reason the economy cannot he recovering much faster than it is geared five, six, or seven percent growth. it is interesting, if you look at the time i called the quarter-century of spectacular, unprecedented growth in america, 2005 -- 1980 two 2005 -- to 2005. let in well over 200 americans in that time. badle say immigration is for the economy or it causes high unemployment. the actual evidence shows the opposite, that the biggest boom. of american history was the greatest in immigration. it is circumstantial evidence. a second point is with respect to state. it is so interesting. we do a lot of work at the wall street journal. comparing texas to california, it is a good comparison if you are from texas and believe in the free market. , roughly,ou have seen about one million new jobs in the state of texas in the last five years, and rough lee one million lost jobs in california. that is amazing. is we the points we made are really seeing one of the great wealth transfers in american history, geographically, in states like california that do not get it right and states that do get it right, like texas. veryis one reason to be bullish on texas. the interesting thing also is texas and california are not the two highest immigration states. texas does a much better job in my opinion of economically assimilating immigrants. california indoctrinated immigrants into the welfare system. jobs. come to texas for people go to california for welfare. you are seeing the differing -- texas is the model we should be emulating. a last point, because it is at the top of my mind. i would urge all of you, if you have not had a chance to read our editorial this morning on immigration -- i was likely -- lucky to get here last night. the united states of america has such an incredible opportunity so much larger than any other most of thebecause people in the world who are talented and educated and ambitious, their first choice to where they want to go to to leave the country is to come to the united states. they want to come to the united states. we have an incredible opportunity to exploit the opportunity for the benefit of the american citizens. that is what this whole immigration debate is and should be about. how do we have in immigration policy good for the immigrants, obvious, but also good for merican citizens? i am worried this immigration debate in washington is migrating in the wrong direction. the last point i will make, i hear 100 times a day in washington, "what will we do about immigration problem? " " immigration opportunity and advantage over the rest of the world. that needs to be exploited. i always say when china -- china is not going to surpass the united states economically because our chinese are smarter than their chinese. this is an and norma's advantage and we have to exploit it. it is really something. thank you. >> a follow-up on one thing. you talk about there are a lot of immigrants and a lot of growth. a lot of people do not realize the growth of immigration in different states has been away from states like california and new york, although they still had some growth. the expert we will hear from later. traditionally, immigrants have gone to the south, other than -- shunned the south, other than texas. .hat has been a problem now, you are seeing dixie really attracting a lot of the immigrant states like north carolina. one of the states with the biggest percentage increase of immigration over the last 15 years has been georgia. it has become a high-growth state. people at, are immigrants more attracted to a state with high welfare benefits, or are they attracted to a state that has jobs? ,e look at some of the evidence and what we found was, on balance, immigrants are much more likely to go to states with unemployment rates than withare to go to states welfare. they are coming here because they want a job, not a welfare check. >> it makes logical sense. you are to leave your country -- make out somewhere new >> there are so many people on the other side of the issue who think immigrants come here for welfare. some do. some do. but the vast majority do not. they come here because they want economic opportunity and a job erie >> that is an important point. next, we will focus in even more on texas. we have an international expert on immigration issues. she wrote a chapter on the bush institute looking at growth and immigration broadly. she is the author of a fabulous book. she is also at the federal reserve bank of dallas, senior economist studying immigration. where is the you, growth coming from? >> when i talked to the media, i .ry to simplify it i say, there are three main components of growth. then there is what steve was talking about. the three main components is really oil and gas. it is huge right now. >> we will have a conference on it in september. >> then i talk about geography, . talk about manufacturing >> hold on one second so we can hear your wisdom. sorry, everybody. >> we thought you were going to tell us whether ben bernanke is going to ease. [laughter] >> you are stealing my material. but that is all right. i have got more stuff. >> manufacturing, international trade, have been huge in texas. oil and gas more recently has been a big proponent of growth. not only a high national population growth rate. not just international, but domestic immigration. it is interesting in recent years, in the 1990's, international -- it really took off in texas. it became extremely important. recent years, domestic migration has been more important than international. it shows the growth differential that is broadening. if you look, i will admit the four percent growth rotted sounds like a -- project complicate lofty goal. we are actually averaging over four percent growth. inflation adjusted. the state of texas, yes. time.an amazing growths the other point i want to make is there has also been a big transformation at the texas economy. of the 20th century, the oil, the cotton, and the cattle state. it was not until the 1980's and especially the 90's that we into arm ourselves modern industrial-based economy. this transition came to two factors. one was oil. if you remember the late 90's, that decimated our oil and gas industry and forced us to change. luckily for texans, texas is a state that has been able to change. that is because of immigration. >> high skilled immigrants, a bit of a sort -- shortage. cap six is unique from other states. are they good for the economy? >> a lot of people will say, they agree. we should bring in every phd scientist we can find to start a new google. do notout those who have a high school degree? what role do they play? good news,l especially now. when we look at our immigrants, .xceed percent are mexico lesson 30% are from mexico nationally. they are less likely to speak english fluently. we see all that in statistics from texas. if you look at these immigrants, they have much higher unemployment rate than low skilled immigrants nationally and lower unemployment rates than nationally and they do quite well. they are stable, especially compared to the rest of the nation. they do very well. in average wages turned up the last couple of years. it is just a testament to the success story of the economic miracle of texas and not just in the recovery, but long-term. we have low skill immigration and they contribute tremendously. does thatilled, become better at attracting high skill industries? more high skilled in the last several it goes back to the 1990's, the texas economy has been crucial, the immigration is high skilled. basically again, texas as a commodities-based economy, we that has labor, but changed now and we have been able to bring them in. iny have been instrumental research and development and health care and education. education, our teachers and professors are high skilled and him and -- international immigrants. >> i want to give you a little bit of context. the united states hispanic chamber of commerce. you can give us -- we have heard the facts, numbers, and percentages. real people on the ground. i am hoping you could tell us about some of the businesses you represent here in texas and what role you are playing in helping them be successful. >> thank you for having me. andk you to the ambassador what the institute is doing. it is a real nervous to the american public. we are thankful to be a part of this. together, they contribute about 465 billion dollars to the american economy. is fastest-growing segment the spanish community. we also have 198 american corporations and we do our work through a network of local chain of commerce and business associations in the united eight. we are proud of the fact we advocate on behalf of those people who are practitioners. we write, talk, and advocate on behalf of business owners. ,t is always thrilling to me the practitioners. the ones who create the jobs. i am happy we have some members of our association here. and ie four members cannot see them here but i know they are in the crowd. patricia is with us today. .atricia began a company her company's headquarters, san antonio, texas and she immigrated from mexico. last year, her country did about $138 million of revenue. she employs close to 100 texans. we also have a gentleman with us here today who also immigrated to the united states from mexico. his company is heren dallas. that, if youpany have ever crossed the bridge that just came up that everyone is talking about, or if you visited jerry jones's house, -- >> we all wish. he employs over 250 texans. , who is thek grandson of german immigrants who came to this state looking for opportunity. today, frank manages over 3200 acres in texas. finally, we have nina with us from dallas who immigrated to -- united states from exit from ecuador. last year, did about one quarter of $1 billion. people and over 3700 a thousand of them are texans. these are the practitioners and the american dream incarnate. they are driving the texas economy forward, paying down the tax bill, and what this is do everyday. they if if you would stand up and be acknowledged, that would be wonderful. >> thank you for being here. [applause] >> that is the american dream right there. >> everyone of them could've chosen any state any state in the nation to continue their business. the fact is, they chose texas for all the right reasons. they are living proof of what this state has to offer. ,> when did you choose texas in your estimation? what are the things about texas that make it especially friendly for immigrants or other people who come here and want to start a business cap help they can grow to that level and drive the growth we these four. >> individuals, and i am no position to speak for them, but i can surmise in the case of these four individuals, you look at the sectors they are in. technology, travel, construction, and agriculture. you are looking for people who want to work. act rooms --oth's both ends of the spectrum in terms of skills, for highly technical positions. i would not say low skilled. i would say differently skilled work that happens in the agricultural scale. in all of those cases, they recognize this is a state where workers are ready, willing, and able, because state makes it possible for them to work and build their own individual work as a family and employee, but help the enterprise continue to grow. >> it seems we hear this everywhere. seems like it is conventional wisdom. i do not think it is. we have to make a protection for american workers. this myth that immigrants come and take jobs. even our leaders in washington on either side, they seem content. they buy into that, that we need to build protections. when the -- how do you respond people who say that immigrants come to jobs? >> we would do at what has transpired in neighboring state. you look at what happened in alabama recently. that state has a fairly draconian anti-immigrant piece of legislation. the fact of the matter is, when it is boiled down, you look at the end of the case, they have 40,000 workers who get up and leave the state. the state lost about $10 billion of revenue and about a half $1 billion of taxes, that it could have garnered, had those works -- workers state in the state and worked on the crops and in the construction site. there is a lesson learned. of whatiment is part happened in alabama. i hope that will never be the case in texas. thennk governor bush and president bush illustrated leadership in terms of his understanding of the immigrant communities in terms of the work the immigrants come here to do. he welcomed immigrants to the state of texas. a very clear minded understanding of the contributions immigrants make to the state of texas. there are lessons to be learned, when you study what has happened in states that do believe immigrants are there to take their jobs. no one came back to take the jobs with the immigrants left untended. >> i want to come back to you and ask, what are lessons from other states? great growth, a lot of them driven by demographics and immigrants. some other state, four percent wrote, we need some help. ,> one of the other things when you talk about where the growth is in the country, and texas has had the much growth, whenever people who disagree with my free market philosophy, they say, people are going to southern states because of the nicer climate from michigan and illinois. it is interesting. i guarantee you, as wonderful as dallas is, i guarantee you people are not moving from san diego to dallas. [laughter] -- and i think this is fascinating. does a betters job of simulating immigrants in a society in a much that are ay than california does? it is something we need to study more. texas has the free enterprise mentality that some of the .tates like california do not we talked a lot about hispanic immigrants. i live in washington dc and you are asking where other states are going. we the a big increase in immigrants in coastal states. it is an interesting phenomenon. when you go to the resort towns, i would say 75 to 80% of service workers working at hotels and restaurants and on our eastern europeans. they are czech and polish. a really amazing phenomenon that they have taken over the occupation. be whites and blacks that have the jobs and now they are going to eastern europeans. did a biggton post story. they interviewed a lot of these people who, most of them were very new immigrants and most arrived. it was really fascinating, the attitude of the immigrants area several of them told a reporter, the great thing about america is there are all these jobs there that is dumping americans say. another thing a lot of these immigrants said was, the other great thing about america is its you work art, you can get ahead in this country. i was in texas a month or two ago. it was a small business, not just one of those taxis. i asked him about his ,xperience coming to america and he said, when i arrived here, it was like i had woken up. drivea kind of ambitious unique to immigrants. 99% of the people in the world never move more than 100 miles from where they grew up. we are talking about the one percent of people courageous enough. to leave your homeland is a courageous thing to do. as an economist, this is one of the advantages of having immigration. for come free selected economic success. and, this gets back to my point about china. is whether issue the united states, whether china, will be the world leader. that is the biggest issue on the world stage. that -- i'm only half kidding. the big advantage over china is we are the melting pot. i believe it gives america a huge competitive edge. if you to places like, i was out at microsoft. i gave a lecture there. it was like the united nations. people from every country of the world. nowhere else in the world you have that melting pot than you do in the united states of america. >> i want to turn to you and follow up a little bit. why do you think texas is so good at a simulating immigrants into its society? also, what are some of the trends? are they doing it well or better yet health immigrants who come, if they lived here longer, do they gain more? in texas, it is a microcosm of the u.s. in this is the u.s. does a lot of things right about immigration. i go back to the horrible protests recently. i look to the u.s. and i always think, what are we doing right? the thing i think we do right is we put people to work. all countries take different perspectives on this. in europe, it has traditionally been a lot of refugees coming into europe. they have been deliberately left out at the labor market, prohibited from working for several years and deliberately on welfare. they were deliberately put there because they were protecting german or swedish workers by being out of the labor force. they got it backwards. the best place to a simulate people is to get them into the labor force. looking at the contrast, what have they done in germany? they are not learning german. they are not participating in the labor force. they devised these strong how do we do it in the u.s.? , you care speak whatever language you want here they go to work and learn english on the job. in whiche the society they're in. they are benefiting from it is a tangible light. western europe, they are starting to come around and understand the significance and , it is for the immigrants also. it is the best place for them to appreciate the society which they come into. >> you represent businesses country.e you talk about other states that passed law. but is what we are seeing in texas having from other state -- in other states, to? what is promising growth in other states? >> i would like to go back to the point steve was making this is in terms of, the place where immigrants from every point of the globe come from. imagines true -- imagine trying to start yahoo or ebay. the reality is they are here for a reason. if you study the impact of entrepreneurs on our economy historically, some of the most iconic brands in the world were created by entrepreneurs who came to america. fortysomething percent of the fortune 500 corporations were started by an immigrant. if you study the phenomenon, at&t, bank oflike america, google, intel, coles, yahoo, they were all started by immigrants. they were all started here in the united states for a reason. toyou bring that back down the state of texas, we are leading the way. texas is the number one state when it comes to exports of other nations. it is important to recognize, principally because of george w. shown by bush, when you look at states like arizona, not to take on arizona, but i was just thinking a's today. arizona, itat exports fiftysomething million dollars a year. in texas, $206 billion year. some of those exports go directly to mexico. i think george w. bush understood the tenuous but important relationship that has to exist with our neighbors to the south. he was very strategic and smart in building, growing, and fostering the relationship over time. today, texas is benefiting from his leadership. a large proportion of hispanic owned firms and minority owned firms are from mexican international. this happened because very strategic, visionary leadership decades two or three or a decade ago. we are benefiting from it. .t does not happen overnight you are seeing other states beginning to recognize and emulate that. there is no stopping this state now, at the rate it is going, it is good news. i see other states trying to study what is happening here and learn how to harness the opportunity immigrants represent to the state and the nation. >> one question. we will open it up shortly. we want to hear from everybody. situation in mexico, the economy is improving a little bit. mean for texas, a state where 60% of immigrants in texas are from mexico. international changes, what does that have in story? >> less immigration from mexico. we have already started to see that, whether you look at authorized or unauthorized immigration. a slowing from esko will continue into the future. are veryher side, we excited about the reforms of mexico. look at the texas economy right now. and oil and gas bone. the economy -- likely talked about earlier, it is going quickly. texans are hoping, looking into mexico saying, they are talking about an energy roof arm, can you imagine? intois how texas extends northern mexico. that would be good for the texas economy. we are hitting records in terms of our exports to national -- natural gas in mexico. we are excited about more good things to come here it >> one of the things that really bothers me, i am involved with this immigration debate. some of you may not agree. but united states senate just passed a bill that $30 billion in securing the border, and i do not know if they want to gold the wall of berlin or what. it is such a positive thing. i hate the idea that we will wall off america from central america. the integration of these economies has been such a positive thing. [applause] >> nobody in washington agrees. >> i feel the same way. i just cannot be as irreverent as eve can be about it. i admire so much, the claims spoken. i had an opportunity to speak with president obama. of course, we talked about immigration reform, and i wanted to talk about it from an economic perspective. that was fantastic. i said, the reality is, you would not be mr. president were it not for the hispanic vote. the history of this country has the hispanic community played such a role in the election of a president. never again will there be an american president without quoting the hispanic vote. i am for you to please begin to change the narrative that has defined the relationship between latin america and the united states. >> not just with mexico, but we open up our opportunities and participate in these markets and everybody benefits. >> every time i hear about it, these are the facts, but every time i hear about it, the narrative has words like illegal immigration and drug wars and order crossings. true. that is we are not turning a deaf year or a blind eye. the reality is mexico is the second-largest trading partner in the united states and will be for decades to come, bigger than in the -- england, brazil, japan, and yet, we never hear from that. it had a governor at the time --"knew the importance" is did that economic business that quoted that economic business partner. positionnot be in the to take advantage of the opportunity that exists. , we would do well to recognize the economic importance of the relationship between mexico and the united states. >> thank you all for making that point. now have time for questions from the audience. we would love to hear from you. such a great panel here. if you could raise your hand if you had a question, we have microphones around the room, i ask that you give us your name and if you are here with an organization, let us know. i asked you to please ask those questions. we do not have that much time, but we are happy to take questions. >> while we are waiting, when you asked me about where immigrants are going now, the state over the last two years that had the biggest increase in immigration has been north dakota. north dakota is the state -- >> we talked about four percent growth. north dakota is eight percent. >> it is interesting you have got the state, mexican immigration heading to north dakota. it democrats -- demonstrates the point that immigrants go where the work is. >> hi. i am with the dallas women's foundation. with immigration being an important engine for texas's growth in our past, i am our issues with educating our many hispanic youth in the country, as well as through the college age. our inability to provide a strong education, will it be a hindrance in the future? you hit on a very important point that we needed to touch on in this conversation. tremendouslynefit from immigration, they are already educated and working age and education is pretty much done. the jobs for us becomes to educate their children, which will become our future. that is an important task, where with growth comes all of these responsibilities, education and healthcare. that is something the legislature has been struggling with in putting together the , when he hadtime so much population growth, every year, 400,000 people, half of those are migrants, with some -- some with large families, i think we have to have a clear understanding that when we attract this many people in grow this vast, education, healthcare, even infrastructure. >> i will add a point to that. when you look at the issue of immigration, there is a huge correlation -- intersection between immigration reform, education and business. the united states chamber, we are not a political organization. we do not take sides. we are a business association. it is about read trade, economic growth, job creation. we struggled as to whether we anuld even have a voice opinion as it relates to education. in the hispanic community, there is a challenge getting our youth to the next level in terms of secondary education. if you look at it, education is an economic issue. , the sooner we begin to grapple with the notion we have got to have a prepared and educated -- the kids who come after us, we will not be the economy we are. at the end of the day, the greatness of the country rests on the fact that we have a phenomenal economy that the rest of the world comes to an where the majority of innovation happens. very concerning rate, we are running out of trained and prepared individuals to take us to the next growth opportunity. them to a place for take ownership of the education challenge. i am pleased when i see organizations, at&t, and headquartered in dallas, texas. , through their investment to help stem the tide of high school dropouts, they have invested $300 million this year to try to help that. it is critically important and will take all of the players in our community, including your organization, at the lead of trying to create the thought process that will get us there, i do not think we will get to the solution we need as a nation business get debt gets involved. texas is leading the way illustrating business leaders who are visionaries see the correlation and are investing dollars in helping to solve the problem. >> with respect to education, especially children, they are real issues for states, especially the ones that have a big surge in immigration, but oneing at the big victor, of the reasons immigrants are at a huge economic advantage for the united states is because if you look at the most recent census data, 65% of immigrants come to the united states between 18 and 35. they are right in the sweet on at the start of working life. if an immigrant comes to the country at the age of 20, it is -- the home country spent all its money educating the immigrants and then they come to the united states. view a human being as an investment, the first 15 to 20 years is our cost. then the working years is our investment. we do not have to pay for the education class for the most part of the immigrants. the other country does. the value of that each year to the united states is in the hundreds of aliens of dollars. immigrants have children. thanchildren on balance americans do. there are education classes like texas, but immigrants are contributors to the public education system. fine.that is i totally agree. i want to add a couple of things. we just recent data out of a sharp increase in high school education for someone who .s hispanic it is really good news. we are still trying to understand and process this. the increases are large. we are trying to understand how it is happening. it is suggesting they might be way off in terms of projecting still 20% of now, nativeborn hispanics will drop out of high school. it is hopefully changing and we are seeing the beginning of that. the other thing i want is a quickly, we focus a lot on education but we did an interesting that he on poverty and the poverty gap. natives anding at immigrants and the fascinating thing we came up with was we focus so much on education but explanatory -- explanatory factor was english. i poke fun at the germans earlier. i will take it back a little bit. we found not being able to speak english explanatory well y explained over half the poverty gap. that was a huge factor. that is really important. we could do more there. i do not think that gives us much attention. >> great. other questions? here in the front. thank you. >> my question is, what would -- have done had you leo of and you couldr not supply your family with , clothing, shelter, education, transportation, but you knew the racial economics are the minimum wage, 10 times greater in this country, next door, what would you have done for your family? >> >> -- let's ask the are the minimum wage question to the panel. people are by chance born in one .ountry or another it seems natural they want to follow the opportunity. >> i would have bothered yet again with another request. i would have gone with the let'soring country >> talk a little bit about, some of the barriers, we have written that we do not have good ways to come near. that is part of the problem. that is part of the debate. >> that is a good point. ofyou seal the border mexico, then the work opportunities will be open. how will they be filled? beas overstays? from canadaoming or both? ifinteresting to think, it you are not -- if you are not going to fill by immigrants from across the border, what are the unintended consequences of doing what they are planning to do? what is a way we could provide a way for people to come here to work? >> this gentleman has a great point. i was in >> texas hunting. i am not a great hunter. we were out in the middle of nowhere in west texas. at night, some of these migrants to our door and one water and basic food. that is an incredibly heroic act that people would take the across theome border and put their life at risk and it is such an important point that we remember. a million people want to leave here, we will know that america is in decline. the fact that people will still risk their lives to come here is something we should admire about our country. wantsigrant family that to come here, how do we allow them the legal channel? there is no question illegal immigration is a function of job opportunities here. if the economy is going four percent and we get the unemployment rate down five percent, they will come for the very reason you said there'd we need to make sure there are ways they can come here illegally -- legally. the program has a lot of negative connotations to it. 1960 --gram in the 1950's. >> if you look at illegal immigration, if you want to know the most effective program in the history of this country, it was the program in the early 60's. we reduced illegal immigration .y 90% by having a plan that is the obvious solution. the immigration bill before congress does that and that would be more effective than building these surveillance letting people come here in legal ways. >> another question? down here in the front. please wait for the microphone. thank you. >> great panel. we talked a lot about the texas economy and if you compare it to theona or alabama, clinical environment has been so favorable for it. you worried about the harsh rhetoric starting to come out from people who are elected about the anti-immigrant that will affect your economy in any way echo -- way? wethe fact of the matter is rhetoric andharsh ill-conceived legislation -- legislation. ,e have seen it in florida arizona. at the end of the day, in our mind, and we look at things from a particular perspective, about commerce and economics, this kind of anti-immigrant sentiment that leads to the anti- immigrant legislation is not only bad for the immigrants. it is bad for business and that makes it at for america. that correlation, it is like 100%. passed in these states like alabama and arizona, the economies of both states have gone from bad to worse. there is nothing emotional about this. every state in the nation needs to be clearheaded about what we are attempting to do. it is an emotional subject. on both ends of the spectrum, it is an organization that tries to put the campbell through the eye of the needle. the best thing we can do is continue to remind people there are important economic and commercial implications to this type of legislation. as americans as investors. they agree on immigration a lot more than we hear about and that a lot of us realize. about economic contributions. a lot of times, the third or fourth thing someone thinks about when they think about immigration. what are we trying to do with this session and all of our work is bringing faxed to the to americans, so we can have a more informed debate on the topic. >> it is interesting. texas is very different from southern states. in 2010, we had a lot of bills introduced with some of the harsh rhetoric and bills, i said, i do not think anything got past. however, it works. often, to the benefit of the thoseeconomy, to reject kinds of bills. it was a demonstration of just how things are here. i am sure for good reasons. , it is aases, texas demonstration of how different we are here. it is interesting and has significant meeting -- meaning for the economy. >> we have time for one last question. if there is one. please wait for the microphone. >> this is partitioned from san antonio. talking about people who come --e illegally >> did you say legally or illegally? >> both. the sentiment. people want to come to work here but they want to go back home because their family is there. a work permit is something that would be very beneficial. they do not want to stay. many of them stay here because if they go back, they can never come back. i am sure you know one worker may be supporting three or four families in mexico with the money. they are longing to go back. fratello -- facilitating the workers is an opportunity for other people to come back. they would not stay and become a burden, and i think that is something very provocative that should be experimented on. came here, in i was longing to go back for 10 years until i adopted myself and made myself so happy. this is my home. the working permits would be for one year and it would be very good. >> wonderful. i think we are about out of time. before we go, i want to thank the panel. a key lesson we learned is that people are assets. different kinds of assets and especially immigrants are assets. is i wishy regret texasrugman, -- he thinks is a backwater state without indoor plumbing. they see what going -- this is what drives people crazy. thank you for putting us on. >> if everyone could thank the panelists. [applause] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2013] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] >> tonight -- >> campaigning is not allowed. you cannot come out and say, i would like you to vote for me for president. you cannot ask for office directly. you have to use these subtle back channels. women were a good conduit. --ple spread their get asked them to spread their gossip and favors. she knows she cannot trust these people. she is not naïve. a lot are spreading false gossip or false information. they are misleading. she is aware of the political game going on. presentation of our original series continues tonight at 9:00 eastern on c- span. >> starting in about an hour, c- span hold a town hall discussion on immigration and the economy. the senate passed an immigration measure in june. house committees have can injured immigration legislation, but nothing has come to the house floor for debate. a reporter will be on hand to take your phone calls. we will also read your tweets and facebook comments. again, the town hall gets underway tonight at 7:00 p.m. eastern . hear about the economic effects of nationalization from panelistth. >> thank you so much. i pleasure to be here. i worked with president bush in the white house to advance immigration reform so it is a pleasure to be back in his beautiful new house talking about immigration. thank you to the bush institute. i want to hark back as we get started to the ceremony that we saw this morning. what we are going to talk about is not just how immigration is good for america, but how naturalization and citizenship ups the ante and makes immigrants more beneficial for the united states. morningople we saw this when they came in the door, they were advocates for america, but when they went out the door, they are even more of an asset. we will delve deeper into that. what i want to do is frame it a little bit, what we are talking about, and how citizenship fits into the process. we are not talking about the debate in washington. we are not talking about comprehensive immigration reform. we are not talking about illegal immigrants. what we are here to talk about are legal immigrants on visas who decide to make the transition to be citizens. legal. what part of legal, don't you understand? hold on the worthy goal. what i would like to do -- the word legal. before we get started, how people become citizens. when you talk about citizenship, what you hear is, why don't they just go to the post office and pick up their papers? as if citizenship is something that happens like that. it is not. -- people, onn be a visa, sometimes they come on a long-term visa. sometimes they come on a short- term visa like a student visa and graduate to a permanent visa or green card. once you have a green card, you wait at least five years on your permanent visa before you can apply to become a citizen. many wait five years, many wait 10 years. some people remain in the country and never become citizens. a legal permanent visa allows you to live and work here but not vote, not serve on a jury, not serve in public office. you get different government benefits. what we are going to talk about is why people make that step and what happens when they make that step. what you have to understand is 1/3.it pricks down about if you watched tv, you would think all immigrants are unauthorized. it is about 1/3. 37% of immigrants are citizens. 31% are people with permanent visas. 28% are unauthorized. the picture you see on the news is misleading. the question before us is what about this third that could become citizens and haven't? 8 million people. that is a lot of people. i was looking at the numbers -- it is a long line. 8 million people could become citizens tomorrow but haven't chosen to do it. one question is why and how can we encourage them? it would be an incredible economic boom for the country. -- the last point i want to make the front turn it over to our panel is, citizenship is a long process of integrating. takes a whole lifetime for many immigrants. sometimes two generations. it has many phases. it is everything from coming in getting a job to finding an apartment, to eventually learning english and perhaps marrying an american and serving in the military. assimilation means many different things. some of them objective, like getting a job and rising up educationally, some of them subjective. hereng to believe you long -- belong here. citizenship is the capstone of that process. it is what people do when they decided a long here and want to join the family. we want to step back from that emotional side of it and talk about the economics. making that decision, what does that mean for you economically and for the country? i have a terrific panel here. them asng to introduce i asked them a first question. let's start with you. you are an economist. you're a professor at ohio university and a fellow at the bush institute. let's talk about the big picture. before we get to citizenship, can you help us understand how integration or assimilation yields economic benefits? what happens economically when people go through that process and become integrated? what happens to incomes? what happens to education levels? when people settle and put down roots here? >> excellent question. i am thinking of something james glassman said a minute ago. he said immigrants get it. but immigrants don't get it overnight. it takes time for immigrants to get it. immigrants come to the united states, maybe they earn 60 or 70% of what a nativeborn american earns. there is some argument. we won't get into that. most of them have more or less caught up with nativeborn americans in terms of income. it takes longer to catch up in terms of wealth. by the time their children come along, the second generation often out distances nativeborn americans in terms of earnings. this is true historically. it is a process. it is an assimilation process, but assimilation is something even nativeborn americans had. and a k from college or high school and goes to work and x, two yearsmakesxs 2x.r they are making immigrants have a double problem. language skills are critical. that is the most important determinant of increasing income among immigrants. they learn on the job. best way to learn english is to speak it and the best way to do it is to work and have to talk. they learn work discipline. some people come from countries where getting to work at 8:00 may mean 8:30. in the united states, it means it :00. -- 8:00. there is a whole host of things, colloquially as and's -- colloquialisms. things that you don't learn in english class. is an assimilation process. it takes quite a number of years. a lot of it is learning labor market information. learning about occupational choices. you come to the country, you are limited. you have friends and relatives who helped you get the first job. you may take the first thing that comes along, but your choices are limited. over time, you build up. one way you build up is through education. immigrants tend to go to school at night to further their education. process ofdentialing naturalization is not entirely different from the credential of getting the college diploma in a slightly different context. a college diploma tells an employer, this person is fairly bright. probably speaks english well. probably is going to get to work on time. probably is not a drug addict. probably is fairly productive. we pay a premium for college graduates. similarly, i expect naturalization has a similar impact. a person who can say that i am a naturalized citizen is a person who is saying, i am making a commitment to this country. i want to be a member of the family. employer's minds, this person is a little more committed, disciplined, capable of doing what i want. therefore, i am willing to pay a premium. the next people will speak much more. there is a premium, maybe 10%. ofyou have painted a picture up 18ants, they do catch -- between 10 and 20 years. what was it like in the past? you hear a lot of people say, my grandmother spoke english overnight. all you hear in the supermarket is spanish. how are immigrants today assimilating compared to immigrants in the past? >> that is a wonderful question. i love to talk about this and i have to be careful. i am a professor with tenure so i talk forever. the -- it is the same now as it was 200 years ago. nationalities change, the accents change, the kind of dress has changed. 1760'sn franklin in the complaint about how pennsylvania ized, that thean germans are taking over and they are not the same as the english, not as good, not as smart and so forth. irish 1850s, we have the immigration. the irish are, first of all alcoholics, second of all caps lick, and all the -- catholic and all these things, and the catholics won't be able to integrate with the protestants. [laughter] integrate quite well on college campuses. click the economic benefits. >> the know nothings so you need to be naturalized. is that thent current generation is not as good as the previous one. it has been true throughout history. benefits -- in 1909, the administration said immigrants in the united states make 80% of what nativeborn snake. -- nativeborn's make. agenda thatad an wasn't pro-immigrants. basically, bottom line was by the end of their lives, by the end of their career, they assimilate like crazy. they are productive, they move ahead. they get it, as jim glassman said. >> great setting for where we go next which is two men well pastor. -- manuel pastor. you are a professor at the university of southern california. you honed in on a art of this in on the economic benefits of naturalization and citizenship. i'm going to sq into parts, let's first talk about the benefits to the individual immigrant. >> let me start by saying that i want to push back on one thing you said which is that some college degrees do signal that you are a drug addict. [laughter] you want to be careful about that. i thought that it would be graceful because i am from california to start by talking about the state rivalry and making fun of california but apparently that was done already. we are hoping now that your governor is retiring that he won't spend the next two years become usd.- usc to agoid a report about a year gain," which is a great title. when you tell young people citizen gain, they are like what does that mean? what we gain in particular in naturalization. the interesting thing was that leg whichcontrol for ability, recency of migration. ask you have to explain it without the word analysis. >> basically, we try to control for everything it should explain a difference between citizen and noncitizen immigrants. a found that citizens made percent to 11% more than noncitizens. -- eight percent to 11% bar. when you are a citizen, you have a wider range of jobs that you can move into. when you are i citizen, you made a commitment to the country. that commitment leads you to make more specific investments in your human capital, your education. the credentialing affect that you were talking about. the credentialing affect is that employers see the active citizenship as standing up for a lot of those markers you were talking about, worker discipline , line which ability, etc. a couple of the things about this. steve moore asked wasn't it the case that a certain person becomes a citizen? when you look at the studies, looking at the same prison over is still find that it about eight percent to 11% gain. we look at the census data and checked a cross-section. we had information on the years people naturalized. we could simulate with the gains were over time. is not a gain from legalization because we in california have been able to estimate who in that sample is unauthorized, who is authorized, and who is a citizen. very little of the game comes from authorization. more comes from making that final step to citizenship. that is crucial in this current debate. the act of including a roadmap to citizenship is about making sure that we can actually capture the economic gains. , and i know you're going to ask me a question and i am filibustering, these gains are not just for these individual workers. >> that is where we are going. and, we have eight percent to 11% for the individual. those people here this morning can go out and ask for an 11% raise. take it now to the bigger society. what is "america? -- what is the gain for america? >> it is again for the rest of us in a couple of ways. realize how many kids are the kids of immigrants. for example, in california, half of our kids have an immigrant parents. the gains that they make translate into the next generation, having more resources in the house. we can focus in on the earnings gain, but somebody who is a citizen starts to feel more comfortable about going to school, engaging with teachers, being involved in education. improving the schools, communities, neighborhoods. the gains don't stop with the families. we estimated that it is about $21 billion to $45 billion increase in earnings and spending power over 10 years. if we could take the 8.5 million folks who are not naturalized and naturalize half of them, those are the gains we would get. about $1 billion to $2 billion per year if you can move naturalization rates up. it is money we are leaving on the floor. >> you take half of the 8.5 million that could naturalize, you get up to $45 billion, over what amount of time? >> over 10 years. one of the things you need to realize is -- by the way if there are anybody who got naturalize this morning, don't ask for 11% tomorrow. that gain happens over time. five to six years to get the initial boost. it probably peaks at eight to 10 years. what we know is that what we do now is assimilate over time. this is an incredibly important thing. we who have been working with immigrants need to do more to encourage naturalization. we need to be thinking what stands in the way. >> we are coming back to that. you are the executive director of the national immigration forum, leaving the new bethlehem project to help people become citizens. uel was going. what are the obstacles? why is this a hard process and what is getting in the way? >> first of all, i want to thank the institute for putting on this event and the invitation. the naturalization process and immigration law is mark obligated than any other set of laws in the government. often times -- mark obligated than any other set of laws in the government. complicated than any other set of laws in the government. for naturalization as a process that can take anywhere from seven to 15 years. that is a big range. within that range comes significant cost, criteria that the individual has to meet whet is her itglish orit is notn just go to the post office and pick up your paperwork. the other thing is that -- thinking more specifically about english for example -- there is a survey done in 2002 where nearly 90% of immigrants surveyed said that they want to learning this. they believed that their economic success depended on their english proficiency. the previous panel mentioned that when you look at the data, half of the poverty gap between hispanics and non-hispanic whites is attributed to a lack of which proficiency. the obstacle is accessed. >> what about english -- what do we know about the benefits of learning english? >> i would attribute -- argue for anlot of the growth individual's wealth can also be attributed to english proficiency. -- you have additional skills to present to an employer. when you talk to employers, whether they are big or small, across the skull range they are looking for individuals with english skills. they are starving for ways to improve the english skills of their workforce. whether it is bringing in a tuition reimbursement program -- there is an incredible amount of innovative models to facilitate english learning. >> let's talk about what you do, what the bethlehem project does. how are you helping people become citizens? steel was, bethlehem the first company to provide english classes to their workforce. we all think, those are the good old days. , one of the leading institutions in america said we need to help them learning wish. -- learn english. we have been asking employers like marriott, the intercontinental hotel, american apparel, are you a modern-day bethlehem steel? do you want to help your workforce learn english and become citizens? we are finding in cities across america that employers are saying yes. being ablehe idea of to stand up and tell america that these are immigrant workers contributing to their bottom line, learning english and becoming americans. an innovative model of connecting the employer to their employee in a different way. >> it is not just that they want to sound like a good guy. it is more profitable. we'll come back. if you speaking wish, you speak -- speak english, you move up on the job and the business retains you. >> when we first started to think about this in 2004, the boston redevelopment authority looked at the growth in the hospitality and healthcare industries and found that the growth in occupations was going to come in areas that required a higher level of english skills. you saw the workforce have low- level english skills. ,ntil that balance was reached the region was in a huge amount of trouble. >> eric, you are the executive director of the immigrant legal resource center. you are leading the new american campaign. to streamline access to naturalization services. i want to ask you what you do in a minute. before we get to that, you have been working for more than a decade helping people become citizens. help us get to the reality of this. we have been talking numbers, historical trends, what are the ?eople who you have encountered can you tell us a couple of stories? >> sure. i also want to thank the institute. i tell people i am a naturalization evangelist. i am like a kid in a candy store today. this is wonderful. i have a very fond impression of the institute and of dallas because of this. i want to introduce you to two people actually three. i want to introduce you to abe sandoval who is typical of someone naturalizing. wife are in the process of naturalizing. they came to a workshop that the campaign runs a couple of weeks ago. i was at that workshop with him. there are 200 people interested in applying for naturalization. there were over 100 volunteers. really wonderful. abel's wife is from mexico. abel is from guatemala. he works at the university of san francisco. that is one of the premier hospitals medical schools in the world. they have three children. to earn college. -- two are in college. one plans on being a lawyer, the other is studying business and advertising. in 1988 whentemala he was in his late teens. he came to the united states and became a house painter. he came unauthorized. since 1998, he has owned his own business. he has eight employees and does both residential and commercial painting. he has contractors license, fully bonded and insured and has workers compensation for his employees. he does everything by the book. additionally, he and his wife are homeowners. in san francisco, that is a pretty big leap. it is expensive to buy a home in san francisco. he told me why he wanted to become a citizen. he said first of all, i want to vote. second, i want to take the last step of becoming fully integrated because i don't plan on moving back to guatemala. i want to plant by stakes in the ground here. -- after i him helped him with his application, i told him you would be a great person to go to this thing at the bush institute. can i interview you are smart -- can interview you? he said, sure. he said "the united states is a great country where we have lots of opportunities and you are allowed to express your opinions. i want to become a united states citizen and live here the rest of my life." he is a good example. he hasn't reaped the benefits of becoming -- cynthia alvarado's and bernardo merino came to the unit states at young ages. he obtained his green card through the amnesty program and family ties. they both naturalized in their 30s which was about 10 years ago. they went to college at the university of california, san diego. they went to graduate school at stanford. they are homeowners in san francisco, once again a big lift. they own several investment properties in san diego where they are leasing out their investment properties. they have newborn twins and are helping to support the diaper industry. bernardo is a lawyer and small business owner with offices in france and -- san francisco and san jose. cynthia is a finance expert. she works with the director of property management and san jose. they develop affordable housing and she oversees a staff of over 50 and an annual budget of over $10 million. since she arrived, she has helped raise over $100 million for building low-income housing. that to me was quite impressive. she oversees the management of 1100 units in 700 cities. she is also on our board of directors. she is on our finance committee and helps us on the up and up. we are an $8 million and urbanization with lots of employees. they both feel being u.s. citizens helped provide them financial security. they wouldn't have bought a house had been up in u.s. citizens. they would not have purchased investment properties. they didn't want to miss out on the financial opportunities. they, once again, wanted to but their stakes in the ground permanently. >> that is very important. that sense of, if you're going to stay, then you're going to invest in a whole different way. i want to come back to what you do, but i want to broaden the conversation first. we are talking about a very good story, but also a troubling story. -- benefits and the uplift when you look at the numbers, the numbers are sobering. 8.5 million people who could be doing this but aren't. the game that you are talking about -- about half of -- what could be done to encourage this? when we start with you and come this way. peopleryone talk about that are not doing it. how do we get them on the train? >> the new american campaign? excitinga very national program going on called the new american campaign. our goal is to help as many people naturalized as possible respecting the fact that it is a legal process. we want to do it effectively as well as efficiently. our guiding principles are to communities.act right now there are 18 collaboration's. areollaboration, what we doing here in dallas is a perfect example. here are theities leads. what we got done is help them with financing. the carnegiepport, corporation. to provide financing to help them help as many people go through the legal process -- >> through the legal process? there is a lot involved here. you are helping with the peace that is the actual filling out the paperwork. >> exactly. helping them get over that hurdle. they partner with lots of adult schools, english language learning schools, civics learning schools, even banks and lending circles to get the fee. they partner with lots of organizations. >> let's come down the line. you guys are working with business. what are they helping people do? >> i will use the example in washington dc. we work with marriott. our first session was with the housekeeping staff. we met two women who have been working at the marriott for 10- 15 years. they have been eligible for naturalization and the one reason they have not taken that final step is because they had a one-hour commute on the train every day. they lived in suburban virginia. they were working eight hours a day, taking two hours to get back and forth home and they have things to do home. they were so happy to be able to come to work and for the marriott to be able to say, we are going to extend your lunch hour so you can get the assistance you need to complete the paperwork. that is one piece. another thing that needs to be done is to look at the process. what investment can be made in terms of facilitating the process so that people are not waiting this long? so that backlogs are produced. so that people can actually go from green card status to naturalization in a reasonable amount of time. >> the problem is a backlog? >> there is an incredible amount of regulation. if you think business is overregulated, look at the naturalization process. manuel, you focus on the fee, talk little about that. you have a great number in your report about what happened when the fee went up recently. toin 2007, the fee went up about $680 because they have to pay a fee and do a biometric exam. aboutt year, we went from 1.5 million applications to 500,000 the next year. when you take a look at it, what happened was it really hit less educated folks. probably doesn't feel like that much money. it is about two and a half weeks of take-home pay for an average immigrant worker. to do this right, you want to consult a lawyer, get the right number of english classes, so the costs are even bigger than you think. my best guess is that some of you going through this should have about $3000 because they want to check in with a lawyer as well as pay the fees. that is a lot of money. family, --ave a >> for low income folks, it means they are facing a liquidity constraint. even though there are economic gains. one thing to clarify is the english language effect is different than the citizenship affect. 15%language effect is about boost in wages. the citizenship is about an 11% boost. >> let me play that out. 15% is getting to english proficiency. youre not counting that in 8-11% citizenship. >> one of the things is it is good to see how business is reaching out. it is good to see the kind of programs being talked about before. all sectors can be involved. in los angeles, the public citizenshipcreated parlors. this is where immigrants and their kids go. they take their kids to the library, there is a corner that tells them how they can become a citizen. another interesting program is the micro-loan program that citycorps and case de maryland have organized. if somebody can give them the money up front, it is good investment. >> we are not talking about lowering the fees. the fees go to something. we are talking about how to help people pay them. >> that is one thing. citizenship and immigration services is supposed to be self financing. maybe shouldn't -- maybe we should be subsidizing. we might want to consider changing the fees, like re- upping for a green card should perhaps be more expensive. >> a green card is a permanent visa that lasts for your whole life but you have to renew it every 10 years. >> those things are basically sold out. you could raise the fees there, lower the fees for naturalization, and encourage something that we all say we think is important. >> richard, you want to weigh in on this? >> listening to this conversation, if you weigh the costs and benefits of naturalization to the potential naturalized citizen, very often the benefits outweigh the cost. time ofk, the naturalization, you have 25 more years of work, you're talking maybe $3000 or $4000 more a year in income. we have to do or economics of here. -- economic stuff here. >> another band word. itthe cost is -- let's make $10,000. the costs are still relatively small in terms of the benefits. we should try to find ways to overcome those costs. i agree with him that maybe we ought to auction off -- >> that is a long conversation. >> there are ways to finance the 680 -- 680 times one million is what? $680 million per year. >> because of the gain we are going to get, the gain of potentially $21 billion, it could be cheaper. let's go back to the businesses. i work closely with businesses. i understand how they see a bottom-line benefit in english. i am not sure i get how they see a bottom-line benefit in citizenship. we talk about the benefits of the individual, the economy, but if i am running my flower stand or chain restaurant, what is the benefit to me of having citizens working for me? >> great question, and when we were starting the project, we had to talk people through it. was,irst question we got what if my workers are not citizens? hr people started to get anxious. is theuestion is, what citizenship process? people realize that through that process people are learning additional skills. that bottom-line impact gets back to the skills that are built over the course of naturalization. businessdown to, every -- yet there is a bottom-line impact, but they want to be part of a good story. they want to tell a good story to their workforce and to their customer base. >> i like that good story but i am also looking for the bottom line. >> there is also no cost to the business. the model that has been created is that they are able to create time within the workday. is to be able to engage their workforce in a different way. the workforce fields more investments. >> that is an economic benefit. quick you were talking employee loyalty and a lot of firms that hire immigrant workers, they think this might be an easily exploited labor force. afterwards, they go these are really hard-working folks. one way to retain people. the loyalty of seeing your company aid you and the benefits that that has for your kids, that is something that leads to long-term relationships. >> what we find in miami is that hotels are competing with each other. they say, i got the best. my workers are really happy. it is nice to see businesses saying, hey, sign me up. >> let's do another hard question and then we will go to the audience. the skeptics -- you do these focus groups, people say they want to become citizens. even legal immigrants don't get much welfare. what is the answer? what do we say to that? an exaggeration that immigrants crave welfare benefits. there are different periods in history -- you get different results. it is true that for some immigrant groups, the incidence of welfare usage was higher than it is among natives. but generally speaking, immigrants are low welfare users. immigrants areal avoiding it like the plague. in many cases, for legal reasons. the ones that are here legally have an extremely high rate of work participation. they work. they are hard workers. they prefer work to welfare. citizen,ou become a you are eligible for other benefits. i have never seen an immigrant that says that's why they are naturalizing, but there are skeptics. >> one of the things that would ,eed into that skepticism is there were a lot of folks who shifted over to citizenship from the legal -- lawful permanent resident status in order to access benefits that they were losing under welfare reform. i don't think any serious economist believes that welfare is a magnet for immigrants. when you look at the data, they do not use welfare extensively. the second thing is the rate of mobility. one of the things we saw in california is, emigrants who had been my -- been here longer than 30 years at a longer rate of ownership. people want to sync their roots in. they want to be independent. >> even to the degree there is welfare, you stack it up next to not 25 alien dollars, it is -- $25 billion, it is not much money. >> i used to work with somebody who owned a small manufacturing plant making wedding dresses. he employed about 50 people in the garment district. he wanted everyone to get legal and then to naturalized because he felt it was a higher retention. higher retention opportunity for him. to stay with him as employees. he thought it was magnificent that they went through the process. >> great. this is really terrific. let's open it up to the others in the room. we would love to hear your questions. as with the last panel, we would like to hear who you are, your affiliation, and please make it a question if you can. sorry, your microphone as a long way to come. >> i thought we weren't getting any more tough questions. [laughter] >> damion with the knight foundation. we have a new app out. my question is, you talk about the economic benefits. can you talk about the benefits to civil society and the fabric of the country? >> just to put that in perspective, we can. our job was to talk economics. i was going to do a disclaimer does i think it is important. we don't want to think about people as widgets. it is painful to limit it to this. to be the kind of person that only think about the bottom line, but you don't want to be the kind of person that doesn't think about the bottom line. let's have a word or two about this. the next panel will be all about the noneconomic benefits. >> in terms of why people become they want the full rights and opportunities and protections of citizenship. when president said today, the most important title he has ever had is u.s. citizen, that means something to people. it means something to their neighbors. intangible, but it is also incredibly important when people are dealing with -- state, local, federal or governments, to say yes, i am a u.s. citizen. that is who we are in society. i believe that that is the reason people become citizens. >> go ahead. >> despite fee increases, one thing that you see in the data is when immigrant communities feel like anti-immigrant rhetoric has gotten heated or the tone is negative, they move toward naturalization. they move toward engagement. a main benefit of naturalization as you learn about u.s. civics. englishmen to more effective at school. you get more confidence that you need -- english makes you more effective at school. you get more confidence that you need. we have focused in on economics because that is what we were talking about. these are people looking to get a full handle on being part of the american experience >> asking people why they are doing it, people do it when they finally feel i belong. to then't do it to get other side of the fence, they do it when they feel they have gotten to the other side. they want to codify it. >> we should be creating opportunities for those who are not yet citizens to find voice. to encourage them to participate in all sorts of debates. >> eric, you're going to add. >> i have seen that in action. they become more engaged in their kids'education. internet road watch programs, etc. , the app.thing the new american campaign is doing a lot of work in emigrating -- integrating technology into the process. >> what does the new app do? out ifan help you figure you plug in your zip code, where the closest location is that can help you go through the naturalization process. it can help you learn the civics questions. requirements, etc. then, if you get to a real computer you can actually go through and get screened for naturalization and complete your application online with pop-ups like a turbotax type of thing. wonderful process. >> another question? >> we don't have another question? >> please, tim. you do need a microphone. waiting, a are follow-up on what was said earlier. the economic benefits of immigration have spillover effects that go beyond what we call traditional economic. for example, the additional income associated with naturalization raises tax money. >> very important. tim? >> tim from the bush institute. you talk a little bit about what the process is like. i didn't hear any comment from the panel about whether that is a good process or not. in an economic sense or in a general immigration sense. how would you improve it? >> i was involved a couple years ago with redesigning the test. it was during the bush years. relevant,make it more still deep. i challenged anyone in the room to pass the naturalization test. we all think we went through high school civics and history. it is harder than you think. it is a real test. you have to study. the idea of the redesign was not to make it easier but to make it more relevant and study of all. i thought it improved it. >> two things. now this process is much more streamlined than it used to be. if we were in this conversation , and it started with clinton but accelerated with bush, streamlining the process. now you can go from a green card in sometimesitizen as little as four months. talking too, we were and a half to three years. that is one positive part of it. i do think the process is elongated. toe years is a long time have to be here to put written. i would be a bigger fan of three years. it would help economically. >> just to be clear, five years you wait before you start? at five years, you apply. then, the processing can get done in about six months. but people -- the process involves this legal hurdle that we have been talking about. in new york, you see people on the subway studying for the test. people are learning history. that thed agree naturalization process has gotten better over the past few years. that is a short window of time. ist i am more worried about what takes place before you get to green card status. you enter the country on a family visa on anyone of a ga zillion different work visas. is good, in some ways it is not. to adjust from that worker or family visa to be eligible for legal residence is a difficult process. you have to dig your out it was going to sponsor you, how you are going to be sponsored. that can be streamlined to meet our interests as a country. window, thethat final economic benefit is much greater. >> the requirement that the speaking was to become a citizen is a great thing. which means we should be flooding the zone with english- language classes. immigrants are so highly involved in the workforce that they need more community-based evening classes. when you look at adult education classes, you're seeing two times the number of people trying to get in the class. people want to learning wish. we need to make that more available. it is a good investment in the economy and citizenship. >> that was a great study. a couple of years ago, there was a study of how long people are waiting. i forget the numbers. in cities with high immigrant concentrations is between four months and two years that people wait for an english class. people in the focus group are saying, why don't they learning wish? in fact, they can't find a class. also, the million-dollar there a .5 why isn't million people eligible to apply applyingllion people annually? 7.5 million, how can we get them to that same state? it is too hard to apply. there is a fear of applying. it is too expensive. all those things are factors that work against our economy. >> which factors are the biggest the terrence? ts?biggest deterren fearglish-language and the of english. you don't have to be a college professor to pass the exam. the fear of how much english you need to know -- it is really working english. a lot of people can do it and they don't think they can. is -- some people just aren't ready to take that step. it is really english and -- as manuel said if we flooded the system with english classes, that would be a huge impediment to get over. >> you had a question? >> people also self rate their own english abilities lower. for a lot of people, it is a question of confidence. thisr elderly immigrants, requirement is a huge barrier. they don't feel like they can learning wish at their age. i just wanted to make two brief points. oh right, i have to ask a question. [laughter] i have one question and one correction. when we look at welfare use, we typically look at the household. foreign-born headed households actually have higher welfare usage. the reason is that they tend to be poorer and they tend to lack health insurance. their children get state health insurance benefits. the other point -- let me ask you. from talking to people, i have heard that people naturalized in order to use family benefits that they get so they can sponsor families for immigration. can you comment on that? >> that is certainly a big reason why people take steps to becoming naturalized. i have found that back in the late 80's and early 90's that was the major reason. as a u.s. citizen, you can petition for your relatives more quickly than you can as a lawful permanent resident. in my state of california, more and more people have been accelerating naturalization. >> i am a journalist and the last question is going to be a lightning round. you get one or two sentences each. i want you to back up away from benefits and think about benefits to the u.s. what is your sum up, bottom line , why is naturalization a benefit? >> me first? because it promotes democracy. it promotes our way of democracy, includes more people that is what we want. >> i think of a small town in texas or the midwest, and those small towns need more immigrants and more citizens. that is the vitality. >> richard, then man well. >> higher incomes. everyone is better off. naturalization adds to that process. >> i was at that naturalization ceremony this morning and what i realized was that it made us aware that this is a unique country in which you can become american by understanding what the principles of the country are. that says so much about will -- about who we are. encouraging naturalization goes beyond economic and other reasons. >> i do so much. terrific panel. >> stay there, don't they. we are going to take a break. i just want to say that when i first heard this panel proposed, i thought that is a strange subject. i didn't think that there was any difference between somebody who came here, got a green card and work in america and help the economy, and somebody let naturalized other than the citizenship -- importance of promoting democracy. this is an important issue. when you realize how much it helps the economy, it raises important loc questions about whether -- how is he questions -- policy questions. it brings to the surface a lot of issues that people aren't thinking about. in the current debate, there is dissension over the question of whether it is a path to citizenship that we want to change for unauthorized immigrants, or a path to legalization, being able to work in america. this panel is quite convincing on that point. it helped america to help people get naturalized. we are going to take a 10 minute break and come back to talk to our last panel about how americans -- immigrants serve america. thank you panelists. [applause] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2013] >> before the chair announces a vote, expressions of approval or disapproval are not permitted in the senate. the the bill, as amended, is passed. the clerk will roll the call -- call role. >> restore order in the gallery. but the very end of the vote back on june 27 of this year in the u.s. senate chamber, the senate immigration bill, passing there by a vote of 68-30 two, arguably one of the most significant is a legislation that passed the senate, this term. welcome to c-span town hall this evening. , c-span radio, throughout the next five weeks, tuesday, wednesday, thursday evenings. we are taking times looking at major policy issues, politics, and issues of the day. we will spend a couple of hours tonight looking at immigration and, in particular, immigration and the economy. your thoughts on what immigration means to the economy, what economic policies, what immigration policies would be best for the u.s. economy. a couple of ways you can dissipate, as always, on the phone. if you are a republican, the number is -- we are also on twitter and facebook. we posted the question earlier economic policies, immigration policies, best for the country. we want to talk about some of those before us became at your will. here is a post from francis's says, the bill is welfare for replace contractors to their middle east more money for securities, another way for the gop to fund corporate greed. rick said -- mark writes -- i want to also let you know ther on we will change topic later on to ask you about some of the things you would ask the president. is posting six vacation -- free vacation questions or president obama, and one deal with -- deals with immigration. we will have tomorrow's news conference live here on c-span and c-span radio. "would you issue a -- an executive order to provide relief to undocumented immigrants of the house is passed the bill. obama insisted during his first term they could not change the laws unilaterally but he did. joining us to talk a bit about that and further action ahead on the house is ron johnson. foreign the us to have -- phone johnson. what are you hearing about the potential plan b echo -- plan b? qwest started to talk about it more openly. theye past year or so, have been really on congress and trying to get something passed in congress. that is everyone's first choice. it is slowing down the possibility the house will not pass on the go. asple who president obama, kerry and john put in their story, it expand his current program he has to deter .eportation their hope is that will happen. they do not need to go through all of it for some -- to vote to pass in congress. removedent population deportation and allowed them to get work permits. they hope to get a better deal later down the road. >> also with a new article online, how the immigration reform could create a new underclass, an extensive article on this. what is your point on this article? what are you trying to say? class this is something i've spent a lot of time thinking about. many in that community is undocumented. the question explored in the article is, the senate immigration bill has, that people would get a legal status, they would be in a legal 10 years at least before they get a green card. another three years before they can actualize citizenship. there is any number of things that could happen to cause them to fall out of status. one of the biggest ones people are worried about, if a person who is sponsoring an entire family for this legal limbo status they have in the senate bill, if that person is out of work for 60 days or longer, they are not qualified. , their entire family, as they are dependent on this one person, could fall out of status. there is no real way of getting them back onto it. think about it in terms of a family, with children, a child could come out to this provisional immigrant status. person would not have a green card until they were 16. during that time, they have test to know federal benefits at all. no food stamps. nooks subsidies under the health care law. they are essentially on their own. looking att you are is essentially an underclass with a lot your chances of read tension than regular citizens. also, safety net. it is a tough question whether or not you want that sanction. >> we are talking about the economic impact of immigration reform. you get to a point where you quote ted kennedy, who pointed out better to get half of what you want. do you think there are enough members in congress who want to get that half a loaf and are willing to settle for the rather than falling short of the house and senate on an immigration bill? qwest that is an excellent question. probably a majority of members who would like to see something get past. they would be in the vein of ted kennedy. it is better than nothing. i do not think a majority of republicans want to see that happen. that is an issue because it is led i republicans. in mindportant to keep there are a lot of people who are very turned about how much they will have to see in terms of harshness in order to legalize them. there may be a majority. it would fall into a minority relatively quickly if the deal swung too far being punitive. .t is a tough question this is something anybody in congress has to do with all the time. the idea is, if you are a good legislator, you want to pass legislation that does good. the reality is, when you are writing legislation, there is no way to predict all of the consequences that would come through. especially when it comes to something like immigration, which is a lot of what they are talking about right now in the senate bill and the house. it is something that is a compromise. it is not what anyone would want if they had a choice. >> as we focus on immigration and the economy, i wonder if you could hang on or a few minutes and hear some of our calls from across the country. let's hear him rené on our independence wind. thank you for waiting. >> this is so ridiculous to me. these people are here illegally. i live in a city where we are bombarded. these people are getting free welfare. we have to pay for their kids to go to school. our kids come home from college and they cannot even get jobs because most of the people are working in mcdonald's in different places. they hire their family members. i do not understand why there is a question. what are americans supposed to >>as far as getting jobs? thanks. any thoughts? the caller brings up a very important point. there are some misunderstandings. no disrespect. it is very difficult for a company like mcdonald's >> thanks. to hire an illegal immigrant unless they have fake ids. they have to bring -- to be pretty sophisticated fake ied's. -- fake id's. -- they have broken the law and are taking jobs away from people who are legitimate american citizens. fromroblem is, at least people who want to actually change it, is that those illegal immigrants are not going away. it is harder to leave the country than it is to get in. some things, they are trying to figure out something to do with them. the color made an important way. you want to make sure everybody has access to jobs. perception is that those jobsare taking and it will be hard to pass something in congress eric >> you write about the underclass, those federal benefits, in particular, the debates over the health care law, which shut out illegal immigrants. am i right? complexes is a very interesting debate. there is a little misunderstanding from the caller. if -- immigrants are not allowed to have the kinds of benefits americans have. they cannot get welfare and medicaid. then, under the health care law president obama signed, they in thehave subsidies state and national exchanges. it is true all immigrants, illegal and legal, can go to school. have things like school lunches. just to clarify how that works. what is more interesting is --ause of the unwillingness there is a policy idea in washington that immigrants should not have safety net benefit, that that is something reserved for citizens, you have a situation, if you were to legalize 8 million undocumented where they are now shut out of obama's health care law, and they also are shut out from the mandate that says you have to have insurance, because it does not make sense to shut them out -- you have an odd situation where you have people who drafted the health care law, all of a sudden, there are people directly opposed to the gold. the problem is people are trying to sell the immigration problem are not trying to solve the other problem. for aks out that legalization program like this to become law, how many people would become -- would qualify, 8 million. around those people, if they do not have insurance already, probably will remain uninsured. because they are mostly young and tend to be healthier than the it is whatulation, you want in an insurance pool. it will not happen because of this kenneth we have in immigration policy that they do not get benefit. intenet that we have immigration policy that they do not get benefits. and howpetition laws you deal with the population of people who are here but not in any legal status. 8 million. johnson reports for "washington journal here: caller. >> 11.5 million immigrants here in america. to find outeed exactly how many of them do want to stay here. i live in a rural environment. i spoke with two elderly mexican ladies. enough as they make money, they are going back to mexico. i find a problem with this 11 million people. they do not want to become american citizens. >> is it a requirement to learn nglish yet so -- english? >> if you want to get a green card. it is not clear how the people would learn english, but that is a requirement, as well as staying employed. yes. >> fawn johnson, thank you for joining us. you can follow her reporting. we appreciate you being on the program. >> a pleasure. >> more of your calls coming up, looking at the issue of the economy and immigration. recent comments from senator john mccain, a supporter of the immigration bill. august is a very important month. the members of congress will pass in the senate. in this case, because the focus is now on the house of representatives, they are back and you -- tory the chamber. ashink it is very important is our constitutional right, to potential -- petition members of congress, elected representatives, that is in the constitution, should be seeking meetings with and communications with our members of congress. i have traveled throughout the state, meeting with various interest groups, ranging from evangelicals, to various an ,rganization are all meetings -- throughout town hall meetings, about the importance of acting on this legislation. i think this fall is very important. in ane we get into 2014 election cycle. to issue has really ripened the point enough americans are aware of it that we will act or not act. polls indicate well over seven percent -- 70% of the american people support a path to citizenship provided that -- i will give you straight talk. the payback taxes -- learn english, and get in line behind those who came to the country legally. that is an important aspect of gaining the support of the vast majority of american people. vasteason why the majority of american people support it is because they realize, and they have grown more to realize, since ted kennedy and i have fought this battle and lost, that this is an issue of 11 million people living in the shadows, depriving the rights of our citizens, who cannot live normal lives. they are not going back to where they came from. amnesty.facto those who claimed it is amnesty, the bill we are trying to get done, it is already because they are not leaving. people live in the united states of america without the protections of citizenship, then some of them, and maybe and of them, are exploited mistreated in a broad variety of ways. that is not what america is supposed to be all about. >> john mccain's a couple weeks .go on immigration senator mccain has just returned from egypt, meeting with egyptian leaders there. he and senator lindsey graham. he also commented on the situation in russia, the decision to cancel the unilateral meeting -- the bilateral meeting with vladimir putin and president obama. in the blog, mccain rushes and to 1955.ations back the recent actions toward the u.s. have reset relations with america back to the cold war era. russians have reset back to 1955, he said in an appearance on cnn this evening. theking a quick teat on topic of immigration and the -- omy, \ next, to calls. frank, thank you for waiting. >> yes. we came illegally from 1959. pride or to leaving, we were checked for our financial ability, that our health was clear of contagious diseases, and we were expected to provide a sponsor that would guarantee a burden on the states -- however, a substantial amount of money in bangladesh before that. the money i earned was deposited -- deposited in set for cisco. as a union carpenter, i was working the first day went to look for a job. transferred to an american -- [indiscernible] , welfare, vacation holidays, and a pension, which i am now drawing. every benefit american citizens had except the right to vote and the right to be president. after five years, i became a citizen of the united states. >> tell us about, what year was this? >> 1959. >> who acted as your sponsor? >> we found out the money was deposited in a bank account of hours in san francisco. the american insurance and -- insurance company did the same thing. ,t was not necessary because as a carpenter, i had a job which made enough to live on. many businesses and construction throughout the united states. i never had to look over my shoulder. we were free, as any american, to form several dentists -- businesses and live an american life without being cheated out of wages and working without healthcare. >> on the job, before you became a citizen, did you ever resentment back or from people who may not had -- have had work as good as yours, but stillere illegal and integrate? >> that is true, but so were others on the job. in san francisco, there were many immigrants then. not once have i had anyone resenting me. i had the same wages they did. >> thank you for your call. west virginia, democratic caller. you are on the air. caller: thank you. i was calling in to respond to the foreign lady. a lot of destruction due to immigration. i made eight dollars an hour in 1980. that's the wage now. i do due to the fact -- not hold anything against anyone coming in. it is when the rich white people mostly try to pay for all these people coming in the matter where they are, they want to pay them less and less so they destroy the middle class. we are tired of it. what field in particular in your area? >> construction, drywall, anything you can name. framing. even in power line construction. i have spoken to some of these people. they do not know what they are doing. if it -- a new company, last year, we had power outages for seven days. the first time ever i could four years old. what are we? a third world country? are we going to settle for the standard of living our fought for so one party can get all the liberal voters we can? we have got to start thinking about the working people. then wall street and all these good leaders created over the past 50 years. our topic tonight is immigration and the economy. speaking of wall street, stephen moore talked about the economic impact, the importance of getting immigration right toward the economy. here is part of what he had to say. >> you have seen over the last five years, roughly, about one million new jobs in the state of texas in the last five years. roughly one million lost jobs in california. it is amazing. one of the points i made for writing a book on this, what we are seeing is one of the great wealth transfers in american history geographically from states like california fought fe party can get all the liberal voters we can? we have got to start thinking about the working people. then wall street and all these good leaders that do not get it right, and my state, and states that do get it right, like texas. this is one reason to be bullish on the future of texas. one of the interesting things ,s texas does a much better job in my opinion, of economically assimilating immigrants so they are successful here. california is more of a welfare state. it indoctrinates immigrants into the welfare system at a much higher pace than texas does. people come to texas for jobs. people go to california for welfare. you are seeing the differing economic outcomes as a result. texas is the model other states should be emulating. >> stephen moore from a recent discussion we covered. when you see some of those clips, the video portions, you can see them all in our video library. he was comparing jobs in california and texas. we will go to texas next. john, on our independence line, good evening. >> i agree. the more immigrants we let in, they will go back to where they came from, not learned english, mexico, guatemala, wherever they came from, what is the point? they are taking jobs away from americans. wages do not go up. the wages down here have been low for years. because, there are many illegals in the area. what is the answer? i do not know. in order to deport them, you take them right to mexico, they are back. some of them are hard workers. how do you decide who is ?uesday and who is to go >> thanks for your call. more of your calls coming up as we look at the issue of the economy.nd we had a chance to do these town halls because congress is in september.l early we are keeping an eye. here is a tree from the representative of texas, talking about a town hall he is holding tonight. in denton starting at 7:00 p.m. eastern. another one here -- if you want to participate in the discussion on twitter, #c- span chat. when the house comes back, the house will take up pieces of legislation. ae senator from new york talk little bit about that from cnn. -- comments -- the headline he says in part senator schumer told cnn wednesday he thinks the house gop plan to approach immigration reform through a piecemeal legislation is acceptable since the bills will be combined in conference. prefer a bigch comprehensive bill. anyone the house -- anyway the house can get there is fine by us. i am optimistic we can get this done. i have had a lot of discussions with oath -- members of both parties. in other news, and across the world bombing today in afghanistan. this marching -- marking the end of ramadan. 14 people,hat killed the headline, the bomb hidden in afghanistan cemetery kills a family of 14. you see a picture there, afghan men preparing graves for a bomb planted in a graveyard. ask to the united states and town halls across the country. we go to north carolina and, with representative patrick mchenry. the headline from the asheville newspaper, the website there, mckendree gets an earful on healthcare. they write in part that all patrick mchenry had to do during his meeting was offer an invitation to stand up and be heard. 30 people swiftly moved in lines on either side to ask questions. , many about pointed obamacare. they wanted direct answers wednesday evening. skip edwards, he did get heat during the town hall meeting in asheville. is jeremy from texas schwartz, who reports for the austin -- boston american- statesman. and thevering the trial fort hood shooting. thank you for joining us this evening. press a key for having me. >> give us that ground on the shooting that happened two years ago. the case got underway this week. it is not usual because he is acting as his own defense attorney, correct? >> that is correct. the shooting actually occurred four years ago. hard to believe it has taken so long. his attorneys have been dismissed and he is acting as his own attorney. there wouldought be -- excuse me -- -- on theions with witness stand. so far, he has not cross- examined any of them. , by actinglowed to as his own attorney, he is allowed to cross examine his own witnesses? >> he gave an opening statement. he can make objections and he can cross-examined. he has cross-examined a couple of witnesses, but not shooting victims. he will be able to give a closing argument. >> he has backup attorneys, i understand. something happened with that today. tell us what the judge decided today. >> that is right. his standby attorney have asked to be removed from the case. they believe, and there may be truth to it, that his son is seeking the death penalty and is not putting on a defense that would save him from the death sentence. it would be morally to assist him in any in the defense. they would basically be removed from the case, not entirely, but not help them with day-to-day activities. the judge today denied that and ordered them to continue helping. they are appealing the order, but the trial will continue if the appeal goes through. the odds of that being successful are low, in addition , iteing a judge is order is an order from a higher ranking officer. they would be in quite a bit of trouble if they tried to defy the order in any way. >> you have been reporting, updating your story. one of the headlines earlier what was that about? >> that was an interesting moment. there was a soldier among the 13 dead who was pregnant. in other testimony, it has been -- cy described she is said, please do not, my baby, my baby. testifiedtestifying she said, in the moments before hassan shot her, giving the distinct impression he heard the cries for help and still shot her. .assan objected to that he asked the judge to remind the witness she was under oath. the witness was asked if she wanted to change any have heard testimony -- of her testimony and she defiantly said no, she did not want to change a word. he is facing 13 counts of premeditated murder and 32 counts of attempted re- meditated murder. 45 counts in total. >> one last question. what is your sense of how long this trial may go? pace.is a fairly quick 15 witnesses today. the original estimate was up to three months. the way it is looking now, i spoke with a military legal expert who thought the prosecution might be done within about three weeks. -- two witnesses, one of whom may be himself. we do not know yet. there is -- speculation he would take the stand himself, which would be an interesting moment, because he would open himself up to cross examination from prosecutors, which defendants very rarely do. >> joining us from texas, he is covering the trial. you can read his reporting. thank you for joining us this evening. >> thank you. i appreciate it. >> back to your calls shortly on immigration and the economy. we wanted to bring you the comments of the president of the hispanic chamber of, -- commerce. here is what he had to say. >> one more follow-up. it seems like we hear this everywhere. almosts like it is conventional wisdom and i do not think it is. we hear, we need protections for american workers, this idea. if it's just facilitates this mix -- this myth that immigrants come and take jobs. even those in washington on either side, they seem content to buy into that that we need to buy protections for american workers. how you respond to people who say that immigrants, and take jobs? >> we would do well to really look at what has transpired in other states, neighboring states. you look at what happened in alabama recently. that state passed an anti- immigrant piece of legislation. the fact of the matter is, when it is all boiled down, you look at the end of the case here, they have 40,000 workers get up and leave the state. what ensued is the state lost about $10 billion of revenue. and about a half billion dollars of taxes that it could have garnered had the workers stayed in the state, or in the plants, work in the construction sites. i think there is a lesson learned. i think that sentiment was part of what happened in alabama. i am hopeful that would never be the case in the state of texas. i think government in the state, or in -- governor bush, then president bush, it illustrated leadership in terms of his understanding in terms of the immigrant communities, the work that immigrants come here to do, and i think he welcomed immigrants to the state of texas. i remember fondly his relationship with the van president of mexico. and a very clear, clear minded understanding of the contribution immigrants make to the state of texas. there are lessons to be learned, when you study what has no oned in states -- came back and fill the jobs immigrants left unattended. >> back to your calls here. the economy and immigration reform. craig is on our republican line. thank you for waiting. go ahead with your comment. >> thank you c-span, and seattle. i am calling on the republican line, but i am thoroughly disgusted in a whole parade of traders, and that includes john mccain, lindsey graham, george bush, who has sponsored the center in texas, and i sufferedg through two hours of propaganda out of the bush center, and they treat america as a whorehouse. treats america like a whorehouse. it is not about the money. c-span keeps playing all of these people. i want to see some balance. one thing mentioned at the george bush center from the hispanic chamber of commerce guy, he was lobbing these wonderful hispanic companies. have any of them enrolled in either a five so they will be true to the 1986 amnesty, which, at that point, required all employers verify eligibility by these workers. they have not done it. we have george bush, mccain, they have done nothing but subvert the law for the last 25 years, and they are trying to put the nail in our coffin now. i would like to see more balance from c-span. march fora wonderful jobs in washington dc. i have seen none of that on c- span. i would love to see that. , he much loved in alabama was the speaker of the conference. the best republican in this country. -- democratsid and republicans will join and get rid of these people. they are liars. they subverted the law many of them voted for. including mccain. they have got to go and they are going to go. >> thanks for the call. our democrats line. hi. >> how are you. as far as immigration is concerned, too much is given to these illegal immigrants. these women are having all of these babies. they can go down and get welfare, food stamps, and they keep having babies after babies and they know they can go down and get a check for each one of them. that is draining our economy, too. they need to pass a law where these people cannot, and have babies and go down and get food stamps and subsidies to housing and different things like that. these people are letting these people, over and drain our economy. >> you are saying in your experience, these things happen? >> yes. it just happened in d.c.. our mayor will not let these -- these illegal immigrants have drivers license. the english. they cannot read english. they will cause more accidents and so forth. it is getting to be trouble. there are senior citizens who cannot get food stamps. in kentucky, west virginia, poor people, they are not even helping these americans there it >> thank you for your call. florida. we hear from paul, independent from florida. caller: one woman said it would cost more money -- i think it is a lot of bull. we should drive them to thein ky and say, get out. as far as elected officials, they are a bunch of bad it's, everyone one of them. they ought to be kicked out of town. that is how i feel about the country. i love my country dealey -- dearly, but i despise the government with a passion. >> thank you for your call. a tweak here. unemploymenthe rate in alabama dropped like a rock. it was a good thing c-span -- good thing. #c-spanchat. what is happening in the senate, what is ahead in the house, and the economy? >> thank you. long time listener and first- time caller. i agree with most of the people who have already. i am a registered republican. i can -- i am pretty liberal myself. the republicans are on the right side of immigration. john mccain is a black eye to the republicans. he said and say, get out. as, not supporting the immigration rules they want to pass is a like twhirl suicide, which says to me, they are only concerned about keeping their jobs. i do not think immigrants take jobs away from americans. they replace from americans. all your callers so far talk about this. i am a victim of this. i had to leave my home town i was born and raised in because i became an unwelcome minority in my hometown. what job did you lose? >> i was working in a factory. we were all replaced by workers south of the border. the factory eventually closed and left. what they said about california, the same thing here in new york, i can tell you from long island all the way to the canadian border, all the mason very cruise, gardening crews, landscaping, all the -- crews,on crew lose mcdonald's, everything, spanish- speaking. i assume it is the same problem they have in california. immigration is not controlled. two things i resent. i think the caller is right, you do need balance. a couple of hours of other people. the other thing i wanted to say is illegal aliens and immigration is not a civil rights issue. there should be no civil rights involved. it is a sovereignty issue. for americans to decide who, how many, when, and in what circumstances people come here. it is not civil rights. that is how our media tries to betray the problem. although aliens, immigrants for selective service. if someone is here illegally and becomes a citizen and they have not registered when they turn 18, they are not entitled to any kind of benefits from the government, at all. no welfare. >> thanks for the call. just the other day, we had the secretary-treasurer start -- .reasurer join us he responded to the question about the undocumented, the 11 million undocumented, and whether they would get a free ride via the senate version of immigration reform. here is how he responded. >> let me say, nobody is going to get a free ride. the senate bill that was passed, it has to pass before people can legalize and become citizens of the u.s., it will take a total of 13 years. they need background checks to make sure we know who they are and what their intentions are. we have got to make sure they have a job. we want to make sure they do not have a criminal record. they will also pay a fine. they will pay the full cost of the legalization process, and during the time they are on the process for legalization, they are basically just candidates for citizens. they will not automatically be citizens. they will go through all of this. it isn't earned citizenship. not something they will be given as a matter of course. the second thing i would just say we need to keep in mind, if we were to report all 11 million people, it would be hugely expensive. it would cost billions and billions of dollars. let's assume we wanted to do that. what we would wind up with, agriculture would collapse. jobs would be lost in the supermarkets, the process -- would skyrocket. they are working. they are contributing. they are helping to create jobs. our economy would collapse. i do not think that is who we are in america. if we have a law that is not working, we fix it. this is what we are saying. this immigration system is broken. let's fix it. "washingtonesday's journal". live tomorrow at 7:00 a.m.. speaking about hurricane predictions. janet, who recently co-authored, love in black and white, she will talk about race relations in america. we will hear from jeff barnett and tracy and they will talk about america by the numbers and the financial health of public pensions. live every day at 7:00 a.m. eastern. evening.wn hall tonight, focusing on immigration and the economy, as you heard from the sound bite there. also, news today from the white house about the student loan bills. sign thatent will tomorrow. this report from the hill, reporting the president will sign that student loan bill. the bipartisan bill has been awaiting the signature since earlier in the month. the student loan interest rates from financial market that would offer lower rates to students now but down the line, if the economy improves as expected. also tomorrow at the white house, the president will hold a news conference. three clock a.m. eastern tomorrow, live coverage of that for you here on c-span and c- span radio. patterson, new jersey. democrats line. go ahead. >> how are you doing? >> doing fine. >> immigration. that is what we are talking about. ok. sure you turn down your television or radio and we will get back to you in a minute. anne-marie is in los angeles on our independent line. you turnwill ask you down your television. make sure you do that or we will get feedback. on the republican line, go ahead. caller: thank you for having me. mr. mccain has it completely wrong again just like the democrats do. it is not like the american people are against immigration. the whole thing they have got completely wrong. we want people to come through the front door. i have spoken to hundreds of people. they are sick and tired of supporting the rest of these people. the american people cannot get anything because we are supporting the rest of these people. they came to the front door hundred and 10 years ago. of supporting these people on food stamps. again, mccain says that people want it. they are so of touch with what the american people want. read hundreds of polls. i do not know what polls he has read. all the ones i have read, when it comes to, do you agree with the immigration policy, 830,000 people said no on just one site. mccain is so far up in left field. we want people to come through the front door. >> thanks for your call. we are also taking your comments and tweets. here is one. jan in patterson, new jersey. you are on the line. problem with is a the immigration law. it has to be revised. today, in today's world, it is totally different. i am a union carpenter. i work very hard. i am going to be 60 years old. i bust my hump to pay taxes and be a good guy, follow the rules, and i look at government and how it operates, and you have got to be joking me. as a citizen, you have got to be because i see a lot of rules being crushed. we fight for rate control. for people to have a standard and decent rage -- wage. people are coming, work for contractors, they pay their money for cable, they break all the rules we fight hard for the american people. what is wrong with that? let's give them a break and all that. [indiscernible] they say, "i am a citizen? i do not understand what is wrong with this government we have. what kind of politicians we have. i do not understand it. have mentioned you are a union carpenter. are you working now? >> i just got laid off today and am waiting to go back to work again. >> i am sorry to hear that. in los angeles on the line now, independent. i have to let you go. make sure you knew your television. turned on the television. in florida, independent line. >> yes. i was listening to a few of the comments that were actually made. one of the things i really want toemphasize, we need balance as a country, not just looking at the negatives, but again, looking at the positive aspects, like i was saying. promoting democracy is great. thelso have to look at immigrants before the country came down. we pretty much had great feedback for immigrants when we lies should we focus on the deportation, because of the fact, they have been here. the other thing we have to also be aware of, we do have stipulations, when they come in the country, there is a stipulation, if they break it, we do try to control all of that. i do not believe we should focus on the political issue. we need to look at our country and cds are the the things we need to focus on. pay taxes, just like united states citizens. we are citizens. is it fair they are paying taxes and they do not have that as well. i believe there is a lot of, we have to -- as a country. come togethero and try to get our country back up, and not looking at an a minus as an immigration economy. >> thank you for your call. we are focusing tonight on the policy side of things, the immigration, the effect on the economy, jobs, and there is a political side to this, looking at 2014 and 2016 beyond that. themorris talked about benefits of immigration reform for republicans recently. believe one of the key things before us right now is that we have got to slip the latino vote from going against us, to what they almost did in 2004, which is to vote for us. to kerry by only 10 points. obama carries them by 60 points. the difference between those was .he immigration bill of 2005 when we killed that bill, we guaranteed a democratic congress and helped guarantee 2008.ama victory in we must not make that mistake again. there are two crucial pieces of information i need to share with you. i have run the last two successful presidential races in mexico. the mexican voters in the united states are conservatives. they are pro-life. they are against same-sex marriage. they of court debt. read them a when i question, latino citizens only, i am afraid democrats are of theting the policies leaders we used to have in latin america. it ruins my country and i came here and i do not want to see it ruined this country. 63% agreed with that. 48% strongly agreed. these voters are going to be republican voters in the very near future, as long as we do not drive them away. tois crucial we reach out them by passing some form of immigration reform. >> morris recently on immigration. a couple of tweets on the subject. here is 1 -- back to a couple of calls here, california, los angeles, independent line. yes, i am on the phone. , in i came to this country had to prove i am healthy and i had no had to prove criminal record, and all of that. i proved all of this. --o, i had to prove responsible for three to five years. are you now a citizen? >> yes, i am. >> what year did you come to the u.s.? what is your home country? >> 1990. did not knowe, i the language. but i said, if i wanted to stay here, it is my 2-d to learn the language of the land. when i became an american , i saw latinos who said, no problem -- [indiscernible] >> how horrible is it for you to learn english? caller: two years. i had to work there it within and imonths, i start work start to go to school and i start to vote. >> we thank you for being part of the conversation tonight. let's hear from >> thank you for taking my call. i live in a dominican neighborhood. units.lding has 60 90% are dominican. it took three years for the people here to speak to me as a human being, and trying to instill my mothers taught me as a child, to extend everyone. now that they are finally talking to me, there are six apartments that are selling illegal drugs. the police, latino police officers, cleaning these are good boys. their parents lay their heads on the pillow at night, and these boys who were 20 something, they are selling
AlabamaUnited-statesDentonTexasBrazilChinaCaliforniaFort-hoodSan-diegoRussiaWashingtonDistrict-of-columbia 37% of immigrants are citizens. 31% are people with permanent visas. 28% are unauthorized. the picture you see on the news is misleading. the question before us is what about this third that could become citizens and haven't? 8 million people. that is a lot of people. i was looking at the numbers -- it is a long line. 8 million people could become citizens tomorrow but haven't chosen to do it. one question is why and how can we encourage them? it would be an incredible economic boom for the country. citizenship -- the last point i want to make before i turn it over to our panel is, citizenship is a long process of integrating. integration takes a whole lifetime for many immigrants. sometimes two generations. it has many phases. it is everything from coming in getting a job to finding an apartment, to eventually learning english and perhaps marrying an american and serving in the military. assimilation means many different things. some of them objective, like getting a job and rising up educationally, some of them subjective. getting to believe you belong here. citizenship is the capstone of that process. it is what people do when they decide they belong here and want to join the family. we want to step back from that emotional side of it and talk about the economics. making that decision, what does that mean for you economically and for the country? i have a terrific panel here. i am going to introduce them as i asked them a first question. let's start with you. you are an economist. you're a professor at ohio university and a fellow at the bush institute. let's talk about the big picture. before we get to citizenship, can you help us understand how integration or assimilation yields economic benefits? what happens economically when people go through that process and become integrated? what happens to incomes? what happens to education levels? what happens when people settle and put down roots here? >> excellent question. i am thinking of something james glassman said a minute ago. he said immigrants get it. but immigrants don't get it overnight. it takes time for immigrants to get it. immigrants come to the united states, maybe they earn 60% or 70% of what a nativeborn american earns. there is some argument. we won't get into that. most of them have more or less caught up with nativeborn americans in terms of income. it takes longer to catch up in terms of wealth. by the time their children come along, the second generation often out distances nativeborn americans in terms of earnings. this is true historically. it is a process. it is an assimilation process, but assimilation is something even nativeborn americans had. -- from college or high school and goes to work and makes x, ten years later they are making 2x. immigrants have a double problem. language skills are critical. that is the most important determinant of increasing income among immigrants. they learn on the job. best way to learn english is to speak it and the best way to do it is to work and have to talk. they learn work discipline. some people come from countries where getting to work at 8:00 may mean 8:30. in the united states, it means 8:00. there is a whole host of things, colloquialisms. things that you don't learn in english class. it is an assimilation process. it takes quite a number of years. a lot of it is learning labor market information. learning about occupational choices. you come to the country, you are limited. you have friends and relatives who helped you get the first job. you may take the first thing that comes along, but your choices are limited. over time, you build up. one way you build up is through education. immigrants tend to go to school at night to further their education. i think credentialing process of naturalization is not entirely different from the credential of getting the college diploma in a slightly different context. a college diploma tells an employer, this person is fairly bright. probably speaks english well. probably is going to get to work on time. probably is not a drug addict. probably is fairly productive. we pay a premium for college graduates. similarly, i expect naturalization has a similar impact. a person who can say that i am a naturalized citizen is a person who is saying, i am making a commitment to this country. i want to be a member of the family. probably in employer's minds, this person is a little more committed, disciplined, capable of doing what i want. therefore, i am willing to pay a premium. the next people will speak much more. there is a premium, maybe 10%. >> you have painted a picture of immigrants, they do catch up between 10 and 20 years. what was it like in the past? you hear a lot of people say, my grandmother spoke english overnight. all you hear in the supermarket is spanish. how are immigrants today assimilating compared to immigrants in the past? >> that is a wonderful question. i love to talk about this and i have to be careful. i am a professor with tenure so i talk forever. the -- it is the same now as it was 200 years ago. nationalities change, the accents change, the kind of dress has changed. benjamin franklin in the 1760's complained about how pennsylvania was being germanized, that the germans are taking over and they are not the same as the english, not as good, not as smart and so forth. in the 1850s, we have the irish immigration. the irish are, first of all alcoholics, second of all catholic and all these things, and the catholics won't be able to integrate with the protestants. [laughter] i find they integrate quite well on college campuses. >> the economic benefits. >> the know nothings so you need to be naturalized. this sentiment is that the current generation is not as good as the previous one. it has been true throughout history. the economic benefits -- in 1909, the administration said immigrants in the united states make 80% of what nativeborns make. that group had an agenda that wasn't pro-immigrants. basically, bottom line was by the end of their lives, by the end of their career, they assimilate like crazy. they are productive, they move ahead. they get it, as jim glassman said. >> great setting for where we go next which is to manuel pastor. you are a professor at the university of southern california. you honed in on a part of this in a study on the economic benefits of naturalization and citizenship. i'm going to ask you in two parts, let's first talk about the benefits to the individual immigrant. >> let me start by saying that i want to push back on one thing you said which is that some college degrees do signal that you are a drug addict. [laughter] you want to be careful about that. i thought that it would be graceful because i am from california to start by talking about the state rivalry and making fun of california but apparently that was done already. we are hoping now that your governor is retiring that he won't spend the next two years to get usc to become usd. we did a report about a year ago called "citizen gain," which is a great title. when you tell young people citizen gain, they are like what does that mean? what we gain in particular in naturalization. the interesting thing was that we try to control for language ability, recency of migration. >> you have to explain it without the word analysis. >> basically, we try to control for everything. it should explain a difference between citizen and noncitizen immigrants. we found that citizens made eight percent to 11% more. when you are a citizen, you have a wider range of jobs that you can move into. when you are a citizen, you made a commitment to the country. that commitment leads you to make more specific investments in your human capital, your education. finally, the credentialing affect that you were talking about. the credentialing affect is that employers see the active citizenship as standing up for a lot of those markers you were talking about, worker discipline, language ability, etc. a couple of the things about this. steve moore asked wasn't it the case that a certain person becomes a citizen? when you look at the studies, looking at the same prison over time, you find that it is still about eight percent to 11% gain. we look at the census data and checked a cross-section. we had information on the years people naturalized. we could simulate what the gains were over time. second, this is not a gain from legalization because we in california have been able to estimate who in that sample is unauthorized, who is authorized, and who is a citizen. very little of the gain comes from authorization. more comes from making that final step to citizenship. that is crucial in this current debate. the act of including a roadmap to citizenship is about making sure that we can actually capture the economic gains. these gains, and i know you're going to ask me a question and i am filibustering, these gains are not just for these individual workers. >> that is where we are going. and, we have eight percent to 11% for the individual. those people here this morning can go out and ask for an 11% raise. take it now to the bigger society. what is the gain for america? >> it is a gain for the rest of us in a couple of ways. we have to realize how many kids are the kids of immigrants. for example, in california, half of our kids have an immigrant parents. the gains that they make translate into the next generation, having more resources in the house. we can focus in on the earnings gain, but somebody who is a citizen starts to feel more comfortable about going to school, engaging with teachers, being involved in education. improving the schools, communities, neighborhoods. the gains don't stop with the families. we estimated that it is about $21 billion to $45 billion increase in earnings and spending power over 10 years. if we could take the 8.5 million folks who are not naturalized and naturalize half of them, those are the gains we would get. in texas, it is about $1 billion to $2 billion per year if you can move naturalization rates up. it is money we are leaving on the floor. >> you take half of the 8.5 million that could naturalize, you get up to $45 billion, over what amount of time? >> over 10 years. one of the things you need to realize is -- by the way if there are anybody who got naturalized this morning, don't ask for 11% tomorrow. that gain happens over time. five to six years to get the initial boost. it probably peaks at eight to 10 years. what we know is that what we do now is assimilate over time. this is an incredibly important thing. we who have been working with immigrants need to do more to encourage naturalization. we need to be thinking what stands in the way. >> we are coming back to that. you are the executive director of the national immigration forum, leading the new bethlehem project to help people become citizens. talk where manuel was going. what are the obstacles? why is this a hard process and what is getting in the way? >> first of all, i want to thank the institute for putting on this event and the invitation. the naturalization process and immigration law is more complicated than any other set of laws in the government. to apply for naturalization is a process that can take anywhere from seven to 15 years. that is a big range. within that range comes significant cost, criteria that the individual has to meet whether it is english or skills to adjust their status. it is not something that you can just go to the post office and pick up your paperwork. the other thing is that -- thinking more specifically about english for example -- there is a survey done in 2002 where nearly 90% of immigrants surveyed said that they want to learn english. they believed that their economic success depended on their english proficiency. the previous panel mentioned that when you look at the data, half of the poverty gap between hispanics and non-hispanic whites is attributed to a lack of language proficiency. the obstacle is accessed. >> what about english -- what do we know about the benefits of learning english? >> i would argue that a lot of the growth for an individual's wealth can also be attributed to english proficiency. you have additional skills to present to an employer. when you talk to employers, whether they are big or small, across the skill range they are looking for individuals with english skills. they are starving for ways to improve the english skills of their workforce. whether it is bringing in a tuition reimbursement program -- there is an incredible amount of innovative models to facilitate english learning. >> let's talk about what you do, what the bethlehem project does. how are you helping people become citizens? >> in 1915, bethlehem steel was the first company to provide english classes to their workforce. we all think, those are the good old days. the fact is, one of the leading institutions in america said we need to help them learn english. we have been asking employers like marriott, the intercontinental hotel, american apparel, are you a modern-day bethlehem steel? do you want to help your workforce learn english and become citizens? we are finding in cities across america that employers are saying yes. they love the idea of being able to stand up and tell america that these are immigrant workers contributing to their bottom line, learning english and becoming americans. an innovative model of connecting the employer to their employee in a different way. >> it is not just that they want to sound like a good guy. it is more profitable. we'll come back. if you speak english, you move up on the job and the business retains you. >> when we first started to think about this in 2004, the boston redevelopment authority looked at the growth in the hospitality and healthcare industries and found that the growth in occupations was going to come in areas that required a higher level of english skills. you saw the workforce have low- level english skills. until that balance was reached, the region was in a huge amount of trouble. >> eric, you are the executive director of the immigrant legal resource center. you are leading the new american campaign. to streamline access to naturalization services. i want to ask you what you do in a minute. before we get to that, you have been working for more than a decade helping people become citizens. help us get to the reality of this. we have been talking numbers, historical trends, what are the people who you have encountered? can you tell us a couple of stories? >> sure. i also want to thank the institute. i tell people i am a naturalization evangelist. i am like a kid in a candy store today. this is wonderful. i have a very fond impression of the institute and of dallas because of this. i want to introduce you to two people actually three. i want to introduce you to abel sandoval who is typical of someone naturalizing. he and his wife are in the process of naturalizing. they came to a workshop that the campaign runs a couple of weeks ago. i was at that workshop with him. there are 200 people interested in applying for naturalization. there were over 100 volunteers. really wonderful. abel's wife is from mexico. abel is from guatemala. he works at the university of san francisco. that is one of the premier hospitals medical schools in the world. they have three children. two are in college. one plans on being a lawyer, the other is studying business and advertising. abel fled guatemala in 1988 when he was in his late teens. he came to the united states and became a house painter. he came unauthorized. since 1998, he has owned his own business. he has eight employees and does both residential and commercial painting. he has contractors license, fully bonded and insured and has workers compensation for his employees. he does everything by the book. additionally, he and his wife are homeowners. in san francisco, that is a pretty big leap. it is expensive to buy a home in san francisco. he told me why he wanted to become a citizen. he said first of all, i want to vote. second, i want to take the last step of becoming fully integrated because i don't plan on moving back to guatemala. i want to plant by stakes in the ground here. when i told him -- after i helped him with his application, i told him you would be a great person to go to this thing at the bush institute. can i interview you? he said, sure. he said "the united states is a great country where we have lots of opportunities and you are allowed to express your opinions. i want to become a united states citizen and live here the rest of my life." he is a good example. he hasn't reaped the benefits of becoming -- cynthia and bernardo merino came to the united states at young ages. he obtained his green card through the amnesty program and family ties. they both naturalized in their 30s which was about 10 years ago. they went to college at the university of california, san diego. they went to graduate school at stanford. they are homeowners in san francisco, once again a big lift. they own several investment properties in san diego where they are leasing out their investment properties. they have newborn twins and are helping to support the diaper industry. bernardo is a lawyer and small business owner with offices in san francisco and san jose. cynthia is a finance expert. she works with the director of property management in san jose. they develop affordable housing and she oversees a staff of over 50 and an annual budget of over $10 million. since she arrived, she has helped raise over $100 million for building low-income housing. that to me was quite impressive. she oversees the management of 1100 units in 700 cities. she is also on our board of directors. she is on our finance committee and helps us on the up and up. we are an $8 million and organization with lots of employees. they both feel being u.s. citizens helped provide them financial security. they wouldn't have bought a house had they not been u.s. citizens. they would not have purchased investment properties. they didn't want to miss out on the financial opportunities. they, once again, wanted to put their stakes in the ground permanently. >> that is very important. that sense of, if you're going to stay, then you're going to invest in a whole different way. i want to come back to what you do, but i want to broaden the conversation first. we are talking about a very good story, but also a troubling story. the benefits and the uplift -- when you look at the numbers, the numbers are sobering. 8.5 million people who could be doing this but aren't. the game that you are talking about -- about half of -- what could be done to encourage this? when we start with you and come this way. let everyone talk about people that are not doing it. how do we get them on the train? >> the new american campaign? there is a very exciting national program going on called the new american campaign. our goal is to help as many people get naturalized as possible respecting the fact that it is a legal process. we want to do it effectively as well as efficiently. our guiding principles are to create an impact in communities. right now there are 18 collaborations. by collaboration, what we are doing here in dallas is a perfect example. catholic charities here are the leads. what we have done is help them with financing. with other support, the carnegie corporation. to provide financing to help them help as many people go through the legal process -- >> through the legal process? there is a lot involved here. you are helping with the piece that is the actual filling out the paperwork. >> exactly. helping them get over that hurdle. they partner with lots of adult schools, english language learning schools, civics learning schools, even banks and lending circles to get the fee. they partner with lots of organizations. >> let's come down the line. you guys are working with business. what are they helping people do? >> i will use the example in washington dc. we work with marriott. our first session was with the housekeeping staff. we met two women who have been working at the marriott for 10- 15 years. they have been eligible for naturalization and the one reason they have not taken that final step is because they had a one-hour commute on the train every day. they lived in suburban virginia. they were working eight hours a day, taking two hours to get back and forth home and they have things to do at home. they were so happy to be able to come to work and for the marriott to be able to say, we are going to extend your lunch hour so you can get the assistance you need to complete the paperwork. that is one piece. another thing that needs to be done is to look at the process. what investment can be made in terms of facilitating the process so that people are not waiting this long? so that backlogs are reduced. so that people can actually go from green card status to naturalization in a reasonable amount of time. >> the problem is a backlog? >> there is an incredible amount of regulation. if you think business is overregulated, look at the naturalization process. >> manuel, you focused on the fee, talk little about that. you have a great number in your report about what happened when the fee went up recently. >> in 2007, the fee went up to about $680 because they have to pay a fee and do a biometric exam. in that year, we went from about 1.5 million applications to 500,000 the next year. when you take a look at it, what happened was it really hit less educated folks. for us, $680 probably doesn't feel like that much money. it is about two and a half weeks of take-home pay for an average immigrant worker. to do this right, you want to consult a lawyer, get the right number of english classes, so the costs are even bigger than you think. my best guess is that some of you going through this should have about $3000 because they want to check in with a lawyer as well as pay the fees. that is a lot of money. >> if you have a family, -- >> for low income folks, it means they are facing a liquidity constraint. even though there are economic as well as pay the fees. gains. one thing to clarify is the english language effect is different than the citizenship effect. the language effect is about 15% boost in wages. the citizenship effect is about an 11% boost. >> let me play that out. 15% is getting to english proficiency. you're not counting that in your 8%-11% for citizenship. >> one of the things is it is good to see how business is gains. one thing to clarify is the english language effect is different than the citizenship effect. the language effect is about 15% boost in wages. the citizenship effect is about an 11% boost. >> let me play that out. 15% is getting to english proficiency. you're not counting that in your 8%-11% for citizenship. >> one of the things is it is good to see how business is reaching out. it is good to see the kind of programs being talked about before. gains. all sectors can be involved. in los angeles, the public library has created citizenship parlors. this is where immigrants and their kids go. they take their kids to the library, there is a corner that tells them how they can become a citizen. another interesting program is the micro-loan program that citycorps and casa de maryland have organized. if somebody can give them the money up front, it is a good investment. >> we are not talking about lowering the fees. the fees go to something. we are talking about how to help people pay them. >> that is one thing. frankly, citizenship and immigration services is supposed to be self financing. maybe we should be subsidizing. we might want to consider changing the fees, like re- upping for a green card should perhaps be more expensive. >> a green card is a permanent visa that lasts for your whole life but you have to renew it every 10 years. >> those things are basically sold out. you could raise the fees there, lower the fees for naturalization, and encourage something that we all say we think is important. >> richard, you want to weigh in on this? >> listening to this conversation, if you weigh the costs and benefits of naturalization to the potential naturalized citizen, very often the benefits outweigh the cost. you think, the time of naturalization, you have 25 more years of work, you're talking maybe $3000 or $4000 more a year in income. we have to do our economic stuff here. >> another banned word. >> the cost is -- let's make it $10,000. the costs are still relatively small in terms of the benefits. we should try to find ways to overcome those costs. i agree with him that maybe we ought to auction off -- >> that is a long conversation. >> there are ways to finance the 680 -- 680 times one million is what? $680 million per year. >> because of the gain we are going to get, the gain of potentially $21 billion, it could be cheaper. let's go back to the businesses. i work closely with businesses. i understand how they see a bottom-line benefit in english. i am not sure i get how they see a bottom-line benefit in citizenship. we talk about the benefits of the individual, the economy, but if i am running my flower stand or chain restaurant, what is the benefit to me of having citizens working for me? >> great question, and when we were starting the project, we had to talk people through it. the first question we got was, what if my workers are not citizens? hr people started to get anxious. first question is, what is the citizenship process? people realize that through that process people are learning additional skills. that bottom-line impact gets back to the skills that are built over the course of naturalization. it comes down to, every business yet there is a bottom-line impact, but they want to be part of a good story. they want to tell a good story to their workforce and to their customer base. >> i like that good story but i am also looking for the bottom line. >> there is also no cost to the business. the model that has been created is that they are able to create time within the workday. that benefit is to be able to engage their workforce in a different way. the workforce fields more investments. >> that is an economic benefit. >> you were talking employee loyalty and a lot of firms that hire immigrant workers, they think this might be an easily exploited labor force. afterwards, they go, these are really hard-working folks. one way to retain people. the loyalty of seeing your company aid you and the benefits that that has for your kids, that is something that leads to long-term relationships. >> what we find in miami is that hotels are competing with each other. they say, i got the best. my workers are really happy. it is nice to see businesses saying, hey, sign me up. >> let's do another hard question and then we will go to the audience. the skeptics -- you do these focus groups, people say they want to become citizens. even legal immigrants don't get much welfare. what is the answer? what do we say to that? >> it is mostly an exaggeration that immigrants crave welfare benefits. there are different periods in history -- you get different results. it is true that for some immigrant groups, the incidence of welfare usage was higher than it is among natives. but generally speaking, immigrants are low welfare users. they are -- legal immigrants are avoiding it like the plague. in many cases, for legal reasons. the ones that are here legally have an extremely high rate of work participation. they work. they are hard workers. they prefer work to welfare. >> when you become a citizen, you are eligible for other benefits. i have never seen an immigrant that says that's why they are naturalizing, but there are skeptics. >> one of the things that would feed into that skepticism is, there were a lot of folks who shifted over to citizenship from the lawful permanent resident status in order to access benefits that they were losing under welfare reform. i don't think any serious economist believes that welfare is a magnet for immigrants. when you look at the data, they do not use welfare extensively. the second thing is the rate of mobility. one of the things we saw in california is, immigrants who had beenhere longer than 30 years had a longer rate of ownership. people want to sink their roots in. they want to be independent. >> even to the degree there is welfare, you stack it up next to your $25 billion, it is not much money. >> i used to work with somebody who owned a small manufacturing plant making wedding dresses. he employed about 50 people in the garment district. he wanted everyone to get legal and then to get naturalized because he felt it was a higher retention opportunity for him. he wanted them to stay with him as employees. he thought it was magnificent that they went through the process. >> great. this is really terrific. let's open it up to the others in the room. we would love to hear your questions. as with the last panel, we would like to hear who you are, your affiliation, and please make it a question if you can. sorry, your microphone has a please wait fore. a moment. >> i thought we weren't getting any more tough questions. [laughter] >> damion with the knight foundation. we have a new app out. my question is, you talk about the economic benefits. can you talk about the benefits to civil society and the fabric of the country? >> just to put that in perspective, we can. our job was to talk economics. i was going to do a disclaimer because i think it is important. we don't want to think about people as widgets. it is painful to limit it to this. you don't want to be the kind of person that only thinks about the bottom line, but you don't want to be the kind of person that doesn't think about the bottom line. let's have a word or two about this. the next panel will be all about the noneconomic benefits. >> in terms of why people become citizens, they want the full rights and opportunities and protections of citizenship. when president bush said today, the most important title he has ever had is u.s. citizen, that means something to people. it means something to their neighbors. it is somewhat intangible, but it is also incredibly important when people are dealing with -- state, local, federal or governments, to say yes, i am a u.s. citizen. that is who we are in society. i believe that that is the reason people become citizens. >> go ahead. >> despite fee increases, one thing that you see in the data is when immigrant communities feel like anti-immigrant rhetoric has gotten heated or the tone is negative, they move toward naturalization. they move toward engagement. a main benefit of naturalization is you learn about u.s. civics. english makes you more effective at school. you get more confidence that you need. we have focused in on economics because that is what we were talking about. these are people looking to get a full handle on being part of the american experience >> asking people why they are doing it, people do it when they finally feel i belong. they don't do it to get to the other side of the fence, they do it when they feel they have gotten to the other side. they want to codify it. >> we should be creating opportunities for those who are not yet citizens to find voice. to encourage them to participate in all sorts of debates. >> eric, you're going to add. >> i have seen that in action. they become more engaged in their kids' education. internet road watch programs, etc.-neighborhood watch programs. internet road watch programs, the other thing, the app. the new american campaign is doing a lot of work in integrating technology into the process. >> what does the new app do? >> it can help you figure out if you plug in your zip code, where the closest location is that can help you go through the naturalization process. it can help you learn the civics questions. requirements, etc. then, if you get to a real computer you can actually go through and get screened for naturalization and complete your application online with pop-ups like a turbotax type of thing. wonderful process. >> another question? we don't have another question? please, tim. you do need a microphone. >> while we are waiting, a follow-up on what was said earlier. the economic benefits of immigration have spillover effects that go beyond what we call traditional economics. for example, the additional income associated with naturalization raises tax money. >> very important. tim? >> tim from the bush institute. you talk a little bit about what the process is like. i didn't hear any comment from the panel about whether that is a good process or not. in an economic sense or in a general immigration sense. how would you improve it? >> i was involved a couple years ago with redesigning the test. it was during the bush years. we tried to make it more relevant, still deep. i challenge anyone in the room to pass the naturalization test. we all think we went through high school civics and history. it is harder than you think. it is a real test. you have to study. the idea of the redesign was not to make it easier but to make it more relevant and studyable. i thought it improved it. >> two things. one is, right now this process is much more streamlined than it used to be. if we were in this conversation 15 years ago, and it started with clinton but accelerated with bush, streamlining the process. now you can go from a green card holder to a citizen in sometimes as little as four months. 15 years ago, we were talking two and a half to three years. that is one positive part of it. i do think the process is elongated. five years is a long time to have to be here. i would be a bigger fan of three years. it would help economically. >> just to be clear, five years you wait before you start? >> at five years, you apply. then, the processing can get done in about six months. but people -- the process involves this legal hurdle that we have been talking about. in new york, you see people on the subway studying for the test. people are learning history. >> i would agree that the naturalization process has gotten better over the past few years. that is a short window of time. what i am more worried about is what takes place before you get to green card status. you enter the country on a family visa on any one of a gazillion different work visas. in some ways it is good, in some ways it is not. to adjust from that worker or family visa to be eligible for legal residence is a difficult process. you have to figure out who is going to sponsor you, how you are going to be sponsored. that can be streamlined to meet our interests as a country. streamline that window, the final economic benefit is much greater. >> the requirement that to speak english to become a citizen is a great thing. which means we should be flooding the zone with english- language classes. immigrants are so highly involved in the workforce that they need more community-based evening classes. when you look at adult education classes, you're seeing two times the number of people trying to get in the class. people want to learn english. we need to make that more available. it is a good investment in the economy and citizenship. >> that was a great study. a couple of years ago, there was a study of how long people are waiting. i forget the numbers. in cities with high immigrant concentrations it is between four months and two years that people wait for an english class. people in the focus group are saying, why don't they learn english? in fact, they can't find a class. >> also, the million-dollar question is why isn't there 8.5 million people applying annually? those other 7.5 million, how can we get them to that same state? it is too hard to apply. there is a fear of applying. it is too expensive. all those things are factors that work against our economy. >> which factors are the biggest deterrents? >> english-language and the fear of english. you don't have to be a college professor to pass the exam. the fear of how much english you need to know -- it is really working english. a lot of people can do it and they don't think they can. we get them to that same state? there is -- some people just aren't ready to take that step. it is really english and -- as manuel said if we flooded the system with english classes, that would be a huge impediment to get over. >> you had a question? >> people also self rate their own english abilities lower. for a lot of people, it is a question of confidence. >> for elderly immigrants, this requirement is a huge barrier. they don't feel like they can learn english at their age. i just wanted to make two brief points. oh right, i have to ask a question. [laughter] i have one question and one correction. when we look at welfare use, we typically look at the household. foreign-born headed households actually have higher welfare usage. the reason is that they tend to be poorer and they tend to lack health insurance. their children get state health insurance benefits. the other point -- let me ask you. from talking to people, i have heard that people naturalized in order to use family benefits that they get so they can sponsor families for immigration. can you comment on that? >> that is certainly a big reason why people take steps to becoming naturalized. i have found that back in the late 80's and early 90's that was the major reason. as a u.s. citizen, you can petition for your relatives more quickly than you can as a lawful permanent resident. in my state of california, more and more people have been accelerating naturalization. >> i am a journalist and the last question is going to be a lightning round. you get one or two sentences each. i want you to back up away from benefits and think about benefits to the u.s. what is your sum up, bottom line, why is naturalization a benefit? >> me first? because it promotes democracy. it promotes our way of democracy, includes more people. that is what we want. >> i think of a small town in texas or the midwest, and those small towns need more immigrants and more citizens. that is the vitality. >> richard, then manuel. >> higher incomes. everyone is better off. naturalization adds to that process. >> i was at that naturalization ceremony this morning and what i realized was that it made us aware that this is a unique country in which you can become american by understanding what the principles of the country are. that says so much about who we are. encouraging naturalization goes beyond economic and other reasons. >> thank you so much. terrific panel. >> stay there, don't leave. we are going to take a break. i just want to say that when i first heard this panel proposed, i thought, that is a strange subject. i didn't think that there was any difference between somebody who came here, got a green card and work in america and help the economy, and somebody that naturalized, other than the citizenship -- importance of promoting democracy. this is an important issue. when you realize how much it helps the economy, it raises important policy questions. it brings to the surface a lot of issues that people aren't thinking about. in the current debate, there is dissension over the question of whether it is a path to citizenship that we want to change for unauthorized immigrants, or a path to legalization, being able to work in america. this panel is quite convincing on that point. when you realize how much it it helped america to help people get naturalized. we are going to take a 10 minute break and come back to talk to our last panel about how immigrants serve america. thank you, panelists. [applause] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2013] president obama holds a news conference from the white house and is expected to take questions about his canceled meeting with russian president vladimir putin and the debt ceiling and nsa surveillance program. we will bring it to you live it three. :00 p.m. eastern on c- span -3:00 p.m. eastern on c-span @12:00 15 p.m. eastern, we look at the health insurance marketplace and exchanges. on "washington journal conquer we talk about whether tracking. at 8:00 15 eastern, we look at race relations. at 8:00 15 a.m. eastern, we look at race relations. at 9:00 15 a.m., the u.s. census bureau discuss state and local government finances and the health of ♪ host: what do my angelou, sandra day o'connor, jesse jackson and betty ford all have in common? they have all been awarded the presidential honor of freedom. and president obama is named the newest recipient. clinton, loretta lynn, oprah winfrey, and sally ride are among them. who would you nominate for a presidential medal of freedom? share with us this morning on "washington journal to go (202) 585-3880 four republican, (202) 585-3881 for
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