It is about doing Work Together. There are plenty of people that you work with and you dont like. Thats what we need to do in this congress. Speaker boehner and the republicans who control me to say it is not time for a weekend break. It is backed that get us back into the session. Host that was the last call. What happens once Congress Comes back into session . Guest i am looking forward to hearing about the results of the meeting at the white house today. In my own office, we are facing as well cuts in our legislative branch. I am meeting with my stamp staff today to go over reductions in pay and possible furloughs. We are under sequester as well. Host Donna Edwards. She serves maryland. Thank you for your time. We will hear from randy forbes next. Again, with been talking to reporters across the United States to learn how their states will be affected. Mike from a public location joins us. When it comes to military guest i am sitting here in hampton roads. It is a dark and overcast day. Nothing has really changed today. Today, i am expecting the maybe which is a huge presence here in hampton roads. You have heard the analogy of comparing sequestration to rolling downhill instead of falling off a cliff. We will begin to see some impacts in this region within the next month or so once the furloughs go into effect and the navy is forced to cancel contracts. Host not only the contracts themselves but what about residual businesses . How much are they depending on the military . Guest something i want to put in context, sequestration everyone said it is a bad idea to do it this way. What people might not realize is there are communities such as hampton roads, virginia, that are going to bear the brunt of this. Nearly half of its economy is dependent on defense spending. Ship building with the navy. We have been buffered from the recession but some of that pain is going to come home now as these cuts come down. Youre looking at 40,000 to affect the one day a week furlough for 22 weeks at least for this year. The sequester is a oneto punch. If Congress Fails to passing a budget by the end of this month, the navy will begin canceling its ship maintenance contract, which is huge. Economists estimate that could result about 30,000 to 40,000 jobs lost in this region alone. People are taking this very seriously. I am sure randy forbes will repeat that. Host mike is with the virginian pilot. They have been following what happens with it comes to sequestration. There is their website, pilot online. Com. Thanks for your time. Representative randy forbes is joining us. Welcome. Guest thank you for having us. Host when it comes to the military, how was your state affected . Guest we are impacted more than anyone else. We contribute a lot to the National Defense of the country. It is important we are member is not just a single day. It is not not just sequestration. These impacts come and began several years ago. We start having enormous cuts to National Defense. We have artie cut out already cut out five at 87 billion. These are just starting to wash up on the country now. When you add sequestration on top of that, which would be more cuts, it is meant be huge economically but also from the start security of the country. Host what programs are affected . Guest you cant just say today. We will mitigate a lot of these next week. As mike mentioned, it is the lack of the budget. We will have a continued resolution on the floor. The house has gone home and the senate has gone home. The chairman and subcommittee chairmen of the 70s, we are here today and continuing to work to make sure he we get a resolution. We need to mitigate most of these harsh impacts that i think will be passed by the house and senate in the next few weeks. Coming back to your question, it is not just one program. Before we got to sequestration with the cuts we have taken, in 2007, the maybe the navy was able to meet 90 of the requirements across the globe. Last year, we only met 51 . The air force will testify they have a declining state of revenue since 2003, yet we had billions of cuts to the air force. The army was already beginning to cut 80,000 people out of the military base on cuts. It is the compilation is going to hit the country hard. Host why not look at programs to see if they are necessary . Guest a great question. Here is what is happening to our military. We are literally disarming one of these cuts, fair question to say do we have waste at the pentagon. We do. All these cuts get the muscle. We also have to look at our procurement costs process. It used to be that a short time ago, we could have four people approve the forms. Literally today, it takes 40 different approvals from different groups before you can have a platform. The military will tell you, that expense the cost in a wrestling but also the time to deliver. Sometimes are taking 20 years. Our subcommittee is launching an effort. Were going to change this and look at the procurement process to do try to revitalize the military. Host this they meant from the washington post. Congress and the president have chosen not to govern. Each side has concluded to let the sequester proceed and then they blame game. Guest there is a lot of truth to that. There is too much bravado from the white house and congress. You have people talking at each other and not to each other. Sometimes you have to go back and say when the president proposed sequestration and many members voted for it. I did not. I said then over a year ago, i said this is where we are going to be today. For the last year, ive been going around the country trying to alert people that this was coming if we did not change this around. Here in washington, people that supported sequestration that voted for it, is like pointing a gun at your foot and pulling the trigger and letting everyone else because you shot yourself in the foot. Thats what were seeing in washington today. Host you can call or tweet us as well. The numbers are on your screen. Host first up is a middletown, new jersey. Caller good morning, gentlemen. Congressman forbes, one thing people have not been talking much about is that it is the deficit has been declining over the years. I think the problem is, there is a huge difference between spending and investing. What we have been doing is a whole lot of unnecessary spending. A large part of it is in our revenue. It exhausts our revenue. Loopholes account for 1. 3 tri llion of the money that could be lowering our deficit. That is all tax cuts they should be cut because a lot do help people that need help the most, the middle class. All of the working class. Bank of america to be paying zero in taxes after we have bailed them out, it just does not make any sense for someone to take a right off write off on their yacht is not make any sense. Were still stuck on this idea of trickledown theory. It is not ever work. Guest you raised a lot of good points. One of the key things, is great to say i am just going to hate thank america and that is a problem or im going to hate this person. The reality is for the last four years, with that over a trillion dollars of deficit. Even the president came out through his chairman of the joint chiefs of staff to city number one security problem in the United States was our debt. I think everybody recognizes we have to do something about that. The question is what. When you look at the fact of where we are right now with the loopholes that youre talking about, it always sounds great until you do the math and put it on paper. To get to where you want on tax reform, notice they say loopholes. Then they say tax reform and deductions. Some of those deductions were given so you could do exactly what you said, so we can encourage businesses to invest in the country. We have to make a business decision. Do it wanted to stop the investment . To get to the dollars they need, there are two huge deductions they went to take out the table they will have to take off the table. Charitable the elections. That is not make sense. The second is the mortgage interest the elections. Let me give you this last perspective. Even with sequestration, if it takes place, the white house will have billions more to spend last year than they did this year. Someone should step back and say does it make sense if we have more money to spend this year than last year, that we are going to have to shut the country down because of these cuts . Host linda, or a public in line. Caller linda, were public in line. Republican. Caller the military host go ahead. Caller can you hear me . Host yes. Caller a lot to be taken out of the budget instead of cutting the military. [indiscernible]guest sometimes, it is always great buzz word. Waste and fraud. The overall dollars dont always add up. When the president came into office, he wanted a very Expensive Health care bill, he got. He also wanted an expensive stimulus package. It was billions of dollars. He proposed the suggestion legislation. Congress have been able to stop him on one of those, we would not be here today. If you look at that stimulus package, a 25 billion, that is exactly what we cutting honesty position. What we have to do is get a better priority on our spending. If we just cut government travel by half, we save 8 billion. We need to start looking at these things and fast. Host our twitter says guest mike would have a good point of look at this. As i told you at the beginning, it is not just the overall dollars but how were spending it. What we cant do is the way cuts have been made over the last several years for he we have substituted strategic analysis for budget analysis. There are two things impacting us. One is the cuts that are coming. It has been arbitrary for the past several years read we made those cuts in some areas that are putting us at risk. Second, the procurement process is what mike should be getting it. If we change that process, we are going to change defense spending and mcmorrow efficient. Host businessweek today look at programs where we could see cuts. The first is the Strike Fighter program. Hopefully, it has been restored. Guest one of the difficult things is the f 35 or f 32. We made a mistake in taking the 32 off. Years ago, we had an office of net assessment. They did longterm planning. Planning where we looked at the agile adversaries and say what programs are not efficient and what makes our adversaries spend money in place so they can spend and other places. We have gotten out of planning in washington. Now things are kneejerk reactions. We need to do longterm planning. We look at longterm planning, you look at projects like the f 32 and a take on a different light. With the f22, it kept countries like china having to put their defense dollars internally to defend against their command and control structures inside. Now, because we dont have the program, it frees them to put missiles along the coast. That is the kind of planning we need to go back to that we have not done in a while. Host arizona, independent line. Caller i think the sequester is going to put our nation at risk. I dont think it is fair. Our protection should come first before anything. People died for our freedom. That is just a shame that the president is going this route. I am not blaming democrats or republicans or whatever. I think it is sickening that they would take the risk of our nation being in jeopardy. With i couldnt agree you more about two things. The blame game. You have to call the facts where they are. It have to make your own its relation of who you think is at fault. Secondly, putting the country at risk. When sequestration was proposed, i voted against it. Immediately after it was passed, i set out across the country because no one knew the term. We had a campaign called defending our defenders. We went across the country trying to tell people from a National Point of view where we would be today. Unfortunately, we were not able to stop that. We are not giving up just because the deadline is today. I encourage the subcommittee chairman for the Armed Services committee to stay here. We are rolling up our sleeves. Were going to do we can next week. Well have legislation that will severely mitigate some of these harsh things that is going to take place. It was a bad idea, bad program and a bad result in a failure in leadership for everybody to allow that to happen. Host its where measures a twitter message says guest when you have the chairman of the joint juice the staff, someone would knowledge as he was speaking for the president at the role of the president and began to tell the country that the Number One National security problem we had was the debt of the country. You cannot spend trillions of dollars on a healthcare bill, about the same as a stimulus and not expect to have problems. People are saying to washington, you have got to do what we do at home. You cant spend more money than you make. I think most economists are recognizing we cant continue to sustain the assassination. Host jim from virginia, independent line. Caller good morning. Am in my 50s i just moved into the second district. I dont know what the effect is going to have on that area. Since the 1970s, we have been hearing the same story over and over again. Infrastructure, jobs, waste. None of this is being done. All we hear is people is you people talking at each other, not with each other, to each other. Calling each other names and everything. You people have to stop this nonsense. All these things are being used to get elected. When you get in office, you are always pointing the finger at somebody else. Of course, youre not to blame. I dont know what youre actually doing, but it is an old story. It needs to be done and it needs to be fixed. Leaves, please, do something please do something and get it done. Get in there and work like everybody else. Not the parttime job that it seems to be for you people. Guest i dont think ive called anybody names and i certainly hope that i have not read not. I think it is important that we speak out. I thought very hard on National Defense. We have weaknesses. I would rather pointed out now point it out now. As far as i was working, there are certain members of the congress that do that. If you look at my subcommittee, id share the armed forces subcommittee. I think you will find the most bipartisan subcommittee in the entire congress. I have a good working relationship with not just my counterpart on the democratic side but my friend, mike mcintyre, we work mostly together. We live in a country where we point fingers at each other and yell and scream. We hear all the talking points. The best we can do is consistently try to peel back the onion and get the facts so we can move the country forward. Onre launching an effort our committee to revitalize the military of the United States of america. Were going to ask tough questions but hopefully we can put images on the table. America is to say that is the direction we need to go. Host what does that mean moving forward . Guest i cant speak for the speaker on that. What the speaker is talking about is that we have to be concerned sometimes that we have false tradeoffs. An example, the same debate we are having today was taking place in january about raising the tax rate for the country. The president got what he wanted, then we turned around and in days we spent money on a bill that went for emergency relief half of that was for work girl objects that had met pork barrel projects. What we have to do as a nation is we have to realize that we need the revenue. The bulldog line in the revenue in. It is not go into priority areas. It goes out in these areas that have little return. Again, i come back to the stimulus package which i fought against. That is why we are taking this out of defense. I do not do that under president obama. I did that under president bush to. Too. I voted against both of the president s packages because they did not work. Host how does the house move forward . Guest again, sit back and say what are our priorities as a country . The number one priority is the National Defense. I have no problem putting all this on the table and having a fair debate about what programs we should have. Here is the question weve been asking in washington, how much do we want to spend on defense . No one has been asking the question, what is the risk to the United States if we dont spend these dollars . If we look at the cuts, we are putting huge gaps in Missile Defense systems. We arent doing that. If you look at eight years from now, submarines in the pacific, that is something we should see if we want to be there. I have never put anything off the table. I have always said bring me the analysis and make sure the analysis will work. Host alabama, democrats line. Caller how are you . I was sitting here and watching everything that is going on. We do we need to quit doing so much fingerpointing and come together and lets fix it for the American People, not just being the beneficiary of the Republican Party or the democratic party. There is a lot that can be simplified if we come together and sit down and talk about it. We need to make an educational decision on it. We know we will soon be outnumbered by submarines. Do we really want to have that . Guest that is a great discussion. I wish we could have that debate and discussion. I dont think we should be blaming people or pointing fingers. We need to talk about directions and we need to talk about which policies work and which ones dont. I am not pointing my finger at anybody. They have to tell you about whether it was their idea whether they voted for it or did not. It was a bad policy. Whether the president urged it and pushed forward, i voted against it and i fought it. Its coming out that i was right. When when we had the stimulus package, it was not because it was a democratic proposal or republican proposal, it is because you cannot spend billions of dollars of interest and not take it from someplace. I said this because it was a proposal that was going to cut National Defense a normal sleep. That is the analysis it will cut defense enormously. Caller good morning. I have a question for congress. Host youre on. Go ahead. Caller how long have you been elected for the congress . Guest 2001. Caller when george bush gave the tax cuts and started the wars, where was the budget . Did you come on the tv and say we care about the deficit . Did it you ask people to cut medicare . Where have you been then . I am 62 years old. I have been unemployed for a year. Are you ashamed of yourself . I am not. Guest on the night of the state of the union, a democratic member of our delegation,