It is not going to make any difference. We have been to these places before. We recently went there and it was all for nothing. Even if we win a small war chances are they will have another dispute and we will be in the same box again. Host david, thank you for the call. A recap of the house and senate in session this week. A number of key hearings will be covering. The full schedule available at cspan. Org. Angela merkel will be at the white house tomorrow and we will be covering the joint press conference with the german chancellor and the president and we expect that the president will send his request for the authorization of military force. You can expect that debate in those comments on the senate floor. When we come back, we will turn our attention to other topics including Grover Norquist. He will be here to talk about where the president s edge it is and republican reaction. Patrick tour realm also we will be talking to a dreamer about the president s executive actions on immigration. First, a preview of the Newsmakers Program that airs at 10 00 eastern time as leaders continue to watch the battles between ukraine and resident food president putin. Covers and adam smith of washington discussing whether the u. S. Should arm ukrainian forces. Heres a portion of what he had to say. [video clip] it seems there is new momentum to consider supplying weapons to the government in ukraine. That is something the Obama Administration and its allies have resisted for a while peering it could add fuel to the fire. Where do you stand on this . I think we should do it. We should give ukraine that are quick meant to defend themselves. Better equipment to defend themselves. Russia is going to try to militarily engaged in countries underneath the surface so does not appear that they are actually engaged. They will use their soldiers in ways that we cannot see. They did that and crimea and now they are doing it in eastern ukraine. We do not we want ukraine to be independent. If this works for russia and ukraine there are a lot of russians become people in other countries around there. Estonia, poland. Where does russia stop . When you read the rhetoric coming out of the highest levels of government in russia, it is not encouraging. We have to help ukraine stop this before it spreads. We have to show russia that there is going to be a high price to pay for this type of military intervention. If ukraine is not properly armed , russia could end up dominating half the country. How do you think Vladimir Putin would react . Do you think this would cause them to back down . Would cause them to step things up in some of the other countries in the region . It would cause him to recalculate. Right now, he is facing the economic sanctions, but militarily he continued to move forward. If it appears that this is going to be something that will be lowcost, there is a greater risk that he will continue to do it. Those risks there are risks on both sides of this but we are defending a sovereign nation by giving ukraine the aid they need to protect themselves. Host adam smith is our guest. The democratic congressman from washington on cspans Newsmakers Program. 10 00 eastern time. We want to welcome back Grover Norquist. Guest good morning. Host weve not had a chance to get your reaction to the president s budget blueprint. Guest it was a political statement, not a governing document. There are a list of things he wants to talk about rather than a list of things he intends to do. If he wanted to do anything on that list, he was president for two years, all of 2009 in 2010. The wind was at his back. Any of the things he wrote down he couldve passed back then easily. This is not a list of things he is burning to do. He campaigns very well. A very good candidate in 2008 and two dozen 12. He is not been as good and 2012. He is not been as good at governing. People go to things that they like to do. He does not like to govern. When we were negotiating budgets in 2011, he was not in the room. He would send his Vice President. He does not like to make those kinds of decisions and to govern and make compromises. He likes to make grandiose list of things i will do someday. He has moved from being president back to being a candidate again, which is unfortunate because we need president for the next two years. Host the issue of sequestration. He points out that in his budget, he is investing in the country and infrastructure and paying for it by raising taxes especially on corporations and there are a lot of loopholes in the tax code. Does he make a valid point in terms of trying to pay for this having corporations pay more . Guest there are a lot of loopholes and deductions. Massive tax subsidies for ethanol and solar and wind and things like that. Very politicized parts of the economy. We should eliminate those targeted tax credits deductions and reduce the total tax rate for all americans. Not raise money, but clean up the code and get rid of the cronyism that obama has been aggressive on doing more of rather than less of. We should undo what he did in those areas. Not to raise more money. Investment. Investment is what politicians say when they do not want to use the word, spend your money. They want to make it summit they are investing in something they want to make it sound like they are investing in something real. The stimulus package was supposed to create jobs and did not. The number of people in the workforce, even looking for work, continued to go down, not go up. Infrastructure. Politicians used to say i will build roads if you give me a tax increase. Some people would raise taxes and then the money would get spent on other things. In wisconsin, before Governor Walker came into office, the Democrat Legislature had spent over a billion dollars of gas taxes on things other than roads. They turned around and said, we do not have money for roads. The reason they like to talk but infrastructure is that when people promise to build roads they do not. You can check on roads. In virginia, governor woerner kept raising taxes to build roads, he spent it on other things. This is a challenge. Promising people, if we raise your taxes for roads, they take the money and spend it elsewhere. Host im sure you so story last month. Raising taxes. At least eight republican governors venturing into this once for been territory including somebody who you for a while were pretty close to, Sam Brownback of kansas. Host guest that article is sort of plagiarized from the article that the establishment press runs every two years. They always write this article and call me about it and say these republicans want to raise taxes and i say, who . I would here, republicans want to. It turned out frank wolf was the only republican who is talking about raising taxes. Everyone else had committed never. One guy is not much of a trend. If you look around the states at the more than 30 republican governors we have, across the board, they are cutting taxes. That was not in the article. The governor of ohio has significant income tax cuts. Governor of wisconsin is cutting taxes. I just met with the governor of arizona, they will be bringing taxes down even though they were left with an overspending problem they will have to fix by reforming spending. Round back is committed to abolishing the income tax. Brownback is committed to abolishing the income tax. It is the model that other states are looking at. When revenue comes in, more than 2 a year, all additional revenue coming in will come down the income tax will be cut so that income tax will be ratcheted down if there is a recession or problem that does not ratchet down that year. Governor lepage, who just got reelected in maine with more votes than anyone has ever been elected governor of maine, is a tax cutter. He wants to put in the constitution a ratchet down. North carolina is looking to continue their ratchet down which takes the business rate down to 3 ratcheting. Looking to take that all the way to zero. With the exception of nevada, governor sandoval has been a tax increase or. R. If governing is too hard for you, you say just do it weve been doing for the last 100 years, we will not change anything because that takes time and people will yell at me. We will just raise taxes to do more of the same. Governing is difficult. It is interesting to see the number of governors who are governing and reducing taxes. Host do you have a candidate in the twee 16 field . Guest im for the republican candidate that can win the primary and general and will not raise taxes. We do not know who it is yet. Host has anyone not signed the pledge . Guest all the people running have committed to not raising taxes. Jeb bush has not raised taxes when he was governor. In the middle of our negotiations fighting against the president , he was a voice going do a tax increase if you pair it with spending cuts. The challenge is not his but it his position on taxes, it is is bad negotiating skills. Reagan in 1982 agreed to treat the spending cuts never happened, tax increases were permanent. Reagan said it was the biggest mistake he made in his presidency. His Vice President was promised two dollars of imaginary spending cuts for every dollar of tax increase. I thought it was an unnecessary why not 10 a fully spending cuts . Of phony spending cuts . Spending went up, not down. Any politician who says, im going to negotiate with the democrats on tax increases and spending cuts is a bad negotiator, does not know his history and missed the successful fight we had in 2011 when boehner and Mitch Mcconnell said were not raising taxes. We spend so much money. The economy is not doing well as a result. Heres what we will do, we will give you 2. 5 trillion in debt ceiling. That was the budget control act which includes the sequester to enforce it. Spending went from 24 of the economy to 20 of gdp. It is why we are beginning to see some life in the economy. Growing at 2. 3 . This is the weakest recovery in American History since we started counting them the same way in 1960. Every other recovery has been stronger. If we had an average recovery , ill be 1. 6 trillion higher. If reagan cost growth compared to obamas, 10 million americans out of growth. That is the difference between reducing taxes and regulation and spending too much and having too many regulations. Working. Host we welcome your calls and comments. Go to our website at cspan. Org. Well go to the democrat line. Thanks for waiting. Caller Grover Norquist favors the 1 and is not interested in taking up the subsidies from the Oil Companies and the corporations. And he gets angry if hes disagreed with and i suggest you take more questions instead of letting him just rattle on, telling lies about the way this economy needs to be straightened out. Guest what weve done is go through the painful acts of the weakness of this economy that has suffered in obamas overspending, overtaxes and overregulating approach. Its not working. You may not know people who are out of work but millions of americans are out of work and the number of people looking for work has declined. During recovery, like reagans recovery, the number of people who say i want to be in the work force increases as the number of people who come into the work force and say i want to start looking now. Under the recovery, technically it was in a recovery and positive rather than negative growth that number has fallen which doesnt happen in normal recovery. So the unemployment figure would be 10 if you didnt have so many people walking out of the work force. You mentioned getting rid of deductions or credits in the industry and im sorry you misspoke, actually americans for tax reform and i personally am strong in favor of pompeo, a Republican Congress from kansas, has a piece of legislation to eliminate all targeted tax credits and deductions that apply to the Energy Industry and take the rate for all businesses down by the same dollar amount. So that we would strip it all out. Oddly enough, the president has not supported that because, as youll find out if you actually go and check the tax code, most of those targeted tax credits go to alternative energy, not to oil gas, and what we think of as traditional energies because they produce energy as opposed to alternative energies which do Something Else but produce a lot of money for people who invent companies but not energy like sylendra. What will taxes be for a American Family with a Median Income . Guest very good question. End the i. R. S. Because it ends us. And that book goes through the history of taxation to give us some sense of what our taxes have been. We may look at it over the last 20 or 30 years and doesnt seem to have changed very much. But in 1774 when the british ran the 13 colonies, when we were a colony of the British Empire taxes paid by americans are between 1 and 2 . Were now up towards 30 . Of the American Economy taken and spent in taxes. So we could do a lot better. We didnt have an income tax until around world war i. As it was dramatically increased. Theres supposed to be a tax on the 1 and your point, what would happen with middle income people . Watch what the politicians do with the rich. Thats what will happen with the middle class in a few years. The income class was only to be in the top 1 of the American People and by the end of world war ii, it was hitting everybody and now certainly hits at least half of the American People. The alternative minimum tax, some viewers may be familiar with, was put in in 1969 because 155 people, they thought, wrpt paying their fair share, 155. Today, millions of americans pay the alternative minimum tax and if a republican fix hadnt been put in it would be about 30 million that were paying that. Tax increases are put on higher income on them foreigners, through tariffs or them meaning some subset of the American Economy, but then they tend to spread to everybody else. They start when politicians say im going to tax the rich, they havent finished the sentence, im going to tax the rich first and then you. Host from sterling virginia, republican line, gary is next. Good morning. Guest hi, gary. Caller good morning, everyone. I agree with what you say about money being misspent on the infrastructure. Governor mcdonald spent 300 million on a road down in southeastern virginia and didnt get a foot of pavement laid. But until we use satellite Computer Technology to design our infrastructure, analyze it, prioritize it, zpwizz zpwizz Small Businesses disit, well get the same thing subsidize it, well get the same thing the donkey dance. We have to use technology. Host whats the half donkey dance . Guest im against the half donkey dance but explain to the others what it is. Caller i think its pretty obvious. Look at the road system weve got now. Theyre making mountains out of molehills. Guest there are a lot of challenges. One of the things we expect the government to take care of is roads. And what we often find is mayors like to fly around the world and make pronouncements on Foreign Policy or think theyre dealing in International Trade and dont get the potholes filled. Potholes and then come and tell us your thoughts on what our relationship with armenia should be. There are a lot of challenges. One of the challenges on roads is that they passed a law in the 1930s called the davisbacon act and was truly stupid and evil. It was designed to keep africanamericans from moving north and getting jobs and competing with white unionized labor and they said so on the floor of the congress as they passed that bill. It was designed to discriminate. And it dramatically increases the cost of every road that gets built if the federal dollar touches it or buildings, by about 25 , maybe more, but at least 25 it raises the cost more than it needs to. We can have 25 more roads or our gas tax could be 25 smaller if we didnt have this law dating back to the 1930s put in with evil intent. Add to that, about 18 of your gas taxes, you go to the pump and pay the gas taxes and say theyll build roads with this. No, theyre not. 25 goes to davisbacon for overspending on contracts and 18 goes to subway systems in new york and around the country and has nothing to do with roads. People using subways should pay for subways and if you pay to the road and use it, you should pay for the road. Or if you use light rail, pay for light rail. Some of the costs politicians say theyre spending money on roads is siphoned off and ending that would be very helpful. Host next, he began his career with the College Republicans and the National Taxpayers union and is the president for the americans for tax reform. Our line for independents from south dartmouth, massachusetts, ray, good morning. Caller hi, how are you . Guest hi, massachusetts, my parents still live in the boston area. I grew up there. Host how much snow you have, by the way, ray . Caller let me tell you something, number one, i think Elizabeth Warren is a very good senator. Number two, i think any company that moves their Corporate Headquarters out of this country so they dont have to pay their fair share shouldnt have any contracts with the u. S. Government. Im talking c. V. S. , burger king, any of those companies, you know. They moved their companies out of the country their headquarters, so they dont have to pay their fair share. You know, Elizabeth Warren has done plenty for this state. And you think youre going to take over on 2016 . Take another look. Host ray, thanks for the call. What about the inversion issue . Guest you brought up the question of american policy and how we tax american firms here and overseas. Most countries in the world, not north korea, not the United States, have a territorial tax system and that is it you earn a dollar in the United States t