Transcripts For CSPAN Washington This Week 20150216 : vimars

Service, i grew up in a family that had military service. My father was a career military person and i grew up under a system that i guess some people could call socialized medicine. Ive benefited from military medicine all of my life. I think its a great system that a lot of people like to criticize in some ways because it wasnt a private system that we had before. But its a very effective system for people. Host i want to draw attention to your website. If you want to get more information on the issues, jameswebb. Com. Tom in new york, democrats line. Good morning. Caller god bless you, senator. Thank you for your service. You wrote me a letter in 1988 after he resigned from that position. I was a navy officer. My question is, why did you vote for the 750 billion tarp program . Senator shelby voted against it. Guest actually, it was 700 billion. But that was a very tough about. It was at a time when the economy was in danger of a cataclysmic freefall. I called around, people felt very strongly on this issue. On both sides. I called around to people who i trusted and who i considered to be experts in the area. The call that convinced me that i needed to vote in favor of the legislation was with an individual named barton dix one of the smartest macroeconomists in the country. He used to do Market Economics in Morgan Stanley and was helpful to me. He actually made a lot of money as a a Hedge Fund Guy in when he left Morgan Stanley, but he said to me three things that stuck with me. He said you have to vote for this. If you dont, the World Economy is going to go in to cataclysmic freefall within the next couple of weeks but then he said, on the other hand, he said, you have to punish the people who did this, who abused our system. You have to find a way to punish them. And he said, you need to reregulate, Congress Needs to reregulate, get back to glasssteagall, which was voted away good during the Clinton Administration and which had previously had the kinds of controls that were would have presented the situation. I voted in favor of it. Then i did something else. In 2010, after a lot of research and actually having gotten the idea from an article by martin wolfe in the financial times, i put into a legislative proposal the idea of having a onetime windfall profits tax on executives from those companies that received 5 billion or more from the bailout. I think there were about 13 companies. And what we said was, you can get your full compensation. You can get 400,000 of your bonus and after that, you split the rest with the people who bailed you out, the nurses, the truck drivers, the soldiers who were out there paying the taxes. We voted in order to stabilize the Economic System not to bail out the people who brought us in to this crisis. And i couldnt get a vote on the senate floor. Neither party i think the , democrats didnt want to vote for this windfall profits tax because they didnt want to have to take a stand between the moneyed people and the people who were going to get bailed out. We lost the ability to even have a vote on it. But that is the reason that i voted for it and what we need to do now, looking in the future, is looking at reregulating the process in a manner similar to the way it was when we had glasssteagall. Host good morning billy from mississippi. Caller good morning gentlemen. Good morning, senator. Thank you so much for your distinguished military service and career to our country and our naval secretary and as United States senator. I was wondering what, you know i keep reading. We all know about the income inequality and its kind of interesting that all of the all of a sudden, republicans have discovered income inequality and and that middle class people are suffering in america and they are now talking about those issues. I am glad they are because i think its the one issue that needs to be most talked about right now in this election cycle, but i dont think that corporations are people regardless of what the Supreme Court said and i am wondering even after the t. A. R. P. And the bailout and everything we have been through, do you think we still have big banks and big Financial Institutions that are still too big, too big, socalled, too big to fail that it needs to be looked at by our regulators and our congress and senators and administrations . Should they be broken up . Should they be divested and on another line, having served up there having served in the senate like you did, why do you think there was a reluctance on the part of the obama and Bush Administration and the Justice Department to fine the folks like you said your friend from Morgan Stanley, fine the people actually responsible within these Financial Institutions and corporations and big banks and mete out some sort of pun punishment for what it is that they did to completely wreck our economy back in 08 and 09. Host billy, you put a lot on the table. Thank you for your call. Wet get a response. Guest thank you for the very thoughtful series of questions. First, i think it would be good for the country if we could get serious discussions on reinstituting Something Like glasssteagall, which did have a form of regulation on the activities that the larger baking institutions could be involved in. Two separate speculative investment from regular banking. In terms of the individuals, we have seen a pattern of finding the institutions rather than holding individuals accountable. I think probably the best way to have approached that was what we were recommending with the idea of a oneterm windfall profits tax because that would have gone directly to the people who had been the most culpable and put in terms of conduct that put us in such a precarious situation. It was one time, meaning i dont believe we should have a socalled windfall profits tax every year because that becomes another tax but in that particular situation, since they were bailed out by the working people of america, it would have been highly appropriate and the reason that you didnt see a vote on that and this goes to some of your other questions, i think its just the power of the Financial Sector in the political process today. As i mentioned at the beginning, we have reasonably good laws in terms of campaign finance. If i am doing an explore tory an Exploratory Committee to see if we could put together a viable campaign, the maximum dont nation 2600. But after the Citizens United case, people can go over across the street and create a super pac and there is no limit in the amount of money that can be put in that. You can write a 5 million check today and essentially cover the same items that would be covered in the 2,600 contribution in an Exploratory Committee. And the power of the people who have made enormous wealth in the country to control the political process is obvious. Its obvious. And what happens to the average american who wants to vote for someone who will bring about change . By the time people even measure the health of a president ial can candidacy about the amount of money he has been able to raise, so you have a screen process a screening process with gatekeepers who can run right a 5 million check before people in america get to vote on people who will take positions on a lot of these issues. Host that is the Playing Field you are going to enter if you decide to enter for president. Can you compete on that Playing Field . Guest that is the question we are looking at in this Exploratory Committee. Is it possible to move forward with enough money to get into the debate process without having to compromise deeply held beliefs . Host how much would be enough . Guest we are discussing that. Host chad in dayton, ohio. Caller thank you for having me on the show. Thank you for your service to this country. I am a republican and you are one of the very few democrats i am willing to vote for because i believe that you are willing to work with both sides and you have proven that with your record working with dragon Ronald Reagan. My question is how do you plan on dealing with isis since they are going to be more of an issue and just airstrikes isnt going to cut it . Host thank you, chad. Guest when it comes to that part of the world, we have to clearly define our National Security interest and i have said for many years, we do not benefit from becoming an occupying power in that part of the world. I am going to go back to the initial invasion of iraq, but im going to get to the question about isis. Before the invasion of iraq, i wrote a question saying this an article for the Washington Post saying this would be a strategic blunder, it would empower iran and china longterm and you can see china is one of the major beneficiaries of all of these years of efforts in afghanistan. The greatest victory for the United States since world war ii, the greatest strategic victory has been the cold war where we were able over a period , of years to face down and expansionist soviet union with a Strong Military but not not allowing this to become a fighting war. We had ancillary wars, i for the fought in one and was wounded in one in vietnam and korea. But basically we put together , the right sort of overall strategy so this thing didnt blow up. With respect to the middle east, in the situation with isis, the first question we have to resolve and i think we have is whether or not any of these entities constitutes a threat to the United States rather than simply locally, and i think isis has crossed the line. I think we can fairly say that now. Then, the question is, what sorts of activities will stop them . What sorts of activities will diminish their attractiveness as one of a number of sunni militia elements in that part of the world . Our activities are one part of it, but encouraging and other countries in the region, it who have a stake in this, to take action, would be equally important. We have seen this in lack last week or so with jordan and the uae stepping up. We cannot do this simply by ourselves. And the membership in these malitias, particularly over in syria, the numbers of people involved, vary depending upon who they think is sort of the top dog of the moment. You can see people moving from one Militia Group to another just depending upon which one they think is being more effective. So, its an extremely complicated situation in terms of crafting a strategy for isis. We have people in isis, i guarantee you, who have been trained by the u. S. When they were in another Opposition Group previously. I could see this as a journalist in beirut when i was there in 1983, when a marine turned around on one of the operations and said dont get involved in a fivesided argument. This is a situation that we are facing there. So we need to clearly articulate our National Security objectives. I believe isis comes under that. We need to encourage the other countries in the region that have a stake in the stability, to step up, including military operations, and when they are approved react, appropriate we should have military operations. The best way to get a clear picture of this is for the congress to have the hearings that it should have had at least six months ago, maybe earlier than that and get a full readout of what the administration is doing and what it sees are the most effective things to do in the future. Host let me follow up with two points. Money is a big factor. You have got your own alleys in the race and senator sanders. And Hillary Clinton, can you get the nomination on the issues . Can you win on the issues . Guest i believe that the issues that we are bringing to the table are the issues that are important to the country. That was the same Decision Point when i ran for the senate. I had no money and no staff. This is a national arena, but we pushed the issues that were, i believe, the country needed to go. National security, interNational Security, economic fairness, social justice, being able to govern in this very complicated bureaucracy. And i believe americans want to see leadership. They want to see people who will take a risk, talk about things that otherwise arent being talked about, bring people together and move forward. I think the record i have had over a long period of time shows i can work with people from all different sides. Thats the way we get things done in this country. Host how has president obama performed in bringing people together . Guest i think that we have entered a period of absolute paralysis that partly was the result of the timing of the healthcare debate. And i was warning about that at the time, where this has been an issue that was a big Campaign Issue and then right before the , election, we saw the economic crash, and i was saying the whole year, president obama came in with very high favorables. It wasnt from day one that this thing started to fall apart. But i dont think the nation the administration ever recovered from the divisive nature of the debate on Health Care Reform that we saw the tea party we saw the rise of the tea party that year. We saw the republicans saying the number one objective was going to be defeat president obama in 12 rather than working on legislation. In october, 11, when i got my criminal Justice Reform National Commission up for a vote, this was a bipartisan i had oren orrin hatch and Lindsey Graham as cosponsors on this bill, people from all across the philosophical spectrum who worked on these issues every day in support of this. Justice kennedy supported it. 18 million. Thats it. One helicopter. Excuse me 14 million. , one helicopter. We could have done this. We weret the best minds of america, show us how to fix this, the whole nature of this problem and particularly at reentry, and who goes to jail . How long . We got filibustered october of 11. We got 57 votes and the national review, the conservative paper , editorialized it was insane to have filibustered something that was that logical but thats how far that things got divided. We can do better than that. Host final question. What is your timeline . Guest i will know it when i see it. We are out talking to people. We are talking more now going in to this year. If we see that its, you know, if we see that this is viable, that it can be funded in a way that we can get into the debates, we will move forward. If not, we wont. Host do you personally want to run . Guest under the right circumstances, i would like to. Host jim webb, former senator from virginia, thank you for being with us. Guest thank you. Host when we come back, our conversation with former House Speaker Newt Gingrich. We want to talk about yesterday senator Mitch Mcconnell may have boxed himself in when he said he did not want to see another Government Shutdown and yet, your successor, john boehner is saying the house has done its job. The senate needs to do its job. Whats going to happen . Guest i think the only effective strategy is too divide the bill into two parts. Take everything which relates to security, border control, tsa, that sort of thing, send it to the president , bring it up by itself, no limits, and challenge the democrats to stop securing america. And then take the second part , which is all of the administrative components of home land security and attach them to the prohibition on what the president has done on immigration and say, look. If you are prepared to not have the administrative part funded for the rest of the year, and you want to try to run the government that way, that is your prerogative. You get down to the fact, if you have the president who wants to do one thing and the newly elected congress who wants to do something else, you are going to have a fight. And to say, gee, they shouldnt be fighting, that means then the president gets to dictate everything . And i think that it would be very difficult for the democrats in the senate to stop a clean bill that paid for everything involving security knowing they would try to and they would say you have to bring in the rest. But at some point, they were looking pretty idiotic and they are the people blocking the people from protecting america. Host we have not talked use talk to you since the state of the union. What did you think of it . Guest not much. I think this president lives in a fantasy world. I think you see it particularly in foreign policy. But he has no idea how the real world works. He has no interest in working with the newly elected congress. I think that means two more years in which there is a real problem of decay in the country and the question will be whether or not people can get something done despite that. Host you gave a speech that has been getting a lot of attention. We covered you in iowa at the Freedom Summit and you were not only critical of this president , but also saying Hillary Clinton would be an extension of the policies. Guest she was secretary of state. There is no indication so far that she has learned anything which would change what obama has been doing. You will see next week the socalled summit at the whitehouse on terrorism which is really, i think, could be called a summit of lies. They are not going to define who the terrorists are. They are not going to define what the threat is. They are not going to be serious about expla