Sanders and Hillary Clinton will be calling for significant increase in the minimum wage. Sense because the economy is consolidated. It is not efficiently allocating resources and paying workers what they should be earning in a truly competitive market. Host teddy downey is executive editor of the Capitol Forum here to talk to us about economic populism. For republicans 202 7488001. Democrats 202 7488000. Independent line 202 7488002. Wall street is betting on bush financialns disclosure. A report came out on how much the Bush Campaign and the Clinton Campaign are getting from wall street. I will play some comments that Hillary Clinton made recently about wall street and what she is calling quarterly capitalism. Im not talking about charity. Cleareyed about capitalism. Many companies have prospered by improving wages and training their workers that than yield higher productivity, better service, and larger profits. To cut costs by holding down or even decreasing pay and other investments to inflate quarterly stock prices. But i would argue that is bad for business in the long run and it is really bad for our country. Workers are assets. Investing in them pays off. Higher wages pay off. Training pays off. To help more companies do that i creditd a new 1500 tax for every worker they train and hire. I will be proposing a new plan to reform Capital Gains taxes to reward longerterm investments that create jobs. Host is Hillary Clintons message aimed at both her wall street supporters and the people who are affected by wall street policies . I think part of the problem she is identifying is that there is a culture on wall street that focuses on quarterly profits and is much more shortterm focused. I think thats right. A lot of our subscribers are investors. Over the years i have gotten to see that the focus very much is on the short term for them. Sense that a lot of she is addressing that as a fundamental problem. But its not really a wall street specific issue that shes hitting at. Onhink shes really focused what really is best for workers. Of the things shes saying are hard to argue with. Would be good to have rules to encourage companies to hire over the long term . I think that is a nobrainer. Would it be good for wages to go up . I think that is also a nobrainer. I dont know if she is putting forward enough policies that would actually create a turnaround. He said a number of your youcribers are investors said a number of your subscribers are investors. Are you hearing back from them . Investors are like anyone else across the country in a lot of ways. They have teams they are on that were formed throughout their lives. There are democrats, there are republicans. You get conversations that mimic the same conversations that i have with your average person. To the article that you pointed they are not particularly worried about this election affecting how they think about investments and how they think policies will change. Because Hillary Clinton or jeb bush, a lot of people on wall street think they are the front runners and one of them is likely to win, really represent either the status quo of the way things have gone under the Obama Administration or perhaps slightly better for businesses and profits and wall street in general. Been an advisor for institutional investors. Year is in an election it a big deal for investors to whats ahead . On i think its important to the extent people are saying things that are credible. I dont think that a lot of the candidates are taken at their word for what their policies are going to be. I think the outlook is really to look beyond what they are saying and what they would actually do. What is their track record . And thenton and bush more establishment candidates, you will get something very similar to what you are accustomed to from policies in and the Obama Administration in particular. And nothing worse than that. And sanders,trump there is a little bit of fear that what they are saying could actually be what they do. On behalf of institutional investors. Aret and people who interested in trying to predict what the policies will be like. It is really focused on what they are saying. I think people really are listening to what Bernie Sanders is saying because he has the potential to actually implement policies that are different and are bold and aggressive and populist. Host we have calls for teddy downey. Your thoughts on economic populism and what you are hearing from the candidates. Anthony, republican line. Good morning. Baltimore. Walter in independent line. Caller good morning, cspan. Populism,mic progressive fairness. I think it is a matter of getting over the greed. Outragt flashed the eous, criminal disparity. I dont even want a burrito anymore. I saw chipotle on that list. We support the greed in america of the donald trumps. The hotel he is building not far from you is being built by those rapists and murderers that he commented on. Carson flat taxed another 999 joke. He stated yesterday that we dont want to be easy on those at the bottom. That is the problem of america. This clown, the republican candidates, none of them care about the workers. But this clown actually said, we dont want to be easy on those at the bottom. When the flat tax that he was proposing was exposed to him. Not in my progressive state of mind, but when he was being interviewed on the clown show and i dont need to name that network. But the comment that those on the bottom continue to get pressed down they are just flying on helium. Host we will get a response. Caller wasink the really focusing on how conservatives in the race have a tendency to say that there shouldnt be welfare programs, we should get away from programs that provide federal assistance to the poor. I think thats what he was getting at. Markets that we look at at the Capitol Forum is the Financial Services industry. I know the caller was talking about chipotle and thre burritoes, but one of the examples where is this seeming gapirness and an increasing among the workers and owners is in the Financial Services industry. Ofhink there are a couple statistics and things that are relevant to the campaign that show this gap. Overs really that there is 1 trillion in student debt outstanding. At the bottom end of the spectrum, students just coming out of college, they are addressing this huge amount of debt. They cant buy phones or cars. So they are feeling suppressed. Thehe other end of spectrum, the Financial Services industry has been very good to the people who have are ready done well. So it is pretty clear that there is another Silicon Valley bubble. Ares clear corporations doing well with all of the stock buybacks that they are able to afford and there is a big merger wave right now. So the Financial Services industry has not really done much since dodd frank to really help the people who are worse off. You see wall street and Silicon Valley really doing well. That exacerbates what the caller was talking about in terms of inequality. Host jack in iowa. Caller good morning. Isnt the real problems the ira programs that reagan set up where workers widely throw money into mutual funds and Fund Managers never challenge corporate data powerful tech the hnocrats . The inequality problem began under reagan. Too much retirement money and nowhere for it to go. Too much emphasis on blind to diversification and no oversight. Shouldnt iras pay money into individual stocks, forcing people to think where they put their retirement money . Guest i think the biggest problem with people and their retirements is they dont have enough money to put into a retirement account. If you are in a position of trying to figure out where that money goes, i think you are better off than a lot of the people out there who dont have any money to put into retirement in the first place. There is actually a department of labor rule that is somewhat controversial right now that is supposed to apply stricter fiduciary standards on Financial Advisors. I think some of what you have seen in the past, high fees associated with retirement accounts, that has contributed to not as much Wealth Creation for the average american in their retirement account. Hopefully if that rule works, there will be a shift in the Competitive Landscape and instead of Financial Advisors pushing people into high feet products they will be competing over how to provide Better Services and lower fee products which will ultimately allow for more wealth accumulation. Host that was proposed by the Labor Department . Guest yes. Hearings just ended last week. There should be a final rollout in the coming months. Fiorina spoke last week about the rolling back of certain financial regulations. Lets look at what happened with dodd frank. The agencies that started the financial crisis and the housing bubble in the first place. Fannie mae and freddie mac are still in place. We put dodd frank in place. 10 banks too big to fail became five banks too big to fail. Would you be an advocate of raking up citigroup . Theseling away all of regulations in which only the big can survive. I would do what is necessary to help Community Banks grow and be strengthened. The next thing i would do is make sure that families and family owned businesses are getting a line of credit. They are not getting a line of credit today. In Mainstreet America all across this country, you see Small Businesses not able to get the capital they need to grow. Fiorina speaking at the iowa state fair today. Live coverage at 11 00 here on cspan. The issue is economic populism. Our guest is teddy downey. Here is mark in virginia. Caller good morning. I think we are over complicating this issue. Im just sitting here listening and overall, we kind of missed the real issue. The first caller had it right. The issue is greed on one end. But then the other issue is the electorate. Choice is spend our dollars where we want to spend the dollars, and wherever we see or feel that there is injustice as far as income disparity, we have the right to boycott. As an entrepreneur myself, i feel just like many on the republican side is that is this should not be regulated and profits should not be regulated. But we the people have the power to regulate prices by the way we spend. Henry ford in his day had perfectly correct. He wasnt just some nice opulent businessperson. The was a person who used rationale, im going to build a car, but i have to pay the people to afford the car. So therefore from the beginning and in section of ford, ford employees have always been paid pretty well so that they can sustain, enjoy the products which they purpose purchase. Now we are in a greed zone on steroids. So when they say, if you raise the minimum wage, which isnt even the real problem. Problem is if you raise the minimum wage, the greedsters are going to raise the product of services and we will be in the price of products and services and we will be in the same place where we started. So we have to stand up and say, these mergers, we dont want. We not have that many holes to run in. Have that many holes to run in. Carly fiorina was right. The Small Business concept is a false herring. When people talk about Small Businesses, they are talking about 100 plus employees. Im talking about the mom and pop that have three people. They are being crushed in our economy. Mark ts of their, lots there, mark. Guest i think one of the the economylems in is increased consolidation, lack of competition. And what the caller mentioned as a lack of choices. When you have a lot of in the economy right now isfor a range, policymakers, into the supermard see a lot of different goods, but chances are on any given shelf there are only two Companies Providing all of the goods on that shelf. If you go to rent a car, it looks like you have 10 different car rentals. But really it is only three companies. Is an issue that occurs when industries are consolidated. Consumers have less choice and less ability to buy with their feet and Push Industries in different directions. Does that also affect pricing . Guest it can. Prices can certainly go up. As probably have and will with the rental car industry. Priceis and everything isnt everything. People cant really see. Choice, quality. Those are some of the inputs in competition you want to see. When you have huge consolidation among distributors and retailers like walmart and amazon, they offer low prices, but you have less choice and the supply chain is squeezed significantly. Resulting in mom and pop businesses being squeezed in the way the caller mentioned. Delawaree is eric in on the republican line. Caller where missing the elephant in the room. It is the economy is so depressed that wages are actually falling. Its not because some ceo is making millions of dollars. Up in arms about an actor making 30 million a year on a film working 12 weeks out of the year. It is just a populist message and socialist message of the rich versus the poor and it is just to divide people. Im not concerned my neighbor makes more than me. I should be concerned about what i can do, not what other people have. Thats my comment. I think the average america isnt average focused on having a problem with their neighbor making more money. I think the big thing is about are they earning it . People who earn their wage and earn lots of money, no one has a problem with that. But if they get the sense you are cheating or you didnt really earn it, you were handed parents,rom your rich or you swindled someone or ripped off the government or polluted the environment, people are unhappy if you made your money that way. A lot of people are working hard and not making a living wage. And they see other people cheating and not working hard and making lots of money. I think that is really where the problems come from. Host here is michelle in wisconsin on the democrat line. Think a lot of the problem in our economy is the wage gap. Look at people because they are wealthy and they are the problem. I look at as though the way things have been heading, our economy and the cost of living keeps going up. And peoples wages arent going up. To have tocontinue pay the expense prices for everything as it goes up. But the wages do not go up. And i just think that thats part of the problem. And i think ceos also need to realize that if it wasnt for the sweat and the hard work of the people who help make those companies successful, that they, too, need to have incentives to keep them going. Bonuses and things like that. Ceos get bonuses but employees dont really get bonuses. So part of the problem is there. As far as the students coming out of college, i dont see why they cant refinance loans just like you would a mortgage. Those percentage rates are still too high for these College Students to be able to move out of the house and make a living on their own. So i think somethings got to give there. And with social security, i know the republicans are saying it is going to run out. People have paid into that their whole lives when they work. They expect it to be there when they retire. So why is that system going broke when people have been putting into it . They say its the baby boomers. Host we would get a response. We will get a response. Guest im not 100 sure what the question was. You mentioned student debt. I think this is really one of the big issues for the 2016 campaign. This populist backlash against the way the economy works right now. Trillion in over 1 debt outstanding. This is actually an economic issue. Houses arent being purchased, cars arent being purchased because students are weighed down by a significant amount of debt. As a result the economy isnt growing the way it should. Millennials are staying at home. Huge drag on the economy. How the candidates choose to try and address the issue and how congress and the next president address the issue is really going to be one that defines whether or not this populist backlash has sunk in enough to drive a change in behavior. Host in the Washington Times today, and opinion piece on the plan Hillary Clinton announced about college loans. Why Hillary Clintons College Tuition plan wont work. Tuition mustge start with illuminating waste and fraud. Another piece in the new york times, the problem with house prices. Housing cannot propel the economy the way it once did. It is growing inequality in incomes. Only Investment Income has been rising steadily in the recovery, while wages from work have stagnated. Buying a home is still out of reach for many working people, particularly those who would have been firsttime buyers in a healthy economy. Newe is a low inventory on starter homes. Our guest is teddy downey, executive editor of Capitol Forum. Economic populism as a campaign theme. We go to houston. Go ahead. I would like to ask just one question on that. Who makes the laws . Is it the senate and the house of representatives . Guest yes. And the Congress President signs legislation. Caller wire we focused on what the president can do . Shouldnt we focus on who we put in congress . Since they make the laws . Maybe we can get things changed if we put the right people in there. Guest absolutely. The reason there is such a focus on the president is because they an incredible ability to drive the agenda in congress. They also have a lot of tools at their disposal to change and enforce laws. One of the things people dont pay enough attention to is how Law Enforcement and the people who implement the laws are just as important if not even more important than the people who write them. One good example is the Financial Sector. We talked about dodd frank. A lot of the problems with that law have been implementation. The people who are implementing it dont act quickly and aggressively to change behavior in the markets they are trying to regulate. Or alter the competitive outlook. One small group, the new York Department of Financial Services, which is part of the governors office, gives a really good example of what one determined law enforcer can really do. A guide by the name of been lasky had more of an impact by himself in that agency than thertgage market b had in the years it was working on the same issue. Yorksmall office in new was really determined to change the behavior of the industry and crackdown on misrepresentation and conflicts of interest. It doesnt take a lot of determined law enforcers. To make big change. That is another reason people in washington are focused on the president. Senators of several running for president is Bernie Sanders. He was interviewed on meet the press yesterday. He talked about the issue of income inequality. We are resonating all over this country because we are talking about issues that are life and death issues to the American People. And that is the collapse of the american middle class. The massive and grotesque level of income and wealth inequality in this country. The fact that we are the only major country on earth who doesnt guarantee health care for old people. The fact that millions of working class families are now finding it very difficult to send their kids to college. And the basic facts that people are working longer hours for lower wages. And all of the new income and wealth is going to the top 1 . And then a Campaign Finance system as a result of Citizens United allows billionaire families like the Koch Brothers and others to literally by politicians and corrupt the american political process. All that together and the American People are saying enough is enough. Bernie sanders running on the democratic ticket with chuck todd on meet the press. Our guest is teddy downey, executive editor of Capitol Forum. The issue of economic populism. Ray in arizona. Good morning. Caller good morning. Called these corporations ship in people from Foreign Countries and pay them like indentured servants to be trained to do something for their company. If one of our problems is we have more people then jobs, we should stop importing people to work for these Big Companies thats it. Part how much of that is a major corporations using those pvisas . We have done a lot of work on this and we never really found a compelling study that work wast h1b visa as necessary as businesses claim they are. It is really all about price. How much does it cost to train a worker . How much does it cost to get an h1b worker to do the same job . So when someone says i need more h1b visas, they really want lower wage workers so they can make more money on the products or services they are providing. Driver of income inequality. It is an issue and we havent found compelling evidence that the alternative, which is bringing in workers and training them from the u. S. , is not really doable. It may take more time and be more costly, but this is a social issue. It is how the congress and the president and the people want their economy to work. I think that is really the question. It is not a question of, do they need it . The caller certainly thinks we should focus on training programs. Similar to the one we heard earlier from Hillary Clinton to create incentives to hire and train. Host a couple of tweets. This one says that while profitsions make record and back politicians that fight against increasing wages, proves trickle down was a con. Says there is no competition in the usa. Monopolies role almost every market and now even hospitals are taking over doctors practices. This one says someone needs to propose a cap on ceo salaries. Disclosure rules took five years. That is the biggest problem with them. It shows a tremendous lack of that itip at the sec took five years to get Disclosure Rules out there. Having taken a quick look at the rules, i dont think they will work. There are a lot of loopholes that seem like corporations will be able to abuse. For example, temporary workers wont count toward the number. The owners of the corporations will have discretion over what period of time they look at. So Seasonal Workers and contract workers wont count. The number is subject to manipulation. Disclosure and focus on ceo pay is probably very important and it is an important shaming mechanism and educational tool so people can understand what the gap really is and try to figure what is happening. Dan in denver. Good morning. Caller it seems like the sec has either been incompetent or complicit with the ceos and stuff. Donald trump friday said he icahn helpcarkarl him set things straight. There . Hat is happening icahn is an activist investor on wall street who likes to buy Interesting Companies and get influence through the board and try to push the company in a certain direction that he thinks will create a better valuation. He is one of the legends of wall street in terms of his activities in pushing companies around and getting stocks to be or companies to be bought at a higher level than what he originally purchased them at through leveraged buyouts and things like that. Theres a lot of talk about barbarians at the gate. Of thate of the icons movement. Is amusing in some respects. But it is part of the trump image at this point. Which is that he is a businessman and he is unabashed about making lots of money and being successful and talking about corruption. That happens all the time and that businesses by off offticians buy politicians. Just being unabashed about how he is going to use his business acumen and bring other people in who have been successful without a regard to how they got that success at what the implications are for policy is amusing. Host a quick look at rick perry. His radical proposal to put wall street in its place. Plan tol aspect of his reform the Financial Sector puts him in alliance with liberal radicals such as Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders. One more call for teddy downey. Kathy in buffalo. Caller good morning. My comment is this. Educationlower level arent qualified for lowwage jobs. We also make up the largest portion in the population of america and other countries. Ormer per to earn 100 lower levelbs at education, we would become less reliant on government subsidies. So that is your call for increasing the minimum wage . Caller yes. Host final comments. Guest i miss the question. Missed the question. Host she was talking about increasing the minimum wage would make people less reliant on government benefits. Guest thats absolutely right. The minimum wage is a way to address the fundamental lack of competition throughout the economy. When there is competition, employers fight to attract the best talent and pay their workers the best and give them good benefits. And that competitive environment creates less of a need for the minimum wage. When you have a largely consolidated economy that lacks theseompetition, you get more behavioral rules from the government and calls for things like the minimum wage to address that competition cap. Gap. Mpetition coming up, Campbell Brown of the 74. A website dedicated to education issues. Then environmental activist Erin Brockovich on the e. P. A. s role and response to the mine colorado. Spill in washington journal is live every morning at 7 00 a. M. Eastern on cspan. You can join the conversation with your phone calls and comments on facebook. Nd twitter our road to the white house continues live from the iowa state fair on cspan, cspan. Org asand the candidates walk the fairgrounds and speak at the des registers candidate soapbox. Tuesday morning republicans marco rubio and governor john kasich. Republican rick perry will speak at 11 00. On friday afternoon at 2 30, ted cruz. Or and on saturday, republican noonnors Chris Christie at and bobby jindal at 1 00. Coming up tonight on cspan. Wrote to the white house joins the 2016 president ial candidates at the iowa state fair. First, wisconsin Governor Scott walker. Then former hp ceo carly fiorina. Followed by senator lindsey graham. Next, Governor Scott walker of wisconsin at the Des Moines Register soapbox. The governor was interrupted by protesters and following remarks he spoke with reporters in the public. His speech is 20 minutes