The middle of this fight and you do not want to take sides, but, you know it is an issue. No, im not going to do that. Its too hard. Im going to tell them no. We have a reporter go on meet and isss all the time very careful. You are never as fiery or provocative or interesting as the opinion people on the shows. Tom marty . Marty just to keep it brief, our approach is the same. Basically do not say anything on the shows you would not say in the paper or on our website. Those are the standards we use. Of course its a difficult environment in which to operate. It is like locker room conversation. So it gets tricky with the risk of getting carried away. Bit st to flip this a should the press be more biased by not giving people equal time to Climate Change deniers, it antievolutionists, etc. . To answer thatnt question. One of the people i edit, davenport, the great Environmental Writer you , our and Margaret Sullivan public editor is big into this notion of fault equivalency. To be an unbiased reporter you have to say one hand, a vast majority of scientists think that there is clearly im a change caused by humans. On the other hand, these other people say, we do not know for sure. We dont do that anymore on Climate Change. Its 99 or whatever. We basically say because of the established science, humans caused Climate Change. We dont do that. Other issues we do that is one where we have moved beyond what i would call the fault equivalency. Marty we treat Climate Change as real and serious. That is where, as she said, where the vast majority of the scientists almost unanimously view the science rests. So, we treat science seriously and respectfully. And that is how we write about it. Now recently we ran a piece from someone who had an alternative point of view, but that is their job. To be open to all points of view. Should the u. N. Be open to global agreements, and how can the United States inspire such a global agreement . Elisabeth you are going to answer that one. Marty what was that . Internet bethe governed by global agreements . Marty there is a lot of discussion, i gather, about therer as i said should be standard rules of behavior for the internet, the way that we deal with space, international laws, the high seas, things like that. Be ould probably certainly a better system than regimesuthoritarian close off the internet, have their own rules for each of these individual states. And we see what the consequences of that are. That is a brutal repression of free speech in those countries. It denies citizens of those countries access to information that is available to millions and billions of people around the world. It is certainly better than a country by country internet. 24 hour news channels. Do they do more harm than good . Too polarizing . You talkedwell, about msnbc and fox. I think they are repetitive. You cant watch for more than i mean, they chew over the same developments over day every day over and over again. Marty brain damage. Right. Th yeah. You could go berserk watching them for that long. I dont think they are harmful. Theyre just really hard to watch. Especially sometimes cnn in the middle of the day breaking news. They are really shifting the standards for breaking news. Developing now is really not. We keep it on in the Washington Bureau and the newsroom in new york and we keep an eye on it. You can see the absinthe flows. If you can see the ebbs and flows. If they find a plain part, its a very big deal. [laughter] oh, they found a plane part. You have to watch for a while. Ok, marty, this is for you. As expressed by the budget, please compare what was spent by the post in 2015 by decade earlier. Come on, mcnamara. Marty i have no idea. Im sure it is less. About 30 people overseas and 15 euros. Not as much as the New York Times, but substantial. A decade ago, we were covering some wars, so it was probably substantially more expensive to cover the wars in afghanistan , and it was a Huge Investment of resources of every type. So, you know, its less, but still substantial. Tom ok, this question is for both of you. And that relates to the coverage of the president ial election for 2016. Kennedyrage of the election in 1960 was revealed through teddy whites book the making of a president , a classic, and another, the boys about how the press handled that. I wonder how you view the coverage of this current cycle from your two perspectives, and what are the challenges the newspapers face when dealing with this . Elisabeth i am not responsible for the president ial campaign coverage, but i will talk about the question. You look at teddy whites book the boys in the bus first of all the boys in the bus, that changed. Inas on the Mccain Campaign 2008, and things have changed drastically even since 08. First of all, there are girls on the bus. A thousand things that are different. Back in those days, yeah, there middleaged guys covering these campaigns, and they would file one story a day at 5 00 or 6 00 at night. I think they were filing on typewriters i guess they must have dictated by phone . They dictated. There was a dictation room at the New York Times and the washington post. Copy iread your actually did that that was how you got your stories in. But the main difference was the resort storage a m1 deadline. Now these campaigns are brutal. The main difference was there was one story a day and one deadline. Now these campaigns are brutal. The Mccain Campaign tweeting constantly, feeding the web, feeding the first draft, which newsletter, morning but it is also received all day long as items from the campaign. Theres also 17 candidates. I look at how these reporters work now. You are filing all day long. You are tweeting, filing, posting. At the end of the day, after all of this, you have to come up with an intelligent, thoughtful New York Times story for later additions for the web and for itions of the paper. It never stops. You was getting to me on the Mccain Campaign. It is hard to find time to think, i think. In this kind of process. To step back and to write bigger stories about what it all means. I mean, reporters do it. The demands on them are way beyond what it ever was on the boys on the bus. I actually like the direction of some of the reporting. Minute toytoday, minute reporting we all do now that we did not have to do in the past. Had a way, the times dictation room. They were the last to eliminate it. I find news organizations like have decided a lot of our resources should not be dedicated to following the candidates as they move around, but should stand back and pursue the kinds of stories that should be pursued. Theres a lot more investigative reporting. We go deep into their backgrounds. We go deep into their financial connections. We go deep into their donors in a way that we should. And we do what we call enterprise reporting. Where we are not just the daily reporting. We are actually being enterprising about it and finding deeper stories that require more time and actually break news. Not news that the candidate happened to say this or there was this malapropism on the part of this candidate or whatever it might be, but actually much deeper stories than we have had in the past, and im pleased with that on average. Coupleere were a questions about radio. Is radio still strong, vital, and global . There used to be the voice of america, which reported americas stories and values abroad. Does this exist anymore . Well, yes. Mvr is bigger than ever and has a much stronger resins overseas. Here in the United States. I am sure that many of you listen to npr. Debate in constant congress about what its mission should be. Obviously the voice of america journalists want to keep it completely separate, objective news organization, and there is a move in congress to make it as the United States is coming under siege from all of this ice is propaganda, there is a move in congress to try and make it more reflective of American Values and american foreignpolicy issues. Obviously the journalists at voa are totally opposed to that. Reallyhink npr is a strong presence here and overseas and has continued to grow and flourish. Very largeis a organization. They have a difficult relationship with their affiliates all over the country about who should be covering what and how big npr itself should become, which some theirates feel may be at expense. They are working through that situation right now, but they are a very substantial news organization. And i would point out they are very dependent on other news organizations like ours. I you listen to npr, and , you a lot of you listen will hear as guests, reporters from the washington post, from the wall street journal. They do as they are, not have a staff as substantial as hours to do the reporting that we do. They do good work and they do a fair amount of original reporting as well. But they are highly dependent on others, and we are part of that ecosystem. Om yeah this question relates to elisab eths comments about the Baltimore Sun closing its Foreign Bureau and other newspapers doing the same. It is about the second tier newspapers, not the post and the wall street journal. Do you have views about these chicago, milwaukee him of these kinds of things . Elisabeth like all newspapers, they are struggling with their print editions and trying to make their digital editions profitable. Hit harder and they have cut back the newsrooms quite a bit. Has an advantage because of its size and reach around the country. Hometownmoving my up, wewhen i was growing had two cartons that said post, and now its just this little tiny tabloid with what looks like an advertiser. You know, they have all shrunk. Locally andd in greatnow about this detail but there have been a lot of local websites that have really sprung up, sort of hyper local coverage of the cities around the country. But i dont what paper was it . I was at a seminar this past papers, aone of the lot of the people who were there , the reporters were doing they were self editing. They had no editing staff. And i thought, oh, my god. [laughter] happening atis some of these places as they cut staff. Reporters are editing themselves. Imagineorter, i cannot that. As an editor, i cant imagine it either. Tom that goes to a question someone had about the vetting. Traditional newspapers like the post have good sub editors to check the facts. Is there any vetting on the web, the news outlets that people read these days online that you know about . Marty when you talk about the web, that is a very big space. Different people have different policies. You know, we have a stated policy of trying to read everything, have at least one other person read something before it is hosted. I am sure that the times has something similar. Rings happen at such a speed im sure it is not reviewed as closely as it was in the past. Things happen at such a speed. They do not get the same level of editing as you had in the past. A day newspaper or twice a day newspaper. Now youll are talking about things being posted 24 hours a day, including at night, all the e, evan days a week. At seven days a week. If you are not the first with the story, theres a good chance you will not get the traffic. For our editing, the question about writing for the web and posting it online we have a system. I am sure the post is the same where you have you have 223 editors look at it, edit 2 to it, edit itok at before he goes out. Then there is a copy editor who looks at it, and there might be another editor if it is a particular important story. Theres a lot of pressure to get things up quickly. Huge amounts of pressure. So, there is constant tension between we have got to get this out, but weve got to make sure it is right. You know, it can be nerveracking. The way that we did that in washington sometimes, its a really big deal story and it has to go right away, but if its very competitive, we will have to get editors read it simultaneously. You can have another editor read over his shoulder. But it is still, you know the later versions of this story is the day unfolds, developments happen, these tory can change a lot the story can change a lot. Theres a lot more scrutiny given to the story at the end of the day as it goes into print. Can i go back to the previous question about regional papers, if i might . Involvedy career was with regional papers. I was the editor of the boston globe, the miami herald. Feel very strongly they do face and normas pressures. They do face enormous pressures. I eliminated foreign coverage at the boston globe in 2007 or so when we were going through the great recession. Anyone with in a management role , you do what you have to do. You have to make tough decisions. We going to cover our local region . The answer for an institution like the boston globe was we are going to cover our local region. There are other places that will cover the world. Nobody was happy with that. I was not happy with that. Sharply criticized. Free much all of the people overseas at that moment left the boston globe to do other things. But i think those institutions there are still many good newspapers out there. Does aston globe still great job. The l. A. Times does a great job. And its critically important that they succeed. We at the boston globe launched an investigation of the Catholic Church that exposed the sex abuse scandal the church is dealing with even today. Tom you got a pulitzer for it. And if we marty had not done that, that story would not have been done. These newspapers have to be the eyes and ears. We cannot be everywhere. Regardless of our size. Even if we were double the size, we would not be able to do that. I think it is absolutely critical that they succeed. Their financial challenges are greater than ours. There is no question about it. We have the capacity to create National Products or as shetional products, was talking about before, how the New York Times is trying to get international subscribers. Newspapers, that is much were difficult and they face the same competition with google and others for advertising. They just do tremendous work under very difficult circumstances and very often write very important stories that all of us learn from. Tom well said. Thank you. Im going to ask one more before we close. We are getting to the end. Before i do, i want to ask both of you if there was something you thought was going to be asked, but wasnt . Or should have been. The final question has to do with the future. I wonder if you both can talk about the recruiting of the young journalists in the digital age. What are you looking for. How excited are young people about doing the kinds of things that you do that are so essential for american democracy . Elisabeth ive got to tell you. You know, given how tough the business is right now, we still get an amazing applicants. We had this fantastic intern this summer in the Washington Bureau he is 22 years old. He graduated from harvard. He just wants to be a journalist. He does not want to go to wall street or finance. He was to be a journalist and he is a great writer. What i find about the young people we do hire, first of all, we hire journalists. The main thing is you hire journalists. Some may have more experience than others, some may have more potential. What i find interesting, of all of the efforts we have on the web and the iphone and Audience Development and graphics and cool, and that is really and there are all of these young people running around the newsroom now pushing our stories out to everybody, and they are young and they are cap so many of them just want to be reporters and write stories. That is what gives me a lot of hope. I think, well, if you are so cool and we are this legacy media. All of these old content providers, right . They just want to be new york reporters and write stories. That is their dream. Just to do the oldfashioned going out and interviewing people and writing a story. Get a huge number of applicants. I have a lot of hope for the future. Marty i would say the single most encouraging thing in our profession today is the caliber of talent. And the single most important thing to our profession is the caliber of talent in our profession. I am amazed at the quality of people we have. The interns we have in the summer. The people we end up hiring. Some who work with us for several years. It is amazing. They have multiple degrees. They speak many different languages. They are a lot smarter than i was or a. M. That i was or am. They are good writers. And they enter the profession for all the right reasons. They are not looking for bank. They are not looking to be a celebrity. They just think we serve a useful purpose in society and in the world and they want to be part of it. And they do that knowing the profession is at a very moment. Ing they face all sorts of risks, and they do it anyway. All of us entered the profession when it was doing pretty much just fine. They had, theyms paled at the problems we face today. I have huge admiration for the people entering our profession now and am very grateful they have chosen journalism as the race for themselves. Tom bravo. Thank you very much. [applause] really, really wonderful. Thank you. [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. Visit ncicap. Org] [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2015] tuesday on cspan, the annual left Forum Conference from new york city. Thethe left should view Democratic Party, and why he supports Bernie Sanders as a Democratic Party candidate. Here is a look. Methe Democratic Party for is not sell out to interest groups. Some groups represent corporations fighting for things for tpp, and they fight imperialism. They do things that you and i would disagree with, or all three of us would disagree with. But other parts of the Democratic Party are fighting to have more rights for unions and increase wages for lowincome workers and more rights for people who work so their families can be better off. And those parts of the Democratic Party, in my opinion, should not be conflated with the other parts. Carl davis talks about there being a sixparty system in this country and not a twoparty system. In that there are a, there are four elements in the Democratic Party. I feel like i am one of those elements and Bernie Sanders is the champion of one of those factions and i will do what i can to support him, because i would like to make that faction victorious over the corporations. Tuesday on cspan, the annual left Forum Conference from new york city. The event teachers liberal activist talking about the goals leftist politics in the United States. That is tuesday at 8 00 p. M. Eastern here on cspan. Now, a discussion on the role of incomec populism, it. Nequality, and behavior this is 40 minutes. Our road to the white house coverage of the president ial candidates continues live at the iowa state fair on cspan, cspan radio and www. Cspan. Org, as candidates walk the fairgrounds and to speak at the Des Moines Register candidate soapbox. Tuesday, senator marco rubio and governor john kasich. Wednesday, governor rick perry will speak at 11 00. Friday, senator ted cruz. And on saturday, governor Chris Christie at noon and governor bobby jindal at 1 00. Join the conversation. Campaign 2016, taking you on now he discussion on economic inequality. This is 40 minutes. Teddy downey is executive editor of the Capitol Forum. Here to talk with us this morning about the issue of economic populism. Some have said income inequality on the campaign trail. The issue as it relates to campaign 2016. What does your group to . Do . We provide legal analysis for a range of subscribers, policymakers, investors, corporations. Host a recent story in usa today. They looked at ceo pay. Paid 800 times more than their workers. Based on the most recent total reported compensation of ceos. Why has this issue bubbled up in the campaigns of Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton . Guest i think the main reason is people are unhappy with the level of income inequality that exists. About the lot of talk results of income inequality. How big the gap is. How much ceos make. How much the average american makes and how big of a gap there is. But there is not as much conversation about why that occurs. At the Capitol Forum we study Market Competition, which is a big factor in how you get to that cap gap. The reality is that an economy is defined by lots of competition. If there isnt a dramatic amount of consolidation in every industry, employers compete for workers. They compete to get the best talent. They pay them more. They provide better benefits. As a result competition is really good for the worker and that reduces income inequality. What you have here is some of the elements that have pushed populism to work in the past. Consolidated economic power. Income inequality. These consolidated industries not defined by competition. Bernie sanders with his classic populism that he is promoting, antibig bank, anticonsolidation, is really working right now. Host in terms of the minimum a number of organizations are raising it. Some cities are calling for raising it. What are we hearing from the candidates . Guest i havent been paying close attention to all of the different proposals. Lineup as you might expect. Conservatives tend to think that the minimum wage is not the appropriate way to address problems like income inequality. That it creates bad business incentives. Perspective is more to analyze things from a Market Competition point of view. The point i was making earlier, the structural reasons for why wages are not going up is in part because employers are not competing over workers. There arent enough. The rules for competition arent encouraging employers to provide better pay or benefits or allow for upward mobility of workers. Thats probably the thing that is missing from the conservative side of the aisle. Bernieocrats, 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 w