A preview of what Congress Might do about entitlement programs in 2018. This is just over one hour. Host and we are back and continued our conversation this morning about entitlement reform. Could it happen this year between capitol hill and this white house . Between capitol hill and this white house . Rettaw is james cap and Melissa Boteach. Thank you both for being here. Melissa, let me begin with you. How do you define entitlement . Aest i define entitlement as basic Living Standards whether its retirement or health care or nutrition that if you are eligible for it, youre guaranteed to receive it. I think thats important because it sets a floor of income security under americans such that when we face the ups and downs of life whether its unemployment or a medical emergency, etc. That there is basic Living Standards to support us. With things like retirement, thats an inevitability for all of us. Host the question is who should be eligible for . It . Guest my definition is similar to its a benefit conferred by federal law. If you meet the eligibility criteria, then the benefit is conferred on you through several programs. I think thats generally the issue that were now talking about. Entitlement spending associated with that eligibility and rules are written into federal law. Host lets tackle medicare first because thats what we spent our first hour talking about because how much is the government spent on medicare . Billion. Rth of 500 i shouldve looked that up, but its half 1 trillion or so. Its behind Social Security is our largest in sanford appeared largest entitlement. Host is it really driving our debt . Guest yes, the issue with entitlements is that you cant sustain the current structure that it is written now in productivity. It doesnt have to change immediately for anyone on the current program. Thats one of the biggest misunderstandings out there. Im on Social Security and medicare. Whats going to happen to me . Thats not what the conversation is about. Its about whos going to be eligible in 2030 or towar 2040 . Its on a trajectory now to the point where the debt will exceed 150 of gdp. Right now its 77 of gdp. Thats the issue. Its really a demographic and Health Care Problem and something has to be dealt with 15 or 20 years down the road. Host why . Why are we on this trajectory . Guest its the demographics and its health care. The country is changing demographically just like every other major industrialized country, many of whom have embarked on massive government reforms. Entitlement reforms. We are dealing with the fact that we have an aging population and fewer workers coming in for the number going into their retirement years. Obviously theres an issue. You have more people taking up benefits and less people paying in. Thats where you have a fundamental program. We have Health Care Cost growing faster than the economy. When you have Health Care Growth above economic growth, you need more resources to help. Of those accommodation is the main issue behind our fiscal problems. That melissa, is it true on average people pay into less than a takeout . Over the years of working and paying into medicare, in the end they will take up more from medicare than they have actually put into the program . Guest in some cases, yes, but i think its an important point that Health Care Spending is rising faster than inflation. Yes, we have an aging population. The question of whether or not Health Care Spending is contributing to our longterm deficits, thats settled. The question is what to do about it . Theres a senior Protection Plan that would allow you to address longterm Health Care Spending without hurting beneficiaries because theres a lot of other places in the healthcare care system you could find those kinds of savings. Host where . Guest you can reform the payment savings. If you spend more on prevention upfront, youre going to have fewer longterm health care chronic cost longerterm. The other thing i would say is that we just passed a tax bill that added 1. 5 trillion to the deficit to give tax cuts to millionaires and corporations primarily. I think the turnaround now is it is Seniors Health care driver of the deficit without addressing the other side of the ledger. Its an important contrast to know. Host how do you respond to that . Guest with respect to the tax bill, and fiscal terms, its actually kind of small. Its about one half to a one percentage increase to the federal deficit. This is at the end of president obamas turn. He ran up huge deficits during his time in office. It was not solved so we had a massive fiscal problem prior to the tax bill. I wouldve preferred that the tax bill had been revenue neutral. The primary problem with countries facing and its obvious in 2016 is slow economic growth. Thats the issue. I dont care how much redistribution you have. You will never get wages up fast enough if growth is not accelerate. Rate,had a 1. 9 growth that is not enough wage growth to sustain. Its not enough to pay for entitlement programs. The tax bill is pushing in that direction. That was confirmed by the joint Tax Committee and the cbo. They agreed it would promote growth. Not as much as some people claim it would, but it would promote growth. It should of been fiscally neutral though. They shouldve done more to close loopholes and bring it down to neutrality. The fiscal problem is entitlement. That has been there for decades and will be there the next 20 years with or without the tax bill. We have a mas massive fiscal problem. Host Social Security whats the status of Social Security . What should be done about it . Guest one of the main drivers of Social Security longterm Social Security is not facing an immediate crisis, but its rising income inequality. The more and more earnings that are concentrating among the wealthiest, which are above the payroll tax cap, the less income is coming to the system. Andebruary 16 this year, millionaire will have completely pay their payroll taxes for the year. Onyou are to lift the cap the payroll tax side of things coming would solve enormous part of the Social Security shortfall. Host do you agree . Guest i dont think thats a particular good idea in the sense that if you pay into the system, the question is do you get a return on it . To hang benefits more more to people pay benefits more to people that are middleclass of billionaires . Middleclass and billionaires . These can be very moderated changes in Social Security at the time. They just passed and the tax bill indexing of the tax brackets for a new measure of inflation that is probably more accurate. Maybe they should do that for Social Security costofliving increases down the road. 10 to 15 to 20 years from now, that would save a lot of money and we should look at retirement age. We live a lot longer than we used to. Should we recalibrate the retirement age when people are expected to work until 68 instead of 62 . That is also true for medicare. Host do you agree with any of those proposals . Guest no, antiimmigrant public doesnt either. The American Public wants to expand Social Security and not to cut it. When you think about a lot of the people who are most going to be turning to Social Security, they are working in jobs that require some level of physical labor storytime age for them is not the same as a retirement age for a whitecollar worker. Here what oura viewers have to say. We will also turn our attention to possible changes to wealth care programs Welfare Programs. You are up first. A is veryr. Cabrett disingenuous. This is not an entitlement program. I turned 66 in february. I did not retire at 62. Most people dont until their 66. By raising the cap and paying into the program all year, millionaires not having to pay off until february, it would add an increase of the program. The Medicare Program the way to fix that is to get a singlepayer across the country from birth to death. When you have everyone paying into this programs, billions of dollars will be added to the program. Congress should be doing things about the cost of medicines and Prescription Drug coverage. If they were really genuine about wanted to make changes in what is going on with the middleclass workers, thats what they would be looking at. Host james, a response . Guest theres a lot there. You talk about the Health Care Problems of singlepayer versus a bigreforms, theres problem the United States and health care and how to make it more efficient overtime. A singlepayer system would move people a lot out of insurance arrangements. Singlepayer would move all them sponsoredernment insurance system. Thats a lot of displacement and cost and a lot of movement of private premier money into the federal government. Im not sure thats a good idea. Is that really the answer to the problem . For people who are very big advocates of single tear, they should read the stories of the u. K. About the National Healthcare service which has features that are commendable, but there are problems when you have totally government sponsored insurance. They have massive problems right now. Have a lot of this location and a lot of waiting because they have been overwhelmed with sick people during a bad winter season. Its not a panacea. Theseare tradeoffs with things for the real question with health care is how to make it more efficient overtimes . Government to make it more efficient overtime or do we need other incentives. . The will always have a mix of private pensions and the public role in health care. Lets get it right and make sure we get the incentives right. Host lets hear from mary, who is a republican in pittsburgh. Programif the medicare is not sustainable, it could have been if president obama had not taken 760 billion. It just blows me away how much he took out of medicare to start the aca. It shouldve actually been illegal. The democrats say they wont touch our entitlements as they call it, but they did when they voted for daca. Aca. E if we didnt have the money, why was he a lot to give 200 million to palestinians as he went out the door . I really feel sorry for the younger people. They are paying into it. They are never going to get it. I do have medicare and it has been very good for me. Im nine years old. 90 years old. Im worried about last long enough for me. Host i want to take your question for melissa. Talk about the aca and what the Affordable Care act said. Guest i think shes referring to changes that were made to save money for medicare. When she said the president it, was she mistaken . It was not going to affect anybodys ability to finance health care. It is about finding efficiencies in the system. The aca helped millions of people gain Health Insurance and in addition it really expanded medicaid so that a lot of people had Better Health during their working years and Better Health. S seniors i disagree with the notion that medicare recipients will be worse off because of the ac. A. Host i think the caller is referring to the fact that they cut the Medicare Program quite substantially in the Affordable Care act. Shes right around 700 billion that they cut on hospitals and Medicare Advantage plans. They use the resources of that to increase subsidization of people in the Affordable Care act. Does that hurt Medicare Beneficiaries . Not necessarily. Depends on how one views the changes. I would say that the cuts that are made though theres a lot of talk about how we did payment reform. Thats not really what happened. , theyhey did was basically lowered the payment rate for hospital admissions by a lot. They did that on a permanent basis. While that harm access to Hospital Services overtime . The actuaries who look at the numbers for the Medicare Program believe that there will be access problems. Not immediately but in 10 or 15 years. Host part of this conversation about entitlement reforms is the economy and will the economy grow and by how much . The employment numbers for december are out. Rate andployment 140,000 jobs added. Your reaction to those numbers . St right now, the economy we are in an economic expansion. The problem is not necessarily that theres not enough jobs. The problem is that wages are terrible. They are flat. A lot of workers have not seen a raise in you years. Every day workers are not seeing the gains from it. The other pieces that there are people who are facing barriers to work that are not addressed. For example, child care, a criminal record that extends from them being considered for jobs. There are people facing enormous barriers that our policies are not addressing. Host one thing we have to realize in our country is that we are having good growth. There is demand for labor. Theres a lot of people sitting on the sidelines of the labor market that should beginning back in the labor force and are outside the labor market for a variety of reasons. We need to address some of those issues. I think thats a big part of our problems these days. The economy is growing very strongly and witches did go up to 20 and are likely to have gone up in 2017 and likely to go up and 2018 because the economy is that strong. We should be grateful at the moment that we are in a very strong expansion. Host lets hear from ed in tennessee. Your question about entitlements . Caller i wanted to comment on what mr. Capretta said about great britain. They dont put enough money into their system and i would rather wait in line and i. Let me give you these facts and let me see what you think. This is from Warren Buffett. In 1960, corporate taxes were 4 of gdp. Now that they are at 2 . Health care was 5 of gdp and now with 17 . 3. 2 trillionnd on health care and . 33 of every dollar is wasted . If we could capture this money and these Paradise Papers and raise the taxes on the corporations and the wealthy because they never done so good, we would have more money that we could cover everything. Can you debunk that . Warned that fit Warren Buffett said Health Care Costs would take over the american economy. The employer insures these people. That is where the money will go. Apretta . C guest i would say the caller is right. There is massive waste in American Health care. One third of all the resources poured into our Health Care System are really low value coul. , how do you capture that . Its a very difficult proposition. If we knew which dollars were wasted in advance, we would stop them in advance. The country is twisting between. We dont have a fully government run Health Care System like other countries, but we dont really have a private system with incentives lined up right. We have to straighten that out. The country may have to choose one way or the other. Maybe we will do Something Like the cap but thehave downsides, government cost could be controlled better. Its a big country and i doubt we will ever go that route. We better get the incentives right along with public oversight to get the cost down. I agree with the caller on that point. With respect of the wealthy and whos paying taxes, the issue is first of all, corporations dont really pay taxes. The taxes that corporations pay will be passed on to the shareholders, the employees of the firm, the consumers of the firm, or the workers of the firm. Thats the universe of people who will pay. A lot of economist have looked at this and say what you have high corporate taxes, it hurts workers quite a bit. Theres a reason why our. To countries are lowering corporate taxes. Investment that goes up and you have more investment and job growth. Its not that hard to figure out. It would be good for workers. Guest just the push back a little on that, you had corporate ceos basically admitted during the tax fight that people who were going to benefit from the tax cuts were shareholders and not their workers. Looking at the jobs numbers, does not appear that what corporations really needed was another huge tax cut at this point. The fact that many publicly admitted that its not going to be used to raise wages or two great jobs to create jobs, but make investments to offshore jobs because there were incentives based on that front come i dont think thats a fair characterization. The other thing that i want to note about the economy that we missed earlier is that theres been a lot of changes to not just wages but worker protection. It basically disappeared guaranteed pensions. And Social Security for a lot of people is the only thing that they have to turn to or comprising a very large share of their retirement. If we are not thinking about the economy during peoples working and what those changes we are doing to entitlements, particular for retirement, i think there is a big mismatch in terms of your going to see a lot of senior poverty going up if you touch these programs in a way without addressing the front. Ist Melissa Boteach our guest here. Also at the table is james cap retta. Hourproach the top of the talking about entitlement reforms and the prospects for it this year. Mike in wisconsin, your next. Caller my question is it that entitlements and the wealth care all seems to bother me. Guest as i said, entitlements are things that you are guaranteed. Their basic Living Standards whether its retirement, nutrition, health care. I dont think characterizing them as welfare or most of these programs as welfare is a fair characterization. If youre looking at traditional welfare, 1 of americans get that. Think about it, we are all paying taxes throughout their working years. And so when we fall on hard times when our wages are cut or hours are cut or we have a health crisis, programs like nutrition assistance and medicaid are there for us. 70 of americans are going to turn to means test the program during their working years. These are not for other people. These are for all of us. Do to them apart that we pay into and the ones that we painted indirectly through a texas. Hey into and directly through our taxes. Host when we talk about entitlement programs, what are we talking about . Guest we are talking about people with incomes below a certain threshold. There certain things like the Block Grant Program that goes to states to support people without earned income. It would be the snap program for people that have certain incomes that they can get assistance for food purchases and housing s. Ucher the Supplemental Security Income Program for lowincome disabled people, those are the big ones. The earned income tax credit is not really a Welfare Program per se. Its an additional wage supplement fed through our tax system, but its income tested. Those are sort of the big universal programs that mainly with comprise welfare. Changeslissa, what would you like to see or if any to these Welfare Programs . The president , according to the hill newspaper looking at work requirements for medicaid. Guest taking away someones health care when attrition or housing is not going to help them find a job any faster. Gettinge interested in people to work and thats your goal, you focus on creating jobs and energy because we know that when people dont have access to enough food that their cognitive are suffering. I think it is important to note are work requirements really just a code for cutting and for kicking struggling are down. En they host next phone call comes from independent. Time, during the same the republican was fighting against him, he brought down he was bringing it down. We need to stop saying this secondly, what is the clinton says social name, y, what is the george w. Bush drained, he took trillion dollars from Social Security. On. S is what has been going damage this because they dont want it. Republicans hate this stuff and they hate this stuff. Host don, lets get a response. Deficit, the president putting the two wars, president obama, under the bush books . Tration on the guest there is a lot there. The n, look, i mean, president obama inherited deep went up and debt because we had a very serious 2007 and 2009 en and debt ran up during those years. The economy has been expanding since 2009, slowly. A lot of opportunities politically to address the between 2010 and 2016, when he left office and candidly much. T do he tried with speaker john boehner, they didnt come to an kicked the can down the road and dealt with other issues, which is fine, im we inherited the fiscal mess and president obama didnt solve it. Respect to president bush, he did not drain Social Security, there were deficits, there was recession when president bush came into office, a lot of expenses ssociated with conflicts abroad. This is not a Foreign Policy debate. Guest i was going to say, republicans have in some ways seeded concern about the deficit passing a 1. 5 trillion tax ut for millionaires and corporations that added to the deficit. I mean, all this deficit has the years about medicare and medicaid and health one of the first big legislative accomplishment during a unified republican of government is a tax cut for primarily wealthy deficit. Ut add to the host sandy in carrie, north carolina, independent. You, cspan, for having this debate. I appreciate it and i appreciate views. Im a s registered nurse, i see people areas from poor to upper class. Requirements would be good for people to encourage them to them togoals and enable have behavior of regular working schedule, but they also need and a care and food decent place to live. Im a registered nurse with a masters degree and its hard for me to live a decent middle class life. Ousing increased, food has increased, taxes has increased. Social you take away my security after ive been working it just seemsars, like people need to know the ich are getting richer and we are being getting poorer and poorer. Host sandy, may i ask how old are, did you say . Caller i am 53. Host 53. James capretta. Guest when i hear people say they are worried about social away, ty being taken nobodys security is going to be taken away, never going to not even a is possibility. The rhetoric around these things, way, way different from the reality. Question is, how do you adjust the program so that the amount of revenue coming in will for benefits promised over the next several decades . It is short several trillion dollars. Okay. The question is how to close gap, that can be done in a oderated way by slightly adjusting future benefit eligibility for people, especially on the high end. Should get ople less. The benefit should be flattened more than it is, rate of return the high wage people goes down modestly and other way. Stments along the i mean, i think the there is inflated concern about people taking away Social Security. Its not going to happen. Host explain how it works for highincome earners right now. Uest well, highincome earners, as noted already, pay Social Security taxes up to a tab, 125,000 a year right now. 85 ofovers, by the way, total wages in the United States. It is not that much wages, it. Pt from and so they pay taxes on that their entireo that working life, rate of return they get for their highest wages like 15 , for people at low end, the rate of return, that is quite the right way to put it, but return is 90 . Regular hrough the Social Security formula redisstributed. Relative to wages paid in, relative to people on the low end. For is there room, though, more . Guest of course, we should probably make it more would, so thatd i it is better protection on the low end, flatter benefit, everybody would be protected if their income fell, but people that are upper middle class and really dont need to run their resources through the Social Security system. They have plenty of opportunity. We dont have Retirement Crisis in this country. We have more people participating in employersponsored retirement did decades an we ago when dominated by defined goingns, which are mainly bankrupt. People have more secure retire and other governmentsponsored through state and local government and federal government, they are defined Contribution Plans and returns on it are very good. So, i think we should be careful about saying we want to go back pensions, benefit that was disaster, didnt work, was unaffordable and bankrupted companies and so we need to make the Current System even better. Host okay, there is a lot there. Payroll taxall, the cap, used to cover 90 of wages wages. 83 of if you were to actually go back, but coverift the cap, the way it used to, 90 of ages, as reason it has fallen, rising income inequality driven more people income and wealth above that cap. Have 1. 1 trillion more in Social Security and be on way solving fiscal crisis without lifting the entire cap. Want to reemphasize the problem here is rising income inequality and increasing share income is escape anything payroll taxation and therefore were getting less in out benefits. Socials of means testing security, Social Security is universal program, something we all pay into and all get i think it t of and is dangerous, the idea of saying all of a sudden that contract made is not going to be there for people at the top the wealth sne guest it erodes support for the program. Social security is as it is, all of us have a stake in it. Wanda, millington, michigan, democrat. Caller hello . Wanda, you morning, are on the air. Caller yes, im a retired state of oyee for the state michigan and i worked in state mental institutions for 31 years. There are jobs out there that 55 or 56 work beyond because theyre so demanding physically. Me to be on the front line working with unstable attack you at d ica ent unprove unprovocated. Now they want to raise the cap, ake the cap off, the rich can afford it, the poor cant. Not everybody can work until they are 70 years old, if they have a job like i had. I mean, i got beat up, i got cut bit, i got kicked. You tell me i could do that job old, show me years someone who could do that job at a years old and they deserve medal if they can do it. Newcastle, in delaware. Hi, anna. Caller the 717 billion from and thenfor obamacare, they also took 700 billion from to the ecurity to give refugees. I said, they didnt work for it, but certainly we did. And i said, my husband worked and collected very little and went to the hospital edicare when he was because our Employer Paid our said, so urance and i i didnt until 71. Only time and that is he used it when he was dead and hospital, im to the said that he was dead. Worked on him a little bit. Feel that every time we hear anything about and medicare y going down, they never say the damn welfare people are living on for the years. 0 after all those years, did they go on Social Security . Anna, james ght, capretta, your thoughts. Guest im not sure how to react one. Hat Social Security hasnt wasted refugees, not n sure where that estimate came so,m, that is not accurate. The Social Security program, it is true people pay into social return and they get a on what they pay in. There is, however, a lot of redistribution in Social Security, so people should understand the amount they get equal to snt always the amount they paid in. A lot of people pay in, get out in and some people pay get a lot less. Quite a bit of unfairness in that, by the way. Lot of low income people pay in and dont get it out because before they pass draw all benefits. So there should be some looking to make it well, more fair in terms of everybody who gets how much do you get how much you pay in. The big issue here is medicare. Eople have this thing they pay to medicare and draw out basically what they paid in. That is not true. Two parts to it, second part called part b, and cian services outpatient care. 75 of it, 75 is paid by taxpayers, okay, not paid for by recipients, not paid when you p pay a payroll tax. By income taxpayers, who are mainly upper income people. On the a lot of people Medicare Program getting heavily saying that is wrong, peoples understanding, i paid for this, it is not true, for it. Nt pay host and 23 paid by premiums . Compare to part a and what is part a and how is for . Paid guest part a paid for through payroll tax, quite progressive uncapped, so t is even people, no matter how high you pay it. So millionaires do pay it. Nd there is also surtax that applies to people above 250,000 year enacted as part of the Affordable Care act. That is more or less selffinancing at this point, awful lot of redtrib ugz. This is for hospitalization and institutional care. Yes. Host scarlet, democrat, hi, scarlet. Good morning. Host good morning to you, go ahead. Caller thank you very much. I am watching and i watch cspan and thank you very uch, i am updated on most of he information that is shared and the international and at the national level. And thank you. Hat id like to say is that i work with native american socia and reservation for 30 years and im getting medicare. Im very happy with the services im getting. My same time, on behalf of navaho people, those that have limited education, those that have the formal schooling for whatever reason and the 40s the 50s, we still have area in whichthat very medicaid is important for them. Host okay, scarlet, Melissa Boteach. Guest really important point. There is a lot of people who to benefit n able from the economy in the past several years, they either are unemployed, they have lowwage jobs, they are facing other barriers, whether child care, transportation, unstable housing, Substance Abuse or etcetera. When we talk about entitlement hard to divorce that from what is going on in the overall economy for people hard for particularly lowincome people, people of and ethnic l disparity as well as hispanic African American community. When we talk about we need to reform isorm welfare, often code for cuts. And what id like to note, if to raise the minimum wage just 12 an hour, you would food stamps. Ion in you know, three quarters of people turning to programs are working families and so maybe we ead of focusing on how reform programs such that we are taking away benefits from should be talking about policys that create jobs and fair,ake the economy more less of need to turn to programs in the first place. Fresno, california, independent. Caller hello. Host good morning, jim, you are on the air. Caller yeah, okay, im on the air now . Host you are, were listening. Is the okay, here problem. I think what you are doing is it, you know, way i see cspan is a pacifier, people that, they think they will get what they say out there. Here is what you do. Are doing what you and give more, not less to the happen, n, what will recession, but more offered and therefore that will take care of people, one thing happen when we have too much in the housearents give too much to children and they are controlled by their way, ren. But the other they are not controlled automatic, they will say, we dont have any money, we have to cut back. Tougher, but not to the degree end, huge the recession or depression and that more t relating to, give and recession come in more often and take care of itself, you t have to demonstrate it host okay, jim. Republican. A, hi, paul. Caller hi, how are you guys . Quick observation. I signed up for Social Security. I was 70, im a former employer and i cant nation how generous this is. I had a couple things yesterday reflecting that. 3000 a iving almost month and unbeknownst to me, my is rel jibl for 1000 a month to collect off of me. Believe were that generous. Likewise, justice i was with my the large boxe of stores in des moines, iowa, and got held up in line because in of me was a man and a oman, they were clearly immigrants, which nothing, i believe in immigration, however, they had over 200 worth of stamps s and their food wouldnt qualify them for all of this. Capableh looked clearly of working, as somebody that employ people. I stood in line for 10 minutes while they argued and tore apart to get it n order down below what their food stamps would allow them. Generous nation we are. I dont know how much longer we can afford that. Call. All right, our final your final thoughts . Uest so in response to the sort of anecdote, the plural of is hard is in data, it to respond to a story specifically, but in this case, you know, i think there is a lot of unknowns. These people, who are in front f you in line, very possible they are working because most food stamp recipients are disabled, children or working, that is the vast majority of food stamp recipients. You were to raise minimum you would save 53 billion over years, underscores going to rograms are people who are working, who their wages are simply not to make ends meet. Second of all, in terms of immigrants are paying taxes into finance these programs, not like they dont payroll taxes or things like that. They are paying taxes to finance and they could have been citizens. Just because somebody has accent struggling doesnt mean they are not a u. S. Citizen. Host james capretta. An t the caller makes interesting point, he clearly was trying to signal hes benefit, large probably didnt need it and he paid into the Social Security life and probably earned pretty good wage, saved for retirement, that is the for reducing ion size of Social Security deficit. E probably could scale back a benefit for someone like that a tad, not totally take it away solve the problem. You know, hes pointing for the solution here. Make k the other point to is that the country is writing a for a lot of different reasons. We are a pretty big and generous be done it could better, should be. When people have this argument United States doesnt have a social safety net, that is really not true, weve always in need of always improvement and refinement and needs to ntry really think about what do we need to do to have affordable safety net fair, proper work incentives, it is progrowth and affordable. And that can be done. Host james capretta, resident fellow for American Enterprise institute. Melissa boteach, Vice President of the center for american to prosperity pay a livable w. Announcer washington journal continues. Host Seung Min Kim at our table this morning to talk about what Congress Might do on entitlement reform. You recently wrote of pete and its ryan versus mcconnell on entitlement reforms. Whats going on . Guest republicans have not laid out their legislative agenda just yet