Somewhat unique debate on immigration. Explain how and when this will go down. Guest this is one of those things that is where in washington. A bill that is coming to the floor that we dont know what is going to happen. We have been told by Majority Leader Mitch Mcconnell that he has no parameters for this bill. That he is not bringing a specific set of requirements to the floor. He is going to open the door to a series of hills being voted on and lets see if any of them get 60 votes and pass. Bill he is bringing up tonight has nothing to do with immigration. Guest it to be about anything. You can put up a bill about french bread pastries. The whole idea is that the senate does not know what there is a majority to support. Has said, okleader lets bring up all your bordern proposals wall and rollback of some Legal Immigration. Some sort of citizenship for most of the dreamers. But that package on the floor and see if they get 60 votes. If it does not come up with the Democratic Alternative on the floor. Host you bring up the president. What role as the president going to play as this process plays out . Im sure he will be cheerleading from the sidelines. He will be saying i put together this proposal. They be saying the president has generous with his willingness to provide a path for citizenship for 1. 8 Million People who are here undocumented. I think he is going to be on the side. When ity are found comes to these types of deals is that he is not a super handson getting into the nittygritty details. He can kind of just then off to the side and say on twitter, it done. Who is he going to be talking to and representing him on the floor . Guest i think it depends. It certainly will not be lindsey graham. They have had their falling out. He kind of goes back and forth. Sometimes he is very tough and wants to put that out that he is not going to be very tough that hes going to be very tough on these people. Other times he wants to have heart and love. It depends on the day. Host how long is this going to take and what is the path after whatever bill get 60 votes . Guest i have no ideaguest . Part of what is interesting here is that the president has had 13 of 14 different positions on this immigration proposal. My colleague alan gomez documented the story. He is a regular. The issue is that the president has said basically i will pass whatever Congress Gives me. He is also said, i dont want this, i dont want that. Is a senator who has been very close to the senator to the president on immigration. It is possible he is carrying water for the white house. Andnot positive that cotton trump agree on this. It is going to be very interesting to see over the next three or four days. Do they get to a bill that can pass . Can the house follow that bill . Paul ryan has been much more skeptical on whether or not he can no bring a bill to the floor. Host as you are watching the various proposals, what do we know about those proposals . Who is likely to have the most support . Ones is going big to be the president supporter of the wall and security. Dr. Recipients senator durbin from illinois is going to be the Democratic Alternative. He is going to be much more focused on caring for immigrants. Much less focused on order security and the wall. We will see whether either of those to get 60 votes. Host as we are having this discussion, we invite you to join in. A very busy week and washington. Democrats, 202 7488000, republicans 202 7488001, and , 202 7488002. Explain how this budget plan fits into that. Guest is basically a wish list. Here are our priorities. Maybe you can spend a little less on this. Maybe you can move some of the money you have already appropriated and put it toward some of our priorities. It is really kind of an exercise in messaging. It is not a document youre supposed to look at and ink is actually going to happen. This is kind of a thing where look, this is what our priorities are. This is what we would like to see happen. This is not reality. Host what is the white house saying they would like to see us focus on . Guest they say infrastructure. They are doing a rollout today. They want to hundred billion dollars that they say will translate into 1 trillion. They want a focus on that. That is one of the big things they want out of the budget. They want spending on the wall. That is the other big thing. They want to get that money. Those are some of the things they are focused on. Host do budgets matter . Know, over the years, its become less and less relevant because the process in congress is so broken that they dont write the appropriations bills. Congress has just passed its twoyear budget numbers for this year and next year. Theyve already proved what the number will be so whatever the present requests, thats two weeks ago the conversation. Host that can they get written into whats happening . Every budget is a list of thousands of little budgets for all the agencies. The president School Wish List the president s wish list, congress can sit down and see if they have room for that. Is that of the matter that ship has sailed largely for this years budget. We will see where we are next year and keep in mind we have an election he between this year and next or which might host shift things. Are we done with shutdowns at this point . Guest not at all. 23 what they passed last week was a march 23 deadline for the yearlong spending bill which is supposed to be done in september and we are now in march. The real bill is supposed to pass march 23 and of a dozen, we have another shutdown. It will also bring and everything in this budget argument. There is no reason to believe we are out of the woods. March 24 could be another shutdown. Host these are some of the topics we are talking about this week. I want to hear your thoughts and questions. Maryland,p first in the line for democrats, good morning. Caller good morning, im glad. O the subject mr. Singer just mention of the wall and i dont agree with it for a reason. We are moving forward in our country and technologies and science, we dont need a wall, we can use drones which can cover more terrain. Also, the drone being in place would also prevent us from going into eminent domain, taking property from the persons on the borders. Wallresident asked for a but he said mexico will pay for it. And try toeverse it get our taxpayers to pay for it. Country, our sun comes up in the east and goes down in the west. In the eastcome up and go to high noon and go backwards. Lets go forward. We are a country altogether so we need to concentrate on that to get our education, our science and technology. We have more places to spend their money than trying to build a wall. Host we appreciate the call. You can start on the wall and how it plays into the immigration debate in the senate. Guest it is not as simple as simply we will take a bunch of cinderblocks on build a wall 2100 miles across the border. This is a very complex piece of terrain. The president himself has said that we dont need to build a wall the entire length. We could have portions that are protected by a mountain and there can be a fence thats already there. Some of it will be Drone Technology. I think the democrats want to focus more on Drone Technology and other surveillance to solve this problem and not an actual wall. I dont believe the president of the United States, donald trump, can accept anything that is not at least credibly called a wall. He needs to have a picture of a wall that he can say i said i was going to build it. I built it. Host is that your sense . Guest yes, President Trump is very defensive when he says that people are trying to say hes not actually going to build a wall or hes making it smaller. , i did not say it would be the whole border, but we will have a wall. At this point, thats something he came back down on. Travis air force base in california, angel is an independent. Caller yes, good morning. I want to quickly respond to the whole drone thing. I have some background in it. Its not as easy as people say. You have to worry about recruitment and competitive pay for pilots and then you have to worry about the maintenance. On the other subject of immigration host what is your background in drones . I just work around drones, lets just say that. Host is it a military thing . Caller perhaps. As far as immigration, i grew up in south loretto and immigration was never an issue. In south florida. Immigration was never an issue. I dont think a lot of latinos are pro are as proamnesty as many people would think. On the republican side, think thats a failed opportunity to capitalize on it. I dont know anyone who is latino who is proamnesty in my family. A keyd be a key voting thing. That could be part of the Republican Party in 2018, that is all. Host it sounds like you have a military background, what did you think about the spending deal that came about in Congress Last week in the increases for the military and nonmilitary spending . From an independent point of view, not the Military Point of view the independent point of view, i dont think the military increases should come at the cost of scraping the diplomacy side of it. They go handinhand. You are general matus speak about this plenty of times. The diplomatic tools are just as useful as the military tools. As happy as we are to get the increases, i dont think we would like to receive them on or evens of diplomacy the department of education. They all go handinhand. The country means to be funded at adequate levels and as much as we would like to get the increased spending levels, we dont think they should come on the backs of all the other departments that need the funds as much as we do. Host thank you for the call. What do you want to pick up on . Guest one thing that stood up is when he talked about amnesty. I think the definition of what amnesty is and who can get amnesty, i think that will be key to the president and his base. Everyone has a different definition of what amnesty is. Its providing a pathway to citizenship. What some people think the president has laid out his amnesty. I think that argument and being able to define that issue is going to be key for this immigration debate. Guest the funny thing about the president s proposal about this issue is that he has alienated everybody with the proposal he came out with a few weeks ago. You would think the republicans would embrace his proposal. In fact, it was all over the place. Program forthe protecting people from deportation for dreamers, president obama was protecting about 800 thousand but President Trump proposal would be 1. 8 million. People on the conservative side went knots. They said this is amnesty. They said its a vast expansion of amnesty but the president said i would cut Legal Immigration. Then the democrats went knots. Give trump a certain amount of credit. He threw out a proposal that alienated essentially everybody. It had something for everyone to hate which is interesting. Host in terms of bringing people together, heres a picture of Susan Collins in todays wall street journal. She is part of the Bipartisan Group of senators trying to come up with a solution. Where are they and how much does that proposal get . Guest i dont know that they have language yet . Thehas been a key figure in senate over several major debates including the spending debate and health care. Theis trying to do immigration debate so its an opportunity to figure out if there is a Critical Mass in the middle that can come up with a proposal that can generate 60 votes and pass . I dont know where they are this morning or whether they have a legislative text or how many people would buy into it. Does President Trump like dealing with Susan Collins and the other moderates . Guest if you ask in, he says he gets along with everyone great. I think he has had some frustration in the past with his agenda being stifled by the moderates. The issue is not really the moderates. Its that the Republican Party doesnt really have one mindset. There are so many different factors and he tried to get them to come together and President Trump is not a detailed guy. He doesnt say this legislation has to be this way. He wants something to pass that makes him look good and not upset his base. I think is willing to work with people but hes not someone who is setting the agenda. Host you covered congress for a long time. Talk about the history of immigration proposals in the senate going nowhere in the house. Guest how long do we have . The one that will stand out in everyones mind is the socalled gang of eight from 2013. It was what they call comprehensive Immigration Reform. It had a broad series of proposals for dealing with Legal Immigration, ilLegal Immigration, the whole list. Is thatost interesting marco rubio, the florida senator who is gearing up to run for resident was a member of that team. They were negotiating that bill. Then he basically joined the house of representatives in opposing it. To push forward in the house of representatives. The senate hassett and it died in the house and that was the end of it. He ended up still getting pummeled by conservatives for being part of the gang of eight that produced that bill. This time around, we are told he is not involved in these centrist negotiations to come up with a bill. He got burned so badly these stepping away. A taste of how toxic this can be. At one time, marco rubio was the leader to get a deal that ever we could come to an essentially he is now nowhere. Host california, the line for democrats, good morning. Caller good morning, i wanted to throw a different thought out there being a retired person these days. All this moneynd on the wall and try to balance the budget which, of course they dont do. What the republican seem to be doing is saying their longterm goal is to reduce Social Security and medicare. That a like to point out lot of the debt this government has and because they borrowed the Social Security. They have never paid them back. They should start paying them back and not end up forcing Social Security down to pay for a wall or extra military. And everything else. Thats my comment. Guest she brings up a great what thethat republicans and what paul ryan would say is that we have to deal with this entitlement issue. Thats whats really making our budget out of whack. Thats why we are on the trajectory that we are. But at this point in time, its an election year, there is no appetite for wholesale dealing with these issues. Legit that is not going to balance and you have the deficits going out of have a and you Republicancontrolled Congress who under president obama, this is their main thing that we have to deal with the debt and we cant keep doing this to our children. Now its just kind of like we will make it work. We will just give spending and see what happens. This twice. Tried simpsonbowles was a commission that was president ially appointed to figure out a way to bring down the debt. Entitlements are the largest part of the budget and the one that is the most difficult to change. Simpsonbowles came out with a big proposal had to this thing and it went nowhere. Then we have the special committee, the supercommittee in the u. S. Congress that was supposed to come up with a deal for 1 trillion in deficit reduction and it collapsed. There is no shortage of ideas about how to grapple with the longterm cost. There is just no political will to do it. Host after tax reform, was there an opening for entitlement reform to be the next big agenda item or was it always going to be Infrastructure Investment from this white house . Guest this white house has wanted this. Some people argued that he should have tried this first before he did health care. He has been saying that this is what we need to get done. I think they feel this is an issue that appeals to working class, to his base, getting out there and fixing bridges and creating jobs. I dont think President Trump has had much appetite for entitlement reform. Host about half way through our week ahead in washington round table this morning. The phone lines are open. Columbia, maryland is next, democrat, good morning. Caller good morning. I would like to talk in regard to the wall and the environment. Once again, the fact that mexico was supposed to pay for the wall. This is a total waste of time. Our money should be going to the environment. I found it despicable how paul ryan was saying that we have to peopleney to pay for the in texas who dealt with the hurricanes and puerto rico and florida. And not even talk at all about caused those, the impact of Global Warming and Climate Change. And what this president is doing to the epa and what scott pruitt is doing to the environment. Host when you say the money needs to go to the environment, where do you want to see it invested . Where would be the best place . Needs to completely change the epa, put it into the epa and back into science. We are destroying our environment and they are destroying the science. We have to believe in the science we need the infrastructure within the science to know whats going on with our Climate Change. Host do you want to talk about the scott pruitt thing . President trump is kg to his links about Climate Change but he doesnt take it seriously. They are trying to pull out of the paris climate agreement. Think one thing this white house has been effective at is at the epa, they are withdrawing rules, not enforcing so they have been effectively paring back the environmental side that the Obama Administration was doing regarding Climate Change and regarding lowering admission emissions. This administration has had some success rolling back these environmental regulations. The wall and about infrastructure, thats what President Trump wants to do. He wants to make it easier to build so that you dont have these permitting issues. They want to ease back on endangered species and the things you have to take into account when you are holding something especially a wall in the border. They want to roll that back to make it easier for building. We get distracted by the tweet of the day and distracted by whatever headline or controversy of the day might be and what we are missing is this knowistration i dont its actually President Trump, he may not be all that engaged in regulations, but this administration has been extraordinarily aggressive in rolling back not only regulations at the various agencies but in fact, reining in the agencys authorities entirely. Ist you end up with democrats like to keep the horses in the barn and republicans like the houses like horses out of the barn and every four years, the democrats bring in the horses and the republicans let the horses at. Just let the horses out. This administration is bringing in the horses is letting horses out and burning down the barn. It gets largely overlooked because we are so consumed by the tweet of the day. Host bringing it to the infrastructure plan the president is tweeting about today, its not just the 200 billion investment, there is also efforts to streamline permitting. Thats the deregulatory side youre talking about. Guest it is removing government barriers which some people would call government control. Or government protections. It takes a long time to go through the National Environmental policy act to review the impact of a project. Your caller mentioned the environment and i find it hard to imagine that 1000 miles of border wall across the u. S. mexico border will pass an Environmental Review. What do you do . You remove nepa which was established by congress by law. They are trying to roll back the regulations which have a legal basis. There are passed by congress regulate agency xor y, this thing. To get to the bottom of it, they have to convince a court that they are still complying with the law while undoing the regulations. Guest thats what will be difficult. We talk about Building Infrastructure and them doing the streamlining. There are laws so unless they can get congress to change nepa, groups will sue and they will be in court and they will tie up these projects for months and years because they can always argue that you have not met the requirements come you not done sound Environmental Review come you have not addressed this issue. A little slug protected by the endangered species and they have not addressed that. This is years of litigation unless you can change the law. Host the tweet of this morning on infrastructure this will be a big week for infrastructure. We will keep you updated as we go along and we are taking your calls on washington journal. William is in alexandria, virginia, and independent. Caller good morning. Take the president serious when it comes to Immigration Reform. The proposal he has shows clearly that he wants to make sure that Immigration Reform doesnt take place this year. I am really hoping that the democrats will not give in. If they do, it will be a problem for them in november. They might lose a lot of votes. Hope the democrats can fight the president all the way to the end. The American People at the end of the day will see that the president has never ever been serious about Immigration Reform. Host what would it mean to you . What would giving in mean to you . If the democrats allowed the president for hosel to pass through just because the president says he would allow 1. 8 million Illegal Immigrants citizenship, i hope they dont give into that because if they do, it would be like its already in progress. Are benefiting including the president and his family. I hope they dont give into that. Want paul singer, do you to talk about the pressure the democrats are under from their base . Right, thisaller is is a political issue first. And a policy issue second. We are in an election year. We are already facing republicans now trying to figure out whether they will face primaries from someone on their right if they pass something that seems like amnesty for millions of people. This environment has become toxic again for policy discussion because both sides you so what happened to democrats on the shutdown. The democrats did not give in. Toocrats said we will refuse move ahead with a spending bill unless we address daca. Stood their ground for approximately 24 hours and then they caved like a house of cards. Largely the they lost the debate because they did not have a second thing to say. After they said they would not let this go, they had to let it go. Host nancy pelosi stood her ground for eight hours. Guest and got nothing. Attention to draw this issue of the dreamers and it wasnt being addressed in the spending bill or the budget deal and she stood on the floor for eight hours to make that point and got nothing out of it. The next night, rand paul stood on the floor for an hour or so and block the passage of the budget deal, the spending deal in time to avoid a shutdown. He got nothing out of that either. Feed oncoming political the floor of the was congress but its not actually achieving anything. Democrats have to figure out what their leverage is and what they are able to accomplish. They are the minority so are they going to be able to get something done on daca . What type of deal would they be willing to make that would not make them look like they are caving or look like they are working with a president who was unpopular with their base. Thats the issue that democrats have right now is that outside of symbolism, what concrete thing can i actually get done and bring home to their base question mark they are still try to figure that out or they will try to run against this congress and run against the president and said they did not get docket done so elect us and we will fix it. Guest the closer you get to november, the further any democrat wants to be from a photograph with President Trump. There is no upside to shaking hands with the president and agreeing. You mentioned rand paul trying to block that spending bill. He spoke late into the night last week. This is the last minute or so of rand paul from that stand last week. Yes, i want to Strong National defense but you have to ask yourself whether a 20 trillion debt makes us a stronger country or a weaker country. I think admiral milliken said the number one threat to our country is the national debt. Theres a question of whether an insolvent nation can be a strong nation. As we look through this, i think it would be wise that we would look at the spending bill and say, this is not the way we should run our government and we come as republicans, if we really, truly are conservative, we should be putting forward something that is looking for balance of the very least set of going in the opposite way. I would ask the senate to really take a look at themselves, look in the american and say is this really what we stand for, is this what we have been running for all these years, to control government and then be no different than our counterparts across the aisle . Ofay i think is a day reflection but hopefully a day in which there will be some who will say enough is enough, not going to do it anymore. From that second Government Shutdown of the year, the overnight shut down, were there any winners and losers in your mind . Guest not really. I want to say this about rand paul he is a person of true belief. For is not just a stunt him. This is his fundamental philosophical belief and he has a point. The point is fair which is if you look at a pie chart of the budget, governments enormous chunks of it are in medicaid, medicare, Social Security, other entitled programs that are largely untouchable. Then there is the slightly of defensenk spending that is now growing, not shrinking. You with a slice of 600 billion of everything else. Its the rest of the government. You cannot cut or balance the budget by eliminating all of that discretionary spending. It want to any good, it will just eliminate the agencies and put a bunch of people out of work. There is an issue here that he is right. The deficit this year will be close to 1 trillion. Next year, it will be over that. We will do trillion dollar deficits for the next couple of years. Not a suspendable path. The question is, who has the willingness as a leader, as a president or member of congress or as a senator to stand up and say there is a bitter pill of america has to swallow. We are overspent and we have to figure out a way back out. Host this comes on the day that the president is delivering his fiscal 2019 budget plan to congress. Guest and President Trump is certainly not the person who will tell anyone they have to swallow a bitter pill when it comes to the budget. He calls himself the king of debt so this is not something that is close to his heart as far as balancing the budget. The other thing to point out as you were saying, we have these trillion dollar deficits and things of this nature. When the economy is doing well, when we are almost at full employment, this is not a recession so you are spending to get out of a recession. This is is when the economy is going smoothly. So what all of the debt happens if you allow this to continue . Host the president s budget has been delivered, it just happened a few minutes ago on capitol hill. We will show our viewers some of the video of the budget making its way to the long wharf building on capitol hill. Guest i have to get over there. We ar hearing from richard and butler, kentucky. Caller i want to ask two questions. Does ilLegal Immigration cost 134 billion per year . Also, do 24 of the prisoners today come from illegal aliens question mar . I dont know the answer. Guest i dont know about how many prisoners are illegal know how manyont undocumented people, how much they cost the economy. I think it depends on the study. Many people would argue that people who are here and undocumented actually add to the tonomy, actually are helping boost the economy and that they are paying taxes and doing these things. I think it depends on the argument you are making. I dont really know about the crime. There are studies that say ilLegal Immigration does not aree prime rates and they not likely to commit crimes but i really dont know. Illegalhe amount that immigration cost the United States depends on how much the unit sites wants to depend want to spend enforcing immigration. You could to zero and say i dont care. There is no way to put a dollar figure thats as this is exactly the cost of every illegal immigrant coming to the United States. Is what question problemswill solve the of ilLegal Immigration that we want to solve like solving crime and we see people coming here and costing tax dollars and what policies can we implement that would help convert ilLegal Immigration into Legal Immigration that is more useful in prospal and profitable for our country. Host maybe the statistic the caller was referring to is this story from the hill newspaper from may of last year. The department of justice released its first set of data on the incarceration rates of undocumented immigrants. It was ordered by the trump administration. Build a in effort to case for more aggressive immigration laws. That doesnt include state and local prisons. That might have been the statistic the caller was referring to. Next is the line for democrats, go ahead. Caller good morning to you all. Host go ahead. If you look at black and white issues, you need to do immigration compassionately or with sinister goals. I tend to believe, and i could be wrong, that the sinister goals is what we have in mind for dealing with immigrants. I dont believe thats what the country was founded on. We passed a 1. 5 trillion dollar tax cut and i dont understand rand paul and what these guys are thinking. The economy is doing great. We did not need a text cut. They passed a 1. 5 trillion tax and peopleorations who make over 250,000 per year while the people making less than that are out of locked. Out of luck. Its the government, the congress, its dastardly done doing his thing. Things get passed by one side in the middle of the night. The majority of them have not read the bill. Host you are up in the middle of the night covering this. Numberwe joke about the of hours we waste watching cspan coverage waiting and waiting. There is this interesting question. The whole point of a 1. 5 trillion tax cut, as the caller said is it supposed to stimulate the economy to generate more Economic Growth which theoretically generate more tax revenue and pay down the debt. As its been pointed out, the economy is in a strip relatively strong position. The real strange imbalance and wage growth and job growth has been better and stronger the past couple of years. Does that tax cut than help to actually drive Economic Activity . When you lay on top of that another 500 billion in extra deficit spending without any attempt to offset most of it, you end up in this position where a Republican House and senate and white house are channeling 2 trillion in debt into the system. Be able to beto paid for itself . I dont know the answer. Host 10 or 15 minutes left in this segment. You spent a lot of time last week covering some of the fall staffom some of the shakeups on capitol hill. Will that go into this week as well . Guest the issues with rob porter who resigned last week am i think so, i dont think thats over. In the briefing today, Sarah Sanders will have a lot of questions about this. The white house has not given a real timeline of how these events played out. There has been a lot of inconsistencies a story came out tuesday or a story came out saying that rob porter who was , not a highary profile job, but worked closely with the president , this is what it was over. He was accused of domestic. Iolence by his exwives at that time, the white house was still putting out glowing statements about him and then the next day, after pictures had come out saying that one of his exwives had a black guy, they still came out that afternoon, Sarah Sanders, and said he is a man of integrity and we did not ask him to resign. He said he will stay in transition a while. Later on that night after there was an uproar, john kelly, the chief of staff, says Domestic Violence is horrible and i did not know about these new allegations but it doesnt really add up. The timeline does not add up. Bet do expect everyone to on the same page this morning on the timeline . Guest we will see but they werent on the same page over the weekend. Aboutwere varying reports john kelly saying he got rid of rob porter after 40 minutes. As i said earlier, that doesnt necessarily jibe with the timeline and the way the stories came out and with the statements they were giving at the time. Host is anyone elses job in jeopardy right now . Guest there is always speculation about the chief of staff and his handling of this. What plays in his favor is being ef of staff, president being President Trumps chief of staff is a hard job and getting someone to replace and would be difficult. San antonio, texas, go ahead. Regarding the military parade, when i was in the military, nobody wanted ceremonies and parades. The most frequent question and statement i heard was whose stupid idea is this . We were wasting our time and taxpayer money. Number two, if i was still in the military and defending my country overseas, i would be wondering who is defending my country back home. Donald trump will not defend us from the russians. Three, the infrastructure thing, that should have been first on his agenda before he gave all the money to his rich friends and stuffed all that money in his own pocket. He couldve use that money for infrastructure instead. Somethingant to say about the tweet the president sent this morning. About themething terrible waste of 7 trillion rebuilding our own infrastructure. The one thing i will say about that is, a bunch of american soldiers went and died overseas in these wars and i dont think host he said stupidly spending 7 trillion in the middle east. Guest i dont the guy would say stupid about the young men and women who went and died for wars. They were arguably bad wars. We shouldnt be sending our soldiers to those wars or whether we got anything out of this but i would be very careful about using that language to talk about sending our soldiers into combat. The other thing about the military parade is the last one was in 1990 after the gulf war. I was sitting in a diner across from capitol hill. We were sitting there having breakfast and coffee and the table started to rattle because of the jets flying over. They managed to tear up pennsylvania avenue. There will be another Infrastructure Project there. To your first point about the money spent in the middle east, we are still spending money there. These wars are still ongoing. When you say this is money wasted, this is money thats being spent under his watch. I think that is the disconnect of their when you talk about that as far as the military parade. I think this is something this has really bubbled up from President Trump. I dont think anybody was talking about this before this and now you have some people who were like it would be nice to celebrate the troops. Its his brainchild and thats what he likes about it. He really likes tanks and all of that. Www. Cspan. Org is where you can from 1990. Rade it was 10 or 15 minutes worth of a fly over down the national mall. Guest it was in the middle of my break. Host independent from florida, go ahead. Caller good morning, folks. Turning to the national debt, do you think it might be time for us to consider a flat tax for a National Sales tax to pay down that debt . I will hang up and hear what you have to say. Host flat tax or a valueadded tax. Do you have opinions on the right tax plan . There has been a lot of times to talk about a carbon tax or some sort of btu tax which the oldtimers remember it. Bill clinton pushed the house to vote on a carbon tax that was an energy tax on the theory that you both start paying down the deficit and improve the environment because people would want to reduce their emissions and burning of carbons in order to save money on the taxes. Of course, the house voted on it. Was testedg vote bill clinton never forced the senate to vote on it so it died. That was the end of that. There are plenty of tax options out there. They all have pros and cons but if nothing else, it is a worthwhile conversation to have. Is the flat tax a good idea . Tax a goodonal sales idea question mark it penalizes people who are poor rather than richer. All of these things should be on the table for a conversation. What do you want to do about 20 trillion. Home, is in mountain idaho, the line for republicans, go ahead. Caller as far as the military parade, we have one every year and its been going on for 30 years. Host finish your thought. Caller or longer, since i was a kid. , the tanks,ly over everybody. An Army National guard. In the havent airbase city fathers pay for this in appreciation to our military. My father was in world war ii in the south pacific. He was a medic captured on pow andnal, served as a boy, our pride is just overwhelming for our military. If it cost 10 million or more to do that, is it worth it . Caller yes. I think we should do everything we can to show our military that we care. Thats all i have to say. Is in nebraska, a democrat, good morning. Caller good morning. Ive got some facts for you. The caller was questioning whether ilLegal Immigration costs the country money. Ive got a study that comes from a nonprofit in washington, d. C. It was called the federation for american Immigration Reform. Theyve got several facts here, one of them is ilLegal Immigration costs the american taxpayer 134. 9 billion dollars annually. Y broke it down further 116 billion of that is locally. 46ral expenditures billion. As far as people claiming that illegals paid most of that back, courting the to these figures, only 19 billion is recouped. The immigration debate this week, what you think should happen . I dont remember which bill it is or which and iative it is dont think it should be put issue. R with the daca if it is, give these people citizenship for 1012 years. Putso think they need to some money in there for the wall. They need to end this chain migration. The Visa Lottery Program should go. I dont know how it will work out but i hope the republicans stick to their guns or at least the people who want to secure things and do things with the way the law is written. On your statistics, we have the president of the association for immigration last month. Daniel stein is his name. You can watch that segment on www. Cspan. Org. The interesting point about chain migration or family had aion is that we student working on this. One of our interns was working on this. He found out that there are 4 Million People already in cardogs to get their green , family related immigration. It will take 10 years to process those people through the system. Without any other changes in chaination law or ending migration, even if the president said today we will not let more family members into the pipeline, there would still be 10 years worth of current immigration going on well you get processed through the backlog. Story thatmes of the basically the president will offer that as a thing to the democrats. Thats good as it will take 10 years to handle the people already in the system. Its a reminder that behind all these fairly simple policy pronouncements are these extraordinarily complex machinery, is not as easy as it sounds. Host our last 30 seconds or so. Is there thisy machinery behind it in policy, there are real human stories behind this, people waiting in the pipeline and they will have stories to tell and this will affect their lives going forward. I think thats the thing to keep in mind is that they will have stories about how this is affecting their lives. Always appreciate the time. Today, thpr