Transcripts For CSPAN Washington Journal 07122019 20240714

Ranking member of the appropriations subcommittee on labor, health, Human Services and education. He is here to talk about the debate over federal spending and efforts to avoid another Government Shutdown. Off. M going to step ,hat is one small step for man one giant leap for mankind. Host we are just a little over a week away from marking the 50th anniversary of the apollo 11th moon landing. According to a cspan poll, only 8 of americans think we should return to the lunar surface. We are going to dig deeper into the survey this morning on the washington journal, while we also hear from you about your priorities in space. If you live in the eastern, central part of the country, 2027488000. Mountain, pacific, 2027488001. You can go to twitter at cspanwj and post comments there or join the conversation on facebook. Com cspan. Joining us for the conversation the morning is cliff young, president for ipsos. Overall, support nasa but not a return to the moon. Lets take the first part. Poll,ou look at the ipsos 78 have a favorable view toward nasa. What do you make of that number . Guest it is a conundrum. We did a poll the last couple of weeks, naturally representative of the conversation and we put out 20 questions to understand americans understanding of Space Exploration. Lots of good nuggets. A real conundrum. On the one hand, americans value and support Space Exploration. 78 support nasa. Goodsee space as a public and support Government Intervention and in many case, nasa should be involved in space, u. S. Government should be involved. On the flipside, it is not to go to the moon or even mars or even Long Distance sort of unmanned space expiration. It is about being close to earth, doing those things that help our existence on the planet such as monitoring weather patterns and climactic change. We have done that, been there, been to the moon, not so interested in mars. 52 of american support actually using space to better our lives on earth. Host what do you make of the 8 . 8 of americans say a manned moon mission should not be a top priority. The administration has said we are going back by 2024. Guest they are not aligned with public thinks. An Public Opinion has said we have done that, been there. Space exploration is important. We want nasa and the American Government to use space to help our lives here specifically on earth. Closer to home issues. Help us monitor the weather patterns, climactic change, reinforce National Security. Interested in Space Exploration, not interested in going to the moon or mars. Look at the top three responses. What should the United States be doing in space. The top three responses, monitoring earths environment, improving security, and conducting experiments. Guest they are not interested in going and basically going to the moon, to mars as much as using space once again to help our existence on earth, better our lives on earth. Host do you read monitoring earths environment as Climate Change the environment . Guest among americans generally there is a variable meaning. I read it personally, specifically as helping us understand, monitor, identify and anticipate climactic changes in weather patterns. I would not say it is necessarily linked to Climate Change. Host we are asking all of you to call in with your priorities for space policy. Eastern central part of the country, 2027488000. Mountainpacific, 2027488001. We will get to those calls in a minute. Bottomnt to show you the 3 responses in this cspan ipsos survey. Exploration of the solar system, manned mission to mars or the moon. Those were the bottom three responses. How did you ask this question . Guest first and foremost, we were surprised by the results. Reinforcing american values, Space Exploration, but they want to use space to help and better their lives. This question asked a series of possibilities and asked americans to rank what are the priorities. We had Something Like 10 or 12 different priorities. We put them together using qualitative methods beforehand and we asked what is the most important and tick all those important to you. We are ordering the question to get an idea of priority when it comes to Space Exploration. Host jim bridenstine, who will be our newsmakers gassed this sunday, tenneco newsmakers uest will sit down to talk about nasas priorities. Had to say. At he [video clip] things are shifting. I will tell you we submitted the budget request about three weeks ago now and in that budget request, there is a very new direction for our country. The president has issued space policy directive 1 and says we should go back to the moon. I like to say we should go forward to the moon because the way we do it under space policy directive 1 is unlike anything we have done before. We are not going to the moon to leave flags and footprints and not go back for another 50 years. The president said he wants to go sustainably. In order in other words, this time we will stay. We will go to the moon and ailed a coalition of International Partners. We will go with commercial partners and utilize the resources of the moon. In other words, the hundreds of millions of tons of water and ice that have been discovered retire riskoing to and improve technology and take all of that for a mission to mars. That is what is on the agenda. I will tell you the first step in achieving that is continuing of low earthe orbit. We are in the midst of watching many saw the crew dragon docked to the International Space station. By the end of this year, we will theching american First Time Since the retirement of the Space Shuttle in 2011. That is an exciting thing we are looking forward to. We have already completed commercial resupply capabilities and eventually want to get to commercial asian commercialization we think it is important and i know this committee has doubled down on this importance. Nasa should be one customer of many customers in a robust commercial marketplace. That includes launch and habitation and we want numerous suppliers competing on cost and innovation. The reason for this is to drive down cost and increase access and utilize the resources that have been given to us by this body to go to the moon sustainably. With our International Partners and commercial partners to do things that only government can do, that is what nasa should be doing. Host the nasa administrator, our guest on newsmakers. You can watch on cspan. Org or listen with the free cspan radio app. The nasa administrator making headlines this morning in the washington post, cliff young, white house anger over moon mission proceeded removal over official. A removal of William Kristol mayer, a clear sign the white house is increasingly frustrated with the agencys efforts to return humans to the surface of the moon by 2024. We are asking all of you to tell priorities as we look at the ipsos poll. What are your priorities for space . Caller forget the moon. Ats go to mars and start colony. This will ensure the survival of the human race. To joe in newgo jersey. Good morning, your priorities . I cannot believe that poll. It shows you how stupid the American People are. Arent we going to another . Ection of the moon trying to mind and do different things. China, italy doing other things, russia as well. The second priority for myself is not an american mission, but an International Mission for mars would include the European Space agency, japan, russia, ourselves. I believe that would bring the world closer together. As Neil Armstrongs mission to the root mission to the moon did. What are we lacking right now besides math in our education . Science, make people want to be scientists. We need to do those things and i think to just shut it off is ridiculous. Guest what we know generally is that americans are very much 80 of americans believe Space Exploration is essential for technological and scientific discoveries. It is key and americans believe that. More generally, they see space and Space Exploration as a collaborative effort and they believe it is much better, 70 of americans believe the United States should do it with other countries in cooperation, they should not go it alone. The question is are the priorities we talked about already are they leading or lagging indicators . Right now americans are not in favor only 8 of going to the moon relative to other priorities like monitoring weather patterns on earth. That is not to say a president like trump or jfk more than 50 years ago who framed some sort of grand objective grand goal for america cannot change Public Opinions priorities. Today what we are saying is american see Space Exploration as essential. Space is a public good. 52 of americans believe space should be treated as a protected wilderness. Usingre concerned with space today for concerns on earth to improve life on earth more than going to mars or the moon. Once again, that can change. Host and it all costs money. When you ask the question about nasas budget, look what you found out. The you ask is 21. 5 billion right amount, 50 said yeah. And you asked as a percentage of the total budget, 49 said yeah, that is about right. 56 said that sounds about the right amount. Guest we framed the budget issue differently to see americans general support and whether it varies. If we get the total amount or less than 5 of the National Budget. Americanse overall is are in favor of what being spent now or more, but it is sensitive the way we frame it. 24 20. 5 billion, thats a lot. Host what about when you ask too much, too little . Guest that is what seems really varied. Specifically, if you take not spending enough plus spending right, independent of how we asked, a vast majority of americans are in favor of expenditures on Space Exploration. When we put it into percent, less than 5 , 41 think we are spending too little. The overall message is americans are really supportive of the amount of money being spent on Space Exploration and depending on the way you frame it, they might be more in favor. It, is the benefit worth what did you find out . Guest a big chunk of americans think it is worth it. 58 of americans think it is worth it and they try to think they can keep the spending spending on nasa, keep it at the same level or increase, only 14 are in favor of reducing it and thisg it over or ceding response ability to the private sector. Government in americas minds has a role in Space Exploration. That there is say not a role for the private sector. Nasa and government has a key role collaborating with other countries and driving forward the Space Exploration agenda. A look at this chart from the government. This is 1958. Is 2019. Line look at how nasa budget went up in the 60s and how it has gone down and up and is on the way back up in our current year. Take a look at how americans and your government has viewed nasa over the decades. What are the priorities . Larry in new york, good morning to you. Caller hi. Is we have money to go to the moon, but we dont have money for a wall . Why not invest money in gml and feed the world gmo and feed the world . Our allies want to go to the moon. We can get technology from them when they get back. Host gary next in orchard park, new york. Caller yes. I am opposed to the hundreds of billions of dollars that have been spent over the years for the Space Program to me is the new version of the militaryindustrial complex. We already have the pentagon nowing their chops right over arming space, putting weapons in space, competing with many of the other countries in the world such as russia and china. What we have here in my opinion is another complex of nobid contracts for huge american corporations that profit from it. If anything comes out of it such as a new device, it is not licensed to corporations, it is given to corporations and if you look at congress, the same type of people that have funded blindly the militaryindustrial complex, it is the same characters are behind pumping more billions into the Space Program. Host cliff young. Guest i was going to respond from gary and larry because they are both against it, they are in the minority. A majority of americans are in favor of spending public moneys on Space Exploration. Obviously there is nuance we can talk about, but there is broadbased support for Space Exploration on the one hand and specific funding for nasa on the other. Host lets talk about privatization brought up in those comments. When you asked about it, how did you ask and what answers did you get . Guest we ask in a couple different ways. Do you agree or disagree Space Exploration should be the sole or primary sponsor billy of the private sector. Wording to that effect. Only 27 of americans are in favor of Space Exploration being the providence of the private sector. We ask in another way where we just apply juxtapose nasa. Only 14 in favor of that. That is not to say americans arent in favor of a robust range between public and private, but the Space Exploration agenda should be pushed by the government and more specifically by nasa. Ask republicans and democrats about privatization, what did you find and what did you think of the numbers . Variability. D some democrats are less in favor of privatization. Republicans more so. That is very much aligned with the way republicans and break down and all issues related to the government. Smallicans are much more government oriented, publicprivate partnerships and other related arrangements. Democrats are much more state centric and believe much more in a robust interventionist government and it is not surprising the numbers specifically that we found in the poll. Host did you find 47 of republicans disagreeing with privatization was high . Guest higher than average. Going back to the initial points i was making, space across party. Ines is seen as a public good it is seen as an asset, a natural asset that should be, on the one hand curated, but also taken advantage of by the government in collaboration with other governments. It is higher than what you wouldve thought, but the differences in terms of party id makes sense given the differences. Host we covered a hearing this past week of a Senate Commerce committee and there was a representative of commercial spaceflight there and he talked about how nasa can and should privatize some of its operations. I want to show our viewers and get their reaction. [video clip] whenever possible, nasa should award multiple competitively chosen agreements to commercial partners willing to put up private cac capital at their own risk. That will replace any need for the costly micromanagement and basedcracy of typical far contracts. It allows for greater diversity and much lower Strategic Program risk. None of this will be easy. Commercializing low earth orbit will be hard. Human travel to than moon is hard. Mars will be harder still, but with even greater rewards as we explore a different planet and its moons. American industry is ready to help nasa chart and affordable and sustainable path into this challenging future. This month, it is natural to venerate the past, but we should be proud of the great new things we are achieving today and what we can do together tomorrow if we build a True Partnership between government, including congress and the American People and their enterprise. Host back to our conversation with all of you and cliff young at our table. Teresa in michigan, good morning to you. Host caller good morning. I think it is just another way for donald trump to get hooked up with putin and i disagree with that. I think putin ought to be shunned all the way and they ought to take care of the roads in america, Climate Change, and invest the money here instead of giving it to the rich folks and their tax breaks. Host juan in miami, florida. Good morning. Are you with us . Caller hello . Host you are on the air, sir. Go ahead. Caller i had a quick question about the framing of the question. I see a lot of the problem constantly is regarding the amount of money we are spending on space, but people dont seem to notice we spent 600 billion on defense. How do you explain to people we should be spending more on space and less on weapons . Host how did you frame the question . Guest that is a great question. Americans are fuzzy on the size of the National Budget, what is discretionary and nondiscretionary. It is a hard sort of thing to ask questions on. What we did specifically, we did not juxtapose this as a choice of defense versus space, we just straight up asked are you in favor of the amount being spent, 20 1. 5 billion or less than 1 of the National Budget and what we saw, as i was saying before, people are more in favor of spending the same or more if we put it into percent versus total dollars. That said, it would have been interesting if we had juxtaposed it visavis the defense budget, but we did not do that. Host john in alabama. Caller good morning, how are you doing . Host good morning. What are your priorities for space . Caller my priorities for space are definitely exploration. My comment was what many people dont understand is if we let other countries go to outer space without us, it diminishes our technological edge in the world and leaves the United States at risk of losing our edge in economy. Going to outer space gives us an overall edge and helps the health of our citizens is basically what i wanted to say. Aboutwhen you asked folks Space Exploration, you ask them several questions, allow scientific and technological discoveries, encourages young people. Why did you ask those types of questions . Guest we wanted to get a granular and more qualitative understanding of idea of peoples understanding of space. I made this point a few times, broad support for Space Exploration, understanding that it contributes significantly to technological discoveries, it encourages rodbased, wide based believe it encourages math and science study among young people, students, young students. Americans are not against Space Exploration. It is an issue of what are the priorities . Basically today are using Space Exploration to better our lives on earth, less about going to the moon or mars. That said, they are very much in favor of not going it alone. They would rather we work with other countries. They believe not only does it enhance peace and cooperation, but the best way to advance the Space Exploration agenda is working with other countries. Host take a look at the numbers when the cspan ipsos paul asked those surveyed if they agreed Space Exploration allows scientific and technological discoveries, 80 agreed with that statement. Is, it allows 63 said it a means to understand Climate Change. 66 said contributes to science resulting in advances to health care. Of say improve understanding the human body. Host we are trying to get an understanding from a qualitative perspective how much americans value Space Exploration and that says it all. There is broadbased majority or even super majority support for what is being done. They see the benefits. Should be ina space, they should not go it alone, space is a public good and it should be a collaborative effort with other countries and not a singular effort, which is super interesting because we are celebrating the 50th anniversary of the moon landing and the moon landing really was about american exceptionalism, beating out the russians in the space race and the space race in general. It is burned into our memories and our imagination and it was really about going it alone, showing the world we were number one, that democracy would triumph over communism, et cetera. America sees space much more as a collaborative effort, much more so than 50 years ago. Host usa today notes the pole in the six 1960s versus the pole where 8 of americans say a man to moon mission should be a priority at a gallup poll in 1965 found 39 of americans said United States should do Everything Possible regardless of cost to be the first nation on the moon. Guest yeah. A leading orinion lagging indicator . Should leaders set the agenda or follow Public Opinion, very Interesting Data point. What we know specifically looking at the polls across the board at the time, it was very much linked to the notion of american exceptionalism and a key sort of symbolic event when it came to the race against russia. Host we are asking all of you to tell us what your space priorities are this morning. Easterncentral part of the country, 2027488000. Mountain, mountainpacific, 2027488001. On this idea of going back to the moon, apollo 11 flight director jean krantz was testifying this week and this is what he had to say about the future of u. S. Space policy, want to get our viewers to react to this. [video clip] for the past several weeks i have done dozens of interviews. Many reporters have questioned should be go back to the moon . Should we go to mars directly and skip the moon . Can we do it again and why havent we done it already . All good questions. Should we go back to the moon, the answer is yes, no question. Thee are opportunities lindner industry would provide. Ur industry my answer, can we do it again and why havent we done it already is much more complex. That is why i am here today, to offer some perspective based on my experience as a leader of one of the spaceflight teams which accomplished president kennedys 1961 mandate to land an american on the moon and return him safely to earth. The 1960s were not dissimilar to where the nation is today. President kennedy faced a confident soviet union and a Sleeping Giant in the peoples republic of china. We are at the beginning of the vietnam war and the domestic turmoil over civil rights is building. Goal was timely and masterful and utilizing the challenge of Space Exploration to unify our nation and demonstrate the technical capabilities of the United States. Today we have many of the same issues although one critical and important element is missing. Kennedys mandate was the impetus, but there was a National Unity that assured our success. I believe today in our country, unity is necessary for great efforts and is lacking within our country, our government, and the space industry. We have an administration that is strongly supportive and willing to provide the resources. We have an agency charted to do the mission, toplevel leadership in place and a very capable workforce, but each of these segments are philosophically divided on the goal. There is infinitely more technological capability than in the early programs, but there is a lack of focus and prioritization. I believe the general support for space and a desire to see our nation continue will continue, but without unity, the Space Exploration program will be grounded. Host what do you make of the last part, without unity . When you think about the pole ipsosn this boss thi did . Guest super majority support, we rarely see that today. It is highly polarized. We have very few symbols in the United States right now that unify and rather, most of them divide. 50 years ago, the landing of the moon and the effort it took to challenge jfk the challenge jfk put forward to america during the heart of the cold war thesee unifying event images are burned in our minds when we saw them specifically the day of. Maybe that is what America Needs today. On mark most issues, democrats are going to divide highly partisan tribal huge differences. This could be the unifying agenda. There are elements in the pole that suggest it could be again. Host one of the overarching themes of the pole shows up when you ask surveyors about their attitudes toward nasa. 78 of a favorable view of this agency. We are asking all of you to tell us what your priorities are. Danny in maryland, good morning. Go ahead. Caller i think if we are going. O go, we should go bold lets build a permanent space and lets have cspan put an office up there and the host can rotate every couple months from space. You could float around with your coffee, that would be cool. Move on. Will david in michigan. Caller thank you very much for taking my call. I am very much in favor of unlimited budget. As long as they explore the oneway travel, line up all the republicans, put them in a spaceship, send them into space and leave them there forever. What a beautiful america we would have with no republicans. Host you did ask people if they are willing to travel to space. Guest without a doubt. Host what did you find out . Guest we found a significant chunk of americans, 31 would love to travel there. That includes me, i would take my whole family if i could for spring break. Pedro, byhost and the way. Guest your background instead of the capital, it could be earth that would be cool. 31 of americans interested in space travel. Host millenials, 40 said they would. Gen x, 43 . Guest it is for the young. Boomers want to stay close to home. I think the young are adventurous and they want to go to space. A third of americans would love to travel to space. Lets go to john in new jersey. Caller my comment is they have people like elon musk hello . Host we are listening. Musk went ahead and teslais rocket with his car and rich millionaires should. E allowed to go out of state i dont think nasa has the stomach to go to places like mars or any other place because thatrely on Old Technology we should be investing and more in a uptodate rockets like elon musk had. If you send up a politician, i have one in the white house we can send also and his family. A lot of partisan talk, setting up half the United States and our current president. Americans are not in favor of Space Exploration being the that is not to say they dont believe there should be a they still believe this is an agenda to be driven by the government, that it is a public good. 52 of americans believe space should be a protected wilderness. Humanity orurce for two humanity and they dont want to have the private sector being the sole entity responsible for Space Exploration. Host elon musks name coming up when you think of space. Who are the astronauts or people who have top name recognition and what about these billionaires like elon musk and jeff bezos and their attempts to get to space . Guest i wonder if he has seen our pole. Basically ask a series of questions on familiarity with astronauts and nonastronauts and individuals linked to Space Exploration. Number 1 and 2 are Neil Armstrong and buzz aldrin. Less known, mark kelly, a more recent astronaut superstar. All fairly well known, but especially that first moonwalk burned into the american imagination. 52 . At 57 and musk at cognitively,st that cognitive map americans are, cognitive figures there front and center. Host you mentioned privatization versus government involvement. The Trump Administration wants to get back by 2024. This initiative to create a space force. I want to show our viewers what the president had to say in february announcing this directive to create a u. S. Space force. [video clip] america must be fully equipped to protect our vital interests. Undermine our security and space and they are working hard at that. That is why my administration recognized space as a war fighting campaign and made the creation of the space force a security. I think we will have great support from congress because they supporting they support one where we are talking about such importance and a lot of the generals and people involved speaking to congress and we have very interesting dialogue going on. We are investing in new Space Capabilities to project military powers, especially when it comes to safety and defense. Develop a legislative proposal that will establish the structure and authority of the space force as the sixth branch of the Government Armed forces. Saucein the new cspan if poll, we asked people if they support space force. 30 had no opinion. What do you make of this result . Guest it is not front and center. It is being talked about on a policy level among elites and people in the beltway, but it is not front and center and we will see the data, there is a difference in support among democrats and republicans. Republicans being much more likely to support defenserelated issues. Even though it is low familiarity, not well known or familiar, National Security is the number two priority for americans when it comes to Space Exploration. It is front and center as a priority. Space force more specifically is not on the radar. People are more worried about breadandbutter issues. It is not something they paid attention to. Who like thiss idea if they sell it as a National Priority they see it as a concern, but they are not paying attention to it right now. Host your priorities for space policy . Caller number 1 good morning, greta. I am a long time caller since the beginning and i love your program. It is the best thing that has happened in communications. We thinky number 1 of ourselves as visionaries. We are totally off base. We are not thinking out far enough. What people dont realize is from what we know now, our planet is going to be soaking up the sun and we will become stardust unless we get off this planet, the human species is not going to survive. As far as Climate Change goes, it is going on forever and the only way we have been able to survive is to adapt and i think that is where we should be spending our money, not on trying to cool the planet down. I would like to see what your guest thinks about my comments about the number one priority. Guest that is an interesting point. I dont know what the timestamp is on being sucked into the sun. I think it is a billion years. People see the priorities for Space Exploration being closer to earth. I am not saying that is right or wrong. They see it, broadly speaking, as important for scientific and technological discoveries, education, et cetera. About the priority is closer to earth today rather than longterm distant Space Exploration. Host john in franklin, tennessee. You are next. Caller can you hear me ok . Host we can. Wants to go too the moon, i think he could play enough money to go to the moon playing poker. He has the worlds greatest poker face. I am a child of the 1960s and a psychologist. I have noticed always the exception in our International Relations with russia around space. At times get hot and times get cool, but we continue to cooperate a lot about that and that meet that leads me to believe a lot of ways to solve our tension would be to expand the Space Program to include china and other countries so we all have our values aligned and we are rooting for the same people in space. It kind of representatives of our planet. The second thing. I was in school during those years and one of the things that happened was a tremendous emphasis on basic Science Education and i can tell you being a little kid in those rooms, it was exciting. Science is a mystery and unfolded and to this day, it is a big part of my life. Go ahead with your last point and then i will ask my question. Caller thank you, greta. The last thing i was going to say is i am not a big fan of commercialization. I think we have made a mess of things here on earth. You have heard the metaphor many times about space spaceship earth, how we are a selfcontained Environmental System and we have not taken good care as a group. It has been kind of every man for himself and i would hate to see that extended out into space with some of the same consequences we have had here on earth. Caller you said you are a child of the 1960s. Let me ask you a question the polln if sauce ipsos cast. Did you ever consider being asked to not . Being you ever consider an astronaut . We lost him. We are not going to get the answer to that. I am assuming he is a boomer, so 18 . I am sure it was much higher back in the day, but they have gotten on with their lives and grown older and forgotten about childhood aspirations. 23 of americans at one time or another thought about becoming an astronaut. Is an age thing. I think it is much less generation and much more age. Being an astronaut and going to space we look at the stars and most americans have seen one sort of cosmic phenomenon or. Nother such as a Solar Eclipse we aspire and imagine going into space and as we get older, we go to school and graduate and get jobs. We have kids. We forget our childhood aspirations and dreams. Host floyd in jonesville, virginia. Good morning to you. Caller thank you for taking my call. I think we need bigger and better satellites than the enemy has got. It was be it would be good to be ahead of them on that. Something i heard brought up yesterday is ufos. They call them ufos, but they are identified in the bible in ezekiel, chapter one. Ezekiel identified them. They are vehicles the angels travel in. Angels dont have wings on their back, they have those vehicles to travel in. 18006134645 and order the bible. Guest 54 of americans believe in aliens and 29 believe they visit earth. I think he is in the majority believing aliens exist that is what our policy as. Caller how did you just host how did you decide what questions to ask . Who did you consult with . Guest with cspan. We went over the polls that had been done on the issue of space over the last 30 years or so. We did an initial analysis, sort of a discovery phase. We have done some of this in the past and came together with a compilation of those things we thought were essential to understand Space Exploration and also interesting. Host lets go to felix in michigan. Caller good morning. I agree with most americans in viewing Space Exploration as a collaborative effort. I also believe this should not be limited to the wealthiest nations and funds should be given to third world world nations to develop their Space Programs and the human race should have represented ofs from every continent on space in the iss and other endeavors. What are your thoughts on that . Guest i think your attitudes obviously,anular, but most americans are in favor of cooperation when it comes to Space Exploration. The specifics of the flavor of it, we did not ask specifically, but at a 30,000 foot level, your attitudes are pretty much aligned with what people think. Host go to vermont, jason is watching. Your priorities for space. Caller thank you, greta, for taking my call. I just think with the amount of money this country spends on taxes and revenue collected, i heard the other day 1 of our budget is given away to other countries and nasa gets less than half a cent per penny on the dollar. When you look back 50 years ago, the inventions we still used today ranging from miniature phone,batteries, miniaturized everything, basically, space blankets, the inventions go on and on and i just think the overall attitude of this country is down and Something Like that could possibly bring us together like it did in the 1960s. Host lets hear from richard in grove city, ohio. 76 years oldlike and i have been an advocate of the Space Program for decades. The most disappointing thing to me is when they got rid of the saturn five. The next thing we ended up knowing was nothing was really happening for the most part in the next 50 years. It is like we stopped growing and stuff like that. I kind of shifted my focus and started making investments in private companies in the space industry and stuff like that and i think that is the way to go. Somebody like elon musk is a visionary and the problem with the u. S. Governments policy is every time you change administrations, for crying out upd, the next thing you end knowing is one administration does not want to follow so you have inconsistency of programming desires. It is hard to believe 50 years later we still cannot decide whether we want to go to mars or the moon. Host when you make these investments in these companies caller airlines that fly around the world now, for crying out loud. When an airplane goes down in the middle of the indian ocean or something, now they know where it went down, for crying out loud. Companies, ar joint american Canadian Company and stuff like that, apparently they have a contract to build the shuttle that is supposed to go from the earth to the moon and use solar electric propulsion, i guess. When it comes to propulsion, that is the key to getting farther in space and i think it is long overdue. Why dont we have nuclear why dont we have Nuclear Rockets anymore . Was already thinking about Nuclear Propulsion on the top of the saturn five rocket. Anyway, yes, i like the interchange between nasa and the private companies because taxpayers dont necessarily want to pay the money. Host what do you make of it . I think americans are in agreement that there should be a robust Space Exploration agenda. It should be cooperative in nature. On the one hand with other countries which you can pull resources. On the other hand with the private sector. That said, they still see space as a public good and that there is definitely a role for the government and it should be central. Host jim from illinois, good morning. Caller i just wanted to say thank you for bringing up this issue on cspan and i think it ofnoteworthy that instead asking to have people identify themselves by their political that asion, cspan sees really not being relevant to this discussion. That is because space is still, by and large, a very bipartisan issue, which something that is a real rarity in this day and age. From my perspective Going Forward, i would like to see more along a path that supports the commercialization of space. Most of the advancements we have had are a direct consequence of the commercial opportunities that have presented themselves, particularly with regard to remote sensing. If you go to the website for the United Nations committee on the peaceful uses of the United States outerspace, they go through a long list of the ways in which everyone on planet earth is benefiting from Space Technology and giving the budgetary pressures on nasa and the numerous studies that have found that when nasa procures items commercially rather than developing them inhouse, they save substantially from a budget point of view and windows same items are procured in the commercial marketplace, that actually builds us a stronger economy in that area because the products are then available for other businesses to purchase. Host cliff young, any thoughts . Guest again, a lot of what he is saying resonates, but americans see space as a public good. There is a role of government. The most credible actor right now is nasa, but the polls say there should be a broad collaboration with other countries and the private sector. Host a headline in the washington times, even 50 years later, Lunar Landing skeptics plague nasa. Suspicions arose even as the Lunar Landing was taking place. Conspiracy theorists said it was an elaborate hollywood style production created on a soundstage on earth. The polls have consistently shown 5 percent to 6 of americans believe the moon landing was faked. 6 . T our poll showed it is small in terms of percentages, but volume, 20 million plus americans that dont believe the Lunar Landing took place. Host take a look at it when you break it down by age. 15 to 34yearold said 9 of them thought it was fake. It goes5 to 49, 11 and back down if you ask 50yearolds to 64yearold and over 65, 2 . Guest it is all about proximity. The vast majority of americans believe in the Lunar Landing. For them, that is fact, not fiction. There is an age relationship. Individuals, americans who are younger are not as proximate. They did not live through it or have their parents talk about it. With my parents talking about the landing, i have a picture of from thesigned picture moon of earth at my house. The younger you are, the less likely you are to have that experience. The vast majority of americans believe the Lunar Landing did happen. Host what did you find out if you asked people if they watched the apollo 11 moon landing . Guest that is interesting. Going back and callers have been talking about either Richard Jason talk about Space Exploration being one of the few unifying binding events or things, especially the Lunar Landing specifically. It is the opinion me of the ultimate example of american exceptionalism in the heart of the cold war. As proximity is decreasing baby boomers die off. Younger people enter the adult population, our proximity has increased. 91 of 65 or baby boomers have watched the date of the Lunar Landing. 69 of millennials and really. Eflecting on this point at least in my mind, lived through it that image is burned in my memory, my imagination. Younger people dont have that experience or proximity. I think that is telling for a polarized travel world we live in today. We dont have those symbols that unite and bind. Host for folks who want to learn more about the apollo 11 Lunar Landing, cspan will be focusing on it next weekend on book tv and history tv. You can go to our website for more information. Remi in texas. Good morning. Caller good morning. I agree with the woman from michigan who said that we could better use that money for infrastructure to help our own country first. Donald trump said he was going to give a break to the middle class, he never did. He just want i believe that money could be better spent on a lot of things down here. The deficit needs to be paid at least what we owe on the deficit and i disagree with all not going to help the American People. Host let me just end by asking you, if you are a lawmaker and the administration, what should you be paying attention to in these results . Guest if you have a space agenda, and they do, i would be excited and i would be encouraged by how americans value Space Exploration. I am a professional pollster. I always think Public Opinion is the most important thing. What i can say and do believe probably his mark when it comes to the agenda, it is probably more of a lagging indicator rather than a leading indicator. Us topace can do for bring america along. There is a lot of support for Space Exploration, which is good for any sort of space agenda. Host if you want to learn more about the cspan pole, go to cspan. Org. At the very top right hand corner there is a rotating box. Click on that and you can find more about the pole. Cliff young, thank you for the conversation this morning. Guest thank you. Host when we come back we will turn our attention to congress. We will be speaking with two members of congress. And wedee of michigan, will ask him about a vote on the floor today for that 9 11 Victims Compensation fund. That is taking place today on the floor. Later on, a top member of the appropriations committee, republican congressman tom cole of oklahoma. We will be right back. Here is what is coming up this weekend on book tv. Inurday at 1 30 eastern, anticipation of the 50th anniversary of the apollo 11 moon landing on july 20, astronaut buzz aldrin recalls his life and career, as well as the Lessons Learned along the way in his book no dream is too high. James donovan took viewer phone calls about the space race and the 1969 apollo 11 mission from the 2019 Los Angeles Times festival of books. Shoot for the moon. Douglas brinkley recounts president kennedys commitment to space expiration and the 1969 moon landing in his book american moonshot. Charles fishman recalls the efforts of over 400,000 men and women responsible for sending american astronauts to the moon in his book one giant leap. Sunday at 9 00 eastern on afterwards, joy and read argues that President Trump is damaging american democracy in her new book the man who sold america. Shes interviewed by sophia nelson. Im surprised people elected on the sheer scream of the eign iny, rieg this president. So he will not take my rights away as a woman. This president so he will stop the horrors of the border. The democrats come in, and they say we will go to court for his taxes eventually. We will wait to hundred days. At 10 00 eastern, Ashton Carter reflects on his career. His book is inside the five sided box. We have to stick up for ourselves. China is a communist dictatorship. When they come to the business scene, they bring a combination of political, military and economic tools that societies like ours dont have. Cook is on cspan2 every cspan2 book tv is on every weekend. Washington journal continues. Host we want to welcome congressman dan kildee, democrat of michigan. Headline onbout the the front pages of the newspapers. Retreats onresident effort to add census question. He announced he intends to order every federal agency to give records to the Commerce Department that details the number of citizens and noncitizens in the United States. Guest the idea that the president was going to defy a decision by the Supreme Court, i think, was questionable in the first place. We dont know how he intended to do that. He insisted he was going to. He went down this path. It was a mistake to go down this path. He failed in the Supreme Court made it clear he did not approach this in the right way. Now that he just announced, according to everything hwe kn ow, the policy was already in place and its already provided to the Commerce Department. Housethe speaker of the announced she will attempt to finalize a deal that would raise the debt ceiling in the next few weeks instead of delaying it until the fall. Can you tell us what it is she would like to do and why it is necessary . What are the specifics . Guest the problem is the debt ceiling, the debt limit will be reached sooner than was originally anticipated. It could be as early as the beginning of september when we would reach the limit of our ability to borrow to continue to provide funding for the government. The thought initially was that the debt ceiling increase and the decision on budget caps which allows us to continue to operate without these automatic sequestration cuts, and a big deal starting in october would be rolled into one deal. It looks like that is not going to be possible now. In order for the government to not default on our obligations we have to increase the debt limit and give the Treasury Department the flexibility to issue debt to keep the Government Operations rolling along. Secretary mnuchin made it clear he needs to see some action. I think we actually are on the same page. It was referred many members that we roll all this into one big deal because essentially that gives everyone more leverage in the conversation. The worstcase scenario is the United States default on its obligations. The speaker is making it clear she will do everything she can to come to an agreement on the debt ceiling and try to get that by itself. Perhaps in concert with budget caps, but potentially just by itself before we recess at the end of july. Host explain the budget caps negotiation. Guest we have to have an agreement to increase defense and nondefense spending. If we dont and we appropriate beyond that, automatic budget cuts are triggered at the beginning of the calendar year. Socalled sequestration. That is a scenario when it was agreed to nearly a decade ago it was considered a scenario so the that congress across spectrum of ideology would do every thing it could to prevent that from happening and to for some budget discipline. We continue to budget beyond those original camps required, we have to increase the caps did not increase automatic spending cuts. Its a complicated route goldberg device designed in 2011 to bring some financial and fiscal discipline. It has just created some speed bumps for us as we go through the process. Host where are the negotiations . Guest the thought was they would roll into october 1 deadline. Because we have to move more quickly on the debt ceiling, it could be those are accelerated as well. Host you are part of the whip team. You helped get the votes for whatever the speaker wants to put on the floor. Where are the votes for the clean debt ceiling vote . Guest thats a good question. The difficulty is this often becomes a partisan question. I think the responsible approach, the increase in the debt ceiling means we will find a Government Fund a government obligation. There are very few members who would say i want to default on our obligations. It is often used as leverage in budget conversations, but in party, wethe majority have a responsibility to do the responsible thing. I think we can put votes together for something that is fundamentally necessary as making sure we dont default on our obligations. Host how do you do that when you have got a headline in drudge that says federal spending smashes records. Budget deficit widens 23 . Guest this is a combination of factors. No one can ignore the fact that in 2017 republicans alone pushed through the biggest tax cut in the biggest shift of wealth from working people to the people at the very top in our history. The Congressional Budget Office at that time said this would not pay for itself. This would increase the deficit. There is responsibility that comes with those decisions. We cant just say we will do tax cuts, which is what the Republican Leadership did, but that accepting the fact it will have an impact on the deficit. We have to look at spending and revenue. More importantly, any time we have been able to get to a balanced budget it has been as a result of really robust growth. Growth that spreads across the economy. Sometimes we have to carefully invest to get ourselves into a position where we are back in balance. Myself and many members have been pushing a significant Infrastructure Investment as a way for us to nominally take not only take care of our tivity, but stimulate the economy in a way that translates significantly into increased earnings for working people. When they have stronger spending power the economy is supercharged. It has a result ultimately of reducing our debt. Crawfordsville, indiana. Independent. Caller thank you for connecting me. I work for the project focused on global i want to ask the representative about the budget. To much is allocated addressing global poverty . The International Affairs budget. Do you think that amount is enough . Thank you. Guest thanks for the call. I dont have the specific number. A false a debate, debate about if the United States should be investing overseas in other countries. People facing abject poverty for example. We have a moral obligation because we are the wealthiest nation on earth to make sure the wealth we have is not just something we hoard, but we recognize we live in a Global Community and we have an obligation to help those who are less fortunate. Even if the moral argument is not strong enough, think about was happening right now at the u. S. Border. There are a lot of questions about how we ought to deal with the border issue. One thing that is absolutely for sure, for certain is people traveling from guatemala, from el salvador, from honduras are fleeing conditions that are probably driven by violence, partly by abject party and they are looking for a way forward. I think it is in our economic interest and are policy interests and National Security interest and a moral obligation to try to do what we can to make sure the people in that part of the world have opportunities. I was disappointed that the president stepped away from direct support to that part of the western hemisphere, the northern triangle. Thisfueled what is now really strong desire for people to flee the area. The caller makes a good point. There was a moral obligation to support those who were far less fortunate and living in the kind of party we have never seen in this country. There is a really Significant National selfinterest in making sure we support those places. Sometimes that point gets lost. Host remind viewers with the house passed on the border. Guest this was a difficult vote for many of us because i ended up supporting what was the senate compromise. It was support for additional humanitarian aid and support for managing those individuals and families coming to the border. I would have preferred the house version of that legislation. I voted for it because it had a lot more Accountability Measures and constraints on this administration to ensure the money is being properly used for humanitarian purposes to make sure we dont see families and particularly children essentially jailed for trying to seek a Better Future for themselves. We needed to make some effort to improve the conditions for those people who were being held at the border and some should be placed with families. Essentially to make sure we have adequate resources to deal with the influx. It was a tough call. The senate had a pretty overwhelming vote. We needed to get something done. The moderates and the democratic side caved a little too fast and the speaker could have negotiated a better deal had she been given the space to do that. We did have Going Forward with something that i think was a step in the right direction but not nearly as significant enough. Host did the speaker of the house make the right decision . Guest i dont think she had a choice because it was going to fail. A group of moderate democrats and some republicans said to the speaker you dont have my vote. We have a majority but its not a majority a stronger jury. We cant lose more than a couple dozen votes on any particular measure. The speaker had a choice. Do i stand on principle and do nothing for those conditions at the border or to accept the fact this is not what we want but it will get some help to the border and we live to fight another day . 4. 6 billion. Host it has caused a rift within the Democratic Party in the house. How would you describe tensions right now . We are seeing it on twitter. We have heard about what the speaker has told the freshman and progressives behind closed doors. Guest there is some tension. There is no way to hide that. This comes of being in the majority. When youre in the minority there are 1000 reasons to get to no, but its hard to get to yes. I think it is something we should have expected. We all kind of expected this would happen. We have a majority. By definition have a lot more diverse points of view. This kind of discord or difference is ok. What we cant let it do is get in the way of us working together when we do agree because we cant come together where we disagree. That is ok. The democratic process. Sometimes it is a little tough. Sometimes it is messy, but that is what it means to live in a democratic society. You have the differences, you air them out in public. It is not fun but thats the way the system works. Host do you agree that the speaker that a group of freshmen women, that they should stop tweeting about what is happening within the party. Guest i think we all have to make decisions for ourselves. How we want to communicate and the positions we take. We have to be careful not to demonize one another over differences that are legitimate differences. I dont think people should stop using whatever mechanism the use to communicate with the people they work for. Oldink taking the carpenters rule of measure twice, cut once. Donte a president i think he gives a lot of thought to the tweets that goes out and it creates significant problems. Being a little more thoughtful would go a long way but no one should be muted in terms of what they feel and say. Host your reaction to representative a cause you cortez saying the speaker is positive targeting newly elected women of color . Guest i understand why she may feel that way. I have served now for seven years with the speaker. She can be tough, but she is tough on everybody. When it is you sometimes it feels a little personal. Look, she knows what she wants to get done. She has a really strong sense of what she things we ought to be doing. She will do everything she can tell try to lead us in that direction. Sometimes that means saying things people take as a personal attack. I dont see it that way. Host anne from louisville, kentucky. Caller im calling again because this guy says we have a moral obligation to help people coming over the southern border. Walk ople are able to they have a route to walk over into our country and try to get into our country. There are people all over the world who were living in just as bad or worse positions. People able to walk here they do have the means to walk into our country. You have the people in mumbai, india, all over africa. People are starving to death. Why arent we sending planes everywhere in the world and picking up people and loading them up and bring them over here to our country . The answer is because we cannot bring every Single Person who is are they less deserving than the people walking over here on the stone border southern border . All you have to do is drive through downtown louisville and you will see people laying on the streets, people standing on the corners. My daughter lives outside of austin, texas, and is worse in downtown austin. We have people in our own country who have needs. It is not like im a heartless person, but where does it in . How much are we expected to do as a country . Guest we do what we can do. When someone is knocking at your door because they are in danger, you dont tell them to go away because they were 75 miles away you might also be in danger and since i cant help them i cant help you. I get the point the caller is making. We have to deal with the reality on the ground. We have a crisis taking place in the northern triangle. They are in proximity to the United States. They are at our borders seeking asylum. It is illegal for a person presented at the u. S. Border and asked for asylum. Its not a violation of law. Its anticipated in u. S. Law that people may do that. Can welieve where we ought to be able to show some moral leadership and some strength and help those people who are less fortunate. One way we do that is to try to elevate the standards in those places. Not simply just view the United States as a source of relief, but through trade relationships try to increase the Living Standards in those places that are less fortunate so there is more balance in the way the u. S. And global economies interact with one another. Host the House Oversight and Reform Committee fully holding a hearing this morning on child separation policies at the border. They will hear from these freshman female lawmakers. Representative of because you cortez, present ocasioco rtez, talib and others. You can watch on cspan. Org or listen with the free cspan radio app. Frank in pennsylvania, democrat. Kennedy in thent early 1960s had an idea called the alliance for progress to help the Central American countries. He wanted to give technology, expertise to the people to show them how to do agriculture and manufacturing. Invest money and have the peace corps. I was wondering if the representative thought about that as a way of stopping the mass migration coming up to the United States. Guest those sorts of initiatives are what we ought to be engaging in. Ifs problem does not go away it is not present itself at our border. There is a real tragedy taking place every day in honduras and el salvador and guatemala. I was disappointed that the president took the decision to diminish the support we provide to those places. Essentially that fueled this crisis. There is a crisis presented itself at the border because we are failing to deal with the source. T the there have been a wide variety of initiatives to bring aid and relief to those parts of the world that are struggling. That becomes a source of a lot of controversy. Is the reason we have a budget problem. The amount of money that goes into this problems is minuscule compared to the value we get from that kind of investment. Host john in jupiter, florida, independent. Are you with us . Caller i am here. Impact in his Community Versus the impact on the Southern States with the illegals. Host what is the impact on your state . Communityhink every has some impact. We are fairly well removed from the southern border. Close to the northern border, just a few miles from canada. I have a part of that border myself. Oneimpact on us i think is that the rest of the country faces. We are concerned with what happens to our fellow americans. The impact is far greater in seven states and western states. That does not mean we should ignore it. I think there is a false sense that many in the Democratic Party want open borders. I have not spoken to a singlemember of congress that advocates for open borders. We want to have smart borders. We want to manage what is happening on our borders. I think the question is not whether or not we have border security, but what happens when people do present themselves. What do we do with the people that are in the country right now . These are real problems we need to manage. I dont think we should start with the idea that some buddies advocating for open borders. I have not heard a Single Member of congress do that. Host the house will vote today on the 9 11 Victims Compensation fund. After our viewers watched very emotional testimony from jon stewart and some 9 11 victims, one of whom has passed away since testifying. Did you see that testimony and how we vote today . We keep only shame temporarily funding the 9 11 Victims Compensation. This is a problem we will have for as long as these victims are around. We should probably authorize inappropriate money to the fund. A couple of years ago i met with john stuart and talked about this. We went through this before. During aks stepped in moment of national crisis. We ought to be there for them and not put them in any have any uncertainty about whether we will have their backs and provide support that they deserve. I am obviously going to vote yes. Host you can find that testimony on our website if you go to cspan. Org. Search in the Video Library at the top. When are you expecting this vote and will you today have will there be special recognition on the floor . Those this is one of votes i think is going to have such broad support. Is coming to us with a lot of sponsorships. Democrats and republicans support it. Im not sure how the debate will socalledr this suspension calendar. It will be time for the leadership to sate they want state they want to get this done and expected big boat in the house. If not unanimous, nearly unanimous. Att the house will gavel in 9 00 eastern time on cspan. Keep your channel here if you want to watch the floor gavel in for the morning session debate and take this vote today. Jesse in florida, republican. Caller hi there. Host question or comment . Caller i just heard the congressman say if someone needed help at our door, knocking at the door that we had a moral obligation to help that person. That is not the situation we have at the border. What we have is someone trying to crash into our window and i have a moral legation, as does he to make sure the people inside the house are protected. Equating what we have at the is really ihouse think a good thing to do. We dont want people coming into our house uninvited. Awaynt want people turned he really need help. Who really need help. They need to consider not only the people that need help outside of this country, you need to consider us. He was sent there to represent us. Not represent illegal immigrants. Guest i understand the callers point. Using the analogy of someone knocking at the door is right. We have a responsibility to make a determination as to whether that individual represents a threat or if they really are a victim fleeing something terrible. Some of the support i voted to provide gives us a lot more capacity at the border to have the time and space to carefully make those judgments as to isther an Asylum Seeker truly seeking asylum and fleeing a bad situation. I dont disagree with the caller. We have that moment and we have to make sure we have the assessment as to whether this represents a threat or is a person facing a threat themselves. What we have seen more recently from the people fleeing those countries are people who are really in trouble. That does not mean when we see somebody who is a threat we cant deal with it. I get the point. We ought to take care of the people within our own country. Many of us have supported far more robust investments in those sorts of needs for the people right here. We have to be true to ourselves, true to our own ideology. This entire country was formed with the exception of those native americans that were here long before many of us ever arrived, largely by immigrants. Its a strength, not a weakness. Host you dont serve on the committees with relevant or jurisdiction over the border, have you been to the border and what do you hear from folks that work on the border . Guest it has been sometime since i was down there. We were talking yesterday about going to the border. There have been a number of delegations that have gone to the border. I have talked to a lot of this members. Its a tough situation. The idea of going into one of these facilities and seeing children and families held in conditions we would not want to subject our own families to is something thats an affront to who we are as americans. I think its important to the extent possible we step back from the partisan rhetoric on this question. I think our values are so much more aligned across party lines and across ideology. The question as to how we deal with the problem is the area of legitimate debate. I dont think it helps any of us to demonize one another on this issue. The u. S. Is a great country. It is made up of lots of great people. We have different approaches for the problem but i dont think we should assume because we have different approaches that we care less about misfortune and people facing misfortune. Host some members that have been to the border of the freshman fema lawmakers testifying before the House Oversight and Reform Committee. They are members of that committee at the witness table today to take questions and talk about what they saw along the border. That is 10 00 a. M. Eastern time. Cspan2, cspan. Org or the radio app. Jerry from minnesota, independent. State i would like to that staying true to ourselves. City ofr speakers home frisco, 17 of the population is homeless. I dont understand how you can say and whether we should give aid to Foreign Countries help resolve the problem. We have been giving them aid for 50 years. Why is the situation still the same . The percentaget of the budget he is referring to versus what youre voting on today and what you have been voting on. The Defense Authorization bill. Guest there is a misunderstanding as to how much of our resources we devote to aid to less fortunate countries around the world. It is a minuscule amount of the federal budget. We are talking about funding the Defense Department and the 700 plus billions of dollars just this coming year. I understand the point. I am 100 on board with the idea that we should do more to deal with homelessness in the United States. I really dont think the wealthiest country on earth has to make a choice between whether or not we take care of problems are at home or we use part, small part of our resources to try to deal with some of the most misfortunate people in the world. That not only benefits them but it benefits us. To be clear to the callers point, the crisis at the border was not made better that was made worse when the president made the decision to diminish some of the direct support into the area. The president is someone we can work with, but i dont think we can escape the fact that made the problem worse. It made it more difficult. We would be wise to at least try to deal with the problem at the source as opposed to waiting for the problem to come to the border when it is sometimes really difficult to manag. Manage. Host coming up, we will talk with representative tom cole, Ranking Member of the rules committee. We will talk about the National Defense bill. He will vote against it for the first time in 17 years. Republican of oklahoma. He is up next. We will be right back. There has been discussion about an appearance before congress. Any testimony from this office would not go beyond our report. It contains our findings and analysis and the reasons for the decisions we made. We chose those words carefully and the work speaks for itself. The report is my testimony. I would not provide information beyond that which is already public in any appearance before congress. Robert mueller is set to appear before two committees of congress on wednesday, july 17. At 9 00 a. M. Eastern, he gives testimony to the house judiciary committee. Later in the day, he will take questions from the house intelligence committee, both open sessions. Our coverage of the congressional testimony will be live on cspan3, online at cspan. Org, or listen with the free cspan radio app. If you would like to hear the complete reading of the mueller report, listen on the free cspan radio app. Volume one air today and saturday at 7 00 p. M. Eastern. Volume two will air monday and tuesday, also a 7 00 p. M. Eastern. Sunday night on q a, former new York City Police Deputy Inspector polly piggies talked about his book. When i was young, they family of welfare. I have aic in my book picture of me in the fifthgrade. Im sitting indian style in the front. I am holding my feet because i had holes in the bottom of my shoes. I had cardboard in them so my socks would not get wet. I had a rough upbringing. I got involved in the streets and met some friends and started selling drugs. It was like the thing to do. Sunday night at 8 00 p. M. Eastern on q a. Washington journal continues. Host we are back with congressman tom cole, republican of oklahoma. Lets talk about getting votes. No plan devote n devote to vote no. Guest its about 15 billion less than the president requested. There are some policy changes i disagree with. It slows down the modernization of the Nuclear Arsenal and moves us away from the develop capability yield Nuclear Weapons develop low yield Nuclear Weapons. Being moved to the United States. The senate has passed a bipartisan bill. 868. We are prepared to pass a partisan bill that hes already issued a veto threat against. Not much sense in voting for something that is clearly not going to be anywhere near the final product. Host you say it does not spend enough on defense. However you have this headline, this banner on drudge report. Federal spending smashes record. Deficit widens 23 . Guest until somebody is willing to deal with entitlement spending we are spending less on defense and overseas contingency operations, which is how you find warmaking then we were in 2010. We are spending less on nondefense discretionary items. Been successive administrations have been unwilling to go where the money is at. You have to take a hard look at medicare, medicaid, Social Security. That is over 60 of federal spending. Ost we learned from the paper this morning that the speaker is aiming to have a vote on a clean debt ceiling bill. Possibly combined it with the budget negotiations. She wants to do it before qld for the august break. Would you vote for a clean debt ceiling . Guest i would. A lot would depend my recommendation would be we extended past the next election so we dont run into the some political spat causing a default, which would be catastrophic for the economy. We would look seriously at anything the speaker proposed. It would be better if we also coupled it with i suspect she caps prefer a cap steel deals. Otherwise you risk a Government Shutdown or sequester in january, acrosstheboard cuts that would be damaging to defense and nondefense programs. Host what do you want to see in a budget deal to raise the caps on spending . Guest defense would be my number one. Already. We ought to do the 750 billion the president proposed. I would prefer a nondefense number as we could get. I recognize democrats probably have a reverse priority and you need democratic and republican votes. The sad thing in washington is we live in divided government. Everything accomplice has to be a compromise. You have to recognize that upfront and prepared to sit down and negotiate in good faith across the aisle. Host we will go to mary in auburn, new york. Guest caller good morning. I have a comment. I was listening to your program manier with the democratic that was on. I cant forever what his name was. Host congressman kildee. Caller he was talking about the reason we rebuild Foreign Countries. Him is i owns to my own home. If i give my money to my neighbor to improve their home now im in ame go, their home is raised it in value. The cities are going into disarray. I look at the city i lived in growing up and it was beautiful. Now it is totally garbage all over, houses are not taking care of. Host congressman, do you agree with spending taxpayer dollars on foreign aid to help those in other countries . Guest i do. We dont spend very much. We have better than a 4 trillion budget. Billion less than 60 on the entire state and forward eight apparatus. That is finding the embassies and the state department. Its a pretty small part of the budget. Historically some the smartest investments we have made have helped us immediately after world war ii. The Marshall Plan was really important in resisting soviet expansion. Those investments paid off for us. We have invested money in columbia. That paid off for us. Both in terms of cooperation against drug cartels. It was nearly a failed state. Now its probably the strongest ally we have in south america. It is always a matter of debate. I understand that. We forget sometimes that we have a lot of foreign aid ourselves from the french during the american revolution. It was selfinterested. It was to help beat the british, but this is a normal tool. It is a small tool. I would consider it something i would not remove from the toolbox. Host david in west virginia, independent. Caller congressman, i have a question about the budget. Every year for the last decade they have been doing continuing resolutions for the budget. Six months out of the year. When is Congress Going to go ahead and do a law or a rule t automatically can continue resolutions continue until congress does the budget and of playing the games they do every year about shutting down the government and continuing resolutions four or five times . One other quick comment, congress been. Congressman. The previous congressman was talking about knocking on the door and allowing immigrants to come into the world. If we had 100,000 coming from china, middle eastern, you would think the democrats would support that . If they were coming by ships or planes . Guest i will not pretend i know with the democrats will or will not support. We need to begin by recognizing we are a pretty generous country. We have over one million legal immigrants every year. IlLegal Immigration is a bad thing. Its a violation of the law and creates a crisis on the border. We have coming across the board about 70 billion worth of illegal drugs. We have thousands of people being trafficked for usually sexual exultation. There is a lot of reasons to have a good infirm Border Patrol and have a Legal Immigration policy which is something this country has done since its foundation. In terms of your question about the budget, the biggest problem of here in my view is political dysfunction. You really dont want to continue want a continuing resolution. You dont want to put things on autopilot every year. We do a continuing resolution and you cant start any new projects. This year, talking about defense, we are scheduled to increase spending on the next b21. , the v 21, if we did a continuing resolution, you basically push the start the finished time for this bomber out into the future. It would cost you more money. Last year we needed 100 abrams tanks. You have a continuing resolution, you have to buy the same 100 whether you need them or not. It is better if congress completes its work on time. Last year it came closer than it has in over 20 years. Most government spending, about 70 was actually finished on time by september 30. It is one of the reasons why the partial Government Shutdown was not nearly as threatening. It did not impact defense or health and Human Services. It did not impact a lot of agencies of government. By the way, those functioned pretty well and there were a lot of compromises. We have to work at it harder. Part of her difficulty has been divided government. That makes it harder. The two sides tend to disagree. Right now the American People are pretty dug in. They dont reward compromise very much. They tend to punish you for it. Thats a mistake. Government in this country, given the diversity of population and the complexity requires a lot of compromise. We should recognize that and work towards it, not denigrated. Host trump policy sets of world of trade deals. European union is cutting deals with vietnam and major south american countries. Japan and others are moving forward with a modified tpp. Southeast asian nations are talking with china, japan, india and others about a regional conference of economic ship. Britain and south korea have a freetrade agreement ready for the day the u. K. Formally leaves the eu. A group of african nations signed it a continentwide agreement. The United States is not part of any of these. Guest we are part of some of these. We are waiting right now to put on the floor the usmca. We obviously are still in the discussions with china and the ne united kingdom. The tpp, both parties opposed that. Hillary clinton opposed the tpp. So to donald trump and bernie sanders. It is difficult to get democrats to support any trade deal. They did not give president obama trade promotion authority. He got it mostly with republican votes. Me, im a classic free trader. The president agrees likes bilateral deals. I think open markets are generally better for my part of the country which is heavily agricultural and exports quite a bit. On and gas is very dependent aeronautics. S you do have rogue actors. China is a good example. They joined the wto but they had not lived by the rules and they operate as of market mercantile power. We would have been better at confronting them. I think a lot of other countries will help us if we reach out to them because it is not as of china is only rapacious towards us. Plenty of Company Countries have the same complaints against china that we do. Host ralph from port orange, florida. Democrat. Caller hello. Good morning. I have a question for the congressman. I was wondering how you feel the tax cut for the top 1 in our nation, the top 1 , billionaires, how has that affected our budget . Lose the promise , the promiseurity of health care, Social Security and other by the way, things that we paid for were deducted from our checks for our entire lifetime. Im a 30year host i think we hear your point. , supporting at tax cut . Guest i want to correct the caller. We have not cut Social Security and we shouldnt cut Social Security. Im talking about executive Ronald Reagan and tip oneill did. Former conger spent delaney and accused to carry used to carry it together former congress been delaney and i used to carry it together. To your callers point about he will probably live longer than his father or grandfather did. That is what disrupting the system right now. I dont think this is a bad thing. I think it is a good thing but you have to readdress the system. It is going to go broke on its own according to the actuaries by 2033. If you wait that long it becomes more expensive to fix. What happens is you get across the board a 22 cut in will just operate on the money coming in. That means you will cut the Social Security checks of people in their 70s and 80s. I disagree with the caller. The average family of forgot about it to thousand dollar pay cut. The idea it went to the 1 is one of the most successful propaganda ploys by the democrats i have ever seen. There is sizable Corporate Income tax now. Our rates were the highest in the world. We have lowered them to about the average in the world, 21 . That has stopped the bleeding of the people thinking back ofusion a few years ago american corporations had quartering and other parts of the world. There is still a lot of work to do. One of the reasons we have the longest economic expansion in american history. Why we have the lowest Unemployment Rate in 50 years. It is why we finally have wages rapidly forwing for people at the bottom than at the top. Im not saying we shouldnt go back and look at different aspects of the policy. You do something that big, you will make some mistakes. Most of the fixes will be pretty bipartisan. Economic the economy is proof the taxcut works. Host karen from norman, oklahoma. Caller good morning. I knew your mama when i was at midwest city. Lady. S a very nice guest thank you. Caller the last guy have tal i am tired about talking about tax cuts for the rich. My soninlaw is not in the 1 that is checked now clears 150 every two weeks. 300 a month. I know to some people that is not a lot but for a family of four 300 a month helps. You were talking about the 40 billion we spend on foreign aid and stuff. Veterans wess have 50,000 veterans on the streets every night. We have 22 veterans commit suicide every day because our government says there is no money for them to get the mental health, the mris, the surgeries they need to get out of this. Let them veterans, kill themselves or die. You have nancy pelosi on tv telling people how to circumvent the law. Dont open your door. You dont have to. They will put a kid in the ghetto or whatever you want to call it. That is probably not politically correct. You catch them with a little marijuana, whatever you call it, and people put them in jail. They are all about the kids at the border. The cages were built under obama and it seemed to be ok then. They care about illegal kids or refugee kids, but theyre all for planned parenthood that aborts black babies over other babies four to one. They are such hypocrites. Veterans, lets of me start there. You can never do enough but we ought to stop and remember the United States does more for veterans than any other country, more than all other countries in the world combined. That has been true under democrats and republicans. George bush doubled veteran spending when he was president. President obama did about the same. Trump is doing more. He made that a priority in his campaign. He is doing it with bipartisan support. While people there are places where we come short. We have done an awful lot and moved broadly in the right direction. That is what the American People want us to do. They are very supportive of supporting our veterans and we will continue to do that. My dad was a career military guy. He spent the last 12 years of his life he had alzheimers. He got great care that we could never have afforded as a family. On the free market it wouldve cost 6,000 to 11,000 a month. He got it because he served his country honorably for 20 years. When he needed his country, it was there for him. This tends to be bipartisan. The frustration in congress is usually we will write the check. We need to administer the programs. Sometimes the v. A. Is not very will run. The situation in denver a few years ago. It was estimated that the Veterans Hospital cost 358 million. It cost 1. 3 billion and continued to go up. Congress took away the ability of the v. A. To contract and gave it to the army corps of engineers. These guys will do a better job. We made it much easier to fire somebody in the Veterans Department than any other department government. If we get people not giving good care to veterans, they can be weeded out immediately. Most of those folks do a great job providing care and take it seriously. When you get a bad case or people lying to you as we had a number of years ago, not telling congress or administration the waits were for veterans, that makes it tough. People that do that ought to be disciplined immediately. We will keep working on that. The countrys record is actually good. There are a range of other concerns you had. Would largely agree with a lot of them. I think sometimes the language of politics and the fingerpointing gets in the way of actually solving problems. We need to do more things together. We need to be more reasonable to one another and work on our differences and compromise. Host one of the items on the agenda is the 9 11 Victims Compensation fund. How do you plan to vote . Guest i certainly support that. I have been a cosponsor of it. Those folks were going up into burning buildings. The loss of life was terrible. In the Oklahoma City we got a lot of help from new york First Responders. We were very pleased to be able to send our First Responders to help them on 9 11. Americans do a great job of sticking together in a time of crisis, whatever their differences are politically. To me this is an obligation we have for helping people who put their lives on the line to help the country and fellow americans in a difficult time. Host you will be voting today on some amendments to the national Defense Authorization bill. Guest the democrats its a tricky one for the democrats. Most republicans will not vote for it. Thats unusual. For 58 years, almost every republican votes for it. They concerns i outlined earlier are shared by our party. We see a bipartisan vehicle in the United States senate. This is like the emergency border funding. There was a bipartisan bill in the senate. One of the house was not bipartisan. At the end of the date we moved towards the bipartisan bill. Basically the democrats put the senate bill on the floor. We dont know if they will do that here. I think they probably have the votes. There are 240 democrats. They only need 218. , in the last year 59 democrats voted against the authorization. There are democrats that dont normally vote for defense under any circumstances but are willing to do that. There are a series of amendments that make the bill worse. Unquestionably moved it to the left. We will see what happens. At the end of the day we will get an authorization done but my guess is it will look more like the senate bill then the final house bill. Host what the president wanted versus what youre going to vote on . Guest the president wanted 15 billion more, low yield Nuclear Weapons, no restrictions on the southern border, and to be able to make sure we