Transcripts For CSPAN Washington Journal 07192019 20240714

Moon landing. And the president of the National Association of Immigration Judges on the backlog of immigration cases in the courts. Immigration cases in the court. [video clip] 391n this boat, the yea are this vote is passed. Host the house on thursday passing legislation to increase the federal and mom waged 15 an wage tofederal minimum 15 an hour. They did so on a partyline vote. We want to get your thoughts on the efforts to raise the minimum wage. If you make 15 or less, call in at 2027488000. If you are a Business Owner, 2027488001. And all others call us at 2027488002. You can also join us on twitter at cspanwj or join the conversation at facebook. Com cspan. We will get to your calls in a minute. This is what the raise the age act would do, raise the federal minimum wage to 15 an hour, tie wagee increases to median growth. Ld apply to teen workers of theto a little bit debate on the floor yesterday between democrats and republicans. We will start with [video clip] my parents worked hard to make ends meet so their children would have opportunities they never had and that is the american dream, which brings me back to the question of what it means to be a patriot. For me, it starts with gratitude for this country and appreciation for exceptional quality. This country saved my familys life. Think patriotism goes beyond love of country, it is also about striving to make this country even stronger. Its about trying to make life easier for americans to work hard and play by the rules. Folks like my parents and so. Any of my constituents i support this bill for a simple reason. In the greatest country on earth, nobody with the dignity of a fulltime job should suffer the indignity of not being able to provide for themselves or their loved ones. [applause] wage decade, the minimum has been stuck at 7. 25 an hour while the cost of living has skyrocketed. There is no part in this country where 7. 25 is a living wage. American families have earned it. This bill gradually increases the minimum wage in seven steps, reaching 15 by 2025. This is a reasonable bill, not a radical one. Cbo estimates it will raise wages for 30 million workers and left millions out of poverty. They will have more money to spend in the local economy and they will be less reliant on Government Programs and given that a deficit will exceed a trillion dollars, that should be music to my republican colleagues ears. Host stephanie mercy Stephanie Murphy citing the Congressional Budget Office. 17 million workers would see increased wages. 10 million earning slightly more than 15 an hour may see wage increases as well. 1. 3 million workers would become jobless, that is what republicans argued when they voted against this legislation. Listen to what republican congressman Lloyd Smucker from pennsylvania argued on the floor yesterday. [video clip] at 14 yearsager old, one of my first jobs was serving as a dishwasher. I had no previous work experience, but the owner took a chance on me. It did not receive a great wage, but it was a starting point and the lessons i learned in that job were lessons i learned used during my entire career, went on after high school to buy a small Construction Company, operated it for 25 years creating family sustaining jobs for hundreds of individuals. My 16yearold son serves food in a Skilled Nursing center after school at a wage of 9 per hour. He is thrilled with that. Again, learning the people skills needed, learning to show up for work on time and learning to work hard. One of the best indicators of success in a career is whether or not you had a job during high school. This bill, unfortunately, would rob many of the opportunity to hold that first job. 3. 7specifically said million jobs lost as a result of this bill. Our friends on the others of the aisle are not talking about that aspect of the bill. There is no question here about the desire to see every individual that we represent have the opportunity to live the american dream. The idea the previous speaker just said the idea that you can work hard, play by the rules, and live your dream. The question is the prescription and it is a fundamental choice. It is a choice of believing in our Free Enterprise system, believing in our Economic System that has created more opportunity than ever before in the history of the world or believing in more government control. Host thursdays debate on the house floor over raising the minimum wage. We turn to these to let washington know what you think of what the house did. Take a look at the map of the states across the country and where the minimum wage will be in 2019. Our first phone call from patricia, a Business Owner where the minimum wage is 9. 86. Go ahead. Caller i am wondering if you will have a story about bernie refusing to pay his Campaign Workers 15 an hour and not giving them health care. Host go ahead, patricia. Caller yeah, about bernie. Host why do you bring it up . Caller because it is about the minimum wage and he has been touting it and preaching to Business Owners his entire career and he is refusing to give his workers a minimum wage. You dont see the hypocrisy . Bank ilhan omar marrying her brother. Host as a Business Owner, what impact would raising the minimum wage have on you . Caller we sold our business. We would hire people and pay them according to the job. If they were just answering the phone, they would get 10 or 15 it was back in 2000. People with skills earn more. We would not have been able to surprised survive paying people that much for low skilled positions. Host the story she is referring campaignt page field hires demanded an annual salary they say would be equivalent to a 15 an hour wage which sanders has said will be the federal minimum rate organizers and other and other employees have invoked are the words and principles making their case to the campaign manager. Marvin in philadelphia, your thoughts of raising the federal minimum wage. Caller this is not a matter of Student High School getting a job washing dishes. This is a matter of a person going to work in his 30s and 40s and having to pick up a minimum wage job just to get back into the fold. This is not an easy subject. You are asking for one prescription fills all, it does not work that way. Yes, there will have to be exceptions to the rule where people work below the minimum wage, but that doesnt mean it unfair minimum wage for everybody, it means there has to be exceptions. Lets have the minimum wage and lets have it at a fair level. Lets have the exceptions allowed. There is compromise, lets try to compromise, that is what politics is all about. Host marvins thoughts in philadelphia. I want to share with you what the u. S. Chamber of commerce proposed because they said they could support a 10 minimum wage, but also wanted some compromises made to the legislation, restore the tip credit, which allows employers to pay less than the minimum wage. Privately owned national franchises or Small Businesses rather than large employers and revise the definition of hours worked. This according to the washington examiner. These are among the recommendations made by the chamber of commerce when they came out recently and said we would support raising the minimum wage to 10 an hour. ,ets go to teresa in tennessee what impact would this have on you . Caller it doesnt affect me. We were going the average starting salary for your minimum retail was going 10 an hour. 7. 25 an hour rate, but it was going around 10 until we got an influx of illegals and the salary dropped completely. It does hurt that way. Here is my comment. The members of congress who i think it is so the members of Congress Calling for 15 an hour to 99 an hour for them for only working 120 to 180 days, no weekends, free vacations, every holiday off, it say weisrespectful to will give you a poultry 15 an hour while we make 100 an hour. Host they would argue when they are not in washington, they are still working in their districts. When they are not here, they are back in their district offices communicating and meeting with constituents and often working weekends, parades, town hall meetings, et cetera. Disagree withd that. I would totally disagree with that. The difference, they want to talk about corporations who make so much more the ceos that make so much more than their employees and yet they are more and to 99, even they have not passed one piece of legislation since taking the house back, not one piece of legislation except for the resolution to call our president a racist. Host they are passing bills, republicans controlled the senate, republicans are not taking up bills passed by the house, which is controlled by democrats, as you know. With two different ideologies, they have two different agendas in the house and senate. So smart tohank hold the senate. The house means nothing, the senate means everything and we will be taking back the house, so they have nothing to show. What can they go on the came pan and say we have accomplished for you since we have taken the house back . Host on minimum wage, do you think it should be higher than 15 an hour . . States i think the should determine what their states can pay, not the federal government. This federal government, minnesota would get a 15 an hour because they are democrats and tennessee, which votes republican, would get a seven dollars an hour. Host teresas thoughts in tennessee and as she indicated, it is unlikely the senate would take up this minimum wage bill, what is your reaction to that . Do you think they should or do you support not taking up the house bill . Robert in illinois, how much do you make in illinois . 14. 86 anused to make hour when i came out of high school. I am making less than 12 an hour. The woman from tennessee saying they only make seven dollars, minnesota makes 15, that is completely wrong, the legislation that comes out of the house gets buried by the Senate Majority leader it is pathetic, it is, this lady in tennessee, she has to remember, i worked construction they making eight dollars, 10 an hour, not because illegals came in, it is because their state voted for right to work, which kills anybody that wants to make a fair living. What were you doing when you were making 14 an hour versus what you are doing now . , iler i worked construction got hurt, i had to go to a different job and i am getting paid 11. 85. I farm on the side. It is pathetic to listen to these people and hear them whin e. Trumpare burning up and i havent seen a lick of that money. Your thoughts on raising the minimum wage. Gives thetion is what government the right what gives everyone the right to give to tell private Business Owners how much they should pay their employees . It should be between them and their employees. The politician already politicians are really very generous with somebody elses money. An hour orem 15 whatever they think people should get. Whatperson cannot live on they are making, get a job where they can. Do something about it. Host this is from the chamber of commerce, which represents businesses in washington, d. C. Saying the cbo report indicated an increase to around 10 an would result in few, if any job losses. The minimum wage increased also help employers both employers and employees would benefit. Minimum wage could be paired with updates to the fair labor standards act. I think we lost bill. We will move on, let me show you more from the house debate yesterday. This is congresswoman jayapal who represents seattle where and here ism wage what she had to say on the. Mpact on the city of seattle [video clip] today we passed the first minimum wage increase for workers for a decade and i am served onight where i the committee where i drafted the legislation. Myant to tally tell colleagues across the hour what the effect of that has been. Seattle is flourishing. We have one of the lowest unemployment rates in the country and jobs growing steadily. Forbes ranked seattle the number one best place for business and careers in 2018 and despite the , whatnd gloom predictions we have seen is what the Seattle Times called a crazy restaurant boom with new jobs created every year. The most recent Research Shows wages for lowwage workers went up without any negative impact on employment and local food prices remain constant so families can better afford to buy healthy food. When we increase the minimum wage, we got strong businesses, healthy families, and flourishing communities. All workers deserve the same thing, lets raise the wage today. Host congresswoman jayapal saying it worked in seattle. Seattle based restaurant chain blames high minimum wage for bankruptcy. Bill in camden, new jersey. What do you think . Caller i dont believe the 15 wage increase and i will tell you why. I stopped my business three years ago due to my health. Hourd to pay my men 10 an and that was a fair wage for construction. 3500 a week to pay for those people. If i had to pay them 15, i have to lay two people off. That woman from washington, she is lying because we are talking about the unemployment rate. Under obama, more Temp Services came into effect. ,hen you sign a piece of paper you are on the list that you have a job even though you are not working. Everything is inflated with these numbers all the time, i dont believe it at all. Host what was your company, construction . Caller yes. I installed fence all my life. Host and you had 5 employees paying them 10 an hour . Caller yeah. To me, that was fair. They were kids from like high school. Three of them were fulltime. I would not have paid them 15 an hour, they would not have had a job. Host take a listen to bill and others to congressman rick allen, the owner of a Construction Company in georgia. This is what he had to say about the impact of raising the minimum wage. Caller i think it is laughable for anybody in this house to say the government will raise your wages. The government does not raise wages. What the government does is provide an environment for businesses to raise wages, that is where the decision should be. It is laughable to me ambers of congress believe they are going to raise the wages of people in this country by this legislation. He Congressional Budget Office recently released a report saying almost 4 million jobs could be lost if this were implemented. We had an eight year war on business and in 2016, we said that war is over. With georgia being the number one state to do business in for the past 6 years, this federal mandate would reverse all the great work our state has done to grow jobs in the economy and we are getting it done in georgia. I dont want maryland to determine what georgia is going to do. As a businessman, i know our economy is about supply and demand and with more job openings than jobseekers, wages are going to go up. Salaries saws and the largest increase in more than a decade thanks to the economic environment led by President Trump that has spurred Economic Growth and prosperity. The last thing we need is more onesizefitsall washington mandates that lead to job cuts, cut workers hours, and shut the doors on Small Business. Host that part of the debate on the house floor yesterday when lawmakers vote passed a minimum wage. Who makes the minimum wage . Old018, half under 25 years. 3 without High School Diplomas versus 2 with a diploma and most worked in a service, leisure, and hospitality industries. Diego, goodn morning to you at how much do you make in san diego . Caller right now, i dont have a job. Seattle ented in with these high wages, i dont know why that would be. I just wanted to say, this bill that passed yesterday, it is so dead on arrival. It is like a recipe for bankruptcy. Host maurice, take a look at how much has gone up over the decades. January 1 1979, 2. 80. In 2009, it was raised to 7. 25. You you think it has kept up . Caller did it ever double . Not even close. It is overreaction on the part of the democrats, to be honest with you. As far as the minimum wage saying goes, i think it is a mistake. It should be raised to maybe 10 an hour. 15, no. Host clarence in kentucky, good morning to you. Caller hello . Host good morning, clarence. What do you think of them raising the minimum wage . Caller that guy you just talk to, 10 sounds right, it is expensive to live in america. If you raise it to 15, that guy said he used to have a business and had to lay people off. Expensive to live in america. I would like to comment on the headlines what you were going to be talking about, people with disabilities working. I draw disability. I have since 2005 and when i first got my disability, like i told the judge, i would be the first to admit if i qualify for this, i just barely qualify. I am able to do something, but , ie the physical person said agree with that, it is pretty much what i told the judge. I am not competitive enough to hold down a job. I think we need more programs to help people that would want to work. The job market is not going to like that. I cut grass and do a little stuff around the house, but i have to take a lot of breaks and there are days i cannot do a whole lot, back to the 15 thing, if they made that a law, it is going to put a lot of people out of work because employers will not be able to keep up with that. Because that argument it is an argument the chamber of commerce lobbies on behalf of businesses is making as well. The Washington Post article they say stephanie mercy, Stephanie Murphy, leader of the moderate coalition who played a lead role negotiating the bill rejected gop criticism while contending the deliberate approach advocated by moderate democrats would guard against any negative effects. Murphy and others advocated for an amendment approved by the house that would require an independent study once the minimum rage reached 9. 50 to allow congress to monitor the effects of the law. The provision approved by house yesterday along a partyline vote, three republicans did vote for the measure, 6 democrats along with newly independent justin amash voted against it. Much doland, ohio, how you make . Caller 15 an hour. Host is this a recent development . Caller no. Host what does that mean for your living situation . Caller it means a lot for my situation. I come from a humble background. Being able to make that kind of money in an hour, it lifted up at and my familys possibilities to the future. I have three young kids growing up in the society. Everyone talking about us not getting 15 an hour and how it will not help businesses, that is not right. Businesses are not going to allow us to make 15 an hour because they want to keep us like china, like mexico, like other places where they do not want to pay those people the kind of money they deserve. They want to work for rockbottom prices and do all the heavy lifting. Host douglas in california. Caller good morning. I think this ought to be a purely capitalistic transaction. What is the employer willing to pay . What is the employee negotiating for . The government has so many regulations that force businesses to spend money on things. You can argue whether they are good or bad and there are a lot of layers to this, but we are in a World Economy and we have to deal with that fact. If we cannot deal with that fact, i dont think passing a bunch of laws forcing businesses to do things is going to help. It needs to be a capitalistic decision and if we are a capitalistic country, thats the way we can solve the problem, frankly. Host what do you do for a living . I was i am retired, but a professional and i made a good salary. Where i happen to live is very expensive, so my good salary did not go all that far and neither did my retirement. You have to make an awful lot of money in this area to get an apartment. For a lot of people, it is extremely difficult and i think if the government can do anything for people, it is to kick down some of the barriers to building housing in this state so there is more Housing Available and that way it will cost less. Much harry in georgia, how do you make . Caller i am retired, may am. Host what did you make before you retired . I worked for the postal system. Host can you tell us how much you made in an hour . I made over 20 an hour. I believe there should be an increase in the minimum wage, more people more money for people who need to generate products. More money is spent, more business growth, deals. It is a shame in the United States of america, we pay people 7. 25 an hour, that doesnt make sense. Roger in illinois, Business Owner. What is your business . Caller hello. My business, i run a garden center. Host how much do you pay and what do you think about raising the minimum wage . Caller since we are agriculture , i think minimum wage is eight dollars, but we pay 8. 50 for High School Kids read adults, we give them nine dollars. An hour. Tpaid is 12 what i have got to say is whenever the state raises sales tax, they are giving themselves a raise and whenever the federal government raises the minimum wage, they are giving themselves a wage because the employee is actually paying more taxes. I think if they are 40 hours or fulltime, that is one thing, but when you are hiring High School Kids totally untrained, minimum wage should a different us Small Businesses are competing against box stores when it comes to Retail Prices and it is hard to make a profit. Host roger in illinois, Business Owner. 299house voted 231 to yesterday to approve this minimum wage bill. There were three republicans who voted against three republicans who voted for raising the minimum wage. Brian fitzgerald of pennsylvania, tom rooney of florida, these are the democrats who voted against the bill. Anthony brindisi of new york, kendra horn of oklahoma, ben mcadams, kurt schrader, and torres small. One congressman who voted against it, dan mauser of pennsylvania on the floor making the argument against raising the minimum wage. [video clip] [video clip] Small Businesses employ almost half of u. S. Employees an account of two thirds of new jobs. 99. 9 of u. S. Businesses are small. We know Small Businesses and. Mployees are the most radical the National Federation of independent business estimates businesses with fewer than 500 employees will account for 57 of jobs lost to this bill and businesses with fewer than 100 employees who account for 43 of jobs lost yet my democrat colleagues have done nothing to protect these job creators from a 107 minimum wage hike. It treats big and Small Businesses the same without the Financial Resilience needed to absorb the increase and bottom line costs this resolution will bring about, Small Businesses and towns in every Congressional District will be forced to make tough choices. Do they lay off workers . Raise prices on customers . Replace workers with robotics, or close their doors completely . Congress should not force our nations and most vital job creators to make those decisions. Making theauser argument against raising the minimum wage, echoing the National Restaurant Association Analysis notes the wage bill could 3. 7 million jobs, the majority of which held by women. We need a commonsense approach to the minimum wage that represents the realities of each region. 15 in new york is not 15 in alabama. Lets go to maryland. Gabriel on the phone. Good morning to you. Caller good morning. How are you doing this morning . Host doing well. Your thoughts . Caller i definitely believe and support the idea of increasing minimum wage to the highest it can go. 15 is more, but i would say even higher. Host what is your business . Caller me and my rather are moving helpers. Peoplejobs and we help the hour. E charge by host how much do you charge and how much do you pay yourselves . Uhaul we go through moving help website, so we go through there and we have built up enough reviews and 5 stars and reviews that way that our price is pretty much premium price. Our price per hour for moving helper, we charge 95 an hour. I brother pretty much runs it, he gets a bigger 25 pays me about honestly, this is a blessing from god, he pays me 27 50 cents per hour when it is just me and him. Much pam in missouri, how do you make where you live . Caller i make 14 an hour. Host is that enough . Caller i worked really hard to make 14 an hour. I worked a lot of years at minimum wage, so it angers me they are just going to give people 15 an hour. I could quit my job i earned and go to mcdonalds and flip burgers for 15 an hour and not have the responsibility i have with my job i worked really hard for. Host tell us what you did, how you started out, how you worked your way up . Caller i work at a casino and i started on the frontline staff and got promotions. I have been here 17 years and i got promotions as i progressed in my career and now i am a casino host, basically. I have been doing that for the last four years. Host making 14 an hour . Caller yes. And i am happy with what i make right now. I worked hard for it. Host katie in texas, share your thoughts with us. Caller yes. I ama senior now and retired. I started off with Kentucky Fried Chicken only making two dollars something, that was way back. Now i need to make more. When i left and i went to kmart and when i left, i was making 22 an hour, but you had to work up. Right now that was in 1990 something. Bread, everything is going up, so they really do need more money. What is going on . Caller why do you think the price living in houston has gone up so much . Caller yes, it has. I was makinguch down there, but the bread and everything was running like . 49, . 59. Now the bread is two dollars and something. People need to make more money because the people in business like the bread company, milk company, ice cream company, bluebell, their ice cream is going up when i used to have to 59 now it is 5. 99. More from the debate, here is susan wild of pennsylvania arguing why she supported the raise the wage act. [video clip] there should not be anybody in this room arguing that 7. 25 an hour is sufficient for a worker pot wellbeing when adjusted for inflation, 7. 25 is less than the federal minimum wage of 50 years ago. I support this bill because 98,000 workers in my district in pennsylvania deserve a long overdue raise. We are now in the midst of the longest period of time without an increase to the federal minimum wage. I support this bill because while corporations are making reference record profits, havesegmentation bankrupted hardworking families across my district. This bill would increase the minimum wage gradually. This is not a bad for business piece of legislation, as my colleagues across the aisle allege, it is a good for everyone bill that puts more money into our worker pot sprockets. Agree, disagree with the congresswoman from pennsylvania . She said raising the minimum wage would help 98,000 of her constituents in her district. Mike in ohio, good morning. Caller good morning to everyone in the United States. I quickly wanted to let everyone know that in ohio, when we found out our employees, i have 9 parttime employees in the coin laundry business, when we found out the state of ohio had a higher minimum wage then the federal government, we, overnight, switch to them over to the state of ohios minimum wage, which was like 1. 30 an hour increase because we felt they were worth it. Hadother thing is we several people that worked through they are developmentally disabled and we hire them through one of the mrdd workshops. If they were to get 15 an hour, we would probably have to cut their hours because they are only allowed to make so much outside of their federal benefits. That would negatively impact them and their productivity. Thank you and have a good day, everybody. Host andrew in massachusetts, how much do you make . Was makinglast job 15 an hour and that last guy, am developmentally challenged, i am autistic and in ofsachusetts, we have none the guys like him who hire people like me. I worked minimum wage jobs, the only thing i get, dishwasher, ditch digger, digging out fields and stuff like that. 2001, i was working two jobs seven days a week. A third job. T 7 00 in the morning to 7 00 at night and sunday i would work from 7 00 in the morning to 7 00 at night and go to another job and work that from 9 00 at night to 7 00 in the morning. Hurt. E got she was born with scoliosis and i had been working seven days a week since 1986. These people that dont want minimum wage are the same people who are denying the 40 hour workweek for insurance. Nobody hires anybody for 40 if you have to put them on health insurance. Its always below the 40 hours and they make you work extra hours so you are working 40 and still not getting health insurance. What do youtexas, think about this debate in washington . Should the federal government raise the minimum wage . Caller i think a better approach is the earned income force therather than we shouldrs assist people. Host marks thoughts. You make less, than 15 an hour in perrys bill . Perryville . Caller i use to. These people dont understand the minimum wage, they are going to raise it gradually. They are saying if they raise that much it will ruin everything. It is a known fact any time they raised the minimum wage, everything got better, not worse. Host judy in rochester, new hampshire. What business do you own . Caller i only have one. Host how much do you pay an hour . Usually we get them right from school, so we started them at minimum wage. My salon would pay minimum wage for three months until they build up their clientele. Then they have the opportunity to make 50 or more than what they brought in. It gives them incentive to work. Nowadays people dont have the incentive to work. Now i dont have any employees and i am happier than a lark. What i think i should do i did pay payroll and did my own payroll, the state and the federal excuse me, if they are going to raise the wages, they need to give the Business Owners a break. Workmens comp. , federal unemployment, state unemployment, Social Security, medicare, they have to pay all that in. They should deduct that from our expenses to pay for minimum wage because if they go to 15 an hour, and i realize it will be gradual, it is still a big increase for a Small Business person to have to pay it i used to pay over 1000 to 1500 a month for Social Security and medicare, it will be more than doubled. A small hair salon cannot afford that and i am sure Little Grocery stores or Small Business people cannot afford that either. They should think about the business person doing something to lower the rate of workmens comp. Because insurance prices are not going to go up, just what we pay into the state. Call. Thank you for that more of your calls coming up in the last 12 minutes or so in our conversation. I want to tell you about this weekend, our cspan cities tour exploring travel to Traverse City michigan Traverse City, michigan. The mayor explains the impact of tourism and agriculture on the citys economy. [video clip] Traverse City is located here on the map of michigan, northwest lower michigan, four hours north of detroit. We are the regional hub for up north. The biggest economic drivers have always been tourism. We are seeing significant numbers in the millions coming to our area. That is what draws people here, the beauty of northern michigan, freshwater resources. Agriculture has been a real mainstay for a long time. We are the cherry capital of the world. We produce the most tart cherries of anywhere else in the country and across the globe. We have become quite a wine region. We have vineyards popping up. Beer has taken up in the region, the growing of hops and beer halls has been popular. People are engaged in how to make Traverse City great and viable for all sorts of people to live and work here. Host make sure to tune in this weekend to look tv and American History tv as they travel Traverse City michigan and you can watch the video of all the city is cities we visited if you go to cspan. Org citiestour. Back to our conversation with you. David, you have been waiting. Tell us what your thoughts are. Caller i have two thoughts. I dont think it is a bad idea to raise the minimum wage. I think it is better to do it how it is now, by state or county because the cost of living is not the same throughout the whole country. I agree for somebody in gaithersburg, maryland, we have an extremely high cost of living. Not new york city or california, but it is very high. Our minimum wage is closer to that 15 mark. And . 10is 10 according to the map we are showing our viewers right now from Business Insider businessinsider. Com. Caller Montgomery County is a little different. Host this is on the state level. Caller Montgomery County may be different. This is the state level. To cities as we learned, seattle, they have a 15 minimum a 10. Ut the state has caller what happens when the government steps in to help workers, they help some, but they might hurt others and one of the ways we see this is with the 40 hour workweek. A lot of businesses, i have my brotherinlaw working at two different mcdonalds because the mcdonalds does not want to get passed 40 hours or where they would have to pay overtime. Instead of working at the mcdonalds they would prefer, they have to drive farther away to get the hours they need to make the money they want to earn. The same thing is similar that will happen if you increase minimum wage on small Business Owners like you heard the previous caller talking about. What is going to happen is they will not hire as many people or they will have to cut labor and make it up somewhere else. They have to be careful and i think the states in the counties they know their constituents and their areas. I would preferred the federal government did not get involved. Host brandy in ohio, how much do you make . Am disabledently, i and hopefully that will change. I did work in fast food and that is why i called. The previous caller was a casino worker and said i could go flip thatrs for 15 an hour and was the hardest job i have ever had. I kind of take offense to that. I did run a bank about five years ago and i felt horrible that my employees did not make the money they should. I just feel very strongly that the reason why we have the huge poverty we have in our country with homelessness and the drugs and the opioids, it all stems from the money. I feel like that business odor that ran the beauty shop, i used to be able to go get my hair colored for 40 20 years ago and i cannot do that anymore. If i have to pay more, if i have to pay double and that Business Owner is making double, then why is the minimum wage still a thing . It is the same argument, the people that have the money want to keep the money. The people that make the money want to keep the money. Horrible to see someone make 7. 50 an hour i think it eight dollars 50 an hour 8. 50 an hour and they have two kids, that is impossible. To the federal government has a responsibility to step in. 8. 55 an are right, hour in ohio. Luke in new jersey, what is your business . Caller hi. Am i on . Host yes, you are. Smoothie shopa specializing in organic smoothies. Host ok. Inler also, it is located colgate, new jersey. Eugene. Will move on to your thoughts on raising the minimum wage. Caller yes. Thank you for taking my call. Allenas laughable was rw congressman, he is a general contractor and i was in the Construction Industry for 40 years. He gets a major contract, he does not hire any employees, maybe one. They subcontract everything out. Those subcontractors in turn higher the undocumented worker, construction workers you see, off the under the table books. Rw allen is famous for that in the south. To fix this problem, it would be easy. The minimum wage of each county or state and get our congressmen to get the wages ago up if democrats want to do anything, they should tie up their wages, the senates wages to the medium wage of each state and you will see that go up every night overnight. Host we will go to dave in california, how much do you make there . Caller i make 12 an hour and i get hours, which is good. Issonally, the minimum wage too low. The congressmen make it 174,000. They should not make more than minimum wage. Minimum wage is too low, it should be 20 an hour at least. We raise the minimum wage, we wont be able to hire as many people. That is not true because if you raise the minimum wage, the person working two or three jobs would only have to work one. The minimum wage is way too long. Everything goes up and it has been going up. You have to make it fair for everybody, people have to be able to survive. Pretty soon you will have robots doing the jobs. Host what do you do for a living and if you dont mind me asking, how old are you . Caller i am a senior. Shop, that cannabis is what i do and it is really a great job, i love my job. I am not complaining about what they pay me or anything, but it could be more. Host dave in california, thanks for all the calls on raising the minimum wage. We will take a break. When we come back, switch our focus to discussing the federal spending and raising of the dead debt limit. Andrt bixby will be here today marks the 50th anniversary of the apollo moon landing and we will talk about that with nasas chief historian, bill barry. This weekend on book tv, saturday at 8 55, an author talks about the global backlash against immigrants in his book this land is our land. For most migrants, etymology border whenat a asked what are you . The difference between refugee, migrant, economic migrant can mean literally the difference between life and death. Sunday at 9 00 eastern on book,words in their new justice on trial, examine the confirmation of Supreme Court Justice Brett kavanaugh and the future of the court. They are interviewed by Los Angeles Times Supreme Court correspondent david savage. Trying to figure out in talking to people, a very different Brett Kavanaugh on martha mccallum, had much more of the bushy approach and on thursday when he came out strong and it was fascinating to learn that was the person he had been early on. As the court has become more decisionmaking its when it makes law rather than interpreting the law as written. It creates a political system. It is not surprising it becomes more political. Kim offers her guide to reading and understanding the u. S. Constitution. In her new book, how to read the constitution and why. Can the president do that . My answer is, that is the wrong question. ,he question is if he does that what is the consequence . What are the processes for holding a president accountable. Washington journal continues. Host the federal government is facing a deadline to avoid another shutdown. What fiscaliewers deadlines washington faces. They have nothing to do with one another, but they are converging at the same time. People think of it as lets make a deal and rolled them together. One is the annual appropriation bill. Out every september 30, which is why we have often shut downs around october 1. No appropriation bills have passed this year. Aey have not even agreed on topline number of what they are looking at. That is one of the deadlines, to get Appropriations Bills passed so we dont have another Government Shutdown on october 1. A more pressing and important deadline is the federal debt limit. Has aderal government dollar cap on what it can borrow now. E are at that cap the Treasury Department has certain tread water devices it can do to avoid going over the limit, but they are rapidly running out of those limits. They are getting tired of treading water. Its about to sink. Unlike the appropriations bill where you know there is a deadline, treasury is not sure when it is going to run out of cash to be able to pay its bills. It depends on the cash flows that come in. That can be unpredictable. The most recent projections were alarming. It says they could run out as congresstember when will be on its summer recess and if that happens, the government would have to default on some of its bills that could have serious consequences for the nations credit worthiness and the financial markets. To say nothing to the people owed money by the federal government and might not get paid. They are trying to rush a deal to see if they can get something done before they go on summer recess. Host which means next week. Guest it does. A week from today the house is out. The following week, the senate is out. They are trying to get everything done as soon as possible, today, really. Get a deadline and a deal done today, so they can get it on the house for next week and the senate floor the following week. Who is negotiating . The leadership of the house and senate and steven mnuchin. A rough outline of a deal right now. Lets remind our viewers, they are negotiating raising the debt limit, allowing the federal government to take on more debt while they are negotiating to spend more money. Guest this is the interesting thing. I am not a debt limit fan. It is more trouble than it is worth. Ways. Might be better i am a deficit reduction fan, dont get me wrong. To debt limit allows people hold federal credit worthiness hostage to anything they want. In this case, you have People Holding out for more spending that they want to do and they are refusing to raise the debt limit unless we increased spending and increase the debt. There is a certain irony there and it shows the bizarre nature of the federal budget process. Host you talked about appropriation bills, the spending bills have not passed because they have not agreed to a topline number. Thisding to politico, is where the budget caps are. If they do not raise the caps without action by congress and the white house, the pentagon would be cut by 71 billion in domestic programs would be cut by 55 billion. Two years ago, both sides agreed to a spending level for the next two years and that deal is expiring and they have to come up with another one. Guest you have to go back to 2011, when they were trying to get a big budget deal past and if they did not get a big budget deal past, they put in caps trying to get a big budget deal passed and if they did not get a theyudget deal passed, put in caps. Series ofassed a short term agreements, budget deals that would raise the caps for a couple of years. They never adjusted upwards, the caps for 2020 and 2021. Think of it as them going on this thing and they never adjusted the last two years. That is why you get this sudden downward plunge in those numbers. Either side wants to enforce those lower caps. They are trying to negotiate a deal, but it is difficult and embarrassing because no matter what they do, even if they froze spending this year at this years levels, the law assumes money is going to go down. Republicans want more on defense. Democrats want more on nondefense. Those are the contours of what they are trying to work out. Secretary of the treasury says he sees a deal in the making and the overall spending levels have been shared who have declined to disclose the precise figures. Richard shelby said the numbers were a big improvement over sequestration, without a new deal would be triggered early next year. 10 . Ing spending by when you see a quote by the appropriators chair that it is a big improvement over sequestration it is what they are dealing with because they did not adjust the caps. Even if they agree to a freeze, that would be a big improvement in terms of more money over the caps. We will have to see how it is defined. I would be surprised if it was much more. That would be hard to get through and get the white house to go along with it. This ious to see how once they agree, the longer it hangs out, the more difficult it is going to become. By definition, if you have lets sayt sayion and pelosi lets lets say there was something they agreed to, object to things pelosi got out of the deal. The longer something hangs out there, the more mischief comes from people who want to subvert the deal. Hope there is a deal i am sick of this routine shut down stuff. The debt limit is a serious thing. We should i would prefer if they separated out the debt limit issue and i hope they do that if they cannot work out a deal on the budget, come back and deal with that in september. They should not leave town with any possibility the government would default while they are gone. That would be beyond irresponsible. The administration is seeking roughly 150 billion in offsets to any of riemann. To achieve those savings, the administration is proposing to office 1. 1 trillion in in offsets. Talk about the trajectory we are on when it comes to debt and deficit. Guest the cbo listed a longterm projection. The path we are on is unsustainable. The debt is growing faster than the economy. Ultimately, it would get so large it would be a problem. Host i want to show our viewers, u. S. Debt is on an unsustainable path. Tell us what we are looking at here. Projected current policy. What does that mean . The blue is the alternative scenario, we which says suppose these capstone hold and the cap cuts that are scheduled to expire dont expire. That is why we call it current policy. Congress wants to keep extending them. What you are seeing in the blue is a more realistic scenario. Iner that, debt is prevented the economy would grow within 10 years. Over 200 in 30 years. That is why we say it is on an unsustainable course. There is very little they are going to do in this budget. Real driving forces of the budget are not the appropriations programs. They are mandatory spending programs. Budgetgest parts of the and the fastestgrowing parts are the mandatory spending and most the biggest wellknown are Social Security and medicare and medicaid. Those grow automatically. They do not go through the annual appropriations process. They are driven by demographics spending, care meaning the more of us baby boomers reaching retirement age, those programs become more expensive because they are more beneficiary. That makes medicare and medicaid marks and. When you look at longterm socialprojections, security, the Major Health Care programs are about 50 of the budget. Another 9 is interest. These are the things that are projected to grow faster than because of the demographics and the health care and it creates higher interest because. Being medicaid. Medicare is this purple color. Social security was brown. Interest is this black bar. People anill give example. Hopefully not too many have experienced this. If you try to live off of your credit cards and make minimum payments, for a while, it feels great. What happens is the interest cost begins to metastasize and normasu have this in , most of yourus bill is interest payments. That is what is happening in progressionerm rates. They are playing they are paying low Interest Rates, surprising a lot of us. We are certainly getting a break. 1 , that would add tother one trillion or so the debt. We are having to pay less on Interest Rates than we thought, so servicing the debt is not costing as much as we thought. As bad as these projections are, they would be worse if we have higher Interest Rates. California. D oaks caller i have a hypothetical question around the debt ceiling and borrowing. I have asked the same question over the past seven or eight years. Twice to Congress Persons and two other times two experts. Lets say you had a president who did not want to borrow money. Can congress legally require that president to borrow money. That is the question. Thank you. Maybe you havent had great luck with your answers because it is something we have never experienced before. Nobody knows the answer to that. Let me think about it for a minute. If the president does not want to borrow . It depends on the borrowing. The treasury does not have the authority to issue the bonds if it is up against the debt limit. Congress can raise the debt and the president could veto that, i suppose. They would have to override the veto. The president cannot refuse to pay bills that the government owes, but the treasury can not issue bonds if it is at its limit. It cannot issue bonds if it is at its limit. Does that help at all . Tot we are going on barbara, deerfield beach, florida, she is a democrat. I amr my name is barbara, 91, i have seen it all. Of course we have to pay our debts. People are living longer and there are more humans on the earth to receive medicare and medicaid. We have to raise the amount people put into Social Security in the first place. Lets take that. Is that a solution . Guest it is a partial solution, sure. When spending is higher than baked into the cake, as barbara noted, there are more people and more beneficiaries, you either have to raise more revenue to pay those benefits or you have to adjust the benefit formulas. If you do that, you have to phase it in. It is easy to get revenues quickly. If you raise the payroll tax cap , that is one of the popular options. That would bring in more money initially. To, on thegoing benefits side, there are things you have to phase in. You cannot say to someone who was about to retire you have to work more years before you get your benefits. That is why it takes longer for those types of changes to be made. I think it will require some sort of mix. Host daniel, arizona, independence. Independent. Caller i have a question about the military budget, andretionary spending bringing down the debt for future generations. Discretionary spending means it goes through the annual appropriations process, which is what we are talking about now with this budget deal. Congress has to approve funding. Byt is what is meant discretionary. Sometimes, congressional terms do not have the same meaning they do in the dictionary. Most people would not consider defense spending as a discretionary matter. It just Means Congress gets to set the limit. It is between 650 and 700 billion, less than 20 of the budget. Large part of the budget. The defensereason budget needs to increase yearoveryear because of things like demographics and health care. The military has to pay Higher Health care costs. That is a driving factor. The military budget fluctuates by what our activities are around the world and our troop levels. York, on ournew line for republicans. You. R i agree with this is reckless what they are doing with the spending. Interest rates are low on the debt is because people are still willing to purchase the american debt. The economy is growing. That brings more money into the coffers and people believe that buy ourigners will debt, believe we will be able to continue paying that debt and that is why Interest Rate stay low. People feel the American Government can no longer pay, Interest Rates will continue to go up. That will end all Discretionary Spending and the government will have to monetize the debt and everybody will pay for the debt and there will not be money for anything else. I saw an opinion page that said we can afford to have a higher debt because the economy is doing well. That is when you are supposed to pay down your debt, when you have more money for your debt. They got everything backwards. This is totally reckless. We are going to have to pay the piper. Is doings the economy well, there is many coming in. Money coming in. You hit on two good points. People rely on the federal government, Treasury Bonds are good as gold. The rest of the world seeks out Treasury Bonds as a safe haven. If we take that away, and one of hiringsequences would be would be higher Interest Rates. If we decide we need to stimulate the economy, we cannot keep running these huge deficits and debts. That would have a negative effect on the economy over the long term and it would have a , andorcing effect eventually we would have to pay for it. Thomas, georgia, democrat. Caller the problem in the backd states stems from when it was never addressed, when george w. Bush and dick cheney stole money from the treasury to bailout the stock market. It has never been addressed. The stock market was never in distress. The money was never accounted for. Nobody ever questioned where it went. Is 788 billion dollars. Bill clinton would have done that, obama would have done that. Even donald trump would have done that, they would be in federal prison right now. Sure i am not entirely what the caller is referring to. There were a number of measures taken in the wake of the Great Recession that were intended to shore up the financial markets. Policymakers were faced with a tough tradeoff. You let a lot of banks go under, greatcould turn a recession into a great repression. Or, you reluctantly provide with the goal of doing the greater good or preventing worse damage to the economy. There was a lot of money provided that a lot of people were reluctant about. Shoring up banks, bailing out banks and we do not know what the counterfactual is, if that money had not been provided and the banks had gone underwood we have a worse situation . Host jack, mechanic falls, maine, republican. I was wondering, with all of these people working in record numbers and the wages rising, shouldnt there be enough money and Social Security to keep that . Would the oldest generation in america about ready to die, what is going to happen when all of these people die in the next generation is not as large. Shouldnt there be a surplus of income . The problem is, the number of beneficiaries is rising faster than the workforce. To ratio of workers 51. Iciaries used to be back in the 1960s, there were five workers for every retiree. It is now three to one. That puts pressure on and why the system is going to produce many more benefits than the payroll tax can afford. Is a mathematical problem. In one sense, it is easy to fix. You either raise the payroll tax, or raise the cap, or do something to adjust benefits and that is an easier problem to fix than health care. Off,the boomers die eventually you have the generalon of society in is living longer. People are living longer. Speaking, there is increased longevity. When you look at the projections, it is not just the boomers die out and we go back to something else. Olderl have a permanently population. Sometimes people use the analogy as saying if you want to look at thinkdont look at this, of it as a python swallowing a telephone pole. It is a very longterm problem. The boomerss after retire, but it stabilizes at a ither level of spending stabilizes with the deficit under current law. Joe, eastpointe, michigan, democratic caller. We fromhow far away are 1929 . Mentioned things repeat themselves, including great depressions. , we implode. He top if i live the way the federal government lives, i would be in bankruptcy several times. Unfortunately, i cannot print money for myself. That would be counterfeiting. I wish the federal government would let the Treasury Department handle its own handln affairs and monetary business and take it away from the Federal Reserve, which is not the Federal Reserve at all. We would solve the Interest Rate problems. I do not mind paying Interest Rate on credit cards, but i remind 21 , that is what state farm charges me on one of my credit cards. If i get a cash advance, it is probably 50 . I wonder how far away we are from 1929. And it seems that these depressions all come on the republican watch. Hoover. Reagan had a Great Recession. Bush. Now trump, who has driven it out, giving the money to his millionaire and billionaire buddies. Host i will leave it there so we can get an answer. Guest there is a lot to think about there, but your basic question was how far are we away from 1929 . I do not know, and nobody does. That is the danger. The fact is that there is no particular dropdead point, where you know you will go over a cliff. Likeyou do know is kind of health habits. What is good for you and what is not good for you. You do not know which donut will clog your artery and send you to the hospital. You do not know which cigarette does you in. But you know you may be better off eating less or getting more exercise or not smoking. The danger with what is beenning now is there has a total lost of any interest in fiscal discipline. So proposals are coming from the left and the right to spend more and cut taxes, and who cares about the deficit and the debt. Afraid that, at some point, there will be a day of reckoning , as a couple of the other callers have mentioned. We just do not know exactly when it is. My feeling is there is no good reason for us to want to find out what that better fiscalme and economic policies that we know would be better for the longterm. Host if our viewers want to learn more, you can go to concordcoaltion. Org. Robert bixby, thank you. Guest youre welcome. Host coming up, we turn our attention to tomorrows 50th anniversary of the apollo 11 moon landing. We will speak with bill barry. Of then, the President National association of Immigration Judges, Ashley Tabaddor, will discuss the backlog of regression cases in the courts immigration cases in the courts. A new cspan poll Shows One Third of americans have a favorable view of the Trump Administrations efforts to create space for us. Nearly as Many Americans have an unfavorable view. The Largest Group has no opinion about space force at all. There are significant differences when you look at the partisan breakdown. Almost half of republicans see space force favorably, while only one cordova democrats view it favorably. National security came in second behind monitoring earths environment when those surveyed were asked to select priorities for u. S. Space policy. Find all of the results at cspan. Org. Mugs aregton journal available at cspans new online store. Check out the washington journal mugs and see all of the cspan products. The house will be in order. For 40 years, cspan has been providing america unfiltered coverage of congress, the white house, the Supreme Court, and Public Policy events from washington, d. C. And around the country, so you can make up your own mind. Created by cable in 1979, cspan is brought to you by your local cable or satellite provider. Cspan your unfiltered view of government. Washington journal continues. Host bill barry is with us, talks chief historian, to to us about tomorrow. Marks the 50th anniversary of the apollo 11 moon landing. Tell us what the 50 year mark means to you. Old whenwas 11 years that happened. I was part down in front of our blackandwhite tv in massachusetts. I thought i was in the middle of enjoying the greatest adventure that ever happened. And i was. 50 years later, i am enjoying the greatest adventure ever happened replayed, and doing it as nasas chief historian. What a ride. Host how did you get to this position . What do you do . Guest the quick answers do not do what i did if you want to be chief historian. I did eight when he to career in air force and did a lot of graduate work on the history of the soviet space program. When i retired from the air force, the then chief historian said why not apply for a job here at nasa . Applied, got the job, and ended up being the chief historian. It was right place at the right time. Host when you look at the history of space, where does this inverse remark . Guest i think it is a real watershed. There are several. The first human in space. But the first time that humans set foot on another planetary body, that is a big step. It is akin to the columbus setting forth for the new world. I bet everyone will remember neil armstrong. Host what was happening at the americans,e, as the agency,d nasa, was able to get americans to the moon . Guest the 1960s are an interesting time. A very turbulent time. Tothe time we were ready land on the moon in early 1969, the war in vietnam is getting hot. Civil rights are a big issue in america. Gender rights are just beginning to creep into the conversation. The economy is bad. Lots of innercity poverty. There are lots of things are distracting americans. A lot of people concerned about the amount of money being spent going to the moon. In fact, Popular Support for the Moon Landing Program never exceeded 50 in Public Opinion polls throughout the 1960s except for one week, this week in 1969, when we landed on the moon. Otherwise, Popular Support for the moon landing was below 50 . Largely, the moon landing was driven by a president who made it his priority and a congress willing to fund that. Even then, by 1960 five, nasa peaked its funding. Host how did it happen . Guest a bunch of really great folks with a really great plan. And we were very lucky in 1969. Wasexcitation at nasa apollo 8, apollo 9, or apollo 10 the expectation at nasa was apollo 8, 9, or 10 would go wrong. So when we named the groove apollo 11, that is when we hoped the crew of apollo 11, that is when we hoped there would be the moon landing. We got extremely lucky in 1969 and were very good that everything went to plan. Extractually built an lunar module. That is the one sitting at the air and space museum down the street here. Host explain more on the background. How did we get lucky . What was happening . Guest steps to get to the moon were extremely complex. We had never actually flown to the moon before with humans until december of 1968 with apollo 8. It was the first time we had launched people on the saturn five rocket care the saturn five rocket had over 3 million parts the saturn v rocket had over 3 million parts. Any number of things could have gone wrong. Performed v beautifully. They were all recoverable things. It even got hit by lightning, the launch of apollo 12, and the saturn v just kept chugging along. Very welldesigned, robust. A lot of the strength of the program came from the disaster early on in the apollo 1 fire. After that, nasa and all of the people in the program come about 400,000 people, redoubled their efforts to fix everything they could. We got lucky but also worked very hard at it. Host in the day that it launched and the days to get to the moon, then the actual moon landing, tell us what is happening at nasa. Guest of course, nasa is chewing on their nails, if they are so inclined, and watching the flight plan very closely. These steps and the procedures were well rehearsed. Buzz, flying in the apollo 11 spacecraft, that mission to the moon was probably easier than any simulation they did. They had been in the simulator, and the supervisor was throwing them all sorts of curveballs if this broke, what would you do . They probably killed them 100,000 times in the simulator. So it was kind of amtek on active. Instead not go wrong for the most part. People were watching the mission carefully. Everyone at nasa was focused on the mission and making sure it was happening. You have the three astronauts all watching, but behind them, several hundred people sitting at mission control. Behind them, they were full of upple working in backing people. Then all of the contractors around the country. Yet people in new york and in hugeornia there was a backup plan in case anything went wrong. We want to have our viewers participate in the conversation as well. If you live in the easterncentral part of the country, 202 7488000. Mantonpacific, mountainpacific, 202 7488001. We take your calls for nasas chief historian. Tell us the back story on the phrase one small step. Who came up with it . Guest there has been a lot of speculation. Neil armstrong said he got no particular guidance other than Say Something appropriate. I suspect he had conversations with people privately about that. Really, it was not a scripted thing. I think in part because they wanted it to be more natural. If he had to stop and read it, it would have been difficult to do so. He made up that line himself, and it was clear that he gave it some thought. Then, when he got up there, that is what came out in the moment. Host what else was planned by nasa when they took those first steps . What were they to do and how were they to document . Guest they had a full two and a the extraplan for vehicular activity, the e. V. A. They set up a number of different experiments. There were some commemorative activities. What is surprising for me, when i look back at it, the commemorative activity plan did not really start until the spring of 1969, about march. A Nasa Administration is what are we doing to commemorate things on the moon . The engineers were so busy engineering the mission that they had not thought about it. Plaque and came to an agreement about it. Then there was discussion about should they put up a flag . Should it be an international flag, a lot of flags . Congress gave their opinion and said you should put up the american flag, if you put up any. That had to figure how to put a there is no wind on the moon, so you will just the a pole. So the engineers in houston figured out how to build a flagpole with a bar for the flag to pop up and put in place so it would look like the flag is blowing in the wind. Then they had to figure out where you put this flag. Flagpole, it will not fit through the door of the lunar module. They do not have any room outside of the lunar module, so they ended up mounting it on the leg of the lunar module, the one with the latter that came down from a where the plaque was as well. It was put in a special fireproof container, in case the flag on fire, so when it came time to put the flag up, neil and buzz unwrapped the two and to get pieces, the bottom and top pieces of the pole. They had a hard time putting the pole into the surface. If you watch the film, it takes quite a while for it to stand up and not fall over and get the flag to stick out straight. But they eventually get a flag. The other thing that happened was a call from the president , which was not in the flight plan, but the president it was appropriate. They thought why not, so they got to hear from president nixon while on the surface of the moon. Those were their commemorative things that happened. There were also experiments. A scientific experiment that measured moon quakes. A solar wind experiment. The first experiment was the solar wind experiment, made in switzerland. A swiss scientist proposed that. They got put up first because they wanted to have as much collection time as it was. It was basically a big sheet of aluminum foil to collect the solar wind and the sun. They rolled it up and brought it back to earth. They also put out a thing called reflector. Ging laser that experiment is basically a series of mirrors in a container, and they said it out on them and so they could measure the distance between the earth and moon with great precision. That reflector is still used today. From that, we found the moon is slowly moving away from the earth. Host nancy is in franklin, north carolina. Good morning. Caller good morning. Thank you for the call. Mr. Barry, thank you for the information. Inemember the moon landing 1969, preparing to get married, a big wedding. Everything came to a screeching halt to watch that. I remember, in elementary school, when alan shepard was the first want to go up in space and come down. He is actually the first man in space. Here is something i wanted to add. Very strange, as it is. July 16, to the day, most is when we lost our favorite person, jfk junior, in a plane crash in the ocean. So both days should be celebrated or remembered. Guest that was a tragic loss. Supportd do you returning to the moon . Because this Administration Says we need to go back by 2024. Caller no. My, Space Exploration son was very involved with it as a kid. Fine and dandy, nonhumans going up there, and doing whatever science you want ows but i think this potus kn how to waste our money when we have homeless, immigration systems, and other issues. This planet, mother earth, right now should be number one. Forever,study in space as far as i am concerned. It is fascinating. But that kind of money should be spent here at home, on planet earth. Host all right. She brings up looking back at her memory at the time of apollo 11. It is her wedding day and everything stops. And then talks about the tragedies of the challenger. And then ends by saying we should not go back. Do you think the impact of the challenger and those other tragedies what is the impact of the challenger and those other tragedies on peoples views going back into space, to the moon . Guest people are sensitive of the loss of people we can consider heroes. Those have a big effect. If you were to ask people that fly those missions in fact, i was one of the escort people for the launch of columbia, back in 2003, before the accident. I got to talk to the crews and the families. They were all of a mind that they knew what the risks were, and they were willing to take those risks, because they thought Space Exploration was an important thing for humans to do and well worth taking the risk. Nancyhis current nancys correct that these arguments were the same arguments in the 1960s. Is it really worth the while . From my perspective, the investment we made, the Apollo Program 25 billion that we spent at the time, which is a lot of money, but compared to all the other money we spent on everything else, it was a small percentage of the u. S. Budget. And they pay back we get, not only from what we learned about the universe and what we understand about it now, but also the inspiration. How many times have you heard people say, if you can put a man on the moon, why cant we fill in the blank . That mindset is important. And one of the things in 1961, 1 resident kennedy challenged us to go to the moon, the reason he did that was when president kennedy challenged us to go to the moon, the reason he did that was lots of countries were newly independent after world war ii, and they were looking at which approach do we take toward development . The soviet system appeared to be good, because they had gone from being clobbered in world war ii to being able to beat the United States to space in 1957. This is an important struggle and something we look back on you can tell when you bring it say wasnt it obvious that we would beat them . It was not. Thisally put an end to discussion over whether or not the soviet system was better and it undermined the soviet government in a lot of ways, and 30 years later, it collapsed there is not a direct line, but there is an effect. Host on al jazeeras website, the new race to the moon is not about bragging race. The 21st century one is projecting geopolitics beyond the limits of our atmosphere with india, russia, china, and others saying they want to go to the moon. Guest i would hope we all go to the moon together. It would make more sense. But most countries do not spend a lot on space programs. It is a lot of money and a lot of risk that goes into it. Countries do not do that just for scientific purposes, generally speaking. They want to see some return on that. Generally, it has been bragging rights or prestige or some geopolitical advantage that countries have been willing to spend that kind of money on. I think we have gotten to the point where we have developed our capabilities enough that it is a relatively small investment. And human Space Exploration will have huge benefits for the future. Host and that article says when there is water, there is competition. Corporations are competing for a ce it is not just the moons proximity to earth that makes it an attractive foothold but what is on its surface. The u. S. Was the first country to land humans on the moon. S did not see what india unveiled evidence of water on the surface. We yeah, we had indications that there may be deposits of water, particularly on the poles of the moon, from earlier missions, but muchone did not find how there was. It is a great example of countries you may not think much of being partners in space working together and achieving a great perspective. Host we go to west virginia. Sharon, good morning. Caller thank you for taking my call. I been looking at the historic photos of the moon landing and i am not educated. Not a very smart person. I am a housewife, and my specialty is dust. Of theed, on the feet lander, that they were spotless in the photos. And the other thing was the creator holes that i think should have been under the lander can you give me a scientific reason why there would not be dust visible in the photographs . Guest sure. Hefact, neil armstrong, when was getting ready to step out the ladder, he made observations, because scientists were not sure what would happen when the lunar module first touched down on the moon. We had landed other robotic probes before, so we had some idea, but they were not fully sure, particularly with the size of the engine. The surface of the moon, actually, has been battered by all kinds of debris that has hit the moon. We call shooting stars, they do not burn up in the emissary of the moon, because there is no atmosphere. So they hit the moon and they grind up the rocks. There is no water or wind. So the surface of the moon is sharp bits and pieces of rocks thats on the surface, but just below that layer, the surface is pretty stiff, because it has been beaten by time and is compacted really tight. So when the lunar module lands on the moon, they blow away the surface dust. You can see it when they look out the window you see this cloud of dust get blown away. So the dust gets blown away before the surface, so it is sort of clean underneath. It was not really a creator, because the surface underneath is hardpacked. Host what she is getting at is some conspiracy theories out that this really did not happen. Why does the flag look like it is blowing, there is no wind, et cetera. A recentith ipsos, did poll about the apollo 11 mission. When we as people do you believe the apollo 11 moon landing was fake look at the age down. 9 said yes from 18 to 34. 35 to 49, 11 . And it gets less as they get older. Guest the Conspiracy Theory thing it is hard to argue with it because theres a theory anyway, so we normally do not engage in that sort of thing. Most of the people ive talked to that ask those sort of questions, they say i saw this picture on the net, and said to have been faked. Well, did you look at the other 70,000 pictures we brought back that could have been faked . The thousands of scientists that have investigated and agreed that moon rocks do not come from earth. There is plenty of evidence, if you bother to take a look at it all. But people love a Conspiracy Theory, that is an interesting 1, 1 that gained traction, particularly in the days of the internet. My perspective is, if we tried to fake them and landing the soviet union was still trying to beat us to the moon. They had a robotic probe that crashed on the moon when neil buzz were on the moon. If we had fake the moon landing, the soviet union would have outed us in a heartbeat. So it is ludicrous, but i understand why people who have not had the luxury of sitting around looking at nasa history records and documents and inerials i am immersed that stuff, so it seems silly to me. But i could see where, if you did not know a lot about it, you may think maybe it is true. Host how are you marking tamaras anniversary . Guest it will be a work day for me, because it is the 50th anniversary. We have been waiting for this. I will be at nasa headquarters, working with our social media team, answering peoples questions. I will be out at the National Mall, the display we have at the National Mall. I will speak at it and watch the saturn v launch off the washington monument. Host the washington journal will be at the air and space medium starting at 7 00 a. M. Tomorrow to mark the anniversary of it, a special production with American History tv. We will take more of your comments and questions tomorrow morning on the washington journal, 7 00 to 10 00 a. M. Eastern time on the 50th anniversary of the apollo 11 moon landing. Lets go to robert, florida. Caller good morning. How are you . Host doing fine. Question or comment . Caller i have two comments the red and the local paper, 50 years ago, somewhere in the neighborhood of 18 billion to 90 billion was spent on that moon landing. Do thatabout trying to again, which would certainly be more money in todays dollars just a few minutes ago, i watched your program on cspan, the gentleman was talking about the federal debt. , found some of that alarming and i would certainly rather put that money towards the federal debt and not try to do this again. But the primary reason for my call i am 75. I fall in that 2 of people 65 and older who think the thing was kind of faked. I would love to get your reason my mind i think it was fake so that taxes could be raised and the federal government could accumulate more money. Irlier that summer of 1969, had been sent to visit my aunt in new york at the time, i lived in north carolina. I became involved in watching i think it was Channel Seven at the time and the mets. Anyway, i got back to north carolina, got a tv, something that had not been around much before, turned it to Channel Seven, and guess what . No channel 7. So i am thinking it is about 700 miles to 800 miles from new york to north carolina, and i cannot get a host what is your point . Caller now they are trying to tell me that they sent back pictures from the moon host alright, anything you want to respond to that . Guest the technical question, the reason we are able to get pitches from the moon is we had very powerful transmitters and antennas on both ends. It is i am not an engineer, but i understand it is different from your tv signal. Host from california, ron. Caller good morning. Thank you for taking my phone call. A workingo have been space vehicle test mechanic at in 1967nedy this month. Then i got drafted and missed the actual launch of the 11. But i worked on it, from building apollo heat shields in downey, california, laying up those to heat treat, then working on the second stage of the apollo second stage, then to mississippis test facility, to take off the top because we had a leak in the hydrogen tank, and then onto the cape. Long story short, i was there grissom and the boys burn up on the pad. It was a moment when we could have lost the space industry. I happened to be working for a guy by the name of harrison storms. Of the spaceent division of north american aviation. And the project manager they said we could lose this thing. That meant they would beindustry. So those people that say there would be no space industry. So those people who say this when you see the loss of transmission from the dark side of the moon, it gives you pause. I worked with those guys. Every one of those guys people watch apollo 13 and think it was amazing. It was not. The guys who were there were amazing. I was so honored to have the opportunity to work with them. As far as i am concerned, we should be going onward to the moon again to double check, make sure that flag is still there. Thank you, mr. Barry. Guest thank you for your contributions to the space program. You were one of the giants that the people at nasa and people we stand onorld the shoulders of people like you, who got us into space in the first place. Host we will go to wisconsin. Bill . Caller i worked at Cape Canaveral years ago. Apollo andeen the the shuttle space shown. It was kind of like a dead time, when i worked there. My comment or question was, itng back to the moon, is strictly scientific or military or accommodation of both . Guest i think the return to the moon is designed to be scientific to learn more, but it is also a strategic move for the United States. Some countries or people will go out into space, and we think it is an area where the United States should lead. The president and congress have agreed that the United States should exercise leadership in space. We will not break the budget in trying to do that, but i think we can do it for a reasonably small investment of taxpayer dollars. The goal is to establish a foothold in space. We can explore the moon and do other things but also send humans to mars. Human adventures expand beyond planet earth into our solar system. Postthe washington this mornings featuring the iconic spacesuits. Can you talk about the gold visor that they are wearing and some other features . Guest sure. The gold visor was designed to reflect as much heat as possible from the sun and radiation. Gold is really good at that, apparently. Kind of expensive for your average sunglasses. Like me, you would be afraid to watch drop them all the time. But they were not afraid of dropping those helmets. That visor they could put up or down. If you look closely at the pictures of neil coming down the ladder, you can see his face, because he has the reflective visor up because he is in the shadow of the lunar module. But when they walked into the Bright Sunlight it is really bright on the moon. So they had the face shield. Looks kind of eerie, but it was designed to be a super effective sunglass for them. Host a space industry reporter quoted in this said they also have that visor so they could see their feet because it was important. Why . Guest when youre walking on the moon or floating in space, it is a little spaceship built just for you. So you need to be able to maneuver around. You need to be aware of where you are. On the moon, with lower gravity, it is harder to feel where you were. You are in a spacer that is pressurized. So being able to have a good view of your feet and where you are placing them and whether you are stepping on something putrdous when they experiments on the moon, particularly on later missions with more complicated experiments a lot of them had wires that connected them to the power source and things, so they wanted to be able to see so they would not trip over the wires. One of the missions ended up carrying the cable out, and it was not like you could just plug it back in again. It was important to have maximum visibility of their feet. Host talk about the recent unveiling of Neil Armstrongs spacesuit. Guest that was great. Had all ofnian has the important spacesuits in special climate controlled conditions to protect them. They had neils spacesuit on display for a number of years after the mission. When they built the spacesuits, they were not thinking about 50 years from then for display, they were focused on we want to keep you guys alive. They built it the best they could, but many of the materials they used were not designed to last for a long time. Plastic has dried up and strong. Pieces of metal that rub together have rusted. So this missoni and had quite a challenge. It was exposed for a long time, because everyone wanted to see it. It suffered a lot of damage. They took it off display about 13 years ago and put it in old storage to figure out how to better treat it and keep it going. A couple years ago, they said it will cost a lot of money to fix this, we will see if we can kickstart it. They did a campaign, raised a lot of money, and were able to renovate the suit. They just unveiled it earlier this week. Interest laying interestingly, it is not in the flight gallery, because that is in a bright spot. Sunlight would be bad for the suit. They tried to put a better place to put it. To me, it is dramatic that they put it right opposite the first plane that ever flew. You can see how far we went in those 60 odd years. Host we go to roger in pittsburgh. Caller hello. Good morning. Thank you for taking my call. I appreciate cspan a lot. I am 68yearold. Ive been around long enough to follow nasas adventures. I really applaud them. I truly do. But i am also one of those millions of people on this planet who have already seen something in the night sky. Irecalling, over time am even hearing that there were retired astronauts, retired commercial airliner pilots, that theymonauts have seen things in the night sky that they would say are not ours. I am bringing this up because efforts at nasa are very courageous. I am all for it. But because ive seen things and i am hearing that there are people who have worked in the field, who even werner von braun, being interviewed by somebody host what is the question . The whole question is spectrum of space travel itself and what it does to the human body. Travel to theof nearest star is something humans couldnt do. Towardsnasas on moving those kind of things . Because getting to the next star is something a human being would not be able to do. Well, you are right. Getting to another star is a long way away. We do not have the Propulsion Technology to get us there fast enough, hundreds of years of travel. It is something that people at nasa would look at the long range plans and do studies from time to time on longrange plans. Primarily, we are focused on closer time things that we can actually do something about. Those things are things that nasa is a government agency, and we do what congress and the president tell us to do, and primarily we are focused on studying our solar system with robotic probes, studying the earth, improving flight conditions for airplanes on earth that is still nasas mandate. And sending humans into space. For the next five years, we are hoping to put people back on the moon and use that as a jumping point to learn how to operate off the planet and get to mars. Getting to mars is a big challenge. We have our work cut out for us. We think that would keep us busy for more than a decade or so. Host woodbridge, virginia. Edgar is watching. Caller good morning. I am a big fan of the space program. I think the more, the better. 1960sup back in the watching Science Fiction television. Was a big fan of star trek, lost in space, the outer limits. My question is what did the employees, all of the employees who were affiliated with and connected with the space program, what did they think of programs like that back then . I always wanted to get their opinion . Guest you would be in good company. Almost everybody that i know who works at nasa is a big Science Fiction fan. Oftentimes, while waiting for a meeting to start, they will say did you see x show on tv or make some humorous reference to something that happened in star trek or lost in space. Like the Kobayashi Maru incident that happened in star trek. Clearly, there are a lot of Science Fiction fans at nasa. We love it. You would fit right in. Alignedabout mickey from oklahoma. Caller good morning. The apollo 11 what we saw series. It was talking about the fact that buzz aldrin did communion on the moon. I was surprised about that, because ive never heard about it. He said that was one of the first things they did, and it was controversial at the time, because he had to have the elements up there, and weight was precious. The other thing i wanted to ask thet was i heard that lender had a thick aluminum foil kind of skin, because weight was so important again, and i was surprised how small that was an how buzz aldrin, who has had a checkered career after the moon landing, especially compared to that i guess this elder of the Presbyterian Church did communion on the moon, which i thought was cool. Guest yeah, there was some sensitivity about religious issues, particularly after the apollo eight crew read from genesis around christmas eve. So there was some sensitivity about being overtly religious. Weause the constitution says will make no law about the establishment of religion. But buzz wanted to do that. Are of the crew members, allowed to carry a personal preference kit, given some weight and size, so he brought a little chalice and a vial of communion wine and the host wafer and had it blessed before he left earth. And when there was timing the schedule for him to have a moment of his own, he did soft communion on the moon self communion on the moon. In the lunar module, weight was critical. And the lunar module did not have to fly in the atmosphere. It just had to hold the atmosphere. So they made it as light as possible. It is really flimsy. If you were an airplane pilot looking at it, you would say i do not know if i want to fly in it. Host you can learn more about nasas history if you to history. Nasa. Gov. Also follow them on twitter, nasahistory. Guest has been great to talk with you. Host washington journal will be at the air and space museum tomorrow to mark the 50th anniversary of the apollo 11 moon landing. Join us then. Continue to call us with your questions and comments. We will take a break. When we come back, we will switch topics and look at immigration. We will hear from the president of the National Association of Immigration Judges, Ashley Tabaddor, on the backlog of immigration cases in the courts. This weekend, cspan is life from this missoni and aaron space medium on the National Mall to mark the 50th anniversary of the apollo 11 moon landing. Join us saturday morning starting at 7 00 a. M. Eastern, michael1 astronaut collins. The founding director of the Space Policy Institute john logsdon. Apollo 2 the moon author. Join us all morning with your calls, facebook questions, and tweets. Be sure to join washington eastern onve at 7 00 saturday morning. Former special counsel Robert Muellers on capitol hill, testifying in back to back hearings about possible obstruction of justice and a visa power by President Trump and russian interference in the 2016 election. It starts at 8 30 a. M. Eastern on wednesday, july 24. Watch on cspan, cspan. Org, or listen with the free cspan radio app. Washington journal continues. Host joining us from los angeles this morning is judge , president ofr the National Association of Immigration Judges. About your first association. Guest the National Association of Immigration Judges is the official union and organization for all the Immigration Judges across the country. Of the judgeshalf in the department of justice and with the public and representatives on the hill. Host how did you become an immigration judge . Guest i have been with the Justice Department might entire career. Prior to my appointment, i was an assistant u. S. Attorney in los angeles. Before that, i started as a law clerk with the Immigration Court in 1996. Host who oversees Immigration Judges in this country . Guest that is a good question. I think most people do not understand or do not appreciate this problem of having an Aggression Court or having having an Immigration Court in law agency. The justiceoned in department, accountable to the u. S. Attorney general our chief prosecutor. A daily basis, describe what is the job, what you are doing as an immigration judge. Have overht now, we 900,000 pending cases for about 400 judges. Our judges here of a wide variety of cases, but their daily routine is pretty much the same in that we are in court morning and afternoon, hearing cases, often times in large volumes, because cases need to go through some preliminary steps before they are ready for trial. Depending where the person is sometimes, they are in detention facilities, judges can be hearing attention cases and dealing with bond requests as well as regular cases asking for asylum or dealing with issues of communal aliens. Ofer judges handling cases not the tyrant nondetained cases could have up to 4000 cases pending on their docket, which means they are usually scheduled out three years or four years in advance and can sometimes be told that they have to schedule cases of 50 to 70 people per 83 hour or four hour orsion per a three hour four hour session. Host how many do you go through day . Guest myself have gone through 50 cases or 60 cases per day. Ive had colleagues who have done maybe 90 cases per day. Part whereliminary the kids are getting ready for trial. Host described the different kind of migrants that show up in Immigration Court. Guest the jurisdiction covers anyone the government believes is in the United States without permission or has done something that requires them to remove or is seeking to enter without permission. You can have individuals who have been in the United States for years, having entered through a visa but somehow violated the terms of the visa. You can have individuals who have been here without status or crossed into the night states into the United States without visas. You can have individuals apprehended out the border. It can very. It can vary. It can be children. We have individuals with competency issues sometimes, we are dealing with people who do not fully appreciate what is happening in court and having to deal with those issues. Of types of range individuals and cases that we hear from someone through has ton here just one day someone who has been here 50 years to someone seeking asylum to someone who has engaged in very serious criminal activities. Host who is arguing for each side in the courtroom . Guest similar to criminal proceedings, every one of our cases are initiated by a charging document filed by the department of Homeland Security. In that charging document is where the government sets out its case. They lay out the facts, lay out the charge. So when the two parties come before us, one of the parties is always an attorney from the department of Homeland Security, particularly immigration and Customs Enforcement branch. Host what about for those seeking asylum or a visa, et cetera . Who is arguing for them . Guest one of the Common Misconceptions is that, while the charges are always started by the government, our proceedings are not consumer considered criminal. Individuals who appear before the court are not entitled to appointed counsel. There are some provisions that present the court that prevent the court there are some provisions that prevent the court from appointing councils here but there are some rights, so we have to go through extensive discussions about those rights and responsibilities, in which we explained that the person can seek or retain counsel, but has to be on their own dime, so to speak, because it cannot be at the expense of the government. Host how do they get representation, is that if that is the case . How often do you see a migrant in your Court Without representation . It is not uncommon to see individuals representing themselves, but it depends on the case. People in detention facilities have a lower chance of able to secure counsel. In those instances, while i do not have the specific numbers, a much higher percentage of individuals, i would say as high 60 of those individuals will not be able to retain counsel. In terms of when individuals have been released into the community or have never been taken into custody, the likelihood of being able to secure counsel is higher. It also depends regionally. Sometimes, in Southern California or in california or new york, some of the more coastal cities or states, where there is greater access to pro bono organizations, we have a higher rate of representation, whereas in some of the more rural or harder to reach areas, individuals may have a harder time seeking representation. And sometimes it is just financially trying to seek an attorney. Host how much does this cost somebody . Guest it depends. I do not have the figures. Ive heard it can be thousands to tens of thousands depending on the complexity of the case. Host we want to get our viewers involved. Democrats, 202 7488000. Republicans, 202 7488001. Independents, your line is 202 7488002. Our fourth line this morning for those who have experience in Immigration Court 202 7488003. In a few minutes, the house will come in for a pro forma session. It will be short. We will go to the floor for that brief session and then return to our conversation with all of you and judge tabaddor. In,olks who want to call continue to do so. Dial in now. We will get to your calls in a minute. What is the wait time for people coming to Immigration Court . How long can this whole process take . Guest again, it depends. In individuals who are nondetained dockets, for example in new york, los angeles, san francisco, it is not unusual for judges to have 4000 to 5000 cases on their docket. Which means it case may come for them today will not be scheduled for trial until sometime in 2022 or 2023. If someone is in a detention facility, we make a lot of effort to make sure that that individual is given much more quicker access to the courts. Judges who handle detained dockets have smaller dockets. They could have maybe a few hundred cases, and theres a big effort to make sure those individuals are provided an opportunity to present their case within a short period of time, ideally within a couple months or a little more than that. That depends on how overcrowded the docket is and how many people are being detained at the time. Host for those people who may yearsve a trial for two to four years, where do they go . If they are in the nondetained docket, it means the individual is likely in the United States. That person is in the United States, awaiting trial. But recently, the government started the Migrant Protection Program that requires the mexicoual to remain in while going through their case in the court did in those instances, this individuals would be blessed in be bused host we are going to how the house floor for just a few minutes and pick up where we left off. All rise. The house will be in order. The chair lays before the house communication from the speaker. I hereby appoint the speaker pro tem on this day, signed nancy pelosi, speaker of the house of representatives. A prayer will be the speaker pro tempore the chair will be offered by the guest chaplain, father dan cummins. The chaplain pray with me. Loving father, in loving our neighbor unconditionally is your law fulfilled. But if we continuously devour one another, are we not consumed by our lust, incapable of walking in such love . Yet if we belong to christ, those devices have been crucified, because we have received the power of your holy spirit. Who bears witness in our life of ur graces, love, joy, peace, long suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance. In these virtues we must walk, restoring those who have been overcome by sin. For this purpose your son asended to heavens throne to bestow these healing graces upon us, your children. Allowing us to walk in the spirit, desiring to love one another, heal one another. Father, we know how to give good gifts to our children, but you promise these greater gifts to us. These gifts of the spirit. If we ask. So, father, we ask. Give us your spirit. In jesus name we pray. Men. The speaker pro tempore the chair lass examined the journal of the last days proceedings and announces to the house her approval thereof. Pursuant to clause 1 of rule 1, the journal stands approved. The chair will lead the house in the pledge of allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of america and to the republic for which it ands, one nation, under god, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. The chair lays before the house a communication. The clerk the honorable the speaker, house of representatives. Madam, pursuant to the permission granted in clause 2h of rule 2 of the rules of the u. S. House of representatives, the clerk received the following message from the secretary of the senate on july 18, 2019, at 4 49 p. M. That the Senate Passed senate 321, senate 1694, senate 1833. Signed, sincerely, cheryl l. Johnson. The speaker pro tempore the chair lays before the house an additional communication. The clerk the honorable the speaker, house of representatives, representatives. Madam, pursuant to section 780, i am pleased to appoint the following member to the National Council on disability. Mr. Baldwin of bakersfield, california. Signed, sincerely, kevin mccarthy. The speaker pro tempore without objection, when the house adjourns today, it shall adjourn to meet at 4 00 p. M. On monday next. Without objection, the house stands adjourned until 4 00 p. M. On monday next. Host we are back here on washington journal, continuing our conversation with Ashley Tabaddor about the Immigration Court system. About whenlking someone is awaiting their court trial, they are allowed to stay in the United States. With the new policy on asylumseekers, what is happening . Guest in those instances where they are part of the Migrant Protection Program or the remain in mexico program, they are given a charging document. D into the court where they are printed with this. When the case is rescheduled or when they prepare their application or get their witnesses together or whatever is required, they are given a date and they are taken back into custody, they take them to the border and release them outside the United States. They are expected to remain in mexico for the duration of the time until the next hearing date. That will trigger the same procedure of coming back to the border and be taken to court for hearings. Host hanks in georgia on the and dependent line. Caller i would like to know whether or not the law established by the u. S. , do the to abidee those laws by also . Obligations are to secure protection for those seeking persecution. Essentially been on a during honoring this through domestic law. Those are our refugee laws. Judges do have to honor those and follow the law when allowing people to pursue applications of asylum, withholding removal, protection under the protection act. Host billy is in brooklyn. Caller they want to build a huge order wall to keep the illegals out. Iny want people to come legally. They have a problem with legal immigration. Immigration hardliners when they proposed a comprehensive Immigration Reform , they wanted to reduce the number of legal green cards by half. As judges, we do not comment. Its not appropriate to comment on those types of policy considerations. What we can explain is the impact of those decisions on the court or on what we are dealing with currently. At this point, im afraid i can answer that question. Host why is there the backlog you were describing . Guest thats a really good question. Initially when you ask about Immigration Court and where its situated, if you look at the Immigration Court, it came out of the immigration and Naturalization Service and the department of justice. We have remained in the department of justice. That has created significant problems for the court and has been a contributor to the accolade. We are a court run by a prosecutor. Every administration has used the court in various ways to advance the prosecutorial or Law Enforcement policy. Being ignored. We were not traditional Law Enforcement, we did not get enough funding. That was one factor to having a backlog where Law Enforcement is getting the money to pick people up and we dont have enough resources to process them. Over time, what became more difficult was the court was used as a messaging tool. With the previous administration, they started the shuffling of dockets. Individuals who were recently apprehended or people with children were put in front of the line despite thousands of cases that were waiting to go through the process. Reshufflinginued after reshuffling of the docket. 2017 sendingf in one third of the judges to the border in a show of support to say we are here to process cases. They had to drop their caseloads to go to the border, not being able to hear. We have to deal with these family unity cases, which are children cases with a deadline. That is being placed in front of the judges to deal with as a priority case. We are told everything is a priority case. We are not treated as a court when they administer. We do not have file clerks that handle thousands of cases that they are being asked to hear on a daily basis. We do not have enough office space. We do not have an us clerks. The agency has taken a big drastic step to reduce interpreters. 85 of the individuals that appear before the court do not speak english as their primary language. Its in, upon the court to make sure we provide interpreters. Incumbent upon the court to make sure we provide interpreters. They are implementing policy decisions that are furthering the backlog. It is introducing delays into the system. To make matters worse, the instituted quotas and deadlines on judges. What it meansoyed to be a judge. Its now introducing a financial stake for the judge to be able to hold his job. Are tryingmes judges to keep track of their cases, use excel sheets to figure out what they are doing on every case. It is compromising their ability to focus on the case. We see a much greater emphasis on enforcement. In previous administrations, we ofld have some level metering of cases or some level prosecutoror toil prosecutor prosecutorial level. There have been resources, unprecedented resources given to the court. Sent went from 300 judges to 400 judges. They have been hired in the last two years. Fromwith that, weve gone 600,000 cases to over 900,000 pending cases. The fundamental flaw from having a court system that is within a Law Enforcement agency. We believe its important before we do anything else to remove the Immigration Court from the department of justice and secure the end dependence the court needs, similar to the tax courts and the bankruptcy courts, so it can function like a court and bring efficiency and protections to the parties. Host kathy is in oklahoma. Good morning. Caller i have two quick questions. Why would you have to have a hearing or a trial for somebody who is caught dead to rights crossing the border. They are not claiming they are innocent. If you cut somebody in your yard like that, they would be sent away. They dont need to stay on your land. And why arestay there hearings when there is no disputing they are here egally question illegally . The children that come here, they dont make the decision. A guardian or parent was taking care of them. Why is there not an agreement with these countries that they will send them back to determine that parent or guardian . I do understand we have to do something with them. Host lets take those questions. Guest regarding the first question and the procedures that are afforded individuals seeking protections from being removed from the United States, under the law, congress has provided these proceedings because the question of someone is a citizen or national is something that should be determined by an independent judge. Next question is whether the person is in the United States illegally. That is one of those issues that congress has determined needs to be decided by a judge. If somebody should stay in the United States regardless of that initial violation of the law or the position being without authority, thats a we talked about earlier in terms of International Commitment on our treaty organizations to protect people seeking relief from persecution. Someone should be given the opportunity to ask to stay in the United States in spite of being currently without status. When you get to those questions, they require evidentiary hearings and for the people to present their sites. Part of protecting american principles and our constitutional obligations is to ensure when there are these types of questions that the parties should be able to go to a neutral judge and present their case in the judicial principles. This is the way congress has determined this to be appropriate and this is the way that would be consistent with our constitutional and statutory obligations. Children,on about the to the extent i can comment on on the lawot comment or what the policy should be, we comment on what happens in terms of the impact on the judges. What we have seen with the children on the docket which i have handled myself is what has the children have at least one parent who is already in the United States. They have left the child with a grandparent or an extended Family Member in the home country to be able to support themselves and their families. There are issues in the home country, often related to violence,domestic family problems, the child is brought to the United States in a variety of ways. About 70 of the individual children actually have a parent or close immediate Family Member in the United States. They are processed through refugee resettlement. They are reunited with their parents in the United States and can receive through the Court Proceedings to determine if they should remain or not remain. Questions about policy changes i cant comment on. Host linda is an independent. Caller good morning. You touched on my question already. I saw a story this week about how the Trump Administration is trying to get rid of the translators in the courts. How could that be legal . We are stripping away their right to talk. Thank you so much for what you do. Host is it legal . To not have an interpreter . Guest part of the definition of is toingful opportunity understand whats happening. Providing interpreters is a key wet of ensuring that provide a fair hearing. There is a key difference between providing an in person and turpin are versus forcing the judge to use an unscheduled telephonic interpreter. Imagine the judge has 50 cases in three hours. You have two or three minutes to judge the case. Having an interpreter present means they can him easily transfer date translate what is happening and help with the processing of the case and be a more reliable source of interpretation. With telephonic interpreters, we are at the back and call of a Customer Service line, explain what we are looking for, wait for somebody to secure an interpreter, that interpreter is usually someone on a cell phone far away. There are reception issues. Our technology in the courtroom is not up to speed. Its difficult to hear each other. We spend time repeating what we have to say. We cannot get simultaneous translation. That doubles the time it takes to do a hearing. The judge just doesnt have enough time to be able to do the cases that are scheduled. It adds delay and frustration. You are trying to minimize what corners,aying, cut trying to reschedule the case of the person comes back at another time and we hope we have an interpreter. Those are some of the challenges we face. These are just not available for some reason and we cant understand how you hire so many judges and not anticipate there would be a greater need for interpreters and the costs associated with it. Host we will go to stone mountain, georgia. Caller good morning. Thank you for taking my call. I had a question and comment. My comment is about the correlation between International Affairs budgets and immigration. I believe there is a strong correlation between the two. It protects national security. The you believe that increase in that budget would decrease the immigration backlog we see now . Guest i dont have an expertise in that area. I cant really comment about proposed policy changes or legislative changes. I know that is something that has been experimented with in the past. Some of that is being discussed currently. Host janet is in west virginia. Caller why do some of those go up theregress and stay for a month at a time and hate help take care of those babies. I wouldnt send my child on a trip like that. Why a dont understand mother would send their child on a trip like that. Host david is in springfield, vermont. I wanted to ask a couple of hypotheticals. People are proposed to apply in their own home countries. If a criminal comes into to court and tries to sue for restitution because he wasnt paid by his criminal partner, what would the court do . We dont reward criminals. I believe on the first , they were asking for policy consideration. The second issue is under our current law, congress has allotted for a waiver. Considered the nature of the crime and have considered the number of years or the equity under the part of the in division. They have decided that depending the person would request stay in the United States. It would be a question up to the judge. That has to be considered in conjunction with our international obligations. Under the asylum law, there are provisions that prohibit granting asylum to individuals with certain types of crimes. The other obligations, the torture, wegainst have an obligation to protect individuals regardless of their criminal activities or criminal convictions if we find its more likely that person will be tortured in their home country. Its not a path to citizenship. It is a protection from being sent to a country that we find to be likely to torture the person. Its a matter of how congress has decided to weigh the nature of the crime of the individual versus the benefits they are seeking. A major there was overhaul. Definitionpanded the provisions,d felony there is something close to 60 different types and categories of criminal activity that would subject to someone being considered an aggravated felon. What you are considered an aggravated felony, you are prohibited from the benefits you immigration. Der exceptions, the convention against torture. Caller is there some way to prioritize the process so the people who have been here a. Hile can not answer that directly. I would say what the caller has a prosecutorial discretion. Thats what some of the previous administrations have considered and have done. You take a look at the order in which you think people should be processed. In courtrson is put proceedings, it really should be based on the facts of the case and the law that applies to the case. The prosecutor can always come in and have prosecutors real discretion. Prosecute processing turial discretion. Everything is considered enforcement priority. We dont see any sort of distinguishing feature between them. Having said that, we do see this , evening of our dockets with the family unity cases. Host anthony is watching in maryland. Your question or comment. Caller i would like to ask the judiciaryt the why dont theyt, news together to eliminate. We know this cant be solved all at one time. It seems like gradually some laws should be made to limit the ple coming in and to stop move some people out. Done by theng government working together. They should eliminate the problem. Guest to the extent that i could comment on that, the Immigration Court is neither in the article 1 or article 3 of the constitution. They are created by the legislative branch. That is the fundamental problem the Immigration Court faces. We are in the Law Enforcement branch. We dont have the independence the court needs in order to effectively monitor and administer the court docket to ensure that we do not have these and docketgistical Management Issues as well as the backlog. How can Congress Work together with the department of Homeland Security or the department of justice, that is not much i can comment on. We are working fiercely to educate our representatives on the hill. That is one of the fundamental problems why we are where we are, because the Immigration Court does not follow the principles of the judicial doctrine. We need to have judges who can exercise their expertise and be treated as judges before we can begin to address the backlog. We hope those individuals realize this is this is not a re or left side. This is a fundamental american possible to protect our country, to protect the American People by moving this court from the Justice Department, giving it that independence so it can then effectively process those cases. Nor kevin in lancaster you new york. I have a dust ander i have a comment question. I do not keep dusting people understand the court system. With the fear, from Central America what is the governments current status whether criminal would be related to gun related atrocities . Guest credible fear is a separate procedure from traditional Immigration Court cases. In 1996pens is congress created an expedited removal reprocess process for individuals who appear to at the border without proper documents. Obligation under International Law to provide protections to individuals congressersecution, provided for what is called the rebel fear. During that stage, even though the person is found to be without documents and is ordered extradition sleep. At the border, there is a process to state based on that fear. , who isum officer listening to the person, to determine whether the person has a credible fear. They have a reasonable likelihood of eating able to show, that if they are given the opportunity to go to court with full rights, do they have a they are showing eligible under our asylum laws . Every case is different. Just because someone is coming from any particular country or has seen gangrelated violence, that does not mean they are qualified or not qualified. You have to take a look at the that is that case and what the process is intended to do. If they are able to pass that convincingar, either and asylum officer or immigration judge, they are provided the opportunity to come to court and gain full access of the rights and responsibilities before the court. If they are not able to pass that credible fear review, they are the government is free to remove him immediately. Thank theant to president of the National Association of immigration. Judge, appreciate the conversation. Now we will bring you to capitol hill. The middle east policy council boasting an event looking at u. S. saudi arabia relations. While remaining safely to different value systems, under the current leadership of both countries, these tensions have been brought into sharp focus. The nature of our military cooperation, human rights violations, addressing regional