Transcripts For CSPAN Washington Journal 20130921

That move is worth it. If you think shutting down the government is a worthwhile proposition, give us a call at 2025853880. If you do not think it is worth it, give us a call at 2025 85 3881. Tell us why you think it is worth it or not worth it. You can reach out to us on social media, two. About 25 comments starting the morning. You can send this email to. The headline on the boston shows house gop ups the risk of shutdown. Is reflective of a lot of the headlines this morning. That house vote yesterday, you may have seen it on cspan, you can see the highlights on c span. Org. The legislation was approved on 89. Twoine vote, 2301 democrats voted for the measure. The report this morning this is a continuation of what youll find on the front page of the Washington Post. Again, on the idea of a Government Shutdown over the defunding of the healthcare law. We want to get your thoughts this morning heard if you think is worth it or if you think it is not worth it. Ill get the phone lines for those that think it is worth it. For those who think it is not worth it. You cannot only participate in the polls, you can also give your comments as well. Two folks have done so. Mark stein. We also heard from patricia meredith. Again, your thoughts this morning welcomed on the phone line and social media as well. From wichita falls, texas. Monique saying that it is worth it. High, i think so because first of all the last time the Government Shutdown happened, i believe if im right, the republicans did something good. It needs to be not shut down, shutdown theres nothing bad going to happen to the republicans. Think they are being told what is going on that is right by the people who they are voting for. I believe it would be worth it. Nexen is larry in mississippi. Next up is larry in mississippi. Why specifically do not think it s worth it . Caller caller it is going to destroy the economy. Theres no doubt about it. The only reason the republicans are doing it remember what they said. This is exactly what this is about. Is the same thing they got in massachusetts and they loved it. The republicans dont want the rest of the country to have health care. You have one republican complaining about making hundred 72,000 and he is a millionaire. That tells you everything you need to know and have a good day, sir. Host renee zimmer los angeles. She thinks it is worth it. I dont like the fact that the government is telling you what you have to buy. It has nothing to do with color issues here. What about all the illegal aliens . Theyre not going to have to pay for it, so why should we pay for it . Do you think is actually going to happen . Dont like the Health Care Law at all. I dont think it is right. Those are just a sampling of opinions on a show this morning. Have heard some of the thoughts this morning from people calling in off of facebook there are some true to people as well. If you want to give us your thoughts again, 2025853880. You have our social media avenues just to give you a sense of some of the sound that took lace in light of the vote yesterday. First up, House Speaker john boehner explains the house gop motivation and he also sent a message to the u. S. Senate. Say no. Time for us to it is time for us to stop this before it causes any more damage to American Families and american businesses. You have businesses all of the country who are not hiring because of the impact of this law. You have other businesses that are reducing the hours for their employees because of this law. To the United States senate is real simple. The American People dont want the Government Shutdown and they dont want obamacare. [applause] [applause] the house has listened to the American People. Now it is time for the United States senate to listen to them as well. [applause] a couple of comments off of twitter to add to the conversation this morning. Sylvia baumgart says it is not worth it. L kde says let it shut down. What difference, at this point, does it make . That is the question were posing for the remainder of our time this morning. This is eric thinks it is not worth it. Good morning. Caller the Government Shutdown if you go back to the Newt Gingrich and bill clinton years, bill clinton did everything that a rightwing president would do. Dont ask dont tell. He was extorted. President obama has to spend his time trying to get it overturned and work with them. Basically what you have is a bunch of people who are angry. You get mad when you lose a ballgame or marbles or something you take your marbles and your ball and you go home. It is also racially motivated. A lot of these people were brought up in a time when racism is rampant. Hese people are still living these Tea Party People are directly trying to destroy this government from within. After bill at it, clinton and them balance the budget, the very next year when bush and cheney took office, it doesnt matter. They give it all back to tax breaks. Youlanced budget if Grover Norquist plan to destroy the government, dont let the government of democrats, act like the democrats act like the deficit matters when it really doesnt. Caller i absolutely think it is worth it. We have had so much trouble Getting Health Care where i am living in a world area. It has nothing to do with race or anything else this has to do with what the American People want. We want to stand up and be heard. We have been heard. It is about time. I hope this goes through. I am praying for. I think it is best for the whole country. We dont need any more debt. We need to shut this down and stop it and make things right again. You may have heard some of the president s comments before i started the show this morning. A little bit more from the forddent who spoke at a plant in missouri yesterday. He chastised republicans over the vote that they were planning and over efforts to stop the healthcare law. Heres what he had to say. Unfortunately, there is a faction on the phone at the Republican Party right now. It is not everybody, but it is a big faction who convinced their leadership to threaten a Government Shutdown and potentially threaten to not raise the debt ceiling if they cant shut off the Affordable Care act, also known as obamacare. Think about this, they are not talking now about spending cuts. They are not talking about entitlement reforms. Were not talking about any of that, now theyre talking about something that has nothing to do with the budget. They are actually willing to plunge america into if we cant defund the Affordable Care act. Ets put this in perspective the Affordable Care act has been in the law for three and a half years. It passed both houses of congress, the supreme court, it was an issue in last his election. The guy who is running against me said he was going to repeal it, we won. The Washington Post this morning has a list of some of the things that would remain intact. According to the office of employees and budget, who provide for National Security including the conduct of National Security. More of that in the Washington Post this morning. Next up, this is james from phoenix, arizona. He says it is not worth it. Shutting down the government over Something Like this is stupid. Everybody needs healthcare. 60 of the people are going bankrupt over health care. It is something we need. With the financial situation like it is where everybody else thehe world is going down tubes, we dont need to follow them. Arguments atre some republicans put forth at us about costs, overall costs, how do you react to that . Caller oh, they can cover costs when the bill came up. Makeshould have tried to their argument when they were there for the bill. Now theyre shutting down the government. Host we will hear next from rick in oceanside california who thinks it is worth it. Hello. Rick, youre on. It is worthi think shutting it down for the simple fact that the constitution stands for the United States and i believe that obamacare is a socialistic regime taking over. Courseowing the natural of the constitution to function. I think it is worth it. Thank you. Is up next from edgewater, new jersey. She says it is not worth it. High. Caller good morning to you. Thank you for taking my call. I dont think this is worth it. I think what is so surprising is that there are enormous rippling effects. I was able to check art of the president s speech to the Business Community earlier this week. From a business perspective, he made some compelling arguments about what the social responsibility of the corporation is and what the corporation can do to interact with the American People, from all different points of view. That is what you are seeing right now. Youre seeing this battle of points of view. Right now, there are those who say it is the tyranny of the minority and that these individuals on the republican side are fighting for what they believe the country should be on a course of or type of trajectory. There are plenty of republicans that dont believe that as of october 1 the entire Financial System should take a Ripple Effect that could be enormously harmful globally. People are moving forward. They want progressive solutions. So i am willing to listen to the president talk about a bill that is law that can be modified. Thate republicans believe some aspects of it are bad and some are good, then allow the law to stand and then correct the parts that are incorrect. They have more power to do that. We want to see them work together. It is not feasible that it continues this way. In the New York Times you will see an article that talks about this issue. There is a part to to this story, though. As the New York Times highlights. Gregory, youre up next from florida. You say it is worth it. Caller it is definitely worth it. The democrats passed this with no republicans and now the ublicans are in power and in just one aspect of the government and that is the wrong rest. Theyre doing the best to get the American People want. Statesimum of the united population wants this law done away with. Keep stopping everything that comes over. This is just congresss way of upting these to to take it so that the electorate can see what the senators are doing and then perhaps we can get a change in the senate. Thank you. Host do you think that change will happen in the senate . Caller there are problems with this scenario. Even Warren Buffett who is the president s friend does not think that this is going to be a problem. He says the shutdown wont cause the ripple that people are talking about. I think someone like him would know. Host the viewer mentioned that he poll in the New York Times is a c paul taking questions about the president s Health Care Law. Heres the question. As you may know, that was a pullback in i was a poll taken back in may. Morningsking you this if you think a Government Shutdown over the Health Care Law is worth it. In fortmavis lauderdale, florida. She says it is not worth it. Good morning, mavis. Say to mostlyd the republicans, it is not worth it. Tell their congressmen to give up their healthcare that we out here, the Little People are paying for them and their families. I dont understand who in the world that is born who does not need healthcare . Mississippi, louisiana, arkansas, oklahoma, it is amazing. I have german to the states and people are talking about roadkill because they cant afford meat . Things are tough out here. Steve king has been getting millions of dollars for farming and he does not farm. The farm bill was fine. Look how much Congress People got money for that. Go ahead and give some of that money back so we can pay for healthcare for everybody. We are entitled to healthcare. The farm bill being a topic on our program. You can see it at 9 15 this morning. Knoll in new york says it is worth it. Are a i believe there couple things. At present already gave a one year waiver to a large business. He was also looking to give a waiver to congress. We also know that a Cleveland Clinic is chopping employees because they cant employ them on the insurance program. We know that home depot is chopping people. Arenow that the unions uprising and dont want to have it either. There employees are union members. A shutdown of the u. S. Government has happened many times before it is not a big deal and we can live with it, but i dont think we can live with obamacare. Even all the people in the union are tried to get away from it. Red ande next color is he joins us from florida. He says it is not worth it. Good morning. Caller i think it is not worth it because theyre not going to get enough money in their one percent hands. They are greedy and what theyre doing is spent 80 of the money on the patient. That leaves them 20 to divide amongst these greedy as obese. Host so who is the they . Said they are doing this. Who are the they . Caller caller the one percent to have all the money in this country. Host this is bridget in huddleston, virginia. She says it is worth it. Bridget, good morning. Yes, i think our government gives away too much. The blue Collar Worker just give give give. Host what would a Government Shutdown accomplish, then . Hopefully they would start listening to the taxpayers. A message we are going to give to everybody. We are out there working every day to pay for everybody else that doesnt want to work or is unable to work. Representative for the state of ohio in congress is now the head of the main street partnership. It is an organization of centrist republicans as they bill themselves. They talk about these issues saying dont lay in the House Speaker. That is the headline that you will find in the Washington Post this morning. Other members of the house believe it is their only responsibility as a member of congress to show up and vote no. Frankly, they take such a dim view of their job that a trained monkey could do what they do. Gene from new york. He says it is not worth it. Good morning. Caller this is not only not worth it, this is absolutely treasonous on the part of the republicans. We have to protect our countrys reputation and its status. We have to pay bills that we have already accrued. For them to keep attaching their possession to obamacare to everything that they try to push through is absolutely obscene and pointless. Such as obamacare needs tweaking. Social security went through a variety of upgrades and changes as it was developing. So did medicare, so did medicaid. Obamacare will need to go through changes as time goes by, but to not let this law go into effect is in my opinion treasonous and totally irresponsible. Host what about the cost concerns that republicans keep ringing up . There costhink concerns are ridiculous. There are ways in which this is going to be paid for and we are a wealthy country. We have to take care of those who need it. Everybody who doesnt have health care does need it. Here isat is gene, william from kentucky. He says it is worth it. High. I think that the house and the senate are being bullies to the president and i dont part of the is United States. There are a lot of people that need this. The ones that are for this are the poor and the ones that are against us of the rich. I vote that they let gone through if the government wants theyown, so be it. Couldnt pick off the president. He has more power than they do and this is all worth it. If a Government Shutdown does shutdown, then what is it worth . What is the purpose e caller caller he stood his ground and said he was tried to make this a better place for the poor and the rich. Host one of the voices weighing in on the activities this week is a republican from louisiana. A chairman of the republican study committee. At 10 00 andsunday also at 6 00 in the evening. He talked with two reporters about issues concerning reportable care act. But issues concerning the Affordable Care act. Here is what he has to say. There is a public outcry going on through the country. So many of the senators like senator landrieu of louisiana. She is going to face election like next year. Theyre going to keep in place even though the president himself says that it isnt workable. If anything does come back, if they dont model legislative tools we have available, rarely we plan on tackling the debt ceiling next week also. We are going to make sure that the country pays our debts. We are also going to make sure that the president s Health Care Law will be delayed and also addressed the economy. Were going to put provisions like the Keystone Pipeline in the bill and say look this is going to create over 25,000 jobs. The president has listened to special interest and turn away those jobs for now. When we say yes to those american jobs and get our economy moving again . Over tos feared passing the senate are showing that we are doing our job and fighting to keep government funded. You can hear more from representative Steve Scalise on sunday at 6 00 in the evening or do can catch it later on a website as well. If you want to see highlights from the house debate yesterday, information concerning a bill that on passed, all of our cspan website at cspan. Org. Also information that you can find in our Video Library, too. All of it together at c span. Org. The hill newspaper taking a look at this issue. Friday, and how should pass a government funding measure for only the military. The senate spends back a funding bill that does not fund obamacare. Another story from the hill takes a look. Alexander bolton writing. Saying that the democrats in the senate are urging the majority leader to be aggressive in the standoff over government shut down. Again, for our remaining time, about 15 minutes or so, when it comes down to the idea of the Government Shutdown of the healthcare law. If you think is worth it and want to contribute, the numbers are on the screen. This next call is from rural, mississippi. Barbara who does not think it is worth it, good morning. I dont think it is worth it because i want the economy to continue to grow and to not have double effects on the economy. Lawmakers in congress should be focusing on trying to correct what is wrong with the obamacare law. It has definitely already begun to affect the middleclass household. Number one, my husband and i both have been affected because i have lost a job that i had for 10 years because of income. The company i work for is seeking ways to save money. They wont need to pay the portion they need to pay concerning the law. Foundnds employer another Health Insurance car coveraget reduced the he was getting. Have the same Healthcare Plan in the United States, it would just not have been obamacare. That is what i was saying again. I would like to know why it is that these economies are allowed hoursuce their employer so they wont have to cover portions of the healthcare law . Why is there not a law against that . Host don in tennessee says it is worth it. Caller did people forget about the sequester and how we were going to lose hundreds of millions of jobs because of the sequester . Now we are going to be affecting the World Economy if we dont get obamacare. I dont remember voting for obama care on any ballots. We had a bunch of legislators that decided that need to pass. Nobody is screening shut down the government on the republican side. It is all the democrats. So we have to shut down the government. All us conservatives want to do is simply trim off some excess fat. The Obama Administration took some 700 million out of medicare to pay for obamacare. Lets put it back into medicare. These are my comments. Lets go to sandra in miami, florida. She says it is not worth it. I am the only one who is the head of the household. I cannot continue paying for everybody. This is just not worth it. Host because . Caller it is causing me to come out of pocket for everything and i dont have the money. And then just taking all this time working on obamacare, they are not taking care of the rest of the problems. The next time you look around they have shut down everything and they go home and they are happy. We are not happy. We are trying to survive out here and we need to have obamacare. Everybody has to speak for themselves. Im speaking for my household. We need obamacare. Toeeded because i needed help my husband. I cant do it all myself. I have 300 after im finished working one whole month. That is all i am surviving on. I am a bus driver. Host that is sandra from florida. The wall street journal takes a look at syria. Ethel, good morning from texas. She says it is worth it. Good morning. [indiscernible] i dont think that they should let the children suffer. They are not doing their job, cut their checks away from then and due to the children with autism. That is the way i feel about it. Ron, from pittsburgh, pennsylvania. He says it is not worth it. Caller the caller said sequestration didnt hurt us. That was an engineered crisis by the republicans. Are veryublicans disingenuous with the shut down the government thing. If democrats were shutting down the government, imagine the outcry from them. These companies laying off people are cutting their hours are largely companies that dont want to be regulated. This is why we need to vote these folks out of the congress could vote the republicans out of the u. S. Congress. They are totally out of line. Host that is ron from pennsylvania. A story from arctic ice in the New York Times this morning. Raymond, on our last couple of minutes. Raymond says he thinks it is worth it. He is from minnesota. Good morning. Caller good morning. The government right now is completely out of control. Our Monetary Policy and our foreignpolicy are intertwined. Until the federal government gets that under control, they keep trashing the dollar. The dollar doesnt have the buying power it had. Our health care is going to reflect that. The cost of health care is going to keep increasing because our dollar is worth less. We have to get it all under control. Until the government knows how to balance your budget, i dont think we should give them the check look. It is time for them to take like i have to take responsibility and pay my bills. They need to take responsibility and pay their bills. Host a couple of emails for you. That is mimi. And lou from highland park, illinois. Al is up next and l is from beachwood, ohio. He says it is not worth it caller . Good morning. Caller thank you. Im so glad you took my call. Democrats, some of the people there are making 172,000 a year. They have the assurance with their family and we are not they are not affected by what is going on for people making 50,000 or less. Trying to brainwash to middleclass republicans to make us all fight against each other to destroy our country. I appreciate you taking my call. I think we should stand together. It doesnt matter whether it is black or white eared we are here together as a family and a unity. Those one percent republicans making all that money want to divide us and put the money in their pocket. Orther it is for gas healthcare or anything else. Here is matthew from wetumpka, alabama. He says it is worth it. You are on. Caller the caller that call before saying we spent too much money, i completely agree. Theres probably a lot of the problem. They dont have any problem sending it overseas and they never want to stop it but heaven for bid that we spend money on our own people. All jobsinsurance on in the 80s and 90s. Wrong with obamacare bringing that back . Our last call this morning will be path from geary, pennsylvania. She says it is not worth it. Caller i want to remind people toothre publicans fought and nail against medicare and Social Security and have been trying to repeal them ever since. I wish to replace some of the old speeches by some of their leaders like Ronald Reagan he was screaming that medicare and Social Security would bankrupt the government and oh god it was a communist lot. There, welicans out dont all have trust funds and didnt jesus Say Something about whatsoever you do to the least of my brothers . Even Christopher Reeves who was a very rich actor wanted all the money for his health care. I prefer that we have a universal Health Care Plan that would be basically medicare for way but this idea of the they are doing it is actually a republican idea. Ithing that comes from had a laugh when bill maher was talking about everything that obama, the republicans have to be against it. He was calling it black tracking. If obama is for clean water, then they have to be against it. Thanks, pedro. From times magazine. Coming up on our program we are going to talk about the military base safety in the light of this week shooting at the navy yard here in d. C. Part debate. Its on, some veterans applying for disability assistance can wait for up to a year to get a response. All weekend long on booktv, and American History tv, they are featuring the literary life and history of fredericksburg for genia. Booktv for ourto offering. It also includes a look at simple light activists and president ial freedom president ial medal of freedom inner which is located fredericksburg. From 1985 until just before he passed away in the summer of 1989. He was an incredible teacher, an incredible lecturer and i would argue that his time in the of the mosts one significant moments in American Public education. Leader in the, a American Civil Rights movement had the opportunity for more than a decade to interact with students on a regular basis and regale them with stories of the front lines of the civil rights movement. Playing] together and marched. No, it is not so. Young. Kins or whitney strategies ofe peaceful nonviolent resistance to the movement in the early 1940s. She was the founder and organizer of a congress of racial equality and he was the inspiration for the 1961 freedom march. Lady who requested the japanese cherry plants be planted along the edge of the park. Live monday night, our series continues. We are in prospect garden here in princeton new jersey. She originally designed this when she was a resident of Prospect House. She brings the white house garden back to this garden at Prospect House. She says to the white house theener, lets recreate section of this garden at the white house. This becomes the famous rose garden at the white house. Doesnt liveally to see the rose garden completed, however. Of is dying in the summer 1914. She is wheeled out into the space outside in her wheelchair and she watches as he gardener works, but she doesnt live to see the completion of this vision she had four roses blooming at the white house. Meet the first and second wife of resident Woodrow Wilson monday night at nine eastern. Also on cspan radio and c span. Org. Washington journal continues. Thanks for joining us very it what did this weeks shootings tell us about guest security and military installations . It told us theyre not very good. This man seemed to have a record of petty crime and mental instability going back some. Of time which intensified recently and nobody picked up on it. Talk a little bit about the ability of someone to walk on base with a weapon the way he did and what it says overall about being able to keep these types of installations secure from attacks like these. I understand there are about 4 Million People in the government, maybe more than that, with the same level of security clearance that this guy had, a secret clearance. In order to get this, the government is a National Security check. This isve been claiming a Background Investigation. It is a check of various databases and in his case they checked government databases and did fbi fingerprint check. They checked with local police in places where he lived a check. Is Credit Rating probably his credit cards, but they didnt actually interview anybody. As far as i can tell they didnt even interview him, which they do sometimes heard so therefore, this is a pretty cursory investigation of him, but that is a sort of investigation they normally conduct for a secret level clearance. For a top secret level clearance like Edward Snowden, you have much more extensive checks. Thise in that case guy had a pretty cursory check. He had some legal problems when he lived in fort worth or colorado, maybe. He shut up some of these tires he shot up somebodys tires and said he had a blackout. This suggested some medical or mental problem. That that was insignificant, which, arguably in the context of that time, maybe it was. Inhad subsequent outbursts 2010, maybe 2008 as well. 830 clearance had artie been granted in 2007 and 2008. It was a tenure security clearance. Insofar as one can tell, in terms of these other incidents that occurred, where he shut up the roof of his apartment in fort worth in 2010, claiming that his gun had gone off accidentally. ,s incidents are never reported because they were fairly petty. Clearance, soe there is no reason to go back and investigate him. He has appropriate clearances and id to get into this building in washington and to shoot it up. So a deeper background check wouldve exposed those things . Guest you cant be sure about it it might have done. The system could be improved to conduct more thorough checks and also the system could be improved to ensure that when somebody with the security clearance gets involved in some sort of legal or police trouble, the authorities are notified about it. We all saw that this fellow she apparently was traveling for the last several months with a crew of computer experts. It was one of those magazine sales crews that go around from town to town. The magazine sellers go from door to door. Governmentm insulation to government installation, updating computers or whatever. When this guy was in newport, rhode island in the beginning of batty and claim that people were following him and forces were talking to him through extra low frequency radio. The police were called, he called the police himself and said they are after me, theyre after me. The lease reported this to a in newport,ffice rhode island, which is where he was staying at the time, but nobody recorded he had gone there. You can say there were warning signs, but there is no real mechanism in the system for these warnings to be passed on to the people who might have been able to do something about it. Phone numbers will be on your screen. You can also reach us on twitter. There is a chart that goes and describes the security clearance process. It starts with the request, it is transferred to the office of her snell management. That goes to investigative services. A third of those are handled by staff. Talk about the workload and especially the role of the contractor in this process. Guest it used to have its own staff of government her snell investigators. Both of these National Agency checks. For people are getting high level clearances and top secret clearances. Ofe years ago that service the office of Personnel Management was privatized and created into a new Company Called u. S. Investigative services which is now owned by another company which is known by another company which is owned by hedge fund would you believe. It is all part of the same veryny that owns kroll a famous private Investigation Company. The people who own it at the top or wall street people. Arguable or at least reported problems with the way this company does work for some. Of time. It was under investigation by the Inspector General, the office of Personnel Management, this is the same company that did the Background Investigation nsadward snowden the whistleblower. There are certainly allegations that it doesnt do its job as well as it could. I believe there have been some recent cases in which it has thatdemonstrated by the ig some of the people who investigated these cases for you sis were themselves unqualified or dishonest or both perhaps. Host the washington journal points out that guest guest that is exactly what i was talking about. ,heyre owned by a hedge fund ultimately, which means that the hedge fund is more interested in making money for its owners or investors than making sure that the government gets what it pays for. Host joining us to talk about military installations safety is of reuters. L caller thank you for letting me on. Momento what youre doing with security checks, somebody will always get through. The problem is that they didnt learn a lesson from fort hood. Clinton towhen bill create that they should be gun free. I cant believe that this existed. Instead of 13, maybe they could have saved 10, you know . Host thanks caller. Indeed, the security in all of these places could be better. Interestingly enough, i covered the Edward Snowden case, the case of the nsa guy who took literally hundreds of thousands or more than a hundred thousand very secret damaging documents from the National Security agency installations through his work as a Computer Operator or systems administrator. He has now given them to the media. After the leaks of the wikileaks by private bradley underg, the white house obama set up a special task force that was supposed to tighten up all the security measures for my physical security measures and Data Security measures for ensuring that people could not get in two files that they werent supposed to get into. And also to flag security people in the event that they that people didnt try to get in. It, the promise to improve things is almost a complete failure. The government has invested rather more extensively in physical security, areas to make sure that people who should not get in there were like and there. They have not improve their data at all. Clearance,e security have the appropriate id, sue can get in past the barriers even though the bears were better than the ones they used for getting people into data theyre not supposed to have. There is such a layer of problems here that you almost sort of think you have to go back to square one and start all over again. There is a real serious of problems here. The governor says there will be a twopart review. One takes a snapshot and the other takes a deeper view is far security is concerned. And he idea what the approach will be like on those two fronts and ultimately what they will find . If you use the example that i just used of the wikileaks case, the government was tearing its hair out or was public you professing to tear tear out after the wikileaks. This one soldier in iraq leaked to the media, again, hundreds. Nd thousands of documents toe of them were dangers u. S. National security. He said at the highest possible Level Task Force under the white house to fix things and from the sounds of things the whole thing is just a joke. Host here is secretary hegel on wednesday at a briefing. Heres what he had to say. We will find this caps on we will fix those gaps. To go beyond that in the specific areas of your questions , i would leave that to the review. There are many questions that are going to be asked and need to be asked in many reviews. The intensity of those of the rs have to go down to every asset. The security of our feminine physical presence, the Security Standards of that security clearance, are they Strong Enough . Why do we do certain things the way we do. We need answers. And we will find those answers. They would say that, one at they . They always say stuff like that. And then the premises the promises that they make very followedt fallen through on. Host tom on a democrat line, good morning, you were on with Mark Hosenball of reuters. Caller good morning. When i was in the navy, the fbi came and talked to my friends, family, and everything, for my security clearance. I worked for the department of defense for a few years. It all worked out to sub on charters. Jacksonville, florida at the time. It just got rid of a lot of people down there and broaden sub contractors to take over and brought in subject sub contractors. Out anding agents to go security checks, they were some protected out to they were subcontracted out. They do not have the best interest of this country at heart, they have the best interest of their shareholders and stockholders at heart. They could be in china as far as we know. Thank you. Guest well, yeah. The system is not functioning ,articularly well, as i say demonstratively, there have been summary failures even within the last year involving the snowden case and then with mr. Alexis here that they really ought to take a deep look at this stuff and see that they need to take it apart and rebuild it. Missouri, dodi is our next caller, independent line. Caller good morning. This is our country. This is the second time recently in the last few years, you know, there is a weighin in and a way out. Dont they check these people at the security clearance . The bags,to check they need to check the people, you know, something has got to happen, you know. Our people are dying. Our people, not their people. It has got to go from the president all the way down through congress and everything. To look into these things. It is not working. Something has got to happen. Somebody has got to step up your to the American People have got to stick together and do something. We cannot be killing our people and let this happen. , what rolehosenball do you think congress will take on this issue now . Guest congress is very good at making a lot of noise about this. Some committee of the senate in , which is has advised already been looking into this issue, even before the snowden case, i think. Certainly continuing to look into this issue. Sometimes when congress get involved very extensively, you have 15 subcommittees looking at the same thing and they come up with 15 different answers to it and argued that makes the things worse. Congress will actually look at this. Whether that is better of course remains to be seen. June you wrote a story in budget cuts hit security for defense contractors. Guest that is true. The collaboration with the Obama Administration has forced one of the mainies, one of agencies that his response will pour security clearance for defense contractors like this for securitysible clearance for defense contractors like this guy. If that really wise under the current circumstances . What does that tell you a little bad about the intelligence of congress and the effectiveness of the security security . Caller thank you for taking my call. I want to echo what the gentleman from shrewsbury said. If people were able to defend themselves when others are around them, this would not be as big of a, you know, a massacre as it was. I think this is just getting brushed under the rug, and all this gets pushed aside to talk about security issues. It needs to be addressed. How many people are armed and our military installations . Guest the answer is i dont know. But the idea is just having more people with guns in secured buildings does not strike me as incredibly wise. Batson and going holding up. It is very secure buildings where people have very high , running them through metal the sectors or whatever to make sure that they do not have guns, when i go into a very secret building, the employees there dont usually have to go through metal detectors, but the isitors do, although again have been in very secret buildings in secret places in the sacred buildings sometimes, and in certain circumstances not have to go through any security checks. Run a securityey check on my background before they go there. Host color from chicago, democrat line. Caller good morning. The government pretty much does not think anymore. Government privatize it is just some baby steps under Ronald Reagan. And then it went on steroids under bush and cheney. We remember we had a halliburton, kbr, blackwater, and all these private security firms. The government was doing nothing. Securityere 70 of our has been outsourced to private, forprofit contractors. This is not the government. This is not us. Nsa iss controlled by controlled by Booz Allen Hamilton holding this is wall street. This is the one thing percent. When people say the government is doing is, the government is not doing this. People need to look and see who is really behind all of this. Of course the government is not really controlled by Booz Allen Hamilton holding going back to the days of eisenhower, he was the general, a very heroic general in world war ii, and he condemned the military Industrial Complex that had too much influence in washington. So, you know, the idea that sometimes the contractors, which helped the government to run inelf, are arguably too much charge of their own work is not entirely invalid. On the other hand, sometimes contractors actually do perform the kind of work the government does more effectively and cheaply than the government does , to set a fast rule, no contractors, whatever, is impractical in terms of the way the u. S. Government is set up now, and is not necessarily wise in all cases. All these things certainly should be open for review now, at least in the case of security clearances. Host in terms of time, what is the difference in time between security clearance and a deep background check . Guest a National Agency checks, which is what this guy had, the cursory data back rentech, that thed take a matter of data background check, that would take a matter of days or weeks, depending on how much of a backlog they have. With the fbi finger print checks, they used to have a six month backlog. I think they have eliminated that now. A full Background Investigation, like the time with snowden, that mr. Alexis did not have, and take four to six weeks. Much longer depending on if there is a backlog. They interview people that you list on yourt you security form, which is in some cases 100 pages long. Then they interview people that the people that you list tell them the secondary references. They go around your neighborhood and interview people in your they will go interview your former employee will cross examine you about your disclosures and what people said about you. If interesting things turn up. Proceduree a lengthy if the contractors who do it carried out the right way. And then if you are working in a particularly sensitive intelligence position, and i think thats what the case with snowden, certainly is with nsa and cia, they will give you a detector, polygraph test as well, although some people argue that that does not work for a while, but it is a method of making you think that it will discover if you are lying to them, and that is another way of getting information out of you, so some of these the background can take it is supposed to and could take quite a bit longer than the National Agency check. It is much more thorough. Guyhe other hand, this snowden who at every possible clearance i think one could have in the u. S. Government, he went of atre and over a period least a year, downloaded a bunch of stuffy should not have and then gave it to people, journalists. Host nash from twitter says nothing is foolproof, check, check, check. Guest manpower takes to fix things yucca we cannot even begin to think about that. Again, as i said, wikileaks occurred two or three years ago in the first instance. Task force,pecial they had a bunch of investigations and recommendations how to fix that. So far i can tell none of that was ever done. Host so we need to talk about the background checks. Guest we will, indeed. Host caller from jacksonville, florida, you are on the line with Mark Hosenball. Caller thank you for cspan. I think the major problem is you have civilian authorities doing back projects for civilians. These people are making profits on this. Happened to the military . I was a United States marine. We did not have nose at billion watching our base. Civilian watching our base. This is insane. Theare going to discharge military man and then hire them as a subcontractor and pay them four times more. What is this country going to learn . You cannot keep doing this. The people are making this for profit. That is all that says, big moneymaking profit. When some to get the whole thing up . Come on, man, strata now, use your head. Thank you, sir. Guest ok. Host annie miller says in the 1964 the, i had a clearance to work for ge and other missile and space the coproducers. It took several months to get the clarendon many people i knew were interviewed before entering and leaving the facility, our bags were inspected. Why did this process change . In some installations, it did not change, and others it did. There are not very Good National standards. Evidently there was no mechanism to check whether this guy had a gun. Based is government not have metal detectors for the cleared employees. Certainly the ones i have been into, and i was into a fairly secret building just within the last month or so. Indeed, i had to go through a metal the sector, i had a journalist with me, but the employees do not think you have to go through metal the sectors. Host blue river, oregon, democrat line, good morning to lee, go ahead. Caller good morning. I find the guests comments to be somewhat cynical. I believe the twitter person hit it on the head. Solutions how much time, how much money you go how many money . How many billions of dollars are we willing to spend, and was up these random events . I think no. I think what happened this critic like this come on as a given it is a visit terrible with their snide little laugh, theyre taking away our freedoms and spending half the budget, you are not going to sub events like this. I am cynical. Why what can i say . Unfortunately, you see these things happen again and again, and the government does not seem to be very effective at improving things, even when they see that there is a big problem. Host as this was going on, september 16, the Inspector General for the Defense Department put this up report systems did not effectively mitigate control risk. If there kind of a lesson we can learn from the i. T. Report . They they take away if had a problem and where is the evidence that they did anything about . Here is the investigation where they found a bunch of problems, where the improvements . Improving physical security, putting in that of the sectors if need be, may be conducting more it extensive security checks. If you have four or 5 Million People with low level secures security terraces, you need to go back and reinvestigate all those, i do not think so, or not on practical terms. So there is a mess here that is not easily solved with a wave of a magic wand. You are talking about a series of compounds, intertwined problems, that it will take some time, effort, and money, the mental effort to sort out. It is not going to get sorted out overnight. This tragedy could happen again just as easily tomorrow. Host how many facilities like the navy yard exist in the u. S. . Hundreds. Bably there are probably literally dozens here in the d c area. Host the d. C. Area. Host brad nexen, republican line. Active dutyd towards and another 12 of a federal employee. I can assure you that the Security System is effective. What is not effective is the supervisors, the people that actually go ahead and approve, liberal people that simply refuse to accept the training, discipline, and refuse an individual clearance. The system works fine. 400, they had of all kind of Information Available out at fort hood. They had all kinds of Information Available. A good supervisor wouldve gotten rid of that guy. The security people on those doors and gates and stuff, they can do that. Dont take lots of millions and millions of dollars to clear this up. You just have to give People Authority and hold them for decisions that they make. It is as simple as that. Believer or not, i know what i am talking about. Guest i have to say it is not if the bullet that, it is very consultative. To turn the government around and get them to do things effectively is much more difficult than it sounds. After wikileaks, after the fort hood shooting. Indicate of the fort hood shooting, the government, the , bringing together various agencies, intelligence indicating that this guy, major system themy army psychiatrist, he had been contacted with suspected terrorist recruiter, imam, in yemen, on were all a lucky alwaki. L who some people thought was suspicious or incrementing. They conducted an investigation and came to the conclusion it was completely harmless. And this guy goes out and shoot people. Under those circumstances, what does that tell you about the effectiveness of the government . He covers National Security for reuters. Mark hosenball joining us to talk about military installation. About 10 minutes left. Next up is jim on the independent line. Caller good morning. I used to be a Police Officer in the air force, and there are two separate issues you are looking at here. One, you have got to understand when you are doing security clearances and youre are trying to keep a base secure, usually the security is based on whatever the mission of the base is. The other problem is, and this really hurts the commanders of the installations, and that when you bring in all these private contractors, it starts to limit their command and control. Is an over reliance on private contractors, military personnel held accountable and stop at the commander of the desk. Desk. S the commanders that is the reality. If you go on a flight deck, you will find cops with guns. But if you go into a topsecret area with i. T. People, you will not find people theyre protecting them. Is probably that true. The fact is that in some cases, the contractors dont necessarily feel the loyalty to that the Government Employees that work for the agency would. This is something the government has to consider. On the other hand, the reason there are so many contractors is because the government believes particularly a series of president s have believed that that is a cheaper, more effective way than having all these people employed by the government. In some cases, im pretty sure that is valid. In other cases, maybe it has gone too far. Certainly you can make that argument any case in point we are talking about. Host he said security was based specific. True im sure that is because some places have Nuclear Weapons and bombs, and other airplanese trucks and , transport airplanes that have risk to them, see you would have higher security at the place with Nuclear Weapons than the place that just repaired trucks. Again, these things have to be calibrated appropriately. It is pretty clear across the board in the government that you could argue this could happen at almost anything. Sandy, utah, lee from our democrat line. Caller hi, i am a veteran, and i was a nurse at one of the va s, and for this man to be hearing voices, to start to hear voices at this age, you suspect cocaine, which can also cause them to be hostile. Be quarterly drug testing, especially ron 9 11. Thank you. Guest that is an interesting point about Mental Health. As i understand by reporting on this case, several people in the government said to me that over so,last sort of 10 years or that the government had a full , and at a very high level both republican then democrats have made an effort to play down the significance of Mental Illnessand mental treatment and security investigations. In the standard form the selected a security clearance, that you fill out to get a security clearance, it says that you must disclose any history of Mental Illness or history of mental treatment. Under any circumstances except and it puts in these two loopholes, which is if youre Mental Health your mento helmet youre Mental Health issue is related to marriage issues some say that could be loosely applied in mr. Alexis would not havee to disclose if he had mental treatment within the last seven years. Arguably, this is a manifestation of political correctness, maybe. I think general dempsey, the head of the joint chiefs of ,taff staff in a last few days said we have to treat Mental Illness with sensitivity. Yes, you do have to treat it with sensitivity, but not in a fairly stupidity. You should be alert to these things or at least there should be some way to alert people to these things. It is clear in a case of mr. Alexis, even though he was so divorced from reality early in august that he called the police i think on himself, that nobody reported this to any authority that could have actually done something about denying him access to sensitive government facilities. Host how often are security clearances renewed . Every fivesecret, years, indicates a secret, 10 years. Unless there is some cause to go back and reinvestigate these things, in the case of mr. Alexis, there was no reinvestigation. So he got a 10year security clearance in 2008, even though in 2008 and going forward, there were some incidents where he came into contact with the police. Not only to have no impact on his security clearance, theres no indication the security authorities learned of any of this. Host we go to jeff from michigan on our republican line. Good morning. Caller warning. Good morning. Host goahead, sir, you were on the air. Caller hello. Host go ahead with your question or comment. Caller yes, i am concerned, i was is that southbridge base this last weekend, in my capacity as a private contractor, i work at the commissary. I will share with you that the isurity at the guard post handled by a private concern. Ive never seen a uniformed officer at that front gate. My vehicle has never been searched. I wave a security badge at the guards, it is cursory. I jokingly say i slow down to 20 miles an hour. I could carry in weapons. A surprising, shocking lack of security. I have never been pulled over. I could do anything i wanted to do. Guest well, i think that makes my point. And thisas far as is a daily occurrence as far as your ease of getting through without someone questioning you at the gate so to speak . Jeff . Caller yes. Host so this happens all the time yo . This epic ability to go through without any intensive search of your car or vehicle . Caller yes, that is an everyday occurrence. Probablythink that is the standard procedure at most military and for that matter nonmilitary government installations. Going into federal Court Buildings now, they have much higher security now because i guess there have been incidents in court where people have gone in and shut up be shot up the judges. You do have to turn out your pockets and most federal and through the going metal the sectors not because they have been turned on really high. Courts, airports, it does maybe about theomething physical security at the courts and airports is tighter than at militaryurity bases and other sensitive government installations. From gran is timothy bay, alabama, independent line. Caller yes, sir, good morning, i appreciate yall discussing this subject. I work at a local defense , and the problem as mr. Marquez indicated, security is being hasled mr. Mark indicated, security is being handled there are no uniform individuals that have the Law Enforcement military background that we need at our facilities. When we do have contractors there, they are usually and strong, to use a perfect word, to inspect baggage, backpacks, lunch boxes coming into the facilities, and unless we as a nation decide that we need to have our security clearance is handled only digital instead of hardcopy to eliminate the backlog that im sure he has investigated and found to be a parent apparent. We are in a an information age. What we have to have everything onhardcopy instead of computers where we can call this information up in mere nanoseconds . Incidentsations and are going to keep occurring until we are tired of it and we demand things to be upgraded, and im sure with his experience host thank you, caller. Guest i think that is fairly true that things will continue as they are into we demand that they be upgraded, but we are talking about a very complex as i say, intertwined series of problems that are not sorted out with the waving of a magic wand or the waving of magic money. It is not going to be sorted out overnight. I does see this being sorted out very easily within the foreseeable future. I think this is going to go on for quite some time, and unfortunately it is going to enable more unfortunate incident like this or Security Breaches like snowden or whatever, you do not know what is going to happen next, but probably more things that are not nicer going to happen. Host does the Defense Department say how long these reviews are going to take . Guest i do not know. Host suzanne is our last call, georgia, democrats line. Caller hi, this is suzanne. I was married to a Fighter Pilot in the 1980s, and he had a top 5e, andy, he flew an f daytoday security clearance, and he was a drug dealer, and he got a robber security clearance. Makes myain, that point that these investigations sometimes are not entirely adequate. Of reutershosenball serves as the newsmaker seniorl security correspondent. To every much free time. Vietnam era veterans make up a significant portion of those looking for disability help from the Veterans Administration. There is a significant backlog when it comes to those veterans and others. Our next guest is going to talk relatedat another va issues. She is retired Sergeant Jessie Jane Duff of concerned veterans of america. Later, Jerry Hagstrom from National Journal Jihadist Terrorism a threat assessment later, Jerry Hagstrom from National Journal Jihadist Terrorism a threat assessment National Journal will be our guest. The subject of whistleblowers is a very important and sensitive subject. We depend on whistleblowers. We value their information. It is reported that they feel comfortable coming forward and say that we have information that you need to have, and my identity, i am very concerned about. We understand that fear to the statute requires us to extend protection. In practice, what we as igs will do is to advise whistleblowers of these protections, to say to the extent that you can give us specific information, that is much more helpful to us than general information, and sometimes in the course of providing specific information anails, it may be that educated and informed person may be able to guess to the identity of the whistleblower. And we need to be aware of that risk. More with Agricultural Department Ig Phyllis Fong sunday night at 8 00 on cspans q a. Span2s book tv has shown over 40,000 hours of programming with top nonfiction hours including bob woodward. We were going to do the book after he died, but he preempted that, and i was horrified, quite honestly. And then i was delighted. I always felt that people are more alike than they are different. So the artist in me rose to that occasion that if i can create that is so moving and that permits the kind of distance that you sometimes need from what is painful, then people will understand, and understanding is basically what is fundamental. But the point is that no argument is given to that effect, none of the relevant facts are considered, and this is regarded as one of the half where a just war theory entails that the use of military force was legitimate. Are the only National Television network devoted inclusively to nonfiction books. 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Provided by your local cable or satellite provider. Washington journal continues. Host we are joined by Jessie Jane Duff of concerned citizens of america, former marine corps Gunnery Sergeant. Guest thank you for having me. Host we were talking about this weeks shooting at the navy yard. Your talks your thoughts regarding the person in question. Guest how did he have a clearance, how did he get on base . The reality is they apparently found out that the Investigation Company that had probably been contacted by the office of Personnel Management had some investigations apparently with snowden. We are waiting to see what happens with the ig report, which is the Inspector General report. There are some question behaviors in his past, and how did he get this clearance . Host there is a story in this years Washington Post, here is a quote from it guest absolutely. It is very hard for us as veterans. Ptsd does not necessarily mean you are are going to be psychotic and go shoe people. I think it is clear that this man had some sort of psychiatric disorder. He was hearing voices. That is not a ptsd issue. It is sad when veterans get a Statement Like that, but people need to understand, ptsd has a wide range of things that influence and affect a person. It does not mean they are not capable of having a job, it is not mean they are not capable of becoming a productive member of society. Host in light of that, how does the Veterans Administration, how does the government in general help people like that, people with those types of problems, especially after they leave the service . Guest apparently when you cement your lame after you get off of active duty, while you are on active duty, these things are being recorded. And when you submit your claim to the Veterans Administration, if you have an apparent problem or either medical or illness related, and then they can address that so that they are able to receive compensation for that problem. Wet part of the issue brought you want to talk about ,hough is the backlog of claims other type of claims, at the Veterans Administration. Give us a snapshot of what is going on. Guest people need to understand what these claims mean. The benefit backlog, these are people pending claims within the va either for medical, sometimes education, or various other claims that are pending, but most are medical. We are looking at close to 500,000 that are and what is called the backlog. The backlog of any claim that has taken over 125 days. With that, it has taken an average 304 days for many of these claims to get resolved, and there is evidence that there are claims that have gone on to 600 days. Then we have appealed, which is a whole other category, where there are 250,000 that are waiting on their appeals to be addressed, and does can go up to 1000 days. Host what is taking so long . Guest well, the Veterans Administration had decided in 2009, secretary said when he was sworn in that he would resolve the backlog. That increased 3000 under obamas administration. The reason was secretary should hinseki had opened the doors for ptsd, agent orange andlains, and everett desert storm syndromes. In a variety of other clinton had not been recognized. What happens if you have a flood of people that come in and they were not prepared for it. It accelerated and almost hit one million veteran backlogs. We had 900,000 pending claims in february of this year alone. Shinseki do as far as accommodating that . Guest he basically put in a plan that all of the backlog claims will be resolved by 2015. What is upsetting to us is that it happened in the first place. 97 of these claims were being handled manually. Not even automated. So what are we doing when we open up the doors for more opportunity for claims, and then not having a plan in place to handle that efficiency . That is like saying i sell online and have no shipping process an order. You have to have this set up correctly. Now we have a plan by 2015. What about the veterans that are dying in the meantime . Last year in 2012, there were almost 20,000 veterans that died before they even receive their benefits claim. That is 53 today. Done. Orangely a lot of agent men that suffer from being on. It is really disturbing that i got this way at all. The plan that is in place, were keeping the gas on them to resolve this, but what theyre doing is allowing a lot of workers to work overtime, 20 hours overtime, and it is a funding issue. People have to understand the second largest budget next to dod, and they were given 25 billion by congress in the last four years. So they have just had poor mismanagement. Host Jessie Jane Duff from concerned veterans for america. She is going to take your calls about related issues at the veterans and administration beard if you want to answer the lines are divided by party. 202 5853880 for democrats, 202 5853881 for republicans, and 202 5853882 for independent. We had a separate line, if you want to give us your thoughts this morning, 202 5853883. A bit of alay speech the president get to disabled veterans talking about it v. A. , talking about affecting sequestration at the time. We will let you listen to what he had to say and get your response. [video clip] some of you may be aware right now we have the reckless across the board budget cuts copy the sequester that is hitting a lot of folks hard on the that is slashing education, science, medical research. I made it clear that your Veterans Benefits are exempt from this years sequester. [applause] i have made that clear. [applause] but i want to tell you going forward, the best way to perfect the v. A. Care you have earned is to get rid of the sequester altogether. [applause] congress eats to come together and agree on a responsible plan that reduces our deficit and keeps our promises to our veterans and keeps our promises to future generations. That is what i am fighting for, that is what you deserve. Host Jessie Jane Duff . Guest i was appalled when i saw that speech. I am a member of disabled veteran american. I sat back and gasped. How could he tell veterans that i protected your benefits this year, but i cant guarantee anything later for the benefits you earned . I thought that was a veiled threat. This is a nobrainer. I think it was offensive. Hisreated administration, his white house created sequester, and now he is telling people it is a bad thing. Please remove it, and you veterans, if you want your benefits, you need to help me. I thought him putting his political agenda in there, dealing with our deficit, economy, and all the other issues, dont intimidate or threaten your disabled veterans. Host with that in mind, calls for you, for Jessie Jane Duff, concerned veterans for america, memphis, tennessee, good morning on our democrat line. Eraler i am a vietnam veteran. Back from theame military, they denied me my voting rights. I love the job i had, so i stayed. 25 years later, i was put into management. Nothing, ime for sued them for determination. I am disabled now from the railroads. A friend of mine went to iraq and came back and they denied him his rolling rights. . Uest has what rights caller his rolling rights, to make sure he had a job when you get back. They had people after he was gone. When you go away in the military, and they come back and hire people, they got me the same way, they got him the same way. They told in guest the same thing they told me. It is too late. Told him the same thing they told me. It is too late. Butt im not in that area, they are not required by law to give you the same job back, i do realize that, any injustice may be ethical for you to handle, but the only thing i can suggest is you write your congressman and say politically active if you feel you were discriminated against. Host someone asked the question of you, whose idea whether to buy incompatible data systems for the v. A. And the dod, and if you have some exclamation, please do. Guest this is an overwhelming problem for many years. I do know they have a concert that was supposed to automate all of the pit of, and i would say 97 were still being done manually, so now they are process you can go online and looking your benefits data, but it was a very difficult, and it should never have gotten this far. Host so they do not treat it with each others, is that what youre saying yo . Guest all of the manual records were still paper. Onef you look at the press, building in North Carolina actually became structurally incapable of holding the backlog anymore because it was so full and overwhelming. These things should have been digitalized. Even when i got off of active duty, i had a record this bacon it was not electronic. Host we have got when it comes to the actual pending claim, 36 silk of them from the vietnam era. Guest yes, that is from the agent orange that they opened up from approximately 2000 nine third whenever you offer a benefit or some type of service, youre going to expect a large number of people who want to apply for a good many of these Vietnam Veterans had already deceased and their families are making the claims, which they are allowed to do. Many of the claims being paid out are two deceased veterans. Host 21 from iraq and afghanistan, 20 from the gulf war, and 11 for peacetime as well. Dakota,om south republican line, veteran, good morning. Caller good morning, sir. My first point was august 20 8, 1970 when i was 20 years old. Im 62 now. Im still fighting them. I have been up to the court of veterans appeals for times. Ive been back and forth, my files have been shredded and tampered with, ive got letters from the v. A. , i have been cancer,agent orange ive got upper respiratory problems, i have been fighting the v. A. , and i have got ptsd to the max. I have been through a lot of treatment host caller did you have just been your own money as far as the appeals process . Caller yes, ive been spinning my own money. 1996,awarded 100 back in and like i say, my first claim was august 20 8, 1970, sir, i am still fighting it. Many yes, there are claims that have taken over 10 years that have not been addressed. Im going to bring to peoples attention this mans story that is called and that is very similar to matthew goldberg, a 47yearold retired arms special forces. Yet three towards in iraq. Inhe had three towards iraq, three bronze stars. He had to submit his claim in 2008, 8 it is still pending. En 30 basically giv disability, but they are failing to recognize his shoulder and back problems basically saying it is not happen in his two decades of service. The big thing that happens that frustrates him as he filled like he was treated as a second class citizen. So what that caller pointed out is what we frequently hear. That they are dragging it out, and the appeals are taking thousands of a spared when they go to the u. S. Court of appeals, the v. A. Claims are taking several hundred days. I am but thats what this man for having to get his own attorney, and i recommend to people to be aggressive. Many veterans get so frustrated with it and they feel as if it is futile, but it is better to get your claim resolved whether it be 10 years later and get that back pay than to sit there and feel like you were never vindicated. Host what goes into determining if you get disability and how much disability you will get . Guest essentially, you have to have a very good document agent, so i always tell people copy, copy your records. There have also been fires, many people that follow me on twitter has said they have gotten calls from the v. A. Saying or emails oh, we did not receive the paperwork basement, and pretty later, we do not receive the paper and literally two days later, we do not receive the paper. Even the v. A. Workers are frustrated because they cannot find a lot of the paperwork. It is literally paper. It is a electronic data. So the system should have been involved many years ago, 10 years ago, so that all the medical history was on electronic data and it was not. Host it is a question of efficiency within the v. A. . Guest horrible inefficiency. Is separate from its peer and we are talking about the benefits progress as. Ss. Proce they review your claim to save a disservicerelated disability. And im not going to lie, some veterans have been smoking for years and say that the cancer is because of the fighting in vietnam. We have to be reasonable when there are people that are trying to abuse the system. And there is that percentage. So theyre going to scrutinize the claims pretty domination must be clear. I would recommend people he utilize dav. They have counselors throughout the nation who can help get your submitted and do it effectively ceded to reinstallation and resubmit. Host donna that next for Jessie Jane Duff. Good morning. My father died in a Veterans Hospital in 1972, and i have realize that they have made a lot of leaps and bounds in medicine since 1972, but i still have a bad taste in my mouth when it comes to Veterans Hospitals. I ran into a lot of veterans over the years. I was in the National Guard when i was in high school, and i met a lot of the video Vietnam Veterans on their way to the wall. D. C. Macros in the guard back when i was in the guard. I have a lot of respect for veterans. I think the way they are treating them is of lawrence. Abhorrent. They shouldve known that these veterans were going to come into the system with all of the wars that we have been in for the last 10 years. I really wish they had actually stepped up and actually took the money and the time into it before all of this started happening. Guest absolutely. His statement have hit it right on the head. The way it has happened in how for it to get to this point for to get to the attention of your having a backlog of 100,000 clams was appalling, but it did not receive National Attention until the Veterans Administration made it clear earlier this year that we may hit a one million person backlog. When all of the media started following us, it became very , then the v. A. Put an implant to have it resolved by 2015. The 2015 deadline, and that the more people that they have included or other elements as well . Guest all of the backlog is supposed to be resolved by 2015. All of the claims over a year older getting priorities first right now. But what has happened is that the appeals side is being neglected, for example, the army veteran i just spoke about, he already went through the benefit side and got 30 . He has that massive disability, idiots having to appeal a, and he has been waiting since 2008. We are concerned, we are seeing tick anyse in a slow appeal site. Heres what our concern is, theyre going to shut some of the claims through. They may have a higher amount, but they dont want to spend the time on it, give them 10 . And shove it on now. Peter tooing to rob pay paul, take these numbers and put them into another column. Then many of the people that normally addressed the appeals side are now being pushed over to the benefits aside, the backlog side because that is the side getting National Attention. Over are over 1500 workers at the v. A. , claims adjusters. They have approximately 1500 people that work on claims, so there is a lot of resources that have been pumped into this. However, because it is so behind now theyre trying to get rid of the ones that are looking the most bad, giving them a bad either eye. Host our guest served as a marine corps Gunnery Sergeant. She belongs to the concerned veterans for america. What you do for your day job . Im very active in the National Security arena right now. Im highly proficient in the dod topics and veterans issues. Is our line5853883 for veterans, john, joins us from goose creek. Caller thank you for the show. I think there is a shift in. Esources to the backlog ive been on the poster 11 g. I. Says it was passed in 2009 when it went into effect. Im enjoying a good school, good education, i came in under the veterans education assistance, which was a pretty weak program when the military was being the the. After the two iraq and afghanistan wars, we started seeing benefits for veterans. In the last three or four months, it has been slow down quite a bit. Right now, i am about 2. 5 months behind. They are probably putting the resources so heavily on backlog that they may be neglecting other demands. What do you think . Guest that is interesting to me because i thought once you are on the g. I. Bill, they start making the payments to you on a regular basis, more or less like a paycheck and that you could count on it. I had no idea that some of this money was not showing up in peoples bank account. That is your benefit. That is separate from this. They cannot take sequestration is not touching any of this. Im not sure what is happening. There has be somebody you can connect with to find out why our is my wire maintenance not why are my payments not coming out on time . Host we will take another call. Caller good morning. Is for ms. Duff, i am a retired vietnam veteran. I was in service for eight years. I put in a claim for my back in 1979. The thing that they do is not right, where they examine you nothing tell you aint wrong with your back. They did not do no xrays, mri. I was an activeduty when i had problems with my back. I am 100 a veteran. This is connected. Many others have disconnected ability, you have a of people that work for yeah, i know i am at 100 , but if i have other things connected , im supposed be compensated, am i right or wrong . Guest once you are at one under present, there is no more money that they can give you. It seems like a five 100 for one identified area, then another area would be additional onto it. But the process is not work like that. When under present me that you are essentially going to receive 100 composition for whatever range you were while you are on active duty, and to get beyond that i think would basically be what theyre doing and saying e5,lets say you were e3 or and you get the comment they should based upon that pay grade, they cannot give you that conversation if you were a Gunnery Sergeant like myself who invested more time. I would say be grateful because the most veterans i talk to have a very bad disabilities and are still at 30 , 40 , and to be blessed that you have access to the military base to get to the exchange to be able to get your vacation. You should your medication. You should be able to get 100 care from the v. A. If you are 100 disabled. Host how much paperwork is involved for an initial claim . Guest it has gotten a little bit easier due to many of these complaints. They make it seem like an is very seamless, but you have to submit all of your medical records, so you can have anything missing. If youre going to make a claim, you have to evidence of that in your medical worker medical record. If you never talk about whatever illness or, you have, your claim will get rejected. If that is a fair process on that level, people cannot randomly Say Something was associated with your service, especially when you get off of activeduty, youre supposed to exit physical, and you can still do this if you are on active duty. You can get it done while you medical veteran v. A. Center. I followed up at the v. A. Medical center. Then the paper get submitted and documented. It is a slow process, it should not take more than a year, though, if that is a problem that is dragging on like this. Host the v. A. Calls a fully developed claim, what is that . Guest essentially when you submit a claim, just where to get picked up on average, it is taking 125 days. For to be process, review, looked at, considered, and the disability to be recognized, it will take close to 240 days. The full process of the time that they take it up to the time that they give you your rating, the rating is 20 , 10 , 100 , that is the full from cradle to grave. Host the penning on the rating you get depends on the money you will receive . Guest exactly. And if you have been retired out of activeduty and your rating is less than 50 , you will not receive a supplement to your retirement. What you receive this, reasonable, if you have i will just use a loose number, you get 1000 a month from your retirement, and the get 20 disability, they will take the 20 out of your taxable income, and it will come to you from the v. A. , 20 untaxed. Host ok. Guest so you get the money, but 20 from the v. A. Is not taxed because it is medical related. It is essentially to compensate you for what you were and able to do now out in the civilian word. World. Disability does not mean we are now disabled and we have the blue parking spot, ok. I have a disability i the v. A. Rating. What they do is a essentially saw the damage within my knees over the 20 years of service, and i capable of walking and going up and down stairs now . Can sitley, but they there is damage that was probably more transferable by i have known people who have gone through various senators and they have been able to get their ratings resolved. You need to have someone advocate for you. If you go to the court of appeals, they can teleconference the hearing. You dont have to fly in for it. Learn the ropes. You can go on to several web sites and learn what your process is. Be inquisitive, educate yourself. If you have to get an attorney, there may be a fee taken out of your reimbursement, but if youre talking 14 years of disability coming to you, thats worth the price to have the attorney handle it. When do you know its time for an attorney . I think once the average claims were taken over 370 days. If youre hitting over 600 days, if youre hitting 700 days, i think thats time for an attorney. But i would not recommend thats each persons judgment but dont go under a year because your claim very well may be in the works and it should get resolved. Unfortunately it is a wait game. You have to use common sense with what your instincts are telling you. But 14 years, my god, get an attorney. But attorneys fees could outweigh what you get in return . Theres a lot of attorneys that specifically represented this. If youre waiting 14 years and youre going to get backdated 14 years, i think that that fee the attorneys are going to take is probably going to be well worth hiring them. However, im not giving legal advice. Id say use common sense. You shouldnt have to use an attorney. Use your congressional leaders, use your senators. Write and you become that squeaky wheel gets the grease. Make waves and push and push and push. Its important. This is your future. Its your familys future, because the medical costs that youre paying out of pocket to compensate for these problems is ridiculous. Geno is up next on our republican line. Hello. Caller how ar thank you for. I think youve neglected to mention a few things id like to ask you to comment on. Its very interesting that youre talking about people going to their congressman or their senator to help try to adjudicate these claims but youve neglected to mention the fact that most states i believe all states and also most veterans groups have Certified Service officers that will submit claims for veterans and act as an advocate at a very local level. And these people are trained to get the paperwork done right. And to me, the Biggest Issue is the fact that these a lot of these people i believe that are in the backlog and maybe you can address this if there are numbers on this these people that have submitted the paperwork themselves probably again might have filled the paperwork out incorrectly. And if people would utilize these veterans would utilize these service officers, their paperwork would get submitted properly first time. I agree with you and i did mention disabled American Veterans. Its a limited show so im probably not going to get all the data out and please forgive me for that. You can also utilize the American Legion, the disabled American Veterans have counselors and, yes, they are trained. I recommend that highly. When youre waiting on your claim, though, just waiting, d. A. V. Cant even give you an update on that. Disabled American Veterans cant tell you whats going on, why is it taking 700 days when they know it was submitted correctly. Thats when you need to get a congressional inquiry done. Thats what my point was. But absolutely, veterans, utilize the American Legion, utilize the disabled American Veterans, go to the local groups that you know, if youre part of the marine corps league, im quite confident they can dreact now the right way. Any affiliated organizations will have counselors either associated with me or be able to direct you in an area. As far as filling out the claims wrong, yes, and no. Its not what hard an and shoult be that difficult. And especially people who are elderly, may have disabilities, a lot of younger veterans, this process is fairly smooth for them to get it submitted correct. But seek out a counselor to help you ensure that its submitted correct. Absolutely. Concerned veterans america for web site is concernedveteransfoforamerica. O. Lots of information for you to check out the organization for itself and to submit claims. Anthony joining us from south carolina. Veterans line. Hello. Caller good morning. How are you . Fine, thank you, go ahead. Caller i had a claim that i submitted, hi fros i had frost. They turned me down. One, they said my age. When i was in the military, i didnt complain about it. And then i resubmitted it and they said, say, you hadnt had any treatment. But there isnt any treatment for frostbite. Now im 5 and im feeling the results of of my injury and im just kind of curious if you had any advice for me. I dont want. Make your your complaint is complete. People dont want to complain on active duty. I get that. If you walked around hurt, people looked at you as if you were faking it. I understand. But if there is absolutely no documentation or evidence that you acquired this while you were on active duty, the v. A. Cannot be held accountable or the military because they cannot prove that it is associated with your terms of service. Thats basically just the reality of it, unfortunately, and im sorry about that. I was asked by email if v. A. Is fraught with fraudulent claims. And is twisted ankle a disability . A twisted ankle is not a disability because that can heal. Ive had multiple twists and sprains. But i did get what was called a zero percent disability for my ankles because i had chronic injuries of spraining my ankles on runs and hops. What that means is later on should i have ligament damage or whatever other issues, they recognize that i have a history of damage that could potentially result in problems later on in the future. But if you just you know, cut open your finger and its stitched up, no, thats not going to be considered a disability unless theres an association with deterioration in your health. So with the larger question about fraudulent claims . Oh, yes, theyre fraudulent claims, thats why the v. A. Has gotten more difficult with the claims theyre predicting. I love veterans and advocate for veterans but there are veterans out there that are using the system for get money from the government and ensure that they arent, you know, basically theyre laying, which is very, very sad. But any programs going to have that. Youll see it in the welfare system, youll see it in the food stamps program. It doesnt mean everybodys lying. But you have to have the discretion the v. A. Cannot just rubber stamp things and say you got it because you said it. They will review their records and ensure that theyre not handing out disability payments because this is taxpayers money. Snipe independent line, veter. Caller hi, im just concerned about when i was in the hospital in syracuse in 2012 and i watched a closedcircuit tv, they had the director of the Veterans Affairs make a statement saying that the budget was cut back 21 and theyre a hiring proceed yet theres an increase 900,000 people from fort drum that are putting in claims for benefits and stuff yet theyre understaffed or underfunded. How are they supposed to catch up on all these backlogged cases and everything when theyre cutting back on the budget and having a hiring freeze. That doesnt help. Keep in mind, the jury is still out on whether the v. A. Has enough money. You were asked on top of that what a Government Shutdown affect claims and processes . It shouldnt affect it but it could. Im not an expert on whats going to happen with this budget coming up. I would indicate that it could shut it down but i dont expect were going to have it shut down for long. I was on active duty with the last Government Shutdown. It was pretty quick. Active duty wasnt affected. They still did get their paychecks. But it will impact the country and its not going to stop the claims from being recognized, its just going to probably halt some people from going to work everyday. So, yes, well see an additional slowdown. Heres matthew, riverdale, florida. Caller how are you today, sir . Fine. Go ahead. Caller im a disabled vet and im rated at 100 and i just went through a reevaluation process and i just got dropped down to 30 . And i have got more medical issues now and seeing the doctors more now than i have in many years. I was wondering how i even try to go about and try to maintaining my00 . Youll have to resubmit your claim. For example, like i indicated with my ankles, im at 0 for my ankles and 0 for my flat feet. What that means is should i have start having increased as the future goes on, then i have to resubmit my claim. Theres a difference between looking for backpay and just having the disability recognized. Now, they do expect disabilities to increase as we get older. So, for example, i may have potential ankle problems based upon all the multiple sprains i had or the flat feet i have. So these are things that can change with time. You just go see a counselor over at the d. A. V. Or American Legion or any of the v. A. Or veteran veteransassociated groups and they should have counselors who can help you with your claim and get another submission and then you should be able to get this resolved. Its not going to happen overnight. It wont. But be patient and you should be able to resolve it. How common of an occurrence that you could get rated to 100 and then get pulled back to 30 . Ive never heard of that. Once your rating is granted, its already gone through. Im not sure of his specific case. Ive never heard of that. Matthew, are you still there . Caller yeah, they gave me a 100 in 2006 and they said they made a grave and unmistakable error with it. When i went through, they just did a reevaluation in 2011 and came back and said, oh, now youre at 30 . And ive gone back to d. A. V. , theyve tried to help me, ive contacted my congressmen and they said they cant do anything unless i become homeless. Did they clear did they explain clearly what this error was in any way . Caller they said basically because ive had 13 doctors that at the v. A. Say that i have this issue, part of my ptsd and stuff like that, my sleeping, but then i had one c. N. P. Evaluator that said that i dont have anything but he only met with me for five minutes and had me take an mmpi examination test. Then you need to go to appeals. You have to submit an appeal. Caller the personal hearing appeal and they pretty much said no. They said that theyre coinciding with the c. N. P. Evaluator because of the fact that he holds more weight and bearing than everybody else. And whats that evaluator . Caller compensation and evaluation foreyour claim. So you went through the v. A. Courts of appeals for v. A. Claims . Caller i did a personal hearing at day pines in nor floor. There may be another level you can still take it. I dont im not an expert on diagnosis or giving people their benefits, i will say with ptsd, and im not trying to undermine anything that happened to you at all, it will not necessarily qualify somebody for 100 . It is a very tough process to get. I mean, 100 is tough. You really have to be incapable of working. It is a it is an intense disability problem that has occurred over maybe the years of accumulation or whatnot. So i wouldnt discourage you but i would encourage you to find out what the next level of an appeal is and you would be able to establish a hearing with the u. S. Courts of appeal for the Veterans Administration. Matthew, thanks. We go to clarence, last call. Independent line. Veteran. Good morning. Caller good morning. First of all i would like to thank jessica an jess jesse r service. Thank you. Caller my concern is i was pretty much healthy when i was on active duty but the biggest problem with me was injuries. You know, i didnt get sick but i just got injured a lot. I had two of my fingers amputated. I tore miami. C. Lmiami. C. L. My a. C. L. During t. They make you feel as if youre going to war. I look as it as they put me in the battlefield and then eight hours in the gulf war but its taken years. I filed my claim in 2009 for my a. C. L. , for my fingers amputated and the other injuries that i received. So when i processed my claim, i did have counselors process my claim for me. Everything was good. But it was denied because they could not find my medical records. Oh, god. Caller you know . So the biggest problem for me, they tell me that they cannot find my medical records so now i have to do the the background and trying to determine where my medical records are. I went through the process of going back to the last duty station where i was stationed out in aberdeen proving ground. They tell me my medical record was sent to they wont have it. Caller i called st. Louis and they tell me my medical record was sent to d. C. I call d. C. And they tell me my medical records went to baltimore regional. Well let our guests respond to you. It will be at the Regional Office that was handling your claim. Thats where it would be at and youre not going to find it. I hate to sound so dismal but ive seen the photographs of these medical records. Theyre stacked to the ceiling in large warehouses. I dont know what happened when you got off of active duty but i was told, photocopy that medical record. Do not submit the only evidence you have. That is thats like suicide. You know, its its not giving you the opportunity to resubmit. If you did not did you get a photocopy of your medical record . Did you do that after you got off active duty . Hes no longer with us. Oh, dear. I have a copy of mine. Im not quite sure where i put it but i do have a copy buried among my many things. If theres no evidence of that medical record, the only thing i can say is you submit go to the congressional representatives so theyll do a congressional requirery as to where your medical record is. It is not destroyed. Its just probably next to impossible to find and they need to dig it up. And it would be at the Regional Office that was handling your claim. Jesse james, formerly of the marine corps, formerly with concerned veterans of america, we thank you for your time. Thank you so much for having me. Coming up, well talk about the farm bill. With the house and senate far apart specifically with respect to food stamps. Well have a discussion on future of the farm bill when washington journal continues. When ellen wilson is in the white house, she brings the white house gardener back here to Prospect House and says lets recreate the rose section of this garden at the white house. And of course this becomes the famous rose garden at the white house. Ellen tragically doesnt live to see the rose garden completed, however. Shes dying in the summer of 1914. Shes wheeled out into the space outside in her wheelchair and she watches as the gardener works but she doesnt live to see the completion of this vision she had for roses blooming at the white house. Meet the first and second wife of president Woodrow Wilson monday night live at 9 00 eastern on c spa cspan and cs. Many have said that our report would advocate mere reinforcement of embassies or closing down our presence. No conclusion like that could be farther from the truth. We recognize that perfection and protection is not possible and that fine and good men and women will still come forward to serve their country and risk their lives on the frontlines of danger. We should continue to do all that we can to protect them as they go about such challenging tasks. That was the sole purpose of our report and it was produced with the deep sense that we had to get it right. Politics, elections, personal controversy and all other external factors aside. This weekend on cspan, House Oversight examines the Obama Administrations response to the terror attack on the u. S. Consulate in been gaz bengazi. Today at 0 00 a. M. 10 00. And all weekend on booktv, live coverage of the National Book festival in washington, d. C. Joining us is the founder and executive editor of the hagstrom report joining us to talk about the farm bill. Where do we stand on the farm bill . Well, we now have all the legislation almost that is necessary to actually go to conference between the house and the senate. This week the house passed a nutrition title which would cut food stamps by 39 billion and so theyd already passed the far Program Section of it. Now theres only one thing left. They still have to pass another measure to put the two bills together and send them to the senate and were expecting that that will happen next week. And that will happen easily, in your estimation . Thats what i wonder, because the conservative groups have said the bill should be permanently split. They want one bill for the farm program, one bill for the for the food stamps, and, quite frankly, they want to cut both programs. But i think that the house leadership is probably going to whip this pretty strongly and they might even attach it to another piece of legislation so that it does go through. How did we get to the point where the house separated food stamps from the farm bill itself . Well, the the house tried to pass a comprehensive farm bill in june. The the nutrition portion of the bill and the farm program have always been in one, since the 1970s, in order to make sure you could get both rural votes and urban votes. And this year it didnt work. The democrats found the cuts in the in the Nutrition Programs too too big and only 24 of them voted for it. But a lot of the republicans still thought the cuts in nutrition were too small so the bill failed. And so then they brought up the farm bill by itself, the farm program, and now they brought up the Nutrition Program alone, but they still have to put them together in order to have a corches a comprehensivconference bill. But will the food portions be the Sticking Point . I think that will be i think that will be the major thing. Although, frank luke us, the chairman of the House Agriculture Committee, says in the end on the food stamps, its going to have to be an agreement between president obama, House Speaker john boehner, and Senate Majority leader harry reid. Theyre going to have to decide on a number and thats what the rest of the congress will accept. Overarching issues such as the debt ceiling and everything else, could this affect negotiations between those three men . Well, it certainly it certainly could. Because if theyre looking for cuts, if theyre looking for money to save, then its possible that they that they would look to the farm bill for part of those cuts. But its also possible that the farm bill could be attached to one of these pieces of legislation and that would make it easier to get it through congress. 40 im sorry, 74. 6 billion when it comes to the snap program, as its called, food stamps as its commonly called, about 46. 6 Million People on it, about 22 million households. The average benefit per person, 133. Per household, 278. Jerry hagstrom, that figure today, how does it vary from years past in terms of the amount of money we spend on foot stamps . Its a lot more than it used to be, double from some years ago. But the fact is weve had a recession and a lot of people are getting food stamps who didnt get them in the past. And this is particularly true of, lets say, suburban people, who have lost jobs. And one of the things that happened under the recovery act is that people were allowed to get food stamps even if they if they had assets. In the old days, if you had a fairly expensive car, you would have had to sell it and you dont have to do that now. Because the argument is, well, these people need cars in order to be able to go to job interviews, et cetera. And so the its been its easier to get on food stamps now than it has been in the past and so people with more assets are are doing it. But its understandable. Were talking to Jerry Hagstrom about the food stamp program, the farm bill overall. Weve divided our lines differently this morning in terms of location. If you live in urban areas, call 2025853880. If you live in rural areas, 2025853881. If youre a farmer specifically, 2025853882. And you can give us a call or tweet us as well if you want to ask questions about those breakdowns, urban, rural, farmers. They all farm under a farm package, so to speak. Thats. And its interesting youve divided them this way rather than republican and democratic, because it really the farm bill usually has not been a split between republicans and democrats. The battles in it have been have been regional. And there has been a bin agreement to supporbipartisanagn programs, especially food stamps, but that kind of broke down this year in which you didnt have a single democrat vote for the bill that would cut the food stamps so much. And you only had 15 republicans also vote against it. The bill passed on republican votes. Taking a look at the house bill, specifically when it comes to food stamps, it would cut 40 billion from the program. It would allow states to require work requirements for ablebodied recipients. They wouldnt receive the benefits indefinitely. Whats the difference on the senate side when it comes to cuts . On the senate side, theyre only cutting 4 billion. And they have theyre only doing things like taking requiring the states to provide more money in heating assistance if youre going to qualify people for food stamps. Theyre taking them away from any lottery winners, making a few other small small changes to the food stamp program. Lets hear from rick who is in massachusetts, defines himself living in an urban area. Rick, youre on with Jerry Hagstrom on National Journal. Good morning. Callercaller good morning, gen. This problem drives me nuts. There are a lot of abuse. People trading them in for cash, drugs. They should be kicked out permanently. But the main reason im calling, which drives me even more nuts, is why are we paying for farm supports to farmers . Almost a hundred years. Farming is a business. The commodity crop farmers not all farmers get subsidies, as you know, they should stand or fall on their own. And for any republican that calls himself a conservative, free market person, theyre hipp hypocrites. And if youre not, please tell me how youre not. Thats my commented on this issue. Well, the argument about why we have a farm program is basically that farmers are people who manufacture outdoors and there is so much about their production situation that they cannot control. They cant control the weather and they cant control world prices. And so since the 1930s, at least, they have had a safety a safety net program. And just last year, there was an incredible drought in the country and the Crop Insurance program paid out 17 billion in Rural America and there was no uproar over this drought. If there had not been that program, you would have had farmers marching in washington demanding what we call ad hoc Disaster Assistance and congress probably would have passed some kind of special bill. So thats basically why the the farm safety net exists. And you can argue a lot about the details of it but thats the basic reason. Jen offers this scenario. How about the farm subsidies given to rich people who own land in new york city. Much farming going on there on fifth avenue . [laughter] no, there isnt farming on fifth avenue. The number of people there are, of course, a few people a few people like that but there arent actually very many people in new york city getting the subsidies. Most of the subsidies that go to people in urban areas actually go to cities that are near the farmland. And now its kind of gotten complicated because about 50 of the farmland in the country today is rented often by the heirs to the farmland. Lets say somebodys grandparents or greatgrandparents were homesteaders and maybe the next generation farmed, maybe even two generations, but now the another generation owns the land and there are fewer people farming, the farming operations have gotten bigger and those people rent their land to another farmer in the community but they still may get some subsidy. Host is there a definition of a farm when were talking about these issues . Guest well, there are actually definitions of farms in terms of the fact that commodities are protected by these by direct subsidies. And by commodities, we mean things like corn, soybeans, wheat, cotton, rice, peanuts. While specialty crops and that would be fruits and vegetables and tree nuts do not get direct subsidies. They get other things to help them out like grading standards. And for example, you notice you never see an ugly apple in your Grocery Store and thats because the system created by the government does not allow those fruits to be sold in the stores. The ugly ones, the damaged ones, go to canning and go to freezi freezing. But this to some degree props up the price of the of the beautiful fruit in the stores. Host pittsburgh, pennsylvania. This is cecil, lives in an urban area. Hi. Caller hi. Ive got a problem with history. Im eight decades being a veteran of korean war, and i find that every 10 years we have a different problem with our veterans with the general public. And here weve got this food stamp thing. And we didnt have any problems food stamps out of the Second World War and korean, which i got caught up in that. Now, the only thing i object to is, why is it that the veterans, along with the general public, is plagued with things that are like a gas tax at the gas pump. Its actually a tax, theyre paying more. And theres not a thing like gas rationing when we had the great war, world war ii. People sacrificed a lot, came back and they had schools and things to their advantage. And were giving subsidies to the farmers. And the problem i have with it is that, what is it . Is it corporate farms . Because the small farmer is kind of crowded out by people like monsanto and their seeds. Theres all kinds of things going on there. Host thank you. Guest the gentleman has brought up a whole lot of issues. Ill try to address a few of them. When he talks about corporate farming, most crop farming is actually not in the hands of corporations. Its still in the hands of individual farmers or family farm corporations in which there may be a son and a father or brothers, something or also these days more likely husband and wife. They buy the seeds from monsanto but monsanto is not directly involved in farming except for its own seed plots. Now, when he raises the issue of veterans and whether theyre getting a proper treatment, one of the issues thats coming up in this proposed cut to food stamps is that this category of ablebodied adults without dependents, it includes a lot of veterans, particularly those people who may come back from iraq and afghanistan and who are troubled. Technically, theyre ablebodied but theyre not mentally or emotionally able. And under the current rules, if the program operates exactly as its supposed to, they can only get food stamps three months out of every 36 months. But the states have asked waivers for these what they call abodies, ablebodied adults without dependents. And so this new rule new law which, of course, it was only passed in the house, it would take away the states ability to get waivers for these people. Host vivian asked, can you tell us how much the members of the Committee Gave themselves in subsidies . Guest i dont have a figure on that. It varies. There are a few members who do. I would say most members of the House Agriculture Committee dont get subsidies but there are some there are some who are farmers and there are other members of congress who are not on the committee who are also farmers and have gotten subsidies over the years. Host so frank lucas is the chairman of the house agricultural committee. Whats his lifelike in the next couple days as theyre trying to resolve this thing . Guest well, hes the one whos responsible. Hes got to get the house to pass this rule that would allow the bill to be sent to the senate and then a conference to be called, and then hes got to convince john boehner, the House Speaker, to appoint these conferees. The senates already appointed its conferees. It will have to reappoint them with when they merge the two bills, but that probably wont be a complicated process. And another question for mr. Lucas now is whether he can convince boehner just to put members of the House Agriculture Committee on that conference or whether hell have to bow to pressure from the conservatives and put somebody whos outside the committee, who may not favor farm subsidies or food stamps. Host is there a deadline to the current farm bill . Guest well, the bill technically expires on september 30 but thats a complicated statement because individual farm programs expire according to crop years, so it depends on the wheat crop year, the cotton crop year, et cetera. So its just technically the bill expires then. The Biggest Issue with the with the bill is that on the 1st of january, the old Dairy Program from 1949 would go into effect, which would cause the government to buy milk at very high prices and then cause mick prices to gmilkprices to go up. This was the issue that came up last year and thats why the dairy why the fiscal cliff bill also contained an extension of the 2008 farm bill and what we called the dairy cliff legislation that made sure that the that milk prices would not go up. Host Jerry Hagstrom from National Journal is our guest to join us to talk about the farm bill. Also the creator of the hagstrom report, which is what . Guest the hagstrom report is a daily report on agriculture. The subscribers get a what we call a pushed email about whatever has been going on that day or maybe some feature stories. And then theres also an archive of it at www. Hagstromreport. Com and thats available to the public. Guest the National Journal puts out information about this as well. Can people get access to this information. Guest if they go to nationaljournal. Com, its also open to the public now. Host joining us to talk about these issues, theres a map that youll find, by the way, in that National Journal the politics of food stamps and jerry, what is this map telling us as far as information is concerned . Guest well, it is showing the percentage of the population in each of these states thats thats getting food stamps. And its interesting, that varies depending on the Poverty Level in the states. For example, theres the theres a higher percentage of people in most of the Southern States who get food stamps. It also depends on what effort the state makes to inform people of their food stamp benefits. One of the big controversies at the moment is whether the government should advertise the availability of of food stamps. Some years ago, actually during the bush administration, the government began an Advertising Campaign because they were afraid that people were not aware of their right to food stamps. And so that played a role in the increase in the number of people who are getting the who are getting food stamps, actually now called snap benefits, and they get them through electronic benefit transfer cards which are like credit cards. But thats now controversial. Some of the republicans do not think that the government should encourage people to sign up for this program. Host here is jared from minnesota, lives in a rural area. Good morning. Caller good morning, how are you doing today . Host fine, thank you. Caller i had a question just kind of related real timely to the map you put up. My question is related to the individuals that make up those areas that you know, that have that dark blue because oftentimes, you know, we hear that barack obama is the food Stamp President and giving food stamps to, you know, minorities to buy votes or to get votes. So my question is slon what is e actual data on the percentage of individuals receiving food stamps in are they classified as minorities or nonminorities . Guest well, the country is mostly white so most of the people who get food stamps are are white. Also but i would say, most of the people who who get food stamps are women, children, disabled people. Oddly enough in this category of ablebodied people without dependents, about 60 of those are are men, and thats where this question of the war veterans comes in. We dont know exactly who those who those people are, but one of the controversies is if it would cut them off, this might upset a lot of people in republican areas. Host we have a viewer whos interested in learning more about those members of congress who receive benefits. He asked the question, have him expend on the rich celeb members. Congress benefiting from the farm bill. Guest [laughter] well, i find it i find it difficult. You know, im going to direct you to a web site called the environmental working group, and they they keep lists of various types of lists of members of congress who get food stamps excuse me, not food stamps but farm subsidies. And thats also where you can look up the the subsidies that individual farmers farmers have gotten. Host barbara joins us from little rock, arkansas, urban area. Good morning. Caller good morning. Host youre on, go ahead. Caller oh. I just recently seen on the news about the food stamps where they was theyre talking about Start Testing drug testing people thats getting food stamps or other government programs. And i want to know this why why were they talking about testing drug testing im in arkansas where you have a lot of farmers. A lot of people are receiving checks for many, many years to not to farm. And they call this subsidy but its just another thing for welfare. And i want to know, why wasnt they talking about testing those people drug testing those people for receiving those checks theyve been sending them . I had opportunity to see some of them checks and a lot of those people that are receiving those checks are marijuana growers, users and a lot of of a lot of meth in this area. Host caller, thank you. Guest she raises the question that other people have asked. If youre going to ask the food stamp beneficiaries to go through drug testing, then why not why not the farmers . And the only answer i would have is, that just wasnt part of the bill. And i think youd have a very hard time organizing a campaign to test all the all the farmers for drugs. But she raises she raises a point that has been brought up in washington, a question of fairness. Host she said people receiving checks to not to farm. I think that what shefarm. Guest i think what shes referring to is the Conservation Reserve Program which takes land out of production, land that is considered to be marginal. But the program started in the 1980s when we had a surplus of agricultural product. So there was there were two reasons for starting it. One was that to to take marginal land out of production on the theory that if you have this land in production, it causes pollution problems, for example, runoff runoff of pesticides into streams, this kind of thing, hilly land. And so and the other was that there were that there were simply too there was too many wheat in the world, too mantoo h corn, et cetera. Well, now that theres more demand for agricultural products, a lot of it has to do with the increasing wealth in china and chinas desire for food. Another part of the demand is the ethanol program. Farmers are taking some of that land out. But in these years, farmers have been receiving checks, there has been as much as 370 million acres out of the 400 million of crop acres in this program, but the new farm bills would reduce the amount that can be in that program to 24 million ache of m. Host one of the articles in the National Journal is the two sides of Crop Insurance. For those who dont understand what is Crop Insurance, how does that affect the debate going on on capitol hill over the farm bill . Guest okay. Crop insurance is a program in which the government pays part of the cost and the the farmer pays a part of the cost. The government pays about 62 , the farmer paid about a third. And under this program, farmers get insurance against both weather risk and price risk. And it has become the most important farm subsidy subsidy program. Compared with the others, which have made direct payments, for example, to farmers. There is there are arguments about this program. I mean, its been very successful, especially that was the one that paid out the 17 billion last last year, and there would have been chaos in Rural America if you hadnt had those payments. But some people question why very rich farmers should get this much of a subsidy for their for their premium premium payments. They wonder if this encourages marginal land to be in production. And so there have been there are some things in the farm bill that would restrict Crop Insurance a little bit. Thats thats in the senate in the senate bill. But then there are other pressures to increase Crop Insurance for crops that dont have it. Its much harder to do Crop Insurance for the specialty crops, the fruits and vegetables, the nuts, et cetera, because theyre grown on smaller acreages and so its hard to develop the program in which you figure out what the what the rules would be. With the wheat and the corn, et cetera, you spread it over, you know, over large areas so the Program Works fairly well for those but not for some of the products yet. Host judy is up next who lives in a rural area. Good morning. Caller good morning. My problem is, okay, ive been a cashier for many years and i see a lot of Illegal Immigrants coming in that cannot speak english and theyve got a thousand dollars or more in food stamps. And i want to know why its so easy for these people to be able to come into our country, okay, and be able to get on food stamps and theyre not even a United States citizen. Guestguest well, first of all, Illegal Immigrants are not supposed to get food stamps so they have had to prove or provide some evidence of their legal status in the United States in order to be qualified for the program. I cant speak to the thousand dollars. If they have a thousand dollars on the e. B. T. Cart, it would have to bcard, it wouldhave to y to have that. But it is not that easy to qualify for food stamps. And i dont know if your experience is recent or not, but these days, the food stamp beneficiaries get their benefits through these electronic benefit transfer cards, not through physical coupons, so it isnt so easy to just sell them to another person for a percentage, which is what people people used to do. I guess thats about all i can respond to that. Host here is deborah who lives in hampton, virginia, rural area. Hello. Caller hi. Good morning. And i thought that was interesting what the last caller just said, a thousand dollars in food stamps. Ive never heard anything like that. But im one of those ablebodied adults with dependent children and my children who are dependent are also disabled, severely disabled. They were twins. At any rate, you know, i remember back when i was working, i didnt work under 40 hours. I was a fulltime worker working 40, 50, 60 hours a week. I had one child at the time. I was a single mother. I kind of rolled my eyes when i would see you know, some years ago i would roll my eyes, okay, go out and get a job. But i understand what its like now because i am a recipient of the food stamp program. And, you know, what it is, im a divorced mother who is now needs training, some job training or education because im you know, jobs that ive applied for, you know, im not qualified for because ive been out of work because ive been home taking care of my disabled children. So you dont know what peoples situation is. And a lot of people, you know, think theres this narrowminded narrative that were lazy. No way in the world im lazy, you know, taking care of my family. However, i want to work but im just in that that situation. And, you know, causing people to you know, you just cant put a blanket, you know, whatever on peoples situation. It is what it is, and, you know, youre going to need help at some time. And i found out, you know, the way that i found out after rolling my eyes at a Cash Register that, you know, youre going to need help. Host thank you, caller. Thank you. Guest well, the caller speaks to the delicate matters that we that we are talking about here. First of all, i want to assure her that this that the house bill would not take any disabled people off of food stamps but also that this bill still has to go through conference with the senate. And the expectation is that the senate and president obama are not going to be willing to accept a very big cut to to food stamps. Host there is an article written by one of your colleagues for National Journal but the headline says, Sugar Growers reap sweeter results than Dairy Farmers in lobbying fights. How much of sugar is part of debates over farm bill . Guest oh, its a big debate every time. And you have the debate between the Sugar Growers who wanted to maintain their program, and the sweetener users, which is basically the Candy Companies and other industrial users of sugar, which say that the Sugar Program restricts the the supply of sugar too much and raises the price and raises their cost of production. The Sugar Growers have however, have a very strong lobby, they have a very large public Political Action committee and so they have done they have done very well at maintaining their program. And its its in its passed both the house and the senate so it would be maintained, assuming that that there are no changes in the conference. Host so Jerry Hagstrom, in light of that, Dave Humphrey makes this statement on twitter, you can respond if you wish. All agriculture price manipulation by our federal government should end. Let farmers earn a living using the free market. Guest well, its a lot more complicated than that. Its its hard to say that there would be no price manipulation because we are in a World Economy. There are subsidies and import and export restrictions all over the world. Agriculture is a little bit different from most other forms of of business. So i think that its unlikely its unlikely that the world he wants is going to happen. Host here is fredericktown, ohio. Joining us is clarence. Hes a farmer. Good morning. Caller yeah, hello. This is more like a twosided conversation. I do not understand why we subsidize the rich. Im in a poor county and Public Record tells you how much the local farmers around you get for subsidies. Its all in the Public Records if you go hunt it up. I know several, they call them family farmers, theyre not family farmers. When youre farming thousands of acres, its not a family farm, it is a business. The same as were subsidizing oil, why are we subsidizing the rich and burying the poor . We take away whatever the poor have. I am a small farmer. Ive lived on this farm, its been in our family for a hundred years almost, and its only a 50acre farm. It is an old farm. Host what do you farm . Caller we raise sheep and we raise chickens and we want to move into some small cattle. But we dont get nothing for subsidies. We dont get anything from help. But my neighbors, i have found out, in three years get almost a million dollars. What is wrong with this situation . We always help the rich and to heck with the poor. I dont understand the u. S. Doing this. Host thank you for your input, clarence. Guest well, first of all, hes basically a in animal agricultue and Animal Agriculture does not get direct subsidies. There have been arguments over the years that Animal Agriculture, you know, cattle raising, chickens, turkeys, sheep, as he said, have benefited from the fact that crop farmers have been subsidized because it may have kept down the cost of animal feed. Now, today there are other arguments about that because the renewable fuel mandate is shifting some of the corn to to ethanol. But on the issue of why do we subsidize the rich, its so complicated because the agricultural subsidies follow production, and over the years, as agriculture has become more mechanized, there are fewer farmers. And but if you have, lets say lets say you have a big corn and soybean farm. But if you have a drought, you have a big problem and you probably have expensive machinery, you may have employees, and the argument would be that these big farmers need the assistance, lets say from Crop Insurance, in order to stay in business for the next year. But i agree with him that it is a very complicated issue between the big farm the big farm and the small farm. If he were in crop production, he would get some subsidies. Host what when you apply for a subsidy from the federal government, what information do you have to provide and how often is a farmer turned down . Guest well, first of all, the the subsidies go along with various with the crop. So you have to provide information on what land you own or land that you are renting. You have to do you have to report what youre planting and what and your production. For example, if youre going to get a subsidy based on a loss, you would have to provide information about that. You also have to sign a paper that you will follow normal farming practices. And there are spotchecks on whether you are whether you are doing that. Host this is john, harvey, illinois, urban area. Hi. Caller hi. My question is why these people who are allowed to receive these subsidies like who are elected officials. Case in point, senator eastland from mississippi, for years and years im talking about back in the 1950s when we didnt even know what a subsidy was, he was allowed to receive subsidies for not growing. Hes a United States senator. For not growing anything. And probably wasnt planning to grow anything in the first place. But my point is, if there are other people receiving these huge subsidies who are sitting up in washington as elected officials, why arent they why isnt it made known that, you know, this this situation exists rather than just people receiving food stamps who are going to be cut . Why cant we cut some of that fat from the budget . And i appreciate if you would give us that you said you had a list of elected officials who receive subsidies that you were going to make public and im sitting and waiting for that. If youd let us know that, id appreciate it. Thank you very much. Guest well, to find the list of officials, go to a web site called the environmental working group. I think its ewg. Org. And there you will find ways to find lists of people who have who have gotten subsidies, various various types of people. Now, when you talk about senator eastland, that was a long time ago. I mean, in the 1950s, the programs were were very different. So i cant really speak to that in in current terms. I wouldnt overemphasize the idea of Public Officials getting the subsidies. For example, most members of the house these days come from the from the suburbs or from the cities, and one of the problems in passing a farm bill is that so few of them have any connection to agriculture anymore, they dont really understand very very much about it. So i dont think youre going to find as many people as you as you might think, but there is the issue of people who do get subsidies still saying people shouldnt get food stamps. And i think there there are reasons to raise issues of hypocrisy about that. Host the subsidy database is farm. Ewg. Org. Theres a database. You can type the zip code and find more information about individuals from that. Again, farm. Ewg. Org. So play out from this point on what to expect as far as negotiations about the farm bill. Guest sure. Well, the first thing is they have to pass this this procedural measure. Then the house would send th the housepassed bill, both the farm bill and the nutrition bill combined to the senate. Then the senate would say no, were not going to pass this. Weve already got our own bill. We want a conference on the two bills. Then they send that message. And then they reappoint their conferees and then they send that message back to the house. And then the house appoints conferees. And then they would hold a conference, theoretically come up with an agreement and then pass it through each house again and then send it to president obama. Now, i think the next question is how long or how will this take . And my answer would be, it can be as short or as long as they as they want, depending on how serious they are about getting this bill done. And Jerry Hagstrom from the hagstrom report, thank you. Guest thank you