Transcripts For CSPAN Washington Journal 20140213

Billion. Yesterday, we talked with republicans only in the first hour of washington journal about the debt ceiling vote. Today, we turn to democrats to get your thoughts on the 2014 agenda. What should be the parties priority . If you live in the eastern part of the country, dial we will get to your thoughts about priorities for democrats in 2014. Joining us on the phone is emma staff reportera for roll call, joining us phone to talk about House Democrats leaving washington for their annual retreat. Where are you, exactly . Where are the democrats meeting . And what is on the agenda . Guest we are in cambridge, maryland where the snow has turned to freezing rain. And we are at the reporters are camped out at the holiday inn houses down the road, but democrats and their guests are out at the Hyatt Regency on the chesapeake bay. The theme of the retreat is strengthening opportunity. They are going to be holding a series of symposiums, breakout sessions. They are going to give speeches that will be addressed by Vice President biden. And tomorrow by president obama. And they will be trying to crystallize their policy positions and messaging strategies and talking points economics,themes like closing the wage gap, very emboldened by the president executive order to raise the minimum wage for federal contractors and they want to continue pushing for a higher minimum wage for all americans. They are going to be talking about tax code reform. That is for all americans. They will be talking about Nancy Pelosis agenda on womens issues. Nationalemocratic Campaign Chairman steve isarael, that the democrats will ask republicans, whose side on are u on . They claim they are on the side of the americans heading into the november elections. Host who was able to attend . And who pays for these types of retreat . Guest i cannot answer the question about who pays. My understanding would be that it is official, party funds. As far as who can attend or who is attending, given the inclement weather, we are actually not allowed in the Hotel Complex of the Hyatt Regency. We have very strict credentialing parameters. So we have not actually seen the full crowd. The neighborhood of 70 of the House Democratic caucus. Certainly, all of the members of leadership are in town. They came and spoke to us last night. Clyburn,er, james steve israel and Chris Van Hollen came to hold a greetings press conference yesterday evening. Democratsre asking only this morning to talk to us about what they want the party to do for the priorities for 2014. Tell us what democrats are saying their priority you touched on a little bit, but legislationwise, what will they push for . Guest you know, they are very, they came to cambridge is certainly feeling in terms of morale better than they had had a come late in the year. Rolloutr with a rocky of the Affordable Care act and a lot of pressure on democrats to explain why the law was not being of limited as smoothly as they had hoped and dreamed and promised. Theyre coming off of helping republicans passed the debt ceiling vote on tuesday. Which to them proves how instrumental they are at passing legislation to the house. And even the speaker john bane oehner conference. Withhope they can come up legislative priorities that republicans as well as democrats that maybewards, this is a watershed moment for bipartisanship. Democratic caucus vicechairman said he was not going to hold his breath. It is very hard for democrats to do much legislatively in a republicancontrolled house. As you know. And especially in an election year, where every vote is going to be looked at very carefully and republicans are going to be scrutinized for their legislative agenda, and the bills they put on the floor, as far as charting the course for seeas far as what they democrats put forward, it remains to be seen whether they can do so cooperatively with the party that is setting the agend a. ,st emma dumain, roll call thank you for your time. What do you want your party to do in washington. What should be there priorities . I need to correct something. Right at the top we told you about comcast acquiring Time Warner Cable. The number is 45 billion with a b. Usa today has the only story on the front page. Billionagreed to by 45 time warner. In the biggest media deal of the year according to a person familiar with the matter. In the all stock deal, comcast will pay 159 per share. Time warner cable shares have been rising as comcast and c media haveliberty months toing for acquire time warner. The number of consumers fell by 85,000 to 4. 4 million in the fourth quarter. Comcast owns 20 of the market. A combined comcasttimwarner would account for 32 of the paytv subscribers in the United States. We will tell you more about this deal if it is approved, as we continue this morning. First, returned to democrats only. What to get your thoughts on the priorities for the year. Zach in binghamton, new york. Good morning. Go ahead. Caller so you brought up this issue today because believe it or not, i was actually in d. C. Last week, and i had the pleasure of seeing the washington monument. And believe it or not it looked exactly like my erect penis. Host we will move on. We apologize for that. Gladys, go ahead. Caller yes, i think one of the main priorities ought to be jobs and not to be tax reform and also immigration. Bewellas as there should close scrutiny of this comcasttime warner deal. I live in san antonio and my Cable Company is time warner. I am an elderly person on a fixed income and i can barely afford this cable. Eventually i will have to have it turned off. I just think that ought to be a priority as well. And i think it is really important that we extend the Unemployment Insurance. People are hurting out here, about to lose their homes, dont know what theyre going to do. Thank you. Host do you Want Congress to weigh in on the potential merger . Caller yes, i want them to weigh in on this potential merger. Is it to the benefit of the consumer . They should consider extending Unemployment Insurance as well as tax reform, immigration, and the minimum wage. People are hurting in this country all over. And yet we cannot get any cooperation or get anything done. Host mike in new york. Caller it is concerning to me the democrat, i watched caucasus meeting this morning on cspan. Those are all important issues Immigration Reform, equal pay for women, minimum wage raising. But it is a kind of thing where people just want to have jobs. I think is a little bit demagoguery, where we are scaring people to think, even as a democrat i cannot believe the republicans do not care about the people. And ms. Pelosi, i have respected her. But to speak that way as if they are in different is not going to win anyone over. And i think may even be a little bit of desperation. So i think it is real important, and i am a smallbusiness Business Owner in new york. I am a physician. I do not see those things stimulating the employers to want to hire people. Again, they are very important issues, but just like the Health Care Act the first two years of the president i think everyone should have access to care, but it think a lot of time was spent on that bill and less time on the economy. The economy and jobs. Host less emphasis on health care, even though you are physician . Emphasis. Less if the bill was inclusive of everybody having access to care, or would still be 20 Million People that will not have access. So i do not know the purpose of the bill. I do not know that anybody knows what this bill is about. Host let me show you the front page of the New York Times, over 1 million added to the rolls of the health care plan. Up forlion people signed Health Insurance through federal and state marketplaces in january according to the government, and the number of young people in rolling increase faster than out of any other group. Hailed by Obama Administration officials have expressed increased optimism that they had overcome their initial stumbles and erase many doubts about the viability of the health care law. Lawer well, just by thel itself, for three years we heard that if youre 26 you can stay on your parents care. But you want those 30yearold kids to pay the bill. It does not make sense. How many of those people that have signed up are fully subsidize and how many of them are partially subsidized by the government . How many of those people are actually paying the premium by themselves . It is encouraging, and do not get me wrong i want everyone to have access to care but if we are making the bill and the cbo admits that we will have 15 Million People that will not have access, then some people will argue that is the First Step Towards universal health care. But i think the bill couldve been written a little bit clearer and a little bit better to make that happen. Host so is a democrat, should that be a priority, that they go back into this legislation . That democrats are willing to work with republicans on making a better . Caller yeah. I think it is a great idea. But again, i do not want to be insensitive, but i think if people work, and they are paying their bills, they are happier. And then we can work on a lot of these other issues, like Immigration Reform. I am for it. We are adding, again, i do not want to be controversial but we are adding all these people into the labor force and what happens to the middle and lower middle class . Are they going to have more access or less access to jobs . Host you are a physician. You own your own practice . What do you practice . Caller i am a dermatologist. Host what is the overhead like . Caller my overhead increases because there is more demand for electronic records. We have to meet certain criteria otherwise we get penalized payments from medicare. We have to buy the systems that are worth 30,000 a year. As a dermatologist, i have a little bit of a luxury of doing procedures and things like that, but my internet friends are ternist friends are getting bought out from hospitals. T is becoming very very difficult. Host back to the New York Times, 25 ofomising is that those signing up for insurance from october through january were ages 18 to 34. The young and presumably Healthy People whom Insurance Companies need as customers in order to keep premiums reasonable for everyone. In atlanta, georgia. We are talking with democrats only. We talked to republicans yesterday. What is the priority for democrats this year . Caller the priority should be to help the African American community. There is no way they will win me midterm elections unless they get out and vote. We have been neglected. We want the jobs. We want those farm subsidies and things cut. We want a program so our kids can get educated and jobs during the summertime. Im not we do not want no limit great and. Immigration is only going to take jobs from the africanamerican people. We have a lot of African American people that have marijuana crime. We do not let me tell you the congressional black caucus, we do not want no immigration. We want the job. If you have to pass keystone with it, that is what we want. Host steve in jersey shore, pennsylvania. Hi, steve. Caller i work every year on construction, and the thing of it is is i get no unemployment because i missed it by a few dollars so i needed the extension. I worked for the same company for nine years. And something needs to be done about that. That is not even fair. I have a job. It is not like i laid around for two years and did not been collecting. I worked nine months out of the year and i am laid off in the winter because you cannot work on state roads in the winter roads. That is mainly what i do. Host we are talking to democrats only this morning, getting your priority list, your todo list for the party this year, including the president and democrats who control the senate. They are the minority in the house, but what are your thoughts this morning . Dial in, send us a tweet, or join the conversation on facebook. Yesterday, the democrats held a News Conference as emma dumain talked about to go through their year of action. Here is what congressman becera had to say. Democrat from california. There is no reason why 2014 should be a year shutdown politics or why we just pack up and put it away and say there is no more we can do. Raise thethings like minimum wage not just for workers for federal contractors but for all americans. We can guarantee equal pay for equal work. Can renew emergency Unemployment Insurance for one point 7 million americans, and we can finally fix a badly broken immigration system. We know in Immigration Reform that we have the votes to pass that bill. And we believe we have the votes to pass all of those initiatives. This is why we think they should be a year of work. This is why were here assembled in maryland to talk about how we as democrats will work with the president for this year of action on behalf of the american public. Host we will go to edward in marinette wisconsin. Edward, what do you think . Inry, we go to jerome tennessee. Caller i was talking about the republicans. Like paul ryan, they lie to you still. They talk to that person earlier. Do not listen to him. Hes a plant. Republicans interfere, cheat, lie. Host what do you want to see the democrats do in 2014 . Caller uh, just keep doing what theyre doing. Try to win congress so they can get something right, something that should be done done and stop all of the blocking and abuse of power that republicans, they are threatening to impeach. It is then that should be impeached. Host front page of the wall street Journal Health options limited. Hundreds of thousands of americans in poorer counties face high premiums and have fewer choices through online exchanges. This is according to an analysis by the wall street journal, and looking at 36 states. And 515 counties across 15 states have only one insurer selling coverage. 80 of those counties the sole insurer is a local blue cross and blue shield plan. Residents of wealthier counties in the United States receive lowerpriced choices than those living in counties with a single insurer. This in the wall street journal this morning. And then also this morning, the headline in the Washington Post, president obama launches a new effort to raise the minimum wage. The president launched a fresh effort to focus on the minimum wage ahead of this years midterm elections emphasizing the populist economic message that will drive much of this years democratic agenda. House event, obama signed an executive order hiking the minimum wage to 10. 10 starting next year. He was following through on an announcement he had made ahead of this years state of the union address. Our cameras were there covering the president. Business leaders, government officials, and congress to also act on this issue. And the president there. You can see signing the executive order with folks in the background who approved of that. Democrats are saying that they would Like Congress to move on minimum wage. The house atn least, not likely to put it on the floor, but harry reid has indicated he would move for a vote in march when they returned after this latest recess. Heres the president yesterday. Keep doingoing to whatever i can to raise working americans wages. And i would ask any Business Leader out there, any governor, any mayor missing, do what you can to raise your employees wages, to work to raise the wages of citizens in your jurisdiction. Dsupport these efforts. A majority of americans, not just democrats and independents but republicans, too, support raising the money wage. The minimum wage. That is Something Congress should keep in mind this year. There is a bill right now in front of both the house and the senate that would boost americas minimum wage to 10. I am doing just like with this executive action. It is easy to remember. 1010. 1010. Lets get that done. Wage wouldinimum not just raise wages for minimal wage workers, its effect would lift wages for 28 million americans. It would lift millions of americans out of poverty immediately. It would help millions more work their way out of poverty without requiring a single dollar in new taxes or spending. It is the right thing to do. Host the president yesterday at the white house talking about raising the minimal wage for federal contractors. Washington times has this headline. The Labor Department says wage edict will not bust the budget. The labor secretary telling reporters that the executive order which will go into effect on january 1, 2015, will benefit hundreds of thousands of workers doing business with the federal government but could not offer a more precise figure. Republicans have said this will not impact that many people. Robert in new jersey. Robert, what is on your to do list for this congress, for the democrats . Caller i think the democrats probably should not be worried about Immigration Reform, because that is just goigng o who africanamerican people are already at a disadvantage when it comes to getting jobs. And the high rate of unemployment in the black community is a shame. And the Republican Party is just not doing anything to help anybody, you know. It is a shame. Host all right, robert. Are you still there . What are the democrats doing . Caller well, they are doing a lot of good things, you know, but Immigration Reform is not one thing they should be concerned about right now. I think it is good that they raised [hung up] host let me move on to edward in wisconsin. Hi, edward. Good morning. What is the priority for democrats in 2014 . Caller democrats, i have been democrats. They are doing the things they are doing. If i can explain that i have cancer and my wife was laid off place, becaused she is worried about playing hes worried about paying insurance for her and other workers in there, so he is just laying them off for parttime. Just, it does not seem right. Somebody that works there for 17 years. All of a sudden she gets laid off for no reason. And then she has unemployment. Done, and weeks is she has no extensions are nothing. Host ok. In wisconsin, democrats only this morning. Your priorities for 2014. What do you want the president to push, what would you Like Congress to push for . Get better numbers on the popularity of the Affordable Care act. The only thing that can save them from disaster in 2014 Election Results more on the potential merger between comcast and time w arner. This is an Associated Press story. We told you at the top that comcast has agreed to buy Time Warner Cable for 45 billion or 158 per share. The deal will combine the nations to top tv cable companies, and may comcast a dominant force in creating and delivering entertainment into u. S. Homes. Cable company,r had pursued Time Warner Cable for months but Time Warner Cable what head rejected called a lowball offer, saying he would cut a deal for 160 per share. Comcast state in the background waiting to purchase any chunk of subscribers. Charter had planned to finance its bid with 25 billion in new debt. The Company Considers selling off some of its territories after the deal closed. Time warner cable markets had balked at the debt that charter represented. Plans to invest with 22 million of its own paytv customers. Will end up entity with about 30 million subscribers when the deal is believe notlevvel to trigger the concern of antitrust authorities. Divesting subscribers can help the deal get approved more quickly. Operates mainly in the northeast and philadelphia, boston, washington, and chicago. It has strongholds in new york and l a n dallas in milwaukee. Mary in jacksonville, florida. What do you think should be the priority for democrats . Caller right. Host youre on the air, mary, go ahead. Caller hi. Host good morning. Caller good morning. Host what are your thoughts . Caller i was calling about, uh, the 10. 10 raise. Minimum wage. Caller i think it should be that because people cannot live off of 7. 00 an hour. I know where i live in jacksonville are thousands of people working for less than that because the bosses know they can get them to work for less than that because the po eople need money. They are working for food. I do not know how they are paying the bills but they are working to feed their family and that is terrible. Host we told you also at the top that the senate before they left town passed an extension of the governments Borrowing Authority to 2015. There was nothing attached to it in exchange for raising the debt ceiling. No spending cuts or changes to the Affordable Care act, it was a socalled clean vote. Yesterday, we told you that ted cruz was not going to allow a simple majority. That he would insist it would take 60 votes. That is what happened on the senate floor. Politico has a little bit about what happened behind the scenes and on the senate floor and front of cameras. Of course, we had we were covering that live. We do not control the cameras in the chamber, nor the proceedings, but we will bring you live coverage as we do of the senate and house floor yesterday. You can see the boat taking place on your screen. This is what political rights. Rankandfile ultimately backed Mitch Mcconnell and john corning into a corner on the debt ceiling increase. Leaders had wanted to allow the toxic measure to pass with just 51 votes so all 45 republicans could vote against it. Cruz demanded approval by 60 votes. Try tonnell and corning persuade more than five republicans in safe seats but they were met with stiff resistance. No republican wanted to be vote number 60 to advance a bill to raise the debt ceiling without spending cuts him of forcing the leader to secure a comfortable margin of victory and risking blame for historic debt default. Beend that they had long asked to take tough votes, senator Susan Collins and Lisa Mikulski pressured mcconnell and cornin devote to break the filibuster. Mikulski resisted voting for the measure without the support of her leadership team. Macconnell turned to his colleagues and, we are not going to do this again. Reelectionth facing this year in tea Party Inspired challenges in their state took the plunge and raced the political backlash by voting to break the filibuster, the type of both the two leaders have long sought to avoid in this election season. After hoping the measure passed without their fingerprints, forcedll and cornen were own part of that by allowing it to move to a final vote with their consent. If then, all the republicans final passage,n so it passed after that but these two leaders are stepping forward to make sure that there was, a final vote could take place in the senate. And the end result . 12 republicans voted to break the filibuster advancing the measure on a party line vote. In the Senate Passed the bill 5543. After macconnell and corning then you sawte, other republicans like Susan Collins, john mccain come forward and vote yes. Mccain changing his vote from no to yes. To back up his leadership on that vote. This is what john cornin tweeted out after the house had voted. All republicans in the senate voted no to increase the debt ceiling. Potus and d are clueless to risks of raising debt. That is what the senator had to say. Te4d cruz. Both parties are not listening to the american people. That tweet yesterday. Roll call has the 12 republicans who voted yes on moving forward with the legislation. They all voted no on final passage. Bit about what happened on the senate floor. If you tuned into cspan2, you saw happen there. Lets go back to democrats only this morning. Santa maria, california, you are on the air. Caller hi. Its menan. Host go ahead. Caller i want to raise a point that i have not heard talked about and i believe that medicare and Social Security should both be means tested. And it has never been raced. For example, i just turned 65. And my Health Care Premium when i was 64 was 1000 a month. The minute i turned 65, my Health Care Premium is 104 a month. Year,if i make 200,000 a it does not matter. That is not sound economics. That is not what insurance bills should be based on. The same thing with Social Security. [coughs] year even 200,000 a after ive 65, i will still get my 26,000 a year Social Security payment. I do not think that is right. That does not even make sense. It is supposed to be a safety net. It is supposed to be to help people from living in poverty and on the street when they are a european add vacation to someone who already makes a lot of money. But no one wants to talk about that. Host ok, all right. Kansas city, missouri. I hope i pronounced her name right. Go ahead. Caller good morning. I think they need to focus, the democrats need to focus on jobs. Not immigration, i think this year should be home of the rest of this year and next year should be focused on jobs. And i think that will stop a lot of the unemployment issues that you have, the people staying on so long. They need to get good, fulltime jobs, job training or something, but i think americans have suffered long enough. The banks and everything like that. But they need to continually focus on jobs and get americans back to work. That is most important for everybody, i think. Host tucson, arizona. What do you think . John, good morning. Do have a limit of how many i can make . I have a couple of makes. 10 or 20 points. Host go ahead. A couple points. Caller i usually voted for obama twice because i was a democrat. Republicans were morons. I learned a couple of things, and ive seen that democrats really are not that concerned with the bottom line. If you increase the minimum wage to 10. 10, your increasing for corporations. Now we have quantitative easing, 75 billion a month at the fed. What did they say back in october . They said that we will deal with this debt. We will experience a crash. They hear me speak, they think that i am the antichrist. Host we will go to david in madison heights, michigan. Caller thank you very much for cspan and taking my call. Justnk we all as viewers caught a republican calling in on the democrats line, that young man from arizona. Anyway, to my point, i think that democrats should keep doing what theyre doing. I do agree with the woman jobs, jobs for jobs. If they could somehow pull that off without much republican support. They will be a winner. But the path they are doing, the progressive way, i do believe in. Rather than the republican alternative. 85 of the republicans voted against raising the debt ceiling. That would be like me going to my Mortgage Company and saying, i am not going to pay my house payment for a year. And i can still stay in my house, right . I do not think it would happen. Host more on the debt ceiling vote in the senate. And to tailor who covered the budget for the Associated Press has been covering capitol hill on that issue andrew taylor. He had several tweets last night after the vote. Sayaid this, i want to something about the way Senate Leaders handled a key vote. Typically vote tallies are announced publicly in real time on cspan. This one was not, seemingly at the request of republicans. We do not control the cameras in the chamber in the senate or the house and we do not control the audio or the proceedings. So this request was made to the people that sit at the desk there, according to andrew taylor. Instead, the only people that could see was going on were insiders and reporters watching the vote live in the chamber. It is impossible to be sure how senators vote if they do not make a gesture. So the public, wall street, can be sure. Could not be sure. It is not acceptable for investors to deny Information Available to lawmakers and their staff cared the media must demand a Public Statement. I have asked that the organizations representing the media of capitol hill will lodge an official protest. I expect a Public Statement from leaders or their offices within appropriate window. He said i believe in response to other reporters i believe it was because gop ers did not want to get the blame for spooking the market. Tarp laid out a realtime as the markets were open. So did todays vote. Response that ongoing public announcement the senate votes are a convenience. He sent that tweet out. The next step could be to provide realtime accounting of roll call votes. Andrew taylor with those tweets about what happened in the Senate Chamber yesterday when the vote was not announced. He says at the request of the republican leaders. This isston chronicle, their headline of what went down between her to texas senators. Cruz, his colleague on the debt limit. Demandedenator cruz that there be 60 votes on this, senator cornyn stepped forward to allow the final passage. Houston chronicle. The Washington Times. Gop chiefs help the senate pass hike in the debt limit. Democrats see an opening with fractured minority. Democrats only this morning. Carlton in louisville, kentucky. What do you think . Good morning. What is your priority for democrats . Caller jobs and infrastructure. Host infrastructure. What do you mean . Caller i would like to see the roads be built. The roads are in disarray. The dams. The on the dams and bridges. Dd plus. Ds and they need to be reparied. Host yesterday there was a hearing on the cost of extreme weather on our infrastructure. The headline in usa today, ofr storms cost billions dollars. 5t cost the United States 1. 1 trillion in economic losses from 1982 2010 and could cost another 1 trillion. We cover that hearing. If youre interested in the costs, as well as how much it cost to prepare, go to our Video Library and you can find it on cspan. We will go to craig in pennsylvania. Good morning. Caller my comment for the democrats. I mean, they went ahead and came up with a way to pay for this threemonth extension on the unemployment. With that being said, the republicans voted it down. Thedidnt the president do executive order, before the three month extension which is going to end next month . Why didnt he go ahead and pick up the pen after he got all this payment due out to all of these people that will all be back pay . Why dont the democrats in the esident say, take your pen his executive order and get this unemployment composition, compensation, get the extension signed . Host sheila and connecticut. What do you think. Caller nobrainer. Climate change. Look at the weather outside. I did not want to face another winter like this. Call your congressman, say you are not going to vote for you sheldon whitehouse. I wish he would be president. Look at his name. White house. Host he has done a lot of work. He has been focusing on climate change. Caller i am so proud of him. And i wish he would run for president. Host political wrote this morning reporting that miller wills gary leave congress. You will not seek reelection. A decision that will serve into hand the seat hes held for a terms to the democrats. Miller who hold a seat on the House Financial Services face uphilltill an reelection in the San Bernardino district. Roll call has a story about the Senate Finance its new chairman, the most liberal ever. Looks to start slow. Says here the book on riden widen is that he is one of the capitals grandest thinkers. Eage to work outside the box to put a bipartisan stamp on many big issues. All of that may be true but so is this democratay, the oregon will become the most liberal chairman of the finance committee, the most powerful panel in the senate. Roll call reporting on the ron widen, democrat from oregon, taking over as the Senate Finance committee. Host we are talking to democrats only this morning. We talked to republicans yesterday. What should be on the to do list for democrats . Caller it is tax reform, tax reform, and tax reform. Last year when i heard that ge taxes, and that warned buffett paid the same amount as a secretary, it became evident that the tax code is unfair and unjust. It screams to be reformed. We should not be giving tax benefits to companies that employ people abroad and send jobs abroad. We should be taxing them and giving tax benefits to companies here. Until we change the tax code, i believe the wealthiest people should pay, like they did during eisenhower, 90 of their income tax. They should pay that much because they have the lawyers to bring it down to 40 . Right now they pay 40 , and they end up paying nothing. So that taxes must be raised on those that make 1 million and more, and the tax relief should come to the middle class. And that is what i think will help change the income inequality that is going on in our country today. Host all right. This tweet outd last night about the potential deal between comcast and time warner. He tweeted out that comcast had been running a dual track process on this solo versus with charter and surprised charter by doing a solo deal. Hannah in riverside, california. What do you think for democrats . Wha should they be pushingt . Caller to tell you the truth, my main object would be to take charge of the Voting Machines, because i do not know what is a miracle to me is i remember seeing news commentaries on the Voting Machines and how they were therogrammed and how democrats will never know how many elections they really won. And this kind of just blows up when ever it is thought of. I guess maybe people are silenced. I dont know. I do not know if im the only one in the whole world, in the 2010 election, with the won over. Where they i noticed this smugness in their sureness they were going to win. And they were so sure when people were not i was right. All of a sudden, they took a big leap. Democrats will always be in the background as long as they are controlling the Voting Machines, but nobody seems to notice that. So god help us. Host up next, the state Department Must decide if the Keystone Pipeline will go forward. We will hear from the former pipeline federal safety expert brigham mccown. Host joins us to discuss what president obama faces politically in his second term. We will be right back. Here they are closing in on me. Evade. Ill thinking, when i went through survival school, they taught us that the people who capture you are probably the least trained to capture pows. And so your best time to escape his right then. So i thought, these are rookies, so i pulled out my. 38. I had two rounds of tracer. And i went like this, get back. And then i fired a round of that tracer over their heads. They did not flinch. They raised their rifles like this and one of them pulled from hi pockets and pulled out a little pointy talkie. Which is like a comic book that some of them carry in their pocket. It hadrons on one side and vietnamese fanatics on the other. The drawing show them capturing an american pilot in his uniform with his helmet on, and he has his hands up. And this one guy said, surrender or die. No die. Hands up, hands up. Am facing about nine long guns staring at me. And i decided that is probably the best advice i was going to get that day. So i went hands up. Former air force pilot lee ellis sunday night at 8 00 on cspans q a. Cotton avenue serves as a metaphor for macons history. When macon was first laid out i 1823, they laid it out with alternating wide boulevards, lenfants boulevards in washington. They were laying it out, a farmer with a load of cotton on this wagon headed towards the river to market downstream. Rode right through the the s takes that the engineers had laid out and the engineer simply wove the angled road into the layout of macon, georgia. This weekend, both tv and American History tv look behind the history and literary life of macon, georgia. Saturday at noon on cspan2. And sunday at 5 00 p. M. On cspan3. Washington journal continues. Host we want to welcome to our table brigham mccown, the former acting administrator of the Pipeline Safety administration. Keystone pipeline. Where are we with it . It is still in process, and is pretty much the same place we have been for the last several years. The state department came out a few weeks ago with the fifth environmental study, project, and that way we keep moving. Host what are they saying on january 31 when they release this latest study . Guest they set a couple different things. Number one, for the proponents of it what they heard was no significant adverse Environmental Impact and it was likely to create 42,000 jobs. And other ways of transporting the oil would be less safe. What opponents heard from it was there is still enough wiggle room for the president to deny the project and, unlike a lot of noironmental assessments, real clear answer was given as far as an endorsement on the pipeline are not. So it leaves the door open. Host what do you think the secretary of john kerry will say on this . Guest ultimately, i think the pipeline is going to be approved, and i say that because president obama approved the southern half of keystone xl. That went into operation in the last month. He approved several other pipeline projects. In the barnyard door is open. More oilready getting from canada than we do any other country. It is too late to put that genie back in the bottle. Host when secretary kerry was a senator, did he weigh in on this . Host guest it is very guest senator kennedy was a proponent of reducing our reliance on fossil fuels, was a champion of the Environmental Movement. President obama is stuck between two camps. He has the union on one side saying build this thing now and the Environmental Movement saying we expected more. Host when . Draft final now the Environmental Review is out for agency currants and that will get looked at at all the different executive branch agencies. After that, we enter the National Interest determination. That is what this says all about. The questions the president has to answer. Is building Keystone Pipeline in the National Interest of the United States . That is the singular question. Host what the numbers say on the economy . Guest the numbers say that we would benefit greatly from having this pipeline. Again, the state department claims 42,000. Some experts have disputed that number, but clearly, there is no dispute that the oil that is coming from canada, being refined in the u. S. Has been a significant plus to the u. S. Economy. Host what does the state Department Analysis say . Did they address the economy . Guest they said. They said they did. They said there would be direct jobs during the building of the pipeline as well as outside jobs would be permanently created. Host how would Environmental Concerns be addressed . Guest the Environmental Concerns can be summed up as follows. They are concerned that the type of Oil Extraction you get from Canadas Oil Sands is carbon intensive and the state Department Says it is. The things they can be done is seeing whether canada will commit to other offsets or other methods, but when you take into account continued reliance on opec for oil and the transporting function of bringing that oil halfway around the world, you know, canada is the best option for moving forward. Oil how long has our sand been coming into the united thees from canada, and do existing pipelines that cross the border from other companies, do they have the same Environmental Issues . Guest so what is interesting is in building a pipeline, transcanada could know this pipeline up to the very edge of the u. S. Border. They threaten to do that and have no Environmental Assessment, no Environmental Impact survey at all. Effective crosses the International Boundary calls for the Environmental Review. As you mentioned, there are other pipelines that cross the border. Canada is going to continue to develop and exploit and pull its resources from the oil sands. It has been doing that for a couple decades. And i will say that the technology that is being used in the oilsands is certainly better than it was before, but as a former regulator, my view on this is if canada is going to bring these resources to market, the question to be asked is how do you get them from point a to b the safest way possible . And i think that is the Keystone Pipeline. Host why is that . Some are saying it is not needed. That oil is coming with or without keystone. There are different prices between truck and rail. There is a difference in the cost and the safety. Of transportation, vessel, truck, rail, have an Important Role to play, but when it comes to moving these types of products over great distances, pipelines have clearly been the preferred medium to do that for halfcentury. Host we are talking to brigham mccown. He was the former regulator of pipelines in this country from 2005 two 2007. Talking about Keystone Pipeline. You are the principal managing director for the United Transportation advisers and a contributor for the national journal. Do you personally or your Company Benefit from pushing keystone xl . Dont. No, we we get lots of calls from people who want to know what is going to happen, but no, we dont. Host brian in michigan, democratic color. High. Caller i have that question about the Keystone Pipeline. I want to the in to know the interior diameter of the pipe line. Guest it is a 36 inch. Caller what does xl stand for . Guest i dont know. Caller i know guys that have been talking about this thing and no one seems to know what the xl stands for. Extra large or extra long . One of the things if you look at the system, there is an existing Keystone Pipeline that was putting in the mid2000s. And that ran from alberta to the midwest. It originally stopped in nebraska and then delivered oil supplies to the midwest through illinois. And then there have been different extensions on a. One brought it down to cushing. And most recently, the piece from cushing down to the gulf coast became operational, and that was supposed to be the southern half of keyston xl. All we have left to talk about is a piece that is going to run from alberta to steel city, nebraska. Thatf the issues of pipeline, why i think it is needed is 25 of keystone xl is going to carry u. S. Crude. That will release some constraints were seeing up were talking about north dakota. The shale in north dakota. Caller my major question was, l goes down to the golf of mexico near houston. Is that going to be more in the United States and sold overseas . Guest there has been a great debate and both sides have weighed in on that. Opposition says that oil will be put on vessels and shipped overseas to be refined. Others are saying no, you have to have a license to export oil. Once it comes in to the u. S. , it becomes u. S. Oil. There is debate. We currently are a net exporter of Energy Products because when you refine a barrel of oil you get so much diesel, so much gasoline, chemicals, asphalt in such. The u. S. Does not need all of the diesel fuel we have. So we are a net exporter of diesel and i would expect that to continue. Host marie in north carolina. Hi. Caller thank you for taking my call. First of all, the 42,000 jobs is totally false. I do not know where that number keeps coming up. And then i would like as this gentleman, have you heard about this bill from kalamazoo, michigan. Guest absolutely. I have been to mayflower, arkansas. And that was, i think frankly, that has been one that has been reported so much it has been well overblown. When you look at pipelines and the fact that we transport 11. 4 billion barrels a year of both crude and refined oil product, and last year we spilled 32,000 barrels. That is 32,000 barrels i would like to we spell more gasoline from gasoline pumps and then pipelines. These are products that are optional, the products we have to use. Thats why we have pipelines. Host are you still there . Caller yes, how would you like to be a family and mayflower, arkansas that was told you have 10 minutes to get out . Kalamazoo, michigan, they have no home and they are not getting paid for it. I have been told to get out. Black sludge coming into these subdivisions is incredible. Its incredible the damage that has been done. The kalamazoo thing happened maybe three or four weeks after the gulf horizon blew up so they got no coverage at all. There are people up there with nothing. Guest i have been to arkansas and met with the Central Arkansas Water District and met with the politicians and others and even exxon officials and other government officials. There are a couple of different points you raise we trance point a lot we transport a lot of oil and gas per year and it is done safely. There are incidents and they should be reduced to me to look for ways to modernize our infrastructure. In the case of mayflower, all the houses have been cleared, not just by local authorities but also by the state and federal epa equivalents. People have returned. I think the company has had a robust response in that area. Kalamazoo, yes, that should not have happened and better training there and better management of control room operators could have cut that spill size by 80 . My former agency is looking at ways to improve the control room technicians and requirements for those operators. Host how does it work now . Were in cushing, oklahoma and we were at their control center and saw that they have it mans 24 7. If there is something off inside a pipeline they get alerted and then what happens . Called a control arm in that alarm either has to be validated or somebody has to be dispatched. One thing the federal government and the National Transportation safety board and femsa have been looking at is ways to make those alarms more easily readable, how to change the displays so those control room operators can more easily understand what is happening on the system. All of those are aimed at reducing false alarms and giving the operators the information they need3. I was a former navy pilot and when you fly an airplane, its about information display and how that information is displayed to enable a person to make a realtime decision. Thats the same type of technology we are looking at for control rooms. George in but we, maryland, democratic caller. Caller how are you today . Time ia question, every see this Keystone Pipeline being pushed, it makes me think that the former president whoosh how much of this pipeline is a benefit . Hunt oilit benefit the organization . Guest thats a good question. Im not an expert on who owns what piece of the Oil Companies. My understanding is that the pipeline is owned by a Canadian Company and has a u. S. Subsidiary called transcanada. Like fedex or ups or anything else, they only own the oil. They have the mechanism to get from point a to point b. Shippers have to then sign up. A Texas Company has signed on but not sure who the other shippers are. Host we will move on to greg and carlson, virginia, good morning. Caller i would like to know why we are building a pipeline to the gulf coast when there are more than 34 refineries in the United States, two of them in north dakota and montana and one on the Canadian Border . We could build a pipeline to one of those refineries and that would not put americans at risk by putting another pipeline through tornado alley. It does not make any sense, why would we do that . I have to agree with you having lived through several hurricanes, for whatever reason, most of our Refining Capacity is located along the gulf coast between baton rouge and houston. It has been that way for years every time we ever hurricane, we wonder if we should move refineries. Moving refineries are getting a new refinery permitted aside from just expanding existing ones are almost impossible these days. I agree with you and there are midwest refineries that keystone delivers to. Once you have the refinery, then you have to have another Pipeline System out of the refinery to bring the refined gasoline or diesel fuel to market. In washington, d. C. , we get all of our gasoline, the aviation airports, get all of their jet fuel out of one of two pipelines. Even though you see a truck bring that to your neighborhood, that truck is getting that gasoline from a pipeline. That infrastructure is very expensive. Host this is an email from one of our viewers guest it is true. Pipelines generally move oil at a brisk walking pace. If you are going to go from one side of the country to the other, that can take 15 days. Host why is that . Guest the rail cars are designed to be immediately filled and moved off into a line. You can move the product more quickly but its not necessary. You use more energy. It costs more and then you have higher pressure. When you put oil on one end of put 1000ine, if you barrels in at one end of the pipeline and youre given 1000 out the other end but it may not be the same oil. Host why . Guest its a credit. You are given a credit for the oil. Its similar type oil but it is comingled in the pipeline. Host how does it physically move the right pipeline . Guest in the case of natural gas and crude oil pipelines, we have pumped stations. It is a compressor type of flowtion that shoves the down the line and about halfway to the next pump station, the pumps start to pull the oil through. That is one of the keys the control room is looking at. You can now have internal Leak Detection sensors, sensors that measure the flow between different gates. You may have sensors that literally are counting the fuel as it comes in and at some predetermined point further down, it is counting the fuel as a goes out and it is comparing the numbers to make sure everything is accounted for. There is other Leak Detection equipment that is either infrared or heat sensitive. There was a day when if he wanted to turn the valve on or off, you had to jump in a truck and drive to the middle of wherever and stand up on top of a pipeline and physically turn about. Now they are remotecontrolled and they are gpsenabled and may have land lines and satellite backup signals. This area of the industry is exciting because it is changing. Host when we were in oklahoma and one of the terminals, we saw there were about a dozen people on a daily basis that work at these terminals. In one place, millions of barrels of oil are being stored coming in and out. It only takes about a dozen people to operate these things. Guest it is amazing. We are leveraging the technology. Its an amazing sight in cushing, oklahoma. When you come over the hill and look at the city and off to the side, it really is two things it is one of the largest Storage Facilities in our country and it is known as the crossroads for pipelines. Thes amazing that wti west texas intermediate price is right there. An additional in a fit of keystone xl coming online is the glut that has been in cushing which means we have we get the oil to cushing but we have had trouble getting it out. When you relieve those constraints and allow the oil to flow, that will result in better pricing. Host here is a tweet from one of error viewers one of our viewers. Guest all of that data is available through the federal government website. If you go to the u. S. Department of transportation website, dot. Gov, you can take a look and in their they will have all the comparisons. The state departments eis i dont know if it was margie or a previous color that was talking about 42,000 jobs, thats within the report. Numbershas efficiency and the Environmental Assessment for different ways of transporting things. What id like to say is there has been a tendency recently to get into a debate about rail versus pipeline or truck versus pipeline. Like in all of the above approach to energy, we have to rely on all the different types of transportation to move products from point a to b. Some places we dont have pipelines and other places you cannot pull a railroad car to your local gas station. We need all forms of transportation to move these supplies. Host here is another email been one of the things i have heard a lot about. I have tried to track it down. If you talk to the president of transcanada, he has been out in the press publicly stating that he has commitments from all of his shippers that the oil staying in the u. S. Will be refined there. East toust approved an west export pipeline that will end up somewhere over by vancouver. They do intend to export some of their oil to asian or other markets. I think we have just started tapping the reserves. We still have a lot of reserves in alaska and elsewhere also. North america which includes canada is highly integrated. We export oil to canada each and everyday on these coast. Canadas is not have Pipeline Infrastructure good to go from alberta to the east coast. Although we import oil from them, we exchange and next for u. S. Oil to the eastern part of canada. Host let me show our viewers a map of the proposed keystone xl pipeline, this black line, starting in morgan, montana and heading the tip of north dakota. Where is the bacchan shale . Guest it is the western part of wyoming and the eastern part of , just north of that line. There are several other u. S. Pipelines that plan to tie into keystone. Host was that the reason why this was proposed . Original plan was twofold. The original keystone takes a longer route. It travels further to the east in canada so they could use an existing pipeline. This route was chosen for two choices. It is the most direct route between the beginningpoint and the and. Separately, it is purposely designed to be able to pick up up to 25 of its capacity with u. S. Crude oil. Henry is next from asbury park, new jersey, republican caller. Caller thank you. I have a couple of questions. I have a theory i believe the u. S. Economy really runs on diesel fuel. If we could lower the cost of diesel fuel, i believe we can help the entire economy. Diesel, am a big fan of two. From my time in the military and europe, as you probably know, the rest of the world loves diesel. For whatever reason, it has been more difficult for the american manufacturers to sell diesel cars. You are right, you get better mileage, it costs less to produce. Diesel prices have gone up substantially in the u. S. In the last 10 years. A lot of that was due to the introduction and requirements by the epa to have ultra low sulfur diesel. That has taken a lot of the particular its particular ates out of the mix. At one time, diesel fuel cost less than regular unleaded at the pump. Im not sure what it is a pure way but i think it is about . 80 per gallon more than unleaded these days. Host from twitter if you go to the transcanada website, there is a keystone xl length. Is that true, not the landowners, not the government . It is thats correct, keystone. The federal government will exercise oversight. My agency and the former agency, the ntsb, the state partners that partner with the federal government, the epa, will come in in the event of an incident to look at medication and how to clean it up best. Just as importantly, they will learn from what happened. As i pointed out earlier, Pipeline Safety and all transportation safety, has a good record especially when you consider today that we will transport roughly 21 Million Barrels of crude and refined product around the country. Odds are, not a single thing will happen. That being said, the operators always is possible for the cleanup. There has never been an incident i have been aware of where the operator has not had the sufficient funds or resources to clean up a spill. Host the previous caller talked about what happened in michigan saying the people there had to pay . Were they are not getting paid . Guest i dont know enough about the issue. Typically, the pipeline companies, they have their own financial resources. They also pay into the Oil Spill Liability trust fund. Congressases where should look at changing the law, certain synthetics and other blends are not covered as far as the tax portion. That fund is that 12 billion, somewhere around there. That money is also available regardless of whether Companies Pay in or not to act as an advanced to respond and then the federal government expects companys to replenish that fund. It has been touched very rarely. Host why is that . Guest because we have not needed it. Host even in these spills we have seen . Guest typically, the operators step up and do the right thing. A single large spill can erase years of profit from it Pipeline Company. Whether it is a Pipeline Company or a railroad or any other type of entity, it is not Good Business sense to have a pipeline spill. When i was in government, i could fine them millions of dollars but by the time you get done with the clinic cost, by the time you get done with the lawsuits, it is a very expensive proposition to have an oil spill. I firmly believe the industry understands that better than ever that they cant afford to have that happen. Host does this trust fund pay individuals or just go for the cleanup efforts . Guest im not 100 sure. It goes to the cleanup efforts. I would think it would go to temporary housing and other factors but not completely sure. In the case of the spill in arkansas, the company stepped up and put people in temporary housing and hotels and even allow them to stay there even after the site was deemed safe to return because some people needed a little extra time to get their heads wrapped around that everything was fine to come back to. Host from maryland, democratic caller caller good morning. Thank you for taking my call. A couple of brief comments i think you have the most fair and balanced of all the presentations. I worked for a Company Called think tank many years ago in northern virginia. I went around inspecting pig farms in houston and the refineries down there. Before that, i worked at a Nuclear Power plant as a radiation safety technician. The one thing i found about big business consistently across the field is they do not want to pay for proper maintenance to keep this stuff from leaking out. Formula that offsets the amount of maintenance to offset 100 versus the amount of safety for the amount of material they spill and they run it as close to the edge as possible. If anybody thinks bp went bankrupt from what they did in the gulf and what they continually do, the pipeline in alaska with their spills, you have another think coming. Im not sure what years he worked in the industry but the industry has changed dramatically over the last years. Cleaning a time when up oil off the ground was seen as no big deal and those times have changed. We take the environmentalism far more seriously and the damage to the environment. Missionthe femsa statement is to protect people and the environment from the unintended consequences of energy releases. Congress has raise the fines are medically and femsa is flexing its muscles more and the epa and other government organizations have as well. The federal Government Agencies are also courting their response. There is a unified government response coming. I think the industry is in a different place than it was five or 10 years ago. Host the pipeline Hazardous Materials, what role will they play it keystone xl is built . Agency is playing a fairly sizable behind the scenes role. Even though the state department is the coordinating agency, all of the pipeline expertise rests with femsa. The men and women that work there are dedicated and dont have a political agenda. They take safety very seriously. Could sitrybody around and talk to these men and women because i think they would be not surprised that they would be reassured that they take their jobs seriously. They are providing the expertise on the safety aspects, on the criteria that transcanada has been asked to do prior to commencing the pipeline. The federal government put one extra requirement on transcanada in the last few weeks. That was to use thirdparty validators and auditors on the construction site. Think the federal government has got this and people should understand that pipelines and hazzmat transportation has been a long along has been around a long time. Host if it goes forward, what will happen . Guest before is operational, they will complete the inspections. There will be preservice testing and femsa will be the overseeing agency day in and day out. Ifwhat about the role something happens, how do they respond and how often is this agency going out into the field and looking at pipelines that exists . Guest the agency has a diverse workforce. Unlike a lot of agencies, they are not all here in d. C. They have remote employees all over the earth. Im sorry, all over the u. S. And in some cases, femsa even goes to china and other countries to inspect fireworks manufacturing facilities and other things. At by airversees hazm as well as vessels. Femsa is a small agency but they are very efficient and robust. We also push down a lot of grant money. . 75 on the dollar to states which only have to match . 25 out of every dollar. They will be out on the field each and every day and they are there now. Host are they also regulating the pipeline being transported by rails and trucks because of the Hazardous Materials . T, the agency is composed of two main offices, the office of Pipeline Safety, and the office of Hazardous Materials safety. Ms is responsible for writing the regulations in helping to enforce them against the entities and the industries that ship hazardous products. Space andpretty white its trucking, vessel, rail. It is also aviation and pipelines. Host do they have adequate resources . This is the footprint of u. S. Oil and Petroleum Product lines in the United States. Guest i think they do. The question is not always one of in d. C. , it seems like if i had more money, i could do more. They are very efficient. I think you will see a plus up of the agency on the hazmat side. This seems to be a bipartisan effort there to include more inspectors. Inspections for all of dot whether it is trucking or pipeline inspections are done at the state level, not the federal level. Host anthony, washington, d. C. , independent caller. Caller good morning. Is the oil that is coming from the pipeline is what they called tar sands, is that correct . Guest some of it is. There is a heavy crude that is conventionally produced and then there is Tar Sands Oil as well. Caller i understand that oil cannot be refined to gasoline or diesel. Guest that actually can be refined. It is a heavier crude oil and it does require more processing. Also is been a debate if it can be exported. Not every country has the refining ability to break it down like the was does. Caller thank you. Host larry, tennessee, republican caller caller good morning. You made a statement earlier. You say we will be shipping oil overseas. They say the pipeline will help our economy. What about the price of diesel being so much higher than gasoline . There should be some way to offset that cost rather than the Oil Companies having to give it to the taxpayer since everything we buy literally affects directly our livelihood and the economy of the country. Perhaps there can be legislation in with the epa which is a monkey on the back of the Oil Companies. I guess we are selling oil overseas offset that cost maybe there could be a program to allow the government to set fees for the epa cost. In large part, the price of oil is now set globally. Differences inom spot prices to changes affecting things globally. Although brent or wti has a bit of a price break am i think youll see that reduced now that we can get the oil out of cushing. The u. S. Erspective, production has been a big and if it in multiple ways. Even with unrest in syria and iran and other places, we have not seen the price spikes we have seen in the past. I think the law of supply and demand really comes into play. It reduces volatility. The regulations are daunting. We do not have unleaded gasoline anymore. We have 20 blends of fuel depending what are the country live in. All of these things have a direct impact on the cost that we pay at the pump and the cost to the economy. Moving forward, i would like to see more diesel, i would like to see more fleet vehicles and natural gas as well. Host i want to show our viewers Washington Post headline here she is featured in the Washington Post pushing for the approval of Keystone Pipeline with some of her senate colleagues. Absolutely, she comes from louisiana and understands the importance of our natural resources. I think we have been stuck in the last four or five years in this debate of renewables versus fossil fuel. I think that is probably the wrong debate to be having. The debate we should be having is how to we free ourselves from oil products overseas, from unstable or less friendly places . How do we continue to conserve and reduce our consumption at the same time we are raising the ability to generate more domestic supplies . I think mary gets that. She is in a tough reelection fight as well. She has pushed hard for keystone. It proves that keystone need not be a d r. It has been framed that way but ultimately, it was the wrong platform to stand behind. Host in the background, you have senator mansion and senator hoban. By the way, our producer has been trying to find what xl stands for. A couple of different websites to reference. Another website says it stands for export limited. Guest thats a message that the opposition is try to frame. First it was the safety message and then when that got to bunt, it said we should not have it in the sand hills and we cannot have it in the aquifer. They realize there are thousands of miles of pipeline in the same aquifer and it was also an expert pipeline. That is messaging but i dont think thats the case. Host pittsburgh, democratic caller. Caller a couple of things i think the aquifers are absolutely critical. When the aquifer is contaminated, you can never un contaminated. E it. The Yellowstone River was contaminated badly by oil spill with exxon not more than one year ago or a little more than a year ago. I think his contention that the industry is changed is patently false. Guest in that case, we are talking about the silver tip pipeline. The donor and the state response, they were satisfied with the response. Beenroposed fine has heavily fined on the cleanup costs in silvertip exceeded 80 million 100 million. Keep in mind, that was a result of record high water from the snow melt the year before that exposed a piece of the pipeline. Even my own agency suggested that may have not been a preventable incidents. Nonetheless, the that went in, i think with Horizontal Directional Drilling that we can now do, i think that line was replaced close to 80 feet below the water bed. That cost more to do that so i think they got the message. As far as the aquifer, the pipeline regulations are set up that where ever you have a sole source water supply and aquifer in an unusually sensitive area, the regulations are set up differently. We have pipelines through the everglades and pipelines through the marshes of louisiana, thousands of miles of type line other ocalala aquifer and studies have suggested it would not be possible to contaminate the aquifer. Ultimately, the proof is in the putting, that we have been running pipelines and other Energy Supplies for a long time. These are not optional supplies. Until we can figure out a way to move our economy into a renewable base, we have to use these supplies. Keeping at home is not an option so we have to get them there as safely as we can. Host thank you for talking to our viewers. Guest thank you. Host coming up next, we will talk to the cohost of the ms nbc show the cycle and contributor to the nation and we will talk about the second term of president obama and his political future and after that, we will be joined by the former chairman of the federal Energy Regulatory commission to discuss why an incident last year in california has them concerned about the security of the u. S. Electrical grid and all that is after this news update. [no audio] that legislation to increase the debt limit and he described it as a blank check for president obama. Rayer new orleans mayor nagin is scheduled to be sentenced june 11 for ryberg, fraud, and other convictions. He was found guilty yesterday and phases years in prison for corruption that several prosecutors say began and his first term and flourished in his second. He served as a democratic mayor of new orleans from 2002 2002 2010. That includes the years that followed Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Finally, lenders repossessed fewer u. S. Homes in january bringing the number of completed foreclosures down to the lowest level in more than six years. Even so, many individual states posted sharp increases in in the number of homes entering foreclosure for the first time. Foreclosure listing firm realty trac says banks took back 30,000 226,000 homes last month. It is a drop of four percent from december. Completed foreclosures were down 40 from january of last year. Those are some of the latest headlines on cspan radio. Cspan, we bring Public Affairs events from washington direct to you, putting you in the room at congressional hearings, white house events, briefings and conferences and offering complete gaveltogavel coverage of the u. S. House and all is a Public Service of private industry. We are cspan, created by the cable tv industry 35 years ago and funded by your local cable or satellite provider. Watch is in hd, like us on facebook, and follow us on twitter. The new www. Cspan. Org website gives you access to Incredible Library of political events with more added each day. We have coverage of national politics, history, and nonfiction books. Find the daily coverage of official washington or access more than 200 house and hours of archived cspan video. It is everything cspan has covered since 1987 and are video is searchable and viewable on your desktop computer them a tablet, or smartphone. Just look for the prominent search bar at the top of the page. The new www. Cspan. Org makes it easy to watch whats happening in washington and find people and events from the last 25 years. Its the most comprehensive Video Library in politics. Host we are live tweeting. Cyclehe cohost of the on msnbc and is a contributor to the nation and reuters. We asked our viewers earlier this morning, democrats only, what should be the priority for 2014 . What you think the priority is for democrats this year . On the hill or the campaign . Host both the white house and on the hill. Guest where they are on the hill and in actual legislative agenda along with what the president is doing is looking at the economy and jobs agenda and a political environment that is not unprecedented in American History but is rare. Thats an environment were almost nothing that is not required will make it through congress. People are always frustrated with congress but the numbers show this is a particularly inactive time. Are trying to lay out economic markers and agenda items even if they are limited in scope because of the dynamic im talking about. Have a minimum wage conversation that is going around the country. There are several states including some with republican control that are also looking at whether, in this economy, the longterm, mediumterm type recession, do we want to have some standards to help people make more money . That is a conversation going on with or without congress. Host republicans respond that you can increase men wages for federal contracts but you will not impact that many people. That a public event and try to put that message out there . Guest there are two ways to the actual can have debate in good faith over what we want this policy to be. Should it be a higher minimum wage and for all companies or all industries . If you are worried about that a causes job loss, not a lot of studies show that is automatic if you are, lets have hearings. Do you want to have exceptions or say that companies which think they would have to fire an employee over the wage can get a dispensation . We can do a lot with policy study to figure out how this works. I think manyat republicans have said in the house which is, we are not going to do anything about this and then you move to come a what can we do without them . The problem with that from a conservative perspective as they lose out on the debate. Now you have a 10 number that is swimming around and you dont have any of the medication policies i mentioned. Mitigation policies i mentioned. They have opted out and gotten out of that conversation. That is unfortunate because most betterelieve it works when there is an actual democratic negotiation and not one side saying we are out in the other side saying we will do it our own way but perhaps at a more limited scale. Host the president has been issuing these executive orders. He has also said i am talking to businesses and i encourage you on the state level to make changes as well. Its interesting to take his message to Business Leaders, asking them to do several things. Do you think that can be effective . Guest i think you cant help but i dont think it is the baseline of the economy. Whether you are a conservative capitalist or a liberal capitalist, capitalism is companies trying to generate profit. Some do it in ways that are innovative and exciting and might be good for their employees or their communities and others do it in other ways that we see have greater costs that they are putting on the rest of us. Either way, it will be about profits. Thats a good company does. Company,e running a you have a legal duty to try to maximize profits in almost every situation. Thinkaseline, i dont that asking companies to think about much else besides their profits without the force of law or regulation get you very far. There are some things they can do and we can come up with examples like in the area of marriage equality. We have seen a lot of fortune 100 companies and wall street Companies Say if you dont believe this is part of your church or synagogue, thats her business but at this company, we will recognize people this way. I think thats great and that does happen in that example may cost something but not that much. As a general matter, when you talk about minimum wage and labor standards and trade, i dont think companies are going to be able to do things that hit their bottom line in a major way just because one asks them to do it is the employees or the president. Thats how it works but when you have rules and you say no one can just dump their waste in the ocean, that no longer become something they can compete on. They say we are not allowed to and we are competing on the same level and thats what many capitalists like certain types of rules but not too much regulation. They like standard rules that they can understand because thats not an area where they are competing against other companies. Host has the president recovered from the self professed botched rollout of the Health Care Website . Guest no, i dont think there has been a full recovery. Of thelic perception competence of this law which is different than the ideology the ideological question is is this where we want the federal government to go . Its a big debate that will not end anytime soon. Democrats through the four selections and law have one incrementally. But it is a big ideological battle. The comp and question is very concerning. Question istence for a concerning. I think we should be a country where we try to get Everyone Health care rather than having them worry day today about whether they have health care and then end up in an emergency situation. We wonder about the person who has a seizure on the side of the road. What happens to them if they dont have health care . We have a system signed by president reagan that says they get access to the er so we have had it confused view of this. Whether you are a hardline conservative that says there should be no backstop, then you have a problem with the reagan policy. That is the ideological thing. To your question, the president has now a competence perception problem even though many aspects of this law are working, are adding health care, are getting elderly people into alternate systems including medicaid that work. Thethere is no doubt problems of the website and aspects of the timing of the rollout have left people to ask legitimate and serious questions about whether this thing is working as planned. That is a political problem. Host we have viewers lining up to talk to you. Viewers know our that we will be incorporating some students into this conversation today. The cspan bus continues its conference tour with a visit to Kansas State University. There are six Political Science and engineering students that are in the program and they are aboard the bus. Want to go to the First Student, dola, Kansas State University hes not ready so we will go to a phone call. Warren ohio, republican caller. Caller could morning. Im glad to hear some honesty for a change about the health care. Ble thing to begin with but i called to talk about the minimum wage. Im in minimum wage with worker, i hate to say it. If we raise the minimum wage, that means the price of all the products, every single bit from a to pick on up will go up. I feel i really dont get a raise. I will have to spend more for this step are the only ones that make out is the congress. Country, obama, i should say. Its all about taxes. He gets more taxes if i get more in my paycheck. The health care is not workable, thank you. Guest thats an interesting perspective. Its a gentleman saying is a minimumwage worker but is not convinced a raise there does not have other costs or tradeoffs. I think that is an understandable concern. You have to look at what we know about where this is this where this has happened. We call the laboratories of democracies the states which have experimented with different wage hikes. Theres a lot of scholarship on this and there are studies that a manageable, small increase in the minimum wage does not necessarily project extra costs on the rest of the economy nor does it lead to eliminating jobs. In of the main determinants whether a Company Response to a regulation by limiting a job is whether that job is mobile. Thats why we have these debates over nafta. If you can outsource the job because someone is selling issue together and can do that far away and ship it for cheaper than it costs to sell it here in washington, d. C. , the net come the next company has an incentive to move. A lot of minimumwage jobs that are in this country now are not mobile. They are service jobs. To humans of human contact and are localized. That means they are not likely to be moved. The only other question is, does it raise other costs . That depends on the company. Employers the biggest in the United States and the one reason they can offer such low cost is because they keep their labor costs down. The cost of things at one company could potentially rise to some degree. Does it increase the cost for everything in the economy . I dont think there is evidence of that. Reason why a lot of republicans in certain states are open to this is because they have found some idea that we have had a minimumwage at the federal level for some time and can do it at the state level depending on local costs and not lose a bunch of jobs. I think the opposition here is not so much about that as it is about more ideological concern about intervening and private business practice. Host lets get our First Student involved ariel med ola. Caller good morning. I had a question about immigration. Over the past couple of years, the dream act was passed. Illegal immigrants over there to school andgo continue their education but how does that look on the National Level and where is the timeline to where we can see it federally to her every student in the United States will have a chance at a Higher Education . Guest thats a great question. There has been tremendous traction for the idea of having some kind of Immigration Reform in the capital even though it often feels like nothing is happening. When it was controlled by the democrats, the house passed a version of the dream act in the first two years of the Obama Administration and there is a majority of votes for it in the senate. It was ultimately filibustered so did not become law. This is something you had with an incumbent president and both houses behind but that is not true for every major piece of international and social policy. A lot ofe have seen different messages from Republican Leadership in the house. John boehner said that there are principles they want to act on and then he backed off. Also republican primaries coming up in february, march, and april. The calendar may look better after you get some of those primaries out of the way. Was congressmangutierrez on our show yesterday. He has been negotiating for some kind of comprehensive reform. Theaid when he heard from speaker was not that they will not do it but that its hard. It is not the speaker had ruled it out. Guest i dont think so either. The speaker put down several markers of the idea that you could do something here. He talked about it being piecemeal reform. That is one approach and he has hired prominent immigration expert to be on his staff of the time when this is front and center. He put out those principles. There are many signs there but one of the problems we have generally and our political has this cspan problem less than other places barlett because cspan does some of primary reporting where you can listen to these folks themselves and see what they are saying on the hill on both sides part of the problem is when we hear something in political culture from the speaker or someone important, we immediately want to go to the outcome, almost like day trading. Its very hard to understand especially in an institution that has so many different members what the final word is. The speaker gets up and says this is harder than it ought or i need to really have Border Security on the issue around complaints at about the president s response to enforcement action and thats an interplay. Chuck schumer said if you dont think he is enforcing the border, lets get the policy in place. Some republicans might be willing to do the same policy if you had a president christie in charge. Host lets go to dave in quincy, michigan, republican caller. Caller good morning. I have a question about europe,ment area in when they have unemployment, it lasts for seven years and the first five years, its the full wage a person made. If they made 100,000 dollars per year, they get 100,000 per year in unemployment for the first five years and then it decreases a little bit in the next two years so they have a full seven years. In the United States, we have a much shorter unemployment pays near minimum wage. If you are making 100,000, you would make 15,000 and you cannot make your payments. What will obama do about that . That seems kind of unfair and causes missed house payments and breadth that are and bread credit reports. Should we go more toward the european system . Guest i think its difficult to figure out what to do out of the publicsector funds for people that lose a private sector job area thats what we are talking about. We have had an approach in the u. S. That says you get a certain amount of unemployment when you lose your job if you buy certain things are looking for work. We dont have a model where you get the full amount of what you might have been making when you had a certain job and were producing a certain value. What is the president doing about it . He has been fighting longterm Unemployment Insurance extended that was filibustered in the senate. I looked up and saw that people that faileds like by a vote of 50 something and felt in the senate it did not fail. Its not get a vote in the senate. Think, thatinary, i as we are in the overhang of this recession, one of the of financialods disruption since the great depression, that we dont have an actual congressional final judgment on these issues. Instead, we have obstruction. Even with those economic problems and with the attention and a fairly widespread public issues, youconomic have Senate Republicans that say we will not even allow a floor vote, we will filibuster so you dont get the final vote on whether we should have any emergency extension which would run longer than usual because of the ordinary times. Host will that come up back up when they return to washington . Guest i dont see why not. When you have a congress that is not doing much, one of the main ways to make you feel like it has to do something is to shame it so you bring these issues up. The big surprise about the democratic strategy is that there has not been a more concentrated effort to put out 10 or 15 top proposals and demand votes on all of them. We have seen more of a one of the time approach. After sandy hook, they said they deserve a vote on gun regulation and ultimately that did not get a vote. We have not seen that on 10 or 15 new pieces of legislation. Givingngrich was good at americans a big idea like the contract with america that had a bunch of ingredients and the demented votes on a lot of it and he had control as bigger but they did not pass every aspect of the contract but they demanded all those votes. One place where the president has struggled and i understand why, but he struggled to get the congress to feel like it had to answer on just about anything. Interbranch conflict was the subtext of his state of the union. Host from the Washington Times our next student is Michael Murray from Kansas State University. Go ahead. Caller good morning. Im sure students are concerned with the fourth amendment. The lawsuit filed by rand paul, do you think this is an effective way to keep the for what in check obama proposed . Do you feel like the reforms he talked about were fair . Host can i ask you something . Paul is asking people to sign onto this lawsuit rate is that something that appeals to young people . General thatl in yes, students and anyone our age are very concerned. With what the nsa has done. Some guest plankton like that would appeal to people average age. It can bet effective. Legala different, more way, less political way to create accountability on these issues. Having said that, does it matter whos pushing it . It can in having someone positioned within congress to be a part of the lawsuit is significant. Lawsuits oneen many this very issue before. Is thing that is different for most of recent history since 9 11 when we have seen drastic extension expansion of surveillance, when these losses went before the courts, the argument over whether a person whether youue have the standing to sue is where most of these suits stopped and were dismissed. This is a was fundamental shift the reason was, courts would say you cannot prove that you are even monitored or hurt by this program. If you cannot prove that, anyone could sue over anything and that is one of the doctrines they have. If you wanted to sue me because we got into a conflict, youd go to court and say heres what happened between us. Then they would see whether you were telling the truth. Here, you had multiple times the court say here is a person or a few people who believed they were spied on because they were International Journalists or were accused and tied to some group or whatever. Repeatedly, they were told no. We are now seeing some of these cases proceed. Why . Because the reported surveillance is so broad, tens of millions of phone lines have prism tends to hundreds of millions of computer isp addresses. It is no longer credible for the government to maintain to accept the idea that you dont have standing bi cause you could not have been spied upon. It is a legal and political comment. We are in a country now are it is more likely than not that you would sue for expensive surveillance because it is more likely than not that you are being surveilled. That is really a huge shift so these lawsuits with members of congress involved are significant. This is something this administration has been as bad on as the last administration. There is something called a state secret privilege which can when theree ad ok are real supersecret that should not be litigated in open court and thats fine. But under president bush and now president obama, we have seen that legal document expanded to try to avoid any oversight over programs that we know exist and are not secret and thats something about whether young people care about them yes. And have ayoung smart phone and someone said, can i go through your desk and papers . Or can i go through your phone , most people would be more concerned about the phone than anything else. As our personal information where our identities and privacy is. You really feel you have very little privacy and that means you tryer give it up or to change your conduct or lifestyle or the way you talk to people. Is it because the government is in their . Thats a fundamental question. Are they co fundraisers . You know, i think that is political. There is nothing wrong, certainly, with trying to take something that can be there and make it tangible for people to say lets do this together. Lets hold the government accountable. Again, not as i mentioned. It is a power issue. Host well, the Deputy Director is saying these reforms that president obama put forward calling them reasonable, it will not impact the job. Lets go to mia in matthews, north carolina, a democratic caller. Good morning. Caller hi, good morning. I graduated myself. It is great to hear the callers calling from there. Host oh, great. Thanks for calling in. Caller my question is mags media generates mass pressure. Given all the evidence that building 7 was brought down in a controlled demolition in 9 11, how can you or any one in the Corporate Media do your duty as journalist . Host ok. Lets give it a little back ground here. There is a group of people throughout that believe the 9 11 investigation done by congress was not adequate. They questioned the evidence. They think some of it has been left secret and not made to the public. They call into this show and other shows to get response from people like you. Guest i have not seen any evidence of that kind of 9 11 conspiracy. I have followed this issue like a lot of americans. I have not seen that. Sure. It is fine to ask questions and be vigorous about it. But you know, i live in new york. There was a lot of evidence. There was a lot of people there on the ground. There were a lot of independent folks who have looked into this. I appreciate the spirit of asking questions. I have not seen anything like that. I dont associate myself with that. Host let me read an el may here from minneapolis. It seems to me elections dont have consequences. They only shifted a van age to the minority. Shown the senate change their rules so the majority can influence change . Guest that is a deep one. That is a question about america. On the one hand, we did divide the system. It was not supposed to be easy to get things done. It with as supposed to be hard. The force of law is generally powerful. Almost always permanent. It is not easy to make laws. Can say throughout the history, that has been the case. Having said that, it has gotten, i think, worse in the sense that what used to be an option, right, to require super majorities for certain things, and provide some balance in the system has now become a norm, and so i think we are in a different constitutional place, because the constitution says the president has veto. Congress can pass things by majority. What we have now is a minority in the senate basically exercising a veto over everything. That is why things look so screwy so often. Add to that in the house, not under the rules, but just under practice, almost nothing comes to the floor without the super majority of the party of power. He is no wonder that Congress Approval ratings are at almost alltime lows. It is not only because of what they do and dont do, but because of how they conduct their business. We have a host of issues. We are talking about jobs. We are talking about oversight. These are big things where we need a final vote. We need it to go to the floor. We need to have that debate. That is where we send the men and women in there to do. Whenever is held to a veto, think, people rightly lose faith in where l the elections matter and whether enough is being done. They rootingly question whether the constitution, whether the constitution is actually being put to the side, and folks in the congress have found basically lap holes, i which is one of the most pop unpopular things. I done think we like constitutional lp holes either. Host well go back to manhattan, kansas, Kansas State University. It is part of the big 12 conference. We have six students apoured the bus. The next student is here. Go ahead. Caller good morning. How are you all doing today . Host good morning. Caller , well, i am ad wereating senior in chemical engineering. Pretty much, what i really wanted to know fis the nation was what our nation is doing in order to encourage more recruitment and more retention of africanamericans in these environments . In my five years at this university, i have noticed that despite being close to the wichita, topeka, metropolitan area, we are only 4 black. Of those 4 black students, you know, only about 600 of vus are going to come back after the fresh machine and sophomore years. I was just wondering what our nation is doing to encourage more and more recruitment and retention, more important hi, of the africanamerican students. Guest i think it is a great question. I think it is a great question. In a broad lef rel, without regards to race, we have to look at education policy and funding to figure out whether there are opportunities for people if you happen to be born nin a family where there is not money for you to go to college, what do we say to that family . Right . You a child. That is different than what we say to adult. We think of it differently. Do with the skol hrships and the support . It relates a little bit to the immigration issue where one of the questions that i think has united more people. What do we do with children who come to this country, rating . They didnt make that choice. What do we do about it . If you think about it, it applies to the nations children if you allow me to be idealistic her on this snowy day. What are we saying to any child that is born into a certain situation . Right . What opportunities howled they have . They dont have a right to do anything indo they have any opportunity, at least, to live a good life, to get an education, to make something of themselves. That question becomes more acute in historically underrepresented communities and communities that are often disproportionately below the poverty line. Then, everything i just said guess for everyone, right this then you have a civil rights question. Are there areas are we want to in the law look to die diversity and look to history of discrimination and figure out whether we want to do anything there. The president s answer has been to support apirmtive action. He recently had his lawyers file a very strong brief defending affirmative action for the Supreme Court and won. The public university, government programs, can use dy railroads ty as a plus factor. Cannot set aside a pot and say this spot is nor type of person. You can say we are going to look at the diversity and i try to you make sure that we have system where will we say, i would use this example in a corporate board. We have a board of 20 people. We have a fair process. We believe in it. Then you look at the result, oh shall the process must be fair. We will not set aside spots for women. Well, no, but if it in todays dy and age shall, you go through the process. Cannot find one qualified woman to be on the board. You may want to take a look at the process. That is how goodie varsity programs work as well. The students question both on recruitment and retention, i think you have to look at that kind of outreach and make sure that you are trying to rng the entire community when qualified. Well, a student may be interested in addition to your hosting, cohosting of the cycle ever day at 3 00 p. M. You also anchor and write presumed guilty, a msnbc series on inequities in the law. Lets go back to health care. Here is a tweet from one of our viewers. Here is where the run ber meets the road. Now money signed up for health care have paid . Guest well, i dont have that exact number off the top of my head. I think you can look to signups. Then you look the monthly payments. I dont think there is a concern. I would put it differently. Dont think the concern is people who buy into the private market will all be deadbeat health care users. I dont think that is the issue. I think ste systemic issue is do you shift from a system are we left tens millions of people out. As i mentioned earlier in the show, dealt with them in the emergency room, you shift that system to try to spread the cost and as the Administration Says bend the cost curve. The way do you that, obviously, is in the system, you are working with the private markets. Are working within capitalism. That is why it was considered a conservative approach. It is not single pay. It is not a government program. Although, medicare has been extended as well. You try to, then, have it be affordable. That is why it is called the Affordable Care act. I think the concern is not enough people go in. The republicans do blame or share the blame for that dynamic. Because this is a law now. Not enough people going to the system, then, he, it is can be expensive that the share of people that cant afford it are greater. I take issue with the question. Will end on this point. The same question applies if you dont have obama care or the Affordable Care act, right inthe same question is what do you do with the person that cant afford health cir and gets sick . Is hurt, spreads that dy sees the family or the community and winds up in the emergency room. Yes, it is a ser is where question over what we do. It is no at question that has been confined to this particular reform. It is the question of trying to provide health care in a system that historically has not had it and doesnt want to do it through the government, and has a lot of people that are going to get sick sooner or later. That is why it is tough issue. Host the New York Times has the latest numbers. 1. 1 million added to the rolls. 2 a were between the ages of 18 and 34. Randy in georgia, a republican caller. Hi, randy. Caller well, as journalist and lawyer, i was hoping your guest could help me with this. The care ac was passed by the house and the senate and signed into law by the president. During that time, he has made several delays on portions of that law. Why wouldnt he be able to just delay the president ial election portion of the 19 or the 2016 election . Thank you. Guest i think the question is deliberately dramatic, about it is a serious question, which is whats the president allowed to do . What can he choose to do m what can he do . Right inwe care a lot about that because there has got to be checks and ball lantses. There has to be checks. The fact is whether the people like it or not. There is great enforcement of authority or the president , his attorney general and those who enforce the laws to mack what they call digression decisions. Has been true. If people are looking at the partisan line and republicans and democrats have exercised that authority. That doesnt mean it is good policy by which i mean you can look at a president or attorney general who said, i will give you a different example from health care that may be controversial for people. This attorney general has said, they have decided, they are not going to enforce federal laws against marijuana in states that are allowing marijuana for now. They also said they reservice the right to continue to do that. If colorado turns into some, you know, drug kingpin tate with violence, they will go in there, obviously. If they can do it under a safe way, they will allow it. Some people may like it. Some people may not. Some people may say it is good. Some people may not. From a legal perspective, that is not a good question. They have that authority. Host let me get another student in here. Ross, go ahead. Caller hi, guys. Wanted to talk about something that president obama mentioned in the state of the union address. He talked about how he urged congress to close the prison at guantanamo. I was wondering where is that rain going to head from mere what steps do we need to make what will that mean for the International Reputation as the United States . Host ok. Guest that is a great question. I appreciate the caller raising it. It is one that we often seem to forget. The prison of Guantanamo Bay is one of the signature bipartisan failures of Foreign Policy and human rights in our era. And it is one that we have now had two successful administrations from both parties. They want to close because it is not working. Yet it remains open. I put the blame at both parties. I think there has been a lot on this issue. What needs to be done . Congress and the president would have to loosen some of the restrictions on it. Allow for the transport of more of these detainees to other places including the United States and abroad. Close something, that again, security expert say is not working. Both parties say it is not working. Both parties have been min taining. Host am rushing you. I want to get the last two student in. Guest lets do it. Host mccailey, go ahead. Caller i have a question about gun control. It seems to be a huge issue facing today. I wanted to know what are some of the meeting grounds that we could reach to help resolve this issue . Host middle ground . Guest well, it is hard. People care great deal. The Supreme Court has represented that there is an individual right to bear arms which means this is constitutional dimension. Right . Congress cannot make any ol rule here. There is no doubt that you cannot walk around with a grenade or a rocket launcher, so i think the key always comes back to not whether we have gun, we have allowed guns. We will always have a lot of guns as long as the constitution is interpreted this way. I think the question is do we regulate the access to those guns, which is not i dont think it is gun control, right . You call that identification control. You could call that access control. The gun itself is not being modified. I hi the middle ground is making sure we dont have people who are mentally unbalanced according to will you or have criminal records or otherwise would want to do us harm. Most fun owners agree with that. It is only the gun lobby this said actually we should leave open the door so someone might have a criminal record doesnt have to buy a gun. That dont make sense. Most people oppose that. That is why where you have to dissing a grate the rhetoric from gun control to say this is keeping a gun out of the criminal stance. Mcken zy, our last student here. Hi, mckenzie. Caller hi. Host go ahead. Caller yes, i just wanted your thoughts on a current issue. They have passed house bill 2453, the religious freedom bill which allows public and private employees in kansas the ability to deny any individual service. So in your opinion, does this still enhance civil rights by protecting freedom or is this discrimination . Host thanks. Guest thank you. I have not read that state bill. I want to say that outfront. There are a lot of these kind of proinvestigations and if the caller described it accurately. The fact you disagree with the law or service, maybe the government can million change and should not change your beliefs, but it does not give you the exemption traditionally to have to comebly the law or provide services that you contracted for if that is your job. These are difficult issue. What we are seen in a lot of places is a bit of expansion that prey on the fact there are legitimate religious differences here and tries to make the difference trump what people are provided. You know, christian scientists, it is more clearcut example, dont believe in revying medical care in most situations. That is their belief. But that doesnt mean that if a christian scientists signs up to be the head of hr the company or a nurse in a more ridiculous example they should say aam a murs. The religious beliefs say i cannot help you, right inthe things get missy. There is a good reason under the First Amendment to try to leave a good amount of space for people to have their he beliefs and not be cohearsed by public moneys or anything else. Yeah. The bottom lynn here again, not that bill to the proposals that we have seen in the state is protect the First Amendment of religious freedom. If people sign up to do a job. One that involves caring for others. They will are to apply yob form standards and if that is hot the right job to them which may be true, i wouldnt be good and right for every job based on my political beliefs and institutional beliefs. Then they have to finned a job that doesnt put them into that direct conflict. We want to haq the kansas stit University Students for joining us this morning aboard the cspan bus and a special thanks as well to Michael Jackman at state for prepping the students this morning, Cox Communication for sponsors tonights bus visit. Ari, thanks. Guest thank you. I love the cspan bus. Host all right. Coming up next, well turn our attention to an incident that happened in california on one of the substations. Jon wellingoff will tell us why he is concerned about what happen. All of this after this news break on cspan radio. Last weeks figures, they say, may have been pushed up by the cold weather, which can cause construction firms and other companies to stop work. Cold weather caused retail sales to drop in january. We spent less on autos and clothing and at restaurants during a brutally cold month. Commerce Department Says retail sales fell four tenths of a percent last month marking the second straight decline after onetenth of a drop in december. Finally, secretary of state john kerry, and his south korean counterpart, are warning north korea against any possible addressing. During a News Conference in seoul today, consider ry and the south Korean Foreign mib ter dismissed did he mans from the north to halt an upcoming joint u. S. South Korean Military ex erases. They say the exercise cannot be used as an excuse by north korea to stay away from Nuclear Talks or delay attempts to improve relations between the north and the south. Some of the latest headlines on cspan radio. The context here as someone who counseled acceptance and submission and res nation the situation. And that has truck me as sort of series that doesnt add up in the sense that we know he was the most prestigious man in the south. We are toll he counseled. We know in the end the south did not subnote it the will of the north that southerners began quickly to contest the northern understanding of the meaning of the peace in northern plans for reconstruction antes them through political mean and extra legal means and violent means. What i found is that in the eyes of confederates, they would not assemble submission. Was symbol of kind of unvowed pride and the kind of measured dea fiance. Rethinking grant and lee, saturday night at 10 00 eastern and sunday morning at 11 00 part of a 3day president s day weekend on cspan 3s American History tv. Host jon wellingoff is joining us from San Francisco this morning to talk about a wall street journal front page story last week, mystery assault on the power grid. General wellingoff what happened . Guest good morning, greta. What happened was basically a team of individuals went into first a number of cable vaults, a number of hundreds of yards outside of a highvoltage transmission substation, cut the fibro optic cables are the 9 11 traffic there, then moved the cable vaults and moved into a pasture adjacent top the substation set up firing positions and fired approximatelibly 120 rounds from ak47style weapons into the substation and knocked out 17 transformers. Host who was involved . Guest well, we dont know. The fbi is continuing to investigate. The only evidence that was left were 120 shell casings, that had no dna or fingerprints. There was virtually no evidence of these individuals. There were some video frames from cameras that the utility had that were extremely grainy. Can see the firing from the ak47s and some of the bullets hitting the chain link fence as they go through, but you cannot make out the figures or see who they are. You could see that there was, apparently, a leader of the group who was signaling them to commence firing with a flashlight. Then he or she signaled to stop firing 19 minutes later right before the Police Arrived. The Police Arrived and apparently, these individuals stopped firing and left that area 70 seconds before the Police Arrived. Host was this an act of terrorism . Guest where will, it was certainly a percentsfully act. We know that. We know, also, it was an act buy a group of individuals who were dedicated to destroy or severely disrupt one of our most important and most vital areas of our electric grid, these highvoltage substations, and that they also put together a very, very professional plan, and they executed it in a very, very professional manner, so we know, ultimately, that these individuals were not, for example, you know, a random group of people who are, you know, that out, to have some fun. I was somebody who had the intent to if into this facility to do they did. They had pacific targets they shot at they, they avoided other targets that would have caused immediate attention to what they were doing, so they knew exactly what they were doing. They carried it out in a very professional manner. This incident has been brought up during congressional hearings with the current chairman of the commission. And in those hearings, it has been talked about how details should not be disclosed because its an ongoing investigation. Why are you talking about this now . Guest where will, i am talking about it because i think it is important for both the administration and congress to understand how vital these individual Transmission System assets are to this country, and how important it is for us to put together an organized plan to put in place midgation measures to protect against these type of attacks. Host lets break that down. Why are these grids valuable . Guest well, they are valuable because we all depend on electricity. Ultimately, every system in the country is dependent upon the electric system. So as such, if in fact, there was organized coordinated atick on a number of the substation, it could take down very large portions of our electric grid. If that attack was conducted in such a way that it actually destroyed the vital pieces of those substations, that is the transformers, we could be without power for a very, le very long time. Host what would be the Economic Impact of that . Guest trillions of dollars. Host how do we know that . Guest bus our entire economy, our entire Society Depends upon the electricity continuing to fuel all the systems in country. We would not have any commerce whatsoever. We wouldnt have any transportation because you couldnt pump gasoline. You know . We would be in complete chaos. Am sure we are soon the tv shows where the grid goes up. Well, that is are we would be if there was coordinated attack on these critical highhavage transformers in the country. Why is there no plan to deal with such a sophisticated attack . Well, because there mission to specific agency who has been given that authority. There are agencies and my former agency folk was one who had authority to deal with the den are reliability of the grid on the longterm basis. No one has been given authority to look at what they call known vulnerabilities. And hazards of vulnerabilities. Ultimately, in the short term, ultimately, we need to assign some agencies, some response k to put together a comprehensive coordinated plan. This is part of a number of proposed pieces of legislation over 20020072008. I testified multiple times on this issue before Congress Asking for the authority to be given to somebody, i didnt care which agency would be give than authority, but there was no movement, unfortunately, on this legislation. So there is no one to coordinate this. The individual utilities, you know, have other priorities and it is not really an individual utility problem. It is, in pack, a national problem. If we had blackouts in large portions of the country it would affect us nationally. Host where is the resistance coming from . Is it the companies . Is it congress . Why . Guest well, i think at this time is the legacy of the fact that a number of industries, you know, not wanting more regulation . That is certainly understandable. I think this raises to the level hall we need to have some kind of coordinated effort at the federal agency level. It not, certain hi, a state problem. It is not a u tell will you ty problem because there are a number of the substations that are owned by the utilities. Yes. Hardening them and reducing them, the vulnerability to these physical attacks will help ebb. It will help all the neighboring utility and help all of the customers that are outside of those utility areas because they will be protected from these types of attacks and the results in blackouts as well. It is something that the cost should be spread to everybody. Perhaps we need some tax incentives. Maybe there is some other way to approach this other than a regulatory one. You know, i am exploring those with a number of individuals, but ultimately, there needs to be some coordinated man to start protect these substations now that we know that there are individuals who have the capability to carry out an attack as sew fess indicated as this within we saw on april 16th. I want you to respond a column written in the wall street journal yesterday buy jenkins who says there is nothing new about americans shooting up the grid. This has been happening for a long time. He says this, that if the am mycation is that more attacks could be ek expected they can because they have been happening for decades. One expert suggests the assaults were widely replicated around the country. Kite take down the prid. He says yes. It would require an army. Every substation is different. What has to be scouted accept prattly. Wouldnt such an army be keen not give away the presence. Why do the terrorists have tranned fighters to deploy, why would their target be a substation . Guest that is a very interesting col loam. I disagree with most everything that he says in that column. I havent read it, fallly. You i will tell you this. Numb per one, yes, there have been people who, you lo, they have taken shots at substations. You know . People, on a random basis, have gone out and shot at substation. No one, no one has ever planned and executed the lef joel of a sophisticated organized attack that you saw on april 16th. That is undisputed. Number two, you dont need an army. You just need a very few number of people with some fairly unsophisticated weapons to target the most critical substations in this country and tris not very many. I am not going to reveal specific numbers because that would be revealing things we shouldnt be talking about. But what was there, we did pacific modeling on load flows to show that you can, in pack, take down the entire grid by hitting a very few number of these substations. So this gentlemen who wrote this column has not done the analysis. He has not done the studies. Really doesnt know the details of, in fact, what could be done. Host lets talk toal in watertown, tennessee. Republican caller,en the air with jon. Go ahead. Caller thank you for taking my call. How do you know they were ak47s. Guest because we had the graph. Caller i am letting you know for those of us who know what we are talking about. It could be any number of wap obs. Who do you work for now . Are billed as the former chairman . Are you not Energy Attorney that is probably also registered as a lobbyist . Is that true . Guest that is not true. Caller ok. Who do you work for . Guest excuse me, sir, if i can answer. I am a partner in the law firm in San Francisco. Work on the emerging technologies at that firm. Caller what i am getting at is that your bill here as former chairman as if you are coming to this from a nonbias perspective and you already said things that were unprovable primarily the ak47. It is just as important for people to know the context of your presence there. Thank you. Host ok. Al before you go. You seem interested in the topic. Why is that . What do you do . Oh, we lost him. Jon wellingoff, would your Company Benefit from any reforms that were put into place to protecting the grid system. Guest no, i done do work in this area with respect to physical security that is not my client base. Host why do you think he took issue with the evidence of the ak47. Guest i dont know. My under standing the round is, in pack, an, a ktype round. Dont understand what the point was there. Was a specific round to have low enough velocity to instead penetrate the cooling fans which was their target. They targeted the cooling fins. Host ok. Were talking to jon welling how far, hes the former chairman of the Regulatory Commission and served from 2009 under the Bush Administration then became chairman in 2009 and served before that under the Bush Administration then carried over to the Obama Administration. The wall street journals the topic. Rebecca smith had the story. A must ry assault on a power grid back in april of 2013 in california. Susan is in california, san diego, go ahead, susan. Caller yes, good morning. Thank you for cspan. Mr. Wellingoff, i am very interested in your conversation. I also saw you this week on the pbs news hour talking about this same topic. As a person who lives in san diego and who was here when our grid went round, a couple of years ago, do you think it is some kind of unexplained accident in arizona, apparently. Just want to back up what you are saying about how frustrating and disastrous this could be on a longerterm basis. Luckily, the grid came back up in san diego after four to five hours. Everything was ok. But had this gone on for any length of time, it could have been a problem. That is all ahad to say. Want to than thank you for bring this up and focusing attention on it. Host ok. Jon grab ahead. Guest thank you, susan. That the point. The only outages we have seen in this country have been relatively short duration. The out oink that susan talked about in sentenced, then, this was the big 2003 outage in the northeast which took out 50 Million People for three to four days. It was from a tree touch on a transmission line. It shows you that ultimately, you know, again, a coordinated attack buy few number of individuals on a number of substations could have a much more prolonged and devastatings ecotone this country. Host what were the Economic Impacts of those outages . Guest tens if not hundreds of millions ofle lar. Certainly the figure on the 2008 outage rib am sure it was bee job the tens of millions of dollars. Probably in the hundreds of millions of dollars. Host right. In alaska, republican callerrer, go ahead, dwight. Caller hi, think the whole issue with the thing with the power grid is overlooking one of the more important aspects. Sure. Some radicals are going out with their weapons. I think, you know, the power grid could be hardened enough to ort nary bullets are not going to cause anymore problems. The things like solar flairs and outages that cause outages that could be not just, you oh, in america. It could be the whole planet. Right now, you know, there is no Safety Devices on our grid like, you know, like metal things or ultrathat could protect our grid against power surges are the sun. You know, i have written letters to the power Companies Saying rareas times here, even in juno, i get no response from them. That is, to me, a bigger issue. Our own sun could knock us out quicker than a terrorist group. Those things are totally rounds. They could not penetrate the shell of one of the big transformer. There moise way. They may knock out the minor or smaller pieces of equipment and take the thing down for a short period of time. That is not going to do it. It would take antitank fun to blow up the big transformers because the shell on those things is three to four inches think, i think. Host ok. Jon . Guest i dont want to comment on what the gentlemen said because i would be getting into details the traps former case that probably shouldnt be disclosed. But ultimately, he is right about the solar flair issue. Those vulnerabilities. Those vulnerabilities, i know folks are looking into now, and look at, you know, working with americans and gaining reg lagses to put in place the type of commitment the gentlemen is talking about it. It is important to ensure that from the major solar flair or any other type of electromagnetic pulse situation like that, that we dont, in pack, have an out age. We do need to protect against that as well. I will say that he is wrong about the case of the transformer and you would be very surprised as to what type of weapon, in fact, could destroy one of those transformers. So it needs to be better protected . Absolutely. And we certainly can do that. There is multiple techniques, and litigation measures we can take. I mean the simplest one. Every single one of these substations that have the high voltage transformers is surrounded by simply a chain link fence that anybody can see through at 1200yards with the scope and the rifle. We could make them ok. You can not see the individual targets within the substation. In addition to that, we could putt in better cameras and better lighting as well. We could even put barriers up which are inexpensive of concrete movable barriers that we have used overseas ult mel times before. That will ensure that, you mo he, some bullet ballistic projectile could not, in fact, penetrate through them. There is lots of easy ways, farley inexpensive ways to protect the systems. Host host whats the cost . Whats the dos do this . Degrees where will, were not. Thats the first point we have to understand. There is 45,000 substation. There is only less than 100 that are the highvoltage critical substations that need to be protected. So numb per one, were talking about a limited number. Number wo be the cost, you know, i dont have exact estimate. You can imagine what it cost to put a fence around a perimeter that is maybe several hundred yards. And to put, you know, more sew is call ited calm reason a lighting and think concrete barriers. Cannot imagine that it is more than, you know, 1 million or a couple million per substation. Preading that over the cost of the entire taxpayer is about of the United States, you know, would be very minimal amount of money to spend to in shore we do not have a major outage that has consequences of extreme economic damage and also potential, you know, health and safety issues as well. Host all right. We are talking to jon wellingoff about a snipe are attack at a substation in california back in april of 2013. Kevin, you are up next in ohio. Democratic caller. Caller yes. Host ok. Go ahead. Caller all right. Yes, sir. Am just wondering. Work at the sites. The last few transform hes we put in big transformer. They were made in ind why and just to hear about the wait time on these huge critical pieces of equipment it boggles my mine we dont have a stockpile of these. Many of the utilities house their spares at the same substations. You know, you shoot out the operating ones. Cue shoot out that spares at the same time, the other issue is there is a very long lead time for the transformers, minimum of six months and. Usually you know 12 to 18 mons to mcthe transformers there is only three companies in country in the United States that make them and shall yes many are made overseas in core rewhy and india and other places, so you know, the supply chain is along and very difficult one and replacing these transformers would not be am easy thing someone were to knock out a large number of them in a coordinated attack. How much do they costs . What is their role inwhat do they do . Each one of them costs tens of millions of dollars. The role of the transformers is to step up volt ame from a number of generators that are in the area so these substations are located where there are a number of large generating stations and step up to the voltage so then the voltage can be electricity can then be transmitted on high voltage transmission lines to the centers to our city and towns where we immediate the power. Well, so, that is what a substation is then basically ma yes. It is on the grid that allows us to step up voltage of power and some instances step it down as well when we get closer to the loads. But these high voltage ones that i am speaking of are primarily to step up that voltage so that ultimately it can be transmitted on these very high voltage transmission lines. The other 345 or the 500 or in some instance the 765kilo vault line. What does the United States grid stim look like ingest guest well, three separate parts. There is three grids. There is western grid, there is eastern grid, then there is texas. Texas is not strongly interconnected into the rest of the United States. In fact, texas is not under the jurisdiction of the federal Regulatory Commission for transmission with reception of reliability so that does have the responsibility. These three grids are separate. They operate separately malt lit. Once you are into the grid area, if you do something that one portion of the grid for exle pell. If there is outage in florida. It is actually felt in maine. You can, you can sense the frequency incursion in maine if there is power plant, for ex pem, that guess out in florida. So because of that, because of that because of this ber cob mecktiveness of the frequency across the entire interconnect that is why taking out a number within the sper connect can destabilize the entire connect and bring it down. Host here is a tweet. Was the super bowl power outage a few years back an ind is calf potential problems . Guest well, that was local small distribution substation transformer, that was my understanding. I done think it was necessarily en caned is of problems certainly not any near to the magnitude of this april 16th purposeful attack that was just, you know, a random outage that was an equipment failure. I want to show the viewers a map of the grid system in the United States. Then john welling off, another tweet from our viewer. He says looks to me like we are burying the lead here that the National Media sat on a major story for nearly a year. Guest well, it is interesting that, you mow shall it took rebeccahit to dig this out. You know, certainly, you know, i provided her some information but she got the vast amount of information from multiple other sources and really, you lo, flushed out the entire story, it is, it is curious that no one else picked up this story for such a long time. Is the fbi talking about it . I done have any contact with the fbi. Should they be addressing it, though you . Are addressing it publicly . Guest test i cannot speak for the fbi. It is my understanding it is still under investigation and it is also my understanding that their policy not to talk about ongoing investigations. Host Rebecca Smith right writes in her story, ho one has been arrested. Guest yes. Again, this particular investigation of who did this, you know, talking about the led, it is not the story. In my opinion, the story is ultimately that we need protect the substations across the country and that we have it now known to us that there are individuals capable of carrying out these kinds of attacks so because of that ultimately lets retect these things lets not see any future attacks to succeed to this level. Another tweet from the viewer who says attack could have been buy anyone angry at u. S. Government for any incrust is such as the persecution of mar mr or something else. Andrew in new jersey, nent independent caller, hi, andrew. Caller hi, good rng. Host good morning. Caller first of all, lets not forget the lessons of 9 11. Okay. We have not learned anything. You got the immigration and service that is charged with keeping track of who comes into this country, where they are, and there was Immigration Service out in california that pressed a few years ago was backlogged and sh eded the documents which means no more paper trail. You done know who these people are. Second of all, how easy is it to go and buy a highpowered rifle at a gun show but no background checks or you need the money to put down, they dont do any background checks at a gun show. The gun laws in this country have so many in them you could drive a mac truck through them. I know you are not a gun expert. The first part of the comments. I am not a gun expert. I am not, i would not advocate doing anything to restrict our second amount rights. Think again, what we need to do is protect the fa cycle thinks which is fairly essie and inexpensive thing to do. On twitter, though, so we need more federal regulations, which means more bureaucracy, bigger government control of energy sources, would that be the result come . Well, i am not suggesting that they control the energy sources. Am simply suggesting there be an agency who put together a coordinated plan, give that plan over to the owners of this infratk ture to ensure those owners carry it out. Then another tweet from redding, what should be done protect american infratake ture wearierless Power Transmission alleviate vulnerability. Well, one thing that would alleviate vulnerability if we have our own power source and certainly people are moving to that. Many people are starting to put in Solar Systems on their houses and put in natural gas generator and small cogenerators in their businesses as well and if, we go to a more distributed system, that obviously will be one that is much, much less vulnerability to this type of centralized attack on a system that is vulnerable to that type of an attack. The callle from alaska said that up there, they are on some sort of independent system. What does that mean . Well, that is true. Alaska is on an independent grid as well. I mean, their grid would not be subject to going down, for example. You took out the western grid in the United States. It would not affect alaska. Their grid is not interconnected with the grid in the United States. Host area. Guest because canada is between us and them. Host ok. Guest we are interconnected to the caid mainian grid. It could in fact fact the canadian grid in part going down but alaska parts are so remote that they, their grid is an independent system from the rest. Just like texas is an independent grid from the rest of the United States as well. Host kim, republican caller. Caller the question i have is, number one, regulations really is not one of bushs big deals. All i can hear that is he is saying he wants taxpayers to pay for the infratk ture upkeep. That is what i hear. Host chairman. Guest well, that is true. I think the taxpayers are the ones who should pay as opposed to the individual rate payers in each individual utility area that has these high volt ago in transformer substations because protecting those is going to protect en throughout the country. Everybody is going to benefit so everybody should pay. Dave in ohio, democratic caller. Caller good morning. Host good morning. Caller i got a few point first when blu of our the caller a awhile back about rareas weapons. There is pistols that shoot 7. 65s for him to think they were all ak47s is ludicrous. Second, it was stupid to bar ry this story. Everybody knows that when a crime is committed, you have got to take care of the you have to bring it out. You have a short window that things can be taken care of or citizens or, you know, information can be gleamed, you bar ry it for a year then bring it out. You know . It makes it look like it was some type of black operation. Host mr. Wellingoff . Guest well, it was a sophisticated operation. In fact the 7602 round that they used was very carefully chosen for the job because they were not targeted the cases. They were targeting the cooling fins which were much, much thinner material. So those bullets very easy penetrated the cooling fins. Their target. They knew exactly what they were doing. Here is a tweet from one of the viewers ob the topic. Related to power outages. Can your guests explan the great new york city black outthat occurred years ago . Guests there was one in 2003 that blocked out new york city and the northeast. The explanation there was, again, a tree that you know was in a storm touched on the lynn and caused a fault on that line and that fault then cascaded through ohio and throughout the northeast and ultimately brought down that whole center of the country which makes my point that these interconnects are set up in such a way that one event in one area can have a devastated effect on a very large area very far away. What types of company, what types of companies or how Many Companies operate the nations grid system. Oh, there aredreads of companies that operate different parts of the grid system, different parts of the Transmission System in the grid, so they there are multiple companies. There are large operators that are independent in some areas called independent system operators regional transmission organizations and but other areas have just private companies that own the grid as well or in some instance publicly entities look the tba, it is a mix. It is a huge mix across the country. That is why it howled that also makes my point. That is where we should come back to it being a national problem, organized at the National Level, because there are so many multiple different kinds of private and Public Companies who own and operate these assets. The attack on power gritteds are a reason to keep aspect of sur ray lens programs. She wants to know where there any picture or film of the attack of this substation in california in april of 2013. Yes, there are. There are. There are camera videos very granny camera videos that was released by the santa dollars are sheriffs office. I believe in june or july. But they only show, again, you lo, very had doey figures you can see the muzzle flash from the ak47s, you can see flashes of hit hitting the fence or the bullets hitting the fence or going through the fence and i saw evidence of that when i was there touring the site and you could also see the flashlight very clearly before initially signaling the commencing firing and also signaling to stop firing. During recent hearings it came out when you were for chairman pe n investigation into this and you were also Briefing Members of congress about what happened. While members of congress thinking about moving forward howled they think about moving forward on some sort of legislation . We talked about this earlier. Then, who gets the power to prevent Something Like this attack happening on a larger scale . Guest well, i think congress should consider giving some agency the authority to address known threats and vulnerabilities that this is one of those in this in tans. It would include cyber security, things like net and other cyber vie viruses that, in pack, can infiltrate the electric system and have devastating effect. So i think it is something that congress ultimately should consider because, again, i have stated, it is a national problem. What about smart grids . What are they . What role could they play . Well, smart grids are ultimately systems that embed intelligence into our existing grid and centsing equipment into our existing grid, we are putting on to the high voltage Transmission System, for example, they call phase monitoring units that monitor every four second, the phase angles and other data from the grid that can come back to grid operators and do things like help prevent the 2003 blackout by giving grid operators a quicker view of what is happening and then, you he, separate parts of it if possible to ultimately reduce the possibility of these outages and improve the reliability. So smart grids can help these things. Other things that can be done with respect to gritted configurations as to put them into more regional and more local microgrids with dc direct current buses or switches m between them that can separate these grids if one part starts to go out, separate it from the other part of the grid and it can be done with the smart grid technology. That is expensive to i do. Is much more ex pensive than protecting the substations, but it would be another technique or another means by which you could reduce the impact of the outage if someone went after one of these substations. Jon, the former chairman of the federal energy reg willing Story Commission served as the chairman from 20089 to 2013. Hes with on the panel in 2006, put on there by george w. Bush, but served under two different administration. We thank you, sir, for your time this morning. Getting up early in sa San Francisco and talking to the viewerrers. Guest thank you, greta. Host well be back tomorrow morning at 7 00 a. M. Eastern time. Thank you for calling in and seconding ut your tweets and posting comments on facebook. Well see you tomorrow