Transcripts For CSPAN Washington Journal 20140412

Politics, 2014 politics. President obamas nomination of Sylvia Burwell as the next head of health and Human Services on this open phones for our first 45 minutes. Here are the numbers. 202 5853881 or republicans. 202 5853880 four democrats. 202 5853882 for independents. Theres our Facebook Page right there. You can email us. Heres the interior section of the wall street journal this morning. Taking a look at rand paul as a potential 2016 candidate. Hes speaking at that event in New Hampshire today. One of the things highlighted from the wall street journal saying mr. Pauls approach to policy he initially advocated a handsoff approach to russian aggression against ukraine. It stands at odds with most republican lawmakers. His nonintervention posture mix into extreme for many gop rainmakers. His name doesnt even come up in my circles says mel semlerbler. We are a leader in the world and we should not abandon that philosophy. That is in the wall street journal. If you go to the pages of the New York Times this morning 2016 politics the topic. The tea party a story the elections may be far off, but the Tea Party Class of 2010 is shaping up to be problematic for the public and party. The party could seize control of both houses of congress in 2014. Only to uselose it two years later. Some republicans say they are pressing that point. Im helping with the majority and way 14 and making the point of 2016 being a different map for us. It goes on to say that Senate Republicans are gearing for the worst in 2016, spreading the Playing Field this season and stockpiling reserves. Scott brown tossing his hat into the ring in New Hampshire. Republicans have put 11 democrat seven seats in play. They will have to prevail in six to take control. You can write about the 2016 president ial politics. You can talk about 2014 midterm elections. Other topics on this open phones. We will give you the numbers one more time. 202 5853881 for republicans. 202 5853880 for democrats. 202 5853882 for independents. You can make your thoughts known on facebook and twitter. Michael is up first grade new kensington, pennsylvania on our republican line. Caller thank you for cspan. Its great to have some real questions answered and talked about. Im interested in the confrontation out in nevada. Ive been watching it and i think its unconscionable that 75 of the land in the western states like nevada and utah its unconstitutional that they should be owning this much land. We could auction off these federal lands and people would develop them for oil. Drill and we would become selfsufficient. The federal government is not doing anything to encourage gas oil production. This would be a great way to do it and still maintain get our independence from some of these foreign countries. And fix our deficit. Host heres the headline from fox news about what he is talking about. Concerning outofstate groups. A battle with the federal government over grazing rights. When did you first get attention to the story . Caller ive been watching fox for this past week. They are talking about some of the issues that the rest of the media does not touch. This last week, they covered this issue. Its been boiling for a long time. This is not just popping out of nowhere. They have so much support from other states and other ranchers and other individuals out there. Host geronimo, indiana. Democrat line. Caller i hear what he is saying about the federal land law. A lot of them are reservations and stuff like that. Im an indian from north dakota. You have no clue how much it sucks that all of this drilling is happening. You are not there. The thing we need to focus on is alternative energy. Im an auto technician. I dont see what the problem would be why do we have to go into the earth when we have other technologies . We just went with spectrum. They just passed in the house what people dont understand about spectrum is, spectrum is a finite technology that nobody has any clue they dont have any clue as to how sophisticated spectrum is. Not only in your house but also host youre talking about Old Television waves that are now used for wifi and other purposes . Caller yes and no. Wifi is a different radio wave from spectrum. Host back to your thought quickly about you said something about people not seeing whats going on. When you talk about drilling, give some examples. Caller on the reservation, there is a couple of people who got they had no clue there was oil there. Everybody went their ahead of time and started offering them 100,000 for 1 billion worth of oil. When they found out the drilling would happen, they were baffled. There is nothing they can do because it was the republican that ran against obama mitt romney owns part of halliburton. They were using the power of National Defense to take peoples land to be able to do the keystone and all this other stuff. Host he mentioned technology issues. There is a profile on the front page of the New York Times today with senator al franken. Talking about efforts he is making on this merger that you may have heard about between comcast and nbc. After a failed attempt to block the comcastnbc universal merger, he finds himself layinf laying a trust busting role in washington. A merger that will unite the two biggest cable companies. There is more on that profile. On our Communicators Program which airs on saturday evening senator franken our guest talking about the same issue. If you want to find out more about it. You can watch that at 6 30 this evening on cspan. Mark and in ohio. Independent line. Caller i was calling as an avid fly fisherman and i heard the gentleman before wanting to develop all of these federal lands. That is not good because a lot of the flyfishing we do in montana is in the National Forest on federal lands. Who wants to go flyfishing when you have all of these huge trucks and rigs set up next to streams all over the place out there . That is not a quality experience. Host do you find that happening . Do you still have plenty of places to fish . Caller it is being crowded out. I was fishing out there last year and we also fish up in michigan at the mason tract. We have been fighting these people for years. They want to develop every last square inch and claim our independence. The oil goes to europe. Our prices here keep going up. If we have all of this gas right now, why did natural gas go up for everybody this year . Why is gasoline so expensive if we are pulling all of the stuff out of the ground in north dakota . Have them answer that question. Host mark from ohio. Until 7 45. The numbers will be on your screen. You can make your thoughts known on twitter as well. Our previous guest mentioned north dakota. Our next caller from grand forest. Republican line. Caller think out for cspan. Think godank god for cspan. I have come from pennsylvania to the oil patch to do construction there. An opportunity that was not back from where i was from. Im out here for survival. Host hows it going . Caller ive talked to you a couple of times the past two years. I had to sleep in my car when i first got here and a i work my way up. Im going to fish on the red river today. A beautiful country out here. I wanted to make a point first about jeb bush. No way i will be voting for another bush. Dont even think about that. When he talks about Illegal Immigrants coming here and this act of love, i wanted to say there is only so much love we can give in this country. We have to think about we have to turn our compassion inward toward our own people. People like george bush and jeb bush these people never had to compete with foreign labor in their life. I dont know why we listen to them. Why we give them credence they dont know what its like. Host is it jeb bushs policies that bother you or his last name . Caller i voted for george bush. Its how insulated they are and how privileged they are to become you can afford to have that compassion when you dont understand or compete. Another point is about i say this all the time we only allow certain amounts of people to come from different regions of the country. 6 million germans came here. 5 million italians. That our government acted and halted migration. That was the act of compassion to abolish diversity and immerse us in one culture, one language and thats what made a strong. Host james from north dakota mentioning jeb bush. The topic of a column in the Financial Times this morning. A push for bush in 2016 is dangerous for republicans. His mexican wife, his record for promoting hispanics have piqued the interest of republican strategists. He cannot replicate those numbers nationally. 40 of voters would definitely not vote for him under any circumstances. No reason to believe they are playing coy. Mr. Bush would have to get 96 of the undecided vote to win. Americans have indulged in political dynasties. The bushes, the clintons and the kennedys. They cannot feel good about it. Donnadynasties are a sign of corruption. Certain bush advisers say that Hillary Clinton would neutralize popular resentment of mr. Bush is privileged family background. But there is no difference. They won the last two president ial elections by nominating someone who inspires their party base and then battling for uncommitted voters. Republican party is following a different strategy. Trusting that the redhot members will fall into line having no place else to go. They will not. Those voters appear to be gravitating to the conservative Kentucky Center rand paul senator rand paul with his untraditional mix of libertarianism. Senator paul and others will be speaking at that manchester New Hampshire event that takes place at 10 00 this morning. You can watch it on cspan. It is sponsored by Citizens United and americans for prosperity. Watch that at 10 00. Columbus, ohio. Democrats line. Caller i was just my observation i dont know how republicans think they can win the white house in the next decade. All of these policies that hold people back and prevent them from exercising their natural given rights described in the constitution. They have intentions of they will become a Regional Party if they dont change their views. Host silver lake, indiana. Independents line. Caller i would like to make a comment. Why is barack obama waging war on energy in the United States of america . The rest of the United States, hear me on this. United states will never acquire enough energy to run this country through wind and solar and hydro. I dont know why they think they can because they cant. They can even produce 40 of the energy to get this country back on the productive path for job creation. I think the democrats need to quit wrapping their arms around anything that is coming in this country. Host joseph from florida. Republican line. Caller good morning. Thank you for taking my call. Im an eisenhower republican. I lived in florida for about 30 years now. Not one governor, democrat or republican has been it kills me to hear these bushreagan republicans call up lets explore our natural resources. That stops at florida. You had one of these browsers you guys usually trout out about obamas letting officers go because he wants to change the military. Two days later, the ap had a story out that the marines had actually let fewer officers go. Air force and navy were about the same. It is the u. S. Army military officers that were being let go at a higher rate. One because, under bush, they had so many appointed. Bush lowered the standards. In normal times, we would not have taken these guys. It was sleazy of cspan2 not do a followup. Well, he works for a communications company. What does that mean . He make cell phones or radios . Hes like one of these guys tooting in New Hampshire . The freedom institute. We have no idea what they really promote or how they get the money. They always say, less government. But to West Virginia where they just polluted the waterways. They want a federal bailout. Or that Texas Company that blew up. They want federal funds. Do you get them on the Cspan School Bus to go down to texas and West Virginia and say, no big of her meant for you . Host debbie from florida. Democrats line. Caller good morning, pedro. Im back home in Gainesville Florida now. Host how long have you been home for . Caller we came back home in 2010. As you know, when we lived here, jeb bush was our governor. He was liked even by democrats. The point i want to make is that, more and more people are registering independent now. Because parties dont have the sav same as our generation we have a glorified view of the past when parties made a difference. Now, because the Corporate Funding of elections, there is no corporate lobbyists and the young people dont want that. They want through Public Financing of elections. They dont feel its worth voting. They feel president ial elections are Just Entertainment for the wealthy because they feel they dont have a voice. That is why they want through Public Financing of elections because they feel our senators and Congress People are like prostitutes. All they do is fundraising. Then as the bankers and people that fund their campaigns that legislate. Until we get through Public Financing of elections, not this hybrid thing am i dont think you are going to get an interest in young people wanting to get involved in national politics. Host we will hear next from mary. Georgia. Independent line. Caller im not going to mention names or anything. My husband comes from a wealthy family. Barry wealthy family. My mother passed away in 1998. Everything she left me they committed fraud. They said she died of mesothelioma. They let me find out after seven years my Insurance Company let them do everything. His father was in world war ii. He worked on the manhattan project. He worked on bills with congress. He was 94 last year. He built the pipeline im looking for the h her letter writing here. He has the government in his hands. I have hidden paperwork that had signatures and boxes of this kind of stuff. Im afraid for my life. I dont care anymore. They turned my children against me. Host have you told this to your local authorities . Caller yes. I went to the police. Host i want to tell you but our Newsmakers Program. The chairman of the House Judiciary Committee appearing on capitol hill this week. Testifying about the Justice Department and oversight issues. Our Newsmakers Program bob asked about that appearance. Heres what he had to say. [video clip] its always wise for anybody appearing before the committee to not make things personal. The remark by the attorney general general, he referred to them as a buddy, i dont think there are many people who believe that he is a buddy of the attorney general. As a result, that was not well advised him on his part. He answered questions from 34 members of the committee on a wide array of issues. We have a lot of concerns about the conduct of the department of justice and we thought it was a Good Opportunity to raise those concerns with the attorney general and from that standpoint, it was a successful hearing. Host our guest on our Newsmakers Program, tomorrow at 10 00 and 6 00 p. M. Find out more on our website. Open phones for the remaining 25 minutes or so. 202 5853881 for republicans. 202 5853881 for democrats. 202 5853882 for independence. New jersey. Independent line. Caller could you please Chris Christie is a nightmare. I watch msnbc quite a bit. We watch we know why we went to war in iraq. It was all for oil. Dick cheney has no business in this country. I cant even believe that we voted for i never voted for Chris Christie either. Let him go to your country or your state. I like Frank Pallone he is a good man. He called two weeks ago and i asked him, could you run for governor . He is running for a congress he. A congress seat. Im trying to wake up. We are a mile from the ocean. We do not get ruined here, but they did on the beach. Some people lost their homes and Chris Christie couldnt care less. Have a good day. The weather here is wonderful today. Host she began to catch the attention of washingtons Democratic Party makers in clintons 1992 campaign for the white house. Her biggest fan was robert rubin. The white house budget director for the president. Not to become the next nominee for the head of health and Human Services. The editors of the wall street journal this morning talk about about the process of w questions she will be asked. She should be pressed to assess obama karras imitation so far and address what she would do differently. The lack of legal basis, the enrollment deadline has been extended indefinitely. Large parts of the federal exchange for remain on build. Major rules are unwritten, including the final employer mandate regulation. Will the constant improvisation continue . You can read the whole thing in the wall street journal. Greg is up next. Jacksonville, florida. Caller a 35 year watcher of cspan. I have been a fan of cspan ever since 1979. Thanks for the open lines. Its been quite a while since we have had called in. My particular issue is this oppression of voting by the republicans who control the legislators in this country. It is counterproductive to the United States for filling its written constitution, particularly getting minorities to the polls and having the right to vote. It is a dangerous kind of method they are attempting to do. Im hoping that cspan, along with some objective Media Outlets begin to cover this particular story. Im sure the republicans want to recapture the white house and all the legislatures. If you take an indepth look at those governors who have legislatures that are controlled by the republicans, its a very dangerous policy. Im hoping that the American People and be American Media will look into this problem of Voter Suppression and all of. Host theres a photo in the New York Times this morning of president obama and ill sharpen appearing al sharpton. The story highlighting the issue of voting rights. Nine states have enacted voting changes, making it harder to cast ballots. A federal judge upheld the laws and arizona and kansas requiring proof of citizenship. Sponsors of such laws have said theyre trying to prevent voter fraud and argue that democrats overstate the impact of commonsense measures in a crass and transparent effort to rile up their most fervent political supporters. They know they are on the wrong side of the issues that are important with voters and the only way they can win is by scaring the basin to voting. The president appearing at that event. The president also appearing us today in the rose garden. Talking a little bit about tenure the tenure of Kathleen Sebelius. He nominated Sylvia Burwell to become the next head of the organization. [video clip] kathleen has been here through the long fight to pass the Affordable Care act. She helped guide its implementation, even when it got rough. She has bumps and i have bombs. Bruises. She did it because we knew of all the people that we have met all across the country, who had lost a home. Had decided to stay with the job instead of sordid business because they were uncertain about their health care situation. A we have metwe have met families who have seen their children suffer because of the uncertainty of health care. We were committed to get this done and thats what we have done. That is what kathleen has done. Yes, we lost the First Quarter of open enrollment. There were problems. Under kathleens leadership, her team at hhs turned the corner got it fixed, got the job done. The final score speaks for itself. There are 7. 5 Million People across the country that have the security of health insurance. Most of them for the very first time. That is because of the woman standing next to me today. We are proud of her for that. [applause] host that event took place yesterday. You can go to our website if you want to see the whole thing. Heres john in maryland. Democrats line. Caller good morning. Thank you for cspan. I watch cspan for a good 25 years. I would like to talk about unemployment. The unemployment bill. I see a bill that was passed in the senate on monday. I have not heard anything else about that bill. I would like to know whats holding it up. Is that the republicans taking their bill up . And letting the American People suffer . A bill was passed the russia situation in ukraine the American People, 2 Million People are still suffering and people dont have food or a lot of people are being put out on the street. Because the Congress Wont do anything to help the American People. Its an unfair situation that you can be a citizen of another country and be treated like an outsider. They can get more money from this country than the taxpayer. Host this is about the Unemployment Insurance bill that would extend benefits at 26 weeks that are offered by the state. Caller thats correct. Host from what i understand the house will take it up soon because theyre concerned about issues when it comes to putting in elements that would aid in job creation. The are you there . The House Speaker also added that the white house should be responsible to come up with a new plan when it comes to that extension. Open phones for the remainder of our time. A lot of comments made on a letter different issues on a lot of different issues. Independent line. Caller i would like to talk about voters im a u. S. Citizen, born and raised. I received an application ballot that would ask me whether or not im a republican democrat or independent. As a voter, i think i have the right to vote for whoever i wish to, whether they be democrat or republican or whatever. Unfortunately, they lock you in by asking you if you are strictly democrat or republican. They stunned that, you have to vote for whoever is a democrat or republican on that particular ballot. Does anybody have a comment on that . I feel like my Constitutional Rights are being denied because i like to vote for certain democrats and seven republicans and is certain certain republicans. Host did you approach the people who handle the election issues for your state . Caller yes, i did. Evidently, its across the board. You can ask anybody from the state of ohio. Youre either locked in as being a democrat or republican and thats not fair. Particularly for this primary coming up. Thank you so much. Host roy in cambridge, massachusetts. On a republican line. Caller i want to raise the issue of the armed standoff in nevada between the bureau of Land Management and the group of individuals there. There are arms on both sides. Some serious Media Attention needs to be directed on this to get the attention of the federal authorities before there is another slaughter like there was at ruby ridge. Right now, there are state officials that are trying to get control of the situation. But some of them have given away the rights of these people. They have established the free speech zone. Theyre demanding these people stay in that area to express their dissatisfaction with whats going on. Its a 20 year issue. The farmer was there before the creation of this bill of Land Management. There are a lot of issues that need to be discussed and have some sunlight shined on them. Host West Virginia. Democrats line. Good morning. One more time. Lets move on to kathy and colorado. Independent line. Caller i wanted to comment on the unemployment of extension and one statement about the irs targeting conservatives. They said the stimulus so far since 2008 to the Financial Sector has been 3. 3 trillion and it continues at about 80 million a month. That is a totalthe total employment cost is less than one months stimulus to the Financial Sector. The Financial Sector cost millions of people to lose their jobs at the end of 2008. That is a source of the problem. All the mitt romneys obtained their 100 riches and are still being stimulated when people who want to work are thrown off the bus. One thing i wanted to say about to the irs targeting conservatives i recentlthe New York Times wrote an article about the amount of contributions from the conservatives approximately 85 for conservatives, 10 liberals and five percent other. That matches the percentage of targeting that the irs did. Approximately targeting 80 of conservative and 10 liberal. Host bob in granger, indiana. Republican line. Caller that doesnt sound like an independent may. An independent to me. You have Kathleen Sebelius on the Health Care Law and then she gets up at a important resignation meeting theirre and you have eric holder who will enforce laws they like but ignores ones they dont. Host paul ryan saw his budget passed. He is in iowa, addressing the gop fundraiser a which you may have seen on cspan earlier this point. Is[video clip] these are timeless principles. They are not passe. Liberal progressives have overplayed their hand. They want us to delegate our power and authority to some faceless bureaucrat who can better harmonize our lives for us. We now know that it doesnt work. We have to go back and say heres our plan to balance the budget, heres our plan to pay off the debt. Heres how we would get the wins of energy jobs in this country by getting the government out of the way in stopping the government from stopping this Great Energy Boom from happening. Heres how you have a strong military. Heres how you have an america in the world that has respect. Heres how you successfully fight poverty. Night by managing poverty but by going at the root causes to get people out of poverty in the first place. We believe in outcomes, not throwing money at the problem. You have to be not just the good opposition party. Have to be a great alternative party. We have to show that these ideas and these principles which made it so great in the first place which we swore allegiance to what we pledge are as relevant and important today as they ever were before. Host you can see the whole thing on our website. The white house releasing information on tax returns for the president and Vice President. The obamas paid a total of 90,000. The white house said that their effective tax rate was 10 20. 4 . The obamas also gave 12. 3 of their income to charity, dotin donating 59,000 to 32 different organizations. The Vice President and his wife released their 2013 returns as well. Paying 96,000 dollars in federal taxes with an adjusted gross income of 407,000. They paid about 18,000 in state taxes for both delaware and virginia. While contributing 20,000 to charity. Jim from michigan. Democrats line. Caller good morning. Thank you for cspan. The only thing people dont know about the Oil Companies and fracking is that the real active chemical they are using is acid. If either hydrochloric acid or sulfuric acid. What that does is decompose the rock. That is why you are seeing earthquakes in oklahoma. If the chemicals make it back up to the surface, you have a mess. When you decompose the rock methane is a byproduct. It is not not an enclosed area down there. It contaminates water. You be good to the fracking websites, they will refer to a you visit euphemism of household chemicals. Dranino israino is a household chemical. They appear to be upfront with their ingredients. Theyre using acid. I know someone involved in the fracking operations. He confirmed that with me. Host jacob in massachusetts. Independent line. Caller i wonder how this voting works. An individual only has certain rights. How can they give them to congress to have more authority than they have . People dont go by natural law anymore. That is the problem. We have all these people who think they have authority and the schools teach authority. They teach kids that they have authority over them, which they dont have it all. It does not make any sense. That is why the world is in such a mess. We have all these people who have this illusion of authority. People listen to them. Host last call is alex from maryland. Republican line. Caller first, i would like to talk about Unemployment Insurance. The benefits i feel like people around the u. S. Should not be paying for other people being out of work. Extending Unemployment Benefits is taxes. To me, what should be happening is, people should get benefits. People who have been working for 10 years or more, it should come out of their retirement funds. That is my opinion. Also, i think a lot of the people who are on unemployment for that long, who have already had extensions beforehand, the people will go and look for jobs or whatever and write down a whole bunch of companies and coal into Unemployment Insurance and tell the companies, hey, i have applied for these jobs. It alla lot of times, all they do is ask if they are hiring. To me, its simply ridiculous. Apparently, a lot of these people out here think its ok to give away money to people who dont really want to work. This is not all of them, but a good majority of them like this. Host thats alex from maryland. That will finish the session for open phones. I youyou probably saw this week that the white house made a special effort to discuss the gender pay gap. Next up, a roundtable discussion taking a look at this issueose issues. Later on in the program tax day is next tuesday. You may have had professional help with viewers. At the Senate Hearing looking at it more oversight is needed over the tax preparation industry guru will talk about that hearing and the issue. All that as washington journal continues after this. I think what we need is something akin to the Grace Commission during the Reagan Administration or the Brack Commission during the clinton administration. An outside group of integrity former members of congress, no current elected politicians to come in and do a complete audit of government from top to bottom. Every agency of government has a piece of legislation or a charter that created it. As a purpose. If its not fulfilling that purpose or not doing it within a reasonable budget, and should be cut or eliminated. Lets take have started. This came in with the highest level of motivation. There are now three had starts. Early head start, enhanced headstart and regular headstart. Why do we have the other two . The first one was not working. Veteran columnist cal thomas on fixing a broken washington, tonight at 10 00. I Heritage Foundation book party for mr. Thomas as he signs his book and chats with guest. This Years National black writers conference. Today at noon with panels on race, power and politics. Of and shifting identities in africa. Strengthening communities. The historical narrative. Plus, a panel on publishing. Book tv every weekend on cspan2. For over 35 years cspan brings Public Affairs events from washington directly to you putting you in the room at congressional hearings, White House Events briefings and conferences and offering complete gavel to gavel coverage of the u. S. House, all as a Public Service of private industry. We are cspan. Created by the cable tv industry 35 years ago and brought to you by your local table or satellite providers. Follow us on twitter and like us on facebook. Washington journal continues. Host joining us right now on this the womens policy research. Peter from the university of maryland and an economics professor for that organization. Thank you very much. The discussion is how pay amongst the genders a lot of pay on political terms this week. We want to talk about the economics of it as well. Is there a pay cap amongst the genders . Guest there certainly is. Women who work fulltime only make . 77 for every dollar an average man makes. The number includes discrimination in pay for the kind of jobs that women do. Host how do we get to the . 77 . Guest that is collected by the government. By the household service. They bring people up around tax time and ask, how much did you make last year . The . 77 figure is the median. The midpoint. Host as far as the pay gap doesnt exist . Guest i cant deny those statistics. How much of it is discrimination . What do we do about it . There are a lot of reasons for the pay gap. One is that women traditionally go into areas that dont pay as well. For example, even if you take what looks like a Homogeneous Group of Business School graduates working in the Defense Industry you may see a gender gap even if you adjust for all of the measured factors like a business degree, years of experience, which jobs they are in. If the women tend to be in Human Resources management or personnel departments and the men tuend to be in finance finance pays better, whether you are a man or a woman. A lot of this is changing. Young women tend to have College Degrees more than men. They tend to go more into those areas than they used to. There was a big bill if there was a woman in the room in 1950s as an undergraduate. Now, there were lots of women in the room. Theyre doing quantitative stuff. They are very good at that. It is changing the way. Those things are mitigated. The areas where men are paid more because the work is outdoors or grimey, that we can continues to be a small part of the economy. The average home income has declined by a little bit. Women have done much better than men in that context. There are still problems. The real area of dispute between the right and the left is what is the best way to go about dealing with it . And not coming up with solutions that would be harmful to the overall economy. Host what do you think about these other mitigating circumstances . Caller iguest i agree on most of them. One issue i would say is that women becoming Human Resource managers and men more likely to be Operations Managers there is quite a lot of detail to research to show that people are generally steered in one direction and not given the opportunities. Women dont get the projects to profile themselves at the same level. I do agree, it is not a oneshot solution. It is discrimination and social conditioning. There is no quick fix. Host things other than discrimination how do you counter that . Caller guest its not discrimination directly. It is not two people doing the same job and being paid differently. That is part of it, but not all of it. We dont really know how much of those choices, women becoming social workers and men becoming engineers are tainted by discrimination. The teachers pull you in one direction. Is it your parents saying this is more appropriate for you then that . Maybe it is preferences. Then the question is, is it partly discriminatory or does it reflect unequal values . Host theres two sets of issues there. The second set is, even among men, they are going to earn more doing certain activities than others because they are more difficult or more boring. There is nothing more boring than finance. Withit would be incorrect to blame business for all that. In marriages when women are should be earning more than men, they are less likely to work. In marriages where the women earn more money, there is a much much more divorce. We need to change values is it up to the government to say this has to come out the same . So we will start regulating peoples choices. She has to be the one who goes to work and she has more education. We tend to lose some of our best women because of social pressures that are in the home, not in the workplace. If you are an Ivy League Lawyer and your husband is an Ivy League Lawyer and he gets a job on wall street, its a lot easier to stay home and have children and exercise that preference. We tend to lose some women to the workplace for that reason. While Maternity Leave may be available to men, no matter how european we have become american men are going to stay home they have a different personality. The americans are always going to lag europeans by a generation or two on these things. Host we have to deal with issues of laws in the books do they go far enough or are there other laws needed to address this issue of the pay gap . Caller guest there was a lot of discussion about the paycheck fairness act. That is a comment to the equal pay act, which has been on the books since 1963. It has been illegal for a long time to pay unequally for the same work. However, this is a weird part of the law where youre not allowed to discuss your pay. Something like 60 of workers in the private sector either are forbidden to discuss their salaries or discouraged. It is a very strange law where you have the right to be paid equally but you dont have the right to find out. You have the right for your bicycle to not be stolen but dont have the right to find out who did it. The issue is to correct that to make it more transparent and easier to talk about pay. The second thing to do pays obviously important. People work to get paid. There is very little transparency about what happens inside companies in terms of equality or inequality. We have to say, we think between 2540 of the wage gap is discrimination. We only find out when there is all cases and we dont host the senate turned back the effort this week. Guest theres two sets of issues with the paycheck fairness act. The first is, there were two aspects to it. The transparency issue, which the democrats are pushing very hard it a more appealing part of the law. There is one side of me that says i am economist. Economists like transparency and not secrecy. There is also the issue of privacy. The neighbors can look up and see what i earn. There is a reason for it. It is also discomforting. People would like to have right to see about pay. There is the issue of whether companies can they put all kinds of conditions on employees like internet activity. My feeling is that, at the very least, if we work in the same place and she wants to tell me her salary and i want to tell her mind, that is our business. I would not say the company has to publish everyones salary. I want a happy medium before with privacy. The bill goes so much further. You have to publish the sellers, more or less. Something else is that you have to pay men and women alike. That is absurd. You would have to pay everybody alike. That is how those things work. If you get in a situation where you do not pay everyone alike, you will have problems. Host let me get a response, then calls. Guest i need to finish. In the Public Schools, everyone gets paid the same. That has had negative consequences. Guest you can still pay evil according to performance pay people according to performance. You just have to show it is objective. Guest you will have lawsuits about every Performance Review want to do that. You have to be a supervisor to understand the consequences. That does not mean we dont need to find remedies. The two sides are committed in opposite directions. Host let me get called. Calls. If you want to add, dial the numbers. Two guests joining us to talk about income inequality. Ariane hegewisch and peter morici. David is up first from ohio. Caller good morning. Ariane there are different things. With women, they have to go out of the workforce and come back in. Then they go out and come back in. Now, pay quality you cannot match that up. What do you think of that . Guest two things. First, yes, women have babies. That does not mean that we have to stay out and look after children. Men want to share that. Also, maybe it is a lesson to learn from germany and japan. If you make it so you can be independent as a woman either by having kids or by working you cant do both. Then a lot of women will not have kids anymore. Japan and germany have a terrible crisis because women who want to work and be educated and have a career are kind of forcefully dissuaded fromh having kids. You cannot combine work and career. There has to be a happy medium. We have to make it easier for families to have children. Child care at the moment it costs more and a lot of states than a year of college. We have to invest more in families to make it possible for everybody to work equally. Guest i think that part of what is going on here i dont want to accuse ariane of this. Some of the advocates want to change the way Americas Society is structured. Maybe men should spend as much time as women with kids. I have a son at cornell. It does not cost a year at cornell for childcare. It does not. Not even a year at the university of maryland, as an instate resident. We can make the statistics come out that way if we want to. I have done it in washington. Highquality child care for two kids you know that. Second children in lower income families it does not pay to work. They stay home. To make a sweeping statement i do not know that i agree with that. It is up to people to decide how they want society structured. Not to restructure society. It creates a enormous problems with measurement. Suppose i do a study of women with seven years of experience. But, in year 12, the women took five years off. And that was two years ago the man will be more productive. You lose so much in the practice of law. You also lose a lot in economics. It takes a long time to catch up. It will be difficult to comply with the law that requires you to prove. The burden of proof will be on the employer. It is basically saying that it will be difficult to pay everybody the same. We have Public School wage structures. I do not want the private sectors conducting themselves as badly as the typical Public School. Guest i think what we do is we set economic incentives. Families decide how they want to find themselves. We set incentives. If a woman earns less, then she will stay home and the father will stay at work. The new then you filled in for future wage gaps. Childcare is very expensive. For example, there was a study in new york state it cost 20,000. Cornell is about 40,000. 20,000 a year is very high. You want to have your kids to have quality childcare. If we set these incentives, we structure decisions. You say, you stay home and earn this do it. We know from all the millennial generations, young men and young women want to share more equally. Then they hit the workplace and hit discrimination. From law firms, they allways have wonderful paid parent leave policies. Nobody takes it. No man takes it because it is the end of your career. You cannot just legislate. You need to set economic incentives to push things in the right direction. If you think they guy do, there should be equality. Women and men should get the same. The wage gap hurts people lower down the income distribution. It leads to poverty. It leads to less earning for pensions. It is kind of an investment in the next generation. In investments to kids it invests into kids. Caller hello. I am from cincinnati. I want to give you a little history. I started working when i was 16. I lied about my age and got a job as a car hop. When i was 18 and out of high school, i got a job with kroger. I got married at 18 and had three children, continue to work. Retired after 36 years of service. When i retired i was only entitled to 80 of my Social Security because i was born email female. That is morally wrong. I did not realize i am married to a strong man. Men are so sensitive about wages. When wages come into a home, the home benefits. You get a nicer home, nicer car better educated, nicer vacations. Children get to where nicer clothes. Husbands are not that soft. They are worried about paying the mortgage and the utility bills. There are many years when my husband and i worked. I made more money than him and he was never offended. He was always happy. Host what do you want the guests to address . Host caller why, in 2014 do women only receive 80 of Social Security benefits . I paid in 100 . Guest i do not know that that is the law. It has to do with whether there are two incomes. It has to do with whether you collect on your husband or wifes earnings. We would have to get an expert but i am skeptical. Guest unfortunately, i do not know the details. I do know that there is something about the household and the highest earner. Guest if we had been told, we could have read up on Social Security. Host next call patricia in pennsylvania. Good morning. Caller hello. I would like to say two things, and be very brief. I love economics. What is she . One of the things in my mind is that you mentioned that women do not like to work. Guest hold on, i never said that women do not like to work. Please do not put that dont attribute that. Host let her finish her thought. Caller it brings in more money to the house. Host go ahead. Caller you are saying as an economics professor, pay equally. What are the jobs . Guest the availability of jobs is a big issue. I do not think this has to do with the gender gap. The u. S. Economy republican and democratic, from reagan years to the time Clinton Left Office we had both republicans and democrats. We had two of the most successful president s in the clinton and reagan in terms of getting programs in place. With these different views of the world, there were 3. 4 ec onomic growth. Since then with bush and obama it has grown up 1. 9 . To give you an idea of how little it may matter who is in the white house, the growth rate was equal 2. 3 . In a world where things are working right we can accomplish two percent productivity growth. That means unemployment grows each year. In some ways, it has. The adult participationra rate is way down. Talk about discrimination. 1 out of 6 adult men is unemployed with few prospects of finding a job. Hundreds of thousands of College Graduates are working as baristas. The availability of jobs is a big issue. It is much bigger than what we are talking about now. That is why we were brought here. Host is there a way to help . Not only for women who have to work, help them keep the job and maintain a good salary is there structural changes that could help . Guest i think we have learned a lot. They have women and men. Give more flexibility. At the moment, if you cannot or do not want to work a 60 hour week a lot of occupations, you basically go to a much lower paid area. There are good firms saying what do we do . Reduce the workload. You can work 40 hour weeks, but stay in your skilled area. You are a professional. Try and get away from all or northinthing. Use the technology that is there and look at jobs. Other areas for women and men are horrible practices. You do not know from daytoday how many hours you will work. That is retail, restaurants. You may come in at 2 00 and they say you work until business slows down. You may earn four hours wages one day one day you may have to stay 12 hours. If you have kids, it is difficult to do that. Use technology to get more predictability. That is very important. Other things there are studies on this. If you do not have paid leave. People are more likely to not come back when you have a kid. If you give 12 weeks, women come back. They keep their seniority. The company does not have to rerecruit. There are lots of things that employers can do. Host maybe the best way to go around is a mandate from government. Guest that is what we have right now de facto is followed terry. Voluntary. I can think of workplaces that need restructuring. Academia has a pretty good reputation. Especially when you look at tenuretrack faculty, as opposed to parttimers. Do not group us together. You have six years to compile a record of fulltime employment to make tenure. You tend to begin that process between the age of 26 and 29. That is primate for educated women to have children. Prime age for educated women to have children. We let people have time off and extend the period out. If you do that and you are strict. , then it still disadvantages women. Breaking up the six years is a lot of time. Teaching is easy. It is easy to become a good teacher, you just have to pay attention. So what we have tended to do is turn a blind eye. Were giving it to men. Then take time off as well. Men take time off as well. We give people an excuse to take time off. A lot of the records look the same. A lot of women are getting tenure. We are leveling the Playing Field by becoming very liberal. Lets talk about Investment Banking and law. If you want to make money, you go to the ivy league and you get a job on wall street. Theyre working 70 or 80 hours a week. If people work for 40 with less pay, they still will not be competitive. The people with 70 or 80 hours will be more experienced. They will be able to bring in new business. That is what really counts to be a lawyer or an investment banker. Treating these kids so harshly they adults, but i am 75. You have situations on wall street while people where people sleep on the can. That is absurd. We tend not to worry about employment practices. We say they are wealthy and they do not need our protection. That creates a bias towards women. How could you talk about competing with someone who has worked those hours . Host let me take a call, las vegas, nevada. Republican line. Caller a couple of things. Occupational deaths and hazards liberal arts degrees. I wonder if you calculated in the earnings of retirement. Women live five years longer. That is 8. 3 more working years. That is more income over a lifetime. That is quite a bit of money in the end. Thank you. Guest the first issue about occupational hazards that is often brought up as an explanation for the wage gap. It is Something Like 4000 people per year die on the job. That is horrible and they are mostly men. They mostly work in lowpaid occupations. Theyre not being paid for that. In terms of hazards, some of the most the occupations with the highest injuries is nursing, health care. Jobs where women typically are. Osha is focused on improving working conditions. Think about, lifting people, the things you have to clean up. It is not sweet and clean and easy. In terms of you are right, women have a longer life expectancy. I think it is one year, not five. But, that is why as a society, we need to provide for that. If you have a Pension System or retirement system and women earn less than men you make the problem worse. The wage gap will fix that. They will need less support and ken paper themselves. Can pay for themselves. Guest lets forget about people dying. Unpleasant work it may be that a lot of the unpleasant work is at the low end of the wage scale. When we compare people at comparable levels of education men tend to go into manufacturing and construction. Women tend to go into health care and so forth. A lot of the people who say it is comparable spend time in a steel mill. All of a sudden, your back in the 17th century. You feel like you need a metal hat and a pick ax. It is dark and grimy. When women go into manufacturing, they are involved in work that is repetitive. Men tend to get involved in heavy stuff. You have a natural segregation of men and women. Should we be saying as a society that the Steel Industry has to pay with the Health Care Industry pays . The reality is, the productivity of the Steel Industry or the industry that makes heavy diesel engines, they can sell the product for so much more. If we paid Health Care Workers fully paid people in engineering, they would not have Health Care Workers. They could not afford them. Guest what jobs women do in manufacturing we need more enforcement and opening of areas. Because they actually are women who want to work in those jobs and do not get in. Guest we agree about that. They should get in. Host guest same with construction. We just did a study of women in construction. The women there are doing very well. There are almost as many women in construction as lawyers. Before the recession, that was the case. It is a lot of women. The number of women who say that they experience daily harassment and income inequality is staggering. And you still make it . That is part of enforcement and we need the law. The other issue is in manufacturing, there is clean manufacturing. It is not quite as dirty and grimy anymore as it used to be. We have Good Technology to make it better. That is an area where we can do more to get over segregation. Host if you are just joining us, the economics of payee quality is our topic. Two guessts joining us. Ariane hegwisch is with womens policy research and peter morici is an economics professor at the university of maryland. Someone asked about pay and who makes what. Is it easy for the irs to see if women are discriminated against . Dont they record pay structures . Guest that is a good question. The National Academy of sciences was commissioned to do a study of how the equal Opportunity Commission could collect better pay data and find out what happens inside companies. People say that the irs gets all of this data. They are absolutely confidential. Also data that the department of labor collected on what employers pay. People say you cannot do that. In terms of finding out who is paid what, there used to be established services. Companies would say how much they pay different people. They no longer conduct those. Now you have to turn to glass door. They are kind of individual initiatives to share wages. You put up your wage and i tell you mine. On the internet. People exchange more. Or occupational data is collected. You can look at how much money a male engineer and woman engineer makes. Not within companies. Guest we conduct every five years a census of manufacturing. That is 12 of the economy. Our data does not give very deep. Get very deep. You can get pretty fine information by industry. It is more in manufacturing than education. That is very problematic. That is one of the reasons there is so much dispute about what is causing what. Economists would like to have better information. Any decent economist once the economy to operate efficiently and good decisions to be made. I grew up in a very rough bluecollar neighborhood in new york city. A lot of the parents were immigrants. A lot of my classmates a significant number, in construction. I was the second child in the sophomore class. They said you will have to get an education because you are too small to work in construction. I was before all of the hispanics got into construction. Theyre not big, burly people. If small his standing hispa nic males can do construction, then women can. Were not dealing with the jackhammers we had when i was a kid. When i was a kid, they were using picks and shovels. There are things that women can do if they are inclined. We go back to cultural things. It is much easier to get a woman to go into the Electronics Factory then it is to get her to go into a diesel factory. Maybe women are being denied. We also disagree about a lot of things. We share mutual respects. That is the product of education. We do not have it is easy to talk about changing the way the people would have opportunity and education. It is hard to legislate that. Host let me take a call from covington, georgia. Democratic line. Caller two questions. This is a backdoor way for unions what will they do when companies turn in their paperwork . They will single out nonunion companies in violation of these regulations. In the people who go in will do ride a longs of the union members. It is just another way to be on them. My next question is they are talking about getting money from pell grants. 450 million was given to big bird. Wouldnt that be better used for pell grants for women to get ahead . Guest so first lady, unions firstly unions. Unionized women face less of a wage gap than nonunion women. That is because unions are not as effective where the wage gap is the biggest. They are also about transparency and fairness and negotiating pay for everybody. I think unions are good for women. Theres is quite a lot of proof that they are. The second issue is where should the act be used as a launching ground for unions. I am not sure how that would help unions. The law is set up to help individuals, already under the Labor Relations act. People are formally able to negotiate their pay. That has not really had unions advance. I think that this act is more neutral about unions. The second act the second question, should there be more Financial Support for pell grants . Absolutely. I fully agree. And Community Colleges about half of the students have kids. Most of them are women. Particularly among black women and hispanic women. A lot of them have kids, work full time, and go to college. Really, to give people more of a break to advance themselves would be fantastic. Guest i know the unions are strong supporters of the pay fairness act. I do not see this as advantage inc. Them advantageing them. With regards to unions being good for women i think it is important to recognize that unions are effective. What people do is classified. Productivity does not change among workers. All workers should earn the same amount of money who do the same task. It is knowledge to workers in the same office and what is more productive because they focus better. Unions when i was at the university of maine, the faculty was unionized. There were disparities in pay between men. Forget about men and women. It does not lend itself to that. One of the reasons that unions are in decline is that more work falls into the category of it is hard to put people in categories and pay everyone the same. The fairness act would put everyone in the same category. It would create a lot of problems. You would get people with Different Levels of productivity earning the same amount of money. With health pell grants, we need to look at what is happening with boys in america. We are placing more emphasis on children performing sooner. Boys naturally mature later. The system discriminates against boys. Many people on the left ignore the fact that boys are being given a tough time in high schools and colleges. That is one of the reason that 60 of College Graduates are female. We know that in minority communities, where they are poor, the performance of boys is a particular problem. The results of a lot of women having children by the age of 25 not getting much Child Support or help. The father is being irresponsible and so forth. It is a rough area to talk about. That is why god made tenure. Rudy giuliani wanted to set up a high school for boys. Hillary clinton came out of the subversively against it. Vociferously against it. If we are going to say that women earn less money in the workforce and need special attention to make it right, that is fine. We ought to require my university and every other university to find a way to grant as many degrees for boys as they do to girls. I doubt that anybody in the academy would want that imposed on them. There are some of the most ardent advocates of this legislation that have never had to make a paycheck. If were are going to start cap advocacy and fairness, then do it across the board. Host matt in rome texas. Independent line. Caller i agree a lot with what peter is saying. If you give the people the same pay and let them know it let them talk about that. There will be a lot of animosity for people who are not doing who are perceived as not doing the same amount of work as their coworkers. There will be animosity. Why do i have to work so hard when this guy over here is doing this . And vice versa for women. Why should i work so hard when the sky is not pulling his weight . This guys is not pulling his weight . Are they talking about the starting pay or throughout the years . Guest it is every paycheck. I should say that it does not mean that Everybody Needs to be paid the same. It just means that you cannot discriminate and how you decide what people are paid. We now that we know that if you talk to people who supervise, men tend to come up a lot and say i need more. Women do not tend to do that so much. For a variety of reasons. You might get to a situation where a man gets 5,000 more per year than the woman. The percentage increase goes up and the gap widens, even though performance is not different. As with Lily Ledbetter of course she got very angry when she found out she was paid that much less. Sometimes, anger may be justified. Being a manager means you have to manage people and their performance. Sometimes it means telling them, sorry, youre not doing as well. You have to pull up your socks a bit more. The paycheck fairness check will not force employers to pay everybody else the same. It will not force employers to reveal their pay structure. Human Resource Managers are specifically prohibited from discussing pay. It is only about your own pay. Secondly, fairness when people know that there is unfairness it affects their productivity also. The research is still out on what it would do to productivity if there was absolute transparency. Guest the problem with the paycheck fairness act, with regard to this issue, and the most salient problem if there is the difference in pay, the presumption will be because it is there on the basis of discrimination. You have to prove that it is not. As opposed to the burden of proof being as opposed to the employer saying, i was productive, i am paid less because i asked for a raise less often. We have to look at who is enforcing us. The people in the Justice Department who enforce this do have kind of a biased and they are difficult to live with. If they improved the bureaucracy and made it more handy, which is difficult to do we have a tainted judiciary. The english knew how to pick unbiased judges. We pick republicans and democrats and they make determinations and reliable ways. The same things happens with government bureaucracies. Those are the kinds of problems. It is the way the law is structured. The burden of proof is tough on employers. Who is going to adjudicate this . Why do we have Immigration Reform . Nobody trusts president obama to enforce the border. We have to wait for the next president. Host charlie is the next call from florida. Republican line. Caller thank you for taking my call. I have been out of the workforce for 14 years now. I can only relate to back then and personal experience. I managed a group of heavy equipment. It was decided loosely, that we wanted a female employee. And it was very difficult to get applications for that type of position. Finally we did. It was a disaster. That is one situation that we can talk about. Another may not be meaningful. This whole conversation of pay quality is political. It is kind of ridiculous. Large companies, smart companies, pay people what theyre worth. That has been true for many years. It is certainly true that males make more money. Would you pay a female Football Team the same amount as you would a male Football Team . Heavy workloads like construction and plumbing and heavy manufacturing women just do not seem to want to go into that field. Guest the color paint this as a political argument. Guest i think it is political. People are fed up with it. It is an economic issue for families. It is an economic issue for women. Politicians pick up on it. It would not be a political issue if it was not something that politicians thought had a track with families. In terms of paying people what they are worth i wish. The issue is that we do find out, when this does not happen through law cases. They are very stressful for everyone involved. There is a big case going around about women and men working in large jewelry retail chains. The reason it is there is because when of the women found out that a newly hired man with less experience than almost every one of the women working there, was being paid more per hour than the highest selling woman who had been there for 10 years. Unfortunately, we think that nowadays this would not happen. But it still is happening. I fully agree with you. People should be paid what theyre worth. Unfortunately, it is not the case yet. Guest Greater Transparency would solve that particular problem. I think it is fair to say there is less of a problem today than there was 20 years ago. That brings me to the comment that the gentleman made about smart companies. Employers with welleducated people do not do this sort of thing because the women are smarter. My son is dating. He is a law student at cornell and he is dating a law student at cornell. I do not think you could snooker that young lady the way you could a sales clerk. Unfortunately, Everyone Wants to reference Lily Ledbetter. They are referencing a world that does not exist today in the way it existed then. Can we find situations . Yes. We probably would have less cases if we had better transparency. Then there is the issue of how far we want to go. Theres a right to privacy. We want to go further than we do. Economists like transparency. Is it a political issue . This bill was written so that the democrats are not comfortable with that. One senator, who is independent voted against it because he says it is unworkable. It was structured this way so that republicans and democrats could vote yes and republicans would vote no. The republicans would have to stop it in the house and the president could spend the next two months campaigning. That does not serve your interest very well. The reality is, this president is probably paying for an earthquake praying for and are quick at night so he can avoid reflection on obamacare and the lousy economy. Lacking that basically women are being used right now politically. By proposing a law that does not give them the things that they could get, getright now. And better remedies by proposing a draconian law. Would you be happy to have a law that deals with the transparency issues alone . Guest that is what president obama did when he passed the regulation, which is something he could get through. For the private companies, they have to they have different transparency. Guest that is what he could do. He probably would impose the city could. Would you be happy to have a bill proposed . Then you could win the transparency issue. Guest i would be happy if we at the transparency. We do need the other issues. We do need better data. Guest if you want the whole pie if you do not want to compromise, you know what you get . An empty plate for dessert. Guest i am happy to join steps. I think transparency is an important first step. Pay data is also important. In effect, we do not know much about what is going on in companies. Some of the issues on medication litigation i am not a lawyer. Some of the way the law has been used and it is drawn up, dismiss some of the claims which, to me, seemed to make perfect sense. It suggests that a major forming. I am not a lawyer, i am staying out of it. Almost all other high Income Countries have this you can compare high stress jobs like call centers or dealing with clients who scream at you all the time. Compare that to high stress male jobs. Same occupation, same qualifications, same level of education. Both jobs are high stress. You should be paid at a similar level. That is the next step to go. We are very willing to compromise. Guest i cannot imagine you being difficult at a call center. You have been so simple with me. If the intent was not to be political, they would have broken this bill down. They would have set up the transparency thing. The administration is constantly looking for things where you can paint the republicans as the party of no. There is so little confidence in his integrity or enforcing the law as it is written. Host we have to wrap up. Guest there was a political agenda to get the republicans to vote no. So hillary can run on this in two years hence. That is unfortunate. Women are being used by this process. Instead of getting some of the remedies that they deserve. Host we have been joined for this last hour to talk about pay quality issues by two guests. You just heard from peter mori ci from the university of maryland. We also heard from ariane he gewisch. Coming up, we are going to talk about the tax preparation industry. You may have called upon a tax preparer to help you. The senate has held a meeting to look at oversight and were going to talk about it. Elaine povich will join us. This has washington journal continues. There is no question that congress routinely the administration routinely does not pick the truth to the American Public. It is not just about inaccuracies with the Affordable Health care act. It is the absence of speaking the truth about where we are. Where are we . We are now at a standard of living the same as we had in 1988. We now have unfunded obligations and that of 1. 1 million per family. That needs to be spoken so we can build a context for the tough things that will come. The biggest problem i see with congress is the denial of reality. You can still be a good person and still my reality. We all have flaws. We all deny realities because we do not want to face him. The fact is that we have not had the leadership in this country. Im talking president ial and congressional that would stand up and tell the truth to the American Public about the situation we find ourselves in. I have my idea of what caused this. Senator coburn on his career politics and reasons for retirement. Sunday night at 8 00 on q a. He was interviewed in 1942 on immigration. He said, it was very interesting all of these accounts of what he said. It is clear to me that he had serious doubts about the immigration integration of baseball. He said they want our fans. We are outgrowing the major leagues in games. We are packing them in. We think they want our fans. If you want to integrate, take old themes. Whole black all star teams, into the majors. Theyre really interested in increasing the talent of those teams they should not take one or two teams. We have bunches of players who are good enough to play in the major league baseball. Satchel paige and integrating professional baseball. Tonight at 8 00 on cspan3. Washington journal continues. Host earlier this week, in the senate, hearing was held on the tax preparation industry. Chairman ron white and the Senate Finance committee discussed concerns about the accuracy of preparation services. Heres a bit of what he had to say. [video clip] because the tax code is so byzantine and so, located in so overgrown, nearly 80 million americans pay for help repairing their tax returns. What is especially alarming is that most of those paid preparers do not have to meet any standards for competence in order to prepare someone elses tax return. Host to talk about the hearing and the issue is Elaine Povich. Thank you for joining us. How did we get to this hearing . Guest the gao and other agencies have been looking into this. They found that half of the tax preparers do not have to be licensed at all. There is a tremendous error rate. More than half of the returns. 60 , in fact, are not right. If you pay money to someone to do your taxes, you should expect them to be accurate. They have looked into those and they are trying to either make them meet a standard like 4 s tates do. Four states set regulations, you have to take a test and pass a course. There are other agencies in the country that are voluntarily so. They are socalled enrolled agents, certified by the irs. Cpsas have to meet standards. Uncle charlie can hang a shuttle out there and say charlies tax service with no certification. Host if you are a tax preparer, you think that each one has a level of expertise. Some kind of degree. Guest not necessarily the case. About half of them do not. Host is there any gender definition by the irs . Guest yes. They have enrolled agents. You have to know you are doing. It is not required. If you go to a text tax preparer and say they are a cpa they have to meet some kind of standard. But you could just go to someone with a sign in the window. How many signs and be seen along the road . As you drive to work, there is a big orange sign. Get your refund now. There is nothing required for them to be certified at all. Host one of the people who talked about this was nina olsen, a taxpayer advocate. She spoke broadly about widespread changes that she was seeing in this industry. Does that bear itself out . Hasnt changed much . Guest it has. I have seen taxpreparation software. Anybody can do taxes. Particularly the preparers who cater to the underserved community. People who do not buy the software or understand it. In particular, a story in the New York Times found that the eitc community, the earned income tax credit they were, but do not make enough to pay taxes. That community is less sophisticated than most communities. They are more likely to go to and an expectant inexpensive tax preparer. Host has there ever been a case where the irs tried to set a general standard as far as level of expertise . Guest indeed. They wrote a whole bunch of regulations. They were set to implement them when a Group Representing me independent preparers took them to court. The court ruled that the irs did not have the authority to set these rules. This is something that the congress and the president had to do. That is partially why senators had this hearing. This is a prelude to writing some legislation. The court threw it out. There are no changes at this point. Host does that mean that in the future there will not be an effort to apply more rules . Guest it seems like the senator is going in a direction. Who knows. You never know will happen. Host the topic is taxpreparation and the industry. Does it need more regulation . We are getting your thoughts not only with our guest, but others will join us. If you want to share your experience or give your opinion, here is how you can do so. 4 lines if you are in the tax profession and want to give your opinion or insight, 2025853883. We will hear first up from don in branson, missouri. Tax professional. Caller how are you . My wife and i are both tax preparers. We passed the test and pay are 60 per year. I know they are trying to beef that up. I can understand it. At the same time, they need to beef up the irs employees we have to deal with. Sometimes, we have to read their own regulations to them for them to understand what we did. I am probably going to try to clean up the whole industry. Start at the top. Host it is the tax preparers and their relationship with the irs. Guest i do not belong to either one of those sets of people. I am sure they are experts in what they do and there are times they have to go at each other. I would rather have my preparer on the phone to the irs than not. Host for those who are sanctioned, what does that mean . Guest they have to meet a standard and renew it. They have to keep up with the tax law. That is one of the things that is most important. Every year, the laws change. Your preparer has to be prepared to apply those new relations and rules to your tax return. Just because you deducted 7. 5 of your income for medical expenses does not mean you can do it this year. That standard has changed. It is now 10 for most. Host who technically falls under the irs umbrella . Guest the enrolled agents. The ones who get the certification. You can believe it or not believe it, but honestly there is some kind of standing that they are enrolled. Host veronica from rockville, maryland. Democrats line. Caller i just wanted to quickly speak about my experience with a tax preparer. I guess that is what they formally go by. Host go ahead. Caller my experience was when youre in college, i came back home to work a lowincome job. I had my taxes prepared by someone in the office of a cpa. I cannot believe how many mistakes this person made. I had this conversation the other day with my sister. I received correspondence from a irs stating that my information was incorrect. My income at that time was only 20,000. I did go to a place that my family thought was reputable. I had so many problems. I did pay them. There were so many errors. Moving forward, after i graduated from college, then on to graduate school, i actually did my own taxes because its so easy to use the tax Software Like turbo tax, and i just feel more confident knowing that i can input the information direct until myself as opposed to relying on someone whos not even a professional. Guest sounds like the caller has her taxes well in hand. Look at the end of the day, your taxes are your responsibility. And no matter who you get to prepare them, your conversation with the Internal Revenue service is your conversation. Yes, the tax preparer can go to bat for you if need be the good ones do, but your signature is at the bottom of the form, youre responsible t. Really does, as the caller says, behoove you to check up on it. Host and it goes back to the larger issue of perception. Take it to a professional, obviously the professional knows what he or she is doing. Guest maybe not. Host you heard our guest reference Government Accountability office talk about a study they did of Tax Professionals. Joining us on the phone, jay mcteague of the g. A. O. Hes their Strategic Issues director. Talk about an undercover investigation that they did. Thank you for joining us. Thank you for having me pedro. Host tell us a little bit about how this study came to be. Caller well, we were asked by congress, specifically senator wyden and Ranking Member hatch of the Senate Finance committee, to review the oversight and the quality of paid preparers. As you know, were in the midst of tax season, and everybodys rushing to get their taxes done. And as ms. Povich said, millions of taxpayers relied on pay preparers to provide them hopefully with accurate and fully compliant tax returns. And i. R. S. Also relies on pay preparers to help them enforce tax laws effectively and collect all the revenue that funds the government. You know, despite the importance of preparers, there is a hole in the regulation. Again, we talked about attorneys and c. P. A. s and enrolled agents having to meet certain standards but over 55 of paid preparers there are no standards. A few states do have regulations, but theyre in the minority. Host so you go undercover to 19 select tax preparers. You present them with two scenarios, one is called a waitress scenario, one is called a mechanics scenario. Talk a little bit about what you find after you presented those scenarios. Caller thats correct. I was struck by your previous caller who described her experience as lower income, single person, and it actually reminded me of our waitress scenario. You know, unfortunately what she encountered was exactly what we encountered in 17 of the 19 visits. We walked away with incorrect refunds or incorrect returns that were prepared for us. They were all over the board. Errors ranged from the refund being 52 less than what the person was entitled to to more than 3, hundred overstated to more than 3,500 overstated in terms of the refund a. Loft times the errors had to do with not reporting side income. In our waitress scenario, that meant cash tip income. Our other scenario, our mechanic did some work on the side, so he had, again, some income that was not purely wages. Even though our undercover agents were explicit about having this income, a number of times they were just ignored or, in one case, actually in two cases, the paid preparer actually showed our undercover agent what his Tax Liability would be if he claimed, as he should, the cash income. You know some of the other stories that we encountered in the waitress scenario, the paid preparer actually told other undercover agent that if she declared her cash tips, she would raise red flags for her employer, and he may be audited because of that. Host jay mctigue, after you completed the study, did the 19 preparers know they were part of the study . Caller they did not. As you mentioned this was an undercover study. Basically we will be sharing our findings with the i. R. S. To see if they want to pursue any actions to correct some of the information and, you know, the experience that we encountered with these preparers, but, you know, we dealt with one individual in office, and it may not be representative of the office itself, and certainly with only 19 site visits its not generalizeable, but when you have such significant findings, 17 out of 19 and in fact, we did a study in 2006 along the same lines and had very similar results in terms of errors and inaccurate returns. Host jay mctigue talking about the undercover study of tax preparers. Mr. Mctigue, if they wanted to find it online, where can they go . Caller that would be gao. Gov. The name of the study is paid prepare returns, in a limited study, preparers made significant errors. Its right on our main page. Host and thats jay mctigue. Thank you very much. Caller youre welcome. Thanks for having me. Host any takeway from that . Guest sure. The criticism is, only, they only did 19, 17 made mistakes. But then you look at the earlier study. They again did 19, and all 19 of them made mistakes. And then you look at a survey that the i. R. S. Did in 2008, i believe it was and 60 of the paid tax preparers returns had errors. Strangely, only 50 of the tax returns that ordinary citizens did had errors. So if you take all of that together, you come to the conclusion that there is a problem here. Host this is joe from ashe, North Carolina independent line. Joe, good morning. Caller good morning. Now, my father was a c. P. A. My brother is a c. P. A. My cousins husband is a c. P. A. Now, you blame the tax preparer h. R. Block, come on in, be a tax preparer, and they give you three, four weeks of knowledge. Why are you blaming the tax preparer when he when i. R. S. Cannot keep up on the changes . I. R. S. Changes every quarter, doesnt change every year, madam. Every quarter they change what the rules are. If you would go to a consumption tax, people who are on welfare disability, when you buy something, you pay it. You would eliminate all this nonsense that the i. R. S. Does and flag stuff. You would be able to get more money, put more people to work in the state and federal, and you would get rid of this nonsense. Host ill just add another tweet on the same topic, saying that doesnt congress and the i. R. S. Set up the tax code to take advantage of the middle class, hide overpayments with good even refunds, etc. . Guest im not going to take a position on how the i. R. S. Does it, quite frankly. All im looking at is the end of the funnel, where taxpayers are having to prepare their tax returns, do their own or have somebody else do it. Hey, my brotherinlaw is a c. P. A. , ok . Ive gotten it from the family about tax preparers. And i understand, because many, if not most of the certified folks who do taxes are quite good at it and they do keep up with all of the regulations that change whenever they change. All the g. A. O. Is saying is that thats not the entire universe of tax preparation that goes on in this country. Host and ultimately, it goes and i think senator wyden even referenced it the complexity of the tax code itself. Guest it is very complex, and thats why people pay other people to do their taxes because in many cases, this is not a simple trick. Host tampa, florida, antonio, republican line, also a Tax Professional. Good morning. Caller good morning. I got my question is that, where are we heading with this . If taxes ive been in taxes for 36 years. Im a c. P. A. Im also a cgma. And for 36 years ive been doing taxes seeing the law get more and more complex. And individuals are expected to do their own returns. They dont need certification. Are we heading towards certifying individuals . I mean where are we heading with these laws . Were going to be certified by the i. R. S. Pretty soon. Were going to get to the point where the i. R. S. Is going to file the return for us . Host antonio, im assuming that youre not an enrolled agent with the i. R. S. . Caller im a c. P. A. I dont have to be an enrolled agent. Host ok. Does your state require law as far as update of you know, education caller yes. I have to take 40 credits, c. P. E. s a year to keep my c. P. A. Status. Host and Elaine Povich, expand also on the fact that he said, as a c. P. A. , he doesnt fall under the i. R. S. Guest right, but in order to keep his c. P. A. Certification, as he pointed out, does he have to renew his certifications and take tests and whatever, and thats terrific. Only four states require certification of nonc. P. A. s and nonenrolled agents. Maryland, new york, oregon and california. And one of the other things that the g. A. O. Found in their report was that the error rate in oregon was lower than the error right in many other places. Now, its not perfect. California had a pretty stiff error rate, so, you know, certifying agents is not a perfect system. But they argue its at least a good system to keep people in the pipeline in teaching them. Host jack, up next bradenton florida, democrat, also a Tax Professional. Hello. Caller hi. How are you . Host fine, thank you. Youre on. Caller great. I just wanted to say, i hope im not incriminating myself here. Im 29 years old. I absolutely have no licenses, no degrees whatsoever for a tax return. The only license i have is to do pool and spa work, which is my main line of work. However, for the past couple of years and this year i do my friends tax returns. I have the software, you know, like most people do. I paid for the software. And people are scared of their taxes. So i have friends come over. Most of them are in their 20s, and they have kids and they sit down and they bring their w2s, and i just type in all the information, and i tell them im going to take 15 , because at the end of the tax return it says how much do you want deposited into this account and how much do you want deposited into this snkt im going to take 15 of your return, and im going to do it for you, and they are always happy. You know, you go step by step through the software d. I. C. , deductions all of that, i go through it, and, of course, the software itself has a little checker that goes through. It tells you if youre at an audit risk. And at the end we calculate, and i say im going to put, im going to put my 15 into my bank account and the rest is going to go into yours. And theyre always receiving you know, 2,000 to 6,000 because of their children. Ive been doing this for years, and i dont know if i can get in trouble for it, but its just what i do. Host youre concerned that if someone wanted to sue you or Something Like that for doing this or just that you practiced it without any background . Caller i just practice it with no background. Its very easy with the software, because most people want to walk into walmart where they have these people that take exuberant amounts of your money just to do your tax return, and i just tell people via social media ill do it for 15 of your return, and you wouldnt believe how many people most of them, like i said single moms show up who have two kids, who get an enormous e. I. C. Return. Host ok, thanks. Guest ok, he is absolutely pointing out everything that weve been talking about. No, youre not going to run afoul of any regulations because, hello, there arent. You dont have to be certified to do what youre doing. Youre doing it perfectly within the law. Theres nothing that says you cant. Ironically, you mentioned that you have to have a license to clean pools. Thats exactly what the g. A. O. Pointed out. You have to have a license to clean a pool, you have to have a license to cut hair. You have to have a license to do nails. But you dont have to have a license to do tax returns. Host if someone has their taxes prepared by someone like the caller, is there Legal Recourse if something goes wrong or if they feel like theyve been wronged . Host well, you can sue the preparer of course you can, in any of these circumstances you can. It sounds like what hes doing is helping friends and, you know, you have to look at it as a contractual relationship. It is, when you sign the bottom of the return. The it is a contractual relationship. So sure, there is some recourse. Host as far as the cost is concerned, what are tax preparers charging these days . Guest i honestly have no idea, but i gather from anecdotal information that theres a huge range. First of all, some tax returns are way more complicated than others. If you are buying and selling stock, if you are involved in a Small Business, if you have all these yes, your return is much more complicated, and it would require somebody with expertise and probably cost you more to get that person to prepare your returns. A simple, you know w2 and eitc earned income and maybe a couple of kids deduction and whatever for that, thats a lot easier. And in general, the preparers charge by the complexity of the return. Some of them have flat fees for certain types of returns. But its all over the place. It varies very widely. Host nelson is up next hollywood, Florida Republican line. Caller good morning. As usual, here we are concentrating on the wrong thing to be concentrating on. Were talking about setting up another regulation to be administered by government with more bure increase, and as a result of that, with more potential problems. The concentration should be based on where the problem is, and the problem is the tax code. If the tax code is simplified, if the government would do its job and simplify the tax code, this conversation would not even be taking place. And bggets that, someone who cleans a and besides that, someone who cleans a pool needs a license and shows exactly what the problem is. You need a license for just about anything these days. That is my comment. Thank you for listening host and another person off of twitter just says the fact that americans have to buy turbo tax or hire tax preparers is clear evidence that the tax code is way too complex. Guest that is widespread opinion, honestly, that it is too complicated. Back in 1986, they tried to simplify the tax code and did a fairly good job of it. They passed a big bill in congress that cut down the number of brackets cut down the number of deductions, really made a lot of progress toward simplifying the tax code. But since 1986, there have been more exemptions, more deductions, more levels, more surtaxes and different changes in the law. The law has crept back up to the point where its once again just as complicated as it was before the alleged tax simplification in 1986, and even that wasnt simple. So you can argue about the tax code, but the fact is this is an entire industry thats grown up around the idea that the tax code has become so complex that an ordinary person has a very hard time doing it. Host we had a senator at one time going with dave camp last year, primarily trying an effort to simplify the tax code. Where are we on that effort . Guest nowhere. I dont think its going to happen. Host why not . Guest because it sounds ironic, but simplifying the tax code is complex. And for every deduction there is theres an entire constituency out there that loves it. I mean, the most popular deduction on the tax code right now is the Home Mortgage interest deduction. Im not going to take a position on whether its good or bad, but it is a thing and it exists, and people love it. And so any time you would say to them, well, were going to simplify the tax code, but were getting rid of the Home Mortgage deduction, there would be a huge outcry from the entire Home Builders industry, the entire Home Mortgage industry, the entire real estate industry, not to mention joe and jane homeowner who love their deduction. This is not an easy trick. Host lets hear from jerry, and jerry is from massachusetts, democrats line, Tax Professional. Hi there. Caller yes, hi. I wanted to comment, im an aarp certified volunteer. I do tax returns at no charge. Im often wondering why were limited to about 5,000 five million, im sorry filings a year, when its a completely free service. We do everything except business kinds of returns, and at a level of complexity that is quite surprising. So i wanted to call to let people know, first off its not limited to seniors. We will do any return typically between age older older than age 25, provided their income is typically less than 75,000 a year. We see people who go to h r block who are paying 200 to 300 for a service that we can prepare literally in a halfhour. Im tested each year. And furthermore, beyond that whenever we too a return theres called a quality audit thats required by the i. R. S. , which means a second tax preparer in the office must review the tax preparation by the first person. Thats required by the i. R. S. Im really kind to kind of advocate and let people know that we are not limited to seniors, and typically, again, its a nocost service. Were throughout the country. Im amazed that people would go to h r block quite frankly. Host thanks, jerry. Guest there are a number of Free Services like that, not just for seniors, but there are a number of Public Service agencies and private agencies that deal primarily with underserved communities, poor communities, minority communities that dont have access and also dont have funds. But this sort of thing exists all over the country. If a tax payer is interested in obtaining those services, its not that hard to find. You can look it occupant internet, just say free tax preparation, look for a reputable organization, like a Public Service group or aarp or Something Like the minnesota folks that do it. Every state has got free tax preparation out there. Again, its your taxes. Theres nothing to say that the guy who does it for free is any better or any worse than the guy who charges you 200 to 600. Check it out yourself. Host earlier this year, a case brought against the i. R. S. Got a verdict. The person, the lawyer behind the effort was dan with the institute of justice, and hes an attorney for that attorney, joining us on the phone. Welcome. Mr. Alban, are you there . Lets try him again in just a bit. But as far as the discussion is concerned, we can talk about that in a little bit. Going back to tax reform a little bit, is it not that you said it was difficult. Is there political appetite to try to make changes to the code . I honestly dont know what the appetite is right now, but i would say that getting, you know things are not moving at an expeditious fashion on capitol hill in any corridor. So to say that this particular area would be one that would move quickly i think would probably not be correct. Host lets try dan again. Are you there . Caller yes, i am. Good morning. Host good morning. Tell us about the institute of institute. What is that . Caller its a libertarian Public Interest law firm. We litigate demace four main areas to protect peoples Constitutional Rights. We litigate cases involving property rights, economic liberty, free speech, and school choice. And the case that we brought against the i. R. S. Regarding tax preparer licensing is one of our economic liberty cases, where were vindicating the right to earn an honest living, free from arbitrary and unnecessary government intervention. Host a quick explanation of the case you brought, if you would. Caller sure. We challenged the i. R. S. s authority to impose a licensing scheme on tax return preparers because in a federal agency, they cannot act without congressional authorization. The i. R. S. Had no Statutory Authority to move forward with the licensing scheme. There had been eight different bills in congress in the past 10 years that would have given him this authority, but none of those bills passed so the i. R. S. Just sort of went forward unilaterally and tried to impose the licensing scheme without any congressional authority. And when we challenged it, they pointed to an 1884 statute called the horse act of 1884 that they said justified their attempt to license tax return preparers. We went to court on that, and neither the u. S. District court in d. C. Nor the d. C. Circuit court of appeals bought that argument, and they threw out the i. R. S. s regulations. Host tell us who you were representing and why you were representing them. Caller absolutely. We were representing three independent tax return preparers from across the country. The lead plaintiff runs an independent tax service in the south side of chicago in a pretty impoverished neighborhood. She serves largely lowincome members of her neighborhood. We also represented a man whos now 82 years old. Hes a korean war veteran who prepares taxes on his dining room table and has for the past 30 years in wisconsin. He actually hangs a wooden jingle outside of his house every tax season that has his name and says he prepares taxes. We finally represented a certified Financial Planner from hoe boning, new jersey. He has graduate degrees from m. I. T. Has been on wall street , and provides Financial Services for his clients and wanted to be able to provide full service Financial Services so that he not only advises them on how to do investments and how to manage their money, but also helps them with their taxes. Two of them would have been forced to close their tax preparation businesses because of these licensing regulations, and ms. Loving would have had a much harder time competing with the big box, you know, like h r block chain preparers that operate also on the south side of chicago. Thats why we sued on their behalf. Host so if Congress Gave the i. R. S. Authority to pursue more regulations, what do you think about that zpirs foremost, and do you think that would happen . I think its a terrible idea. It would be poor Public Policy for a number of different reasons. First of all, the licensing regulations are largely being pushed by the big tax preparation chains, because they know its going to squeeze out the little guy. Its going to push out the small, independent mom and pop preparers who are going to have a harder time paying the compliance costs, both in terms of time and money, to comply with these licensing regulations. But h r block and Jackson Hewitt and the big the big tax industry insiders, they have the financial resources, and they benefit from economies of scale, and so they can afford to absorb the cost of complying with the licensing regulations, because in the long run, it will give them a bigger share of the market. Thats the first reason that it should be rejected as bad Public Policy. The second reason is that its going to harm consumers. When you create a shortage in the market, you drive up prices, and you reduce choices. People who were previously happy customers of someone like Elmer Killian or john gambino would have top find someone else to prepare their taxes, and in some cases, folks might decide, no, im not going to decide someone to do, it im going to give it a go on my own. And in some cases, those folks may be less prepared, less qualified to prepare taxes than whoever it is that was preparing them before. You also have the problem where, you know, there has been fairly vigorous competition in the tax preparation market, but when you put in the barriers to entry, it makes it very difficult for people to come in and compete with h r block. Of course, another organization that lobbied for these regulations was infewity, the makers of turbo tax. They stand to benefit the most from these regulations because the regulations dont even apply to tax software. Of course, turbo tax benefits the most from these regulations because not only does it impose a cost on all of their competitors, but imposes no cost on them. The final reason that these regulations would be very bad Public Policy is because they offer a false promise, and they dont really show any indication that they would fix anything. Theres no reason to believe that taking a test or continuing education courses is going to have any effect on issues of fraud. Dishonest preparers can take exams and dishonest prepare considers sit through continuing educations courses just as well as honest prepare considers. Theres also no reason to think that licensing or i. R. S. Mandated training are going to fix the issue in terms of error rates. In a study they found a 61 error rate on returns prepared by i. R. S. , trained and certified preparers in the volunteer program. I. R. S. Employees have also had similarly high error rates on just answering a single tax question. Scommoip thats dan alban with the institute for justice, an attorney bringing a suit against the i. R. S. , and heard the verdict of that. Mr. Alban, thanks for your time. Caller thank you. Host any takeway from that, Elaine Povich . Guest couple of things. First of all the tax preparation industry is gigantic. There are more tax preparers in the country than there are police and firefighters combined. Its true. You can look it up. Go to facethefacts. Org, an organization i used to work for. We did some research on this. Its a very big industry. Secondly i would say that i interviewed mr. Killian out in eagle, wisconsin. Hes a delightful gentleman. Hes been doing tacks for a very long time. Mr. Killian knows his limitations. He only does simple returns. He only does them on paper. He doesnt use tax software, and he has a very loyal clientele. The regulations that most of the states have are pretty simple. They do require a course. They do require a test. They do require certification. The fee to become a tax prepare preparer is something less than 100. Its not particularly onerous. I find it hard to understand why a successful business would go out of business if this kind of regulation were imposed. It might drive some of the real small folks out. Its interesting that mr. Killian is one of those who prepares the taxes on paper, his kitchen table. Only 7 of the returns that the i. R. S. Gets gets are on paper. Everything else is electronically filed. And they say, and i have no way of knowing whether this is true or not but electronic filers tend to make fewer errors because the software itself will do the math for them, and thats where an awful lot of the errors occur, in the math department. Host tanya from martinsburg, West Virginia, next, independent line. Hi. Caller hi. In 2008 when the banks were bailed out, they got two pieces of paper giving them billions of dollars. My husband and i went in to file our taxes that year. We had to sign 11 papers with our signatures, and i was pretty darn mad about it, too. You have over 2. 1 trillion sitting off seas. Nobodys going touch that money. They waiting to get a lower tax rate to bring that money back here, but nobodys going after them. This is just another way to go after the little guy and the poor guy. Guest hey at least today sign those returns, you know . You signed them, you read them youre responsible. Take care of yourself in that situation. I think you need to understand that taxpayers taxpayers need to understand that they are the ones that are ultimately responsible for their own returns. Floip a Tax Professional in ventura, california, this is rob. Hi, rob. Caller yeah im not a Tax Professional. My other half is. And shes been doing it for 40 years. She started out on paper, but now she runs a big tax program. That costs us several thousand dollars a year to run that program. It also because of electronics that she was talking about, every time that she pushes the button to send a tax return in, that costs 40. Its just part of the fee. The other thing is, she has to do 32 hours of continuing education. Those classes are expensive all right . So if youre an enrolled agent its not an easy thing. By the way, the c. P. A. You had, he has to do 40 hours. Only part of that is for taxes. He has to do other things, you know, as a c. P. A. In his continuing education. All 32 hours that an enrolled agent does is taxes and things of that nature. Its very difficult as a small enrolled agent business to continue, because the processing fees, the continuing education, and shes right about the fact that it is a sliding scale depending on the complexity of the return. It used to be, i used to stand at the coffee machine and make hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of copies of paper. Now the i. R. S. Doesnt even allow an enrolled agent to do a paper return. You have to push the button, therefore, you have to have the tax program. Host how many clients does your wife have, approximately . Caller shes almost ready to retire so were under 100 now. Host ok. Caller but some of her returns are the kind of people that she does, youre not talking about a twopage tax return. Youre talking about a 60page tax return. Host ralph from ventura, thanks for the input. Any thoughts on that . Guest interesting that shes been in business for a really long time and stayed up with it and, you know, made her modifications to the way things are going, and i think thats part of why the certification for the enrolled agents works out, because they do require that you keep up with the changes, yeah. Host and hes in one of those states that has the laws that require them to do so. Arthur, glen burnie, maryland, independent line. Caller good morning cspan. Wow, hello, america. First of all, i got to thank the cspan networks, especially cspan radio, and the cable tv viewers that make it possible for me to listen to crancran for free. Regarding tax preparation to listen to crancran for free. Regarding to tax preparation, in my opinion, if you were to get all the special interests out of the issue, the American Public would benefit greatly. Twheats im hearing, hearing a bunch of tax preparers call in here this morning and saying, you know spouting the virtues of it. As a tax payer and a Small Business owner, i reject the entire premise that the tax system is so complicated that we almost have to get a third party involved. When a preparer or the individual does the calculations and files the forms, you know, any individual or Small Business has a Social Security number or a tax i. D. Number, what theyre doing in essence is reconciling their accounts with the government. It should not be so complicated we have to get a third party involved. In my opinion, its just another example of the leadership failing to act in the best interest of the people. Host thanks caller. Guest very opinion ated t. Sounds like hes got his own taxes well in hand so i appreciate the call, yeah. Host west point, mississippi, democrats line. This is stanley, and youll be the last call. Good morning. Caller good morning. This is just atrocious in my opinion. The focus on the poor and the middle class and to be scared that theyre not paying their fair share of taxes, when you have 2. 1 trillion in overseas accounts by the rich and the multinationals to avoid taxation. Every time we want tax reformation for fairness, all they do is jump on the little guy, and then we dont want reform anymore because it only hurts us. Guest interesting point about the overeast multinational corporations. I cover state policy, and a number of states, including montana, which has taken the lead on this, are passing laws that allow the states themselves to go out of the country and try to find these multinationals that are hiding income offshore. Its an example of the congress again, not being able to pass the laws to do that. Several states have taken matters into their own hands and have passed laws that allow the state tax collectors to go after these guys. Its very interesting. Host Elaine Povich is with stateline, their senior correspondent, covering, amongst many things, tax issues. Thanks for your time. Guest happy to have been here. Thank you. Host for our last 30 minutes or so, open phones. Heres how you can call in this morning. 2025853881 for republicans. 2025853880 for democrats. 2025583882 for independents. Well take those calls when washington journal continues after. This. What i think we need is something akin to the Grace Commission during the Reagan Administration or the brad commission, the brad realignment and closing commission. An outside group with sbeg riis, former members of congress, no current politicians, knock and do a complete audit of government from top to bottom. Every agency of government has a piece of legislation or a charter that created it. It has a purpose. If its not fulfilling that purpose or not doing it within a reasonable budget, it should be cut or eliminated. Lets just take head start. I mean, this is this came in with the highest motivation. Do you know, and i didnt until i researched it, there are now three head starts. Theres early head start. Theres enhanced head start, and theres regular head start. Why do we have the other two . Because the first one wasnt working. Why did we have the third one . Because the second one wasnt working. On afterwards, veteran columnist cal thomas on fixing a broken washington, tonight at 10 00 eastern and sunday night at 9 00. And immediately following after words, a book party for mr. Thomas as he signed his book and chats with guests. Also this weekend on book tv, this Years National black writers conference. Today at noon eastern, the panels on race power, and politics literature and shifting identities and n africa, and sunday at 2 00, strengthening communities, the historical narrative, plus a panel on publishing. Book tv, every weekend on cspan2. Washington journal continues. Host an outside look at the capitol, the camera here in the studio. Open lines for this last halfhour. 2025853881 for republicans. 2025853880 for democrats. For independents 2025853882. Bob is up first on open phones from minnesota, democrats line. Hello. Caller good morning. Host bob, go ahead. Caller thanks for taking my call. I just wanted to say that i think its going to be a catastrophe with further deregulation of campaign finances. It isnt going to be a deal anymore where the government represents the people at all. The government is going to represent the corporations and thats going to be it. Thank you. Host youre talking about the reference to the Supreme Court case that came down last week. Larry, winchester, kentucky, republican line, hi. Caller oh, good morning. I dont agree with the last caller. The corporation today has the highest tax rate. Theres no wrned why they have offshore accounts. There should be a flat tax for everybody. Host why would caller so we can simplify the tax code you know, just charge everybody 7 to 10 and let the federal government live within their means instead of using extra money. Host is there an example where this kind of system is used and it would work . Caller sure. Church. A church. Host how so . Caller the church of latter day saints, got 15 Million People in it, and we all pay 10 to the church. Host katy, Texas Democrats line. Im sorry, this is katy, texas, this is joe. Good morning, joe. Caller yes, good morning. I want to talk a little bit about benning asee. There seems to be this overwhelming push to have hearings on benghazi. Last time i checked, we lost four in benghazi out of 10,000 in iraq in a war that never should have been called. And yet we hear no effort being made in the congress or anywhere else to have hearings about iraq. Now Rachel Maddow did a piece in one of her shows why exposed the reasons why we went into iraq. When i looked at that, it only reinforced in my mind exactly why we need to get to the bottom of this iraqi thing. Some of them need to be brought to account. Thats my comment. Host there are stories this morning about william burns, a career diplomat who left the administrations back channel negotiations with iran. He plans to step down as the state departments secondranking official in october. A successor to mr. Burns has yet to be chosen. The candidates are likely to include mr. Obamas Deputy National security advisor and the undersecretary of state who is leading the American Team in the formal negotiations with iran. Benghazi mentioned in the story as well. It says it was mr. Burns who accompanied the bodies of ambassador Christopher Steven and three other americans on a c17 flight to washington from germany in the after the attack of the american compound in benghazi, libya. Host thats in the New York Times. If you were to go to the front page of the washington post, another story about iran, and its diplomat that was set to come here in the United States, saying that the Obama Administration said friday it would block the nominee as impose door from entering the United States. The decision to bar entry to the diplomat, who was allegedly involved in the 1979 seizure of the u. S. Embassy in tehran followed intense political pressure on the administration from republicans and democrats on capitol hill, but it also marked a rare instance in which washington has effectively vetoed another countrys preferred choice as an envoy to the united nations. George, east meadow, new york, independent line. Caller yes, i like to talk about the xl5 plan. We have a problem with russia because theyre inserting a tremendous amount of pressure on england, in front of england and front, because most of their oil is pretty much controlled by russia, i believe 80 of the oil comes from russia. Now, i think i have a viable problem, viable way of getting around this. Two ways, actually. Number one as far as the x. L. Pipeline is concerned theres been a lot of conjecture about the franking, etc. , going through with korea, all kinds of explosions, etc. , leaks. Now, if they were in conjunction, would go ahead, and every 10 of the pipeline there would be inspectors there from both the u. S. And canada to make sure that percent of the pipeline was ok. In other words youd have to check all the connections between the various pipes etc. , so it would be good. Now, that would have to be done in a manner that we do our nuclear, that there would be that there would be particular emphasis to be made on that, and it would be guaranteed in writing to make sure that 10 was done. Host thats george from new york. This is fritch ohio, republican line. Caller yeah, im still on the taxes a little bit. Its interesting that individuals have to walk through the smallest digit toing if out their taxes, and the government cant get the budget together on trillions of dollars of three digits over there and figure out where they are. The other thing is, what age do you no longer have to do taxes . We think a young buck thats 20 years old. Theres people 65, 90, 100 years old. Is there an age where you dont have to do them anymore . I dont think so. And i think thats unfair. The other thing is i think there should be two budget, one for the dollars, one for the amount of forms that theyre allowed to throw on everyone else. Ill hang up and listen to your answer. Host albert, east chicago, indiana. Democrats line. Good morning. Caller yeah, i wanted to ask you, do you think theres the military had hunger on water . Host why do you ask me . Im not going to offer an opinion. That was on the sfrer east chicago, indiana. If you stay tuned to cspan come 10 00, youll get to see several legislators and other types address the address something called apologies the freedom sum thought takes place in manchester, New Hampshire. This is an event thats put on by the americans for prosperity and Citizens United, and here to talk about it on the phone is the national telegraph. Hes a political reporter and columnist for that organization. Thanks for giving us your time. Guest thank you pedro. Host talk about this event overall. What he wants the purpose . Guest as you said, the americans for prosperity, Citizens United, they try to put together what you really might call one of the first cattle call events in the 2016 campaign. Theyre invite ago lot of people, certainly toying with the idea of running for president to talk about the conservative agenda and trying, for many of them, trying to introduce themselves to voters who obviously are going to be critical to them. Host so as far as those who are appearing, who do we expect to hear from . Guest well, senator rand paul from kentucky will be there as well as senator ted cruz from texas. Governor Mike Huckabee of course, who ran for president in 2008, did fairly well here, finishing third will be there. Donald trump will be making his third visit to New Hampshire in the past three months, will be speaking as well. And some new faces, too, to New Hampshire. Mike lee the senator, will speak, as well as congresswoman marcia blackburn. And speaker gingrich, of course, who also ran for president in 2008. Its still very early, certainly, to determine whether any of these folks are going to make solid headway in New Hampshire. Certainly rand paul has visited here a number of times and has really been the most active in terms of reaching out to republican activists in the state. By all events hes been at, he draws really good crowds and has really touched on a message that resonates really well here, and that is the personal privacy and the invasion of privacy by the n. S. A. And the i. R. S. Not only conservative republicans, but many independents are concerned about personal privacy, and here in New Hampshire, as you know with its live free and die motto and a libertarian streak, people are generally guard of their personal privacy. We were the first state in the country to reject the notion of a real i. D. Program here in New Hampshire. People are very suspicious of government intrusion into personal privacy, and rand paul is attractly a lot of attention here early on with a lot of criticism of those practices. Host so if rand paul attracts of attention, whos going to be the newcomers . Whos going to be a newcomer to this organization in introducing himself or herself . Host i think ted cruzs appearance really is brewinging. As you know, on capitol hill, hes often been at war even with his own party in terms of the federal budget bailout and how strident he was with regard to that. That makes him certainly popular here among fiscal conservatives. We of course, have a balanced budget. We dont run deficits hereby we dont run deficits here and we dont Like Congress members who allow that to happen. Ted cruz is certainly a new face. Folks like Mike Huckabee, donald trump, newt gingrich, theyre all, in many respects, known quantities near New Hampshire. I think people are anxious to hear ted cruzs message, and i think he has perhaps the most Growth Potential at this early stage. Host kevin landrigan, political reporter and columnist for nashua telegraph, thanks for your input into the Freedom Summit that takes place today. Guest great. Enjoy the program, pedestrian row. Host thats live at 10 00 here on cspan and see some of those speakers that mr. Landrigan highlighted. There they are, just a sampling of some of the speakers youll hear, starting live today at 10 00. George from texas, independent line. Caller good morning. Thanks for cspan. How are you . Host fine, thank you. Caller ok. I want to make just a couple of quick comments, and then a really short one. First, im really disappointed with cspan and the lack of coverage they had for the civil rights summit that we had here at the l. B. J. Library in austin texas. Ive seen cspan cover many lesser events at different president ial libraries around the country, and at this event, we had four president s speak. It lasted tuesday, wednesday and thursday. And cspan3 only covered obamas speech on thursday. And then the next day, yall had a short segment, i think about 45 minutes, where yall discussed the anniversary of the civil rights act. I think your coverage, you know, youre going to go to american for prosperity after this program, and youre going to cover a lot of people on the conservative side, and you missed a tremendous opportunity. I know yall know where austin, texas, is. Host we did cover it live. We did cover a portion of it live. Caller well i guess i missed it. I kept trying to find it on your program, and i guess i missed that portion. I think the only portion did you cover live was obamas speech. The next thing i wanted to say was about the equal pay for women. And the problem for women especially the military families. The people dont realize how much this affects the military family where because the man may be fighting overseas or may be may be in the military, the woman actually becomes the primary bread win for her the house, for their household. And then they have to pay for child care. I think your guest, i think his name was mr. Morici, he made a disparaging remark about child care costs. My daughter, her husbands in the military. Their child care costs are 15,000 a year. So its not something to sneeze at about the amount of child care costs they had to pay in order that she can keep her fulltime job to be the primary breadwinner, while his military pay is very actually very low. Host clarence from maryland, independent line. Caller hello, pedro. Good morning. Host good morning. Caller pedro, im like to make comments about the issue of the high school that called out the names of the students that wouldnt be graduating this year in front of the whole school council. Id like to say that you know, theres so much issue today about bullying and the School Boards are come down on little two and three and four, 5, 6 years old for bullying. We turn around and we see our school board that will actually take and call the names out of these students that arent graduating. Is this bullying . Host mary from olean, new york, republican line. Caller hello. Host hi. Caller just calling about the house of representatives going home till the 28th of april and did you not even bring up the Unemployment Insurance bill and didnt even bring up the Unemployment Insurance bill. Would like to know where the president is with his telephone and pen to sign it into law, because were hurting in new york and all over the state in new york, i think. We need the Unemployment Benefits. Host thats mary from new york. Sylvia matthews burwell, the head of the white house who heads up the budget effort for the white house, is now the new nominee to become secretary of health and Human Services. Again, currently servings as budget director for the house. She was introduced yesterday as well as a speech from Outgoing Health and Human Services secretary, Kathleen Sebelius. Heres a bit of it. But throughout the legislative battles, the Supreme Court challenge, a contentious reelection, and years of votes to turn back the clock, we are making progress, tremendous progress. And critics and supporters alike are benefiting from this law. My professional work as a legislator and insurance commissioner and a governor have been tremendously helpful in navigating the policy and politics of this historic change. But at the end of the day, health is personal. Its personal to all of us. Family illnesses and personal Health Challenges touch us to our core. I spent time as a daughter navigating care for ill parents. As a mother and now a grandmother, ive experienced and worried about prenatal care and healthy babies. Weve had family Health Challenges, as all of us have, and finding the right care can be difficult, even with the best contacts and the right resources. So the personal reward for me at the end of the day are the folks who approach me, the strangers who approach me, at a meeting or pass me a note on a plane or hand me a phone with someone on the other end saying thank you. Their stories are so heartening about finally feeling secure and knowing they can take care of themselves and their families. Host next up is troy from indiana, indianapolis. Hes on our independent line. Hi. Caller hello. How you doing this morning . Host fine thank you. Go ahead. Caller yeah, i was listening to your calls, and im kind of piggybacking off a previous call per the coverage of the National Action network. But at the same time some of the topics were really revealing to me because i actually am satisfied and pleased with the administration but i do think its best for the country that we move on, because congress is not acting like adults and not putting the best interest of americans at heart, all in their zest and zeal to undermine the administration. I watched the eric holder hearings and the gentleman, i dont understand how hes even representing his district, because i dont understand the disrespect the discourse thats been leveled at this administration from the president to the attorney general to susan rice and everybody, the nonstop talk about benghazi and i. R. S. Scandals and blocking and everything. Its just our country is out of control and were just not ready yet for a minority to be president. I dont know if it will be even worse if we have a woman president. But for the message of the people who need Unemployment Insurance, who need medicare medicaid, and whatever type of benefits in what a person may need, were not going to get anything accomplished as long as the congress is at the president s neck like this. Even though they said they want to make him a oneterm president , even into his second term totally disrespectful. Host tommy, st. Louis, Missouri Democrats line. Caller yes, sir. Im sorry im even calling. Its just i have no where else to turn. I started with the mayor. I started with the government, food stamp office. I started with the senator, and they gave me a number, and its been ringing and ringing and ringing, and busy signals, and i just cant get an answer. My mother i have the television too loud. Im one of the unfortunate ones with the unemployment. I have to turn the television down. I cant hear you. Host go ahead with your comment, only because were running a little short of time but go ahead. Caller yes, sir. My mother has aarp, medicare complete, and they cut her off. Shed get 45 every three months to look in catalogue orders and stuff and i am unemployed and do my best helping her. And its just rough. I just dont know whats going on. I worked 34 years of my life. I have three purple hearts. My mother lost her father in world war i. We have the shellshocked helmet. These people dont understand us lower class people that used to be middle class. And i just hope and pray theres some answers for us. I couldnt even do jury duty, i shook like a leaf. But the judge sent me a letter and said thank you for coming in, and im starting to shake like a leaf talking to you. So please pass the Unemployment Benefits till i get a job. Theres a lot more to the story, but i just dont like talking about in public, thank you. Host thats tommy from missouri. Here is richard from florida, independent line. Hello. Caller yes, good morning pedro. Host hi. Caller this i. R. S. System is totally ridiculous. 73,000 pages of code no one can read try to read a book of 2,000 pages and see how long it takes you. First thing an attorney will tell you read the small print on any and every contract that you get from no matter who. No one can read the small print in the tax code because it would take them 10 years, and they still wouldnt understand it. It needs to be totally abolished. They need to do it with a flat tax or fair tax. One more thing this draconian government we have led by president obama, is now the bureau of Land Management out there and harassing the ranchers out in the west, trying to confiscate their property killing their cattle, and threatening the lives of people. Something needs to be done with this government and with obama. Congress needs to protect the people the border, our jobs, and our property. They refuse to do it. We need to get something done here. People need to get involved. Host roy is from tampa, florida. Hell be the last call, democrats line. Hello, roy. Coil yeah, hi. I think the u. S. Military police should arrest all of the Senate Members of the federal government for treason. Because they all signed an oath of support for israel. They cant agree on anything to help the American Public on anything. There is total gridlock. Host and thats the last call well take. The Freedom Summit that takes place in manchester, New Hampshire, which you heard our guest previously reference, is currently going on. It is what will be change when had we fire harry reid. In order to win elections but to do what needs to be done. We need to be united. Democrats smile when republicans are divided. They help they can be divided. It is too much for us to be mired in