Transcripts For CSPAN Washington Journal 20150202

Host you can also catch up with us on social media. Host a very good monday morning to you. The president s fiscal 2016 plan which kicks in october 1, proposes to spend 3. 99 trillion on the budget plan, just under 4 trillion, and projects revenues of 3. 53 join dollars. That would leave a budget deficit of four and 74 billion kit that will be the topic of conversation throughout the this morning on washington journal and is the topic of conversation on the front page of many newspapers. Los Angeles Times budget aims to boost middleclass. Over to the front page of the wall street journal this morning, obama opens bidding on taxes. Front page of the denver post this morning president would find huge projects for corporate with Corporate Taxes is the headline there. This is how the New York Times puts it. Should washington worry about what may be the defining economic issue of the era, the widening gap between the rich and everyone else, or should policymakers primarily seek to address a mountain of debt at the white house hopes to control but only marginally reduce as a share of the economy . The budget is thicker than a phone book and multiple lines will be a starting point for that discussion with congress representing his aspirations, not the final word. You will get your calls in just a second, but we want to turn to a reporter for rollcall, joining us once again on washington journal. Even before the budget arrives on capitol hill, republicans have been panning the information that is come out of other programs that are in it. Is the budget dead on arrival when it arrives this morning . Guest well, the budget is dead on arrival just as it is in the same sense as it is most years on capitol hill, particularly whenever you have divided government. The budget what the budget document is used for by the white house, regardless of party, is to lay out his vision for how in sort of an idealized world it would restructure parts of the government, restructure parts of the tax code. And where the executive branch would prioritize investments if it were left to its own devices. But since it is divided government, what really happens is that you will see lawmakers in both parties try and go through this document and on one man certainly pan things, and you have seen that from republicans, but you will see lawmakers in both parties go through the document and try to find things and match things that the frb proposed and they are otherwise interested that they have already proposed and they are otherwise interested in to pick out little pieces in order to advance their own priorities and find places they might be able to find Common Ground with the white house. Host what are the areas of potential agreement in the spending plan . Guest well, one of the things that has released a little bit, came out over the weekend, is the significant investment that is being sought to get a full sixyear Service Transportation highway built on highway bill done. It is a certainty, i think, already that the particular mechanism of paying for it using attacks using eight tax on foreign profits and foreign earnings, the way the white house has structured that and the way the treasury department, i suppose, would be proposing that, its not something that is going to be viewed terribly favorably at the capitol, but there is a bipartisan understanding that there is a gap in the funding for the Highway Trust Fund, and if people are actually willing to come to the table and find some other alternative tax policy reason or way to pay for it that is one area where you might find Common Ground. The other thing, going through some documentation that has come out this morning, we are noticing that there is a 561 billionbased defense funding request in here, along with another amount of money 58 billion dollars for the overseas Contingency Operations fund. I think there is bipartisan perhaps, agreement that the defendant level defense level has got to the above where it was in the sequester and that is another area where we will try to find Common Ground. Host talked us through what is going to happen specifically today after the budget arrives and the coming days this week. Guest well, one of the things that is happening today in particular is you will see the president himself going to the department of Homeland Security to lay out his Budget Proposal. That leaves with it the implication that the president is probably going to be talking at least at some level not of anything in the fiscal 2016 budget but in the upcoming looming crisis in the fiscal 2015 spending situation with the department of Homeland Security funding, which runs out towards the end of february. You will see Agency Briefings by the office of management and budget in an assortment of apartments and agencies that will all have Conference Calls or briefings to outline their various plans, and then what happens very quickly is that the attention turns to capitol hill when the books are delivered at people at people have a chance to digest things just a little bit. You will see agency heads and i won the and omb going back and forth to the hill and outlining their vision ahead of the drafting ahead of the of the annual budget resolution by lawmakers in the capitol. Host Niels Lesniewski writes for cqroll call. Check out his work on rollcall. Com. Thank you for joining us. Guest thank you. Host the president s briefing happening at 11 45 today. You can see that on cspan2. Shaun donovan is the white house budget director, he will hold his briefing at 12 45. You can also see that on cspan2. The Defense Department briefing happening at 1 30 talking about specifically the Defense Department budget. That happening over on cspan2 as well. If you want to check out all the action on budget day, continue with us on the cspan networks. You can also check in online. We will be posting a link to the budget document when it comes out at cspan. Org. The budget, of course, being printed by the Government Printing office. The first for the Budget Online in 1996 and has developed an online at in 20 online app in 2013. 1. 6 million views on the budget app, according to documents released today. We are talking with our viewers this morning and want to get your thoughts, take your calls on the president releasing the 4 trillion fiscal 2016 budget. We will start with arnold in Daytona Beach, florida, line for democrats. Caller yeah, how you doing . Host good, sir. Caller my comment is that i think some people, mainly republicans, need to think about something. We dont have the same kind of economy we had in the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s. We have an economy now where you are giving taxpayers to rich people, filthy rich people, and corporations. They are taking that money and they are reinvesting it in china, india mexico. People are getting screwed on this deal. They need to get the tax rate backup at least to what it was before george w. Bush went in. We have this huge deficit for one reason he ran it up and we are still paying interest on what he ran up. There is no way obama can get it down. It has gone on long enough people. The only changes republicans are willing to make, they are blaming us, laming us, the taxpayers. The first thing they do is try to cut Social Security disability. It is not us doing it, it is them, and the need to stop giving breaks to people that are investing in other countries. Host arnold in Daytona Beach florida. If you want to join the conversation, phone lines for republicans come democrats, an independents. Mike is waiting in illinois. Caller good morning. Host going, sir. Caller hello . Host you are on the washington journal. Caller ok, i am for cutting the tax breaks, he doesnt get enough of them, but the spending is im for the spending, it is just he did is expanding things that he did his big spending thing besides failing the banks out, and big banks not little banks. That hurt everybody. He doesnt do anything about the tax code, and we pay for factories to move overseas. Not only factories overseas, he wants to republicans and democrats dont care who come here and works. Republicans say it is ok as long as they go through the proper channels. They have got millions and millions of the visa workers. I think i read an article, 13 million in the last 10 years or so, and the last 13 years, they have created no jobs, bureau of statistics for american workers. All the jobs, 2 million have gone to immigrant workers, legal and illegal. So they dont really do much, and this spending, in Chicago Illinois here, that just goes to people that are politically connected. They fix the same roads every couple of years here. It never ends. Host let me ask you, part of this package, the details have been released today, is the 470 billion Public Works Program that the president is proposing for infrastructure funding. There is a picture of the budget there from the government pending office that we are showing our viewers right now. Would you be in favor of 478 billion Public Works Initiative . Caller sure, i could tell you where to put it, but on the biggest jobs in the country, the oilfields, all over the place you could do it by building a big grid in the northeast. Create new grids. But people dont put it in the atlantic a ocea like they want to do because noreasters will destroy that no problem. And in the rockies, the i80 corridor, they tried to do that many times. A little bird called the sage grouse in wyoming they stopped it. It is you know, the problem is, these people in washington, they dont know or care with the money goes. Host got your point, mike. We want to get as many calls as we can in this first segment of washington journal. Taking your calls on the president s 4 trillion budget plan. You can follow along on our twitter page as well. Edwin writes in that the budget is a wish list that is sure to raise agony with congress. Drew writes, everyone knows you have to spend your way out of a recession and also into one. Panther got to get rid of the belief, cut taxes and end regulation and they will hire. One entire Budget Proposal should be a Public Works Initiative. Jimmy olsen was the first one in writing in comments with his question. The nations most vile people, elected federal officials, reward their cronies with stolen the. For that reason alone, large federal budgets must always be opposed. If you want to join the conversation on facebook and twitter, happening all morning. Good morning bill. Caller good morning. I see a pattern where the federal government brings up the same things like Infrastructure Spending as the need to increase taxes, and i would be more willing to see more spending their if there was a review of past things we have spent our money on and how well we had done it. I remember there was a report on the drone use on Border Patrol that said that it was really not costeffective, but i havent seen efforts to improve that were get rid of any field programs that dont seem to be costeffective host to good up for this kind of review you were talking about, would you want that to come from congress to do that job, or would you want the agencies themselves . Caller i think a little bit of both. It is one of the jobs of the party out of power to be a watchdog for things that are not good spending of the money, and the problem is, that tends to be framed as a political debate rather than as an honest assessment of what is what money is being spent well and what is not. When we look back at things like the stimulus project or plan when we were promised Shovel Ready Projects would be funded, i havent seen a review of that of how effective that was good it makes a hard to have confidence that the money we get now will be used effectively. Caller host bill getting up early for us on washington journal. The president talked a little bit about his budget plans and the programs he is proposing in and in every with nbc news last night that air just before the super bowl. The interview took place in the white house kitchen. Here is a bit from that interview. [video clip] i think republicans believe that we should be building our infrastructure. The question is, how do we pay for it . You are offering tax hikes for the wealthy savannah, my job is to present the right ideas and if the republicans think they have a better idea, they should present them. But my job is not to trim my sales and not tell the American People what we should be doing and pretending somehow that we dont need better roads or more affordable college. One of the things ive learned over the past six years is when i told the American People very clearly what direction i think the country should go in sometimes people change the minds and even republicans occasionally start agreeing with me, although sometimes a little bit later than i would like. Host the president s budget is expected to hit capitol hill today. A phone booksized to document that legislators and committees are supposed to start going through. Some details of the proposals have come out already. The Washington Post detailing a few of those. It will include an increase in the pentagons budget by 38 billion, expanded an extended tax credits for parents paying for child care, College Students tuition, and the which college workers. It would help pay for preschool for fouryearolds from poor and middle income families. It would have a program to improve roads and bridges and railways nationwide. It would extend unemployment insurance. And so on down the line. Sure to be plenty of stories today and in the coming days about what is detailed in that document. We want to get your reaction as we tell you that topline numbers and give you the latest information on what has come out. 4 trillion budget, 3. 99 chile dollars, rounded up to 4 trillion. James in akron ohio, on our line for democrats, what do you think . Caller well, the budget is fine, but he was something that people dont seem to remember or think about the total income of the federal government in 1950 isnt even half of what it is today. That is the first thing. And all these people that are complaining about the taxes and stuff, their income hasnt went up. When the percentage of their income would have to be greater in order to feel the needs of the country. Here is one other thing, too. We talk about middleclass. We dont have a middleclass today could we have middle income. The middle class should be making over 100,000 a year. The vast majority of the people who call in here dont make 50,000. We better start thinking about this. We have to get the money from somewhere and it can only come from people who have it, the people up top who havent been paying the taxes, and the poor people taxes have been going up, people on Social Security, their income has been going down. If you look at the minimum wage from 1950 in the minimum wage today, person should be making over 20 an hour. We dont want to pay 15 for that excuse me if 20 is the minimum wage, that the middle class income should be about 140,000 a year just to be middleclass. We dont have it. That is our problem. Host jim, you mentioned the revenue of the federal government, projected revenues in fiscal 2016 expected 3. 35 trillion. If you take that revenue away from the proposed 3. 9 chile dollars budget, well 3. 9 trillion budget, we are looking at a deficit of 474 billion. Deficits different from debt the total National Debt according to the debt clock calculator that is online, over 18 trillion. That amounts to 56,500 per citizen, according to the debt clock that continues to run online. We are talking about the president s budget hitting capitol hill today. Randy is in Fort Worth Texas line for republicans. Caller hey, good morning. Thanks for taking my call. The president s budget plan is great, 4 trillion, but he is not talking about cutting anything. The federal government takes in 16 trillion annually from taxpayers. The president is taxing the rich, but for example down here in texas, we have the low income areas. The children get free breakfast free lunch, and free dinner. And the welfare check is not affected at all by that. In other words, he is raising the taxes on just the School Programs here. Why isnt the president talking about cutting any programs, that he wants to raise taxes on the rich . Host randy, we will be talking about some issues that you bring up. Two members of congress will join us later this morning. Congressman john delaney is a consummate for maryland and he will join us in about 25 minutes or so, and then we will be joined by tom rice, republican of South Carolina, and he is a Budget Committee member, talking about these issues and the stories that come out this morning as the details of the four chile dollar fiscal 2016 budget start to come out. Richard is up next in massachusetts, line for independents. Caller good morning. I think that the people calling about the big business can you hear me . Host yes, richard. Caller and how they dont pay their fair share well, big corporations and all the big businesses who hire millions of people working, we wouldnt have nothing in this country could these people dont even know what they are talking about. The taxes we give to the government, every gallon of gas sold, it is never used for what it was supposed to be for, infrastructure. We need to raise it for infrastructure. That is why whenever we give the government and it dont use it for what it is supposed to be for, that is the whole problem here. We have note say in washington. I called my congressman and congresswoman almost twice a week anyway and i just get the same old garbage. So dont blame big business. Those people keep us going. If we didnt have them, we would be really underneath. Thank you very much. Host dane is in cloverdale, indiana, our line for republicans. Good morning. Caller hi, how you doing . Ok so, i think Government Works most efficiently when things are funded by the federal government and implemented by the State Government. James madison, i believe, was a federalist and federalists believed that the most smartest, most richest people should be in charge of the country. You know, and there is also this issue, you know, with the rednecks that we have in congress particularly republicans come even though i am a republican. Host you still there dane . All right, we lost dane. Jack is in ohio on our line for independents. Caller hi, richard, how are you . Host good, jack. Caller thanks for taking my call. Talking about the infrastructure, we lost all of our tax revenue, and if you stop and think about it, it all started back in 1992 during the election. Ross perot told them, you open up after, we will lose all these jobs. Where is all our money going . Over to china. China had nothing, now theyve got everything. The American People has got to understand and they cant blame it all on one party. Back in 1994, it was the democrats that was in charge. They opened up nafta. All of our money that we used to have from our tax base has gone to china. They want to blame it on the republicans, and that is not where it is at. And the other problem is that epa has got too much to say. They blocked of our roads and added trillion dollars to go out and redo the roads and stuff. If everybody looks at the roads today within one year it is all coming back up because blacktop is not what it used to be. All were doing is throwing money away. Nobody watching, nobody paying attention. You put down all that laptop and within one year it is coming back up. Thank you for your time. Host jack in wellsville, ohio. Talking on some of the sunday shows yesterday were various members of congress, including congressman paul ryan republican congressman paul ryan, ways and means chairman, former Budget Committee chairman. Here is his take on the president s proposals that we are expected to see in todays budget. [video clip] so what i think the president is trying to do here is again exploit envy economics. This topdown description doesnt work. We have been doing it for six years. It may make for good politics. It doesnt make for good Economic Growth. Host we will look for reaction from members of Congress Today and we will have two members on todays show talking about these budget issues. A few more tweets. Carol wrightson, obama has made the rich richer and all else fpoorer. One of the previous callers is right congress will cut benefits year while at the same time they want to on ukraine. Robert is perhaps referring to the lead story in the New York Times, where the nato military commander supports providing weapons an agreement to kievs beleaguered forces. After a series of striking reversals that Ukraine Forces have suffered, the Obama Administration is taking a fresh look at the question of military aid. Secretary of state john kerry plans to visit kiev this week and is open to new discussions of military assistance, as his general martin denson, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff accordingas is general martin dempsey, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff. If you want to be more on net story, it is the lead story in the New York Times today. Tom is the minneapolis on our land for democrats. Caller hi, john p i know you are the new kid on the block on cspan and you are doing a great job. Host thank you. Caller you guys have been running a lot of stuff lately about the Transpacific Partnership and other things associated with the loss of middleclass income, and it has been pretty much bipartisan. I just want to mention to some listeners that they should look up some of the stuff online. There is great stuff on there. I think that is the big problem, the loss of middleclass income. But heres my comment about the budget. Barack obama is going to run of 475 billion budget deficit and that is terrible, but it is almost unavoidable with the way our system is set up. Republicans always talk about how wonderful Ronald Reagan was. Whether that is true or not, i dont know. I dont think so good but ill tell you, if you go back and look at the budget deficit numbers from mr. God reagan back in the 1980s, you will find that he was running a 350 billion budget deficit and if you inflationadjusted that or adjusted for the size of the federal government in our society, you will find a barack obama is running a smaller budget deficit in equal dollars tha Ronald Reagan. Nhe is more balanced in his budget deficit than Ronald Reagan was. Host hey, tom, stick around for a last segment of washington journal today. William hoagland is the Vice President of the Bipartisan Policy Center and he will talk about the history of deficit issues. Stick around for that. Appreciate the call from minneapolis, minnesota. California, line for republicans. Good morning pam. Caller good morning. Im a little concerned because i hear so many people calling in saying to raise somebody elses taxes, 70 else has to pay somebody else has to pay, we need is a need that, and businesses are not paying their fair share. My sentiments are similar to one of the earlier callers who said that without corporations, we really dont have anything because they provide the food, the services, all the products that we use it when people get up and go to work in the morning, they usually go to a business of some type. The business pays workers comp. , Social Security medicare, property tax, and other types of taxes as well. And provide people away to make a look a way to make a living so that they in turn can pay taxes to the government as well. I believe that when people stop to think about they are tossing around a billion million, trillion dollars, i probably pay 30,000 to the federal government each year. When you calculate that they are spending billions, for example like on the computer for Computer System for just obamacare, 1 billion is 1000 million, and 1 trillion is 1000 billion dollars, and on helping people realize that. When you do the math, someone like me sending and 30,000 a year, i guess maybe half an hour working population is in sending any income tax to the government. I agree they have to get the money from somewhere, but the idea that the corporations arent doing their fair share is, in my opinion, a misunderstanding of how are our economy works and how people get their livelihood and where the government gets 99 of its money, either directly or indirectly, through business. Host all right, that is pam calling in from california. One other piece of information about this Budget Proposal president obama will ask for a pay raise of 1. 2 for federal workers giving federal employees and uniform members of the u. S. Military a 1. 3 percentage pay raise in fiscal 2016, 22 government officials who talk to the Washington Post. The Washington Post noting that the economic downturn and the concern about federal deficits led obama to recommend no bump in federal employee salaries in january 2011 and 2012 and in 2013, he recommended a. 5 increase. The president looking in fiscal 2016 for a 1. 3 percentage pay increase. Arelmarlene is up next in new jersey, line for democrats. Caller good morning. Im listening to everyone calling from around the country could i happened to be 70 years old. I am an old lady. That call from california defending corporations in the 1960s, up to the 1960s, corporations paid 34 of the federal budget in taxes. Now they are down to about 11 . The american taxpayers were forced to bail out car companies. Does any american know was it on the news that General Motors just opened a huge, brandnew plant in mexico . How Many Americans right now there are trade talks going on between us and the eu. Now, the reason it is bogged down right now is because corporations want the ability to sit country twoo sue countries if they dont get what they want. Americans need to wake up that we have leadership that is more concerned with the rest of the world that the American People, who are actually paying their salaries. Host marlene, let me ask you about this Infrastructure Spending plan. The president is proposing to pay for that plan, 470 billion over the next two years from revenue from a onetime mandatory 14 tax on the 2 trillion in profits of corporations have been keeping overseas in order to avoid Corporate Income taxes here. A onetime tax there to pay for the infrastructure upgrades. Would you agree with that mechanism . Caller heres what the problem is with that. I live in new jersey. Right now they are going to spend 41 million in new jersey to extend a rail line that the most riders it will seize 150 people. That is 41 million. Does that make any sense to anyone listening . It is one thing if the money goes to infrastructure, but i dont call new railroads stations built like the taj mahal infrastructure. Our roads are falling apart. Host so it is a matter of prioritizing and having the right Infrastructure Projects . If they were to do the prioritization, you would be ok with this plan and how the president wants to pay for it . Caller yes, i think corporations should be taxed at a much higher rate. I was a bookkeeper for years. I worked in the 1960s in a bank in new york, i worked on 150 million bankruptcy. If the American People knew what a joke bankruptcy has become, they would be appalled. I was told pointblank that they had no problems with a few million here and a few million there. That is bankers. Meanwhile, i was stunned because they would put a person out of the house for a 50,000 foreclosure. They would be out on the streets. But the wealthy and the businesses walk away. In new jersey we have a casino. It cost 2. 2 billion to build. Billions they are selling it for like 150 million in bankruptcy. Now, what that means is that anybody that legitimately did any work in that building is out there money. Host that is marlene calling in from new jersey this morning. One other tweet on this issue of corporations and taxes. People who live corporations isnt it their responsibly to provide wellpaying jobs for all americans . If not them, then who . Good morning, jim. Caller good morning, thanks for taking my call. I am retired military and i can honestly say that conservatively our military wastes about . 50 on the dollar that the taxpayers pay just in redundancies alone. Also, our military buildup is way too high. We have 10 aircraft carriers that are active. I think the chinese only have one. The russians dont have any. And the u. S. Taxpayer funds 90 of nato. A lot of these contractors for the government, they are basing their companies outside the United States to avoid paying taxes. Host on defense spending, just wanted to jump in on that. 561 billion proposed in the president s fiscal 2016 budget on defense spending, 38 billion over the sequestration under the budget control act, the caps that are supposed to be in place. This would go through those caps by 38 billion dollars. You say you are retired military. How do you feel about 1. 2 pay increase this year for federal and plays and uniformed members of the military . Caller well, the thing is and this is what a lot of people dont realize when the news talks about funding for the military, and very little of that money actually gets to the troops. Most of the money goes to Companies Like raytheon or general dynamics, and these are people who are charging the federal government 30 million for one f16. Now they have this new f3255 that by the time the pentagon is done paying for leasing scandal they will cost two to best paying for these things, they will cost 2 trillion. They will cost 2 trillion. Host so it is a good way to get the money in the hands of the troops themselves . Caller exactly, but many of these properties with contracts with the federal government are making hand over fist. Host norman on our line for independents. Good morning. Caller i just want to say that this country needs money, they should stop cutting food stamps, cutting out Social Security medicaid medicare, School Programs, and in the ti meantime, they are spending millions of dollars to blow up isis, 3 billion for israel, afghanistan pakistan, all these countries get billions of dollars. Then youve got south america mexico, all these countries getting billions of dollars. That you get all the subsidy moneys that these corporations debt. Then you get all the tax loopholes that corporations get. All this money going here instead of cutting peoples programs and americans are rich richer and poor poorer. [indiscernible] host all right, on our Facebook Page joel has a comment talking about the 4 trillion spending plan that includes the 474 billion deficit. I say eliminate the deficit and present a budget that spends only 3. 5 trillion. Then close the loopholes, use that money to buy down the National Debt. Voila, you take the debt argument away from the gop. James is in ohio on our line for independents. Good morning. Caller good morning. Yes, i would just like to say most about tax problems and money problems come from the bush tax cuts back in 2001. They say raise the taxes on just the rich. Everybody was given those tax breaks, not just the rich. Everybody has to get us out of this mess. Host all right, that is james intention, ohio. Stephen calling in from new york, line for republicans. But morning, stephen good one, stephen. Caller hi, how are you . I have a few friends who work in the Social Security administration, and people barely come into their offices and receive a minimum of 725 a month, after receiving medicaid and they never even put into the system, while the elderly who contributed all their life are getting caught on their Social Security benefits. I even have seen this when we had our company shop in brooklyn where people have been receiving Social Security and never putting into it. Billions they are getting. And actually, from what i understand, the people who interview these people from other countries arent even allowed to ask questions about their finances, and is one woman accidentally asked this fellow a couple of weeks ago, found out that he owned for cars and home 4 cars and a home, and he is still receiving benefits. Host on Social Security, some numbers to give you their. One of the mandatory programs, spending, Congressional Budget Office projects that Social Security will be one of the key drivers of increases in the budget, with it being an aunt or 20 billion with it being 920 billion mark for Social Security. Cbo expects Social Security to grow 6 annually over the next decade due to the growing Elderly Population in this country. Those from the budget numbers to watch from roll calls reporting ahead of the budget release. Happening today, the budget document on capitol hill today and staffers and members going through those. We will be joined by a couple members this morning to talk about it. Trying to get as many of your calls as we can. Stanley is in is the main on our line for republicans. Good morning, stanley. Caller hello. The servicemen calling in complaining about the Navy Aircraft carriers in the 1950s and 1960s, while formosa was rattling their swords and china and china was rattling their swords at indochina, going down the drain, if it wasnt for the president of many aircraft carriers in presence of many aircraft carries in the area, we wouldve been in war in the 1950s. And in the 1960s it probably wouldve devastated our country. Host ok. So, stanley, are you ok with that increasing the Defense Department budget by about 38 billion this year over the sequestration caps, going to those budget control caps, 561 billion expected in fiscal 2016 proposal, ok with that . Caller im ok with the increase of the military budget to protect this country, but some of the private armies that we are supporting, like blackwater and stuff like that, i think we should cut their budget because i think they cause is more trouble than our regular servicemen, who have to live by the military code of justice. Host all right. Miles is up next in iowa on our line for republicans. Good morning. Miles, you with us . Caller yes, im here. Host go ahead, sir heard caller . Caller hello . Host you are on washington journal. Go ahead with your comment. Caller i would like to know i have Social Security. Yes, i am here. Host turned on your tv could we can hear you. Caller all right, here we go. Ive got 1. 7 increase on my Social Security this year. Host ok. Caller how come congress got a 17 increase in their pay raise . Lets get real. Host miles, we can talk to members of congress about that exact topic, pay raises and issues from todays budget. Texas, line for democrats. Kim, good morning. Caller good morning, everybody. Maybe yall can also look into i was watching a program last night and they have those eb51s, immigration things come and i think it is republicans and probably the the democrats selling to the highest bidder in hong kong or china for the most they were paying 500,000 and up, and millions, just to get immigration. If the politicians sells it to his highest bidder and pockets of money given to the campaign how can it go into the economy . These are the kind of things we have to look at, everything in anything, instead of one group of people or thing. And always tv is filled up with the nonsense questions. So i dont know, but theres another thing you ought to look into. Host cedar park, texas, our last caller on this first segment of washington journal. Up next, we will continue our discussion on the release of the budget with congressman john delaney, democrat from maryland. Later, we will hear from South Carolina republican tom rice could first, the Wilson Center hosted an event on the current political situation in yemen. Here is a bit from that event that happened on friday. [video clip] houthi is a changing organization. It is not the same thing as it was when it began. I think it is also \itse i think it is also itself not sure what it is at this point. The Houthi Movement began as College Students in the late 1980s and early 1990s. They from there they were counteracting influences that were coming from saudi arabia and wahabbism and salfism in the north. Salafiism from the north. At some point houthi got involved and he is the one who militarize the group. In yemen everybody is militarize but he is the one who said we need to take a more aggressive position. He is the one who came up with the chant, death to america, death to israel. That chant is not meant to be antiamerican. It was meant to stick a thorn in the side of the president , who at the time, after the u. S. Invasion of iraq, was defending the embassy in defending his relationship in the war on terror with the bush administration. And really, the thorn was to say we are authentically yemeni. We dont serve foreign interests. We are authentically yemeni. The thorn worked and that is when the conflicts began. It introduced another dynamic in the movement in the sense that now the movement is dealing with tribal and military relations up in the north. They are successful largely because the Yemeni Military is fighting as much each other as they are fighting the houthi. But this gains them lots of credibility within yemen as a force that can stand up to the regime. Everybody who is upset with the regime, as peter alluded to, the houthi begin to create a coalition of those rejecting the main components of the regime. Host and you can watch the entire event by going to our website, cspan. Org. And now on this budget day, we are joined by congressman john delaney, democrat from maryland, member of the Financial Services and joint economic committees. I want to start with the headline in the lead story of the Washington Post this morning. Obama targets public works. A topic that you have been talking about, infrastructure, for a while. You have been on capitol hill. Take us through his program and how it differs from what you have been pushing for a while. Guest sure. So we have been working on this for about two years and is building huge Bipartisan Coalition around this notion of increasing investment in infrastructure in the United States and which we think is important for a whole friday of reasons competitiveness, jobs, improving peoples lives and paying for that through reforming our broken taxes them some of the system that takes all our money overseas. We are really pleased that the president s Budget Proposal takes our idea and animates it in this new budget that we have. The levels are different than ours. The tax levels that are being charged we are suggesting a. 7 tax rate on all the cash overseas. The administration is at 14 . Our go forward taxes them is a little more complicated than what they are proposing. Theyre proposing a flat rate of about 19 and ours starts at about 12. 25 and goes down as Companies Pay more tax overseas. In general, the revenues race for our proposal is less than what the president is proposing but in general, almost exact same proposal that we have put forth, and the nice thing about the levels we are at we know we can get bipartisan support. We were excited to see it in the budget. Host you know you can get bipartisan support with the. 5 guest 8. 75 . Host to get these corporations on board as well . Guest this is new in the president s budget. We have a Stakeholder Group of over 70 organizations, business organizations, labor groups, who are supportive of this. In the last congress we had 100 members of congress, and about 50 on each side of the aisle supporting our concept. I think the levels we are at our the levels were a deal can get done and where the administration is coming at will be part of the negotiation host start a little higher guest that may either strategy. I think the levels we have in our bill are the right answer and i know that is where you can get a deal done. Host some stats on the money corporations have overseas, from the wall street journal, a chart on former prophets accumulated offshore as countries reinvest that money overseas. General electric leads the way with the amount of money that sits overseas, 110 billion followed by microsoft, 76. 4 billion pfizer, 69 billion merck, 57. 1 billion apple 54. 4 billion ibm, 52. 2 billion, and so on down the line guest about 2 trillion in total. Host any of those committees on board with your proposal . Guest those Companies Think of our proposal in the context of broader tax reform. It is my view that we will not do broader tax reform and just do international, the piece were talking about here. I believe those countries would be very much on board with what were talking about. Theyre reserving supporting any specific proposal because the question for them is standalone International Tax reform or is this part of something broader . That is an open question. I believe we will just do international. Host if you want to talk to corpsman john delaney about these issues and his proposal and spending plan, budget plan, infrastructure 2. 0 act hr 625 for those who want to go online and read about it, the phone lines are open. Host he is with us for about the next 35 minutes or so. Before we get to calls, also want to ask about about sequestration. The president s budget on Discretionary Spending is expected to be about a 7 increase over sequestration, you agree to levels under the budget control act of 2011, 30 7 billion over the spending caps for nondefense Discretionary Spending, 38 billion over spending caps in defense spending. In general, how do you feel about sequestration and going over these caps . Guest i, like most of my colleagues, think that sequestration is a dumb way to go about budget issues. I like that we are moving away from the sequestration model. I havent read the president s budget in deal because it just came out this morning, but it sounds to me like an investment budget. He is investing in infrastructure, basic research putting money in cyber. I tend to be in the camp of those investments pay off really well. One of the things we dont do in government right now is dynamically score the investments we make. Host explain that. Guest sure. If we spend a dollar on infrastructure soon the cost of government as in the cost of government at dollar, and there is no compensating benefit in the budget forecasts for investing in infrastructure, the jobs that are created, etc. In other words, every dollar we spend is assumed to be a lost dollar. As someone who has spent my whole career in the private sector and thinking about investment in building businesses, i know thats what investments can have a very good payoff. Infrastructure has been proven over 50 is that for every dollar we spend as a nation on infrastructure, we get almost two dollars in Economic Growth. In my judgment, Smart Investments not all investments are Smart Investments been very targeted investments in infrastructure and basic Research Like the president is proposing pay off in the near to longterm. Im actually very least with what he is doing on the investment side of the ledger because it is what we need to do as a nation and i think these things dont score nearly as bad as people think they do. We have gotten a little too caught up in this pay for framework where we insist on paying for everything dollar to dollar and some things the government pays for you get no return on investment, and that is the right way to think about it, but a lot of things the government invests in actually do produce good returns and we ought to be modeling that into the framework that we use. Host congressman john delaney, one of the few former ceos in congress, when are at the ernst young entrepreneur of the year award, founded two new york stock it change listed companies before the age of 40, now in his second term in congress, representing the six the district of maryland, here with us for the next half hour. West virginia on our line for democrats. Good morning. Caller good morning. Congressman delaney, can i ask you a question . Guest yes, sir. Caller i would like to know what you are going to do about the preexisting conditions that are allowed in the Medicare Supplement Insurance Program where they discriminate against seniors. I asked you 20 questions that are preexisting and they turn you down or they will accept you if you say that you are perfectly healthy. Are you going to get that out of the law so that people will not be discriminated against . Guest so, sir, your question is about preexisting conditions in medicare. Most preexisting conditions that people have, best of my knowledge, are in fact addressed in the medicare program. But if you have any specific questions on that, you should reach out to our office and we may be able to help you. I think most of the stuff you are getting at is in fact covered. Host bonnie isnt maryland is in maryland on our life replicas. Caller yes, good morning i have 2 in the paper it all the way in the back it had one time borrowing money, the state is going to borrow money for transportation to pay state Workers Compensation that are retiring. This is a fact because it was in my paper. My second one is medicare pays for nothing for seniors. I had to go on medicaid when i had to go on medicaid it do to an accident, medicaid pay for it all. When i turn 65 you go to any senior place and you see every senior in there, they cannot see. If you cannot get glasses and for what i get, i cannot afford them. My sign is in the pharmaceutical business. You see six out of 10 who use medicaid, they get paid health. Host lets let the congress a respond. Guest i agree with you about how funds deposited into the Transportation Trust fund im not sure, i think you said you are calling from maryland. In maryland, we passed a new law last year that would help protect those funds. Weve seen what a lot of people call a rating of transportation funds for other purposes. It happened a lot in the last several years. I think we will have a new approach Going Forward. Last year, the legislative session in maryland passed a law , which i think is a good law to protect those funds. I do not think youll see as much of that Going Forward as we did in the past. I agree, it is a problem. As far as the medicare benefits i have seen the situation with i care benefits. It is not sufficient for what a lot of our seniors need. Or are a lot of holes in the program. The copay can be a little high. The deductibles are high. There are these talks going on in congress right now about merging the two parts together. I think that might improve some of your concerns. Those are good questions. Thank you. Host them jeff is up next, republican. Caller good morning. Just a little background, then i have a question. I wanted to repatriation of profits from these american code corporations oversieas. These Companies Going overseas, they get help from the u. S. Taxpayer to set up plans and equipment. They are getting subsidies to set up for divisions for which they make profits. Then, they do not want to read patriot profits back to the u. S. To pay taxes on them. Now, my question, i as an individual taxpayer, i am subject to worldwide income. If i go overseas and make money i cannot avoid paying taxes on that. Why can corporations do so . Yes bantu questions there. There is one about the government supporting corporations in setting up overseas operations. That actually focuses more on domestic manufacturers. That is actually more targeted to people running operations the United States, but youre right that parts of our government to facilitate u. S. Corporations getting into new markets. The Commerce Market does that in a whole number of ways. I think those are good programs. They are really not that expensive. They facilitate particularly development in the about the world. What we have in the tax will right now survey called the furl. That allows a corporation to effectively say that if they do not repatriate money to United States, they do not have to pay taxes but they have to keep the money overseas. That has been a longstanding part of our tax code. I figured is very done. I think we should not allow that. I think corporations and they make money overseas, they have to pay taxes on that money. And they should be able to bring that money back freely. Host the wall street journal has a chart on those deferrals. You can see how they decrease over time. They are at 2. 11 trillion. Guest it is a huge number. What we have to make sure is that they are there are two types of jurisdictions. There are tax havens. Jurisdictions specifically set up with no taxes. We should not allow companies that make money in tax havens to bring that money back taxfree. Our build is not do that. It allows for a minimum number of tags. Then, there are other companies lets look a company like starbucks. Their running operations in a place like germany. They have to pay german taxes just like a german Coffee Company would. They have all the cost over there. You have to make sure that companies are paying playing on a level field. What our bill does is if a company is paying a competitive level of tax in a jurisdiction that has Corporate Tax rate similar to ours, then they have to pay very little additional u. S. Corporate tax. What we are talking here is the double tax. By now we have a system that would effectively charge a double tax. Double taxes there is there in a tax haven, but is not fair if they are in a jurisdiction artie charges a decent amount of taxes already. Our bill gets rid of deferral. This money would come back. They would have knows it no incentive to keep the overseas. Some things are put in place will reflect the inconsistency. If theyre in a competitive country where they are actually paying competitive tax rates to that jurisdiction, the amount of tax they have to pay as much stop smaller than in the tax haven. Host one person wants to know about the congressional pay raise. Is there a raise on the horizon . Guest i am not aware of a congressional pay raise. I do not think that members of congress should get a pay raise at this point. For someone who comes from the private sector, you are rewarded by good performance, and i do not think we can say we had been paying performing at a level that merits pay raise. Host what about pay raise for federal workers . Guest i am in support of that. I think a pay raise for federal workers is good. I think the members in my district, if you look at some of these agencies, they work in the department of Homeland Security, etc. , i do get would be hard to argue that they are not doing a good job. Host mike, youre next. Caller good morning. I was like to ask the representative i understand recently that the Democratic Party wanted to pass at bill that sales tax on Financial Transactions including stocks, bonds, and future contracts. I have two questions. First, how much exactly is in this pool . I have heard that there are 1000 trillion dollars of transactions per year. A 1 tax would of course make 10 trillion. It is not only how much is in there, and a no have probably study this, but also, what would be the negative consequences of an acting as sales tax on Financial Instruments . Guest there are two things. The question is about a proposed financial transaction tax. People look at it and think it is a great opportunity to raise revenues for the governor. Government. They say, if we were to tax that, we could make a lot of money. As technology has worked its way into Financial Services, we see a lot more frequency of trading people do more transactions. I think we have to look at it carefully, and cautiously. There are a couple things that my high level view informs my opinion. I like income tax better. In general, i like taxing income and not behavior. Often times, you can tax at a high level behavior, but if the companies are not making any money, you are really hurting those businesses. I like taxes on income. I also worry, if you do not do financial 10 transaction tax, in a global environment, making sure that the United Kingdom and asia if you do not have a similar regime across global key financial markets, than all of the companies that engage in Financial Transactions will simply relocate to those other jurisdictions. This business is the most movable of all businesses. There are a lot of people that move in the industry, and the ability to move those overseas is very easy. I think it is very naive when people proposing things and not doing it as part of a global agreement. I worry that the minute the United States taxes these things, the businesses, which include the bangs that get a lot of attention, but also things like schwab, fidelity, they would look great locate their operations overseas. I also worry that this would have an effect, again, it is painted sometimes very quickly as something that is against the biggest Financial Institutions in the world. Why do we want to charge soak skies more taxes . Charge those guys more taxes . All of those things would be subject to more tax. You have to remember that ordinary americans would be paying that tax, not just banks. I think what the president proposes is a little more carefully crafted. What is is an additional lead the on the assets of very large Financial Institutions. Again, i have to do bunch of work on that to get my final opinion, but it is a little more targeted. I think it is one of these things that sounds good, but you have to get into the details and make sure does not cause businesses to leave the United States and disproportionally her average americans who have their Retirement Savings in stocks and in accounts. They would be paying this tax also. We have to think of the consequences. Sometimes there are unintended consequences to these things and they sound good, but you wake of the next day and are not making the revenue that you think. And a lot investors would figure it out and go overseas, and the person paying it would be the average american. Host congress will be getting its hands on the 2016 Budget Proposal from the resident. It is expected to be delivered in the 8 00 hour in capitol hill. There is a picture of the budget itself eating printed. It is a 3. 9 trillion legit budget. We are with congressman don delaney. We will get through as many of your calls as we can. Jonathan is in fairfax virginia. The morning. Caller congressman delaney, you proposed a bill that had a find that C Corporations could pay into and repatriate their dollars. It was most go towards infrastructure. I was wondering if the bill usb he have now has anything that would allow people to go through such a methodology or if you think obama will put repatriation on people in the near future . Guest good question. The president didnt put repatriation in the forefront of his budget. They released some of these details. What they do in the budget is deal with the money that is sitting overseas, then he makes some changes to be go forward system. It is very similar to what we propose for a long time. Our rates and levels are a bit different. We also proposed what youre talking about, the american infrastructure fund. Host and that is a different bill . Guest yes, we have two versions going. This one deals with the International Taxes done. The other one is a smaller version, dealing with money overseas creating the infrastructure fund, and Encouraging Companies to invest in a fun. What it did is is it allowed companies to bring some earnings over taxfree while putting money into this fund. Host is that bill any closer to infrastructure 2. 0, will it be easier to move . Guest i think it will be easier to move because it deals with the Highway Trust Fund. This one ended up with about a hundred members of congress on it. Then, it expanded because we have so much money support for the project. We say, lets get more money back and this is a revenue opportunity for the trust fund. The Highway Trust Fund funds 90 of the highways in this country, and it is running out of money. This fixes the Highway Trust Fund, it is a massive acrosstheboard Infrastructure Program for this country. It creates jobs and make us makes us more competitive. It increases in investments and infrastructure, gets money back from overseas, which is great. It also puts forward a go Forward International sat tax system. We believe it was will score a very positively. Host you are projecting up to 120 billion in new money for the Highway Trust Fund. Guest plus, 54 the other thing. That was the same rate that chairman dave camp propose last congress. Host it is a chart 2625. David is waiting on the line from new york. Caller good morning. I have comments more than a question. Ronald reagan lowered our taxes to 28 . Revenue has doubled from 500 billion to 900 million. I have another comment about the tax code in general. If you look around this country, cities are collapsing under the weight of its own bureaucracy and their own spending. Spending has never been under control. D choi being the poster child for this whole situation. Right now, i am in new york. We have a situation going on now with our speaker. Speaker silver. This looks just like more of government grabbing at the resources, rather than those resources ever getting to the problem. All they are doing here is encrypting more businesses with legal manipulations. Weve known it. Until you take power away from Government Spending, and get back into the hands of people who really know how to spend money, the Small Businesses etc. You will have this problem. The minutia of the budget what we will do here and there, it is too complex for any group of people. Host to claim at your concern is it specifically about State Government or you think the same applies to the federal government . Caller right now the tax code just goes up and up. Social security, that tax actually contribute as much the federal budget as income tax. You have 59 Million People on Social Security people. There are so many issues. Guest there are a lot of issues. I think you ring up a good point. Government can in fact be very wasteful. We need to make sure that whatever programs the government launches they are done at a High Standard with high transparency, ethical behavior, and are targeted towards producing a positive result. That is to go back to an earlier comment that i made about how we think about budgets. As someone whos spent my whole career in the private sector, i think that i think differently about some of these topics. The one thing that has shocked me in the budgeting process a government is the scoring process. The way that everything is scored the same. Things that are proven to these smart, like investing in infrastructure or in basic medical research, which has proven to produce Economic Growth in this country that is scored the same as increased spending to build the government bureaucracy. It does not make sense of a look in the at these things the same way. I think the problem is that we dont look at these things the right way. If we do not do real analytics dynamic scoring, and use data to predict outcomes of the spending we may, we tend to not make the smartest investments that week could. We tend to view all Government Spending as a same. I think this contributes to seller some of the things that the caller is identifying. To avoid b wasting government, we need cap transparency. We also need to think about Government Spending the right way. Host a lot of numbers today coming out on budget day. The caller was talking up Social Security. 920 billion dollars is projected to be marked for Social Security and an increase of 6 annually over the next decade. We will try and stay on top of the numbers as much as we can. A lot of is coming out on the budget. Kylie is waiting from arizona. Good morning. Caller good morning. Ive ask if of hawaii. I just want to say that obama is proposing a plan that would help our country. Right now, the middle class is being tax 30 to 35 . The rich, they are getting tax 35 , but there is a separation between middle class. You make 35,000 and you are being tax 35 on that . You are not making the cut. The Big Companies, as far as what he is proposing overseas, the tax overseas, these companies are going overseas and pay no tax. They are not contributing back to our country and they are selling products in our country. Now, i pay 35 in taxes and i am still bluecollar. I work five or six shifts per week and i try to get overtime in, 12 to 13 hour shifts. I am still struggling. If you want to have a family, or just the basics, and not have to work your whole life, and enjoy anything, the middle class is screwed. The companies overseas, why should they get a break . If i went overseas right now the last caller actually or a few callers ago had a good point, if i were to go overseas right now and make money, you would get taxed on that. I would get taxed by the u. S. 35 depending on the income. It is usually 35 percent. Guest kylie, two good questions. Your point about the middle class is the most important. Let me deal with the corporate sufferers. I agree with you, right now what goes on with corporations they have this deferral option. I think everyone thinks it is a really stupid system that we have now. Companies can make profits overseas i like to not bring it back and therefore not pay taxes. That for us, bad for them. None of them really want to keep all that money overseas. They want to bring about United States. We need a new system. Hopefully now we will talk about that new system. The debate about what is happening on the milk labs part of what is happening is changes all over the world, technology and globalization. We have hollowed out a lot of middle skilled jobs held by middleclass americans. That has really hurt the backbone of the country, the group of people who built this country, save this country, and arguably save the world. We have let them stay in a very Weak Division in the job market. It has put us in a situation where wages of middleclass workers are not growing. One reason i care so much about infrastructure is because it is something we need to invest in it is a middleclass jobs program. Building the infrastructure is a middleclass jobs program that would put people to work and create demand for middle skilled middleclass workers. It would help everyone in the middle class. If we combine that with the smarter tax policy where we give some middle class americans of break, i think you can see how the middleclass could thrive again. Host one thing on Infrastructure Spending, one more try i went to show our viewers today. This is infrastructure is ending by country. It is weighted as a percentage of gdp. In that time, china 8. 5 spending on infrastructure. Japan, 5 . India, 4. 7 the United States 2. 6 guest it is insane. When you combine that with the fact that we have a lot of data that says for every dollar that you get 1. 92 back. It is a very good return. The nice thing about infrastructure is that people actually believe that government is competent in building infrastructure. Going back to this question from an earlier caller about how sad if a satisfied he was as to how government performs. If you ask people what they think the government is good at, they think we are very good at military and in second place is infrastructure. It is viewed as an appropriate and proper role of government. It is very bipartisan in that role regard. These other countries that you are referencing are being much smarter about how they spend their taxpayers money than we are. Host lets get to paul. Caller good morning, congressman. I would like to ask whether you have ever considered the idea of simply getting rid of the Corporate Income tax altogether and taxing the income divide derived from wealth at the same rate as all other income. I look at the numbers online and it turns out that you would actually in up with more money assuming that Everything Else stayed the same, then you would as the system we have now. You would greatly signify the code. I am a retired cpa and i know you get rid of many thousands of pages of tax law by getting doing those two things. Corporate income tax we all know that corporations do not pay those taxes. They either take money from the dividends or investments, or employees. That is my i really am an independent. I am a prolife progressive, i sit on the slide. Guest it is a smart question. When you look at what is happening to the Corporate Tax income for the government has fallen a lot. One reason has fallen is a point you are getting at. So many companies, or businesses, are not choosing to incorporate. They are choosing to be limited partnerships, limited liability companies. Their owners hate hats on the earnings as individuals. The reason why so much of a is occurring is because of the complexity of our Corporate Income tax system. You look at corporations and you see some paying the full rate, in the 30 percent range. You see other Companies Paying 10 . It does not make sense. The other thing is all of these reductions. Or are all kinds of strange things in the Corporate Tax. There are lots of ways that it could be simplified. And it would be good for the country and companies. Wealth tax is something that we have some prohibitions against doing in this country. The only places where you can do wealth taxes at the state level. The federal government cannot do it. We can do income tax, but not a wealth tax. We have looked at, and not to delve into a completely unrelated topic, but we have done a lot of work on the carbon tax. It is taxing carbon, which i think is important. I want to change our behavior as a nation around carbon consumption. Using all the revenues generated by carbon tax to reduce the Corporate Income tax rate you put in place the carbon tax at the right levels, you could raise a lot of money and cut the Corporate Income tax down by one third. If you were to simplify even more, you can probably cut it in half. That is where i think there are a lot of opportunities. As an american who cares about business and the environment i would much rather tax carbon that profits. Profits correlate with making jobs and putting money into peoples pockets. I think theyre both ways is that levine the tax code, as you reference, and also of lowering it significantly. I do not think it is a well tax, i figure is through a carbon tax, for example. Host we appreciate your time for being here. Up next, we will be joined by republican from South Carolina, tom rice. We will be right back. The Political Landscape has changed with the 114 congress. Not only are there 43 new republicans and 15 new democrats in the house, there are also 108 women in congress, including the first africanamerican woman in the house. Keep track of the members of congress using Congressional Congress congressional chronicle on cspan. Org. It has a lot of info on there. New congress, best access. With the sec focusing on Net Neutrality in february, we spoke to two industry executives. Chris riley with mozilla, and at t Vice President , hinkle quiz. The internet needs strong rules to protect Net Neutrality. Including know this, no blocking. They need to be i expect actively enforceable. The problem we have now is a Net Neutrality issue is not focused on the substantive. I think there is a lot consensus that is focused on the secs Legal Authority to adopt rules and what Jurisdictional Authority they should use. Our concern is that they will undo potentially a regulatory status that has existed now for over one decade. Lex tonight at 8 00 eastern on the communicators on cspan 2. Washington journal continues. Host august and tom rice is a republican from South Carolina and was on the Budget Committee. We know the baseline numbers, and that they can include sequestration. What is your reaction to that . Is sequestration a good thing . Guest absolutely not. Sequestration is not a good thing. What we need to do is agree on more intelligent ways to cut spending, rather than just across the board. Given that they were unable to do that in 2010, sequestration was the way it had to be done. We are already currently spending greater than the historical average for the government. Spending is the problem. It is not revenue. We are running 400 billion plus deficit. That is way down from a couple of years ago. We need to do more to curtail spending. We need to get the size of Government Back under control. Host 474 billion is the projected deficit. The 4 trillion budget hits capitol hill today. What is the smarter way to spend . Guest i like the pathway to prosperity that the House Committee has put out for the last three years. That would balance in 10 years. The way it does that is it would repeal obama care and save 2. 1 trillion. It would provide premium support for medicare. As you know, it is projected to run out of money around 2030. It would also, not a silly cut discretionary, but slow the growth of discretionary. We have already cut out, back to 2007 or 2008 levels. It is projected that it will be historical low levels. Spending in defense is increase, based on the needs of the pentagon right about 400 billion. Were talking to congressman tom rice, a member of the Budget Committee. If you want to call in, you can call 202 7488001 for republicans. 202 7488000 for democrats. 202 7458002 for independents. If you are outside the United States, 202 7480003. Congress may, what happens in the Budget Committee when the president s budget arrives on capitol hill . Guest there will be celebration. Not because of the content of the budget, that the fact that we get the budget on time since the president has been in office. There is a process that we go through to do the budget. It is due on february 1. In the past, it has not been delivered before april. Then, the house presents is budget. That has not happen in since the president has been in office. That is fascinating to me. So may think that we do there so nonsensical in washington, you can hardly run a bakery or your household without a budget. Yet, here we are trying to run the most complex nation in the world, and we have not had and agreed to budget since the president has been in office. Host them the term debt on arrival has been thrown around. Guest certainly, not every term in the budget will be agreed to. I think there probably areas that where we can find Common Ground the house will put something out very similar to what it has put up in past years. We are confident that the house and senate will go to conference. That is something that if it is something that the president agrees to down the line, i doubt it. Hopefully we will work together. Host there will be separate house and Senate Budgets this trimaran around . Guest there is a process for that. That is how it is. And. Reconciliation. It requires 51 votes. Host but its not something that has happened in recent years . Guest right. When harry reid was head of the senate they did not want to take up a budget. Anything that republicans had to bow on, it might h hurt them in an election. Last year, we passed no budget no pay. We never did negotiation process, and i was very disappointed by that. I suspect that this year we. I think on this will put forward a unified budget and the president will have to decide whether or not he will tour or trying work on it. Host tom rice represent South Carolina seven district. Here to take your calls and questions is the congressman. Tim is in clearwater, florida. You are up for us. Caller good morning. I was a ron paul supporter and i am basically the in the conservative wing of the republicans. We are overthrowing democratically elected governments like in the ukraine. I understand that we are in venezuela now. Just minor own business . You tell as we are broke and bankrupt you are damaging my childrens future. Who do you think you are with all this militarism. Guest one of the main reasons iran for congress was to get our debt under control. I think everybody from the white house to the congress will tell you that we have to do something to rein it in. We have 18 trillion in debt and climbing. Right now, our debt held by the public is at a somewhat dangerous level, 70 of gdp. It is predicted that that will go to 100 of gdp within the next 20 years if we do not do something to rein it in. The house Budget Committee does exactly that. Our budget will balance within 10 years. It is a gradual process. We are spending, i dont know 20 more than what we are taking in right now. We will start paying down the debt. If we can simply make progress, put our budget on the right trajectory, and i think you will see a great weight lifted off of our economy. People will be more interested in investing in the United States. Host the u. S. Debt clock website has a running tally of our National Debt. 18 trillion. You can see that there as well as some of the breakdowns that they do. Deborah is waiting in virginia. Good morning, deborah. Caller good morning. My question is this people are out here working so hard. I work 84 hours per week. The minimum wage is getting to the point where no one you know, republicans say they want to increase it. I am wondering how you could think that a single mother can live off of the money there is now. You make so much money there but it is killing the lower class and me, i am middleclass. The amount of money that put in taxes is insane. Being single with no dependents, i really pay. Guest my response is that the best way to get the wage base is to go our economy. The president is very fond of saying that i am for the middle class, and his proposal for this budget this year has middleclass in the title. The fact is that if you look at the average Household Income since the president has been in office, it is down about 9 . At the same time, expenses have expanded greatly. The middle class is getting squeezed. Here, we have this middleclass squeeze from over the past six years. Health care costs are. Fuel costs are out. They are down somewhat, but they are overall higher than they are since the president took office. I understand, and i agree that the middleclass is getting squeezed. We need to do everything we can to grow our economy and bring that middleclass Family Income back up. I have a bill that will be interesting in the next few weeks to do just that. I want to get government bureaucrats, i want to have them have skin in the game. Im working on a bill to do that. I think Big Government is a part of that problem. The problem with an acrosstheboard minimum wage like that is that they divided by what is a living wage. I can tell you that a living wage in San Francisco is dramatically different than a wage in South Carolina. I prefer that states that what that minimum wage should be. I have no problem with state setting a minimum wage. I know that large number of states improved an increase in their states. Well i struggle with is applying the same minimum wage in california to North Carolina or louisiana. Or South Carolina, where i am from. I do not think that makes sense. Host on this proposal that is expected to be in the budget, 1. 3 pay raise for federal employees and uniformed members of the military. What do you think . Guest i would certainly stand behind the uniform members of the military. One point where struggle is that in so many ways the federal bureaucracy is dragging our economy. When you look at these extensions of the clean water rules, these new rules on banks. All of these regulatory extensions hurt smaller business. That is where jobs come from. The new rules under obamacare are a big drag on small business. These huge regulatory measures are a drag on our economy. While like to see is bureaucrats if they are action slow our economy and slow hirings, and cost the middleclass wages then they should suffer the consequences to. The median Household Income has declined since 2007. Yet, federal employees make more than a day in 2007. They do not share the same consequences that perhaps they should. Guest we have another caller waiting to speak with you. Caller i could save us some money right off the. I have gotten 13 medicare books and that is a waste of money. If they would rage early retirement from 62 to 64, and from 65 to 67, that would save money for medicare and Social Security. And have a fair flat tax. If you obey you were a big guy in a big company, you would pay more. Guest units name to tenants of the house budget that being a fair flat tax, they are aiming around 25 . That would make us more imperative in the world. Right now it is 39 maximum. We are the highest in the world. You see an American Companies and jobs leaving our shores. The president gets up and says that these companies should be happy to pay the highest tax rate in the world. It is unpatriotic if they do not. What the president misses is that these people are companies are in global competition. If theyre working on a high cost item like a jet engine. And working with other countries that have to pay 15 tax, who do you think will win the competition . In fact, we need a fair flat tax. The senate has never taken that out since it has been proposed. The other item, i know you said increasing retirement age for medicare. The house Budget Committee does that also. It only affects people who are eight years from retirement. It gradually increases the age by two years. Two of the three items that you mention are in the house Budget Committees budget. The other theme is not putting so many government allocations. That is under nondefense discretionary. I think they really do not want you to understand what theyre talking about. They use those terms. We have cut that also. It is back to 2007 or 2000 eight levels. All of the increases under this demonstration are gone. The house budget would not cut those further, necessarily, but slow their growth over the next 10 years so that we can achieve a balanced budget. Host we have a caller from South Carolina cedric. Good morning. Guest it is good to talk to someone from South Carolina. Caller you may change your mind after im done talking. Congressman, my thing is why hasnt anybody talked about reinstating overtime pay. In South Carolina, we cannot pay anyone over 40 hours. Now, they pay people time and a half. When are the big Companies Going to start doing their share . They are asking for a one cent tax and South Carolina to rebuild roads. The Big Companies bmw, bowlinewing, they are the ones who will benefit. Host lets let the congas my respond. Guest im not really entirely sure what he is talking about doing away with over time. I do not think the federal government has done do ways over time. Maybe the stay is not paying as much as over time . Im really not sure. If the federal government has done anything to alleviate overtime laws, im not aware of it. I know the governor of South Carolina has proposed a plan to increase highway funding. It would be an increase in the gas tax, and the simultaneous decrease in the another tax, it would make South Carolina more competitive. Im not sure of the exact terms of that so its hard for me to comment on. Host we will go of the east coast. Mike is calling in. Caller good morning. My question is why would you pay to keep the pipeline builds when it does not require the Pipeline Companies to pay into the oil spill find to clean up an oil spill if it occurs. Guest i am for responsible development of all of our neg energy reserves. My entire focus in congress is on american competitiveness. I think we have simply given away in so much of our Competitive Edge to the rest of the world over the last two or three decades. Energy costs is one thing that makes us more competitive. I fair and five taxes and makes us more competitive. Changing our immigration system from family base to skill base makes us more competitive. Investment in infrastructure makes us more competitive. I think by not doing these things, we are choosing to be noncompetitive in the world. We should not be surprised when we see jobs leave our shores. Things like the Keystone Pipeline which make more fuel reserves available, and as a result makes for lower costs here. Should they be subject to this reserve to cover for fuel spills, absolutely. Should they have liability for accidents caused by them absolutely. Host thomas from californias next. Caller good morning. How are you gentlemen . Guest good. Caller on going to talk to tom rice about pay in the military. I would agree with it in terms of the test we put them through. What about these mercenaries like blackwater . They are given 84,000 when our military is getting a different amount. There is a huge disparity in the thought process. The irs assaulting salty american citizens on american soil. We have spies on congress. All these things a one point something pay raise for all those activities. This is while you pursue policies that hurt our nation. Host payments for private contractors. Guest i am on the Budget Committee. Im not on intelligence or Armed Services and do not deal those contractors directly. We have heard concerns from the pentagon, a few it seems that you give more and more uncertain every day. I have two deferred the experts of the pentagon and what we need to do on that. If there is pay disparity, there should not be. American soldiers are heroes. Without them, we would not have our liberty. Why there would be any pay disparity, im not sure. Im not sure that blackwater has the bit for these contracts, i would assume that they would. There should not be any pay disparity for similar benefits for similar work. Host rochester new york. John is calling in. Caller good morning. I am a veteran. I just want to go back a little bit to what you discussed about Social Security. If you go all the back to 2000 and to the end of clinton signed. I used to be a republican. If you look at a surplus and paying Social Security for our aging population, we knew that this would happen. Also in 2001, we made china defer. I got deployed. I had no party on murder no body armor, and adequate equipment, it was ridiculous. To go through all these tax cuts for the rich, and turn around these last six years, the problem now saying that this is a problem now, no, it is something that happened over time. Guest of art there to respond to. The beginning was about Social Security. I agree with you. The Congressional Budget Office says that the Social Security trust fund will expire in 2030, i believe. 15 years from now. And the grams he and in the grand scheme of things, it is not much time. We need to make sure that our promises we make our cats. And the promises we make to our children are kept. What we need to do is fix Social Security today. The house budget does not touch Social Security. The rules of Congress Prevent us from doing that. We are working on a bill to do that now that would fix Social Security. It would combine increasing salary levels at which she had to and for Social Security. Raising retirement age. Similar to what the house Budget Committee does to medicare. It would not affect anybody who is iron is either retired or within eight years of retirement. It is deferred. The last thing, there would be these things would make Social Security good for many years. I agree that we need to make our promises to our seniors and that jens what was the last part of his question . Host his experience with funding for body armor and what he needed when he was deployed. Guest i think we have done better with that. Certainly there were problems in the early 2000. The pentagon has identified and dealt with a lot of those problems. Sequester has affected a law of our military budget. It has come down. In order to preserve our readiness around the world, and at this time in global uncertainty. The house Budget Committee would increase the pentagon budget by 5 billion over the next 10 years to take care of some of the shortfalls. Host if false want to take a peek at the house budget the are talking about, it is on the website. We will have a link to the president s budget when it comes out available at cspan. Org. The president will be speaking about the budget. That time has been bumped back a little bit. He will be talking about that at 11 55 a. M. When he goes to the department of Homeland Security. The director of the department of Homeland Security will also be talking about that a little later. You can find out on cspan 2. Do you want to jump in . Guest are there any more calls . Host several. Guest the best way we can handle our continued deficit is to grow this economy more quickly. Two years ago, the house budget predicted that our economy would grow buy 2. 9 . A group by 2. 5 now, we are at 2. 1 people say that that slow growth the economy is disappointing. My response to that is when you have middleclass income going down, family when you have the highest Corporate Tax rate in the world and aging infrastructure that make us less competitive its disappointing. Its not surprising. Wheat of folk on focus on american competitiveness. If we do that, no one can compete with this great we have fantastic schools and technology and a skilled workforce. If we remove the noose we put on ourselves, we have ports that cant take certain ships. It takes 16 years to get permits. They have been studying the port of charleston for five years. They issued a preliminary report saying it will be economically feasible. I have asked the army corps of engineers, is there any chance youre going to find it unfeasible . Weve got to wait 10 years before we get a study. I was in panama looking at the panama canal. They are asked and it. Are expanded. Their business is growing so much they have to do it. What was so significant about 2000 . The United States relax a lot of its trade agreements. We have got to decide that we will make this country competitive. If we do, our comment will not grow at 2. 1 . A lot of these problems with debt and deficit and these problems with unemployment and benefits, they go away. Host we want to get there as many collars as we can. Richard, go ahead. Caller i think the representative misspoke when his constituent called. He was complaining about the work on saturday and sunday. That is a state issue. I think south killer and is a caroline is a right to work state. They can offer pay at whatever rate they feel they can get away with. I hope the workers, i hope it works out better for them. I am a Union Democrat in kentucky. This president has gutted the middle class with this obamacare. My wife and i have lost our insurance. We have lost our doctors. He has taxed me and Justice Roberts said it was a tax. I didnt put two and two together. Ive got procedures that i have already put off. First time in my life, i voted republican was in this last midterm. I am saying to all the middle class people in america right now, get out of the democrat party. Get out of the Republican Party and be independent. This has got to stop. Guest i agree with respect to obamacare. Health insurance rhenium are up and coverage is down. These policies, people cant afford the deductibles. People say Health Care Costs are down because people dont go to the doctor. Government intrusion into the Health Care System to the level they have done is a horrible idea and i agree with you. Its not just obamacare. When you talk about getting the middle class, you are exactly right. Average Household Income is down. He says he is for the middle class. Fuel prices are up since his he took office. They have come back down now. Fuel costs are up. The war on coal, everybodys home utilities will up here in you get health care, utility prices. Feel prices affect food prices. Every time he speaks, this new budget scams half 1 billion. We are already spending more than historical average. Look at the fruit of the tree. I agree with the caller. This man has gutted the middle class. Incomes are down and expenses are up there in the seeds of our economy are in the middle class. Two thirds of our economy is based on consumer spending. When you squeeze the middle class and take money out of their pocket, you should not be surprised when the economy performs at a substandard pace. Forecasts are going down. We have got to get the government out of the way. I have fought it every chance i can. Im getting ready to put out a bill where the bureaucrats suffer if the middle class suffers. Host bob is in pennsylvania. Good morning. Caller good morning. I would like to salute that last caller who became an independent. I want to say about this overtime law, if you worked 10 hours a day for three days, you have six hours of overtime. I still get those six hours of overtime, even though i lost a days pay. They passed a law that you did not get overtime unless it was over 40 hours. The six hours that were overtime, if i lost a day out sick, i didnt get overtime at all. You should have overtime, anything over eight on any day. Now they track it as anything over 40 hours is overtime and thats not there. Thats when i became an independent and i was a republican. Guest when was that . Caller they did that about 15 or 20 years ago. Guest we havent done anything to change overtime loss since i have been in congress and host . Caller why do we want to reduce Corporate Tax rates to match European Countries tax rates where the economies of those countries have gone south so quickly in the past few years . It seems it would do the same in this country that the economy will go further down. Caller it comes back to a matter of competitiveness. There are eight items that we need to focus on. If we focus on them and get out of the way, you will see american jobs come back. Unemployment will go down, a whole host of issues will be resolved if we can simply choose to be competitive. That is invested in infrastructure and a porch, dodd frank, we gutted big banks. It is killing community tax. Getting back to the tax situation, we were the highest in the world. Lets pick an american company. Lets say its ge and they make jet engines and they can make those anywhere they want. They decide we will make a new engine and employ a thousand people. We will make 5 billion of profit. Will they do that in america or ireland where we only pay 15 in taxes. That is a high cost, low margin thing. If they are competing and they have to pay double the taxes they are not going to make them in the United States. That is a fact. Its forcing american jobs overseas. We are the only country in the world that taxes global earnings when they are repatriated. They have to leave in france or they will pay 40 when they come back to the United States. Are they going to employ people here . Host you mentioned ge. Firms have been a king letting profits overseas. Ge has 110 billion in profit that has accumulated offshore. The Number One Company after that is microsoft. That chart is in the wall street journal. Caller burger king is moving to canada. We cannot sit here with the highest Corporate Tax rate in the world and thumb our noses at companies that are International Companies in International Competition and say you will come here anyway. If they do that, they will lose in International Competition. Its not a matter of patriotism. Thats silly. Its a matter of survival. We have got to make ourselves competitive. Our future is very bright. Host we have just a couple of minutes left. Michael is in illinois on the independent line. Caller we are 21st century but thinking like the 20th century. We spend way too much and defense. There are no giant wars anymore. There is no need for hundreds of jet fighters and hundreds of tanks. To fight these giant wars and spend all this money when the money should be used for health care and infrastructure and better schools. It makes no sense. On the point to profits, every company has made billions in profits. They are sitting on record rockets. If you look, boeing has paid zero taxes. They are writing it off. They say 39 , most are paying zero to 10 . You live in a fantasy world. We have to get rid of the old, rich, white republicans. Caller i think most people that are looking at the newspaper will tell you there are worrisome hotspots around the world. Whether its isis or al qaeda or russia invading ukraine, there are things that we have got to be prepared for. We need to wrap up our defense spending. They rely too much on us to protect them as well. Some of that is at our urging. I agree. We need to control costs everywhere we can. I believe that we cannot sit here and ignore problems of violence around the world. Host the last call is from new york area. Caller a few comments about obama care. Im a physician. Im a private physician and i buy my own insurance. If you buy your own insurance prior to obamacare, the cost would go up astronomically each year. Since obamacare has come in, its going up, but not at the rate it was. Before obamacare, the system was worse. We had millions uninsured. If they get sick they went to the er. You will pay the most money at the er. We are doing Preventative Care and primary care for millions of more people which will save money in the long run. It amazes me that even at the inception of this law, the republicans were saying it was costing jobs and making health care go up. How can you judge a law or obamacare before it goes into effect . Host i will give you the last minute. Guest cbo and others have said obamacare costs jobs. It will cost 2 million jobs. With respect, healthcare insurance premiums are going up. The ability to use the policies has gone down. Copays and deductibles and these other things make it difficult to use policies. Health care costs have gone down because i believe people are not affording to. This is anecdotal, constituents in my district, their lives have been effective negatively by this law. What we should have done medicaid covered people who were poor. People who were employed and their employers had health insurance, which is the bulk of the rest of us and wealthy people can pay for their own care. It was the people in the middle who werent covered that we need to target. We can do that with tax credits. We dont have to make a federal program to do it. We dont have to define the terms of a policy that everybody buys. Everybody has to buy maternity coverage. Everybody has to buy substance abuse. This law was written largely by the insurance companies. It is stifling the economy. We are not getting the coverage we had before obamacare. Host thats all the time we have for. Coming up, we will talk about the Budget Committee. Well be right back. The Political Landscape has changed with the 114th congress. Not only are there 43 new republicans and 50 new democrats and 12 new republicans in the senate, there are 108 women in congress. Keep track of the members of congress using congressional chronicle on cspan. Org. They have lots of useful information including voting records. With the fcc focusing on Net Neutrality in february, we spoke with industry executives at the Consumer Electronics show in las vegas. We believe at the end of the day the internet needs and forcible rules for users and developers. Those need to include management and they need to be enforceable. The problem we have now with the Net Neutrality issue is its not focused on the rules. I think there is a lot of consensus on that. Its on the fcc Legal Authority to adopt rules. Our concern is they are going to undo a regulatory status that has existed now for over a decade. Tonight on the communicators at 8 00 eastern. Washington journal continues. Host we take a look at how your money is at work in a different federal program. This week is the federal budget coming out. Its now on capitol hill. Joining us to talk about it is William Hoagland, from the Bipartisan Policy Center. We have lots of details to go through. This is a 4 trillion budget. It includes a deficit and one that spends above sequestration levels. Your reaction to those numbers . Caller this is a budget that is not dead on arrival on capitol hill. Its probably going to be on heavy life support when it arrives a peer. It does have an opportunity to engage the president and the congress in some serious debates that have been lacking over the last few years. I have concern as we look out into the future, you gave the number right for 2016. The budget shows the deficit would go up in the out years under his proposal. It is 640 billion over 10 years. Congress has interest in reducing the budget, that is going to be a difficult task for congress to take on. It continues to show a deficit in debt. The budget assumes that with Economic Growth that the proportion of the deficit relative to the economy is flat. The second concern i have after glancing at it is the accumulation of deficits from the beginning of the republic to today as a share of the economy remains relatively high. The budget stabilizes that around 75 . Thats well above historical average. We used to run about 40 of gdp. Its a good start. Its as exciting as the super bowl was for budgeteers. Host he will be taking your questions. Phone lines are open for the next 40 minutes until the end of the show today. A lot of experience that you have in reviewing the budgets and the process they go through, what happens today . What is the timeline for getting if there is some agreement . Caller guest this begins the process. By law, the president issues of the first monday in february. This will be his day for his agencies and officials at his omb erector director. He will be making a presentation. As early as tomorrow, the two Budget Committees will begin the process of taking testimony from cabinet officials and others on the broad outlines of this budget. Under the process that we are operating under, regular order the Budget Committees will take the budget and go through it and they will come up with their broad blueprint of what they would like to see fiscal policy be for the next year, 10 years or longer. The committees will report out of their committees. They will go to the senate and house floors and for the first time in five years, they intent could conference to conference. This will become the basis on which guides the committees of jurisdiction on filling out the blueprint and building the house and moving forward. If everything works the way its supposed to, this is not always the case, it will be april 15 when congress has its answer to the budget in terms of its own fiscal blueprint. Then the real work begins with the committees building around that budget and reporting legislation to the president to be signed into law. Host this is the 2016 legend that will begin october 1. Budget that will begin october 1. He served as a staff member on the Senate Committee from 1982 until 2003. He served as the staff director of that committee for several years. He now works for the Bipartisan Policy Center and will take questions and comments. We will start with sharon in ohio. Good morning. Caller good morning. Thank you for taking my call. I just wanted to ask the gentleman what the American People can do . What can we do . The stupid mistake has been made to put the republicans in control of the congress. Every decision they make has a big business hank on it. They dont care about Social Security. They dont care about what we have paid into, our retirement plans. They only care about the egg business and big business and the rich. Guest i think the fact you were calling into cspan is an indication that you are an active individual in the process. Thats good. I think what we need is people such as yourself and others to study, understand, when with your wayeigh in with your congressman as we are in this preparatory stage. I encourage you to do what youre doing, which is participating and continuing to do that with your elected officials. Host what is your group . What are you trying to do . Guest we were established in 2007. It was established by four former majority leaders of the United States senate. These were democrats and republicans. We are not nonpartisan. We work hard to find solutions to these issues, such as the debt and deficit and issues of health care and immigration. We want to find solutions with bipartisan issues. These are usually highlevel people. Many have served in congress or in statehouses. We bring these individuals together and we conclude that if you can find bipartisanship, we ought to be able to find bipartisanship on capitol hill with these issues. Host we are chatting with William Hoagland. Robbie is up next. Good morning. Caller good morning. I would like to say that i think the major reason for the 18 trillion debt that we have is the ability that congress has to raid the Social Security trust fund. People are very much misinformed about what is going on with Social Security. The vast majority of years its been in existence, its operated on a surplus. Congress has been able to get a hold of that money. If we change that, they would be more responsible. I would like to know his opinion on this. Host what do you think . Guest i dont want to get too far into the weeds. You are correct. When the Social Security when you are a in more on an annual basis in your taxes to Social Security, we build up a surplus in the trust fund. When the Social Security trust fund has a surplus, what does it do with those surpluses . It rights and iou to the treasury so they dont have to go out and aro from the public. It becomes available for operational government. You are absolutely correct. The difficulty is we are moving into a situation where we are not running a cash surplus and we are paying down that debt that was accumulated in Social Security. As the congressman previously on pointed out is that trust fund will exhaust by 2033. We will have to go into a payasyougo system. The revenues will only pay benefits. That will be a 20 reduction in what people will expect. This is a complicated issue. I apologize for going into all of the numbers. We have to look at ways to reform the system. We are not talking about cutting benefits for those who are in retirement. In order to make the Program Sustainable in the future, we have to look at ways to improve it. We have to modify the program for the future. Host john is on our line for democrats. Caller good morning. I would like to ask a question. Senator rand paul made a remark a week or so ago. I was listening on the television that he wants to cut Social Security disability by 20 because most evil people are scamming the system. I would like to say i worked for 35 years with one company. My lungs went bad and i had to go out on disability. I do know about most people scamming the system. What do you think about cutting disability by 20 . Guest thank you for the call. Let me point out that we have launched about a year ago a commission made up of a number of highly respected individuals including kent conrad and former undersecretary at Social Security jim lockhart to look into this issue. We set up a task force on disability. We are looking at the issue of disability. One of the things i have noticed in todays numbers, i have not seen what the president reposes to do about the disability Insurance Program. The reason i raise it is we have to trust funds. We have one for retirees and one for disabilities and the issue is the Disability Trust fund will exhaust its resources at the end of 2016 probably november. What senator paul was suggesting, i think, is not that he was proposing to reduce benefits by 20 . If congress does not address the Disability Insurance trust fund in this congress, this is in this congress, under the current law as it exists, those benefits would have to be reduced by 20 . The issue before congress how does he propose to deal with that budget . There are proposals out there. I dont think fraud is a major issue. There is some inefficiencies. We know there were some in new york with some of their Disability Programs. The vast majority of people deserve the benefits you are getting. The question is whether those who want to work can find work and not be disenfranchised by the Disability Program by the way it set up. This is a big issue. Its one that i did not see addressed this morning, at least in the initial release of material the president put out. Host lots of numbers will still be coming out today. We will be chatting about them tomorrow as well as new details come out. We are talking with William Hoagland. Joe is in kentucky on the line for democrats. You are up joe. Caller we keep talking about the budget every year. Whatever has happened to the plan . Guest the commission was set up , the president wanted recommendations in 2012 to move forward to find ways to reduce the longterm debt of the country. The commission had to have a super majority and they did not reach that goal. The recommendations did not become formal recommendations. The president himself did not take some of those recommendations and bring them forward. The commission, all of those commissions that were set up to look at the longterm debt of the country that has been set aside. This is for budgeteers, this is an important day for us. We are going to reengage on a number of proposals. A number of proposals that congress is considering our part of those proposals. We will see some of that. The president s budget is released today, without looking high numbers myself, it suggests there will be a 1. 8 trillion dollar deficit reduction over the next 10 years. It is said that there will be 400 billion from reforms of the Health Care System. When i checked this morning, it was about the same number. It is the same proposals of last year that focus on pharmaceuticals and increasing premiums for part b and part c. A lot of that was in the original commission report. Host we see these things pop up down the road. Andrew is up next on the line for republicans. Caller good morning. I was one the hearing wondering about that waste spending. Wasteful spending. What about getting rid of planned parenthood . The grants they give out to artist that give out statues nobody wants. Thats just wasteful spending. Bridges to nowhere. I would like to see what he has to say about that. Host it depends on your definition of wasteful spending. Guest its the eye of the beholder. 4 trillion of spending, there probably is inefficiencies in that budget. The question is does this indicate areas of consolidation of agencies and review of programs and look to ways to consolidate and move forward. There has to be ways. The previous caller, i believe there is fraud in the Disability Program. There probably is in the Defense Department and on down the line. It behooves us as managers and executives to weed out that as much as possible and make the government the most efficient for the limited dollars we have. How much is there . Its in the eyes of the beholder. Is a program that funds artists a wasteful program . Maybe it has lower priority. For that artist, it is his sustenance and livelihood. It is a challenging issue. That is why we elect officials who tried to make these hard decisions of setting priorities on how taxpayer dollars should be used efficiently. Host lets head to new york. This is the line for democrats. Caller good morning. I want to ask a couple of questions. One is in the health care program. It seems like the middle class is when someone goes to the hospital and cant pay, it comes back on the rest of us. The health care they have now covering everyone is more sensible. It would be more sensible to have a public option plan like other countries have. I think that would be an easier way out. Another question i have is why are we spending so much money overseas, i know we have to protect our country. We need to protect the people here. We need to feed and close the people here. You are supposed to help the poor and needy and anyone who says you arent, i dont know what kind of heart they have. Guest the issue of the public option was debated at the time the aca was going through congress. It was not an option we could move to at that point. The bottom line is we have a very complex Health Care Delivery system that includes public and private involvement. The public option elimination making it all public option was something a Democratic Congress felt they could move forward with. I do believe you are going to have a debate. There is going to be a debate over the Affordable Care act. Making changes and modifications to it, i think the house today will vote on a repeal of the entire Affordable Care act. With all do respect to congress, that is unlikely to get sufficient votes to overcome a filibuster in the senate. Modifications to the Affordable Care act will be negotiated and maybe successful. On overseas investments and expenditures, its a function of the budget function 150 we are in a global economy, but in this budget of 4 trillion, less than 2 of it is actually going for what we would refer to as overseas assistance. Host the rules committee is having a hearing on the rules for that vote on the Affordable Care act. We are covering that on cspan today for those who might want to watch that. Ive got about 20 in its left with William Hoagland. Vick is in peoria. Did morning. Caller we always have a problem controlling congress. I have a solution. When i tell people, we have candidates and they will vote 97 of the time what their constituents say. The way we will do it is an has to come in the form of cards. They have to be registered voters. If they say they want stoplights , lets say 51 of the cards come in, thats what they will get. We can hold their feet to the fire. I want them to give up their office if they want hold to that. Call some of these people up. Lobbyists, businesses, people with money, we would have control instead of a republic where we are not represented. What would you think of that idea . Vote 97 of the time like your constituents or leave office. Host i will let you weigh in on that. Guest im not a political scientist. Its an interstate proposal. I would suggest that there are 535 members of congress. It could be, difficult to manage administratively. Let me say that i am more concerned about voters are dissipating and just voting. It does seem to me that we have seen a decline in anticipation in harlot process. I think that is a concern our dissipation process. I think that is a concern. We will be better informed in the decisionmaking process. Host myrtle beach is next. Tim, you are on with William Hoagland on budget day. Caller good morning, john. I would like to say about Social Security, people should be more informed. I found out more about Social Security in these last 13 months that i knew before. He mentioned at one time we had a surplus and they rated it. Raided it. We are looking at the lowest gas prices in a long time. We are looking at a windfall right here if we keep the gasoline in the United States. What would you think about a . 50 a gallon for everybody and what it would do for the economy . We could do all the things that everybody wants to do. Host are you talking about a gas tax . Or lowing the price lowering the price . Caller think if it was . 50 a gallon. Guest first of all, you raise a good question. When the price of gasoline comes down, is this the time to establish a gas tax . The budget today has a very big effort as it relates to infrastructure. His proposal to fund the Highway Trust Fund, which expires at the end of may of this year, establish a proposal that includes a tax, a 14 tax, on profits that are being held overseas. That is his way of funding it. Im not anticipating. I think that sets up the good debate. There are some rivers of congress that are starting to focus on a gas tax. Host the president is looking to raise money for those public works projects over the next six years. Guest it includes a 14 tax on overseas profits. A 19 , at his current, an interesting point, the way it is phrased in the documents that were put out today, it is a tax now. 14 on 2 trillion, im not quite clear on how that 280 million comes in. We would not be looking at a deficit. We would be looking at something much less than that. Its not clear how this is set up. For future profits overseas, the proposal is 19 . I think what the president proposed today will engage a discussion about is that the way to Fund Infrastructure in this country or is a gas tax, that has been at the normal way historically. Should it be out of general revenues . From a budgeteers perspective is this is a wonderful opportunity to talk about our funding needs. Host tennessee is up next. Ray is on our line for republicans. Good morning. Caller good morning. I have a question. He said that there isnt much fraud in the disability. I have a number of younger people in my family that are disabled. One is 45 years old. She has never worked a day. She is drawing disability benefits. Now she is drawing disability. She has ruined her health. She eats. How can he say before they make this decision . Guest if i lead you to believe i dont think there are issues in the Insurance Program in this area of fraud, i am sorry. I did not mean to suggest that. I meant to suggest that the program of this magnitude, that is an element of it, but there are clearly individuals who really did have a disability and it impacted their work. What i would suggest to you is one of the things that concerns me is not so much whether you r relative is eligible and receiving benefits. What is a problem at this point is she has no incentive to go off that disability to gain work. I feel that is one of the issues are commission is working on. We have a task force in this area. The way the program is set up, your disability and if its our reduced by 50 after a dollar amount. That is a disincentive to work. We need to find ways to incentivize people to work. There are a number of disabled who still want to work if its available to them and the system does not disenfranchise them from working. Host we bring up stephanie on the line for democrats. Good morning, stephanie. Caller i just have one simple question. Actually, i have a bunch of questions, but i wont argue with them. The cap on Social Security, it is 118,000. Guest yes. Caller if you make 1 million you keep paying. Guest that is a very good question. There are people who have suggested its one way to provide funding to the Social Security trust fund. When the cap was established, it was supposed to cover 90 of wages. Today it is much less than that. I cant remember the exact figure. There is a sense that the cap should be raised if not taken off completely. There is no civil answers to these very good questions. The reason you dont just take the cap off completely as it does have an interactive affect with the benefits. If you take the cap off, then Warren Buffett and bill gates will be paying, but they will qualify for larger benefits. That is not the intent. This is a balancing act. I think some mechanism for modification could be part of the solution for increasing the solvency of the program Going Forward. Host jan had a question on our twitter page. How does that process work . If you think there is fraud . Guest i am not a lawyer and i dont know what the procedure would be. You can go to the Social Security office if you have a concern. You can highlight to them to look at this case in more detail. Host napier phil, illinois is next. Morning. Caller i would like to ask the gentleman just a couple of issues. We already pay a high gas tax in illinois. It seems like they are not using it for its and if it. The other thing is Social Security, they use the surplus for other programs. Now we are paying interest on those other programs. They raided the Social Security program and the middle class is paying the interest. The third thing is, the gentleman where his policy center, is he paid by the taxpayers . Guest the policy center is a 501 c 3 organization. It is a nonprofit organization. Our funding comes from foundations, about 70 is from foundations, contributions. We solicit help to deal with individual projects. We are not a pay for play organization. We do have some Corporate Funding that comes into our organization. We do have some individual contributions. No packs to taxpayer dollars are involved in our work. Host surely is next in california. Caller good morning. I am a 79yearold woman. I have worked from the time i was 17 until i was 69 years old. I raised three children on my own. I never asked for any help. I was put on ssi and i moved to kentucky for one year. I came back to california and it took a year and a half of appeals to get my ssi back. I had to call my congressman. They would never return my calls. I turned it over to my congressman. We own you a year and a half back pay. They said it would be deposited in my account. No money. They sent it to the wrong bank account. Every third of the month, i get my deposit. What in the world is going on with Social Security, the whole organization . Guest again, we have a huge system. Its 50 Million People receiving benefits. I am unclear as to why your ssi benefits would have changed or that there was a disconnect as you move from one state to another. I have no good answer other than this is a management issue. Now i am going to be a little bit bolder than i should to say one of the problems is as we control spending, particularly on nondefense, one of the areas where we have reduced spending in this country, a lot of that is administrative funding. A lack of employees because of the reduction in funding, the irs, the Social Security Disability Insurance administrators, we have to rebuild those management structures to handle the growing caseload that is out there. If we are going to keep faith with the people who need the benefits they have paid for. Caller good morning. Thank you for taking my call. This is a twoway street. We need supply and a man. The guy that is on here right now. He is a supply side are. Right now, its working people and poor people who create the demand in our economy. That is 95 of the people in this country. The problem is our wages have been suppressed because the unions have been fading away. A lot of it has to do with republican policies. We dont have the workers. We dont have enough money to pay all of our bills and have money to spend back into the economy. A good Infrastructure Project would be a start. That would provide jobs for construction workers as well as increase productivity of workers. You wont be stuck in traffic as long. Guest first of all, im not sure im a supply sider or a demand sider. I am a hoosier from indiana thats how i look at it. The bottom line is i was not suggesting at all that there is a need for investments, we discussed the budget today will put that fourth. We need to do investment. There is a need for creating that demand through government. Government does have a role to play in making the economy grow and making it wages grow. At the same time, for the future and for my grandchild right now and the future generations out there, we have to be cognizant. We should not overspend and create more debt. That is a tax burden levied on future generations. I like to be serious about looking at ours ending in revenues to make sure balances Going Forward. That is not to suggest that there is not a role for government to play in increasing demand. Host we have just a minute or two left. We have david from philadelphia. Caller good morning. Good morning. I understand financing a little bit different. There is a tax that is zero. 4 trillion was invested, that would be the starting gate. I look at the year 2016, which is leap year. Monday is the 29th. You have a zero for Social Security. Under that, you have no tax. Then you have a plus plus. Host we just have a minute left. What is your question for William Hoagland. Caller there was a question of starbucks in germany. Then you had the japanese banks. You want to do a monopoly statement. Watch fortune 500 guest im not sure i follow the arguments. The funding is very complicated. I am not sure i understand the question. Host if you want to follow William Hoagland we always appreciate your time on that the washington journal. That is it for today. We will be right back here tomorrow morning at 7 00 a. M. Eastern. Have a great monday. [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. Visit ncicap. Org] today, president obamas budget is arriving on the