Race. Democrats, call 202 7488000. Republicans 202 7488001. Independents, 202 7488002. Look forward to your comments on senator cruz and the 2016 race in general. The senator wass short and sweet. His tweet said i am running for president and i hope to earn your support. The video is titled a time for truth. [video clip] i believe in america and her people and i believe we can stand up and restore our promise. It is going to take a new generation of courageous conservatives to help make America Great again. Im ready to stand with you. To lead the fight. Host as you can imagine, it is front page news in a lot of different playsces today. First bigname in a crowded field they write. Texan set tone to make his formal announcement in person. They write that the announcement by crews will make him the first major 2016 contender to formally declare by skipping the step they write a forming an Exploratory Committee and jumping right into the race. He is providing a jolt to the field that has relatively been sleepy potentially pressuring other candidates to get closer to making their own announcements. His announcement will give other gop contenders a competitive rival on the right. To the wall street journal. They write that the announcement marks the beginning of the primary election battle to define a Republican Party that is been divided between the balance of ideology and pragmatism. This candidacy comes as recent polls indicate that none of the likely candidates has emerged as a bridge building consensus choice among the partys factions. More from the journal. Mr. Cruz will be planting his flag on the far right flank of what is expected to become it crowded field spinning a spectrum spanning a spectrum. Mr. Cruz stands for a brand of ideological conservatism that contrasts with former governor jeb bush who has said that a successful president ial candidate must be willing to lose the primary to succeed the more centrist electorate. Good morning. Caller you all have a great network. I want to say that im so fired up about ted cruz i could not sleep last night. I than calling cspan for 35 years. Ted cruz, i would vote for him over ronald reagan. I think he will be the greatest president in American History for the taxpayers. Im going to work for him fulltime, no pay. Host what is he going to bring to the dialogue . Caller we have an 18 trillion debt. I think ted cruz will make a great case that we have to cut spending. I think he will set up a great example for the whole country. He is by far the best that is ever run for president. Im going to call every friend ive got and tell them to work hard for the great ted cruz. A taxpayer champion. Host lets hear from eric in maryland. Eric is an independent. Caller i am very proud. I would like to send a message out there because i am black. I used to be a democrat and im going to vote for ted cruz. We have been so disappointed by the democrats. Im glad that somebody that conservative is coming back. That is the way we need to go now in america. Host thank you for calling. Lets hear from a democrat, kathleen from chicago. Good morning. Caller good morning. It is a shame when you have people calling in saying that they are black and they talk like a hispanic. Anyway. What is ted cruz go to bring to the table, nothing but laughter. 18 trillion deficit but you know what it comes from . It is from all of these wars but the republicans like to start and never pay for. I wish you all would do me a favor. Set up three charts. Put what they spend for domestic spending, put what they spend for what they send out in this country to help other countries and put down what they spend for military. You will see why we have an 18 trillion deficit. It is not because it is over here, dealing with the people in this country who pay taxes. It is for wars and helping other people. I hope ted cruz runs. I want to laugh until i die. He is ridiculous. Host kathleen from chicago. Back to the Washington Post piece. They write that cruises battles against the Obama Administration have made him a hero to many conservatives and left him with a National Network of small dollar donors. He will aim to raise 50 million for his president ial bid. Adviser said in the coming weeks , cruz plans to build on that base of support and cast himself as an uncompromising gop conservative who has challenged both parties during his short time in washington. James calling from santa fe, texas now. Independent. Caller ted cruz is from texas. I think we made a mistake when we elected this idiot. Host how come . Caller he does not need to be president. I would like to ask if cspan would do something with their checking about the Republican Party is so hot against immigration. The thing about that is, i would believe that 90 of the people that hire illegal aliens vote republican. Host anything else . Caller it dont wash. Thank you. Host hubert, Deerfield Beach florida. Caller my question is for senator ted cruz. I would like to know, maybe somebody else can explain to me why is it he is able to run for president of the u. S. And he was born in canada . Host we will get to that in just a moment. There are a couple of pieces that refer to that. What kind of president do you think you would make hubert . Caller i think he is very divisive. I do not think you would make a very good president. Im an independent and im pretty open. A thousand vote republican, i would vote for if i was to vote republican, i would vote for senator rand paul. Host we hear that senator paul is going to make his announcement on april 7. We will have coverage of that as well. Senator cruz will make a speech today at Liberty University. We will have live coverage at 10 00 a. M. Eastern time on our companion network cspan 2. Mark writes at facebook that, i think ted cruz in marco rubio are great senators, however america elected a senator last time around and it did not work out well. Governor walker of wisconsin has been elected governor three times in a blue state. Does not care what people think or say about him, has real life executive experience in plummeting and servant of economic principles like lowering taxes. He is the man for the job. In implementing economic policies like lowering taxes. He is the man for the job. Caller i wonder if the people who are going to support ted cruz are the same people who said the president obama is not a citizen when he was actually born in hawaii. That is amazing to me. I always thought that you had to be born in america to be the president. Ted cruz was obviously not born in america. I am irate this morning that we are not holding ted cruz to the same scrutiny, discrimination and racism that we held to the president , who is american. How can a person who is antigovernment, wants to shut down the government and did and caused millions of dollars in deficit, now want to be the leader of the government he hopes to reduce, diminish, demolish . I am irate this morning. Host to cynthia, hubert and anyone else asking, the cb see has this posted the cbc has this posted. They talk about how the Calgary Alberta born senator could become president. They write that cruz what differentiates crews from his competition is that he was born in canada. To an American Mother in a cuban born father. His heritage meet him at dual citizen at birth. The constitution of the United States does not preclude dual citizens from running from the president running for the presidency but it requires president s to be natural born citizens which which is commonly believed to be americans born with citizenship you and if they were not born on u. S. Soil. Two lawyers who represented presents for both armies of the Supreme Court also recently wrote in the harvard law review that crews meets the constitutional standard ted cruz meets the constitutional standard to run. Rose, harrisburg pa. Thank you for waiting. Caller good morning. I am a black republican and i am elated that cruz is running for president. I like what he stands for. Maybe the legal blacks and hispanic people may get a fair shake. Host what else do you like about him . Caller his stamina, his endurance and his willingness to stand up for what he believes in. A lot of republicans do not do that. They fold like a cheap suit under the democrats. Host that is rose. Lets hear from a democrat from albuquerque, new mexico. What is your name . Caller my name is lovita. Im calling to say what ive heard other people say. That is, ted cruz was born outside of the United States. He was born in canada to an American Mother, true enough. Hawaii is in the United States yet and still the birth theres wanted to claim the birthers wanted to claim president obama was not a citizen. For the guy from lj who ive listened to over the years because ive been a cspan listener for years, tell him lets see how he will do about ted cruz. Thank you. Host some other reaction to ted cruzs announcement. Bill kristol. Jerry brown was on meet the press yesterday. They got into a discussion about Climate Change. Heres what he had to say. [video clip] i want to play a clip this week from one of the republican president ial candidates on the issue of Climate Change. [video clip] i think the world is on fire literally. [applause] i just came back from New Hampshire were there is snow and ice everywhere. Debates on this should follow science and should follow data. Many of the alarmists on Global Warming have a problem because the science does not back them up. That was republican senator ted cruz saying what he said on Climate Change. What do you say . What he said is absolutely false. Over 90 of the scientists who deal with climate are convinced that the human activity, the industrial activity, the generation of co2, methane greenhouse gases, are building up in the atmosphere. They are causing, not just warm drought in california but severe storms and cold in the east coast. It is climate disruption of many different kinds. That man totes such a level of ignorance of the existing scientific data. I think that man has rendered himself unfit to be running for office. Host the governor of california on meet the press yesterday. Lennox, democratic caller. Caller i am loving the announcement. I needed a good laugh. When he was running for governor in new york, howard stern had said host i think we lost them. Lets try don from redding, california. Are you there . Caller can you hearing . Can you hear me . Host go ahead. Caller oh my goodness. Host don, are you there . Caller i am here. Host go ahead and finish what you are saying. Caller hello . When i was saying was that there was a politician who was running for office who had said that there are a lot of people who have low iqs host i think we lost him. Lets see if we can get other folks going. Ralph, whiteville north carolina. Caller i am here. I think that a grown, College Educated man, talking about green eggs and ham shut down the government come up costing a billion dollars. The racist rants that came from his father talking about obama and you have the audacity to try to run this man for president. Get real america. There are falls on the loose. Host the green eggs and ham reference to senator cruz on the senate floor for 21 plus hours on the floor. He took time to read out of a book. Gina, picayune mississippi. Youre on the republican line. Caller i think it is great that mr. Cruz has come out. There is one thing i would like to say about mr. Cruz. He acts like he loves america. That is one thing that mr. Obama has never acted like. Mr. Obama acts like he despises america. That is the missing element in his presidency. For all you blacks and democrats who think it is his skin color you are sadly mistaken. It is obvious from day one he hates america. Host couple of comments by facebook this morning. Christopher writes, ted cruz does not impress me. I do not see him pulling many votes beyond his own base. Mark writes, finally, there is hope on the horizon for our country. I pray he can be successful in repairing the damage done in the last six years. Cheryl writes i think he is a great candidate. Someone who will take a stand against the establishment. Edward writes edwin writes as the senator of my state, ted through texas under the bus. He is made a joke out of the role of senator. Chase, staten island, new york. What do you make of ted cruzs entry into the president ial race . Caller i think it is disgusting. Ted cruz is a canadian. He was born in canada. All of these rightwingers that said that he bomb is a said that president obama said that president obama is a kenyan. He is not going to become president. Ted cruz is too stupid. As far as that woman saying president obama does not love america, she is just racist. The rightwing does not like president obama because he is black and that is it. Host usa today. Ted cruz kicks off 2016 gop contest. It is an event at 10 00 a. M. Eastern time. You can watch it live on cspan 2. The New York Times headline goes this way. They write that becoming the first candidate to declare himself in the race, republicans briefed on his strategy says stir cruz hopes to reclaim the attention and affection of those on the partys rightwing. It is the shiny object principle. He wants to be first, get into the conversation come and not show any doubt or hesitation. There is an advantage to being first. He is now the only one running for president. Ricardo. Lansdowne, pennsylvania. Caller it is laughable, talking about him running for president. He made a mockery out of the political system. It is ridiculous what is happening in this country with these republicans. Some of them, not all of them. It is really sad. If people do not wake up, i do not know what is going to happen. This man is a hatemonger or. He looks like he is retarded when he is talking. Host im going to let you go. Vicki, from chicago. Caller good morning. I am calling to say, i think it is ridiculous that senator cruz is running. I believe that he is bad for our country. He shut down the government. He seems to like conflict. I do not think that is the way America Needs to go right now. I do not think he is good. He is not personable. I think he has a lot of hangups. He would not be good for the president. Im hoping Hillary Clinton will run and she will take this country in the direction that our president is taking it right now. In a good direction. Host there is a little bit we can learn about ted cruz in the Associated Press this morning. They write that he is a man in a hurry. He won election to the senate in 2012 as a political rookie to upset a candidate with decades of experience and deep connections. They have a review of his resume. His career was practicing law at the highest level. A graduate of harvard law and a clerk for a Supreme Court justice. He taught such litigation at the university of texas. The son of cuban immigrants of a cuban immigrant and an American Mother. Cruz was born in Calgary Alberta on december 22, 1970. While his parents were working in the oil business. He has since renounced his Canadian Citizenship and lawyers have said they think he is eligible to run for president. He and his wife live in houston with their two daughters. His father is now a texas pastor who draws plenty of his own attention, saying in the past that obama is a marxist who should be sent back to kenya. Jerome, orange, new jersey. Independent caller. Caller good morning. I am amused by crews running cruz running. He has shown no community involvement. He has an evil that seems to go above anything that exists today. An ego that seems to go above anything that exists today. He denies Climate Change. Where are these guys heads . Host lets hear from ross who was in austin, texas. Independent caller. Caller thank you for taking my call. As far as ted cruz running we all know he is not the sharpest knife in the drawer. I think he would at least make it entertaining. My big thing is this. I think basically, he is a male version of sarah palin. Host what does that mean . Caller it means he is a raving dumb head. He is going to be saying a bunch of outrageous stuff that does not apply or is just so overthetop ridiculous that people are going to have to shake their heads and keep watching. Host cruzs liberty speech which we will have live on cspan 2. Mueller niels was new ski writes about why it is happening. His operation supporters telling them to pay attention. He will be making an announcement soon come and they said. He made this announcement after midnight. Much of the attention about cruzs planned appearance focused on two basic choices time and place. They write that president obama signed the Health Care Law into law five years ago today. The date of the announcement is no accident according to this report. Cruz has been perhaps the loudest in calling for the repeal of obamacare. You can watch it live on cspan 2. Well have replays during the day. You can watch it at cspan. Org once it happens. Carla, middletown, connecticut. Thank you for waiting. Caller this seems like a repeat of the last republican primary before 2012, where you had all these candidates. It was exhausting to watch. This went on for a year. It was like a dog and pony show. I think the strategy is to put as many of them out there bank with all of these different crazy views. The one that will be the front runner will slowly come in. I have a feeling it will be jeb bush. He is going to look so good next to these other clowns. We have been there before. Host mark. Little river, south carolina. Caller i am supportive of ted cruz. To the lady about the republican that was black and she was worried about being a mexican. O. J. Decided in the o. J. Trial you cannot distinction a voice from what nationality they are. To the man from north carolina, worried about ted cruz reading a story to his kids, the reason being is with black individuals there is no father in the family at the home to read bedtime stories to children. That is why they dont understand that. Host going to let you go there. He relishes enraging his political opposition. He is joe mccarthy. According to steve. Washington post writes about his speech at liberty today. By selecting a private Christian College as the site of his announcement, cruz is sending a signal to conservative republican primary voters about his candidacy and his political positioning heading into the race. He has courted evangelicals and other social conservatives as part of an attempt to build a coalition of conservatives frustrated with party elders. The choice of venue underscores cruzs intention to court young conservatives. If we carry young people, we can turn this entire country around. Jim is calling from pennsylvania, republican. Caller good morning. I would like to reply as a republican to the vitriol against ted cruz. The only vitriol that is coming from republican ted cruz is he is speaking the truth about what president obama is. I want to remind democratic voters that voted him into office twice, this is the same this is the same guy who said we have 57 states in america. The same president who thrown israel under the that bu, and responded to Benjamin Netanyahu three days after he won election, or reelection. This is the same guy telling us we need to make this deal with iran when iran has been producing terror around the world for 30 years. They have killed american servicemen and women. I want to remind democratic voters of who we have an office. Host that was jim from pennsylvania. We mention ted cruz address cpac. Heres a little bit. [video clip] senator cruz washington wants amnesty. The people what role of law. Rule of law. Washington wants power over the internet. The people want freedom online. [applause] dont believe president obama when he said that if you like your internet, you can keep your internet. [laughter] Hillary Clinton. And bodies the corruption of washington. [applause] we need to run a populist campaign, standing for hard working men and women. We need to take the power out of washington. And bring it back to the American People. Host back to your calls. We will do this for about 12, 13 more minutes. Brent, republican. Hey there. Caller good morning. Thank you for taking my call. Im calling to voice my strong support for ted cruz. He is my first choice for president and i want to tell you why. He believes in founding american principles. He believes in the constitution, and here is what all the democrats are upset about. He says that our government should actually abide by its governing document, the constitution of the United States. Founding principles that are a numerator it the constitution, a declaration, individual liberty, property rights, the right to own and keep her private property selfdetermination, individual responsibility. These are the principles on which this nation was founded. It is a sad day in this country when we have at least 47 mitt romney was exactly right we have about 47 of the people in this country who think that to support the constitution makes you an extremist. I have heard words from democrats on the show like racist, retarded, stupid. They dont know what they are talking about. This race must be about founding american principles of the constitution of the United States. There is no candidate no other candidate in the race, or about to be in the race who supports the strict adherence of the constitution and to our founding documents like ted cruz does. That is why i am wholeheartedly for ted cruz, and i hope he wins the nomination. I hope he i would love to see a debate with him and Hillary Clinton. It would be very interesting to watch Hillary Clinton act as if she is not a radical extremists from the radical left, while ted cruz has nothing to hide about what he believes because it is mainstream founding american principles. Host thank you for calling. While ted cruz is airing on cspan today, we remind you that Hillary Clinton will be on cspan after the show today. She will be at the center for american progress, talking about urban issues. Washington times broadening out the conversation this morning to include rand paul, cruz. Rand paul, we are hearing, will announce his candidacy on april 7 in kentucky. Both have made marks among conservatives. Thats in the Washington Times this morning. We have rich from pennsylvania. Hi there. Caller thanks for taking a call. I just want to say this real quick in reference to the last caller. Just so everyone knows, the constitution is a living document, which means it can be amended. That is for another day, another subject. In regards to ted cruz, his view on Climate Change Global Warming, however you want to look at it, is so absurd. You have top scientist, not only nasa, but around the world proving it. He denies it. The only reason he denies it is because he is so far in deep the pockets of big oil, big coal, and if there is a team of cocaines, it is scott walker and ted cruz. God, i hope he does. He will put a lot of comedians back to work and get a lot of material to the latenight talk shows and saturday night live. Host there is some other news this morning. From wall street journal chaos and yemen. Many feel that yemen is on the brink of civil war. If you go to the New York Times the headline says out of yemen, u. S. Is hobbled in terrified. It is the latest below to the counterterror program, which is artie struggling with significant setbacks in syria, libya, and elsewhere. The loss of yemen as a base for american counterterrorism carries major implications not just there, but throughout the region. That is in the New York Times to go congress is back in session today. They will have one week before the easterpassover break which will be two weeks. Front and center is the budget issue. Politico says it is a make or break week for the gop congress. It could set the tone for what they accomplish, heading into the heart of the legislative year. They will vote in the house on resolution in a rare bipartisan bill over how doctors are paid by the medicare program. On the senate side, Majority Leader Mitch Mcconnell will try to push through a gop budget resolution, something that has been increasingly hard to do. Theres a lot of activity there. The budget resolution is a nonbinding bill, but he gives many a chance to vote on their amendments and make sentence. You can watch the house here on cspan two. The senate may have a very long night. They call it a photo from a veoteorama. Back to the question. What do you think about his announcement . Caller i once had to run because he will head to the comedians. As long as we have republicans in office, who want to go to war, we will have more costly war. They dont run for peace. They run for war. How much it cost the American People . Their minds are going from all that chaos and what they have to do is sad for humanity. A give a much. Host this congressional story menendez expected to be charged. This is from the wall street journal. He could be charged as early as this week. That is the update. This follows the legal battle after how much over how much because edition shields lawmakers and their aides. He is the ranking democrat on the Senate Foreign relations committee, has been under investigation for possible corruption. According to people familiar with the inquiry, he has denied wrongdoing. We may see charges this week. Rodney is calling from indiana. Caller thank you for cspan. I just wanted to remind people that our president , mr. Obama was chastised for going to reverend wrights church in illinois. I dont know if anyone out there has seen ted cruzs dad preach. Nothing but hate. Id like to see him get by that. Thats about all ive got to say. Host all right. Scott from pennsylvania. Hey, scott. Caller hausa going . I just want people to try take a step back and think about every four years what continues to happen. It is the same cyclical and sanity. It is the definition of insanity. Nothing changes. Politicians make more money, corporations prevail. The rest of us seem to lose. I think we need politicians versus some maniacal candidate that comes out of the left or right. I think it is just setting the stage for more failure for the middle class. Host thank you for calling. In case you missed it, ted cruz sent out this tweet just after midnight i am running for president and i hope to earn your support. With that tweet came a 32nd video. Heres a look at it. [video clip] ted cruz its time to rise to the challenge. I believe in america and her people, and i believe we can stand out. It will take a new generation of courageous conservatives to help make a great america. Im ready to stand with you to lead the fight. Host we have time for a couple more calls on the ted cruz candidacy. Dorothy from baltimore. Caller thank you. I just looked at that commercial. What did ted cruz he will solve . He said nothing. What we really need is people to get together and find solutions for real. He did not say the about a solution to the debt, to war, to children on college debt. He didnt say anything that anything here this is what i dont understand. This is the reason we keep getting at the p into problems. We need for real people to get together and do something with solutions. All this talk and luster, and not saying anything. All the people supporting ted cruz cant tell you one thing that he is doing for anything. Thank you. Host all right. That was dorothy there. We have patty now from florida. Patty, youre the last call here. Caller good morning. I just want to express my support for ted cruz. I think he is fearless. He is truly conservative. He believes in the constitution. He has a background in economics, going back to his middle school years. As far as getting into war, obama involved us in libya without any support. He almost went into syria, until he found that damaging. As far as robert menendez, obama went after him. Only when he turned on him with iran. As far as clinton is concerned having her own email server in the house is absolutely against the law. It was absolutely for her own privacy. It in flames david brock the message out anything damaging against hillary. Another point where people ought to wake up and understand the messaging coming from achilles camp, from hillarys cap is lies. So may live. Thanks for taking my call. Host patty there, a supporter of ted cruz. One must twitter comment. Ted cruz wants the rich to get richer, while taking away health care and sending the rest of us to war. Lots of opinions on ted cruz today. We will share the speech at 10 00 a. M. Live on cspan two. It will be republican senator ted cruz at Liberty University in lynchburg, virginia. We will certainly be talking more about him and other potential candidates in the days and weeks ahead. We are going to shift gears and after this break, we will talk about the federal budget. Maya mcguiness will be with us. She is be president of the committee for responsible federal budget. She will give us a blue print of the budget proposals in congress. Then, we will talk about the freedom of information act request in fy 2014. First, jeff zients spoke on the crafting of the gop budget. [video clip] mr. Zients it is impossible to project forward on how the mechanical go. From our perspective, our goal is absolutely to get to an agreement. That reflects the principles we have laid out. We have laid out many policies that would enable you to get there. There is bipartisan support to lift the defense caps, lift the nondefense caps, and pay for it over 10 years. Thats the blueprint where there is bipartisan support. Our hope, and our objective is for congress to come together around an agreement of that basic form and put in place before we have to get into a situation where we are into brinksmanshipp. Again, hard for me to say exactly how that process might unfold. We still have to get through and see where the republican budget resolutions actually land. I think there is our posture is one of trying to encourage good faith conversations and efforts to get there. That is why we are trying to be clear. To facilitate that sort of thing. The one thing i would add is this basic structure of lifting caps on both sides, paying for it over a decade is one that was good economically, but also it works politically. There is a question out there that i think Republican Leadership has to grapple with around do they look to find areas where there are areas of bipartisan agreement and moved to those. Rather than getting backed into them. On the dhhs side, you saw them getting back into where they knew the story was also going to end. Theres a question in a budget process as to where we can get to the outcome on the front end, which i would think would be better politically, and more portly, better economically. Host to watch the entire event you can watch the video on cspan. Org. Now, turning to Maya Mcguiness maya mcguinemacguineas. This week, Congress Takes of the budget resolution. Where they at the process . Guest it is time for them both to move forward in their chambers, and think about how to bring them together. And recent years, that has been an impossible task. You have one party in another party, and they will never reconcile their budget. At big piece of this right now is with the house and senate both run by republicans, this is a test as to whether they can govern. Can they come up with that budget. I think the fact that we have not had a budget in the past years is a sign that we cant govern. They are starting pretty close to each other so that is a good chance they can come to an agreement. Host prior to this coming to the floor, the president put out his marker. Why has the president said as far as future spending, and what do you think of it . Guest it is interesting. The whole budget process starts when the president said his budget, but it wasnt really incorporated into the process. It is all but forgotten. The president s priorities were not really focusing on fiscal constraints. In the past, we are talked about how you want to at least make sure that debt is no longer going faster than the entire economy. That has changed. Now that the president put his budget out, he didnt try to have that metric. He certainly didnt try to balance the budget or try to make it for the longterm that the economy is going faster than the budget. He focused on a number of new initiatives. He had some past Health Care Savings, for instance. He didnt focus on the same physical things as the house and senate. What we are hearing from the president is that this problem of deficit has basically gone away for the time being. Our budget deficit has come down significantly, which is true. But i will talk more about how you have to look at the big picture. Meanwhile, the house and senate are introducing a budget where they say we need to look at this over 10 years. They are on different paths. Host we will get to these details in just a second. I want to get the viewers and law. I will put that phone numbers on the screen for Maya Macguineas the president of the committee for a responsible federal budget. Here are the numbers to call. Democrats call 202 7488000. Republicans, 202 7488001 independents, 202 7458002. We look forward to your tweets as well during this segment. Republicans propose deep cuts. What are they proposing to cut . Guest s budget gets balance purely by cuts. It doesnt talk about revenues. My take on the situation that are deficit and debt is so large that if we are going to get a balanced, the budget must look at all aspects. You are looking at a pretty difficult goal as is with one hand tied behind the back. Where the cuts are are primarily on health care. That makes sense. I think Health Care Costs are growing clicker than the economy. They have a trillion plus in Health Care Savings that they arent specifying. When you go back to the purpose of the budget, the budget is really a place where people can show their priorities, and in many senses their political priorities. If we dont look specifically at the details it is not critical that the budget gets enacted. One thing they have been talking about is repealing the present health care plan. That would all go, but there are a lot of Health Care Savings and revenues that they would want to make up in other ways. Repealing obamacare would ask the cost money. They talk about making up those costs, but they dont say how they will do it. They also talk about block granting medicaid, which is something we started hearing about a few years ago when paul ryan put it forth. That is something to have stuck with. They also focus on the sequester. The sequester is these large spending caps. That is about one third of the budget. What sequester doesnt do is it doesnt affect foreign entitlement programs, the greatest area of growth. The sequester spending caps, many think they are too onerous. The steep cuts are in the defense area. There is a question as to whether they will list those cap somewhat so that they will be less pressure on those parts of the budget and offset them with other cuts, like we saw with the ryan murray deal. What the republicans want to do is have trade and more space to spend on defense, and less on domestic discretionary paid those. Second, they want to use and over and see oversee contingency operation. They are trying to get more money to the defense fund. Host one more quick question before we get to calls. You mention house and Senate Republican plans are fairly similar. What are the biggest differences . Guest originally the senate had it used that gimmick. They havent said lets put more money in the war spending fun. We were kind of pleased. The house had used this gimmick a backdoor way to get money. Senate havent done that. Then, they offered an amendment and went along as well. The senate gets a budget balanced one year later. And doesnt have a strong of cuts in health care areas. Both of the budgets really interesting are both lose on how they want to get the revenue. There are a lot of tax breaks. Another inconsistency relates to a lot of moments in the budget and decisions on how to fund things. These budgets dont choose to pay for them, and they say that somehow, magically, they would be paid for. Theres a huge disconnect by saying, we want to be fiscally responsible, but we wont give you specifics, and it when it comes to decisions, we will actually add to the debt. Host we will take a call from joe in new york. Republican caller. Good morning. Caller good morning. My question is basically how come we take money out of our budget to go against a foreign country leader, which should be illegal because we have no business interfering in someone elses politics in some other country. My second question is if we are worried about balance budget, why dont we take care of the concerns at home by putting people back to work the need to go to work. We could take a work program like they had back in the 20s and 30s, during the great depression, and put people to work on roads and bridges that we actually need to build are our if the structure in the country. We need to spend money on that because when you get American People back to work, more taxes will come in. Host good point, joe. Guest to important questions. On the first one, that is more of a Foreign Policy question than a budget question that many questions around the country as to how interventionist we should be around the country. It really is a small portion of the budget overall that goes to International Affairs and our involvement overseas. Much more has gone towards the two wars that we have been involved in. Prior to this, we did not have wars that we did not at least partially fine. This is the first time we have gone to war and we 100 debt finance the war. Finally, shouldnt we be paying for instead of adding it to the bill . Your second question is critical. The whole question with physical fiscal responsibility is all about Economic Growth and keeping our economy strong. In addition to be highly indebted right now, with our debt at twice of historical averages, we continue to have real job problems in the country. Not only do we have job problems, we have wage problems. Even as jobs are slowly coming back, wages are growing as much as they need to. I agree that a huge part of an economic plan needs to involve a plan i would even say balancing the budget in the next 10 years, i dont even think we need to go that far but getting the debt under control. Interest payments are the fastestgrowing part of the budget, and looking at different ways to grow jobs. Your point about infrastructure is an important one, i think that is the part of the budget that has the most potential to create jobs. An area in which both democrats and republicans agree need to address. There is a Big Coalition that say infrastructure has been underinvested in for quite some time. Also, jobs are coming back as quickly as they need to be. Funding in this area would be a great way to help for job growth, and good jobs. Hopefully, fingers crossed, this is an area where we will see some progress. Host lets hear from larry. Caller good morning. Iva, to make. I have a comment to make. You are not telling the truth. The truth of unfunded liabilities. Members of congress, republicans and democrats, you cant get anything done with three days. It doesnt make sense. Obamacare, its destroying jobs and businesses. It has collapsed the system. Youre not telling the truth. Unemployment is higher. Its 23 , not 5 . There are lies by the media president , members of congress. We have to turn back to the old standard. The Federal Reserve wont work. Were heading into a financial collapse. Guest someone who is more pessimistic than im. You do bring up a point of unfunded liabilities. There is always a l lot of confusion around the spirit of the deficit is the amount of money that we borrow each year. That amount reached 1 trillion during the height of the financial crisis. That is because the economy took a nosedive. We thought we could be headed towards depression. That leads to more money going out. That is the deficit. The annual amount that we borrow. The second is the debt. Where we are. Right now, our debt is about 74 of our economy. That is increasing every year with the deficit. Even when the deficit is coming down. The deficit has decreased significantly over the past few years. That comes after a massive runup. The deficit soared out, has been coming down, but even as it comes down, that still adds to the debt every year. Debt will continue to grow until we are running budget surpluses. The point you brought up with unfunded liabilities. That is a massive massive number. It is how much money we have promised, primarily in programs like Social Security and medicare. And the difference between what we have promised and the revenues that we have they pay for it. One of the biggest problems we had out there you talk about both parties line, a big accusation, but what they try to hide is how much we have promise for these programs and what we actually pay for them. That is a real imperative to get a head up. Talking about Social Security and medicare t they are important programs in the country, and we have millions of people dependent on these programs it would lead people vulnerable if we dont fix them, but we do have to make changes so that what we are promising is in line with what we actually pay. All of those numbers show different things. As fiscal metrics, none show that we are on a strong pass. Even the deficit, that will start going up in a couple years from now, and debt is expected to grow. Host Stephen Moore writes under the gop plan, spending rises from 3. 8 trillion to 5. 1 trillion but at least its an honest effort to stem the tide of writing. Its time for congress to man up. Its that man up question that got my attention. You said this is a real test to see if the gop can govern. Tell us more. Guest he is writing bear about the policy test. I think there are two tests. The policy test and the political test. The political test is what they have in front of them now. Everyone says washington broken, no matter what the time. Is. I have to say washington is the most broken i have seen, and i have been working on the budget for quite some time. The level of dysfunction is so high. Its mainly between republicans and democrats, but also between the house and senate. These two bodies dont work as well together as we want them to. The reason i see broken this is because both parties have become so concerned with winning the selection rather than governing. The amount of campaigning and preparing is ramping up. Now, when you have to parties that are the same, and they get to implement their agenda is a real test. Something i am watching closely i was just talking about the importance of entitlement reform, and i recognize fully that this is something that people arent sure how w it would work. Republicans have been more willing than in the past on talking about how to reform medicare. Let me say, for people who are watching, you see those political ads, and people attack someone for Social Security or medicare. Dont forget that doing nothing will leave those programs to cuts. Now, republicans are facing, will they actually do entitlement reforms. Those specifics are very difficult. They have two choices. Make hard choices, as a budget that reflects their priorities showed the budget is about tradeoffs. When youre adamant the you get have that you can have a penny revenue, lets see what that looks like. Or, dont come up with a budget. That would show the failure to govern. I think they have to move forward on the budget. When you move to specifics, we will face, as we should, the real tradeoff in a budget. If we want to spend our lives money, but not pay for it, you have big deficit. If you want to close that gap, you have to look at what you will tax more of. You cant pass budgets on Just One Party and expected to fit or not expect huge pushback. Republicans should be open to working with democrats on compromises. Host bill king writes on twitter, the budget cut social programs and blows the military, how do you sell thats the American People . Caller thank you for taking my call. My question was about the unfunded liabilities as well. At what point does this congress start discussing this and include this in the budget negotiations to bring them down. Guest i wish that point had been years ago. This is a really serious basic challenge the country. Being fiscally responsible fiscally responsible is never fun. Saying, we will spend more money, but and cut your taxes is what they are excited about. What we have to do is make sure those things outline and the promises align with the reality that we live. That is not the case with Social Security and medicare. If we had made changes years ago before the bank is retired, the changes would be so much bigger. If you just make a small change to a very big generation use you make a lot more money. Say, no one over 55 would be affected by changes. Thats a suscep sensible thing by i would say is more important to protect those who depend on the programs. There are a lot of ways that we can fix Social Security where you ensure the lower to quintiles are protected. We can only do that for make changes right away. The key here is we need politicians were willing to stand up and talk about these issues. There are people who have done it before. It works in a bipartisan way. Youve had talk of putting forward as Social Security commission. I know we are all kind of tired of commissions, but i think there is some strength to doing that. I commission would bring together some democrats and republicans, and maybe experts from the outside. Then, members of congress who know we need to make these changes would vote ea ordinary, but have their fingerprints directly on this. No one likes owning difficult decisions. Theres nothing forcing us to fix Social Security today. But this constant kicking up a can of the issues mean that changes will really start to be more profoundly impactful and damaging to the people who depend on the programs. Anyone who wants to protect them should be arguing to make changes as soon as possible. Host harvey has been hanging on for michigan. Democratic caller. Caller good morning. I just wanted to say couple of things. I dont hear anybody talking about population control. There cant be 500 workers for every job and have wages grow. I hear people talking about expanding the economy. If you continue to expand the economy, we are all going to be buried in garbage eventually. Its not realistic. I dont hear anybody talking about cutting the military budget. The pentagon is still not audib auditable. We still dont know where the money is going. The tax code is ridiculous. A needs reforming. I dont hear anybody talking about cutting corporate welfare in the tax code. Finally, why dont they remove the cap on Social Security. It will never go broke. Why dont the older wealthy pay their fair share. I think that covers it. None of that is contributing to talk about getting our budget under control. Guest you have five questions. I will do my best to hit all of them. Population control. I dont think theres as much concern about population growth as it used to be in this country. In many ways, what we need is a growing population to support the aging workforce. The fact that we are all living longer and we have crafted a whole lot of Government Programs where the elderly depend on federal Government Programs once they are not working in the economy. That means we need people to support those. Thats my biggest concern about population demographics. I guess i misunderstood your question about our economy is starting to grow again. I would say we have not met the challenges of a growing as we have to. That is a good thing. We deftly want that. Defense spending there are huge disagreements on defense spending and what the right amount is. Again, i would humbly submit that i would defer to defense experts and not finding experts. In my world, their differences all over the map. It is clearly a different kind of world as far as security threats that we face. Many think that we need a nimble budget. For sure, and i agree with you, we should see where the money goes. The fact that the Defense Department has failed its audit is inexcusable. The tax code. Again, i will point to possible area of momentum. The tax code is so bad that you have agreement from both democrats and republicans that something needs to be done to address it. Theres real talk of tax reform this year. I dont think we will get past the finish line. The tax code is so right with holes, credits, exclusions. Throughout the tax code, both on the corporate and private side, we lose trillions of dollars per year in tax breaks. If we close those loopholes and those are things we like, where we can take tax breaks but if we close them, we could bring down our tax rates and collect more revenue to help close the fiscal deficit. Im a big fan of tax reform. The white house is not interested in individual tax reform, im not sure why. We could actually make the tax code more progressive, but here our focus is on business tax reform. Boy, are there a lot of things we need to do in business tax reform. Paul ryan, and the former head of the ways and Means Committee started on this. I think paul ryan can pick that up and work on in the senate. Democrats and republicans interested in doing this, i would caution everyone, tax reform is very hard when it comes to the details. You have to give up tax breaks that you like, and it is worth it. There will be a discussion in the country on the tax code, and people will be saying, no, dont touch this. Lobbyists will swarm on capitol hill. We should keep our eyes on the prize. A simplified fair tax code could help us do a lot for the economy. Host if youre keeping score at home politico writes that this week on the house floor some will be voting against the budget resolution. A group of roughly two dozen hardline conservatives will be voting to back it. The majority went will be voting to push a resolution through the house. Dana could lose 27 votes and still pass the measure. No democrats are expected to vote for it. Anything you want to add . Guest no democratic support i assume. The big fight between republicans is between physical hot and defense hawks. The sequester let me remind people, the reason we have the sequester is because there was something called the super committee, they were able to come up with their plan. When the supercommittee failed, the deal was that sequesters were going place. The thinking was that this acrosstheboard cuts to defense and discretionary, they are so stupid that they would never happen. They happen. They are still here. The sequester is coming again. The real discussion is if we need to list those caps, give some more room and spending, or if we need a plan to balance the budget. I would suggest that there is a way to square the circle close the hole. If you were to use a mandatory savings to pay for it, you could have more targeted, sensible savings policy, which was be purpose in the first place. There are parts of the budget they are crying out for real savings. We should swap out this kind of acrosstheboard cut. If we did that responsibilitly it you still wouldnt have democratic support because it doesnt all on the spending side. For a bill budget that gives balance, you have to look at all parts of the budget. Host 18 figure referring to 18 trillion, the u. S. National debt. Why dont we take a call from a lawn a in new york. Caller good morning. I would just want like to make one statement can you say this is the first time we have the same party and both houses. Four years ago, we have the same party and both houses and it really didnt happen help much. We did get a bill called obamacare. Second of all, when president obama came in, he had a stimulus for ever structure. Did he not . Guest yes he did. Caller what happened with that . Guest we spent a lot of money on infrastructure. Why dont you face your question and i will adjust the stimulus. Caller i will let that go. I was watching tv the other day and freddie mac where you have your housing they make money, i dont know what you call it. They took and 40 million extra. I believe it was a democrat asking what jack lew was doing with that money that they began in. He didnt have an answer for him. You know, 40 billion is a lot of money. Dont you agree . Guest i certainly agree. There is money coming in from freddie mac and fannie mae the governmentsponsored enterprises the deal with housing. They were losing quite a bit of money before. They are bringing in money, and that is making the deficit look smaller than it would otherwise. It is going straight to the treasury. Host here is paul. Caller good morning. I disagree with. You, and other people, especially politicians out there in the district of columbia, they say that a tax cut is an expenditure. I dont believe that is correct. That is our money that washington confiscates from oz and redistributes other people. Spending on programs like planned parenthood, those expenditures. Me keeping more of my money, and other tax p taxpayers get be more than money is not an expenditure. This thing about the fair share we could solve the tax problem real simple. We get rid of the tax code and go to f flat tax with three rates. People cou who make less than 20,000 could pay 5 . Over that, 10 . The next group and businesses 20 . That would solve the problems. Thank you. Guest great. Im not sure why you think i would say that cutting taxes is an expenditure. Cutting taxes is cutting taxes. It is less revenue. What i would say is it doesnt increase the deficit. I think the bottom line and number one principle of budgeting is if something is worth spending, it is worth paying for. How will you pay for . You dont need to balance your budget every year, but you basically want to balance it over a business cycle. You will borrow more when times are hard, and save more when times are well. You do want to keep those things aligned roughly. Thats whats not an expenditure, necessarily. I think you are making the case for tax reform. The same case i was making. If you broaden the base and get rid of tax breaks that we have you can bring down tax rates. I would also say you can collect revenue to close the fiscal cap and budget deficit. I dont think you want to do one without the other at this point. The flat tax i guess what you were saying wasnt quite a flax flat tax because it had a progressive rate. I do think you want to do so in a way that isnt asking the middleclass to pay a lot more. You want to make sure those rates are at least as progressive as the tax code now, if not more. You want to move those numbers around to get the right distribution. I also think the way to start this is something that commission did, which i thought was a great idea. For tax reform, what if we got rid of all of our tax breaks . How low can you bring the break . But, you cant get rid of everyone, what about the home break, some people need it. But you dont need it for second homes. You would basically pay for it tax breaks that you believe are worth keeping. The questioning here is how to pay for it. Tax reform includes that exercise. I think starting with no tax breaks and figure out which ones are worth keeping is a very good exercise. Host if youre tracking democrats, roll call tracks their strategy for the budget battle. Senate and House Democrats facing different challenges, but operating much from the same playbook. The resolutions that went through the house and senate were indisputably political documents, giving each side fodder leading into the twoweek recess. In t the senate, facing a vote orama what we are expecting on thursday night, it may go all night. President obama says that he will demand a dollar for dollar in domestic spending. Is that fiscally wise . Guest what the house budget date was an increase some spending for defense and decreased domestic discretionary. Fiscally wise, and policy wise, arent exactly the same thing. It would be fiscally wise to keep the past stronger. Bring in the cast down, where they are could mean real damage. I happen to agree with the president that we should be looking at seaquest or at least on both sides of the budget, but pay for with mandatory. This is what brian and murray did, changing past, the finding areas where were spending more money than we need to be and bringing those down the dont add one penny to the deficit. Its how i would do it. The point he makes is a political one as well. Democrats want sign on to increasing cap for the fence. Its their bargain. If one goes out, the other goes out. Thats how they are tied together on this. What we did see was increases last time. Unfortunately, when it shows is the president is focusing more on sea cluster men on fiscal responsibility. We have seen that through his Budget Discussion that year. Instead of using moments like that to say, we need an egg of ways to not grow the debt, we are making sure we have places to spend more money on his priorities. I would say that we have been focused on how to fix the debt. That remains a huge challenge for this country. But, with a broken congress, certainly one that does not embrace hard choices, they should be at least a commitment to not make debt worse. Last year, we borrowed more than 100 billion. Basically because congress didnt want to use things pay for things. We will have to make changes to spending, and tiles and tireless, and the tax code. It seems like they are not out to challenges at all. If theyre not for the challenge, they should be willing to say that we will not make the debt worse. Host we will go to study. Democrat. Good morning, debbie. Caller i cant understand how you can get these deals from doctors. A person goes in an office for 10 minutes, and the doctor doesnt do anything. These doctors are giving their own selves of raise and youre not paying attention to it. Thats where the money is going. Also it you are so desperate that unocal of the debt is so bad. Its time for you to start charging these churches, the church is that want to get up in the government at least 1 . You would have 1 trillion. Guest i think the Health Care Point is an important one. Growing heag Health Care Costs in addition to the aging population are the Biggest Challenges we face. Health care costs come from excessive bills. The lack of transparency. You talk about going to the doctor. I feel it a go to the doctor and dont know how anything costs. There is not enough transparency and not enough skin in the game. We dont have incentives to buy one plan over the other. We need to change our incentives and change the way health care is delivered. So that doctors receive compensation for keeping us healthy. There are exciting ways where we tried to move in that direction slowly. This is a behemoth of a system. Reforming the health care is assembled take some tips on our time, but we need to push the h to change the way we receive health care in this country. Host one more call from joel in michigan. Caller thank you for taking my call. Good morning. I do need to clarify one thing before we get started. Thats i accidentally hit the wrong number. I meant to hit the independent line before i get calls for my Family Friends about my affiliation, i wanted to clarify that. My comment in question is actually on the interest on debt. I guess my comment is that that will be the big gorilla in the room, particularly when we normalized policy. My question is regarding the budget proposals but both the president and congress, what are their assumptions on the debt in the next 10 years . Thank you. Guest thank you for the question. Thank you for the clarification. Likewise, as a political independent, some newspaper identified me as one of the two parties, and i did get calls from my family. I had to call for correction. Interest on the debt. As i mentioned, it is the single Fastest Growing part of the budget. That is something that should cause us all to applause and realize we are on the wrong track. Second is the point you made. Interest rates are really low. If and when Interest Rates go up if they were to go up one percentage point, that would add 1. 3 trillion to the debt. That is the same amount as that supercommittee. It that is a lot of money. The government has a hard time. They have a hard time saving 20 billion. 1. 3 trillion is a tremendous amount. They use what the cbo puts out. That has rates going up slowly approaching normal rates. That is part of the reason Interest Payments will be growing up. We are vulnerable if they grow to average. If they go up higher, one of the reasons you worry about high debt is it can push up Interest Rates if people start to lose faith in your country. The Interest Payments would go up even more. If your kids go to college and the Credit Card Companies start sending them teaser rates, they start borrowing and then you realize that they are structurally vulnerable and the rates go up. Thats when it hits you and thats what can happen at any time. The most important thing is getting in control of our debt and bringing Interest Rates down to a manageable level so that spike would not hurt us. Host thanks a lot for your time and your insight this morning. We have about an hour and a half left. It after this break, we will spoke us on an investigation into how the Obama Administration has responded to 700,000 freedom of information requests in 2014. Our segment about your money continues with waste and fraud. A Senate Hearing recently looked at the problems. It has cost the federal government billions of dollars. Well be right back. Here are some of our featured programs on the cspan network. On book tv, Government Housing policy caused the financial crisis. It could happen again. Director of the Earth Institute on a plan to counter environmental decay. Saturday morning a discussion on the last speeches by Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther king junior. Sunday afternoon the 1965 meet the press interview with Martin Luther king junior. Let us know what you think about the programs you are watching. You can email us at cspan. Org. You can send us a tweet. You can like us on facebook. Follow us on twitter. We met up with a reporter from wired magazine. He gave us a tour of the latest in tv technology. This is an organic light emitting diode. It uses led backlights to color a liquid crystal display. This one is using the individual particles as a source of light. They can be turned on and off independently. With led, there is always going to be some light sweeping through there. Its pretty amazing. This is the big buzzword at the show. This is the holy grail of tv. Tonight, on the communicators on cspan2. Washington journal continues. Host our guest is ted bridis from the Associated Press. Thank you for joining us. One of your recent stories starts this way. Guest each year, there is a government audit of performance under the freedom of information law. This reveals how well they are responding to requests and demands for government records under the freedom of information act. Host tell us what you found. Guest as head of the team for ap, we request government records about newsworthy stories. We generally have a frustrating experience. We dont know if ours is anomalous. It is not. There were Record Numbers of requests, citizens and news organizations asking for government records under the law. The numbers were way up, 714,000 requests last year. The problem was the government withheld or censored a Record Number of documents. Host what do you think is going on . Guest what of the things we found is the number of federal employees who are assigned to work on these requests has gone down by 10 . Even though the administration has telegraphed that the freedom of information law was to be the most transparent administration, cutting the employees making it transparent is a big problem. The sheer volume, it takes a long time to get information under these requests. In some cases, years. Host phone numbers are on the bottom for our guests. We are talking about the freedom of information act. We will talk about what the white house is saying about all this. The phone numbers are on the bottom of the screen. Back us up a little bit and explain what it is. The freedom of information act is a lovely gives you the right to access information from the federal government. It keeps citizens in the know about their government. Take us into that. When did it start and how has it been working . Guest they have tried to bring it into the current age. This is one of the cardinal tenants of democracy in the United States when it comes to a transparent government and Holding Government accountable. It is the closest equivalent to a citizen subpoena that you can demand. The government can turn over records related to its activity and there are only about nine categories of exemptions or exceptions to the law. You cant ask for something that is classified or has National Security implications. Host what do people want to know . Guest a lot of veterans ask for their medical files. A lot of people want to know the government is doing about them for subjects near to their hearts. It could be information about their travels, their fbi files. Last year when Edward Snowden leaked information about the nsa, a Record Number of people asked the nsa if their phone calls or emails had been intercepted. The e nsa said they would not respond. There are nine categories that are exempt. National security, any information that would be withheld, commercial business secrets that would be damaging to companies, some delivered of process, some backroom decisionmaking, Law Enforcement records. Even these have to be narrowly applied. Just because there may be a sentence and a document that may fall under these exemptions, that means the document has to be released but that one sense needs to be blocked out. Host what is the process . How much does it cost . How long does it take . Guest it doesnt cost anything to file a request. It may run into a small amount of money when it comes to search and copy fees. To its credit, the government did not doubt this on the costs. We have already played paid for these records once. This is the government doing our business. You make a request in writing. If you go to the agencys websites, there is a link for foia. Most of these include a form on the website where you can submit your request. Host i want to let people know that we have a special line. This is for people who submitted foia requests. We wanted to respond or read the white house response to what you are writing. They touted its success. It excludes instances where it could not find records or a person refused to pay for copies. It released 91 of requests. We actually do have a lot to brag about. What do you make of that . Guest this is the white house putting their own spin on some bad numbers. This is the equivalent of your son or daughter going to school and coming home with a bad report card and him saying well, i tried my best. Its not good enough. They have done some laudable things under the freedom of information law. On day one, he turned upside down the presumption that records ought to be releasable. That had not always been the case in the past. I mentioned earlier, they dont gouge us. He instructed federal agencies in that one category where its backroom discussions and conversations about policy, in those cases, agencies ought to release them. What we saw last year is those numbers were low. I think about 60,000 examples where information could have been released had improved slightly. It is still not great. Host we have a lot more to learn with ted bridis. Good morning, mary. Caller i saw a report that recently the white house had exempted itself from foia requests. Wouldnt you say that this level of lack of transparency is consistent with the corruption . Guest what she is referring to is a policy directive that the white house made formally exempting the office of administration, one of the offices within the white house structure that would exempt it under the freedom of information act. This was to comply with a judges ruling. Within the white house, it was exempt. The timing was an opportune for the white house to make that announcement during sunshine week. That is the time when organizations promote transparency. The white house is traditionally exempt from the freedom of information law. We cant see the president s emails. We cant ask congress to see their emails or the Supreme Court justices or any federal judge. It only applies to the executive branch agencies. Host rachel is in texas. Caller one morning i got up and listen to the news and they touched on this one time. When bush was in 2004 and 2008, there is no story out there. Nobody has discussed money that bush sent over there and it was not guarded and somebody took all that money and nobody has accounted for that money that has come up missing. Tell me what obama has done that could beat those two stories, he asked our boys to go out and fight. Guest im not familiar with bodies in landfills. I think the pentagon is a big target for freedom of information requests. They take a long time to respond. They said the average Response Time this past year had been trimmed down to about three months. Our experience was that it takes much longer than three months to get information out of the pentagon. Transparency in government, its broader than just records requests. We have fought for access for the returns of soldiers remains in delaware. We think thats an important issue. We think its important for citizens to see that. Host this is a tweet. How does the Bush White House compared to the Obama White House . Guest incontact context, one of the problems that we had with the Bush Administration and its secrecy was it had turned the presumption that federal records not necessarily be disclosed double. The Justice Department under ashcroft said we will defend in court to the nth degree if you try to withhold information that citizens have sought that you think ought to remain secret. President obama on day one turn that on its head. They spent 28 Million Dollars last year fighting to keep information secret. Host thomas is in fresno california. Caller good morning. I have a question for you. Its in relation to sequester. The clients of requests made by the percentages, how many have been set in asking what sequester is. Why is there so much blowback from it . Why can we get any answers . We have an ongoing lawsuit. If you need any more information, youve got my number at sees ben. You can call me personally. Guest sequester is a good example of one of those cases where its a breaking news story. Something comes up and we need to extract from the government all of the files about this in a quick amount of time so we can reveal to the public the inner operations of government. This is why its so important to be able to get the information quickly. When sequester came up the freedom of information law, ive got a team of investigative reporters. It is not the only tool that we use. For fastpaced stories, foia is not great and it should be. Foia should not be left for academics in historians. Host are there any dangers of foia being manipulated or misused . Guest one of the nine exemptions may be misapplied to hide or censor information that may be embarrassing to the administration. There was an incident in which we quoted in our report last week in which the national archives, the chief archivist of the u. S. Government, had tried to exempt under the privacy provision, this is part of the law that looks at phone numbers, they had failed to censor a sentence in a subsequent document. It was the sentiment that they live in fear of upsetting the white house. That is untenable. We sometimes get staff in the agencies asking us to narrow the scope of the request and limiting the time frame. I would say often this is done reasonably. In some cases they are doing this to exclude something. Host our guest is a graduate of the university of missouri columbia journalism school. He worked for the wall street journal. I should point out that he was one of six journalists in 2013 whose phone records were seized by the Justice Department. Guest the context of the story that we wrote last week is important. This is a government that does not like bad headlines or leaks. They dont like negative information. My team of reporters uncovered information new the anniversary of bin ladens death. There had been a bomb plot to destroy western airliner. We investigated this. We prepared a news story. We approached the government. We were persuaded with some specific information not to publish immediately. In a manner of days, we were able to publish the story. During that time, the Justice Department in investigated our sources and seized my home phone records and my cell phone records. It was an openended fishing expedition. There has been a lot of public criticism about the government cracking down on leaks investigations and journalists especially. James rosen at fox we were able to compel the Justice Department to rewrite the rules that protect journalists and their Source Information much more rigorously. Host you are on with ted bridis of the ap. Caller is it possible to get his phone number and be in touch with the organization he heads up . Guest just call the Associated Press bureau in washington. I should be easy to find. Its a listed number. Im on social media. There are lots of ways to reach out to me. Host what aspect of this conversation are you interested in . Caller im interested in finding out which agency would be the best one to identify possible waste in various services our government has for seniors. I have a hunch there is a lot of duplication of overhead and office space. Had you identify where the money is spent . Guest thats a great question. I want to stress that the law is incumbent on doing homework and understanding where the records and where the files name we might want reside. In ikequestion, i would start with the center fors medicare services. Maybe the Social Security administration. Its the same law to make the same request. You can make duplicate requests two different agencies. Host which is the best in terms of prompt response . Who is doing the worst . Guest thats a good question. The Commerce Department always is a pleasure to deal with generally. I think mostly because they tend to be less sensitive requests that we make. They are expedient. They are reasonable to deal with. The cia is a nightmare for any journalist and i would think any citizen. They denied every single request for what we call expedited ross setting. Thats the speedy consideration on a breaking news story. News organizations are allowed to cite this. The Treasury Department return some documents. We were looking at iran sanctions nine years ago. Thats an untenable lag time. Other agencies are overwhelmed with the sheer numbers of request. The Defense Department, the fbi the Justice Department. The Justice Department is doing better. They administer the foia team. Host 180,000 49 we have a more calls. Mary is in Woodland Hills california. Caller i was wondering how much impact budget cuts and the Government Shutdown maybe has caused the government not to respond to some of the foia requests. Guest we think it has a fairly significant effect. The diminishment in resources that are assigned to the foia requests, it handcuffs the agencies. In some cases, we are sympathetic. They lost 375 federal workers whose job was to respond to these requests. They were to review them for propriety. That is a good question. I think the diminishment of resources is having a real effect. Host we have a tweet. Guest our experience, they really are. The numbers that you cited earlier, 40 something percent partially released. This may be two words on a page. Everything else completely blacked out. That is fairly routine. There may be only a sentence exposed. The rest is some inference about what else might be on the page. Host lets talk about what congress is up to. This is a piece that we came across. Congress must pass reform legislation. What would they do . Guest john cornyn and Patrick Leahy introduced a foia reform bill. It went quite far in the last congressional session. It failed in the house. Speaker john boehner did not bring it to the floor for a vote. It has been reintroduced in the current congress. It would do some important things. The most important thing that it would do would be to establish by law what president obama had said by executive fiat. Records that ought to be released ought to be released. Host lets go to north carolina. Caller i am enjoying the discussion very much. I just wanted to make a comment and a question. The comment is the journalist may be reaping what they sowed. This president we have is probably the least that it individual who is ever entered the president ial race. When he was coming through that process, nothing was asked about his act grant or his leaf structure. When you look at the federal agencies that are now so politicized directly from his direction, the irs, the doj right on down the line, we are getting what has been sowed. The news media is supposed to that these individuals. Now you wonder why you cant get information. Thats all i have. Guest that he is critically important. Setting vetting is critically important. We do quite a bit of digging. Foia is a principal component of that. When we talk about the delays introduced in the process, we are still getting responses back from federal agencies asking for correspondence between congressman ryan and federal agencies from the last election. Its a frustrating tool to use for president ial setting. Its not the only tool that we use. Part of our vetting was digging into secretary clintons background. We were so frustrated with the response for the records that we were unable to get at the state department. The ap filed a federal lawsuit to recover emails that she had written about a number of subjects which he was secretary of state. Host how does large volume explain denial . Does it take longer to comply . Guest when you have a large volume, you are rushed. Its always easier and safer to withhold something then asked delhi really something that might not be supported under the law. One of the troubling items that we found in our investigation was in the rare occasion its only about 2 of requests that are challenged on administrative appeal we asked the government to look for itself. Had the information been appropriate under the law. In almost all cases, the government admitted it was improper under the law. Thats a troublingly high number. Host do people get denied more frequently than the press . Guest only to the extent that the freedom of information law can be complicated. We often see citizens asking the government a question or to produce a report when we know that under the law the government is not responsible or can be compelled to answer a question. All it can do is search files for records that might be about a subject and return those. Host frank is in fort lauderdale, florida. Good morning. Caller good morning. I would like to ask i lived in the d. C. Area for seven years. One of the things i had researched was the material that came out after the jfk records collection act. One of the things that i did it, there were a variety of things that state investigators were investigating of the time. Some of those records were looked upon it by the records review board. Some of them to this day are still sequestered. That is unusual. They were not part of the original record. They became a part of it later on. A number of people looked into this stuff. There they are still sequestered. Can you find out the reasons why these of men sequestered to get something tangible . It was an awful long time ago. Some of these records preceded the kennedy assassination. Guest after 25 years, records that are classified are supposed to be subject to a mandatory declassification review. This is another tool that we can use, to ask for an mdr. Frank mentioned a smart point. You dont just stop with digging for information at the federal government. Sometimes they are exchanging information with the state and each state has its own version of foia. They are different in every state. Frank said he pulled information from florida. If youve got a congressman who represents florida and you want to investigate him and you cant get his information under foia you can ask Florida State agencies if they have exchanged information or set correspondence to that congressman. Some of this is like a puzzle. You try to find ways to extract information that may be blocked from you in other ways. Host where do you go to file foia . Do you do it online these days . Guest traditionally, you do it online. That has been one of the improvements that the administration has done. Most have web forms. You type the information you are seeking and provide contact information. If you want an expedient answer, right narrowly and describe things as specifically as possible. Provide the names of the people whose emails you are seeking or keywords that you might want done on a inbox. That is something we do regularly. Host is there a way to find a status on your request. Guest there is a foia liaison officer, a Public Relations person in these agency. Each agency. Youre supposed to be able to call and site the Reference Number they give you for your request. They are supposed to say soandso in this office is reviewing the records and you should get a response in six weeks or six months. What we find is the status is pending. Host the white house has for six consecutive years responded to 91 of the requests that has provided some or all of the documentation. 130,000 sets of data has proactively been released. On the proactive part, what are they talking about . Guest it was 125,000. These are records that have been uploaded to a website called data. Gov. These are proactive statistical compilations that they have released. They do some proactive disclosures. They are encouraged by the president as part of his memorandum on day one, he encouraged agencies to proactively release information. When we call an agency and ask for information the responses youre going to need to file a foia request. Its that because they want some cover under the law. It simply because thats going to take a long time and maybe you will go away. Terri is in indiana. Caller good morning. The records about the drug war i have studied this. The murder and crime rate doubled for the drug laws. Before they passed those laws, there were no murderous alcohol gangs. They repealed the alcohol law 13 years. They reveal these drug laws and the crime rate will be cut in half or more. It would be cut by billions of dollars and the streets would be safe. Its ridiculous the way it is. My stepfather was a patrol over officer. You can buy Illegal Drugs in a prison. You get much better drug deals from the guards. Host do you have a question for our guest question mark . Guest what about the records for the drug war . The dea within the Justice Department does not have a great track record of responding to foia requests. Every agency is required to have a reading room online. Federal agencies upload free fully requested documents that others have asked for. They are of interest. Policy directives, mission statements. The dea has not done that. Its one of the few agencies that has not made the effort. This caller asks a good question. Everybody has a interest and they ought to be able to access those types of records. Its frustrated when they are not. Host has 9 11 changed things . Guest i saw flight 77 hit the pentagon. The echoes of that really rocked washington for many years. The laws about transparency and the operations of the government , the pendulum slung sharply in one direction that was to keep everything secret. We werent sure what information might be useful to al qaeda and other organizations. It has started to swing. Its been 14 years. We cant live in secrecy forever. The post 9 11 spending boom and security boom, that ought to be subject to Government Accountability and scrutiny by taxpayers and by the oversight the way any Government Action ought to be. Host we have time for a couple of more calls. Caller good morning. Thank you for taking my call. I have two or three questions. One caller called and said the president wasnt properly that it. It seems to me that he was feted by everybody, including the bursars. With the guest encourage agencies to give papers that are imprudent and not wise to give . Third, do you feel that news people report the news or do they create the news . It seems that they want to sell papers more than they want to inform the people. Guest i think that we produce news that people want to read. We have an Important Role in society. The collar mentioned the vetting of the president. It is very serious business. We spend a lot of time and resources on all the candidates, including president obama before he was elected. One of the more recent areas that we look into specifically now is a record on transparency. When mitt romney was running for president , we sent a reporter to massachusetts who went through cardboard boxes full of state documents for three weeks looking for information about how he operated the government. None of the candidates have a great track record on this. We are in the age where the modern candidate insulates themselves from negative press and transparency is a dichotomy from that. Host our guest is ted bridis from the Associated Press. Thank you for your time. We appreciate it. We have one more segment left. We will have our monday segment about your money. The series will continue with waste and fraud at the Social Security department. A Senate Hearing look at problems. It has cost the federal government billions of dollars. Here are some of our featured programs for this weekend. On book tv, and author says that Government Housing policies caused the financial crisis and that it could happen again. Sunday afternoon, the director of the Earth Institute on a planet to counter global issues like poverty corruption, and environmental decay. Saturday morning on American History tv, a discussion on the last major speeches of Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther king. On real america, the meet the press interview with Martin Luther king. Find our schedule at cspan. Org. Let us know about the shows youre watching. You can email us. You can send us a tweet. Join the cspan conversation it. Like us on facebook. Follow us on twitter. Tonight on the communicators we met up with a wired magazine reporter. He gave us a tour of the latest technology. Organic light emitting diode. It refers to the backlight system. It colors a liquid crystal display. This is using the individual particles as a source of light. They can be turned on and turned off independently. Your always going to see some kind of light through there. This is pretty amazing. This is sort of the big buzzword of this years show. This is the holy grail of tvs. Tonight on cspan two. Washington journal continues. Host this is our segment called your money. We are going to look at the death masterfile run by the Social Security administration. A lot has been written in recent months about issues in this area. Our guest is daniel bertoni. Thanks a lot for joining us this morning. What is this thing . Guest bear with me. I have a bit of a cold. Under current law they maintain a database known as the death masterfile. They use this to manage their own beneficiary records for people who may die and established survivor benefits. They are required to share the same data with other agencies for the purpose of improper payments. They can match this against the beneficiary roles and identify people who are deceased. They share us database with other agencies. They share that with the department of homeland security, department of justice. They shared with the private sector. Banks, credit bureaus. Even individual members of the public can request this host . Why is it important to have this file . Guest they have huge numbers of beneficiaries. They need to have that information to make adjustments to their benefits. They can adjust survivor that if its. Its important for other agencies who need this information to determine if people are in fact deceased. They can pay benefits for years at great cost to the taxpayer. Everybody does not win in that situation. Host the phone number is on the bottom of the screen. We have phone lines for democrats and republicans and independents for our guest daniel bertoni. One of many headlines is this one. Agencies cant always tell who is dead and who is not. Some of the details about what is going on, we are talking about improper aim its associated with the death masterfile. Some of the details include 1. 1 million. Tell us more about this. Guest given the range of this information its important that this data be as accurate and complete as possible. What we found is thats not always the case. This is exactly what we are talking about. We find individuals who are in fact alive but due to an error find themselves. We have to navigate a bureaucratic nightmare convincing the government they are not dead. That can be problematic. Their mortgage lenders, their dmv, the list goes on and on. There are actual dead people who should be on the list. This is really get into situations of improper payments. I dont know that an individual has died, i may continue to pay that person for many years at great expense. Host we covered a recent hearing. Judy rivers spoke she wound up in this file two different times. The first incident occurred in 2001 and it was fairly painless. I had no idea that it had happened. I had a couple of Identity Theft situations. I had never heard of the death masterfile. I just continued on. The second occurrence happened during one of the worst periods of my life. I had spent time taking care of two terminally ill parents. The situation did not help. I could never have imagined i was unable to find a cell phone. You can do nothing without a so security number in the United States. Host four others like her, whats the remedy . Guest problems with the death file come down to two issues human error and identification rosset sees. Processes. Anyone of these sources can and have at times provided information that was inaccurate and incomplete. This information migrates into the database. We have situations like this. They need to have a very strong friend verification front end verification. We found that the agency does not verify the reports that it receives. It does not verify deaths of people who are not beneficiaries. They will enter that into the system. They dont verify information from Funeral Homes. If there is any disconnect they will simply not record the death. To have things happen there is ways to address this. Host we will repeat the phone numbers for people who want to talk. Our guest is daniel bertoni, he is the education Security Director at the Government Accountability office. Before we get to calls, take us deeper into what the people are doing about this. Guest we made several recommendations. The recommendation most importance to your viewers is they get their hands around errors. We recommended that they do some additional analyses. They can find the source of the errors. The extent to which this poses risk to the program. By extension to the rest of the government they need to identify options for improving those areas. We believe that is a prudent approach. It is cost effective. It will make the death file more robust and more effective for people using it. Host mark is on the line from nevada. Caller if people who are receiving payments of a deceased individual, are they being prosecuted for cashing those funds . Guest absolutely. There was a 60 minutes segment a couple of weeks ago about the Adult Children of a beneficiary who passed away. The death was not reported and they received benefits for 30 years. In our report, we highlighted an individual an adult child of a Government Employee received 500,000 in benefits. We do go after those cases. Its difficult. The program is complex and the rules are complex. There is some education that needs to be done. There is also some responsibility for people to ask and inquire if they should be receiving these benefits. Host how do people find out about these egregious cases . Guest we had a situation with a bank. There are other aspects where people dont report this information. We look for bold individuals who have not use medical benefits for 10 years. These people are dead. They can use these leads to look into some of these issues. Caller gilbert is calling from tampa, florida. Guest when a person dies in a hospital and a death certificate is issued, this is sent to the irs. Guest my audio is a little bit low. Host are you still there . Can you repeat the last part of your question . Caller i wanted to know when the hospital issues a death certificate if they report to the irs. Guest typically they will report that information to the vital statistic agency. It will provide information to Family Members who could push that information forward. They can give it to the Funeral Directors where they can report information. Death reports can come in from multiple sources for the same individual. From the state the family, and the funeral director. I dont believe from the irs. Host what is the requirement . Guest there is no requirement for a report of death. Funeral directors have an agreement to do that. States have an agreement to do that. But there is no requirement to do that. Host ways congress try to do about this . We show that clip earlier. Guest certainly oversight. We had in over a hearing on this issue. E there is some legislation out there. There are a range of things that they can do from an oversight standpoint. Really, there is much that agencies can do on their own. Host gary is calling from maryland. Caller how are you doing . Host doing well. Going ahead go ahead with your question or comment. Caller ive a question. After the person is deceased and payments continue. They go into an account, or whatever. Isnt it fried . Guest that is a great question. 20 years ago, we had checks. Checks going to a home. The individual would have to go to the bank and a test a ttest to be that person. A bit more difficult. Now, it is an entirely electronicbased system. That money goes electronically into a bank account. If you are a spouse, or a child of that person, if you have enough information, you can easily access those funds through the atm machines. Yes, they should be. At some point, it is likely to be deemed illegal by the agency. Host have the laws, regulations, ability to find this out in an electronic world improving . Starting to improve . Guest i cant speak to that specifically. I know theres a lot more attention to this issue. There are some legislation in activity around cyber security. I cant speak to that. I do know this. There are laws to be changed whereby if you think your information is being compromise, you have the right to a free Credit Report to see whats going on. I would recommend that. If you suspect something is awry, take advantage of that free Credit Report and go from there. Host and people need an attorney to go back to any of these entities and Say Something is not right . Guest no. There are people who are savvy. They can reach out to the agency. I would say start at the local field office where they can pull your record up where they can see if you have been deemed dead. No, you dont need an attorney. There are instances where a notion happens, and people find they need to do that. I wont say it is a requirement. I will say it is an unfortunate outcome of bureaucratic a mass sometimes. Host mary is on the line. Caller hello. What im about to say might sound silly. When you scratch a ticket and win, and a machine starts beeping that you want, how come Social Security doesnt have some kind of machine that the Social Security number comes up twice, this machine beats off . Guest are we talking like store lottery scratch off tickets . Caller no, im segment Social Security. Im just using the lottery tix wayne to you the reason why you know, they should have it machine, Social Security. If the numbers put in twice. Guest there is no backup system. If an individual and agency receives a death or four, and inputs information what once or incorrectly, there is no automatic sort of query that would catch that. There are queries that would cas catch other errors. I dont know of any automatic Online System that would catch entering dual ssns. Caller really good questions. I can see where we get into the leaves of the small things and cant see the overall pattern. Some of our countys drive us down to the dollars. I think it we go back to how many people passed away after 110 years, and backtrack that and pull on that you could go to voting records. How many of those records got voted on. Is probably really interesting conclusion on that. Not to mention someone pulling organized crime, political people doing it. There was one quote i heard one time its good to be democrat because you always keep voting after youre dead. If someone puts money in twice on the Social Security number, it should be a red flag that something is going on there. Its very important for voting rights, the amount of money to that gets lost, i can see where we get buried into the dollars. This is a very big item. Im glad youre covering it. Guest thats a good question. As i noted earlier, 110 death reports. Theres a lot of activity there. We think they could do some additional analyses. Take a riskbased approach, and identify the areas that pose the greatest risk to their program and by extension, to the rest of the government on overpayment. A lot of bad things can happen when folks get your Social Security number. We hope the agency will move forward on this. They have indicated that they had begun to do riskbased analysis. We havent seen that yet, but are anxious to get our hands on it. Host jack is on the line from texas. Caller good morning. Im going from memory. I believe last week you were part of a panel. A couple of things that really mindboggling. There may be 6 Million People listed as being over 112 years of age whereas there are probably 35 and the whole world. We are losing we are paying out maybe 120 billion per year in overpayments. My question is which agency should be in charge of the master deathless . I believe the Social Security Administration Person thought that they should control the file, and yet he repeatedly responded that they only accurately verify and use things that are specifically related to his program. You know, Social Security. Who should be in charge of this . How can we better verify these things . Guest that is certainly a policy called. Given its mission, and the number of beneficiary it serves, it certainly needs to use death data to use its issue benefits. I dont they its a bad idea that the agency maintains this data. They certainly have a use for it. Its that they move beyond using this for their own individual program and acknowledge that this is bigger than them and more important than their own case roles. And that there is a role for them to play in helping to improve improper use in the federal government. It comes down to resources. Certainly, they cant verify every single death report. When you take a riskbased approach, there are death reports that i think they are not verifying that pose risk to them and the benefits that they should be looking at. We have asked them to give do that. Host is a section of ss a that deals with this issue big enough . Guest i cant speak to that. Ssa would probably say no. They always ask for Additional Resources to support their operations. My concern is that they have not rant wrong every efficiency out of their operations. There is money to be wrong out of what they do. Once they do that, perhaps you can talk about Additional Resources. Host of you are asking the at twitter, the issue of missing people. This couple gets the issue. Guest certainly. If a death report comes in and information doesnt coincide or match with information in the records, such as an ss and, date of birth and agency wont try to rectify that. That will not be entered into the system. We have an opportunity for many many individuals who are in fact dead who are not being put into the system. In essence, they are missing. Host on to arkansas now, larry. Caller good morning. I have a Family Member the passed away about six years ago. They collected government death benefits. Her husband did. He passed away. Last week. The funeral home tells us now that he cant collect that death benefit or the family can. Cant. Guest and your question is what are the rules around that . Caller yes. Guest i believe we are talking about survivor benefits. Im not an expert entirely in this area. First and foremost, if someone dies, there is a very small death benefit given for burial assistance. A few hundred dollars, not much. In terms of survivor benefits, if two individuals are working and being paid, at the death of the one individual, you cant keep you dont get both sets of benefits, you get the higher of the two. I dont know your circumstances, but i think maybe that might be happening. I think that might be better question for a field office rep. Host and tennessee, a republican caller. Clara . Caller clara, yes. I would like to know if someone is a legally using your i illegally using your identity, and you die, and you are trying to improve it that person passed away, but the identity has been stolen, who investigates that further . Does it get investigated further to find out who is using that illegally . And what are the statistics on a legals using the identity of someone who already died . One other point. Our veteran deaths treated differently . Guest the first part of the question was im sorry. Host claire, are you still there . Guest i dont believe theres any difference in reporting or processing of veterans deaths. Action the agency a vegan affairs, they directly report death information to ssa. There is a pretty timely report of death so they can find out quickly about the death if it is done right. The process would be done the same. That is one where they would verify the death. They would reach out to Family Members, or someone else in the know, to confirm that the death has occurred. The process should be the same. Host another question that was stolen identity. Guest as far as illegals. We do know that certain Illegal Immigrants are using stolen ssns. I dont have statistics or know how prevalent that is. We do know these social pu Security Agency has conducted several investigations and have seen that happens quite frequently. As far stolen identities the first part of the question i didnt catch. Host lets move on. Via twitter, someone asks, has a Social Security asked to update their Computer Systems to lower false payments and heirs . Guest that is somewhat out of my slim wim lane. They do have an i. T. Program and i could say, desires to update. Some of it may involve electronic upgrading, we havent seen that yet. We hope to. Host heres another one. Is there any crosscheck with the u. S. Census . Guest i dont believe. I dont know. Host margaret from california. Thanks for joining us. Democrats line. Caller high. Thanks. This is a good topic. My mom passed away a few years ago. I had to become her conservator and trustee before she died. She had alzheimers. I had set up an account where her retirement checks and Social Security checks were automatically deposited. What was interesting was apparently are Vital Statistics in San Mateo County are so lightning fast that i guess a few checks got deposited right after she died that i wasnt aware of like said, they were being automatically deposited all of a sudden, i have this negative balance. What had happened was apparently Social Security and retirement which was from the public schools, had said, we sent you too much money, and the bank senate right back. It was kind of a surprise. Apparently quite efficient here. The other question i have is when they go whats it called the master deathless . Death list . Guest death file. Caller is it based on Social Security number or name . Guest it is based on several elements. The money coming out click quickly shows that they were being efficient with their job. If they had not done that, someone could have been hit by and overpayment. Its probably good thing they did on their part. As far as the death master file, several elements. Data death, in even and even perhaps last address of residence. If some element of the information is incorrect or input incorrectly, that we have the problem of people not being reported or being reported when they shouldnt have. Host anymore questions on your end . Caller i just imagine the people of common names, that would be a problem sometimes. If you have a name like lee as your last name. Or john smith. Something like that. Names that are very common. That would be a chance for slipups. Guest thats the reason we have Social Security numbers which uniquely identify us. Like a fingerprint. No one should have the same one. The ssn is critical, as well as other elements. Host why did you start looking at this particular issue . Guest we have done work over several years. At least, we were asked to look in this further. We had been involved here for a while. We have had things to say. Host charles from illinois. Republican. Caller as the government bureaucrat asks private enterprises how they keep track of pensions when they pass away . Guest we did not make that part of the scope of this review. That is a good question. Whether would be disability systems, we have reach out to the private sector to see how they manage their programs. That is a good question. That is perhaps a good question to ask ssa. Host orlo is up next. Can you turn the sound down on your set please . We will hear you a lot better that way. Caller ok. Host thank you sir. Caller mi on now . Host yes you are. Caller hello . I once i want to thank cspan for all you do. I once asked a question, if someone receives a Social Security check on say, the 10th of the month, and then subsequently passes away 10 or 50 days later does the amount that is left over is it incumbent on the state to return that money . Or how does that work . Guest again, im not next were in benefit payments. I believe there is a prorating of the amount. The person was alive for some portion of that month and should have been given that benefit. My understanding, i think, is that there would be a prorating for at least part of that benefit for the time that they were alive. A better question for ssa. Host denise from knoxville tennessee. A republican. Caller thank you cspan for taking my call. This is about Social Security numbers and how the gentleman that they are like a unique fingerprint. My daughter, i took her into get her disability started, and i was informed that she was from california i was informed that over 20 people were using her Social Security number. My question, i guess, is what happens to that Social Security number, her credit, and anything else going on. How do i protect her . Guest it is unique as long as no one is abusing the number. It should be assigned only to her. It hasnt been assigned to anyone else, someone just got their hands on that Social Security number and are using it for various purposes. As far as verifying her information name, date of birth, address, it shouldnt be hard to corroborate that she is the owner of that ssn. As far as protecting it down the road, unfortunately, she is probably stuck with that ssn and will have to figure out ways to identify ways to protect yourself. That includes you monitoring her records with ssa, and working with the agency to find out whats happening including making a referral if you think there is fraud involved. Host looking back at your phone Credit Report. Getting ahead of trying to find out the hard way. Guest absolutely. If you start thing strange activity and bank accounts, your credit card statement, or if you gett are getting strange notifications, you do need to very quickly reach out to the appropriate bureau, get your Credit Report, and see if theres something strange. Next is to go to the Social Security administration, and keep in accurate log of all the people you contacted, the day what the promised action was. I think afterr a certain point of not getting action, you could have send the record to your congressperson, your senator. Host heres another tweet. Who is responsible for data entry . Is it privately contracted out . Guest i dont believe so. I believe these are Social Security employees. Host lets go to washington dc, a democrat. Youre on the air. Caller i have two points. When Insurance Companies issue a check, they verify to make sure that this person is actually deceased. I want to know why that oversight is not expended to the government. The second point is the fact that different agencies, whether it is the deceased family, the funeral home, other entities that this gentleman is talking about cant just say, the persons disease. I feel like there should be some oversight as to who is actually naming the deceased person and verifying that information. The fact that five or six different agencies can all vouch for one deceased person seems like overkill. Guest similar to the Insurance Company that checks before issuing a check its the same. We will verify that debt. Ath. That block of death reports will get verified. They will reach out, most likely to a Family Member to verify. Its the other entities, the Funeral Homes, the state agencies, that they dont verify. Their view is that Family Members and Funeral Homes are historically Accurate Reporters of the information. We asked them if they had any studies to prove that and they couldnt provide that. We also did some studies on her own and we found that in 35 of some erroneous cases that we looked at, these individuals were in fact living and somehow ended up in the death file. In 26 percent of these cases, the source of that were family and Funeral Homes. Host lets try to get a couple more calls in. John from new york. Thank you for waiting. Caller yes. Im wondering why they havent taken your Social Security card and made it like a drivers license where they put your picture on the front of the card with the number. Verify it. Then, you would have the face along with the number every time they try to use it. That would stop half the problems. Guest thats a great question. If some work that done in the past, looking at what is known as a hardened Social Security card. There are a range of options. A very sophisticated card with a biometric identifier etc. Very expensive. Obviously, the agency is concerned about the expense associated with that. There is also policy issue here. There are some that think that the Social Security numbers shouldnt be an identity document. That should be other documents. Host thomas from indiana. Good morning to you. Caller thank you for taking my call and thanks to cspan for the great work. First, a comment. You suggested that the public needs to be better educated about the ins and outs of Social Security. That is a good one. I am reading a recently published book called, get whats yours. One of the anecdotes is that a Social Security employees think he offer thanks the author for explaining a benefit that they did not know about. I do have a question. Shortly before i started receiving payments from Social Security, my employer arranged a presentation from the local Social Security office. A comment was that the Social Security number is only for Social Security and nothing else. Yet, i get on the phone for utilities, and they want my Social Security. One phone Company Refused to make a change to my account without the Social Security number. Exactly what is the extent of use of the Social Security number of . Is it possible for others to use it as an id . Guest this goes way back. Originally, you are correct. The Social Security number was established only for the purpose of managing Social Security retirement, and disability payments. However, because it is a unique identifier, it is considered to be fairly reliable when you combine it with name, date of birth, and ssn. Over time, it entities have chosen to use it to validate the information that folks are providing and who they are dealing with. Over time, it has grown to be something much more than a vehicle for managing retirement and disability benefits. It has become very important for the private sector to validate who they are facing. They key here is that you dont have to provide your ssn to these entities. But, they also dont have to do business with you. With the current law, its a tough place to be in. If its being asked for, and you want a service cell phone renting a movie at blockbuster they ask you this information. Host from california, barbara. Caller good morning. Im calling because i happen to know someone that was doing this. I reported them. Host doing what exactly . Caller they were collecting their mothers Social Security long after they were Social Security check long after they were dead. I cant hear you. Host keep going. We are listening. Caller i reported them on a tip line. After about two years i found out that he got caught. They may have paid the money back. He didnt go to jail. He told them some lie about it being an error and dates. Ever since then, he found out that i didnt and he has been calling saying that i did this and that, and im being harassed by all these different agencies because of the lies that he says about me. Guest im sorry about your circumstances and the fallout from that. I think you did what you were supposed to do. If you see someone committing this kind of activity, its the right thing to do. The issue here the ig
comparemela.com © 2020. All Rights Reserved.