up. the next chance won't come until october. so we want to find out whether you like or dislike the law or maybe you're still not sure or don't know enough about it. good sunday morning to you. we want to begin with this story from the bbc website. the shooting that took place from denmark. the story points out that the police have shot dead a man they believe was behind the two deadly attacks inside the danish capital. the police say they killed the man as he opened fire on them. it came after one person was killed three police officers injured at a free speech debate that took place in a cafe yesterday. in a second attack a jewish man was killed and two police officers wounded near the city's main synagogue. a video surveillance suggesting that the same man carried out both attacks. they do not believe it is connected to any other individuals and the prime minister saying it was a very sad morning describing the shootings as a cynical act of terror against denmark. here's a quick look at some of the headlines. from inside the "washington post" there is this story. we want to get your calls and comments. we'll begin with nick joining us from tennessee. caller: let me preface this by saying i'm one of those people if i may embellish our president's quote that clings to his bible his guns his wallet and the constitution. and this is definitely encroachment on freedom. i know that's not in vogue nowadays but we are being swallowed by this beheemutsdz that we're creating in washington that's taking control of every aspect of our lives from the cradle to our grave. people think this is going to work like the v.a. but people don't realize there's a commandment that the liberals live by, at least the leadership does, that the government -- the government can be the only ones ben evlevent ben factor for a prolonged period without becoming a bloated black mailing bribing bureaucracy. and you watch your children are really going to suffer for this. and this slavery is going to be -- you're the one who is going to put the shackles on them. a child born nowadays they own $166,000 interest on the debt alone. is that the kind of legacy you want to give them? host: thanks for the call. we'll go to tim in ohio. this headline with the obamacare window closing health care.gov activity is picking up. good morning. what do you think about the affordable care act? caller: i'm not sure about it because we really don't know enough about it to make a good judgment. but i was wondering, if you have -- if you work for a job and they pay your health care are you going to be taxed? host: you're taxed if you don't signed up. caller: no. are they going to tax your health insurance. host: we can find out from jason. caller: ork. host: you face a fee if you don't sign up for the affordable care act and then that fee increases over the next five to ten years if you fail to sign up. this is a story from the philadelphia website. that's this morning from the philadelphia website. let's go to samuel from virginia. caller: i like the law. i'm a medicare patient. my question is this. when you speak to the people whether they like the law or not like the law, ask them what kind of insurance they have today. what kind of protection they have. are they just speaking in bits like it because of o host: this is the headline from inside the a section of the washington post. traffic to -- traffic to health care.gov. what does today's deadline mean? guest: today is the last day to sign up for an individual health plan for the 2015 year. the law establishes specific enrollment one knows -- windows. you will not have a chance to sign up again for health plan until about october, which is when the next window is expected to open. host: we had an earlier caller about the irs"'s role in all of this. what penalties can consumers face? guest: this is the first year that counties will go out for the individual mandate. it is expected about guest: 6 million people will face a penalty guest: guest: for not guest: guest: guest: guest: guest: guest: guest: guest: guest: guest: guest: guest: guest: guest: guest: guest: guest: guest: guest: guest: guest: guest: guest: guest: guest: guest: guest: guest: not having insurance coverage. they have not set for sure whether that is going to happen or not. we know the counties -- last year it was $95 and 1% of your income if you did not have qualifying health insurance. this coming year, if you stay uninsured for 2015, that goes up to either $325 or 2% of your income. a lot of people will be discovering the penalty for the first time. host: the department of health and human services releasing figures, including this that 87% of it consumers qualify for tax credits. what type of text credits are we talking about? guest: these are premium tax credits. monthly financial assistance to pay for your health insurance. it goes to the insurer, not the consumer. what it means is that you see a smaller price on your health insurance. what the administration has said this year is that these tax credits are worth about $260 a month. on average, if you're receiving a tax credit, that is knocking about three fourths of the price of the cost of your monthly premium. host: let me ask you about a related story about those who are immigrants in his country and lost coverage. about 200,000 people will be dropped from the plan by the end of this month. you explain what this is about? guest: this goes back to the aca's citizenship requirements. h h s was not able to verify citizenship status. this could've been for a number of reasons. the law is clear that if you do not meet these requirements, you cannot sign up for coverage. these people who are losing their coverage, their problem is either verifying it or they could not verify it. host: if you have not signed up by tomorrow, what does that mean? guest: that means you do not have a chance to sign up again until october. if you do not have insurance you risk the chance that you'll face an individual mandate penalty. there is some sort of leeway. if you start an application but have not finished it by today, the ministry should says there will be some time reagan go back in and make sure you complete it -- the administration says there will be some time where you can go back in and complete it. it essentially means that your chance to buy your own coverage is for the most part over this year. host: what is different this year compared to last year with regard to the site itself? not nearly as many glitches. there was a slight delay yesterday. stark difference from last year. guest: the site is running more smoothly. i imagine this is how the administration imagines it would've run the first year. it is been about a three month enrollment window. we have not heard any major issues. yesterday was the first time i could remember that the site was glitchy for a number of hours. that might've been unexpected enrollment surges at the end of this deadline. for the most part, the website has been working more smoothly. host: jason millman, joining us live on the sunday morning. his work is available online. thank you for being with us. guest: thank you. host: we continue with your calls and comments. let's go to milley -- let's go to bob in stevens point, wisconsin. caller: tomorrow or the next day, the president is going to stand up and say, look how many people signed up. what he does not realize is that obamacare is like the speed limit. people who do not like it are signing up. ask the callers if they signed up for it if they are for it. i think a lot of them are doing it because they have to and he might turn around and make some kind of executive orders to penalize people who did not know. host: thank you for the call. next, milley in kingsport, tennessee. caller: good morning. i do not like this affordable care act. it is a law, but only for certain ones. they penalize ones that do not have insurance but then the ones that make under the limit, it is not a law for them. how can this be even a law? host: the formal care act is bad for the country because it uses transfer of wealth, theft by government dries failure, and illegal gains for health coverage. you can join in on the conversation. you say you are not sure about the law. caller: i have my insurance through my husband's employer. the thing i'm not sure about is, i do not think it is what anybody really wanted. i think it was a big compromise. i do not think that when you are sick, it ought to be about money. i do not think americans need health insurance. i think they need health care. i think it should be without insurance companies. do like all the other developed nations in the world. if you are sick. that is my comment. host: sunny joining us from texas. you like the law why? caller: it is a good law. people try to look at the affordable care act as the way it is laid out. some people did get a rise in premiums because they had insufficient policies. the question is, we have governor rick perry -- we had governor rick perry, how is it that the states that do not participate in the program, how can those people be penalized when it is the governor's fault of each state that does not participate? host: some of that monster outside washington d.c. -- headlines outside washington, d.c. a news conference this past week by west coast lawmakers, asking for the work stoppage to end which are slowing down the shipments. drilling rigs inching ever closer to home. from the boston sunday globe another blow for the weather warned city in the region. boston gets set for another snowstorm tonight and into tomorrow. the houston chronicle, from dining to rent, as oil prices plunge, that plunge is beginning to sink in across texas. you say you like the formal care act. why -- the affordable care act why? caller: i had insurance, but i lost my job recently. i am in a crucial situation to be registered. someone called and asked me to get signed up. after they heard my situation, i would not have any money to sign up for it. would i be penalized? host: we talked to jason millman about this. you can apply for a waiver. it is a pretty liberal application process and they grant most of those waivers if you submit the information in time. caller: ok. in the sense of it, just this week, i lost my job. host: what you should do is contact your member of congress and let them handle the paperwork so that you are not penalized in any way. we will move onto sherry from auburndale florida. you also like before double care act? -- the affordable care act? caller: i was disabled from my job and cobra insurance, they were providing ridiculous as far as the cost. i think people who were unable to afford insurance and on welfare or receiving some kind of benefits from the government they had the medicaid available to them but from what i heard the people receiving this benefit was unaffordable because of the amount that the person who had medicare or medicaid was responsible for. host: the hill.com, writing that the end of the year sign up season is midnight tonight. expected to add more than a blood million people. -- more than 11 million people. the drive was splashed on the front pages and touted by big-name endorsements. the president's buzz feed hit this week getting more than 25 million views. here is a part of that conversation and this selfie with the president promoting signing up for the affordable care act. [video clip] ♪ >> wednesday. >> february. >> february 15. in many cases, you can get health insurance for less than $100 a month. though to healthcare.gov and figure how to sign up. host: that video getting a lot of attention and a lot of use. more than 25 million. it was part of the interview the president conducted with buzz feed as he tried to reach out through nontraditional media. we talked about this yesterday on the washington journal. it is available online any time at c-span.org. inside the new york times is this photograph of new delhi and the headline, the city and country waking up to problems it cannot ignore. slow reaction to having the world's dirtiest air. stephen joining us from chesapeake, virginia. caller: good morning. i do not like this health care law because i cannot afford it. i am a self-employed professional. i have been self-employed and playing private -- paying private health insurance for 20 years for me and my family. i was really hoping that obama would do something about people like me. i lost my health insurance six years ago when they jacked up the rates from $660 to $820 a month, just for the basic things. i voted for obama in 2008, mainly because i was hoping he would help people like me. when i looked last year at how much i would have to pay for this thing it is $600 premium, just for me. my kids are grown up now. my wife is on social security, thank god. not social security, medicare. monthly premium, $6,000 copayment and $6,000 deductible. i would have to pay those parasitic insurance companies about $18,000 before they would pay one cent. i cannot afford it. host: thank you for the call. bill has this point on our twitter page saying, until we have universal single-payer health care, the affordable health care act is just fine live with it. we are getting your comments on our facebook page. here are some of the comments. george says, there is nothing affordable about it. bobby says, it needs to be repealed and replaced. the unaffordable lack of care act. mary says, we need universal health care coverage. robert says, overall, a good thing. sean says -- sarah says, you mean the unaffordable tax act. it is unfair and incomplete. diane is joining us from augustine, georgia. caller: i like it because everybody should be able to get affordable health care. if you just think about it everybody now -- before when i was paying a deductible for exams and everything i was getting once a year, now you do not have to pay those deductibles because we have better insurance. people say, i like my insurance before, but your insurance before could bankrupt you and have you where you could lose your home and everything because of high medical bills you have. host: michael says the affordable care act is still not fully implemented and will not be until 2018 at the earliest. we are long way from seeing what it actually is. the national journal is conducting its own poll, are the votes to repeal the affordable care act still politically advantageous to republicans? greg is joining us from robstown, texas. you say you are not sure why ? caller: our lost them here are different from the rest of texas -- our laws down here are different from the rest of texas. doctors will be unaccountable for any mishaps that happen in the surgery room. we have been living with that problem for a long time. i make about $600 month. when i signed up yesterday, what they are telling me is that whether i can afford that are not, i have to pay a car and after that, just to get to work i don't have any money. they are taking everything i've got. if they had me to my wife's, her bills and rooms from $300 month to $900 month. that was impossible. now, i'm stuck being broke and i do not know if i can afford this anymore because i'm working part-time. they claim they're going to be cutting the hours. i'm not sure if this was a good thing. i know that for the last 20 years the only thing i ever needed a doctor for was surgery on my knee. i do not really have health problems and i have a good immune system. i am paying for something that only if i use it and until then i'm going to go broke trying to afford it. host: could you make that argument that that is the same with car insurance? you do not need it until you need it? caller: i thought about that. when it became mandatory. this thing about forcing people -- we have a lot of problems in south texas that we see up close. our neighbors are being infiltrated by everything that is happening down there. they are sticking them in the neighborhoods down here in corpus christi. that is a problem for us because they are overwhelming the medical system down here because that is the first thing they do. host: another viewer saying still waiting for our misinformed callers to whine about working people paying for the subsidies. here's a look at some of the publications out this week, including the weekly standard. steve hayes. we are covering all of this is part of our white house coverage. this baby could live to be 142 years old. the cover story of time magazine. ray is joining us in clinton pennsylvania. caller: if you remember, you can bring up film of these politicians, obama's boys that said there is 30 -- 35 million people who do not have health care and this will give them access. numbers do not lie. if this was such a great thing how come there are not -- what happened to the other 20 million who have not signed up? this was the figure that they sold the thing on, which was a lie. everything he said, affordable, is a lie. i know people who cannot retire because where they are at, they have insurance at work but as soon as they retire, either the husband or the wife had medical problems, it is so expensive one of the other -- one or the other cannot retire. host: affordable depends on your definition. some saying it costs too much. others think it should be free. new york times, focusing on 2016 and jump bush -- and jeb bush. the story is called, "dynasty's son." political reporting that laura bush reverses on the enough bushes line. appearing the of video link were jeb bush was speaking, she said jed, it is mom, what do you mean too many bushes? i changed my mind. at the time, she said jed bush was qualified to run but she told us there is no question jeb is the best qualified person to run but i hope you will not. i refuse to accept that this great country is not raising other wonderful people. the former governor has moving toward a likely presidential campaign. that is from politico.com. next is jeff from springdale arkansas. caller: i like the affordable care act because it is the only way we were able to get insurance for my wife. i own a small business, do not have enough employees to do group insurance so i would give everyone money to buy insurance on their own. my wife has a history of depression. she is never been to a doctor or psychologist. nobody would insure her because of this history of depression, even though she was perfectly healthy in every other way. in 2014, we were able to get insurance through obamacare. we just have to pay for the insurance. that is the first time in 15 years that my wife had insurance. into this 14, she got terribly sick -- in 2014, she got terribly sick and we would've been bankrupt if not for obamacare. host: a supreme court decision king versus burwell. the oral arguments slated for the next three weeks -- in the next three weeks. next is bill, joining us -- we will go to henry from pensacola, florida. caller: good morning. i like obamacare. has i hear the callers, some states have obamacare and some states do not have obamacare. what i dislike about the proceeds is that, we are uninformed about how many states the callers are calling from that do not have obamacare. i think there is a disparity between the states. it needs to be looked into to be able to judge. host: jim has this point. if working people are not paying the subsidies, who is? front page and inside the new york times, the attacks that took place in copenhagen. a second shooting has been investigated. an update from the new york post. copenhagen was plunged into terra by a pair of public shootings. the first, public -- targeting eight cartoonist. the second shooting happened nine hours later outside the city's main synagogue. each attack claiming one life, leaving several others injured including a total of five police officers. the attack that targeted the cartoonist happen to be in a crowded cafe, tron comparisons to the assault in paris. -- drawing comparisons to the it assaul assault in paris. the suspect is believed to killed overnight. duwayne is joining us on the issue of the affordable care act. caller: good morning. i do not like the affordable care act. host: why is that? caller: it was a joke from the beginning. people lied about it. it kept getting changed. it is a joke. he is a joke. it is pretty sad how it is. host: we will go to sam, joining us from crockett texas. caller: good morning. i do not like the affordable health care act. not one bit. every time they create a new law to help unfortunate people in this country, this is more money out of my check that i work for. that i'm trying to live on and it is going to some of the i do not know and do not care about. i'm sorry to be that way, but i work for my money and i deserve every penny of it. host: thank you for the call. tomorrow is part of president's day. we will take a look back to 1980 when ronald reagan announced his candidacy in 1989 and share with you democrats and republicans. all-day coverage tomorrow and you can get more information online at c-span.org. speeches and debates. you can see at c-span.org. tomorrow, we will have coverage beginning at 10:00 a.m. eastern time, a special presentation of campaign announcements dating back to 1979. change is joining us from mobile alabama. -- james is joining us from mobile, alabama. caller: it takes 25% of our income. medical care has gotten out of hand. i had emergency gallbladder surgery and that put me into bankruptcy. i'm disabled and i cannot afford it. host: thank you for the call. from inside the washington post, the mastermind of obama's political ascent. the new book by david axelrod called "believer." susan axelrod is a truly wonderful wife and mother. beyond that, notable revelations are few and far between. jesse jackson senior can be seen as a seamless -- a seamless -- shameless self promoter. michelle obama has frustrations that can boil over in and once slugged my arm. a review of the book when he walks out the building, i do think he is going to look back. devote axelrod -- david axelrod is our guest on booktv which it can check out online at booktv.org. next is matt from winston-salem, north carolina. caller: i was white-collar worker, had great health insurance and lost my job. a year ago in january 2014, i was diagnosed with double pneumonia and each one and one flew -- h1n1 flu. i walked out of the hospital with a bill for $67,000. i'm on a payment plan with the hospital. -- six the $700. i'm on a payment plan with the hospital. i'm self-employed and i can get insurance that will cover that. host: of that bill, how much of you paid off and how much is still in the balance? caller: i'm paying $200 a month. when i see callers say, why my subsidizing this for other people? i am exley paying this off. -- i am actually paying this off. there is interest on that. other people are paying for that . it is not just the people showing up at the hospital that don't have health insurance. it can happen to anybody. host: good luck to you and thank you for the call. ray says everyone gets we paid for medicare -- medical care all are working years and still pay monthly premiums. this is from burt who says the scan to rebuff the american people and make big pharma and health insurance companies rich. chuck dawson says it was created on a foundation of dishonesty. lee says it is another tax program scheme. james says, the affordable care act is the greatest thing i've seen happen in my life. your calls and comments on the affordable care act. the next sign-up period begins in october. tim from peoria, illinois. caller: i am calling to let you know that i like it. me and my wife have not had insurance in over 15 years and we were able to get health care. it is a good thing. people get really sick and have not been able to get it. that is all i have to say. host: thanks for the call. let's go to christine from millersburg, michigan. why don't you like the affordable care act? caller: i'm from vanderbilt, michigan. the thing that seems to me, my husband and i had it. with what we paid and the subsidy that we got, it was $28,000 last year. if they paid out $300, i would be surprised. it is like they are the only ones that paid out. they did not pay anything and every time i had anything submitted, i had to fight the insurance company to pay it back. that is just the way i look at it. it has not helped us a bit. it has made it more difficult for us to live. host: the hill.com, as the republicans unveil a new obamacare alternative, you can read the deal tales -- the details at hill.com. david is next. caller: i do not like the health care act. host: why is that? caller: all the subsidies are coming off our back and we are $18 trillion in debt. the country cannot afford that. the new health care law for medicare is basically the death panel. my father was in the hospital this last year and the hospital would not admit him as inpatient and he was there for five days and had to go to the nursing home in medicare would not pay for his nursing home care because he was not admitted to the nursing home from and in payson -- inpatient status. host: from the l.a. times another poll. most still do not know a lot about it. few want it repealed. frontpage and inside the washington post is an instance of story about brian williams who was forced down without pay. brian williams, undone by his gift for storytelling. a shorthanded nbc news desk, ryan being brian. no one really knows if williams can make it back to the anchor's chair. it would've been impossible to imagine him not occupying it in perpetuity. it is all thanks to a facebook posting no one had ever heard of before. those 10 words, sorry dude, i don't remember you on my aircraft. he was the engineer who began the investigation into brian williams. brian williams coming an example of the leveling power of social media. the story this morning from the front page and inside the washington post on brian williams. we'll go to evelyn from mississippi on the affordable care act. caller: there are some good things about it and there are some not so good things about it. one example, i have a niece that could not afford insurance. she only worked about four days a week. she signed up and her premium was $23 a month. when the year was up, they sent her a bill saying it has gone up to $180. her hours have not increased. her pay has not increased. how could she have afforded the $180? she had to go the mother company. that is what bothers me about -- that is what -- go to another company. that is what bothers me about it. i like it because it is a -- if it is pre-existing, they will ensure you. host: jim says, the affordable care act monthly premium plus the deductible plus the co-pay, how much would you pay each year? you may be surprised or shocked. james is joining us from tennessee. caller: for one thing, it helps the poor. i do not know why some of these people are crying about, i do not care if anybody has insurance. you have to pay this insurance. host: thank you for your calls and comments. the deadline to sign up is midnight tonight. the story by jason millman available online at washington post.com. when we come back, we will turn our attention to the situation in ukraine. a cease-fire at the moment is taking hold. it is in the eastern part of the country. our conversation with former senator jim webb, who is contemplating a potential presidential bid. up next, a portion of our newsmakers program. our conversation with transportation secretary anthony foxx, who is beginning a tour across the country to discuss a plan for $470 million for the country's roads and bridges. here's a portion of our conversation with anthony foxx. [video clip] >> you are proposing big increases in transportation spending. to pay for them, in part with overseas profits. is it realistic to expect republicans in this congress to raise taxes on u.s. corporations? particularly given the anti-tax sentiment? >> the proposal via ministry should has put out is to use program of business tax reform to pay for our bill. our proposal actually works in reducing corporate tax rates by removing the 35% tax rate that would apply to overseas foreign earnings that currently are not taxed as they are sitting there. they were brought back, there would be a 35% rate that would a product to them. -- that would apply to them. between 1% reduction. to bring those -- a 21% reduction. to bring the proceeds of that over here to pay for infrastructure. about double what the gas tax is producing now. >> have you talked to gop lawmakers and met with them about this proposal? >> the proposal is one that enjoys bipartisan support in many ways. about a year ago, the chair of the house ways and means committee put a proposal out there that used the same framework. we think it is a framework that can work. >> there was the hearing on the house earlier this week. some members of your party and the other party that were skeptical about this -- that this plan enjoys as much bipartisan support as you are suggesting. what do you say to the skeptics? >> a little bit like what they say about democracy. it is the worst system ever except for everything else. host: anti-fox, former mayor of charlotte, north carolina. he is our guest on c-span's newsmakers program. we hope you tune in at 10:00 eastern time. we want to look of john herbst who served as the u.s. ambassador to ukraine from 2003 to 2006. now with the atlantic council. fix for being with us. guest: thank you for having me. host: for the moment, the cease-fire seems to be holding. guest: it is somewhat holding because we know there has been a showing from rebel and rushing -- and russian positions. host: this is a story from the l.a. times website that there was an increase in the shelling just before the deadline for the cease-fire that began today. guest: the parties to the agreement had reached an understanding for an immediate cease-fire, but the kremlin and rebels whom they control said they did not want a cease-fire. they wanted to 2.5 day delay. they increased their offensive activity to take a strategic town. host: i want to point attention to this map. you can see crimea and the eastern part of ukraine for the fighting is taking place. border with russia. who is fighting homewhom? guest: what you have is a hybrid war led by the kremlin in ukraine's east. they sent volunteer fighters from russia and there are russian officers were leading this effort. host: what is president putin's endgame? guest: he has not said what he wants. our analysis is that he would prefer to have a government in key have that is -- a government in ukraine that is compliant to his wishes. most of ukraine hates him because of the war he is been conducting for over year. he will settle for destabilizing the country so they cannot establish a functioning democracy. his goal is to keep ukraine in perpetual unstable state. host: is he rational? guest: this is a rational goal. is a nasty one. it is ultimately not good for russia. after prudent fears the emergence of a market economy and democracy in ukraine. he claims his regime is democracy for the slob and people -- slavic peoples. host: if you look at the ukrainian economy, what does it produce? what does prudent fear? -- what does putin fear? guest: he was reportedly very upset with the people throughout your code which -- the previous president of ukraine when ukrainian televisions visited to see how lavishly he lived. he sees this as a nasty example for the russian people. he faced demonstrations, tens of thousands of demonstrations across russia. he's afraid of the power of people. host: our guest is john herbst who is served in embassies from tel aviv to moscow and saudi arabia. he is a graduate of georgetown university. now, the director of eurasia center at the atlantic council. our phone lines are open and we are dividing lines between democrats, republicans and independents. (202) 748-8000 four republicans. (202) 748-8001 for democrats. those of you listening on c-span radio, which is heard on at some 20. if we provide weapons to these rebels, what does that do to u.s./russia relations? guest: the proposal, which i support, is to provide arms to ukraine's dormant. russia is conducting a hybrid war in ukraine. russian sergeants at -- russian soldiers have fought. ukraine needs weapons to prevent further russian aggression in ukraine. we are not talking about sending weapons that are currently under the kremlin's control. the recently supply weapons is this, ukrainian people asking for them. they are the victims of this aggression. mr. putin has a vulnerability. the russian people do not approve of russian soldiers fighting in ukraine. he tells his people russia is not fighting in ukraine, but he is lying. polls have shown that the russian people do not want russian soldiers fighting. mr. putin is hiding his casualties. if we provide arms to ukraine mr. putin has a deterrence. this may deter mr. putin because he is afraid of dead russian soldiers returning to his country. he wants to bury them in secret. host: "on capitol hill, there is a new sense of urgency as top ranking democrats -- present the bill that would give the ukrainian government the weapons they need." quoted take for the president to take that next step -- what would it take for the president to take that next step? guest: there is strong feeling in favor of this. ash carter, when he testified before congress, he said he is in favor of this. host: let me ask you about the role of the french president and the german chancellor. those with a to point people when it came to the meetings in moscow. why those two? guest: it might not be a bad thing for the united states to be involved. angela merkel has been contacts with mr. putin. it became natural that she with president francois hollande were trying to reach a diplomatic agreement. the agreement are very weak. the kremlin violated one of the agreements. it is also true that europe is following president obama's lead. as long as they maintain those sanctions, the role of chancellor merkel will be helpful. host: the german chancellor at the white house with the president. they held a news conference. here's the president. [video clip] >> what we have said is, the international community working together can ratchet up the cost for the violation of the core principle of sovereignty and territorial integrity. russia has paid a significant cost for its actions. it has not yet dissuaded mr. putin from following the course he is on. it has created a measurable impact on the russian economy. that will continue. my hope is that through these diplomatic efforts, those costs have become high enough that mr. putin's preferred option is for a diplomatic resolution. host: that was the president at the white house. if that scenario played out, how long would it take? guest: i do not think sanctions by themselves are enough. sanctions only hit over time. the sanctions were imposed last year and are biting now. a lot of nasty things can occur in ukraine because of kremlin aggression in the six to 12 months. host: you can send us a tweet at c-span wj. he says let regional powers intervene if they feel it is warranted. guest: i think i understand gary's perception. united states made several mistakes in the middle east with our intervention in iraq. we had no natural partner. in ukraine, we have an ally in president portion go -- president poroshenko. mr. putin may decide he can attack nato allies in the baltic states. we need to stop mr. putin in ukraine. we can stop him by sending weapons to ukraine and through sanctions. host: our guest is john herbst, who spent more than 30 years as a member of the u.s. foreign service. let's go to lou, joining us from highland park, illinois. ask for being with us. -- thanks for being with us. caller: what is the significance of the pipelines running through ukraine and the price of oil affecting mr. putin's decisions? guest: the pipeline is through ukraine provide a majority of russian gas the goes to europe. they are significant. they have not play too much of a role of the crisis of the last seven months -- less several months. regarding the price of oil, mr. putin's economy relies on hydrocarbons, both oil and gas for well over 50% of exports. the fact that oil has dropped in value by 50% is a devastating blow to russian economy which is based on hydrocarbons. this will limit his foreign-policy options over time. essentially remain in place -- if sanctions remain in place, it might force a change in policies overtime. host: jerry from overton, nebraska. caller: i remember during the clinton administration that we promised the ukrainians that if they give up their nuclear weapons that we would defend them. is that true? guest: we signed a law with russia and great written. -- great britain. that memorandum gave assurances to protect territorial integrity of ukraine if you gave up nuclear weapons. ukrainians complained that the powers -- russia violated since they are the aggressor. they also complain that the united states and great britain have not done enough to help them and that the united states and great britain are obligated. host: sandy, democrats line. caller: people in donetsk, what i hear from the global scene don't you think that them being attacked that they need help from russia? should they be separate from the other ukrainians? i pray for god to have mercy on this country. guest: numerous polls have shown that before the russians begin their war in ukraine's east. a large majority of people wanted to remain part of ukraine. only about 25% are ethnic russian. there are almost no neo-nazis in kiev. nationalist parties are not represented and did not make it in. there is some irony in the russian charges that they are fascist in ukraine. russia distorts its news and oppresses its own people. host: this is a piece that is available online at the economist website. it is describing prudent as the ultimate master saying, look at the world from his perspective and mr. putin is winning. for all of his enemies, he remains the kremlin's undefeated master. he goes on to say that the conflict has shown the discord among mr. putin's adversaries. his overarching aim is to defy him neutered that alliance. guest: i would agree. i do not think he is in an enviable position. he expected that the united states and europe the united states europe would not. he has been surprised by the strong stance on sanctions. so far the europeanses has held firm. prime minister alan. his economist is sinking. his economy is having a problem. we don't see it but there is serious dissatisfaction with his policies. the money classes in russia understand the damage that sanctions are doing to their interest. they understand this is a result of his policies in ukraine. so he is in a difficult spot. but that has nots prevented him from continuing his aggression and even continuing it. guest: i once worked with saudi arabia for the state department a long time ago. my sense is that the saudis are keeping production of oil high in order to deal a blow to american shale producers. saudi arabia has ules been concerned about maintaining its market share. they see the shale revolution as a challenge to that. host: martin, good morning. caller: thank you, c-span. people do not choose the people who rule. germany has no right to dictate to russia. neither does the united states. 20 million russians were killed in world war ii. the guns of august are heard once more in europe and the united states is collaborating in those crimes. that's what i have to say. and my question is why do you continue to justify u.s. imperialism around the world? guest: i listened carefully and you are very misinformed. soviets died in world war ii. ukrainians died in russia that's one. rashe is trying to dictate what ukraine does. mr. putin is the aggressor here. united states and germany are trying to defend the people of ukraine from kremlin aggression. if you understood that you understand that your policy prescriptions simply make no sense. host: how likely is it in the long term you think ukraine could be part of nato? guest: ukraine has the right to seek membership in nato. but this is not the issue really since 2008. president bush the younger at the bucharest nato summit urged nato to consider ukraine as a member and there was no agreement. the current crisis has nothing to do with nato. it began with ukraine and the eu were close to making a trade deal. and mr. putin decides that was unacceptable. host: another question from the viewer. guest: i mentioned before that there is a dissatisfaction with mr. putin. the problem with authoritarian regimes is that they seem stable until they no longer are. my sense is this. if oil prices remain low for another two or three years. if mr. putin continues his aggression in ukraine, if the sanctions remain -- strong sanctions on russia renain or grow stronger and if the west provides military arms so ukraine can defend itself mr. putin will either have to change his policy in ukraine or he will be under serious political pressure at home. host: from maryland. caller: good morning. thank you c-span. sir, i understand more than a lot of people your comment about a hybrid war that russia is waging. however, i do have concerns when it comes to armling ukraine, the ukrainian got. my concern with that is that we lend legitimacy to russian propaganda saying that we are also waging a hybrid war there with our special forces and advisers and that's something that i don't think that is good for our interests in and a stable ukraine. guest: i think you have a point but it's a rather limited one. right now the massive russian information campaign claims that american special forces are fighting in ukraine. i've seen pictures that they have shown of alleged american prisoners. we know this is all bologne. so if we actually provided weapons mr. putin would have a bump in his campaign to say what's happening in ukraine is the result of american policy. on the other side mr. putin is sending fighters in ukraine, he is sending arms in ukraine. the rebels in ukraine right now are under russian leadership. and in august he introduced regular russian troops to beat back the ukrainian army. so all the united states would be doing is helping ukraine defend itself by providing arm. not sending american soldiers, just arms. host: another comment. is this an ethnic war? guest: this is not an ethnic war because the russian people are not interested in ethnic war. that's why the russian people don't want soldiers fighting in ukraine. even if they believe the lies about what's happening in kiev. host: ron from pennsylvania. caller: good morning. i think we definitely should help the people of ukraine. we should provide them with weapons. they're a wonderful country. they're also part of europe. and europe needs to defend one of its own. i also think germany and france need to step up as well. sanctions are not nearly enough. we need to protect these people. and it will also help to prevent other aggressions by other countries that would contemplate this type of land grab themselves. they're watching closely. guest: i agree completely. china is watching how the west responds to putin's aggression and ukraine -- all the responses. and china is a more -- is a country which has the means to be a more dangerous threat than russia. host: what types of weapons should we provide? guest: we suggest arms to the une craneion army military. we think they should have anti-armor weapons. and army personnel carriers. radar which can help ukraine locate missiles, fire on this positions from 40, 50, 60 kilometers away. that's the principle source of ukrainian casualties. we should provide hospitals. we should provide -- there's -- intelligence support in the form of uav's. host: can you give us a sense of what the army now has in trying to fight these rebels? guest: ukraine does have substantial armor. it does have some missiles. it does have more light weapons than it needs. but it can use the specific things that i referred to. host: let's go to washington, d.c. good morning. caller: good morning. host: if you can turn the volume down on your set. caller: i have more of a statement. i've learned by experience first that the first casualty of war is the truth. and why is it that if russia has -- been in ukraine there has not been one captured or anything like that? we went to ukraine because they overthrew a dualy elected government. and that is what the genesis of the problem. but why is no soviet citizen has been captured and all the soldiers as far as i've been able to determine? guest: you spend too much time listening to russian tv which is a prop ganden outlet. in fact there's massive evidence of russian soldiers fighting in ukraine. there's massive evidence of russian equipment in ukraine. and let's understand something. the ukrainian people overthrew -- actually, they did not. the president fled because he permitted if he did not order the use of sniper fire against peaceful demonstrators. almost a hundred people died in sniper fire last year while he was president. host: this program is carried live on the bbc parliament channel and daniel is joining us from great britain. caller: good morning and good morning to you. thank you for having me. i'm just going to ask about the ukraine crisis. the united states more oil to europe instead of russia crippling the economy but at the same time helping your allies in europe. for example, the price of gas in the u.k. is $7.70 on average per gallons compared to $2 mth 7 in the u.s. >> thank you. oil is a if you thinkible product. if we sold american oil in europe that means the other oil which europe would purchase would go elsewhere. it would not lead to a drop in oil prices in great britain or france or anywhere else. however, the united states has laws about the export of energy and those laws make it harder for export natural gas. natural gas is not a worldwide market like oil. and if we were to ease -- if the united states were to ease its laws enabling us to export natural gas to europe and if europe would build refineries, you need liquefied natural gas plants, this could lead to lower gas prices in europe and i think this would be a good thing. host: next caller from michigan. good morning. caller: good morning. i'm absolutely amazed at how the united states and other countries villify russia. on c-span a number of months ago, i saw a man named webster carply who told a very interesting story about the russians coming over and helping abraham lincoln during that war. they came to san francisco, to the united states. russia and the united states had very good relations then. and then of course everyone forgets that the 28 million russians that were killed. i happen to have connections with the russian and ukrainian communities and i think america made a big mistake because russia and the ukrainians are like brothers and sisters. they fight and they disagree but eventually they make up. but somebody comes in and starts poking a stick and pointing out this is bad and that's bad there's really -- putin is no angel. but then on the other hand, america is no angel, either. otherwise we wouldn't be in 28 or 38 countries sticking our nose into things and neglecting our people. so please be a little more fair. and actually, please have webster tarply on again because i think americans need to know the history of russia and american relationships. host: thanks for the call from michigan. guest: ok. i love the russian people. and they have a great history and have done many wonderful things. but there are several thing that is you said that are simply not right. first of all, you're right that 27 or 28 million soviet citizens died in world war ii. but of soviet citizens a larger percentage of ukrainians died. so there was great suffering in ukraine as well as russia as a result of world war ii. i have no problem with the russian people. i do have a problem with mr. putin. he is responsible for the death of over 5,000 ukrainian people because of the war that he has conducted. at this point the ukrainian people deeply dislike mr. putin as they understand he has killed many of their fellow citizens. we would have peace in europe if mr. putin was not an aggressor and we need policy to stop mr. putin. and keep this in mind. the greatest russian historian wrote, about 120, 140 years ago, when russia is aggressive abroad it treats its people at home very badly. mr. putin is treating the russian people very badly. at the same time he is killing ukrainions. if ukraine can win in this war against mr. putin's kremlin, the russian people will be beneficiaries. their lives will be better. if you understand that you would understand the policies are very sensible. host: and the imf confirming about $17.5 billion in loan assistance to the ukrainian people. this is a story from the bbc news business website. what would that money be used for? guest: well -- host: loan. guest: ukraine has an enormous short-term national debt. so this package is an emergency financial package enabling them to meet their obligations. but the economy is in great trouble because of the war mr. putin is conducking. of course the whole east has been destroyed. host: our guest is going to be part of a conversation that is taking place this week. we will have live coverage on the c-span networks. you can also watch it on line. it is taking place on tuesday cosponsored by the council on foreign relations. again our guest here will be among those in attendance. i hope you tune in then. richmond, virginia. democrat's line. good morning. caller: good morning. my question is let's assume putin wins in the ukraine. he gets it. what is his next step? what is his end game? what is he shooting for? guest: that's a very good question. i've already said his game in ukraine is to destabilize the country so it cannot move decisively towards democracy and the west. but mr. putin has claimed the right to intervene wherever russian speakers are in danger. and he gets to define the danger. there are many russian speakers in kazakstan, in ukraine, in georgia, in moldova, in our battlic allies that is astonia and latvia in particular but also lithuania. mr. putin has also said that the rules of the post cold war order must be rewritten or there will be no rules. he has also said that he should have a sphere of influence in the whole post soviet space. i think it is safe to assume if he gets his way and does not pay a high price, he may pursue a similar policy in the other countries i mentioned. and if he does it in the battlic states we may be in a situation where the united states has to intervene militarily with our soldiers to defend our nato allies. host: we welcome our listeners on c-span radio heard coast to coast. we're talking about the ceasefire that was implemented today. how long will it last? and the larger issue of u.s.-russia relations. peter, ohio. caller: yes. i believe that the ukraine will be lost within a year. i've heard that something like latvia might be next. and i believe the best thing we could do is to beef up poland militarily and put that kind of pressure on this them. what say you? >> guest: i think that's a very good idea. i believe our policy should have several different instruments. one of the sanctions which we're already doing very nicely. providing deevesive arms to ukraine to put serious cost on aggression. three making nato much stronger. at the nato summit wails in september decided to send some nato forces to the battlic states. we need to send a lot more. >> it was just a year ago that russia hosted the winter games in soachie and then this transpired a short time thereafter. how much did that cost the russian government the olympics? guest: i've seen figures as high as 50 60, 70 billion. host: what was his goal to host the olympics? guest: it's true the country gets good public relations by holding the olympics. i think he wanted to bring up his own credentials. it was good domestically for him, his image among the russian people. host: is crimea lost to the russians? guest: i think crimea is firmly under russian control. and it's hard to imagine ukraine getting it back any time in the short or even the middle term. it's worth remembering that the soviet union took the battlic states just before world war ii and the west did not recognize it and eventually 50 years later the battlic states were free. maybe that's the sort of approach we have to have towards ukraine but it's right now firmly in moscow's grap. host: and why is it the epicenter of this fighting? guest: it's right next to the russian border. it's the place in e eastern part of ukraine that was most famously disposed towards the kremlin. so when putin decides he had a stabilized ukraine he started to work towards dam ask. host: good morning. caller: thanks for my call. it's unbelievable that the u.s. -- and i don't know who are these people responsible for following this mindless policy. senator mccain, who went there in kiev i think right in the beginning of the conflict and since he went there more than 5,000 people have been killed. u.s. is inflaming this thing. you are trying to tell me that the russians, putin -- you can hate as much as you want. and you just said $70 billion in olympics only to turn around and then raid ukraine that's what they were planning. this is crazy. thank god for the germans and french that have stepped in and stopped this mindless policy coming from some people in washington. guest: you have a great deal of indignation. what you don't have is a great deal of facts or logic. what's happened in ukraine is mr. putin has conducted a war. he seized crimea by force against the wishes of the people of crimea. he begin a hybrid war in ukraine's east. the 5,000 people who are dead in ukraine are directly the fault of the aggression of mr. putin. senator mccain went to ukraine and spoke in favor of protestors who said mr. yanukovych made a mistake when he tried to force them off the square using police methods. the kremlin sent advisers who advised the use of force against peaceful demonstrators. and after ukraine, the people of ukraine got angry at yanukovych for allowing snipers. the kremlin then began a covert war in the east. host: william good morning. caller: first of all, could you tell me what fluent languages your -- you are comfortable with? and secondly, go back and replay the issue of the -- the e u. association agreement and the putin bailout. guest: sure. i am fluent in russian. unfortunately, i'm not fluent in ukrainian. at one time i was fluent in arabic. host: and what's the difference between ukrainian and russian? guest: they are as distinct as french and spanish. they have many similarities but they are quite distinct. regarding the origins of this crisis. when yanukovych was still in power, he was negotiating a trade agreement with the e.u. starting in -- and this is something they were negotiating for several years. mr. putin decided some time in the summer of 2013 that he did not like the idea of ukraine signing this agreement so he began to embargo some ukrainian products. mr. yanukovych proceeded with the negotiations. in late november 2013 when he was on the verge of signing, he said that he received under great pressure from the russians and he would there not sign the agreement. as a result of that decision, tens of thousands of protesters went into the streelingts of kiev, the capital of ukraine, to protest. mr. yanukovych then used to police. in other words he used fascist methods. as a result of that, the next day hundreds of thousands of people in the streets of kiev protesting against mr. yanukovych's authoritarian policies. to help mr. yanukovych deal with the crisises mr. putin offered a loan. he said he would like to take that loan but the people of ukraine said they don't want mr. pute rn's money they want a free ukraine. host: let's to -- go to nicholas. caller: i appreciate you allowing me to speak with you here and having this opportunity. there's three issues here. so if you -- three. i agree completely with the saudi what i call their petro islam assault on the u.s. shale industry. because of thiffer with a has beenism, they're directly linked also to isis. so saudi and let's just say one could say that the whole of opec is behind isis and against the u.s. so that's a big problem we've got there. host: let me take that point because we're short on time and ask you about the other players he indicated. guest: other players. host: other countries. for example, is it in iran's best interest to see the instability in this region? he mentioned saudi arabia. guest: again, i think saudi arabia doesn't have strong view on what's happening in ukraine. i don't think iran has a strong view. however they've been allies. although i'm not certain about that. host: what's motivating these rebel fighters in ukraine? guest: well, there are some people in ukraine's east who would like to be independent of ukraine. and they represent most 15 or 20 prt of the population. poles by the way conducted in the did you know bass before this began last spring and since have shown at most 22, 23% of the people from the did you know bass would either want to be free of ukraine or part of russia. in other words 70 plus% want to remain part of ukraine. but you have some people like that. but even among those 23% very few people are willing to take up arms. that's why the kremlin has to send in its own agents like this intelligence officer mr. geerken is a criminal in the fsb. russia had to send them in to stoke the rebelion. and then russia has to send in its own forces to fight in this rebelion. host: finally we began the conversation, you are not optimistic that the cease fire is going to last. then what? irgets one of the reasons why i am mess mystic is the leaders of the rebel forces said they don't believe the ceasefire applies to the strategic town where most of the fighting has been. so they've already indicated they have no intention of observing the ceasefire. secondly they've already mentioned there have been a bunch of shellings coming from the rebel side since it went into effect more than 12 hours ago. finally most importantly it is not in the kremlin's interest to have a seerfire. they need to destabilize ukraine so it cannot develop as a democratic country. host: now the director of the eurasia center at the atlantic council. you can get more information on line. thank you for being with us. guest: thank you. host: we'll be live with it on tuesday. we'll continue our conversation with former senator jib web democrat of virginia who will be with us to take your calls and comments. and later former house speaker newt gingrich. we're back in a moment. host: jim web former senator, democrat from virginia. thank you very much for being with us here on c-span. guest: a windy windy day out there. host: it is a windy day. guest: let me ask you about your own thinking about a potential bid for the white house. you're looking at it. you'll be in smoin, yea this spring. host: when i left the senate i took a year where i did no media, no op eds. i used to write a lot of op eds. just to regain my political independence and think about things. and when i came out with my book last may, there was a very strong response when i went into different media shows and started talking about issues. over a period of several months we decided that we would put together an exploratory committee to be honest with you to see whether even possible in today's age of campaign finance which is so different than it was even when i ran for senate. to put together a viable presidential campaign that can be competitive on the one hand and still not have to concede on a lot of major issues to the financial interests that are so active right now. here as good example of what's happened if people want to think about it. on my committee, the maximum donation i can receive is $2600 by law. the pac about $5,000 max. i'm getting a lot of 100, and 150s and very grateful. but under the current policies after the citizens united case, someone can write an individual a check for $26 million. there's absolutely no control in terms of how the money is going into the overall political process. we've seen jeb bush has said that his people have said they want to raise $100 million in three months. there was a piece in the "washington post" yesterday that said that people have to pay $100,000 just to walk into the room to talk to him. so we've had this bifurcation between what the law says and what the reality of politics is. so we're looking and the exploratory committee, listening, talking to people about the issues but also having to make a judgment about whether you can actually put together the type of funding to compete and still be independent. host: money aside, what issues would motivate you? what are your passions? guest: the themes that i ran on when i ran for the senate in 2006 are the same themes i focused on during my entire time in the senate which were issues of economic fairness. i was talking about the preakdown of this country into three americas, not two americas. during the campaign throughout the time that i was in the senate, the people at the very top having moved away from everyone else. you can see this most emphatically in what's happened in the stock markets since our economic recovery began after this last recession, since april 2009 the stock market has almost tripled. it's actually gone over 18,000. it was down about 6,000 in april 2009 when the recession bottomed out. and yet average wages and salaries have declined during the same period. if you own stock, if you're on one side of the financial benefits, economic benefits in the country you're doing pretty well. if you're on the other side we have not. we have focused on this throughout the time that i've been involved in elected politics. the second one is the issue of our national security policy. how we articulate our national security policies rooped the world. when do you use military force, when do you not. and other issues include social justice issues. we led the movement toward fixing our criminal justice system from the time i was running actually when i was running for the senate i had political advisers telling me it was political suicide to start talking about the breakdown in the different components of our criminal justice system not simply mass incarceration but how these people are able up up is america stronger or weaker? guest: i think clearly since 9/11 we've become more adept in terms of protecting ourselves from issues of the types of things that happened on 9/11, international terrorism i think our people have done very good out in the areas where those who wish us harm train and prepare. we i think are pretty much on top of issues like cyber warfare and these types of things. but what we have lacked since the end of the cold war is a clearly articulated doctrine that determines when we use military force when we decide to put large numbers of people on the ground and keep them there and i think we're still struggling with that. i think you can see that from the results of the arab spring. the situation in libya has been characaterized frequently by benghazi by what happened in benghazi but the real story on libya -- and i was talking about this well before benghazi was when can a president unilaterally use military force in a situation where there were no treaties in place that compelled us to do so, no americans at risk, and no clearly defined threat to the united states? tried to get to the airport at triply today. they lost thousands of weaps from karachi's weapons storage areas that have spread through the region. and the doctrine of when we use military force has become extremely vague. this notion of responsibility to protect or humanitarian intervention. it's not clear. we could -- the president would use that in ireland tomorrow for all we know. it's a very loose doctrine and it's not healthy for the country. host: recent nurel piece which is available on line, here comes trouble. do you think -- do you consider yourself trouble? guest: i vment read the piece. but my participation in the elect ral process -- i spent a lot of time as a writer. when you write, you have a duty to get to the gut issues and write about them in as powerful a way as you can. i think we showed in a paralyzed environment how you get things done. the greatest example was the give bill. i wrote the g.i. bill before i was sworn in. i sat down with the committee counsel and wrote the bill. we worked across party lipes in 16 months. we got the most important piece of veterans legislation since world war ii through the congress and the bush administration opposed this the whole time. this was not an easy lift. so we know how to work across lines. you know i haven't read the a. i don't see what we're doing is trouble. i see what we're doing is trying to show that you can have a formative leadership that's independent of this -- these financial processes and maybe get something done for people. host: our guest is jim web who served one term in the u.s. senate. let me read a portion of what bob moser says about you. guest: i think that's a little hyper bolic in terms of what i would say my objectives were. i think what this country needs is leadership. it needs leadership that can get things done. and i think we've been able to articulate issues get into the depths of them. the criminal justice situation being another one where we brought more than 100 different groups from across the philosophical spectrum together to listen to them. we weren't talking at them. we were getting information from them. and got a buy-in on how to put together a commission, a sunsetted commission to examine all the components of the criminal justice system all the way from the international association of chiefs of police the national sheriffs association to the aclu, the naacp, and the american bar association. i don't know other people up there who are working in that kind of way. so i don't think this notion that i'm here on some horse to try to save america is what we're doing. i feel very strongly about a lot of issues. but i think when you look at what we've done, it's providing leadership and what i hear over and over again in the thousands of e-mails we receive is that i don't agree with you mr. web on everything but i trust you. and i think that's what we need in government. host: our guest, a graduate of naval academy. the autor of nine books. served in the reagan administration and served from 2007-2013 as the senator from the commonwealth of virginia. we go to tennessee. caller: good morning. senator web i've got to ask you this question. suppose i come to your house and i bring my kids and i bring my wife and she brings her parents and i bring my parents. and we bring our brothers and our sisters, and they all bring their chish and also bring their spouses family. and all the cousins. and we come to your house the law hasn't been effective. it's been loosely enforced. there are a lot of entities in the country including wall street and is big on open immigration that have worked against the notion of putting restrictions proper restrictions on immigration law. at the same time, when we look at this -- and number one, what we do have to do is fix the law to make it proper and fair in terms of the numbers of people come here and a lot of the other issues that are alongside it. the second part of that is the reality of the number of people who have come during this period of very lax enforcement. i live in bailey's crossroads virginia within a few blocks of my house are the comb ar area, the willsston areas our number five child goes to jeb stewart high school the most diverse high school in america. it's more than 100 different nationalities. and when you look around and see people who have been here for 15, 20 years who have worked hard, who have learned the language, et cetera we have to do something other than just saying they all should go. and that's the approach that i took when i was in the senate. i proposed an amendment in the 2007 immigration bill saying we need to fix the larger law itself. but for those people who have been here for over a period of time we put down a set of dritia. if you meet these criterion then you should have a pathway toward citizensship. host: good morning from massachusetts. caller: good morning senator. my name is evan. just calling from greater springfield, massachusetts, a city that i think is a quintessential rust belt city, economic decentralized, stagnation, brain drain. my question for you is how do we reinvigorate our economies and our older urban centers? and i was wondering as president what type of agenda you might bring forward to do so. guest: thank you. well first of all in terms of the economy writ large, i agree with those people who say we need to grow our way into greater life, greater benefits for those who are carrying the hard work of society. we also need to fix our tax structure. i think that the hopefully this will happen in the coming year. bru if not it should happen as soon as we can get it on the table. to look at corporate tax reform. i think we should reduce our corporate tax rate and eliminate loopholes, repatriate a good bit of the money that is still being held offshore. and at the same time fix the biggest indicators of inequality of treatment here and that is the difference between people who make money on regular salaries ordinary income versus people who are making their money on passive income such as increases in the value of their stock. the income tax rate on capital gains of taxes and dividends is much, much lower in most cases than it is for ordinary earned income. i made a promise when i ran for the senate that i would never vote for an increase in taxes for ordinary earned ip come. but i do believe that we should be much fairer in terms of the tax rates on capital gains. in terms of the larger issues of the manufacturing sector and the future of the economy i think we have two problems that we're facing here. one is to rehabilitate the manufacturing sector as much as possible by getting these companies back in and they know the productivity of the american worker is high and there are places where, for instance southwest virginia, the very southwest of virginia where they have lost their manufacturing base. they were big in textiles and furniture for so many years. coal had diminished. tobacco has gone away. people down there have a very high unemployment rate and a willingness to work hard. and in those places we can start bringing american businesses back and getting people to be productive again. when people want to invigorate the economy, just remember the people at the middle levs of the economy spend a larger percentage of their income and as a result really do help to invigorate the economy in a very real way. if other piece though, of what's going on in terms of our economy is that we're leading very heavily in many areas towards service oriented jobs and to sort of individual jobs. if you look at the generation behind my generation, there are a lot of people who are working as more as contractors categorized as contractors, like my oldest daughter, as opposed to being actually employed. they face difficult situations. their profession is portable. they move around from place to place. very difficult to get retirement. in many cases they have to pay for their own medical. we have to develop a formula that will protect maybe the affordability for those kinds of jobs so they can have the same proteches in health care and in retirement that we have had in my generation, the baby boomer generation. host: the president is asking congress for trade authority. he has a lot of support from republicans. not so much from democrats. what's your view? guest: i tend to agree with the president on this. i worked on a lot of the different trade issues when i was in the senate. i spent a lot of time in east asia. i spent a lot of time in east asia in my life before i came to the senate and i was one of those who worked hard to try to bring about a trade agreement with korea with the free trade agreement with korea. the difficulty with the present situation is it's almost impossible to get things through. at a time when if you look at china, china's making free trade agreements all through asia. just made one a year-and-a-half, two years ago with the ten countries of also i don't know. very economic system in those ten countries. but now they signed on trade agreement with china. we need to be in that ballpark. and to give congress an up or down vote i think is fair. bring it over. if you don't like it vote it out. if there's something that troubles that many people over there vote it out and have them go back and work on it again. host: let's go to david joining us from new jersey. our line for independents. conversation with former senator jim web. good morning. caller: good morning, c-span. the best channel on television. good morning steve. it's a pleasure to talk to you again. host: now you know david calls every 30 days. we love to hear from you david. thank you for the compliments. here's your chance to ask the senator a question. caller: good morning, senator web. you are a shining light and i want to thank you for your service. i'm a world war ii vet. mr. web. and i would like to talk about the greatest generation as tom brokaw called me generation. we were the greatest generation because we all worked together to do what was best for our great country. our corporations financial institutions politicians the american people, we all came together to do what was best for our great country. and the one word that described my generation was two letters. we. w.e. unfortunately, today 90% of our corporations, financial institutions politicians and a large nur of american people are not thinking of what is best for our country. the word that describes the current generation, unfortunately, is me. host: thank you for the call. thank you for your service. guest: thank you very much for that. and i do appreciate your service. my father was a world war ii veteran and was an incredible experience to grow up under the tulet ledge of those who had gone off in world war ii. actually also when i started working on the house veterans committee many, many years ago the mentors over there were the world war ii generation who had benefited from the g.i. bill. and ills say i learned as a marine in vietnam how people from this country can work together. people from all across the geographic and ethnic boundries coming together, having to work together, having to rely on each other is one of the formative experiences of my life to see how we can do that. and i believe we can do that in the larger sense as a nation. another thing that was very important in terms of making the greatest generation the greatest generation was the g.i. bill. the world war ii g.i. bill. there had not been a g.i. bill for veterans until the world war ii g.i. bill. even before i decided to run for the senate i was saying those people who were pulling many consecutive tours we were calling them the next greatest generation deserve the same benefits from the world war ii generation. for every dollar that was spent on the g.i. bill in the world war ii generation we received more than $5 back in treasury remune rations because of successful careers that were built on this type of an educational opportunity. and i think we're going to see that. this g.i. bill that we put together as i said i wrote it sitting down with legislative counsel, and the model was the world war ii g.i. bill. pay their tuition, buy their books, pay their fees, give them a monthly stipend. tell them that they really are going to be a great part of the future of this country. and i get letters every week from veterans who have been able to use that benefit and who are on their way of becoming the leaders of tomorrow. host: to david's point though that we have gone from the we to the me generation. agree or disagree? guest: i think there's a lot of truth to that particularly in terms of how our society has been breaking down with the people at the very top. the so separated from the rest of the country in terms of the income levels and other things. and i think the issues like the money that's being made on passive income -- if you look at the very, very top, actually i asked my staff to chart this out when we're having some of the debates on the top 1%. how about the top top of the 1%? where does the money come from? and the money overwhelmingly came from passive indom. where you hire somebody to manage your portfolio. and i have stocks and i like to make money off of stocks. but at the same time, if you don't have a stake in that, then you are getting separated. and people feel it in this country. i feel it everywhere when i travel around talking to friends from the marine corps, from -- i work in l.a. but different -- everywhere i go in america you hear this. that we're not pulling together and the notion of fairness has been harmed. host: from wyoming bonnie republican line. caller: mr. web thank you for your service. and i would like to ask you, what do you think of the health care system now that you have it all set up? and could you tell me -- it is not helping the seniors. i know that because i am of your generation and i am a senior. and i'm retired and i'm also a widow. and my husband was a military man. and it has not helped me. there's just -- i would like to know your opinion of that. host: thank you. guest: thank you for that. i think there's a lot of work that can be done now that this system has been kind of shaken down and put into place. i raised a lot of questions about the legislation when it was being debated. it was a very, very complicated and i think most difficult piece of legislation that i saw including four years as a committee counsel. and the problem i think was that this administration did not present a bill. as bob dole used to say the congress proposed -- the president proposes, the congress disposes. we didn't have a bill to dispose. there were five different bill that is came up through three committees in the house and two in the senate and 7,000 pages of contradicty information. i voted with the republicans 18 times trying to rein in some of the different portions of the bill. at the same time, when it came for a final vote i believe we did need to move forward. the benefits in the bill were better than voting it down so that there would be nothing out of a year's work. things like preexisting sngses. and areas like that. but there's a lot of room to make this a better bill. and with respect to having been in the family that had military service, i grew up in a family that had military service. my father was a career military person and i grew up under a system that i guess some people could call socialized medicine. i've benefited from military medicine all of my life. i think it's a great system that a lot of people like to criticize in some ways because it wasn't a private system that we had before. but it's a very effective system for people. people felt strongly. people who i trusted and who i considered to be experts in the area. you i think was it was one of the this smartest in the country. he used to be for morgan stanley. helpful to me in vietnam in the 1990s. and he actually made a lot of money as a hedge fund guy in -- when he left morgan stanley but he said to me three things that stuff with -- that stuck with me. he said you have to vote for this. if you don't the world economy is going to go in to cataclysmic freefall within the next couple of weeks but then he said on the other hand, he said you have to punish the people who did this who abused our system. you have to find a way to punish them. and he said you need to reregulate, congress needs to reregulate, get back to glass-steagall voted away during the clinton administration and which had previously had the kinds of controls that were -- would have presented the situation. i voted in favor of it. then i did something else. in 2010, after a lot of research and actually having gotten the idea from an article by martin wolfe in the financial times, i put in to a legislative proposal the idea of having a one-time windfall profits tax on executives from those companies that received $5,000,000,000 or more from the bail-out. i think there were about 13 companies. and what we said was you can get your full compensation. you can get $400,000 of your bonus and after that, you split the rest with the people who bailed you out, the nurses the truck drivers, the soldiers who were out there paying the taxes. we voted in order to stabilize the economic system not to bail out the people who brought us in to this crisis. and i couldn't get a vote on the senate floor. i think the democrats didn't want to vote for this wind pham profits tax because they didn't want to have to take a stand between the moneyed people and the people who were going to get bailed out. we lost the ability to even have a vote on it. but that is the reason that i voted for it and what we need to do now looking in the future is looking at reregulating the process in a manner similar to the way it was when we had glass-steagall. >> billy from jackson, miss good morning. >> good morning gentlemen. the good morning, senator. thank you so much for your distinguished military service and career to our country and our naval secretary and as united states senator. i was wondering what, you know, i keep reading. we all know about the income inequality and it's kind of interesting that all of the sudden republicans have discovered income inequality and that middle class people are suffering in america and they are now talking about those issues. i am glad they are because i think it's the one issue that needs to be most talked about right now in this election cycle, but i don't think corporations are people regardless of what the supreme court said and i am wondering after the t.a.r.p. and the bail-out and everything we have been through, do you think we still have big banks and big financial institutions that are still too big, too big so-called, too big to fail that it needs to be looked at by our congress and senators and administrations? should they be broken up? should they be divested and having served in the senate like you did, why do you think there was a reluctance on the part of the obama and bush administration to fine the folks, like you said your friend from morgan stanley, fine the people actually responsible within these financial institutions and corporations and big banks and mete out some sort of pun inc.ment for them for what it is that they did to completely wreck our economy back in '08 and '09. host: billy, you put a lot on the table. wet get a response. guest: get thank you for the very thoughtful series of questions. i think it would be good for the country if we could get serious discussions on reinstituting something like glass heave steagall which did have a form of regulation on the activities that the larger baking institutions could be involved in. in terms of the individuals, we have seening a pattern of finding the institutions rather than holding individuals accountable. i think probably the best way to have approached that was what we were recommending with the idea of a one-term windfall profits tax because that would have gone directly to the people who had been the most culpable and put us in such a precarious situation. one time, meaning i don't believe we should have a so-called windfall profits tax every year because that becomes another tax but in that particular situation since they were bailed out by the working people of america, it would have been highly appropriate and the reason that you didn't see a vote on that -- and this goes to some of your other questions, i think it's power of the financial sector in the political process today. as i mentioned at the beginning, we have reason bly good laws in terms of campaign finance. if i am doing an explore tory committee to see if we could put together a viable campaign the maximum donation of $2,600 but after the citizens united case people can go over across the street and create a super pack and there is noliment in the amount of money that can be put into that. you can write a $5 million check today and essentially cover the same items that would be covered in the $2,600 contribution in an explore tory committee. the power of the people who have made enormous wealth in the country who control the political process is obvious. it's obvious. and what happens to the average american who wants to vote for someone who will bring about change? by the time people even measure the health of a presidential can candidacy about the amount of money he has been able to raise, so you have a screen process with those who can write a $5 million check before people in america get to vote on people who will take positions on a lot of these issues. host: that is the playing field you are going to enter if you decide to enter for president. can you compete on that playing field? guest: that is the question we are looking at in this exploretory committee. is it possible to move forward with enough money to get into the debate process without having to comp preromise deeply held believes. guest: dayton ohio chad. caller: thank you for having me on the show. thank you for your service to this country. i am a republican and you are one of the very few democrats i am willing to vote for because i believe that you are willing to work with both sides and you have proven that with your record record. my question is: how do you plan on dealing with isis since they are going to be more of an issue and just airstrikes isn't going to cut it. host: 40e69 thank you chad. guest: i think when it comes to that part of the world we have to clearly define our interests and i have said for many years, do not benefit from becoming an occupying power in that part of the world. i am going to go back to the initially invention of iraq but i am going to get to your question about isis. before the invasion of iraq i wrote a question saying this would be a strategic blunder it would empower iran and china long-term you can see china is one of the major beneficiaries of all of these years of efforts in afghanistan. the greatest veth occur for the united states since world war ii, the greatest strategic victory has been the cold war where we were able over a period of years to face down expansionist soviet union with a strong military but not -- not allowing this to become a fighting war. we had ancillary wars i for the in one, was wounded in one. basically, we put together the right sort of overall strategy so this thing didn't blow up. with respect to the middle east, in the situation with isis the first question we have to resolve -- and i think we have -- is whether or not any of these entities constitutes a threat to the united states rather than simply locally, and i think isis has crossed the line. i think we can fairly say that now. then the question is: what sorts of activities will stop them? will diminish their attractiveness as one of a number of sunni militia elements in that part of the world? our activities are one part of it, but encouraging and other countries in the region it would who would have a stake in this who take action is equally important and we have seen this in the last week or so with jordan stepping up and the uae stepping up. but we can't do this simply by ourselves. and the membership in these malitias, particularly over in syria, the numbers of people involved, vary depending upon who they think is sort of the top dog of the moment. you can see people moving from one militia group to another just depending upon which one they think is being more effective. so, it's extremely complicated situation in terms of crafting just going to ussis. we have people i guarantee you who have been trained when they were with another syrian opposition group. previously. i could see this as a journalist in the beirut when i was there in 1983 when a marine turned around on one of the operations and said don't get involved in a five-sided argument. this is a situation that we are facing there. so we need to clearly articulate our national security objectives. i believe isis comes under that. we need to encourage the other entries in the region that have a stake in the stability to step up including military operations and when they are appropriate, we should have military operations. the best way to get a clear picture of this is for the congress to have the hearings that it should have had at least six months ago, maybe earlier than that and get a full readout of what the administration is doing and what it sees are the most effective things to do in the future. host: let me final up on two final points. money is a big factor. you talked about that early but if governor o'malley and bernie sanders and hillary clinton, can you get the nomination on the issues? can you win on the issues? guest: i believe that the issues that we are bringing to the table are the issues that are important to the country that was the same decision point when i ran for the senate. this is a much different arena, but we pushed the issues that were, i believe, the country needed to go: national security. international security, economic fairness social justice, being able to governor in this very complicated bureaucracy. and i believe americans want to see leadership. they want to see people who will take a risk talk about things that otherwise aren't being talked about iblt the reported i have had over a long period of time shows i can work with people from all different sides. that's the way we get things done in this country. hoeflt. host: how has president obama performed in bringing people together? guest: i think that we have entered a period of absolute paralysis that partly was the result of the timing of the healthcare debate. and i was warning about that at the time where it has been an issue that was a big campaign issue and then right before the election, we saw the economic crash, and i president obama came in with favorables. it wasn't from day one that this thing started to fall apart. but i don't think the nation recovered. we saw the rise of the tea party that year. we saw the republicans saying the number one objective was going to be defeat president obama in '12 rather than working legislation. in october, '11, when i got my criminal justice reform national commission up for a vote this was a bi-partisan -- i had oren hatch and lindsey graham as co-sponsors on this bill people from all across the philosophical spectrum who worked on these issues every day in support of this. justice kennedy supported it. $18 million. that's it. one helicopter. $14 million. one helicopter. we could have done this. we weret the best minds of america, show us how to fix this the whole nature of this problem and particularly reentry, and who goes to jail? how long? what will the administration looks like? we got filibustered october of '11. we got 57 votes and the national review the conservative paper editorialized it was insane to have filibustered something that was that logical but that's how far the things got divided host: final question: what's your time line? guest: i will know it when i see it. we are out talking to people. we are talking more now going in to this year. if we see that it's, you know, if we see that this is viable that it can be funded in a way that we can get into the debates, we will move forward. if not, we won't. host: do you personally want to run? guest: under the right circumstances, i would like to. host: jim webb former senator from virginia thank you for being with us. guest: thank you. host: when we come back our conversation with former house speaker newt gingrich. our conversation continues. we are back in a moment. ♪ this president's day on the c-span networks on c-span starting at 10:00 a.m. eastern. >> to provide that proven leadership is our challenge in 1992 and that is why today i proudly announce my candidacy for president of the united states of america. >> >>. >> a special present ace on campaign announcement from ronald reagan in 1979 to barack obama in 2007 and we will reair these announcements later in the evening at 9:00 p.m. on book t.v. on c-span 2. finalists, david brian davis on his third and final volume on the history of shrank focusing on emancipation at 1:30, elizabeth colbert argues that we are currently undergoing a sixth mass of extinction and this will be the most devastating and french economist along with senator elizabeth warren talk about wealth and economic inequality on american history t.v. on c-span 3 at 8 eastern. cartoonist patrick oliphant draws ten care actemperatures. then at 7:00 p.m. eastern, a 1960 nbc interview with former president herbert hoover discussing his life beyond the presidency. at 9:30, our conversation with playwright james still and maerp bacon about the widow lincoln to mark the 150th anniversary of the lincoln's assassination. find our complete television schedule at c-span.org and let us know what you think about the programs you are watching. call us at 202-626-3400. e-mail us at comments@c-span.org or send us a tweet@c-span hashtag comments. join the c-span conversation. like us on facebook. follow us on twitter. . >> "washington journal" continues. host: we want to welcome back the former speaker of the house. newt gingrich guest: great to be here. host: the headline yesterday, mitch mcconnell may have locked himself in when he said he did not want to see another government shutdown and yet, your successor, john boehner is saying the house has done its job. the senate needs to do its job. what's going to happen? guest: i think the only effective strategy is too divide the bill into two parts. take everything which relates to security border control, tsa that sort of thing send it to the president, bring it up by itself, no limits, and challenge the democrats to stop securing america. take the second part, which is all of the administrative components of home land security and attach them to the prohibition on what the president has done on immigration and say, look. if you are prepared to not have the had miles per hour strative part funded for the rest of the year and you want to try to return the government that way that's your prerogative. you get down to the fact if you have the president who wants to do one thing and the newly elected congress who wants to do something else, you are going to have a fight. and to say gee, they shouldn't be fighting, that means then the president gets to dictate everything? and i think that it would be very difficult for the democrats and senate to stop a clean bill that paid for everything involving security knowing they would try to and they would say you have to bring in the rest. but at some point, they were pretty idiotic and they are the people blocking the people from protecting america. >> since the president's state of the union address, what do you think of it? guest: not much. i think this president lives in a fantasy world. i think you see it particularly until foreign policy. but he has no idea how the real world works. he has no interest in working with the newly elected congress. ibt that means two more years in which there is a real problem of decay in the country and the question will be whether or not people can get something done despite that. gave a speech that's been giving attention. we covered you in iowa at the freedom summit and you were not only critical of this approximately but saying headline newsh hillary clinton would be an extension of the fortunately policy policies? >> she was secretary of state. there is no indication so far that she has learned anything which would change what obama has been doing you will see next week the so-called summit at the whitehouse on terrorism which is really i think could be called a summit of lies. they are not going to define who the terrorists are. they are not going to define what the threat is. they are not going to be serious about explaining what we were up against and instead, they are going to have a pr show and pretend they don't know. they are calling it extremism, not terrorism. guest: you have to ask yourself what are they take talking about? what happened in copenhagen shots fired at a conference on whether or not a cartoonist has free speech. there is no confusion about it. the person probably went to a jewish synagogue and killed the guard at the synagogue. now, president said that's random acts of violence referring to the person who killed four jews in a jewish grocery store and who, by the way, said to public television, yes, i wanted to kill jews. if we can't can't have an honest conversation about what threatens our civilization, all of the rest of this is a share aid. >> why are we not having that conversation? why is the president not addressing that? >> our elites in both parties were convinced you could not talk honestly aboutp without offending everyone that was muslim. they made a decision not to tell the truth. we have been in a big lie campaign under bush and obama has been involved in this big lie campaign. the director of the fbi says 10 days ago, they have active investigations in 49 states but they can't tell you what connects all of the investigations. we know what it is. people engaged in a form of radical islamim which is a threat to our survival. we have no techniques today, no strategy for dealing with this. >> we keep hearing this is the most partisan time in washington. your own part impeached bill clinton back in 1998. is it any more partisan today than in the 1990s guest: i have to say hillary has this too. none of the three of us get to the point where what we did in the '90s was held up as working together. we could fight and compartmentmentalize it and we could, for example the president clinton and i worked on dealing with saddam hussein literally at the same time we were fighting over something. we could also say and we want to get a welfare reform bill done. ahead different version but we wanted to get something done. i get a sense this isn't so much more partisan as it is just president obama does not have many of the skills clinton did. bill clinton whether you liked him or disliked him was an extraordinarily effective person at dealing with human beings. he liked people. he liked engaging people he was happy toing in on or about ate and talk. the result was, he spent 35 days together negotiating, you know, people that couldn't balance the budget. we balanced it for four straight years. it was a bip bip solution that would not have been done without the republican house and the democratic president. >> one issue that both sides say they want to work on: tax reform. >> right. host: how do we get there guest: a trillion dollars arrests more money. you are going to get nowhere if he says i won't sign a bill unless you raise a trillion dollars of additional taxes. i think you could set up a series of principles and find a way to get to a type of simpler, much, frankly, less expensive tax code particularly when you ever an internal revenue service that is as dysfunctional and incompetent as the current revenue service is. last year, they sent out $4,000,000,000 in refunds to people who shouldn't have gotten them including my favorite which is 353 checks for one house in shanghai china. they didn't notice it. they 450 to a house in lithuania. the system is not only complicated. it doesn't work. the machinery doesn't work. so you've got to almost then it down in complexity to get to something the human beings can make functional host: you were part of the debate in 2012. have you ruled out? guest: there are no probable circumstances where we will end up running host: did it decide you that mitt romney decided not to run? guest: no. i talked to mitt when he was first looking at. first of all, it's very, very hard. anybody who has never done it has no idea how hard it is. there is a new generation coming along like scott walker who did well in iowa and showed up on the c-span coverage. you have jeb bush who is sort of between the two generations. and then you have a whole group of people john caseigs. chris christies. this number is very competitive situation. mitt went out and talked honestly with a number of his friends. the next conclusion was that while he could be a candidate action engaged in a race, he wasn't going to have the kind of financial addvantage he had last time. there were too many people who can raise their own money this time and therefore, going to be a very bruising very competitive process host: tom radford was at an event sponsored by bloomberg and said if jeb bush wins the new hampshire primary and wins convincingly, it's probably going to be his nomination. however, if he loses all bets are off. do you agree or disagree with that? >> well, look. i understand the importance of the new hampshire imply, especially if you are from enough new hampshire but the fact is this is going to be a fairly lengthy nominating process and it's very unlikely, if you looks at iowa and new hampshire, nevada and south, it's unlikely one person wins all 4. if they do i think that person probably will be the nominee. host: that's never happened? guest: if you look at, for example i, reagan had to claw his way back and had a very challenging time and in the case of george w. bush he won new hampshire against mccain or lost and had to claw his way back from south carolina. you just can't tell. host: former house speaker newt gingrich 20s 12 candidate. joining us from valley cottage good, good morning republican line. caller: good morning steve. good morning, newt. i have been following your career many years. pleasure to talk to you. newt two things, one, why can't republicans come up with a contract with america the way you did back in the '90s and the specific agenda to get things done and and to get the the president to move to the center like you guys did bill clinton and the second thing, newt, is can you please explain to the american people ho bill clinton's public private partnership with the banks led to the financial crisis and that's about it. pleasure talking to you. a million things i would love to talk to you about but unfortunately we don't have the time. guest: thank you very much. i can't discuss the second one. i am not sure i agree with your analysis there. i can tell you that i do think the republicans ought to have a an agenda in the summer of 16, a bold platform i think they should mean it and say to the country, if you give us the house, the senate and the presidency, these are the things we will get done. it was fascinating to me that larry hogan was able to run in a tightly focused campaign in a state people thought was hopeless, maryland won a surprisingly big victory on staying focused on reducing taxes and creating jobs, and didn't get on other topics. it's striking in the skreer of scott walker. i campaigned and clistaa, my wife was from wisconsin and my son-in-law, paul evers and so we have a lot of ties to wisconsin. we were with scott early in his campaigns and said if you elect me governor, this is what i will do. he increased thevan senate. a great shock to the left. he did what he campaigned on. they recalled him. he won the recall and he is able to to be a pretty good example that you can keep your word and people will actually give you credit for doing what you promised you would do. i would hope we would have a platform that would be bold very specific and give people an understanding that if we win the 2017 will be dedicated to very dramatic and very serious reform of a government which is frankly increasingly dysfunctional, not in a partisan way. bureaucracies are incapable of working in the modern world. host: he did not finish college. we have not elected a president since harry truman. guest: that's stupid. host: that was my question. host: guest: bill gates should not be allowed to form microsoft and you should not be able to use an apple computer. let's be clear. scott walker is a guy who was the very effective executive from the largest local government milwaukee county a very effective governor. even sew a lot of things about him, and people will say things but if you don't have a piece of paper indicating you could sit long enough and smile at your professor long enough to get a grade. we tried out a harvard lawgrade graduate who was a columbia graduate. if having certificates from the big schools mat referred barack obama would be a heck of a lot better president. host: bando, independent line. caller: thank you. good morning. mr. gingrich newt i know you know that your name sake is also toxic. there is no doubt that you operate in the what you call the real world. let me point out a couple of examples. it was noted that you orchestrated this presentation that will be presented to congress and i want you to identify all also, when the process happened when isil became isis and what that acronym means? you are noted as being a participant in paris at the time when that transformation took place. there are zinists who are radical and israel state and an islamic state may be possibly very, very attractive to them. guest: i am not quite sure what you mean. isis is, in fact, what they call themselves. there are various complex reasons why the state department uses isil. i think it's irrelevant. my argument -- i do two news al week and the last newsletter said i would vote no on the president's request for force because isis or isil whichever you like better is not the problem. there are 20,000 foreign fighters who have now gone to syria and iraq to join isis or isil. there are thousands of fighters in boka haram in nigeria. last year boko haram killed more people. 10,000. and about 8,000 by ebola. we had a worldwide threat. what we need is a declaration of war on the worldwide campaign of radical islamism. to focus on syria and iraq is to miss the points of what we are up against as a civilization. host: you wrote a piece in the "wall street journal" part saying congress needs to do more of its job. guest: we sxlalt desperately need five minutes in the house and 5 in the senators to go to the core of who opposes us. how big are they? how are they spreading? how are they gaining ground? lieutenant general flem of the intelligence agency testified this week at the armed services committee that we are now faced with an enemy who has gained ground in the last year that the strategy of the administration are not working and he said he would not vote for an authorization for force unless there was a strategy that was capable of working. so, i think if we need the judiciary committee needs to hold hearings on the domestic threat. homeland security needs hooelingz on the border and the danger of catastrophic disasters. the intelligence committee needs to look at why 15 years after 911 we still have not solved this or 14s years we still have not solved these problems. the foreign affairs committee has to look at the collapse of the state department as an effective instrument and the united services needs to look at we have been waging war now at least since 2001. you could argue much earlier than that in terms of dealing with terrorism. we haven't won. you have a baseline hearing that says what are we doing that's proceed foundly wrong. host: the et cetera say, why we are losing" ws. j..com. we will go to charles on the republican line. alexandria, virginia. good sunday morning to you charles. caller: mr. speaker, didgood morning. i am delighted to have a chance to talk to you. we are just now concluding wars as you are aware, iraq afghanistan, unlike any in the past. there have been so many civilians in the combat zone doing the works opposing the defense department. i am proud to say i spent 10 years in iraq and afghanistan on telecommunications, data processing, ran the balloon project. i have trained afghan troops in computer operations, and now, i am having real difficulty locating a job here in america. what we need is to have some kind of a plan to reintegrate all of these civilian technicians and engineers and help us find work here in america, help us transfer our security clearance and support. two of my co-workers were killed. one of my close friends lost a hand to an ied. and i consider although i didn't personally wear a uniform, i consider myself every bit as much a veteran as any of the fine men and women i served with in iraq and afghanistan. host: thanks. guest: uest: my father spent 27 years in the infantry. it's not something i looked at. i will look at it now. i agree with you. people are willing to risk their lives to go into a variety of dangerous countries and this includes frankly or embassies and places like yemen or somal i can't. we ought to have a program to help them transfer into the civilian economy. that's a very good idea, one that i hope the two armed services committees will take up. host: do you miss the house? guest: i go often enough i am sashiated satiated. i was 2k3wr5i69 to people of georgia and grateful to my colleagues for making me the speaker. it's a big full-time job. if you do it right, you don't have time for much of anything else. krista and i are trying to make movies. she writes the elephant children books for american history and we are doing things online. a lot of things we are doing that are pretty fun. host: how is speaker boehner doing? guest: get pretty well. he has more republicans than any speaker since 1928. he has clearly grown the majority. he has a pretty good general sense of where he wants to go. and now having to learn to work with the senate a much harder place. the founding fathers wanted the senate to be as john adams put it, the cooling saucer to the hot cup of coffee from the house. and on a good day, the senate is frustrate can. and then there are the bad days. host: jerry in new york democrats line with newt gingrich. caller: good morning, steve. good morning, mr. gingrich. guest: good morning. caller: i have a comment regarding debating style i would like your opinion on. to me it very much appears most conservative politicians ted to speak with ness as confidence as they espouse their views. i think it is very important to allow for a degree of unsureness in one's think can and internal and external debate bate nor to allowed for a broader perspective by narrow partisan views that usually lead to policy. i think you would agree humility is important in onets character as well as style because we must remember we don't have a full view. we are not omniscient. we are not god. being open to persuasion may seem weak on camera or radio. but it allows for a much needed conception of how we many times can cause more harm than good. i think from this vantage point it seems one be more liberal minded from that point, mr. gingrich, i would like your comment. guest: if you mean 19th century of being open to freedom, i agree with you. being the 21st september tree of being closed and politically correct, i would disagree with you. look, i think there is a big difference between discussion style and debate style. debate style almost requires, as a matter of course that you know what you think, you say it clearly and crisply and attempting to convince the audience of your point of view. that's what debate is like. a discussion i couldn't agree with you more my core model of leadership is listen, learn, help and lead. and i believe good leaders start every day by listening to people of all backgrounds, trying to in include information of all backgrounds and trying only to reach a judgment once you have looked at every possible angle. i think your description would fit a discussion perfectly and good leaders should spend most of their time in discussion and only as little as necessary in debate. host: lev let me pivot to another question. i don't think we have asked this on c-span how you spend your valentine's weekend but you tweeted it out so we are going to ask you. this is the tweet that came out on friday calista is taking me it to spend the night at the american muse cannim of natural history, my favorite history. great valentine gift. a photograph of you. how was it? guest: unbelievable the coolest thing i have ever done. what they have done is created an adult sleepover, a night at the museum. and crista got at a time and this tie for valentine's day. she had a gift and a christmas gift out of it. we arrived, and they checked us in. they had a -- the -- anybody who has been there knows they have a 90-4 foot long blue whale hanging from the ceiling. 200 and something cots under the blue whale and you were going to sleep under the blue whale. clasta got me and hertz l.l. bean sleeping bags that are mono grand. so we arrived looking like little kids with our sleeping bags. they had a terrific champagne reception, a very nice dinner and then they got this great presentation. you could go -- a huge museum that holds up to 30,000 people a day and you have 220 people drifting around doing what they want to, seeing the museum at their own pace and they had three or four really good presentations that were absolutely fascinating and we got to sleep about 2:00 in the morning, and it was spectacular. to anybody who has interest in natural history, i would recommend it as just one of the -- first of all, if you go to new york, go to the american museum of natural history anyway but if you want to have an unusual immersion experience, it's extraordinary host: was it comfortable? guest: sure. the cots were fine. the sleeping bag was fine. i never thought about it before. think to yourself. who are the kind of people who are nutty enough they are going to spend a pretty good bit of money to go and sleep under the blue whale at the american museum? everybody was a geek thinking this is exciting. i am glad i am here. and so everybody was very quiet. they were all really nice people to hang out with. host: we are going to go to lynn in cedar hurst new york, new york. go ahead lynn. caller: can you hear me host: we sure can. caller: okay. so i would like to make an an analogy of, you know what you pay for is what you get. you know we pay, i think, $0.05 out of our c-span -- out of our cable bill to get rehashed wires like the one who's face i am looking at. at the same time we have this opportunity to table a guy like scott walker who wants to, you know, become president, perhaps even work for the qoch brothers and cut education. so brownback wants to cut education. so, i think if we continue to keep cutting our education budget did the way the right-wing would like us and turn our seeking truth into trying to get a decent job in the united states we may not be able to pay the cable bill for this rehashed bull crap. guest: if you believe it's rehashed bull crap i can't imagine why you are wasting your sunday morning. you must have a very unusual approach to life. i find c-span to be remarkableable. senator web was on a few minutes, answers without editing to a wide range of people. i think the speak has had 106,000 people. it would not have existed without c-span and they were cover -- they weren't covering me because of the bias. they will cover hillary clinton and elizabeth warren. you have a chance this is why ever since i came to congress which by the way was the year c-span was founded, i have always been a big supporter of c-span because it's the one place where without any editing, without any election the entire diversity of american political thought is available for you both on the website where you can go appeared look at the arkansas ivers, which is extraordinary and every single day on how many times. host: 3 networks, about 6 and a half a cents a month which accounts for our budget upwards of about $50 million he never asked you this before. you had a sparring with tip o'neill, one of the more memorable moments in our network's history but on a personal level, what was your relationship like with him? guest: good. this is again an example of what president obama doesn't quite get about the nature of the business here. he wasn't here long enough to learn it before he became president. o'neill was a consummate professional. he had been elected to the state legislature. he understood the business up and down. he knew we were on opinionposite sides like being a pro-football team or lawyers on the opinionposite side of a big case. he also knew we were all people. i went over when he announced his retirement and sat down with him on the democratic side and said what a strong leader he had been. how big an impacts. and he said some day, i would ab trong schlueter but -- leader. he had a wonderful sense of life. the first thing people need to remember in this city is that everybody he negotiated with won their election. all of them won an election from the american people or they are not allowed in the room. in the senate 100 senators who won an election or they are not allowed in the room. you have a president and vice president who won an election. you have to meet each other with a certain hughmility because the other guy won, too. it's a different kind of approach. i field o'neal to be very tough. but he was very tough in a very sort of irish neighborhood bar politician style where he could be friendly to you when he is done beating you up or friendly to you if you weren't fighting but if you got into a fight, he came as you know on the one tape you were talking about, he could come at you pretty full force. host: hot our video library. we will go to david in eng inglewood, in general. good morning. caller: i wanted to make a quick comment and a question. my quent is that a lot of the prominent politicians today, santorum, kasig all of these guys obtain you were the one who brought these guys and gave them a chance. however, i believe, that -- and thes my comments. republicans need someone who has a fighting spirit and boehner simply doesn't have it. he is always on defense. you are always on offense. that's what we need. we need an articulate person who is on offense. obama has run rings around boehner. i think deep down in your soul you know this. guest: first of all, any president has enormous advantages over a speaker of the house or senator majority leaders because of the power of the white house to attract attention from the needmedia is so enormous. no sense, you are always at a certain disadvanceage. i was at a disadvanceage dealing with clinton. i represent 43 people, half of whom are fighting each orient the person we nominate will have an offensive expert. i hope they will focus, frankly not so much on hillary clinton or the democratic nominee but defining bold steps that the american people can embrace. if they do that i think we will win decisively in 15. i think it will be somebody who understands they have to stay on much obvious doing things in a way that works for the country, not just works politically. host: in addition to the three networks, we are heard on c-span radio which is heard nationwide xm chants 120. democrats line in general. good morning. caller: i am glad to speak to you this morning. there are many issues affecting the world today, and one of them is climate change and mass extinction of wildlife in our natural world. we are people who put a man on the moon. where are the big, big ideas coming out of the world today like for ocean acidification and pollution? guest: i think you have seen improvements. the original clean air acts i think in the early 1970s in california and you look at how far we have come. the income generation of automobiles will be air purification vehicles, literally, the air that they put out after they are done using it will be cleaner than the ambiant air, less pollution, cleaner environment, greater opportunities. >> you are seeing dramatic improvement in efficiencies, which is why you have a glut of oil and gas in the world, and you saw the prices come down. technology continues to improver and will move in the right direction. i think if you are worried about endangered species we need to rethink part of our foreign aid program to enable us to work with poor third-world countries to have a dramatic expansion of national parks. talk about particularly mammals, there is a huge danger that being killed for meat is going to wipe out a lot of species including chim pans ease and gorillas and rhinos and elephants. so on a large mammal basis we have an immediate obligation to try to dramatically expand national parks around the world. host: we will go to ben joining us from san martin, california republican line. good morning. caller: good morning. in the way one gentleman stole my thunder saying i wanted today praise newt gingrich on the way you controlled or helped make things happen through, you know, compromise and things like that. and that's what we are going to miss. during the current administration. i know a lot of people a lot of groups -- excuse me -- i am nervous -- people are working behind the scenes to create new people to come up in these positions. i was wondering with your group and other people can you guys work together in the behind-the-scenes to get people in there that you think that can work together to make something happen for america? host: thank you, ben. guest: i think we see things that are coming together. van jones and i have joined together, van represents a very liberal viewpoint on criminal justice reform something which senator jim webb talked about earlier. we are working with, for example, senator cory booker and elijah baker on a bi-partisan basis and ron johnson in the senate. i think you will see a bi-partisan effort in that area. i encourage on a regular basis democrats and republicans to come together every time they can. they are not always going to be able to agree but there are a lot of issues they can agree on. congress woman ann wag nowhere has a bill on sexual slavery and on protecting young women in particular, and that's a very bi-partisan bill and the sort of thing we ought to be able to pass easily in the house and senate. so there is a chance to create this environment where people work together on a range of bills, and i think that's an important part of this. host: hot i asked you about the house. do you miss cnn and crossfire? guest: i was disappointed. i thought crossfire was working. we got huge reviews here in washington from people who loved it. a number of senators and house members would say i would be glad to come on. governs would say when i am cog coming through town, i would like to be on it. but zucker is in charge of cnn. he made a decision that that was not viable in the modern marketplace and that they had to go to a different model. he has done very well when he took over. they were basically competitive with msnbc. and they are somewhere above nbc. they are below fox but much more competitive. there are days had they actually beat fox. so while i don't particularly like the outcome, i respect zucker's obligation to the company to try to get it to be a very viable firm. he thought, you know, pursuing intentionally breaking news and then developing a series of shows that include travelo gues and other things was the only model that will would work the way the market plates has evolved. host: i want to go back to the c-span archives. on your 100 day mark after the first one 00 days back in 1995, with speaker boehner serving in. take a look at the house republican congress. (video clip.] [applause.] >> they are joined by chris farley. we mentioned this because tonight is the s & l 40th program. do you remember this moment? guest: yeah. it was a great moment. i don't know who did this but somebody in the conference it was a total shock to me. i had no idea farley was going to show up. of course, it was a very optimistic positive spirit. we had kept our word in the contract, voted on every single item we promised to and the congress, you can tell the conference was in a buoyant mood host: did you like the way chris farley i am personiated you? guest: it was revealing. the kind of exubrents this reflects how i operate. host: back to the earlier point about dhs. local congress reach an agreement to avoid a shutdown? guest: i don't know. i suspect there will be a temporary cr if necessary. i think the only way it will work is to split it into two bills. otherwise, the republicans will kach or the president will never cave. the president is happy to blame the republicans and the republicans won't be able to sustain not paying for border security and things like that. if they split the two bills i think the republicans can win. and then there will be a shut down on the administrative side. the president wouldn't give in. nobody in the country would care. host: newt gingrich thank you for being with us. we will continue the conversation as we do every day at 7:00 a.m. eastern time. john ward will be joining us. he talks about the president's legacy and the peace that he -- piece that he wrote: is alabama the left ronald reagan? steve gonzalez who is here to talk about -- with the american legion about preparing veterans for civilian employment. one of the issues with one of our callers and our money segment focusing on social security disability insurance. tomorrow morning at 7:00 a.m. eastern time. thanks for joining us on the sunday edition. hope you enjoy the rest of your weekend. have a great president's day holiday and terrific week ahead...

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