Transcripts For CSPAN Washington Journal 20150406 : comparem

over the weekend the religious freedom laws in arkansas and indiana, and whether businesses should be more socially active. some of the reaction to those laws in those states, whether businesses should be more engaged in political debates over social issues. here is how to join our conversation. for those of you in eastern and central time zones, the number is 202-7 48-8000. mountain and pacific 202-748- 8001. for social media, send us a tweet @cspanwj. make sure you mute your television or radio when you call in. over the weekend, the president gave an interview to thomas friedman of "the new york times." the front page this morning -- peter baker's article "obama calls the iran deal our best that." host: a quote from the president , "this is the best that so far that we have to get an agreement from iran. what we will be doing even as we enter into this deal is sending a clear message to the uranian and to the entire region that if anybody messes with israel america will be there." this is the headline of "the financial times." "pope francis in prayer for kenya victims." he was in a rainy vatican city yesterday. he called for an end to the persecution of christians and to all those who suffer injustice as a result of ongoing conflict and violence. he cited the killing of almost 150 people in kenya last week why islamist militants and called for a piece -- and called for peace in yemen, sudan, and nigeria. he referred to the out like nuclear deal between iran and the international community praying it would be a definitive step to a more secure and fraternal world." our subject for the first couple of 45 minutes or so is about reaction to the religious freedom laws passed last week in indiana and also in arkansas. this is the business section of "the wall street journal." "walmart emerges as unlikely social force." this is from "the new york times." "many credited walmart's influence as a major factor in the decision on wednesday by governor to ask state law lakers -- lawmakers to amend the legislation or take other action to avoid the potential for discrimination. for many, walmart's pointed intervention into what amounts to a civil rights issue highlights a cultural transformation underway inside the company's bentonville, arkansas, headquarters. some of the reporting of "the new york times." should businesses be more involved in social issues, such as we saw with the religious freedom law. michael from kensington pennsylvania. from new kensington. go ahead. caller: thank you for taking my call and thank you for c-span. i disagree with the portrayal of this law as the ability of business owners to discriminate against gays rid i think gays and other groups and all americans still have certain protections under the constitution. they are not being prohibited from being served in the public marketplace. what the law does, it prohibits the government from coming in and telling someone that they cannot -- that they have to perform a certain activity, they have to engage in a certain activity that violates their religious believes. a writer from boston, who is active on legal issues and things like that says you would not force a jewish baker to make bread for a catholic mass. the government would not force that individual to do that. nor should you be able to force a fundamentalist to engage and cater a gay wedding or to take photograph for a gay wedding. host: what do you suppose prompted the state of indiana to move forward with that legislation? caller: well, over the years it has been something that has been coming because ever since 1990, when bill clinton signed into law the -- signed into law an act it has been deemed to be unconstitutional. you could not make a federal law that would involve all the states, so they thought it would not hold up your it many states have made similar laws in the past without such outcry. the only difference is today the huge cry is coming from the leftists, and i believe, from many organized leftist organizations that have huge social media -- that have used social media to gravitate on two issues that portray christians as traditionalists or republicans or anybody who has a conservative viewpoint as racist homophobes, etc., and they have shut down businesses. host: michael mentioned social media. walmart did tweak out its policy -- did tweet out its policy, it's antidiscrimination policy. james in grand forks, north dakota, go ahead. grand forks? we just lost james. let's go to robert in davenport iowa. what do you think? caller: i think they passed the law in indiana so that they could discriminate. they did not want to wait on -- next thing they will be saying they did not want to wait on black people. before world war ii, they would allow nazis to eat, but they did not want to allow black people the same thing. as the bible says, they say they are christians, cast the first stone. with that in mind, it is just a way for them to try to start discriminating against people. why would they care what that person is doing? that is none of their business. what they are supposed to be doing as christians is winning those souls to christ, and then christ brings those people to him, and then he straightens them out and start repairing them. that is not their job. that is how i feel about it. host: more of your calls coming up on the issue of whether businesses should be involved in social issues. joining us is andrew -- is angela greiling keane. let's look long-term first on the issue of nuclear negotiations with iran. what is ahead for the president and the administration in selling this to congress? guest: the president has a big task in front of him. he is happy the negotiators reached an agreement last week, which they announced thursday. the president's job is not done. he has to put on the charm offensive. he and his administration were doing that over the weekend, trying to send a message to a skeptical congress to try to convince lawmakers to support the deal while the president has said he would lead out the menendez bill. he still needs some support from congress in order to see the deal be a success. host: the timeframe is important. that bill will come up for consideration by the senate foreign relations committee soon after the senate returns next week. guest: that is right. senator corker, the main sponsor of the bill, says he wants to bring it up for a vote april 14. so the senate when they come back, it is like to be an early order of business starting at the committee level. what we are seeing so far, what we heard on the sunday shows yesterday, is predictable support, opposition for the bill on long party lines, and given that republicans have control of the senate, the president knows he needs all the support he can get in the senate against that bill. in an interview published yesterday with tom friedman of "the new york times," the president left open the door to a compromise with senator corker , even though it is not on this legislation. he had kind words for senator corker, saying he is a reasons person, and signaled that there may be some middle ground. host: later in the week the president heads to the meeting of the summit of the americas. where will that be? why is this an important meeting? guest: the president flies out wednesday night, first stop in jamaica. thursday night he heads to panama city for the summit of the americas. it is a big deal because it is the time of year that all of the leaders of the americas get together, and it is especially a big deal this year because it is the first time that a cuban government delegation is represented there, and the first time that president obama and growled castro will have a chance -- and rolfaul castro will be meeting in the same place after the president announced the new relationship with cuba. there has been no announcement yet of a formal lateral meeting but everyone expect interaction and everything that happens, be it a handshake, i contact, or an actual meeting, will be analyzed for what that means for the future for u.s.-hubert relations. host: one other issue that is coming up, "the miami herald" focuses their headline, that venezuela has its own agenda for the big summit. they have toughened relations with venezuela, correct? guest: relations with venezuela have been sharply deteriorating in recent months. it is a concern of president obama. in the past couple of months, he had sharp words about his concern for the venezuelan democracy and the rollback in venezuela. likewise, even sharper words for the u.s. and specifically for president obama. they view the u.s. as meddling in venezuelan affairs and they see the u.s. as the root of some of the problems in venezuela where there is serious inflation and people are not able to get necessarily the food and supplies they need to live there. that will be another issue that is overshadowing summit. host: very near term, today's agenda for the president includes the easter egg roll, the 137th annual. why has this become an annual event? guest: the foreign -- before the president dies into policy -- before the president dives into policy issues, they will be at the annual white house is direct role. children from washington and across the country converge on the south lawn. decorations have been going up or days. the president was unable to take his helicopter to and from the south lawn last week the easter egg roll decorations. it is a big deal and it is something that the president and the first lady show up at each year. they will probably talk to some kids, let the dogs out and let the kids pet them. it is a good way to start the week. host: angela greiling keane bloomberg news white house correspondent you can find her on twitter. thanks for the up eight. -- thanks for the update. guest: thank you. host: here is how to join the conversation. host: walmart is at the center of a lot of the discussion on businesses, and the reaction to the religious freedom act in arkansas. the headline from the business day section of "the new york times," "walmart, long silent on public policy, emerges as an unlikely social force." "walmart started to tiptoe into areas like environmental stability. in critics -- and critics noted in ways that would affect its bottom line. walmart surprised civil rights advocates by becoming the first prominent company to back the renewal of the voting rights act in 2006, a decision informed by the retailer's standing as the nation's largest private-sector employer of african-american workers." in indiana, the final four, wisconsin in duke tonight. the head of the ncaa, mark emmert said the issue is near and dear to us because we have 500 employers in this state. we run the enterprise from here. we have to attract a diverse workforce, he said. i do not know the statutes in texas or other places, but i think that those are things that, as we go forward, as we make the decisions about places we should take our tournaments we are going to have to look deeper and harder at. mystic beach, new york, are you there? you are on the air. caller: how are you? this stuff here in indiana, and what is taking place in arkansas about businesses be more socially active or whatever, this all starts back with this sexual acception thing. these people got it all wrong. until we define and identify who god is, ok -- there should be nothing said about anything in our state laws or federal laws. we are walking around with the same god in our pockets. and what should be done is, if my dollar bill matches somebody else's dollar bill for trade and commerce, that is as far as you should go. "in god we trust," or get rid of that slogan. host: the front page of "washington journal." this is about rand paul's and coming up this week, challenging his own course, and some of the writing from "the wall street journal." "in baggy cargo shorts and t-shirt, rand paul took the podium in nashville to boost his father's 2008 presidential campaign and repeated one of ron paul's signature applause lines a warning about the risks of u.s. military in thin -- of u.s. military intervention abroad. "today, mr. paul addresses audiences in a sport coat and is striking a more mainstream tone as he prepares his own run for the white house. mr. paul now a republican senator from kentucky, is trying to present a profile distinct from his father's. he will make the announcement for the presidency tomorrow at noon eastern." we will cover that live on c-span. back to your calls. to panama city, florida. heaven, what do you think -- kevin, what do you think about businesses' reaction to the religious freedom law? caller: businesses need to be socially active. the best way is by paying their fair share of taxes, and, you know, just trying to help the american people. because if they take every tax loophole in the world and send their profits overseas, and leave them overseas, to me that is not patriotic. but, you know, once again, i think they can be socially active by paying their taxes. host: minneapolis, minnesota. what are your thoughts on that? caller: hi. well it depends on what you mean by socially active. but if we look at it closely, we can see that businesses are already socially active. we can look at what starbucks did not too long ago with the race matters thing that they will be doing for the whole year. the cores -- the coors owners are socially active. some people do not agree with their politics, but they are socially active. in communities, local communities, you may have local businesses support events or projects that people are working on. like i said, depending on what you mean by socially active, it already exists. do you know what i'm saying? host: tony perkins, the head of the family research council, was on c-span "newsmakers." he reacted to some of the news out of indiana in terms of business reaction to the religious freedom law. tony perkins: the hypocrisy is amazing to me, how you have all these businesses say we will not do business in indiana, where they are doing business in china and the middle east, where they do not only discrimination, but they execute homosexuals. a lot of the media did not call them out for that -- the fact that a lot of the media did not call them out for that is quite striking. host: he said the hypocrisy about some of the business leaders' reaction to the religious freedom law in indiana. here is a -- here is what carly fiorina had to say. "opposition to the religious freedom law is hypocritical. once a fortune 50 chief executive herself, she is disgusted with how ceo's rush to condemn the religious freedom law. mrs. free arena -- mrs. free arena -- the result of corporations vowing to narrow special interests rather than on public anger. ceo's like tim cook, who publicly objected to the indiana law, having aged in a level of hypocrisy that is unfortunate. she says also, "when tim cook is upset about all the places that he does businesses because of the way they treat gays and women, he needs to withdraw from 90% of the markets he is in, including china and saudi arabia ," she said thursday afternoon during an interview with wall street journal reporters and editors. "but i do not hear him being upset about that." james in sutton, massachusetts your thoughts on the activity of diseases in terms of -- on the activity of businesses in terms of their response to the religious freedom issues. caller: yes, i have been concerned about this for quite a while. i feel when a person is selling a product that you are selling a product to anybody. however, when it involves a contract where you have to personally be involved, i think in a case like that, the person has the right to refuse on any ground whatsoever. host: in terms of the reaction like major companies, we talked about apple here and walmart in indiana. do you think some of their reaction has been over the top or what? caller: i think they do not have a policy, like i just expressed. selling a product or a service where you have a contract. anybody that is selling a product, i think if they are saying anything outside of that, i think they are not thinking it through. it is almost like the thoughtlessness of this thing. i know it is not the topic, of iran -- nobody has quoted mohammed albert and i -- mohammed el-baradai's book. things are not being thought through very clearly. host: we will talk more about that in our next segment. eight tweet from congress -- a tweet from congresswoman loretta sanchez. after mcdonald's agreed to raise the minimum wage in many of their stores. she said, "it is great to see companies like mcdonald's working toward improving employee benefits and wages." next up is judy from miami florida. caller: good morning. i do not mind businesses being socially active, except when it comes to religion. when it comes to religion, for businesses to get behind some christian police state activity, it is a form of fascism. historically businesses, kings presidents -- not presidents, but leaders of companies, and always works together to use religion as a police state. we do not need it in this country. if the republicans think they have any chance of winning in the future in 2016, they had better get off the religion check. they had better get off anti-gay and anti-women's rights over control over their own bodies, or they will not win. i am thrilled to death to see all of these companies come out and just smack the religious back into their churches where they belong. host: some of judy's comments reflected in a tweet from gary who says, "republicans win next presidential election if they stay away from social issues focus on the economy, illegals and limited government." also, "it means should apple tell us how to live even though inter-american offshore money and -- "do like the amish. separate and do not up a -- do not participate in the political system. it is over." our headline here, courtesy of the museum in washington -- "filling coffers for race begins." "the charade begins this month for presidential contenders -- the charade comes to an end this month." marco rubio writes the timing -- like most things in politics, is driven by money. april marks the start of a sprint to raise as much as possible for an official candidacy before the summer reporting deadline, which lands as televised primary debates are about to get underway. candidates who fail to show that the early big money is flowing into campaign accounts could quickly falter. one big exception is jeff bush -- is jed bush. although he is perhaps the least choroid of the pre-candidates his announcement may not come for a while. that is reporting from the front page of the "los angeles times." in "the washington times," and appearance over the weekend of that state's governor, jerry brown, on some of the sunday shows or it "brown spares agriculture and water cuts." "farmers use 80% of state's water, add 2% to the economy." "jerry brown on sunday defended his order requiring californians statewide to cut back on their water use in a historic mandate at spares those who consume the most -- farmers. as california indoors a fourth year of drought, his order this week were wires towns and cities statewide to cut back water use by 25% compared with 2013 levels. back to our calls and your comments about whether businesses should be more socially active. northport, florida. welcome. caller: i think it is hypocritical the way the businesses are acting. back in the 1960's and 1970's, not to compare gay behavior to being a black person, back in the 1960's and 1970's, with hollywood jumping all over black males and black employment, businesses jumping over the discrimination that happens today. they are not jumping over that. they are jumping all over this gay rights thing. i think it is the biggest farce. it is not even discrimination. host: what do you think is driving the businesses to be behind it? caller: i really think it is money. it is opening up a new market, and i think the money thing -- i think it is because of the false equivalence of equating civil rights with gay behavior. it is not even discrimination with gays a gay person can get married like everybody else. it's only discrimination where you prohibit someone from doing the exact same thing. when blacks wanted to vote, they wanted to vote on tuesday, not on wednesday. they wanted to get into schools, just like everybody else did. what do gays want to do? they want to get married differently. they want to have a contract with someone of the same sex, which is totally different than marrying someone of the opposite sex. if you deny someone getting married to the opposite sex that would be this culmination. i think it is a marketing thing. host: appreciate your call. about 15 more minutes on this topic. (202) 748-8000 if you live in the east and central time zones. (202) 748-8001 mountain and pacific. business owners, (202) 745-8002. from "the new york times," an op-ed piece, some of what he had to say -- fixing blame on where this all comes from. he says, you can blame last year's decision in the hobby lobby case for unleashing a herd of ponies that have gone off in unprecedented directions. a moneymaking organization, that is no different, he writes in "the new york times." you can find more of that at nytimes.com. next up is frank in fort lauderdale. go ahead. caller: good morning. i boycott the companies that endorse certain social issues that i believe are a moral -- a immoral. like jc pennies, our family used to shop there for years, but when they endorse gay marriage i suck going to the company. also starbucks. when they came out in favor of gay marriage and abortion, they give money to abortion facilities like plan parenthood i stopped immediately from patronizing them. i would like to comment also on that lady who said christians should stay in church. christianity -- it's not just the one day of the week belief. it's every day we exercise our faith, and try to save souls, and bring people to christ. it's a beautiful religion. it's all about goodness. it's really common sense. the 10 commandments make good sense for order and society. host: you talk about the individual actions that you and your family have taken against some businesses, not sponsoring those businesses, not frequent ing those businesses. do you think it is the appropriate law of a state to make laws to protect those this is in those cases? caller: to protect them? their rights? see, that's the issue. two very important rights at stake in cases like that. that's why the religious restoration act, throughout our nation, brings forward those decisions to judges to make a determination which right trumps the other. which is more important than the other. of course, i come down in favor of traditional major because -- marriage because as i said that is part of the natural law and one of god's commandments to not commit adultery. to change a definition in order to publish your social agenda is not being truthful. host: we're kind of losing you there. we will go to arkansas and robert who is in hot springs. a business owner there. caller: good morning. as far as social media concerned, this is something that is kind of a new and budding deal in the world as far as businesses. if there they're not connected with social media, they will not be in business for long. host: in terms of things like the religious freedom law that your state has passed indiana has passed. what are your thoughts on that? caller: i think that the reason businesses were so engaged in social media -- as far as religious laws -- is because they understand that it is now businesses, i'm sorry, the people who decide who they will buy from. it's a big thing. you have to be kind of walking a line as far as small business. host: thanks for your call. the impact of business has also impacted the political lobby. this is a headline in "the washington post," a group is tired of being accused of climate denial. next, we go to rio rancho, new mexico and john. welcome to the conversation. rio rancho. john, are you there? you are on. you are on the air. caller: ok. yes, sir. i just want to say -- my comment was that i think there is a huge divide in america between people who believe in god and people who go to church and ex espouse ostracization of others. i don't know where ostracization comes from. as not biblical. can you hear me? host: sure can. caller: i've never seen anything like it. we celebrate the resurrection of christ, but we don't really care about someone try to resurrect themselves and find a job, or anything like that. what we really do is we care about ourselves, how much money we have in our bank, our own security. as far as other people, we don't. by going to church we are ok with christ, as far as being selfish. i don't know what they're doing a religion, but i got off the bus. i don't go to church anymore. i know a lot of people that do go to church, have a lot, and don't do a dam thn thing for people who don't. host: let's move on. caller: your question is pretty wide open. anything we do as human beings is social. we asked the question, should businesses be socially active? they already are, whether we know it or not. why don't you ask another question? if they are socially active in favor of what you believe, you will say yes. if they are socially active against what you believe then you will say no. another question, when you say should eight business be socially active, are you tired about the president, the people who work for the company? then you ask, if they are active, the corporations must be people, shouldn't they? have a nice day, hypocritical america. host: thank you for expanding the question. here is some reaction on sunday shows. bobby jindal, rick santorum, religious freedom law's work, is the headline. to kim the step in shelbyville indiana. go ahead. caller: good morning. i just want to make a comment that i think the social issue with businesses -- it's all about the money. if you listen to this and see what's going on, apple corporation, for example, we have them saying that they don't want to do business, or it's not right to do this, but yet, i watched iran tv and you see them celebrating on the streets over this bad deal that we made. there were many of them who had iphones out there taking pictures of their returning heroes. if apple is so stringent about what is going on here in the united states, why did they sell items in countries like that that treat people so terribly? it seems like everybody is leasing out on conservatism and saying that we are running the country, but i can't think of one issue from abortion to gay rights to whatever, where the conservative view is actually taking place. liberal views are in control. conservative squawk about it and it doesn't go anywhere. host: you are calling us from indiana. what did you think about the changes that the legislator made to the religious freedom law & by governor pence? caller: i think a lot of it was misinterpreted. any time that people in the minority see a chance to get them self in the public, they will do so. i don't think -- i like what one person said, is not so much that a person of a gay believe can't come in and buy a cake. that's one thing. my first reaction to that was why avoid the company even know that? to ask him to perform ceremonies and things of that nature, then i think they have a chance to say, i really can't do this, it's against my religion. host: appreciate your comments. we'll hear from jim next in south carolina. hello. caller: good morning. it is really hypocritical for the left to think that companies are not people, and should not be accorded those rights, but should join in on political missions to squash whatever they don't like. it's really comical and hypocritical. i think that -- i don't know why a company can't may be served. i have no problems serving any person. if they don't like it, they can have somebody on their staff serve that mission, and maybe give profits to charity or something. when it comes to a construction company having to make and build an abortion business, maybe they should be allowed an exemption. again, it is really frustrating to see the left derail that businesses are people and shouldn't be afforded political rights but they are using them as a tool for their way. host: comments on twitter as well. we are at @cspanwj. one here says, religion has never been a harbinger of freedom, it has always been used to subjugate people, i believe in the end visible man. another says, businesses are not democratic, big exist completely and only on the for grants of people. joshua, should businesses be more engaged in social issues in the states where they do business? joshua, make sure you meet your television or radio and go ahead with your comments. caller: i have a comment from ea and earlier caller who said we have got in our back pockets. he was referring to the american currency which says, in god we trust. with that said, not everyone on this planet believes in god. many people believe in other deities. the greeks believe in their thing. the hippies believe in their thing. the chinese, japanese, every culture believes in something different. i'm looking at the media extravaganza involving these social groups and business owners saying that they are going to start random screenings. this is what i heard. they are going to start random screenings to point out which person in their workforce is or is not gay. i am a religious man myself. i was born into religious family. i am a devout christian, a christ follower, and that is why i'm comfortable with. however, i have also read that in the bible, it's not necessarily morally wrong to be homosexual or lesbian. it is considered an abomination to christ. with that said, i just do not think even with it being an abomination, i think it's morally absurd that businesses especially the people who own businesses should pass this thing about saying their workers -- or making sure they are homosexual or not. host: appreciate your comments, joshua. the conversation continues online at facebook.com/cspan. next up, former deputy of secretary of state, john limbert, will join us on the nuclear framework announced last week. later, don beyer will be here to talk about the agreement as "washington journal" continues. ♪ >> tonight on "the communicators" author, vincent moscow on cloud storage. >> the national security agency is building one of the largest cloud storage facilities in a mountain facility in utah. it is doing so because it surveillance needs require that degree of storage and security. u.s. governments chief officer ordered agencies to move to the cloud. as a result, even civilian agencies are turning to cloud services. >> tonight at 8:00 eastern on "the communicators" on c-span 2. each night this week at 9:00 eastern, conversations with a few new members of congress. >> i knew my mom would be crying. my dad was proud. it's funny my dad is 82 years old, and he showed up to the capital. he usually walks with a cane and he showed up, and he didn't have a cane. i said, dad, do i need to send someone to the hotel to get your cane? he said, i'm in the capital, i don't need a cane today. he walked without a cane for the entire day. i know they were super proud. >> the five newest members of congress talk about their careers, personal lives, and share insight as to how things work insight capitol hill. join us for all five conversations every night at 9:00 eastern on c-span. >> "washington journal" continues. host: john limbert is professor of middle eastern studies at the u.s. naval ac academy. he also served as former deputy assistant secretary of state for iran. here to talk with us about the iran nuclear agreement and what is ahead. we are hearing this described as a framework. what does that mean? guest: that means that this is not yet a detailed agreement which both sides have signed. they are not details in it. what it lays out our principles. -- are principles. the site has said a time limit of june 30 to reach a final agreement. what they have agreed on are a set of principles about enrichment, inspections, sanctions, dispute resolution and so forth. host: you brought along a copy released by the white house. a u.s. version of this framework. are all of those items on that framework agreed to by the iranians? guest: this is not surprising to me. this is the american version. of what we believe is in the framework. the iranians, obviously, are going to present this differently from their side. this is normal in any negotiation that the two sides will go back and say here is what we agreed to, and they will present it in an way that addresses their sites particular concerns. host: one of the events we covered last week. you were in several discussions. the immediate reaction to this deal, i heard someone mention that you said, this reported deal between iran and the p5 plus one countries particularly with u.s. representing a change in dynamics between iran and the u.s.. expand on that a bit. what do you mean by that? guest: they much so. if you look at the course of relationship -- or you might call it non-relationship -- that we have had with the islamic republic since 1979, it's been pretty much an estrangement. it's been one of uninterrupted hostility, characterized by exchanges of insults, accusations, threats, in which it was very difficult to agree on just about anything because of the prevailing suspicion and distrust on both sides. now, we have a situation in which the two sides have agreed on these principles. and have agreed to go ahead and negotiate. a few years ago, no iranian official could be caught publicly speaking to an american official. now you have our secretary of state, the iranian foreign minister meeting exchanging gifts for grandchildren, meeting with each other in meetings that they describe as productive and positive. this is a new dynamic. these very words carry a lot of symbolic power. if you think about it, it has been about 35 years since any encounter between the u.s. and iran has been described in that way. host: you mentioned the june 30 deadline for the agreement between iran and the countries. what are you looking for in the months ahead? guest: i'm looking to some very difficult and, given negotiations. one of the bowles of negotiations that -- rules that negotiation of negotiations for countries that have been adversaries for so long is that everything will be harder than you think it will be and everything takes longer than you think it will be. this is not going to be easy. just as reaching this framework agreement was lazy. what secretary kerry and his team, and others, have shown is if you keep at it, if you have persistence and patience, this is possible. host: former deputy assistant secretary of state to iran. john limbert is our guest to talk about the news last week out of switzerland on the proposed framework between iran and the p5 plus one countries on nuclear arms. our phone numbers for you to join the conversation are (202) 748-8000 for democrats. (202) 748-8001, republicans. independents and others, (202) 745-8002. you can join a the conversation on twitter @cspanwj. what is the state department's role here domestically as far as selling this deal to congress? guest: it is going to be a tough sale, obviously. this is part of the job of leading. basically i'm not in the state department anymore but the job is to assist secretary kerry the president, and his team of ensuring, or carrying the message, that this arrangement and this whole process is the best way of pursuing the interests of the united states. host: i was to remind viewers that we have a late to the agreement on our website c-span.org. oddly, what's the big news about this agreement? guest: for me, personally, the big news is that after 35 years we and the iranians are not friends, we don't necessarily like each other, we don't necessarily trust each other but we can talk to each other. we can talk to each other about things that concern both of us. we can talk in a way that advances our interests. in other words, after 35 years of hostility, we have started -- i use the word started because this is very preliminary, we are still beginning of a road -- on a process that may yield better results for the united states. host: let's go to our callers. bob is an massachusetts. first up. independent line. caller: good morning. i'd like to say that i think the deal we made with iran is really really bad. any form of nuclear material or ways to make nuclear material is a bad idea. if they need some for medical use, why can't we supply them the stuff they need for medical use? they don't need to be imaging nuclear materials. you know they will live. as soon as they can, they will take out israel. i don't think any amount of negotiations with these people will work. they are crazy. they scream, "death to america" every day. they hate you and you try to defend them. i don't understand it. guest: well, one could argue if this is a good deal or a bad deal. it is certainly legitimate to say it should be this, it should be better here, or better there but what after all is the nature of the deal. the nature of a deal is something that both sides can agree upon, in which we give something up, we get something they give something up, and they get something. in terms of do you like the other side, do you trust the other side? i'm not sure that is really the point here. what is negotiation all about? what are international relations all about? most of the time they are about reaching agreements that are in perfect, like the agreements we reach with the soviet union or china. often with dubious partners on the other side. partners the unique there like nor trust. for our own interest, we still pursue these agreements, whether we like them whether we mistrust them, whether they say this or that is not the point. the point is this is an agreement that advances the interest of the united states. host: in it to years that you served as deputy undersecretary for iran, have we reached any sort of agreement with iran in the last 10 or 15 years? guest: we have reached agreements on various issues. we cooperated in afghanistan for example after 2001 2001-2002 in forming the new government, setting what the arrangement should be in afghanistan. we have reached some agreements. we reached agreements for providing earthquake relief, having u.s. m military planes provide earthquake relief. until now, the agreements have not led anywhere. there not been able to change the basic dynamic of the relationship. that may be what is different about this one in particular. host: from tennessee, robert. go ahead. caller: i also think it is a bad deal. the reason why is because when you hear someone saying they want to kill somebody, maybe we should take a it for its face value. we know who will it when in the end. god will. their eyes will be consumed from their sockets, flesh melted from their skins, and thanks to our antichrist president and people like you who sympathize -- i don't understand your door at like you don't know what i'm saying. host: you are breaking up just a little bit. he mentioned the former president. how different is the rhetoric between the former president and rouhani, the newer president. guest: the former president was for an opponent to any dialogue between the two countries. host: he opposed a? guest: he was the gift that kept giving. his rhetoric of wiping israel off the pages, his a holocaust denial was the perfect gift -- in private, he spoke about ending the negative mentality between the two countries. he could always be dependent on to say something outrageous and provocative. as long as he was president, it was very difficult for us to listen to anything that the iranian said. he personally became part of the -- a large element of the problem. he became, if you excuse the expression, in this town, radioactive. it doesn't matter if what he said was nonsense or made sense. after a while, no one would listen to him. host: in the first one-on-one conversation about the nuclear framework, president obama talked with a new "new york times" columnist. [video clip] president obama: we can have a inspections, i'm president, and we know every point along their nuclear chain, what they are doing. that lasts for 20 years. for the first 10 years, their program is not just frozen, but effectively rolled back to a large degree. we know that even if they wanted to cheat, we would have at least one year -- which is about three times longer than what we have now -- and we would have insight to their programs which we never had before. in that circumstance, the notion that we wouldn't take that deal right now, and that that would not be in israel's interest is completely incorrect. look, i have to c respect the fears that the israeli people have. i understand that prime minister netanyahu is expressing his deep-rooted concerns the a lot of pf the israeli population feels about this. what i can say is number one this is our best bet by far too ensure that iran does not get a nuclear weapon. number two, what we will be doing is sending a clear message to iranians and to the region that if anyone messes with israel, america will be there. host: and your view, is the president correct? the best bet by far? guest: again, isn't perfect, of course not. no agreement is perfect great you negotiate for the best deal that you can get. again, honest people can disagree about this agreement. it should be this, or it should be that. one of these strains that i hear in some of the criticisms is people are not looking for a deal. they are looking for a surrender. and other words, we should not force the other side to give up everything and agree to everything that we want. that is not a deal. that is surrender. arrangements like that, if we know anything from history, do not last. host: good have been hopeful for the talks that it be raised higher than what they welded up? guest: the contrary. i heard commentary from people who were quite skeptical saying, this deal as described is better than we thought it would be. the fact that iran's enrichment will be limited to one facility and it will be limited only to the first generation of centrifuges -- the so-calledir1 ir1's -- and that they will not enrich uranium for at least 15 years. people being kept a goal, and perhaps we got more out of this than expected. host: let's go back to calls. lansing, illinois. anthony. caller: the reason i'm calling -- a question for your guess. is it true that iran can apply a nuclear bonmb within three months and if there is no deal made, and we don't get inspections, my question is if they can get a bomb in three months, if we put the sanctions back, and with those sanctions after three months if we are saying they can get a bomb within three-month, if after three months, we don't have a deal then would that mean that we would go to war? host: so what happens if we don't get a deal? guest: that's a good question. will we go to war? i don't know. what will happen is we will have a continuation of the same -- i would call it cold war -- that we have had for the last 35 years. that situation has not served our interests. in other words, these 35 years of estrangement, glaring at each other from across a desk -- there has been violence, there has been lives lost. senator obama, candidate obama in 2008 said, we need to change the situation. he said, if i'm president, i will talk to the iranians. i will talk to the iranians because this doing so is in the interest of the united states. his then opponent, senator clinton, attack tempered he hard on that position. said, oh no, you can't do that. he won. he won the nomination, he won the election. and then in this wonderful way of american politics, his strong primary opponent became his secretary of state. host: speaking of iran, some of your comments reflect what tom friedman is saying in "the new york times," the obama doctrine, he writes what strikes me most is his policies. he says his view was engagement could serve american interests far better than and less sanctions and isolation. guest: he said something similar in his nobel prize address in also. he said -- how did he put this -- engagement with regimes lacks the satisfaction of indignation. in other words, if all we do is to announce and -- the an denounce, that satisfies us, but what does it accomplish? afteri was so impacted by that statement, i went to some iranian friends and asked, can you put this into eloquent persian so that i could use it in my persian discussions that i have over bbc, virgin media. they said, no we can't. there is too much meaning and nuance in that phrase for us to put it into something eloquent. as they said, this is from very early on in his administration. host: you speak farsi or persian? guest: yes i do. host: let's go to our democratic line. caller: hearing johndon, we haven't had an effective relationships and 79 hearing i think it speaks to our weakness. we should have gotten up and walked away from the table rather than listing to any demands from iran's part. if we sat at the table, we should have been telling them after that 6:00 time period or whatever we enforce. we should have pulled out. host: do you think it is true that the military option has always been on the table? guest: it's there. it's very clear to me that this president does not seek to involve the united states in another ground war in the middle east. that was what his original election was premised on -- getting us out of the existing wars. i was in iraq myself. i saw some of the things that happen there. firstly, i support that. in terms of walking away from the table, it goes back to this satisfying purity of indignation. yes, it makes you feel good, but what does it accomplish? what works -- what has worked in this case is patience, staying at the table. remember, it has taken five years from the time that president obama became president and announced that he wanted to change this relationship into something more in accordance with american interests, and all that time, we have had to listen to some very difficult rhetoric from the iranian side. the iranian side would often get into meetings and list grievances against the united states. what's important in a situation like that is that we stay at the table. host: were you ever early on in any of these limited conversations? guest: yes i was. without going into any detail. it's difficult. you come away feeling, what opening is there? what's important is you say, ok we hear you. it took five years but eventually that narrative broke down. iranians said, ok, nready to talk seriously. this was even before the last to administration. host:shreveport, alabama. homer. caller: i'm an avid listener. i think our biggest problem is we've got the biggest state. we need to quit playing world police on everybody. be a little more humane. i agree with brother don. i think we have played too much world police. host: ok, homer. thank you. florida, terry is next. caller: thanks for taking my call. mr. don, the remark about -- you have to america, -- host: i think you are breaking up. you may be on a cell phone. a little tough to hear. we go to ohio. tom is on the end of the line. caller: good morning. we all know there are questions about iran. we should also question the reasons for israel, and the things they have done. they machine gun -- they back to the slaughter of palestinian women and children. i'm sure there are a handful of families over there getting rich off the status quo. we should question them a little more than we do. host: let's hear some of the concerns from israelis benjamin netanyahu. he was on a number of sunday shows, including "state of the union." [video clip] prime minister netanyahu: iran has cheated. there are same concerns about north korea. i think in this case, what is happening with this deal is that what has been illegitimate is being legitimized. newiran's nuclear program is being legitimized. they are given the opportunity to not only maintain their infrastructure but in a few years, increasing. i think what is required is the application of very strong sanctions that have proven effective. economic stations and oil thing since, tough sanctions were only applied in 2012. if they were together at the table, why, when you get to the table, you start lifting them immediately. start applying the precious because they do work. there is still time to get a better deal and apply pressure is iran to rollback its nuclear program. host: the prime minister, among the things that he said is that the deal legitimizes iran's nuclear program. what are your thoughts? guest: with all the respect, i disagree. he is very articulate. he represents israel's interests. israel definitely has a concern. particularly after the kind of rhetoric it has seen and heard from iran over the past years. i think this early have a right to worry about iran. when he said, this is a bad deal, i find that -- behind that, i hear any deal to which two sides would agree to would be in his view, a bad deal. the only deal i think he would consider is not a deal but surrender in which iran gives up everything they want. one other point. in speaking to some is really friends, i give the impression that there is a great deal of difference of opinion within the israeli political system about this particular issue. the prime minister represents one view that is not necessarily representative of the entire country. not the israelis do not worry about iran, not that they like iran or trust iran, but there are many people within israel, including members of security and diplomatic establishments who do not agree with the positions that he is taking. host: here is steve in adams town, maryland. caller: good morning. i thought that from what i've heard, really there is a lot of nuclear power nations that really do not need to enrich uranium. it's really not necessary to develop domestic nuclear power plants. what has been happening with you know, high-yield centrifuges that they have developed -- they are cutting back 75%, that i did not recognize that -- i don't know that is in the negotiations or not, but i thought i heard you mentioned something earlier that they would not be able to use. but if they were, with the amount over the years, the question really is how would inspectors know where to go to look? guest: again, my understanding of the principles of the framework agreement is that iran will not use centrifuges are above so-called rir1 model for at least 10 years it can use a limited number of ir1 centrifuges. the inspectors -- from what i understand of the agreement -- it puts in place a rather rigorous inspection regime over almost all of the process from the zipline chain to uranium mines to -- from the supply chain to uranium mines to imports of equipment. as far as i can tell this arrangement goes about as far as it can in ensuring that what in richmond is done is not bring in iran closer to a nuclear weapon. host: about another 10 minutes with our guest, john limbert former deputy assistant secretary of state to iran. we're talking about the p5 plus one, the permanent five members of the un security council, plus germany. we go to dan who is in youngstown, ohio. caller: yes. you want to know why netanyahu is upset? this agreement, first of all, i see the iranian celebrating in the street, and the president on tv saying that they will continue to enrich, they will not give up any of the centrifuges, none of them whatsoever they have the right to deny inspections as they feel free, and to delay them, and you sit there and say, what's in the agreement doesn't matter, what matters is that we are talking. what's in the agreement is everything. we are turning our back on israel. christians are being killed daily by isis, and we sit back here and negotiate with terrorists. host: on some of these other issues in terms of iran's sponsorship, what would be included in an agreement like this? guest: the two sides agreed early on to keep this, to restrict these negotiations to the nuclear issue. which is we have seen, quite complicated in itself. if you bring other issues to the table, what happens is you make -- you almost ensure that these negotiations will fail. yes, these are legitimate concerns. things like terrorism is a legitimate concern. the way the iranian government treats its own people. icon, for one, i agree. i have connections of over 50 years to iran. i would love to see the iranian people, my friends, family members enjoy and live under a government that treats them decently, that doesn't put reporters in jail, doesn't arrest he would human rights activist doesn't miss the women. i know secretary kerry has raised these issues on his one-on-one meetings. host: what is the cause for celebration that the caller mentioned over the begin? why aren't iranians happy about the deal? guest: there is a hope of getting themselves out of -- ordinary people out of the box, the political box, that this iranian government by its inept diplomacy has put them in. the iranian currency is near worthless. the iranian passport is worthless. my iranian friends and this country cannot even call themselves iranians anymore. they call themselves persians. if you say persians, they think of carpets and cats. if you say iranian, they think of weapons and terrorism. host: let's go to the independent line. caller: about now, we are ready to give in to them because we want to make a deal. i deal is not trading goals for copper. you are making little value of the regime's nastiness, and you talk about netanyahu saying, well, he did not have an overwhelming majority of the people. he won by -- you would kill for his percentage of win. the only person that does not understand what the iranians are like is obama. he just wants to make a deal so he can make a deal. that's not how we make deals in business. if i did that, i would be broke, and i'm not broke. host: what does the present have to do to sell this to the american people? as we look at a headline in "the new york times" today -- the tricky task of selling the deal at home. guest: both sides have their work cut out for them. i would say, iran, judging by the welcome that the foreign minister got when he returned and judging by some of the reactions of celebrations that i have seen on television, this deal is popular. iran has its hard-liners and opponents. as far as i gather, the opinion polls are supported. -- supportive. among americans, figures were somewhere in the 60% range. because, again, the argument that the president is making and has made now for about 5, 6, 7 years since he was first elected was that such a deal, whatever you think of the iranian government, whatever you think of the islamic republic -- i am always obvious and not big fan of it, as others are not -- but, whatever you think of it, this arrangement is better than maintaining the dangerous status quo, and it serves the interest of the united aids. host: let's go to landis, north carolina. james is on. caller: good morning. i don't know how educated people are on the deal. i read some online. i really don't know all of it. anytime you can talk to people who you have not talked to for over 10 years, that has got to be some progress. israel has the support of the united states. you have to give it time to see what comes out time june. from what i read, it is not a done deal at this time. we have the right to inspect their facilities at any time. i think that is a starting point. host: we've talked about political leaders, president obama, president rouhani. what about the supreme leader in iran? what role is he playing in the negotiations and the aftermath? guest: we are obviously talking about one of the most powerful people in the political system perhaps the most powerful person. on the other hand, we are not talking about a saddam hussein who could make every decision on his own. i don't think the process would have gotten as far as it did is f he had not given his approval. we saw last friday at the friday prayers, the leader endorsing the deal. is that a good thing? you may ask, if you are suspicious, wait a minute, if these hard-liners like it, then maybe there is something wrong in it. apparently, the decision is made. what's the interest of the ruling group, including the supreme leader, is to stay in power. this is obviously popular with the vast majority of their people. the decision they have to make is do they want to stand in the way of what 80%, 85% of their own population clearly supports. host: you are professor of middle eastern studies at the naval academy, training future leaders of the country, what has been their reaction broadly? guest: they are fascinated. i love my students. they have the open-mindedness of 20 e-year-olds. they are interested. what they see directly affects them. if, god forbid, there is an armed conflict, they are the ones who will have to go out and fight it. not the ones in the think tanks here in washington who are criticizing it. they are the ones who will have to do it. it affects their future directly. i find them very thoughtful about this issue. they believe, if this is something that can prevent us from having to fight another war in the middle east, then it is worth taking a close look at. host: john limbert, former deputy assistant secretary of state thank you for being here on " and more ahead, gone buyer will joint -- don beyer will join us from virginia. and later on, we will look at how much corporations get from subsidies and tax breaks. our next guest is philip mattera . >> tonight on the communicators, author vincent moscow on the development of cloud storage and big data and how the government is using it. vincent: the national security agency is building one of the world largest cloud data centers in a secure mountain facility in utah. it is doing so, because it's really -- it's surveillance needs require that degree of storage and security. the u.s. government's information officer three or four years ago ordered u.s. government agencies to move to the cloud, and as a result even civilian agencies are turning to cloud services. >> tonight at 8:00 eastern on the committee caters on c-span2. -- the communicators on c-span2. >> wall street journal continues. host: douglas has been back for a week, but we get a perspective on the iranian deal from congressman don beyer. we just finished up a conversation with a state department official for iran. as you see it, from a congressional plan view, what is you -- is your take on the framework? guest: i was very surprised that the framework was as comprehensive as it was. i think we got everything we hoped for and more. my great hope is that, as the president has asked for, that there be a congressional debate, but that congress does not prove to be a stumbling block in the deal has been worked out with the p5 plus one and iran. as the president has said, this is the best chance we've had in a long time to go forward, a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. host: you served formally as an abbasid or two switzerland inlet -- as an ambassador to switzerland in liechtenstein. in looking at this relationship between the u.s. and iran, where do things stand now? guest: i am optimistic. in 2009, the two big missions were of secrecy. to get the swiss government to agree to the enhanced sanctions. switzerland was at risk of being the whole of the donut in europe, the place iran would go to trade oil. and we have -- and our argument was we have to find some way to bring it to the table. when we finally bring them to the table and we get a framework agreement, this is a great step forward. we are where ahead of where we were just two years ago. host: the issue of iran will land first and foremost next week with the senate. i want to play you some of the comments from senator bob corker, this set -- the chairman of the senate foreign relations committee and his concern over the deal expressed on fox news sunday yesterday. [video clip] >> one of the proposals being floated as a nonbinding vote by congress. you could disapprove the deal, but then the president could still go ahead and extend sanctions. is that acceptable? center corporate: -- senator corker: no, it's not. i think the bill we have laid out had strong bipartisan support. chairman menendez, who has stepped down, as we know, but chuck schumer supports this, tim kaine. there is strong bipartisan support for a binding vote in congress. the president needs to sell this to the american people, and congress needs to be involved in this way. >> let me after the second question. the white house is that the president would veto the kind of legislation you are proposing. if you does, you don't need 51 votes or even 60 votes. you need 67 votes, which means 13 democrats to override his veto. do you have 67 votes? senator koerber: -- senator corker: i don't know if we have 67 votes or not, but we have 64 or 65 that we are aware of today. i talked to numbers of democrats over the weekend and i think there are many more that are considering this. look, i think the american people want the united states senate to go through the steel. -- this deal. they understand this is one of the most important geopolitical agreement that will take place during this decade. this is an appropriate place to be. if the president feels like it's something that is good for the nation, surely you can sell this to the united states senate and the house. host: congressman don beyer your thoughts on the senate's role in this iranian deal. guest: i think senator corker is right that the congress does need to be involved. i think the congress does have a responsibly, which he is trying to fulfill, to sell this to the american people. but is also rented the same president that imposed the sanctions, -- but he is also right that the same power that gave the president the right to impose the sanctions gave him the right to listen. host: to join the conversation with our best, the numbers are on the screen. let's go to calls. mike is in monroe, georgia independent line. your first up. go ahead. caller: hey, guys, how are you doing this morning? host: fine, thank you. caller: congressman, going above your pay grade and talking to us below your pay grade how do you answer about the inspection process given the last iaea president of it openly admitted that they lied about saddam hussein'as stuff even after they were in and kick out, in and kick out. how are we supposed to believe an independent agency that we have no representation in will be truthful to what they say? and i would appreciate a very honest answer. thank you. guest: we do actually have quite a bit of representation in the iaea. we have an american ambassador there. we have a significant michigan indiana, austria where there -- in vienna -- a significant mission in vienna austria where they're located. the advisors have to come together for an independent audit. most importantly, we have been able to inspect all of their facilities. as the president said in this current framework, we will be able to inspect the uranium from their minds through the process to where does stored. that is a lot of inspection. host: going to the experience of the iraqi weapons specters, any concern that there will be things that will be missed guest: obviously, -- that will be missed? guest: there is obvious concern but we have to continue to work on it. we have gone 20 years without any infections in iran. now we will have unprecedented access. that is a huge step forward. host: rhode island, independent line. caller: sir, i cannot disagree with you more. i was in the military and you scared me to death. first of all, we right now have found out about underground bunkers that they are plutonium in that we had no knowledge of and i can guarantee our inspectors will have no access to. that is number one. number two, if you are wrong how many children in the military do you have that you are willing to sacrificefight these people in the event that they come and bong us -- bomb us? and never three, why are you -- number three, why are you so against israel that you give them no say in this matter? our president refused to talk to him. why? guest: thank you for your question about the military and sacrifices our military have made. we have already been involved in quite a few wars in the middle east. iraq one, a rack to -- iraq two, and now in syria. i think the major policy goal now is to avoid getting into another major war. as the presently that clear he -- clearly, it's not just avoiding war. iran without the steel could move very quickly and send forces in war posture. this is the single best option to avoid american loss of life, avoid having to use american or israeli military. and there is enormous difference of opinion within israel. netanyahu is the premise are but not the only voice. i think what we are trying to do is make israel as secure as possible. no american president has done as much to strengthen israeli security at this one house. host: let's go to the calls. joe, democrat line. hi, joe, you're on the air. caller: good morning. usually when i call i say this is joe from the bronx, new york, a staunch democrat. what i want to say to you in reference to the topic we are discussing right now, when i speak to the people from main street, and those of the people i believe in, the people from main street, what they are saying is i wanted to try to talk to the republicans. you are the smart party. the thing that the republicans are trying to do and you know that from the aca, this president, they want him to go down in history for having done things that president frady years are trying to do and make it -- that presidents have been trying to do for 80 years, make history. the only thing the democrats wanted to do was raise income, and they killed that. and now they are trying to oppose everything that is good for this country. host: joe, we will a you go there and get your thoughts. he mentioned main street. have you heard much from your constituents in virginia? guest: not a lot yet over the weekend. but i do know anything that makes our heart -- our economy more secure and is good for business will affect our future. i don't think there is a smart party. i enjoy being in congress because there are a lot of smart people in both parties there. but i think humility has to come along with our so-called intelligence as we try to figure out what is going to be best for america and for the world. host: some look ahead to the debate that may be ahead on capitol hill, "the wall street journal" has a headline "political battle ramps up over iran." and the hill as well. as a member of congress, who do you want to hear from to further strengthen your belief in the steel, your belief -- in this deal, your belief in the president? guest: eliot engel from new york and ed royce, the chair of the house foreign relations committee, they sent a strong letter to the president week or two ago about this deal. and i think this deal represents everything they asked for this letter. what i really hope for is that this does not become a democrat versus republican peace. as the president said in his interview with tom friedman yesterday, because netanyahu has concerns about the deal does not mean he should be aligning with house republicans are senate republicans. and because we like the deal does not mean it should be a democrat thing either. hopefully americans will be coming together. as they say, political wars and at the water's edge. host: why do you think that's not so much anymore? guest: i don't really know, because certainly we have seen unprecedented support for israel with democratic and republican presidents alike since john kennedy forward. both republicans and democrats are upset with settlements and don't see that as a two state solution. and both parties together deeply believe in our responsibly to help secure israel's future. host: back to calls for congressman don beyer. in new jersey, hello. caller: good morning and thank you for taking my call. i just have a quick question. i'm wondering if anyone has taken any poll, or has gotten the polls of -- the pulse of the american people with this decision with the decision that was made as far as the agreement. and also i noticed the iranian people were happy when their prime minister, whoever the sky -- whoever this guy is, but he brought the message back to them. also, the saudi arabians, the egyptians, and the jordanians, what do they feel about the agreement? do they feel that they will have to get nuclear weapons also? those are the questions i would like to know. host: ok, a lot on the table there. guest: to the point of the iranians celebrate this framework deal, i'm sure it's very true. their economy has been destroyed in the last several yearsthe sanctions that we have placed on them with the european union. their growth rate, the devaluation of their currency, they have been a mess. anything that gives them relief. they were looking for a way out of the sanctions. someone described it perfectly -- we've let them keep the buildings, but taken out all the furniture. we gone from -- we got significantly down in centrifuges. we've gone from 10,000 down to 300 grams of enriched uranium. their plutonium has completely gone away. as i say, the buildings are there, but there's no ability to move out. by the way, netanyahu said in 1992 that iran was only a year or two away from making a bond and -- making a bomb and now it's 2015. as far as the saudi's and the egyptians, some of this is tied up in sunni versus shiite. but also, we have been involved with the saudi's against iran all these many years. the possibility that there might be peace and reconciliation might be threatening to them. host: congressman don beyer is our guest. he is a freshman congressman from virginia. we are talking about your calls -- we are taking your calls and talking about the framework for the agreement with iran last week. on another note, you are set to replace chris van hollen as the finance chair of the congressional then democrat campaign committee. -- congressional democrat campaign committee. what is the biggest challenge for you to get quality candidates and take back the house in 2016? guest: that is the big question in it, finding quality candidates. we need 30 seats. we are at 188 right now, which is the fewest democratically since harry truman was president. we had a tough year in 2010. we lost 65. and this last week, after the ebola scares and the isis beheadings, it was a pretty terrible election. one in three eligible americans even showed up to vote that day. our job is to get great candidates and for people to be excited enough to turn out. we expect some improvement. even if we can get 18 to 22 that is a big step in the right direction. host: it is early yet, but is your game plan any different from what congressman van hollen laid out? guest: i'm really on the fundraising side, as chris was the finance chair. lots of fundraising and trying to stick by the spirit and a letter of all of the fdic ideas. i do not like united citizens decision is all. we want to help fund those candidates on the edge, the reds or blue or frontline candidates. and there will only be 60 or 70 of them that have a chance to win. some seats are safe for the republicans and some are safe for the democrats. we will be focusing on those seats that we have a chance. host: let's go back to calls. california, joseph on the independent line. caller: hello, and good morning everybody. i just want to remind everybody that israel got its nuclear weapons with their ally in south africa when they were in the apartheid regime. they were outright fascist. me being a black person, i don't think israel should have any nuclear weapons. i think we should put sanctions on israel to get rid of their nuclear weapons. guest: thank you, joseph. one of the interesting things to come out of the last conference with the nonproliferation treaty, which iran has signed and israel has not signed, this frame is a big step in the right direction. israel has never admitted to having nuclear weapons. i don't know they have them or not. certainly, it is a worthy goal that there be no nuclear weapons in the middle east. host: on the line from oklahoma, james. good morning. caller: good morning and thank you for taking my call. i totally agree with the guy that just talked about israel not having nuclear weapons either. mr. netanyahu, he came over and he lied to the american people and he also lied to his own people when he said he was against the two-party state right before he got elected, and then switched back and said, well, i am for the two party state. i think the american people, especially the religious right here in america, should understand that without the united states netanyahu would not have a bed to sit on, much less to sleep in in israel right now. we are the guys holding those people up. i don't think you'll ever get the religious right here in america to agree with anything the democrats or obama will try to do with iran, any kind of agreement. they will just disagree with it over religious prejudice. and that to me in my mind is someone that likes to think about things -- as someone who likes to think about things, it's irrelevant. we do have a talking point. we did finally get them to the table. but the israelis are extremely jealous of that. and as far as negotiating, they cannot even negotiate with the palestinians. we have every right to be over there, to talk to a ron -- to iran, and those people have a right to celebrate, because they are finally getting some of that stuff off their backs that they have been carrying around now for about 20 years. i will be celebrating, too, if i finally get a little food again. host: that is james. guest: thank you, james. john was on just before i was and he was one of the original hostages. he pointed out many years ago when he was deputy secretary that all those years only had 10,000 nuclear weapons aimed at the soviet union and they had 10,000 aimed at us, we always had an embassy there. we had a consulate and discussions. we haven't had an embassy in iran since 1980, i think. finally, to get a dialogue and the chance for peace, the chance for reconciliation, this is a good step forward. host: tony from pennsylvania, republican line. caller: i think obama gets a lot of credit. it's a good deal and it's a good chance to avoid war. my problem is all of the rhetoric against iran. correct me if i'm wrong. isn't it true that all the security agencies, including the saudi's, agree that iran has not attempted to make a nuclear weapon? isn't this a country that has not attacked anyone in 112 years? and i always hear the republicans saying the same line state sponsor of terrorism. but when you talk about terrorism, isn't it israel that seems to bomb their neighbors at will in response to these sky rocket attacks and killed tens of thousands of people in lebanon and syria? who is the terrorist. -- who is the terrorist here? host: lots of questions. we will let congressman baier respond. guest: thank you for your perspective. there's a lot of history here. when i was ambassador in switzerland, switzerland represents us. this was ambassador would say, as much as we distrust the iranians and think they will cheat, the iranians distrust us going back to 1973 when we helped to overthrow their democratically elected president. it goes both ways. there is skepticism. my big problem with netanyahu when he came to speak to congress when he -- when the they came to the idea of no deal is better than a bad deal, he did not discuss an alternative. there's this option that iran will hurry to make it bomb which brings on military action. that is what causes bloodshed. as we know from 1939 and 1914, was the first bullet flies, you cannot predict what will happen. host: were you in the house chamber during that meeting? guest: i was. i spoke out against the invitation. i thought it was very bad lyrical etiquette, very bad diplomacy. but also out of respect for the relationship between the united states and israel, i wanted to go and give him the respect of listening to the argument. host: you're a congressman from northern virginia. a lot of your constituents are federal employees. i wanted to ask you about the budget proposal, which is on the front page of executive magazine. talking about ben cardin, "i will send in front of the bus to protect federal pay and benefits." talk about that. guest: it is more bad news unfortunately. ever since reagan we have been talking about getting government off the backs of our people. we tend to look at federal employees as a bad guys, but they are the good guys. since the 1960's, the private sector workforce has grown by 145%. the number of people in america has grown by 66 percent. in federal employees have grown by 9%. we are getting more and more work out of fewer people. in the last several years they got no raise at all. 1% last year. i think the president proposed 3% this year. it probably will not fully hold up in the negotiated budget. we are really trying to balance the budget on the backs of federal employees. who are the ones helping to make our country so strong. we forget that our federal employees are the ones that protect us at the airport, and the fbi, border control -- border patrol, homeland security, so many things that are good things they do for us. host: massachusetts, bob, independent line. caller: good morning. my first comment is for those who are nervous about israel's reaction to the possibility of iran having a long -- a bomb. we should not forget that in 1963, we almost went to war over a small island 90 miles off the coast of florida that had, we discovered, nuclear tipped missiles from the soviet union. and the resulting deal wasn't to reduce them, move them over here, or reduce the payload, the deal was, get them off the island entirely or we will strike you militarily. now, that was a long time ago and it was a different world but that was a nation that felt threatened. i understand israel's concern about this. my question is, how do we know with this deal that iran will do what it says is going to do with dropdead, boilerplate accuracy, no fooling around, total truth? how do we know that they will say what they will do? host: and i will add onto that, congressman baier, a tweet from robert who says, we had an ear agreement with north korea. we know how that turned out. why would this agreement be any different? can you cite the proposed proportion of the agreement guaranteeing unfettered inspections at anytime anywhere? guest: thank you bob, and sandy. first, let's go back to the cuban missile crisis in october, 1962. the great challenge their, what people forget is that we also had nuclear tipped missiles in turkey on the soviet border. and the trade-off there, which doesn't get a lot of play, is that the soviets took their missiles out of cuba and we took hours out of turkey. there was a trade-off, just as there is with the sanctions right here. and the soviet union was feeling just as threatened by american missiles on their border as we were by cuban missiles 90 miles away. but on the issue of trust, too this is an issue in any treaty anytime. back to the soviet union, and 10,000 missiles each way, we are now and i believe, 1800, with a plan to go to one third of that. most people plan to go down to 600, and i'm sure the soviets fear that we would cheat and we fear that they would cheat also. that is why we have so many infections. i cannot quote the framework agreement because it is many pages long and i have not memorize the whole thing, but there is unprecedented inspection of uranium from the line all the way to spent uranium. host: i want to let the listeners know we have a framework for the deal that was released last week. you will find it on our website www.c-span.org. but go to tampa, florida, mike on the democrats line. caller: good morning. i would just like to point out that we still have over 2.5 month to hammer out an agreement with iran. let's not get our hair on fire about this potential agreement. the other thing i would like to say is that let's not forget that the real nuclear flashpoint, or potential flashpoint, is pakistan. let's not forget that they are the ones who sold equipment and know-how to korea. have a nice day. guest: thank you, mike. i think many foreign-policy experts believe that pakistan is far more problematic because they have so many nuclear weapons, and sometimes instability -- insecure stability in terms of leadership. there is already a bomb, for example. we have to be careful. what is lost in the debate with israel, too, is that the principle of destruction is very operative. do we ever think that iran could use a nuclear weapon without destroying its entire country? also with the issue of israel and cuba, if israel does have weapons, we have to think about the psychological impact it has on its many hostile neighbors. including iran iraq, saudi arabia, and others. host: here in new york city tommy on the republican line. caller: i don't understand. why do we have to have a deal with them? justly the sanctions as they are. if we see that they are honest and complying, let loose in the sanctions. why give them anything? we don't have to give them nothing. do you remember 1979? they are the first ones who started this anti-american stuff. and like you said, you are a government employee. you democrats are worried about every other country. you don't worry about america. you are elected by americans. as you say, you're a government employee you -- to do great things for this country. don't worry about turkey and iran. worry about american people. you don't have to give into them. given to us. if you feel they are doing what they should be, then this led -- the sanctions little by little. guest: the way to move forward in a framework agreement is that the sanctions have not slowed down iran's nuclear processes at all. right now, they have 10,000 grams of enriched uranium. that 20,000. -- and 20,000 centrifuges. they have made enormous cave -- breakout capability, which could be realized in two or three years. we want to ensure that they will never have nuclear weapons. and it's not just iran, too. everyone understands that if iran actually build a nuclear weapon, then egypt and saudi arabia will be forced to do it very soon. israel might have to the same thing. you get a whole new wave of nuclear arms race, which we have not had since the nonproliferation treaty. this is a very important thing and it is about america. because instability in the middle east, as we've seen again and again it tends to dry and american soldiers, american loss of life, and huge american financial costs. host: a couple of divergent views on the iranian deal on twitter. let's hear from richmond virginia, james on the independent line. welcome. caller: good morning and glad to be on. thanks for c-span. i have several things. first off, i support the treaty 100%. i just wish we could get israel in on the deal. and as far as the people saying we cannot trust them, how can anyone trust us? ire member we signed a treaty that we would not -- i remember we signed a treaty that we would not torture, and we tortured. and we have about 150 house of representatives people -- i hope you were not one of them -- that goes over to israel on a fact-finding mission. and the only thing i found out that they found out was, naked politicians could not walk on water. i will listen to your comments now. guest: we clearly need international agreements on so many different things. they make the world a safer and better place. i think we want to bring the israeli people into this agreement as much as possible. the primary beneficiaries of this are the israeli people, and their security. there are huge american interest in this also. but we have kept them fully informed every part of the way and we continue to do that. host: on international agreements on other issues, the when climate change is this week and the president announced new target goals of greenhouse gases mission reduction i 28%, delete believe, by the year 2020. -- i believe, by the year 2020. what does congress into due to affect that change? guest: i've been very frustrated and one of the primary reasons i ran for congress was to be a leading voice for climate change. and trying to take it out of this democrat versus republican kind of debate. in the post this morning, alec from the legislative council said it was not a crime to be a climate denier. many of the colleagues i've talked to privately have agreed that we need to work on ways to move forward. no country has made as much progress on greenhouse gas emissions as has the u.s. since 2009. we have done a good job, but without legislation from congress. we could do a much better job with some of the interesting ideas coming out. host: to some of the con -- comments you have made about the death of climate change. they did some reporting on that. what is your take on their political act rating? guest: their death rate was worldwide from weather-related events. it was clearly a statistic. i will not use that statistic. and the bad part of that is that it takes us away from the real damage that is being done. and i don't the you can measure it so much in u.s. deaths right now. we are seeing diseases, and just illnesses related to respiratory things, wildfires, he related. the best leaders think long-term 10, 20, 30 years out. that is when climate change will have a big impact. think about the nations that will disappear, like the maldives, or the 55 million and the dishes that will be displaced as the water dries up. -- bangladeshis that will disappear as the water dries up. host: what is the car industry's role in climate change are where is the car industry headed in terms of renewables and alternative fuel vehicles? guest: in a really good direction. i'm very excited about it. 1992 through 2008, our cafe standards were set at 22 miles per gallon and we make no progress. actually, we may come to a logical progress, but we turn it into bigger and heavier and faster cars. -- we made tons of technological progress, but we turned it into bigger and heavier and faster cars. we are much better off than we were. and you see manufacturer after manufacturer coming up with new products. i drove a toyota to capitol hill a few books ago -- i don't sell them, by the way -- but it was fueled with hydrogen and gave off water. no carbon whatsoever. host: a couple more calls. here's alan ingber. -- here is alan in brooklyn. caller: there's a comparison here in the iranian argument by the republicans between real and immediate threats and make-believe threats. i think if they focused as much attention on the long-term danger to america of not attending to climate change as they focus on the possibility that the iranians will not respect their agreement 10 years from now. -- 10 years from now, we would be in very good shape toward viable climate policy. and likewise if the republicans would be motivated more by -- i think the republicans are motivated more by denying obama a congressman. think back to 1980 when many of the viewers were not born yet, and they had this october surprise where bill casey repeatedly went to europe to negotiate with the iranians to hold back our hostages purely to deny election. and there is an element of that in the letter by representative cotton to try to poison the well not to hurt obama, but to poison success. i think we need to focus our long-term national interest on climate and iran. guest: alan, thanks for the perspective for survival long thought that the greatest national security challenge we face in the long run is climate change. certainly immediate needs syria, isis, and this framework with iran and others. but if you look at what can affect billions of lives, it is what we are doing with our climate. i'm an amateur scientist, so i believe in humility. science is always contingent of the we learn new things everyday, but let's build on what we know now and we can always adjust. host: one more call here. here he, pennsylvania, laura. caller: first, the representative is fighting off a lot of calls this morning. there are a lot of americans who do not back israel. i think we give them an out a lot of money. it's a very's piece of land. -- a very small piece of land. those people ought to be all millionaires over there by now. but the thing that really started making me pay attention to this was a while ago, we had asked israel's military that we pay for you guys can stand down. netanyahu was in charge and he said, screw you, america, we are going to go on the boat and they killed an american kid, a child. a 19-year-old kid. i don't know who else they killed. the boat was fine and they ended up letting it go through. this was israel for you. they gave us lip and we give them all this money. host: that incident, when did that happen? caller: that was a couple of years back. i don't know if the boat was going to pakistan or palestine or wherever it was going. it was on the news and everything. they shot our kid, a 19-year-old. even though we asked them not to go on the boat. host: we will get a response from congressman buyer -- congressman beyer. guest: that was a complicated incident. it was in 2010, a turkish ship going to gaza. there was concern that there were weapons on the ship as opposed to only humanitarian goods. and i think there were 10 or 11 deaths as a result, and one american citizen. host: do you think as a result of this proposed iranian deal that it's likely that the white house last week announced military aid to egypt, that the administration would provide more military aid to israel? guest: i think the administration is very committed to israel, and saudi arabia, and egypt. we had conversations with leaders in both saudi arabia and egypt over the weekend assuring them that a framework deal with a ron did not mean we were abandoning legendary alliances with others. host: freshman congressman from northern virginia, we appreciate you being with us. more ahead on "washington journal." your money segment is next as we speak with philip mattera, the research director of good jobs first. we will look at how much corporations receive in federal subsidies and tax credits. it is your money. that is coming up next here on "washington journal. -- "washington journal." ♪ >> tonight on the communicators, author vincent mosco on the development of cloud storage and begin to and how the government is using it. vincent: the national security agency is building one of the world's largest cloud data centers in a secure mountain facility in utah. it is doing so because it surveillance needs require that degree of storage and security. the u.s. government's chief information officer three or four years ago ordered u.s. government agencies to move to the cloud. and as a result, even civilian agencies are turning to cloud services. >> tonight at 8:00 eastern on the committee caters on c-span2. -- the communicators on c-span2. >> is not this week, conversations with members of congress. correct my mom was crying -- >> my mom was crying and my dad was proud. my dad was 82 years old. he usually walks with a cane and he showed up and did not have his. and i said, dad, do i need to send someone to the hotel to get your cane? and he straightened up and said, i'm in the capital. i'm walking tall today. >> five newest members of congress talk about their careers and personal life and share insight on how things work on capitol hill. join us for all five conversations each night at 9:00 p.m. eastern on c-span. >> "washington journal" continues. host: every month here on washington journal we hold a segment called your money. we look at how your taxpayer money is spent. joining us for the last 45 minutes on washington journal is philip mattera. he is the research director for a group called good jobs first with a new report tracking corporations, how corporations get taxpayer subsidies and tax breaks across the country. mr. mattera, tell us about your organization. what is behind is? guest: we are a non-profit nonpartisan research center that traditionally works on state and local economic development policy. and we created a database called subsidy tracker to compile the available information on those subsidies. recently, we extended subsidy tracker to the federal level and now include data on more than 130 federal programs that provide grants allocated tax credit, loans, loan guarantees and bailout assistance corporations. host: what is the dollar figure in how much annually u.s. provides grants, subsidies etc.? guest: i should say our information is only the amount that can be treated to specific -- attributed to specific companies. there are a lot of things in the tax breaks -- there's a lot of the tax goods and the tax break for you cannot tell who is receiving it. we look at those that could be tagged specific companies. and that works out to on the grant side, the grants are what we call advocated -- allocated tax credits. these are grants that are awarded to specific companies. those were got to be about $10 billion per year. and then in loans and loan guarantees, we tally those separately. and those amounts now are about $30 billion a year, but they were much higher after the financial isis -- crisis and the federal reserve rescue programs that were implemented in 2009. host: you title your report "google fans favor corporations: identifying the large companies that dominate federal subsidies." i want to look at the chart here. the number one on this list is called a virtual of --iberdro la. guest: we were very surprised that a spanish energy company ended up on the very top of the list with $2.2 billion. and that is the cost of a specific program that came out of the recovery act that allowed companies installing renewable energy equipment to receive cash grants. and iberdrola has purchased a lot of windfarms in the u.s. who have qualified for these payments and ended up at the very top. host: i want to look at another chart. this one is looking at the companies with $500 million or more. and this is a look at parent companies with $100 billion or more. these are the face value of loans, loan guarantees, bailouts, and assistance. these are all banks, the top 15 or so. guest: the federal reserve programs were even larger than tarp. host: what are those programs? guest: these are programs like the term auction facility, not very well-known programs. in 2009 or 2010, the federal reserve pumped massive amounts of money into the banking system to buy up toxic securities, to increase liquidity, and to prevent the banking system from collapsing. and many of the recipients of those were large u.s. banks, but also large foreign banks because a lot of them had invested heavily in what had become known as toxic securities. host: our guest is philip mattera, the research director of good jobs first. the numbers are on the screen. you mentioned this is the first report that you have done on federal subsidy, right? guest: right, we done some work on state and local subsidies but federal are a number issue -- another issue. guest: --host: which state gets the biggest awards of subsidies? guest: if you look at cumulative awards, new york state get to be at the very top. mainly because they have given out very large awards to semiconductor companies that have built chip plants in upstate new york. they also gave a very large subsidy award to alcoa in the form of very low-cost energy over many years. all of our subsidy totals are punitive numbers -- cumulative numbers and they are all treated to parent companies. the subsidiary amounts are aggregated to the parents. host: tell us about the data on the federal level, how will that be used? guest: it will be used to inform the very heated debate on some of these programs. we don't take a position on all of these 137 admiral programs as to whether they are good or bad or otherwise -- 137 federal programs as to whether they are good or bad or otherwise. we found that in many cases, these debates were going on without people knowing exactly how much individual companies have received. we took it upon ourselves to compile the available data and make it readily available through this free website subsidy tracker.org -- subsidytracker.org. host: philip mattera is here to tell us how your money is spent. you are welcome to join the conversation. also, if you want to send a tweet. this is cheryl in mid -- mid lothian, democrat line. caller: i was acting going to ask the question about why this is not referred to as corporate welfare, and actually you just said that. that was when my major questions. the other question was, i've always been stymied as to why the middle-class of the u.s. have bought the idea that these corporations need this, and also that this is important for our economy to be able to survive. i'm not quite sure why they have continued to buy this story. thank you very much. guest: corporations spend a lot of money and lobbying to persuade congress and the public that these programs are necessary. they usually justify them in terms of job creation. as you probably know, there is a big debate going on now about the export/import bank, which is one of the programs we have data for in subsidy tracker. the companies that are receiving assistance via this program claimed that it creates or saves thousands and thousands of jobs and that is how they get support. others raise questions about those numbers. i cannot resolve that debate. but in his database, we do make it possible to find out the extent to which individual companies are benefiting from programs. host: let's go to ocean, new york, cliff on the independent line. caller: hello, philip. you have good information there. you know, your numbers are good on how much they get. if you could just, without taking a position, if you could have a correlation between right on a is number of jobs created, that way, people would have a clear idea -- right on the next line is the number of jobs created, that way people would have a clear idea of how much money they get being related to the jobs created. republicans are hanging there had on this idea and it does not work out in reality. you are in it position -- a position to give good information that would allow people like the, just regular people, to make a decision on whether corporate welfare is a good thing for jobs or it isn't a good thing for jobs. thank you. guest: unfortunately, there isn't agreement on the job creation numbers. both sides have their calculations about how many jobs are created or saved by these programs. when it comes to matters like estimating jobs, there are different ways of doing it and you can come to different conclusions. unfortunately, we cannot provide definitive numbers on jobs that are affiliated or associated with these programs. host: your organization is called good jobs first. how do you define good jobs? guest: that name comes from working at the state and local level, where you have made the argument that when corporations receive subsidies, they should be required to provide jobs that are well-paying. the taxpayer should not be subsidizing substandard jobs. the same argument could be made at the federal level. it gets a little more complicated, because mineral -- many of the federal programs are not directly related to job creation. some of them have other purposes, such as all of those bailout programs that were meant to save the banking system, not necessarily jobs. although that would have been an indirect affect of saving the banking system. for a look at the state and local level, we argue for what are called job quality standards. saying that companies that received these subsidies should be required to provide wages of at least a certain amount, to provide health insurance coverage, and so forth. and many state programs do have those provisions built in to them. host: if you had to have a percentage to it, what percentage of companies receive a state subsidy to provide good jobs? guest: guest: it is hard to say. i would say many of the larger companies that receive the subsidies do provide decent wages but some of them do not. this is an ongoing battle at the state level were advocates are pressing for stricter standards on these programs. host: vector calls. here is eureka, california. caller: i was hoping someone on that would answer my question that has been on my mind for many years. i am a retired greyhound driver and during the time i worked there, we joined trailways because they were struggling. there were the only other company that was bigger and able to absorb them. we did. amtrak is constantly federally subsidized. it has set tracks that can only go certain places. greyhound lines can go to every town. they are struggling. i went through so many strikes it hurt me and my other fellow drivers. got divorced and everything. the longest-running we had was four years. i am sure the government doesn't even know it but it my question is why are we constantly federally subsidizing amtrak and doing absolutely nothing for the only intercity bus line that is left? thank you very much and i will take my answer off the air. host: thanks for asking the question. guest: we don't include amtrak in our database because we limit our information to private sector, for-profit entities. there is a program in the database involving some subsidies to intercity besides. it is not the largest program around but intercity buses do receive subsidies as do some other kinds of transportation companies like smaller airlines. it is a company didn't matter -- it is a complicated matter. it is not quite the same debate we are dealing with here which is the use of taxpayer money going to purely private sector entities. host: as you mentioned, plenty of corporate assistance to the transportation department. you listed assistance to small shipyards, capital assistance and training assistance for over the road bus availability high-speed ground transportation next generation and railroad development research and safety grants. all of this is part of a larger look at the many agencies federal programs covered. this is at $68 billion. guest: right. it is mind-boggling how many programs there are. these are not all federal programs. we went through the federal grant programs, and there are probably over 1000 of them. we selected the ones that provided assistance to for-profit companies and provided assistance that benefit the company in some way. there are for-profit companies that do research that benefit the government mainly. we are looking at money that provides a commercial benefit to corporations. host: in terms of transparency, did you get that information? guest: some of it was easy. the information we have here is public information that is online somewhere. some of it is not that difficult to find. for example, the u.s. a a spending website that the federal government available. we got a lot of information from there but a lot of our information comes from very hard to find reports and websites and sources like that. host: here is north carolina, bob you are on. caller: good morning. this whole situation has been a burn under my saddle for a long time. i look at it as a spider web of cooperation between corporations and our government to run our country. when either end fails to keep their agreement or their assumed agreements one friends the other one with some type of damage -- one threatens the other with some type of damage. where the taxpayer goes wrong is while the government and corporations have their own cooperative, wage earners have no cooperative. unions are destroyed almost on a weekly basis. we have no way of bargaining with our government and corporations to win any part of this game. until we organize into cooperatives like they are doing overseas and start controlling part of the web that controls this country, we are going to end up always on the short end of the stick. host: any response to bob? guest: that is an interesting idea, but we are a long way from their. corporations and for-profit operations still dominate the economy. we are trying to do is understand better how they interact with the public sector. host: here is david albuquerque new mexico. caller: i heard corporations have $3 trillion in sales in overseas accounts and that we lose $100 billion a year in taxes. i wondered if that was true. is there a list of the corporations that do this? guest: what we are looking at in this report something different from that. we are looking at the financial assistance that the federal government directly and especially gives corporations in the form of grants and allocated tax credits. these are very limited tax credits where the government chooses who is going to get those benefits. most tax credits are provisions that are written into the internal revenue code that any company can take advantage of if it qualifies. there is no available information on which companies are benefiting from those various provisions. we cannot list all of those. there are other organizations such as citizens for tax justice which estimate the extent to which companies are underpaying their u.s. taxes by looking at their financial statements. that includes estimates of how much they are keeping offshore in unrefrigerated profits -- unrepatriated profits. host: you talking to your report about contractors and headline is doubled to bring federal contractors. you write the contractor with the most subsidies is general electric which has received a hundred $36 million in contracts , mostly from energy and defense department's. general atomics as received nearly all of its $615 million in grants from energy. high on the lists are the giant military contractors boeing, united technologies and lockheed martin. the chart next to it, you have the rank of the federal contractor. that means where they are in terms of the contracting dollars overall. this is the amount of their federal loans and guarantees. guest: what we did was look at the list of the largest for-profit federal contractsors. the data on subsidies only tracks for profit. we ruled out nonprofits and government entities. we were surprised to find that many of the companies are the biggest recipients of contracts have also been recipients of grants and other kinds of federal assistance. we felt that raise an interesting question. why are they getting both of these things? we understand why companies get contracts. we thought it was interesting that many of these same companies are then getting grants to subsidize their research. they get money from the federal government to research different systems products and then they turn around and sell those products to the federal government and get a contract. we suggested maybe that was a form of doubled up in. host: here is michael in maryland on our democrats line. caller: why need your help with is understanding the value of your organization with the value that good jobs brings. if you are looking at all this data and you are telling me the grants of these corporations and you can't reconcile that and tell me with these grants the greed of these jobs or give me a range of jobs they created, what is the use of the organization? what value does the organization bring? i ask this with all respect. guest: let us remember we are looking at data involving more than 160,000 subsidy awards. we are not looking at a small number of situations we feel like this database is not meant to answer all the questions about corporate welfare. it is meant to be a tool that allows you to identify which companies are receiving the most if you so choose, you can then do additional research to find out about the job creation results from these different subsidy awards. we are not trying to resolve the issue. we are trying to provide a tool to help in the debate. host: about 20 minutes left in the segment. you can join the conversation. here is a suite with a question for you that here is a tweet with a question for you. why do electric companies need tax credits? guest: there was a decision by congress to include a provision is something called section 1603 in the recovery act that provided these forms of assistance for companies installing renewable energy. as many people know, they recovery act had a lot of different objectives. the main objective was to try to stimulate the economy at a time of serious recession after the financial meltdown. when congress designed the recovery act, they also try to promote various other goals in that spending and one of those goals was to increase the amount of renewable energy capacity in the united states. this particular program the 1603 program, ended up being a very expensive program. some people think that is great because it encouraged a lot more companies to invest in wind farms and solar facilities. other people see it as a boondoggle. the arguments for the program were that the spending have to re-stimulate the economy and it helped move the country away from fossil fuels. host: is a call from pennsylvania from kurt on the independents line. caller: thank you for your work. i believe your work is exposing the face of crony capitalism or fascism as i call it. what we need to do is change the tax code so we no longer subsidize almost anything. if we had a flat tax with a standard reduction of $50,000 for every taxpayer and maybe a flat tax for health care and social security and let everything else be settled out in your own decision-making. this obviously is welfare for the richest among us. twice the welfare goes to what the people than to poor people. i think you are doing a great job of promoting a work and god bless c-span for their efforts here. guest: thank you. what you are saying suggests that is a cross ideological approach to this issue. we found that this report has received a lot of attention and support from people across the spectrum. there is both a liberal and conservative and libertarian critique of many of these programs. we are not trying to pass judgment on all these programs but we find that people of many different ideological stripes are interested in this information to pursue their own critiques of these practices. host: kelly is calling from oregon, a democratic caller. caller: good morning. i think corporations need to lose personhood status. i think that would solve a lot of problems. the corporate regime is driven by profit and might we say greed because the guy making $40 million a year, or that is not enough. the consumer is the one that suffers. the same thing every time i buy a product the indention on a bottle of wine, i could almost of my head of their. that is a way they are cheating us by giving us less product. it has to stop. it just has to stop. it is out of control. even if people in their own lives realize how harmful the products they are putting out our, they have a duty to the corporation to just continue those profits. host: as your report look in terms of how much of the subsidies go to an executive in a company? guest: in theory, the money that is going to these corporations could end up as a part of the executive pay packages. there is no direct financial assistance to corporate executives. this is assistance to the company as a whole to use as it sees fit. many of these are grants to do specific things. they are not just money that the company can do anything it wants with. that is particularly true with the grants. host: some of the recordings, the headline here is boeing energy, banks rick big subsidies. donald lambro writes it is in drawing from page coverage, but the republican budget cutting battle deserves our attention and support. does your report addressed to export import bank at all? guest: would talk about the fact that has been around for a while. has been around since the 1930's. there have been attempts abolish the export import bank for a while and that has been unsuccessful because there is a divide between the large companies who argue it does help in job creation and certainly promoting exports and those who argue it is just a boondoggle that debate is ongoing. we feel like we shed light on which companies are benefiting the most from the program. host: next up is william from alabama. caller: i have a question from the gentleman -- for the gentleman. is there ever a cutoff date for the subsidies? i know exxon mobil was reporting they made the biggest profit in history back when oil was about $100 a barrel. they are still getting subsidies. is there ever a cutoff date? guest: what goes under the name of subsidies includes lots of different in things. some of them are provisions in the tax code that seemed to last forever. our focus on this report is on which of the subsidies can be attributed to specific companies therefore we have a lot more in the way of grant information than we do tax credit information. most of the tax credits are things that you cannot pin on individual companies. that are provisions in the tax code that companies make use of in some of these provisions have been around for decades. host: he said this was the first time your organization did a report on federal corporate giving corporate subsidies. you had to spend this will be an annual report? guest: we intend to keep the database currents by adding new information and if we can find additional programs to add. all of our data goes back to fiscal year 2000. we basically have about 15 years of data. if people interested in historical data, we felt like the past 15 years was a good period of time to cover. it is also the time covered by u.s. spending by the website. we will go on analyzing this and we are interested in doing mash ups of this data with other data. for example, comparing the biggest recipients of subsidies to the big campaign contributors or the company spending the most on lobbying. or even looking at things like regulatory compliance. are there companies that are getting is the subsidies that faculty violate regulatory rules? there is no end to the number of issues that can be addressed. we will do some of them and we encourage other people to use our data to perform similar analysis. host: a question from gina on twitter who asks don't cities and states have to recoup revenue they give away incentives to corporation by taxing homeowners? guest: there is no direct connection between those two things. cities and states hope that by giving subsidies to corporations, they are going to encourage more job creation and that those people holding those jobs will pay local taxes including property taxes, that will make up for subsidies. sometimes that happens oftentimes it doesn't. host: let us hear from rockwall, texas. this is david. are you there? ok, we will go to mike in texarkana, arkansas. go-ahead. caller: we have one post office by the way. i am a disabled veteran and it turns my stomach what has happened to this country. you have no republican callers and i wonder why. this week's volumes -- this speaks volumes. the senator from arkansas -- he is embarrassing to the state. why i am calling is this cutting tax breaks for college interest rates, then they turn around and give subsidies. the subsidies are not funded. they are borrowed money. ge, i forget the chart that showed millions of dollars in subsidies. they they zero taxes but they reap the benefits of people like me that fought for them to keep them safe to do this but they don't pay any taxes to help the military. there is something wrong with the picture. host: a couple of good points there. guest: many people have pointed out this inconsistency between what companies are receiving and what they are paying our contributing to the cost of running the company. the debate on this issue really took off during the clinton administration when secretary robert rice pointed out what he thought was the unfairness of proposals to cut aid to the poor at the same time the companies were receiving a lot of these forms of assistance from the government. it was then that the debate on corporate welfare took off. there was what was known as a strange bedfellows coalition that arose. people like ralph nader were on one side and john kasich who was the head of the house budget committee on the other. he is now the governor of ohio. they got together to try to find common ground on eliminating some of these programs. in the end, they didn't have much success because as much criticism as there is, they also have supporters. often deep-pocketed supporters who manage to keep them alive. host: supporters in terms of senators and congressmen. guest: and corporations. host: our caller from arkansas mentioned general electric. here are the figures. in terms of the top 100 federal contractors with the most federal subsidies, there is the rank of general electric. they get a hundred $36 million -- they get $836 million. boeing is at the top most because of the export import bank. our caller mentioned these are unfunded. is that true? guest: not entirely. and live the grants are funded because they are appropriated money. the loans and loan guarantees are concentrated, especially the ones awarded by the federal reserve bank. host: because it would be paid back? guest: because it was not appropriated and they were payback paid back. we don't tally the grants and bailout money together because the loans and bailout money were paid back in the amounts that are available are the principal amounts. if someone gets $1 billion in loan and repays the billion dollars, you are saying they got a billion-dollar subsidy so we thought it was better to keep to number separate. host: next caller is from ohio. good morning to debbie. caller: hello and thank you for taking my call. i was wondering if the gentleman would address the budgeting process our country adopted back in 1965. it was called the planning programming budgeting system, ppbs. i have been reading about this on a website. this is goal-based planning. i have been studying the education budget and they go into these multi-your projections -- multi-year projections were however much is needed to carry out the provisions of the act -- host: we will get a response. guest: that is beyond the scope of our report. i don't think i have anything to add to that. host: there is clarksville, georgia, the republican line. go ahead. you're on the air. caller: thank you for letting me speak. the gentleman yacht talked about general electric and the best of my memory serves me the dates back to president obama. is that not correct? guest: i don't recall. host: he doesn't know either. caller: to my knowledge, i am pretty sure that is who he backed. i thank you for listening to me. host: let us hear from springfield, massachusetts. kurt also on the independents line. caller: my question comes a little more common sense i guess. people on that side seem to say these welfare -- this corporate welfare helps create jobs. my question is with employment down and wage growth down, how do you equate the two statements? if it was true, we wouldn't have the economy we have now. thank you for taking my question. guest: as i said before, this is not an easy question to result. -- to resolve. it is not so much that these programs create new jobs but they protect existing jobs. that is even more difficult to prove or disprove. host: you mentioned your figures go back to 2000. historically, where do things right in terms -- rates in terms of grant loans or whatever in terms of looking back 10 years. is it more now than it was in terms of the percentage of the gdp or the federal budget actually? guest: there was a big spike in these programs after the financial crisis. a number of these programs that we look at were related to the recovery act. a number of them worry later -- a lot of them were related to the federal reserve programs that were lesser-known. they will continue to go on as long as they have the amount of support they did. host: have you been asked or do a spec to be asked by congressional committees to testify on your findings? guest: i have not been asked and i am not sure we are the best people to testify about the programs themselves. we are not experts in the programs. we are basically researchers who have collected data that we hope others will use who are experts in these various programs to do more detailed assessments of how effective the programs are. are they creating the jobs? are they decent jobs? without like we wanted to put the data together which we have done at subsidytracker.org so people can make more informed decisions. host: philip mattera is the research director for good jobs first. thanks for talking about the report. that will do it for this morning's "washington journal" and we look forward to seeing you here tomorrow morning. have a great monday. >> this afternoon, we will be live with a discussion on battery technology steve levine. he is the author of the powerhouse inside the innovation of the battery to save the world and is expected to talk about the technical challenges of next-generation energy stored and what it could mean for the renewable energy sector. live coverage of that starting at 12:30 a.m. eastern. at six :00 eastern, we will discuss finance and helping entrepreneurs around the world.

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