order your copy today. >> "washington journal" continues. host: we are back and we will spend the next hour talking about the 60th anniversary of lbj's war on poverty. joining us for that conversation this morning is the president and executive director at the center for law and social policy and the social mobility director of the center of opportunity at the american enterprise institute, thank you both for being here. i want to begin with when this came about for lyndon johnson during his presidency. it was his january, 1964 state of the union address when he first declared this war on poverty in america. i want to show that for our

viewers and come back and that will launch the conversation this morning about that. [video clip] >> very often, the lack of jobs and money is not the cause of poverty but the symptom. the cause may light deeper in our failure to give our fellow citizens a fair chance to develop their own capacities. a lack of education and training and a lack of medical care and housing and a lack of decent communities in which to live and bring up their children area whatever the cause, our joint federal and local efforts must pursue poverty, pursue it wherever it exists from city slums in small towns, sharecropper shacks or in migrant worker k -- camps. on indian reservations, among

whites as well as knee grows. among the young as well as the aged, in the boom towns and the depressed areas. our aim is not only to relieve the symptom of poverty but to cure it and above all [applause] [applause] to prevent it. host: lyndon in 1964. what led to this moment and why is it important? guest: thanks for having me on. lyndon johnson was following in the footsteps of others, robert kennedy, john kennedy, when you think about that level of national political leadership. lyndon johnson knew some of this personally from his own experiences in texas. he knew that the country was being driven apart multiple ways , some of that was related to

racial segregation and more, related to the incredible disparities but also economically. it was a real risk that some of the economic progress that had been made since the end of world war ii might not be sustained at least not equally sustained. this moment is so important because here you have an unusual moment where he president proposes something bold with the wherewithal and willpower and passion, the belief that this is something, even if we didn't have all the answers that we could take on as a country and that it would be good for all of us. host: what do you make of this moment in time and what is happening in america at this time? guest: in 1964, it was the middle of an economic boom, the likes of which we haven't seen since. it would wind down within a few

years partly because of the attempts to expand the war on poverty at the same time president johnson expanded the conflict in vietnam. by the end of the 1960's, this dream of growth will lift everybody to new heights that we've not seen before, that sort of goes away within a few years but in 1964, it was the apogee of optimism about what the country can a compass together. we don't have big deficits, those are decades away so there's not a lot of concern about that. democrats had strong control in the congress. that would get even stronger with the election of 1964 and barry goldwater getting badly beaten by johnson. it was a time where there was a lot of experimentation and a lot of believe that there were no limits to what the federal

government could do. host: what we are marking coming up is the 60th anniversary of lbj's great society speech at the university of michigan. what was it about this speech? guest: the great society and the war on poverty, there was a lot happening at the same time that overlap. i think the great society ends up being even more ambitious than the war on poverty. the war on poverty as part of it but part of it is expanding civil rights agendas that president johnson was able to get through congress. you have a lot of programs around community involvement and boosting political power of local communities. you have things like headstart and other programs that aren't necessarily about reducing property -- poverty but expanding opportunities. that in some ways is an expansion of this original idea

of lifting more people out of poverty. guest: when president johnson is giving this speech of the university of michigan, he's trying to inspire the country and inspire future generations and talk about what's possible. it was an older society approach, it wasn't just all about government. one of the things president johnson and his administration did was to promote the development of new private institutions that would help guide and valuate the progress. he was essentially saying poverty is an injustice. our racial disparities are in the justice and he talked a lot about protecting the environment and you can see how relevant all these issues are today. he said we need to come together as a country and this will help us build a stronger country and it will help us when we come together that we solve these problems and we will grow

together. there were a number of shortcomings but by and large, that speech really outlines this vision of how we can tackle some of our greatest problems together with a few initial ideas but no certainty about all of the answers. host: this wednesday march the 60th anniversary of that speech. here is an audio expert -- excerpt of it. [video clip] >> in your time, we have the opportunity to move not only towards a richer society and a powerful society but upward to the great society. the great society rests on abundance and liberty for all. it demands an end to poverty and racial injustice. to which we are totally committed in our time. [applause] host: president lyndon johnson talking about the great society and marking the 60th anniversary

of that speech this wednesday. out of that came the war on poverty and that is our discussion this morning. some key legislation during that time, social security amendments of 1965 created medicare and medicaid and expanded social security benefits. the foostamp act of 1964, the onomic opportunity act of 1964, that was job corps, the federal work-study program and a number of other initiatives and then you have elementary and secondary education act subsidizing school districts with a large share of impoverished students. what came out of this legislation? guest: in many ways, but this agenda was focused on was health coverage and human capital for lack of a better term, helping people develop educational knowledge, skills and talents,

preparing them for the labor force. there was some on income support but generally to have people have a basic income which the biden administration wanted to have a guaranteed income but then decided against it. we really made progress later on a bipartisan as bases under nixon, ford and under president george w. bush and others where we said this is a big gap. what came about from this time was pretty remarkable. these are durable programs. medicaid not only reduces poverty by most measures that account for health coverage but it reduces people's interactions with the criminal justice system which is really important in an age of mass incarceration which is another thing the president didn't foresee but we went down that path. what didn't come about was a

balancing of the economy. similarly, as scott said, there is a sense of a rising tide would lift all boats. that was sort of true when you look back to when president kennedy first use that metaphor about stuff happening in part of that is because there was a massive decline in unionization. the economy is not producing the gauge it once did in an even way. it did produce gains but not for folks at the bottom. that made it more and more necessary if we didn't change out the economy was producing wages and earnings for groot, more was necessary to have in public benefits and support. we have durable programs like headstart that have shown to have positive long-term effects in many studies and sometimes these programs even pay for themselves which is pretty remarkable. at the same time, there were a

number of trends and shifts happening that were not well addressed by the agenda at the time. host: what are your thoughts on the legislation and the impact today? guest: it's a mixed bag. medicare and medicaid were huge advances in terms of providing health insurance to a large segment of the population that lacked it. the war on poverty most immediate help most americans. there was a dramatic decline in property among the elderly. there were improvements in health and we can get into what the official measures of poverty says but the elderly were certainly helped by the security expansions and medicare. health insurance for non-elderly family through medicaid was also very important. i think there were other aspects

of the great society and the war on poverty that were less successful. some of the expansions and liberalization of the aid to families with dependent children program which is the main cash welfare program was in existence at the time. they were probably counterproductive in terms of expanding the opportunity johnson wanted to see. johnson was clear whenever he talked about poverty that the goal was not to lift people above an arbitrary line just by giving them transfers, he wanted people to become more self-sufficient, he didn't want them -- he would say dependent on the dole. by that criteria, the legacy of the war on poverty is more mixed . for a long time, the ways in which we expanded these programs ended up being somewhat counterproductive in the 1990's, there is a series of bipartisan reforms we can talk about but it set things up a little bit more balance. a lot of the programs he created

would mean -- remained with us today. we need to have some of these programs and if we don't like them, we should find replacements for them rather than discarding them. we want to hear from all of you. if you live in the eastern or central part of the country, dial in at (202) 748-8000. mountain/pacific, (202) 748-8001 . you can join us on facebook.com/ c-span and on x at c-span wj or text us at (202) 748-8003. what is needed now where we are today as a society? guest: the united states has built an economy that has among the largest share of low-paid jobs among rich countries.

there is a glut of very low-paying jobs in this country. when scott talks about people being self-sufficient even though i think we all depend on each other in various ways, often we are thinking about people working. turns out lots of people are working and are paid poorly in the united states and that relates to the decline in unionization. we see more of a worker void and need to see more power. or been gains for people who have low income including especially for some communities of color but also for white americans with the lowest incomes. they pale in comparison to the gains at the very top and they also, in my view, they often are dependent on some of these programs and transfers even more than i would like. i would like it to people's jobs were compensated such that they could have a decent standard of

living. johnson was clear that this was about raising living standards across the country, rural or urban, black or white so that's necessary. the other thing that's necessary as a result of these challenges is a basic income floor. we've found it did not do much of anything to discourage work. in fact, because our caregiving infrastructure is not what needs to become a lot of people even use unconditional income like the child tax credit expansion in the american rescue plan act, they use that income to allow them to go to work. i think we mean -- we need more and worker voices and supporting peoples caregiving needs throughout their life. host: how would you answer that question? guest: my analysis would start with what's happening poverty over time. i think the story is impressive,

more than people realize. if you take the official poverty line the government has, by that definition, 1964 when president johnson makes this speech, 19% of the u.s. population is poor. by that official measure today, is between 11-12% so it's gone down quite a bit but it's the growth understatement of how much more we have produced poverty over time. the official measure doesn't include most of the major ways we have tried to attack poverty like income or food stamps or housing benefits, medicare and medicaid. it doesn't count the tax credits so we have better measures of poverty. when you look at those, the improvement is much better. the in numbers i put the most stuck and suggest the poverty rate in 1964 was 19% and today it's 102% of them measure everything the same way.

dramatic inclines in poverty because we expanded the safety net but in large measure, is because of the strength of the american economy. the increases in income before recount transfers has been a big part of it as well. a big part of has been the changes we made in the 1990's which were reforms to the safety net that encouraged work through welfare reform. from there, if you look at intergenerational mobility, if you start the bottom as a kid, can you escape the bottom when you are an adult? we packed -- we made practically no progress in 60 years by that metric. that suggest the things we need to do it to increase upper mobility out of poverty over generations are different than the things we would want to do just reduce point in time poverty rate. there is a different agenda there in terms of getting

disadvantaged kids ready for school. there has to be recognition of the importance of place and the disadvantages of concentrated poverty and i would say the two-parent family is really broken down over this time. that's been harmful for kids in upward mobility. it's a safety net we had in the 1960's and 70's and 80's and that's to blame for that. thinking how we can reform the programs we have that reduces poverty but does it in a way that is not going to limit upward mobility. host: what do you make of the upward mobility argument and focusing on education and other areas? guest: a major focus of the great society and the war on poverty was education. one thing we found as these investments in early childhood especially when complemented by the source of elementary school investments in secondary school investments. we saw that increase people's

chances of moving out of poverty as adults. the kids were exposed to these programs, even programs like a bipartisan food stamp act, they have better health outcomes. people were in the early years of life exposed to medicaid are more likely to graduate from high school. these programs essentially ensure the basic foundation we all know that everyone one of his needs to access this opportunity and be able to thrive. i think we have a lot to build on a lot of these programs didn't go far enough. they absolutely acknowledge people and place and if you listen to the rest of the president's speech, he talks even more about rural areas, tribal reservations and talks more about the cities and the specific strategies that are needed and he acknowledges poverty everywhere and some of this has to do with place. we've learned a lot about that. i think we have to -- we have

done very little to ensure access to affordable housing for people in this country since then and it's among the greatest challenges that we are facing. housing is so important to influence people's access to opportunities, transportation, education, jobs and yet in this country, housing has become quite unaffordable for many millions of people. that's an area where i would love to see us tackle head-on. host: let's get to our viewers. we are marking the 60 anniversary of lyndon johnson's great society speech. the anniversary is this wednesday, may 22. he gave a speech at the university of michigan. kentucky is up first. caller: thank you very kindly. i believe that we've been privatizing public-sector sector functions for decades.

even after the rhetoric about growing government, the private sector has been taking over the public sector with a motive. the social safety act, there is wide range of income where you cannot make it up my to get by but a claim you get too much money to get help. also, the thing about dependency is it people have the necessary conditions like food or bed to sleep in or something, then they will have what they need to acquire the conditions. without that, you have to starve in the streets. the last thing i will say is if you look at poor lower income districts in our communities, they don't get the proper public sector functions. you look. at

the well off areas and to get the best of everything. if everyone was -- elected at the large instead of districts, i will listen to your answer. guest: that's a lot. i maybe will take the first point about privatization. i'm not entirely sure what the caller was referring to. i would call myself liking to leverage the strength of markets more so than we do. when you think of privatization, you can think of the private sector providing benefits without any public subsidy and obviously that doesn't always work out for low income americans. if we had a private educational system, you have growth in a

quality education. you would also have people who could not afford any education. also when you have public education system that is more less a monopoly of the government, that takes away a lot of the incentive to innovate it takes a lot of incentive away from putting kids priorities first. in a place like that, conservatives say we need to give kids more options to get their education from people other than the sort of monopoly public provider. that is why conservatives tend to like charter schools which organizes like a public school but does not have a lot of the constraints. if you talk about -- i think the

experiment with public housing which is less of a johnson initiative, more predating johnson, the big public housing projects that still stand today, but a lot of it was torn down in the 1990's. those have some serious problems in terms of crime, violence and safety that were not helping residents. conservatives say why not give people housing vouchers instead? give it to any landlord that would accept it. the push moving forward needs to be more of a combination of the public sector and private sector then was the case in the 1960's. guest: i will start with the privatization question as well. briefly, as anne kim documented in her new book, we have multiple examples of corporations not introducing

efficiencies. in fact, introducing inefficiencies. lobbying for them. for example, tax prep filing assistance where the government can provide the same service and would not lobby to add paperwork in the way we see the private sector do this. that is a real challenge and one we need to take on. secondly, you make an important point about the fact that very often, people are struggling and not qualify for some of these benefits. they are just a little too well-off. i think many of our programs are overly targeted in some cases and we should think hard about the fact we have so many people in this country who work even full-time year-round and cannot make ends meet, and are sometimes even technically below the poverty line. we do need to think about what we can do to support people even

as incomes rise because it is still quite a challenge to make ends meet in this country well into the working-class and middle-class. i will also just note that the conditions that you described, the necessary conditions for people to then achieve a more sufficient lifestyle are exactly the sorts of things we are talking about here. whether it is health care, income, even basic education, those are the conditions that will allow -- the research allows people to thrive, especially when they have some of them as children and then become adults. finally, we get back to this question of place. some of the core areas in this country do have a much poorer public services. that could include education, infrastructure, and we've also created some historical harms. building highways, because of

race, right their neighborhoods that would cut them off through some of the opportunities they would have had. we have a lot more to do, but the federal government clearly plays a role in helping support some of the communities in this country of all races -- rural, urban, throughout the nation -- in ensuring they have some of the basic services and infrastructure that will in fact allow the private sector to thrive. host: let's go to ernest in rhode island. caller: thank you for taking the call. the programs have really evolved to help the country. the first is headstart. this is a program that took underprivileged kids, fed them, provided childcare for at least half a day that enabled people to get to work and enable better

nutritional standards. and republicans have been attacking headstart since it started in the 1970's and i cannot understand why. the second issue is medicare medicaid. johnson's goal was for universal health care. he wanted to get everybody universal health insurance and who do you think opposed that? it was the republicans, and most prolifically, the american medical association. that is how it became compromised -- the reason why medicare, because seniors were losing their homes to hospitals. but could not afford the hospital bills. they instituted medicare for people over 65 and had a compromise. ok, we are going to have a health care plan called medicaid for the lowest of our people in poverty. host: i will jump in at that

point and kick off the conversation. guest: let's start with headstart. when it was first introduced, it seemed to have a lot of positive long-term effects for the kids. as they become adults, they graduate from high school, college, they do better in the labor market. one of the successes of headstart and other such programs is we started creating other options for families, too. today, families have a lot more options. not enough. a lot of families go without needed childcare and women in particular provided billions of dollars of unpaid care every year, but we have improved the conditions for folks that are not participating in headstart who are otherwise low income. even parenting practices have improved. headstart has done a lot of good

if you just focus on the kids, never mind the fact that allows parents or caregiver the ability to work. i appreciate the holistic nature often of the programs. some of the programs now will see lots of variation and there are better practices and worst practices. that is something that policymakers are constantly working to learn about and improve. universal health care, it is absolutely right that president johnson wanted universal health care. he was not the first, he was up last president to advocate for that. we have built on the infrastructure of medicare and medicaid through the affordable care act, as well as subsidies and creating health insurance marketplaces. there are still nearly a dozen states that have refused to participate in medicare expansion which would help a lot of folks who often don't have children at home, but are working and not getting

health coverage through their employer. this goes back to the issue of whether we want strong work incentives, whether we don't want to punish people. universal health coverage would be one of the best ways to get rid of any work disincentives and to ensure that people throughout the income spectrum have some basic level of health care. guest: very quickly, i think on headstart, i would probably respectfully disagree with indi. there are studies out there that are nonexperimental that have found some longer-term effects of headstart. by not care mental, -- by nonexperimental, they differ in many different ways. you try to adjust for those differences and you look at headstart helped the ones that got it. it is hard to do those kinds of studies and control for the different things that might better.

the gold standard for research is to do a randomized controlled experiment. where you give some people headstart and you withhold it from other people. that has actually been done and what has been found over time is that the gains in terms of test scores fade out over time, by the time kids are in third grade, the kids who got headstart don't look any better than the kids who didn't. there's a lot of questions about what headstart is trying to do. is headstart trying to raise test scores? i think it should, but there are a lot of disagreements about what it is. ernest about the opposition to medicare/medicaid. medicaid was thrown in as almost a poison pill. they were trying to throw it wart medicare from

getting passed. there's always been a fair amount of opposition to these programs. it gets back to the story about the appropriate role of markets and the federal government. i would argue we ought to cover more people by leveraging markets more than we do. i think if you imagine we have federally required car insurance, for instance, that required everyone be covered for paying jobs and rims for their tires come a lot people would be getting pink jobs and rims further tires and that would escalate the costs for every thing related to cars. in some ways, we have done that for health care. we subsidized for people, rather than supporting catastrophic costs. i think we ought to be focused more narrowly on that. host: let's go to greg in

springfield, virginia. caller: hi. neither of these guys have said much about human behavior, about choices that people make. the black community, for instance, in the 1930's have less crime even though jim crow was terrible. effect is you can -- the fact is you cannot just focus on outcomes. the problem there is too complicated, more involved than just saying we will declare war on poverty. host: scott? guest: i think the 1960's, crime expanded a lot, for sure. that was also a period where there was a lot of overcrowding in neighborhoods. there was more poverty than there is now.

there were a lot of civil rights issues, a lot of it having to do with police forces. all the major urban riots were triggered by conflicts with police, for instance. i agree with the caller that choices are important. i also think that people generally make good choices for the most part. i think it is easy to focus on the folks were abusing the system, but black poverty and black child poverty are at an all-time low today. i think it is hard for a lot of people to believe, but both are way down over time. what is and down is this massive gap -- is not down is this massive gap we have in economic mobility between blacks and whites. it is a complicated issue. the differences in family structure are implicated there, but these choices don't come in a vacuum. these were people whose

ancestors were in an institution that were trying to destroy the black family. these are people whose grandparents were far poorer than any of us could imagine and far poorer than the grandparents of comparable white children at the time. these are folks whose children are raised in the kind of concentrated poverty that most white kids do not see. if you are up in those circumstances, what kind of choices will you be led to if you don't have role models for upward mobility in your immediate experience? i do think that choice and responsibility are very important. i think our policies cannot undermine that at all, which is why i favor more safety net reforms that require work requirements and time limits, but i think it is a danger to just look at differences between groups and say it just reflects cultural decisions or choices. host: indi?

guest: we definitely agree. i want to emphasize that we have seen rising employment rates in the black community, other communities that have been marginalized and excluded. we have also seen policymakers make choices. when we talk about behavior and choices, we need to hold policymakers accountable. they have made choices decriminalize and incarcerate at levels unseen in other democracies and targeting specifically the black community. so, even when scott mentioned family structure and parenting, first of all, the rise of single mothers in the u.s. is pretty much on par with what you see in other wealthy countries. here, we punish single mothers more. we have withdrawn support in ways you don't see another countries. being a single mother here is more of a challenge that it is another countries because of the choices policymakers have made.

black fathers spend more time with their children than almost any group of fathers. but when you separate families and destroy families, where we replace slavery, we had jim crow, segregation, but we still have a lot of those legacies persisting with incarceration and arrests and the jail time and prison time. there are racial disparities with the drugs that are targeted, the way that communities are surveilled in black communities, you have a much higher chance of interacting with the child protective services system even if your circumstances are pretty much identical to a white community. that means it is much more likely your family gets torn apart. people are making decisions and operating in a system, in structures, with institutions

that are not in the first place treating them with equal concern and respect. we have a lot of work to do to transform, reform, in some cases replace these systems, but like scott, i think people are making a lot of rational decisions and we have a lot we can do to help them make the decisions that are best for their families. host: let's get to walter in mississippi. caller: how are you doing? host: go ahead with your question or comment. caller: i think this great society deal was just another way to move us closer to socialism. that it's all it has done. these people know it. i don't understand why they are sitting up there talking about -- that don't mean too much to people that really know what's going on. host: just a reminder for you and others, you have to mute the television. the great society and the war on

poverty indeed was socialism, the underlying theory? guest: it was very explicitly about the whole of society approach, including the private sector, to tackle a national problem. in fact, it turns out there are things government does much better than the private sector. health insurance is one of them. you can spread out risk in ways that the private sector can't. it does not have the same incentive to deny people's claims for needed health care. we saw that in the pandemic, the government stepped in, worked with the private sector but helped ensure the development of vaccines. it helped of the actual implementation of a strategy to get people vaccines to save lives. programs like the child tax credit, whatever you want to label it, where you give families a basic income because they are raising children, what we do know is they pay for themselves many times over for the rest of us.

it is a good thing for all of us if we can ensure that everyone has a chance to develop and flourish. in my view, if the answer sometimes is government, so be it. if the answer is sometimes the government supporting the private sector, so be it. the great society was fundamentally about a whole of society approach. host: how would you answer that question? guest: i'm inclined to agree with walter than indi. i don't think i would call it socialism but i would say that great society and progressivism to this day is probably much more comfortable with a stronger public role than a private role. i think that extends to things like a guaranteed income, for instance, where as indi said, president johnson's aides wanted to implement a universal basic income program.

the compromise was a randomized experiment, sort of like what i mentioned before. during the 1970's, that was intended to test this idea. if you give people a guaranteed income but does not require work, is that going to be good for their outcome ? will it provide more work? if you give people income and phase it out less quickly, that ought to promote work. instead, what the sermon found is it discouraged work -- what the experiment found is it discouraged work. the experiment was shut down prematurely. i think that is a lot of the concern conservatives have today with something like the universal basic income. or an expanded child allowance. is that the unintended consequences that are stemming from good intentions will

actually end up doing harm than help. guest: i strongly agree that they shut down the program prematurely, for different reasons. it turns out that the kids and families where we get basic income generally did better because of the basic income more than any changes in work. it is not that work doesn't matter, it is that income does matter. when you reduce the stress of a household to afford clothing, food, utilities, you are creating a much more nurturing environment for kids to raise their kids. it did shut down the program prematurely. we have learned since then that these guaranteed income programs, which is what i am focused on rather than universal basic income, does have these long-term positive effects for children in particular. host: we will get one more call from mapleton, illinois. good morning. caller: i wanted to address the charter school comment that mr.

winship talked about. first, i want to say i was a soldier, enlisted, not drafted. i also became a police officer after that so i can talk to all day about law enforcement. mr. winship speaks in the abstract, talk about solutions on paper. he does not talk about real life issues. the reality is in schools have always been separated even since the 1954 brown decision. we went to catholic school, all of us. uniformed sisters taught us standing skills on how to read and write, so that is how we are able to understand how things work. we were a prosperous mexican family. if you want to talk about vouchers, why don't you can find them? you are throwing minorities and poor people debate as to why they should be given vouchers. why don't we start a pilot

program and don't give it to anyone else but them? that way we can see if it works and see if they can advance just like we did, my family. what do you think of that? guest: it is probably unconstitutional to do a pilot by race. i do think we should be doing a lot more experimentation. if you want concrete things rather than abstract things, i would take headstart's budget and convert the program into a voucher program. give low income families a fixed amount of money. i would say you can take this to any provider that has been licensed to accept it. if that means for your kid going to a religious institution, great. if that means getting tutoring for your kid, that is great too. if you want music lessons for your kid -- it would let parents have more choice in the way that

they invest in their kids, as opposed to having a one-size-fits-all solution that research has shown does not have long-term effects. so, i favor a lot of experimentation. in particular, to help low income african-american kids because they have a level of disadvantage, as i mentioned, that is really unknown in the white community. i will give you an example since you are looking for specifics. if you look at the percentage of black kids who grow up in neighborhoods that over the course of their childhood are 30% poor or more -- 20% poor or higher, then ends up being two thirds of black kids and it ends up being about 5% of white kids. that is the kind of disadvantage kids are starting out with that i think we need to attack and i don't think the solution is more

of a public role, universal pre-k for instance. it will help a lot more people that don't need the help and it will be expensive because of that. we need to target these things with the communities of the most need. guest: i think it is important to ask ourselves how much more do we want to separate, segregate, stigmatize people? schooling is a great example where we potentially have a lot of benefits by bringing people together to public schooling. it could be sometimes through public charter school, but nevertheless, when we think about strengthening our democracy, when we think about people being willing to and not feeling shame for their circumstances, that the kids need, in many cases, the right answer is actually bring people together rather than split them apart. i think there's a real role for public education in addressing poverty and strengthening our democracy. part of that is going to be a

federal role because right now, we have localized so much of it and based it on property taxes that by a large, people can segregate by income, race, and we have a highly unequal system of education, whether public, private or mixed that is not either doing enough to address poverty or to strengthen our democracy. host: indi, president and executive director at the center for law and social policy. scott winship with the american enterprise institute. thank you both for the conversation. we appreciate it. guest: thank you. host: we are going to take a short break. when we come back, open forum. any public policy or political issue on your mind. there are the lines. start dialing in. we will be right back. ♪ >> >> this week on the c-span networks, the house and senate

are in session. the house will take up legislation clarifying the securities and exchange commission and the commodity futures trading ability to regulate digital assets and cryptocurrency. the senate will take a procedural revote on a bipartisan border security and immigration bill that was blocked earlier this year. secretary of state antony blinken will testify before two congressional committees to discuss his department's proposed 2025 budget and the state of american democracy and global instability. on tuesday, before the senate foreign relations committee, and then on wednesday before the house foreign affairs committee. on thursday, northwestern university president michael shill and the ucla chancellor and the rutgers university president give an account for the antisemitic protests on their campuses before the house education and workforce committee. and beginning friday, live coverage of the three-day libertarian party convention. friday's speakers include 2024 independent presidential candidate, robert f. nnedy jr.. saturday's speakers include

former president donald trump. watch this week live on the c-span networks, or on c-span now. or head to cspan.org for scheduling information or watch live or on demand any time. c-span, your unfiltered view of government. >> friday night, watch c-span's 2024 campaign trail, a weekly roundup of c-span's campaign coverage, providing a one-stop shop to discover what the candidates across the country are saying to voters. along with firsthand accounts from political reporters, updated poll numbers, fundraising data, and campaign ads. watch c-span's 2024 campaign trail, friday nights at 7:30 p.m. eastern on c-span, online at cspan.org, or download as a podcast on c-span now, our free mobile app or wherever you get your podcasts. c-span, your unfiltered view of politics.

>> "washington journal" continues. we are back in open m for our remaining time this morning. the hush money trial in new york for the former president was expected to end this week. however, news this morning out of new york is that the judge says closing arguments in the hush money trial will be next week. from "the washington post," it said the judge says testimony will wrap up this weekend closing arguments will be held after the long weekend break for memorial day. "right now, it is looking like we will finish everything this week so we could have summations first thing tuesday without a break." that is the latest from that trial this morning. richard in minneapolis, republican. hi, richard, what's on your

mind?