find a zero effect. my guess is that if you you were the federal minimum -- the bump the federal minimum up to $10, you'd see some job loss. the congressional budget office said up to 500,000 jobs could be eliminated over three-year period. that's about two months worth of new job creation spread over a three-year period. i'dsorry to see that job loss, but the benefits of the higher minimum wage would benefit anywhere from 16-24 million workers: so, again, there's a trade-off as there often is in economics. i think the number of people benefiting is much, much larger than the number of people losing their jobs. and so i would make that trade. but, again, i would do it cautiously. and the $15 minimum wages in seattle and san francisco i'd be much more reluctant to endorse. >> host: gilbert, arizona, is next. ray on our line for democrats. good morning. >> caller: yes, thank you for taking my call. i've got to say that i really believe that the trade agreements is the heart of our economic problems in this country.

i mean, it absolutely does no good to have cheap products when people do not have decent jobs to be able to to buy the products. i think part of the problem is free trade versus fair trade. in other words, our competitors like in china, they don't have epa requirements and everything that we have to follow here. and i'm curious, tell me, what do you think the impact of trade deficits, you know, with other countries? i mean, we're constantly losing this trade war and also the impact of having h-1b 1 visas with open borders with regards to jobs and open borders in this country in regards to jobs. i think our experience with trade is that it improves the living standards of our competitors and the elite in this country but not, not the common person here:

>> guest: well, ray, i mean, again, i sympathize a little bit with your comments. i do think overall trade remains good for the economy. that's another area where there's been dozens of studies by economists. historically, trade has been a positive thing. it raises our living standards, and as i said, it raises exports as well as imports. thousand, you do raise some reasonable points. we have been running persistent trade deficits for many years now. part of that reflects the overvalued dollar, and so i support efforts trying to level that playing field to headache the trade fairer -- to make the trade fairer. other things in the economy, you know, trade is not the source of most of the problems we've had. and most of the problems we've had do reflect the recession and other things going on, new technologies that make it easier for companies to replace workers, especially workers without a lot of education that to fairly routine kinds of work. so you're lumping a lot of things together and blaming them all on trade.

and i think that's only responsible for a small part. and the other thing you talked about was the h-1b visa. people can debate about immigration and whether less educated immigrants are good or bad for the u.s. economy. i think there's a fair amount of consensus that people with ph.d.s, people with we engineering degrees, that's a good thing for the u.s. economy. it builds more innovation, it creates more start-ups, more new patents and products. all of that is the best thing that can possibly happen for thest economy. now, there's possible reforms in the process that might make that process even better and fairer, but overall immigration has mixed effects, but immigration at the top is mostly a very good thing. and i would be cautious about labeling or lumping all those things together and blaming our current economic problems. >> host: as you said, we have a line for up employed americans, 202-585-3883. pat calling in on that line from cam depp, new jersey.

good morning, pat. >> caller: good morning, everyone. i'm excited to be on. i just wanted to tell you my story. so my story is i am 58 years old, associate's degree in computer science. my industry is health insurance, and since 2005 i've been in and out of employment. so i tried to -- [inaudible] i disagree that community college -- [inaudible] when i was unemployed, i did whatever they told me, so i went to school and took a certification for medical billing and coding. that doesn't get you in the door to do it even though i come from health insurance and have a solid knowledge. i reinvented myself again, and i became a substitute teacher in new jersey. they're crushing the union, and now you go to an agency, and you can work all over jersey. but to make $100 per diem as a

substitute, we have to work in the hardest, toughest cities like camden and trenton, and i've done both. and then the last thing because i have health insurance background, i've been to temp agencies, and i got my license to be an independent insurance agent, and they wanted to pay me, and i took it, and i went an hour from camden, i thanked them for the opportunity because the licensing helped me, but i'm 58, i'm a person of color. it's hard to create leads as an independent insurance agent. i don't even know where to start, you know? in the '80s when i first started working, i worked for a wonderful corporation. prudential. aarp operations. they trained us on how to do the jobs they wanted. >> host: professor holzer, want to let you comment on pat's

transition. >> guest: first of all, i credit pat and people like her. it kind of shows the resilience of americans under difficult circumstances, that every time a job ends or gets in trouble, pat finds another pathway to try to make it. but for about nine years it sounds like pat and people like her have been swimming against the tiled. and interestingly, pat's difficult actually started before the recession really hits, and, again, it reflects the situation that some of the problems are due to recession, longer-term trends that make it easier for american companies to eliminate jobs and replace their workers. so what do we do about that? again, we try to, we try to help those transitions, and it's interesting because we send a lot of people to college in america including community colleges. and sometimes a lot of people drop out and don't finish. then there's people like pat who finish, and pat did everything right. she not only went to community college, she finished her degree

program and got a degree in a field that seemed to be growing, and that's sort of the best advice we try to give people. and even that sometimes isn't enough. the american economy moves very fast, and an area with a strong growth one year can be shedding workers a year or two later. so it's hard. it's hard, and the only thing i can say is that policy has to work harder to help people like pat in the short term, to help them get into college and get those degrees. not just degrees in general, but in the high demand fields. i think we can do more to encourage that. but once she finishes, we need to have more assistance getting her into the job market. if she can't get health insurance through the job, that's why obamacare's important. you know, and for all of the bashing that obamacare gets from the right, really there's very good numbers, probably over ten million americans are newly insured right now. so we help, the government helps subsidize people like pat to get their own insurance on federal

or state exchanges. so that's what we can do. we can help people get the skills we need, help them transition to new jobs. if they're still in low-wage or low-benefit jobs, we can supplement their low earnings, help them get health care and that's the pest we can do to help people -- best we can do to help people in what's going to continue to be a very dynamic economy. and i don't think we can stop firms from eliminating those jobs. technology is a powerful force. each if we wanted to, we couldn't stop firms from doing that if we tried to. they'd probably pack up and and move somewhere else or replace those jobs each faster with machines. it's the world we're going to live in, a very dynamic world with a lot of uneachness, and the best -- unevenness, and the best we can do is try to help workers make the transitions and try to supplement to at least provide the basics we need. >> host: you bring up the affordable care act, a different take from charles koch in a

recent column in the "usa today." charles koch, of course, chairman and ceo of koch industries. he writes in that piece: we should e will imnate the artificial costs of hiring government policies such as obamacare have given businesses a powerful incentive to hire two part-time people to do one full-time job. this trend was reflected in june's unemployment data, he writes, which included the loss of half a million full-time jobs. that number now stands at 7.5 million up 275,000 people in june. [laughter] >> guest: well, mr. koch is not exactly a neutral observer. he and his brother have very, very strong views which they up state. and, again, we're mixing apples and orange toes together. i believe as the economy picks up more steam, employers when they create jobs will be more willing to commit to full-time employment and to the higher

wages and benefits that entails. it's funny that he blames obamacare. the obamacare positions don't even kick in until 2015 and 2016. now, it may be that some businesses are anticipating that can and creating part-time jobs in advance, but i think there's a lot of different reasons for those numbers. if you're going to say we should eliminate obamacare or the employer mandate, as an economist, i was trained to look at the benefits as well as the costs. and i think there are substantial, huge benefits created from obamacare. now, we could have done obamacare without creating a mandate on employers with 50 or more full-time employees, and people have debated that. that's something to keep watching. i will not blame obamacare for all the growth in part-time work. i don't think that's warranted by the facts. and, again, we've got to look at the benefits as well as the costs. i'm hoping that as recovery pucks up steam, more of those involuntary part-time workers will be able to get full-time jobs. >> host: just a few minutes left

with harry holzer, professor at georgetown university. we'll go to mike in oklahoma op our line for independents. good morning, mike. >> caller: good morning, gentlemen. first of all, your speaker's totally out of touch with what's going on in america as far as obamacare. it's evident, certainly down in oklahoma, that employers are hiring people 29 hours per week or less. period. take a look over the last four years the number of total part-time jobs versus full-time jobs created, and i think maybe you'll wake up and figure out what obamacare has done to the labor market. you're just totally out of tune. you sound silly out there. >> host: mike, we talked about some of those numbers, but if you want to respond. >> guest: well, mike, frankly, i think you're overstating your case. it might well be that obamacare is leading some full-time jobs to become part-time jobs. i'm not saying that's a zero effect. what i'm trying to tell you, and

maybe you should be better in touch with the ten million people who are now insured. why is america the only major industrial country in the world with a massive uninsured population? every other industrial country has figured out how to provide insurance to their population. obamacare takes us in a positive direction. now, i understand there might be some costs to that. in the world i live in, there's always costs as well as benefits, and some of the growth for part time doesn't reflect that. i think it does reflect a generally weak job market. if that comets to be the case, as i said, maybe we loosen the employer mandate at some point. but we, again, my sense is that every problem in the health care and in the job market somehow gets attributed to obamacare, and i think that's a little out of touch as well. we have to be honest about the costs and benefits if we could figure out a better way to do it, we can think about that. but americans need to be insured, and we also have to try

to rein in those costs which are burdening everybody, and i think those things should be high on the policy ageneral da. >> host: -- agenda. >> host: michael in kansas city, missouri. good morning. >> caller: good morning. >> host: go ahead, michael? >> caller: how you doing today? >> guest: i'm good. nice the hoe hear from you -- nice to hear from you. >> guest: i'm all right. my thing is the common sense in anything people do, it's just, it's just a shame people don't use which happens. >> host: what do you mean, michael? >> caller: you know, in life. you talk about all these people unemployed and all this, common sense tell you don't shut down the government. just do what you're supposed to do. you know? you've got a ba, degrees and all this stuff, and it's just common sense. >> host: michael asking for more common sense from lawmakers. >> guest: you know, i think common sense as a commodity we do need a little more of.

and, you know, there's one point in michael's comment that i think is correct, we often do stupid things like government shutdowns, like a refusal to think about raising any new tax revenues that shoot us in the foot sometimes. so i think a little more common sense and a little less rabid ideology and partisanship would help us, but common sense isn't going to -- some of these problems really are complex and difficult, and the world is changing very rapidly, and keeping up with those changes and having kind of the right kinds of policies to deal with them, i think, is a big challenge. i think more common sense in this town would certainly help, but thinking carefully about the new policies we need would help as well. >> host: montgomery, alabama, eric on our line for democrats. good morning. >> caller: good morning. how are you doing today? is. >> guest: i'm good, how are you? >> caller: my question is kind of two-parted. for one, i would like to ask does the inability of congress to be able to act on the american people, have that, has that negatively affected our job

market and wage inequality? and do you foresee any actions on raising the minimum wage, tax reform or the new bubble student lope debt? >> guest: -- loan debt? >> guest: you know, eric, i think that the paralysis in the washington right now and especially coming out of some of the very extreme positions taken by a lot of the people in the house of representatives, that clearly hurts the economy. it clearly makes inequality worse because there are some things we could do to make the tax system even more progressive and to help people who need more help. and i think raising the minimum wage modestly -- i wouldn't support huge increases, but modest, gradual increases to the minimum wage, things of that nature, would help. it's hard the get anything done in this town. we have this crisis of children flowing over the border. we have to do something about that, and the paralysis in congress get everybody,

congressional people left on vacation without doing anything sensible on that. so it's hard to be optimistic looking at the current land scape. it's hard to see how we're going to come out of this election with a more functional congress than we have right now, and and that's a big source of concern. and i don't think we're going to go back to one party. i mean, maybe in 2016 if we elect a president and two houses of congress all from the same party and i have other concerns about that happening. there are it's very discouraging, and i just wish there could be a little less ideology ask partisanship in congress and a little more focus on the problems that really do need some action right now. >> host: ending with your 30,000-foot view again, has the u.s. economy learned the lessons of the great recession, or are some old habits starting to slip back in? >> guest: i guess you're talking mostly about the housing market and financial markets where big bubbles developed, and when those bubbles burst, we had a

massive recession. we learned some lessons from that. i think the dodd-frank legislation does some things right to try to correct that problem, prevent new bubbles from occurring. i fear that in some places the legislation may not have been strong enough or there's so much latitude for how those rules get implemented. so right now the banks are required to come up with these plans for how they would be resolved if they're threatened with bankruptcy, we don't have to bail them out again. fdic and the federal reserve recently rejected a lot of their proposals as not going far enough in the right direction. so dodd-frank was a step in the right direction, but a lot of those problems still exist. the problem of banks that are too big to fail that we might still need to bail out, but there's still time to try to correct that. and i hope the federal reserve remains strong and pushes those banks more in the needed direction. >> host: harry holzer with georgetown university, always appreciate you coming by.

>> guest: thank you. >> the pentagon has announced a briefing later today. we'll have that live for you starting at 2:30 p.m. eastern on our companion network, c-span. >> join us later today for more from the american institute of cert tied public accountants and and their conference on accounting and auditing practices. the two-day practice includes a discussion with officials from the office of management and budget expected to talk about key financial management issues and future challenges. that'll be live starting at 2:50 eastern on c-span.

>> we'll continue to monitor congressional tweets, and we'll try to bring more to you throughout the day. >> all week watch booktv in prime time. tonight at 8:30 p.m. eastern and tuesday through friday at 8, booktv features a wide range of topics including foreign policy, law and legal issues, iran, coverage of book fairs and festivals from across the country and the bestsellers from this year. and let us know what you think about the programs you're watching. call us at 202-626-3400 or you can e-mail us at comments@c-span.org. join the c-span conversation. like us on facebook, follow us on twitter.

>> while congress is on break this month, c-span's prime time features a wide range of political views and topics. this week a debate on america's greatness, veterans' health care and detectives from the cdc. we visit the atlanta press club for the future of news, and we take a history tour looking at the civil war. c-span prime time monday through friday at 8 p.m. eastern. and let us know what you think about the programs you're watching. call us at 202-626-3400 or you can e-mail us at comments@c-span.org. join the c-span conversation. like us on facebook, follow us on twitter. >> join us tonight on c-span3 for american history television. at eight, we'll hear advice from the founding fathers' personal letters with author william kristol. an hour later we'll focus on alexander hamilton and the concept of a man's honor. at 9:40 it's lectures in history. tonight's theme is political unrest in the early american republic.

and at 10:30 more lectures in history with a discussion on alcohol use in early america. >> in this next "washington journal" segment, we'll take a look at the status of the disability case processing system. a cuter-based system -- computer or-based system designed to track payments for the social security administration. from today's "washington journal," this is about 45 minutes. >> host: each week in this segment we take a look at how your money is at work in a different federal program. this week we're joined by the steven ole macker of the associated press to take a look at a computer system that after six years and nearly $300 million in development costs still is nowhere near ready. what is this computer system that we're going to be talking about today? >> guest: well, this is a computer system that helps the agency process disability claims. so when a person first applies for disability benefits, they go

to a state agency, and these agencies are affiliated with the social security administration, but they're run by the states, and there are 54 separate agencies across the country. and each one has their own individual computer system. and six years ago the social security administration embarked on this plan to replace all 54 of these computer systems with one massive system that would help them process applications coming into the system and track them as they work their way through the system. >> host: and so on the benefits of what this was supposed to do, were the benefits going to be financial benefits? wait time reductions? what were we supposed to see from this computer system? >> guest: really all of the above. right now there, if you apply for social security benefits, there are long delays at every step of the process, and there are a lot of inefficiencies. so this computer system was supposed to reduce those wait times and increase efficiency, increase the accuracy of judgments whether they're approving benefits or ea

jekylling -- or rejecting them and, hopefully, make the system more efficient. >> host: so six years, nearly $300 million later, it's been described by some members of congress as an i.t. boondoggle, that's their words. why? >> guest: well, because it doesn't work. the agency cannot say when it will work, and the agency cannot say how much it will ultimately cost. >> host: and what went wrong along the way? >> guest: well, so a few months ago the agency hired an outside consulting firm to find that out. they realized they had a rob and they'd spent an awful hot of money on a system that budget working, so they wanted to find out what went wrong and how to the fix it, so they hired mckenzie and cane, and they did an -- and company, and they did an internal report finished in june. essentially, they found a massive technology program with no one in charge, no single person responsible for getting the job done. they found that there were -- they didn't give the contractor enough details throughout the

process on exactly the kind of capabilities that they needed, and there budget enough what they -- there wasn't enough what they call shared risk. meaning the contractor got paid each though the system doesn't work -- even though the system didn't work, and so there weren't enough incentives across the whole project management to insure that this thing would get done. >> host: what are the similarities you've seen between this and the very high profile problems with healthcare.gov during its development and rollout? >> guest: well, the one big difference is they never rolled this out. this system is still in the testing phase. in fact, after six years and almost $300 million, it's never actually been employed. so you're not seeing the results in the public that you did with healthcare.gov. >> host: we're talking with steven from the associated press who's been following this investigation into the sos administration -- into the social security administration's disability i.t. program

investment of about $300 million inics years, and -- in six years, and and it's still not working. if you have questions or comments, republicans call 202-585-3881. democrats, 202-585-3880. independents, 202-585-3882. i used the word "investigation." members of congress are looking into this now. how was congress made aware of this, and how much oversight are they bringing to this? >> guest: well, i'm told that the house oversight committee, the house oversight and government reform committee is looking into this. they found out about this. i'm not sure who tipped them off initially, and they actually got ahold of this report which had not been publicly released at the time. they've requested information from the social security administration on about this contract and about this project, and they are looking into it. >> host: and what has this meant forcare lip colvin who -- carolyn colvin who is going through the process of being

confirmed as the head of the social security administration? >> guest: well, this comes at an awkward time for her because she was just recently nominated by president obama for a full six-year term as social security commissioner. she's right now the acting commissioner. she took over last year when the former commissioner finished his term. now, the social security commissioner serves a six-year term, and so whoever, you know, if she were to be confirmed, she would serve beyond the obama presidency. and so right now she's going through that process. one of the last weeks that congress was in session in july, she had a confirmation hearing. this issue was mentioned but barely talked about, and right now i don't see any big roadblocks to her getting confirmed, but this could raise some issues with other senators as she goes forward. >> host: is this the biggest issue she's going to face? what's on her plate? >> guest: oh, there's a lot on her plate. so this is a big deal. this is almost $300 million.

but when you look at how massive social security really is, you know, i had some numbers, 58 million people get social security benefits. now, most of those are retirement benefits. that's almost one out of five americans. about 11 million get disability benefits. and so, you know, last year social security paid out over $600 billion in retirement benefits and $140 billion in disability benefits. one of the problems with the disability program is that it's, the finances are not secure right now. in two years the trust fund that supports the disability program is scheduled to run out of money. and at that point disability will only collect enough in payroll tacks to pay about -- taxes to pay about 81% of benefits. so if congress would do nothing, that would result this an automatic 19 percent cut in just two years. congress can do a simple fix, and they've done this many times in the past. social security is supported by payroll taxes, 6.2% directly

from you, 6.2% that come from your employer. and a portion of that goes toward retirement benefits, and a portion goes toward disability benefits. congress could redo that formula and transfer money from the retirement system to the disability system. they've done it before, and it wouldn't be that big of a deal except for the fact anything touching social security and anything, you know, touching a hot button issue in this congress is not necessary hi going to be -- necessarily going to be easy to do. >> host: we've got steven covering chick issues for the associated -- economic issues for the associated press and covering tax policy issues as well. he's with us for about the next 35 minutes or so. we're going to take your questions and calls. glenn from franklin, new jersey, on our line for democrats. good morning. >> caller: good morning. >> host: go ahead, glenn. >> caller: i'd like to know why these contractors are getting paid if it doesn't work? >> guest: well, that's a good question, and that is, in fact,

an issue that was brought up in the report that was done by the consulting firm. the way they describe it, they talk about shared risk. if this thing doesn't work, who has to pay? and what they said is that the contractor probably should have had, should have made the contract. the contractor's a large government contractor out of maryland called hock lead -- lockheed martin. the report does not specifically fault the contractor, although it does raise the issue that maybe social security would think about switching contractors although the agency tells me they're not currently doing that. so the way the contract was set up, they were getting paid each though the system wasn't -- even though the system wasn't working. >> host: renee is next from e middle, oklahoma, on our line for independents. good morning. >> caller: hello. and how are you doing this morning? >> host: good, renee, go ahead. >> caller: i have a question. i am a person who is disabled, not of my own doing.

and -- [inaudible] it's never to be revisited again. because of this, i have a disability. but when i ask questions about it and how it's formulated, i find out that it's a 1940 tomorrow lair for -- formulary for a median income fam ily of four being utilized. how does a 1940 income convert to a 2014 income? i don't get it. ..benefits are calculated, you start off with the basis for how they're calculated for retirees. for them, you get wages over the course of your lifetime and the agency then takes your 30 years of your highest wages and

averages it. they bring those up to today and they come up with an average monthly wage and then apply a formula to that to determine it. they replace about 40 percent of wages on average when you retire. so you take that and if you get disabled and if you get disabled and you've been working, the social security administration uses a formula, say you've so you are invested in the program and you've worked that if you are disabled and a little bit younger, you don't have to work quite the years. but they make a calculation to figure out what your earnings based on what the past earnings are over the courier and they use a formula to come up with the benefit would be. granted it's not much. the average disability benefit

is $1,146. that's more than 13,000. post co. we want to know about the impact of the delay about the processing system that we are talking about on the money segment of the washington journal. will this strike people spiraling for benefits? >> guest: this is the disability program. retirement benefits is a much simpler process. once you decide you're going to retire, 62 is when you are eligible and right now the full retirement is 66. it's a pretty simple calculation. they have a history of the wages and determine what the benefits are. this ability is difficult to figure out if someone qualifies for benefits or not. last year 2.6 million people applied for benefits. the system is getting swamped with applications. only about a third gets approved and the standard is high to get

the disability benefi benefit te law says you have to be disabled for a year or your disability has to be projected to last a year or result in death and it has to be so severe you can find no new job in the economy anywhere. >> host: dan is calling on the line for republicans. >> caller: i understand that social security income cap seems a bit ridiculous. it seems that it is all subject to the social security tax that would take care of the solvency problem and number two, what is being done to root out the fraud, waste and abuse that seems to be rampant? >> guest: he's right about that. when you pay social security taxes if you make more than $117,000 in wages because the

taxes are taken out of the wages any amount you make above 117,000 is not taxed. originally you think about social security retirement system is not meant to be the entire income per person when you retire and so for people who make more than that, they have other income coming in, so the amount of the taxes are capped but the benefits are capped as well. dan makes a good point if they were to take the caps of people making more than 117,000 a year would pay social security taxes on all of their income it wouldn't even raise the deficit but it would e. race a chunk of it. the question becomes if those people are paying more taxes do they then get more in benefits and that would reduce the solvency as well because the program would pay out even more money and the way the system is

set up if you are a little wage worker you get more of your wages replaced by social security benefits than if you are a high wage worker. that social security is an insurance policy that helps people stay out of poverty when you retire and if you are making more than 117,000 a year you will not be in poverty when you retire so they are not getting as much return on their money and that is an issue that has come up in a lot of democrats in congress have talked about the need to perhaps raise the cap. republicans are less reluctant to do so because they don't want to raise taxes on anyone. >> host: miami florida is next on the line for democrats. good morning. >> caller: good morning. the 6.5% tax funds the largest social security fund with the disability the social security fund -- one of the solutions is

to take a small percentage of the 6.5% and reallocate it to the disability and that would shore up another 20 years to make it in line with the larger social security. is the opposition against that they don't think it's fair that people that work should support people that don't work even though quite a people who are on disability really need to be on even though the fraud and abuse or is that not a fair right because there is no tax increase it is simply a reallocation. the social security people paid into it and then a piece of that goes into it. how do you compare that to the similar problem they took a transfer payment from the larger fund separate from the payroll

tax piece? >> guest: it's the amount of money that comes out of your pay is 6.4% of that fund the entire program. it's supposed to be 6.2% directly from the pay and the employer contributes. they will tell you they are paying the present because the employer share tv employer share at the reduced wages. so right now about 85% of the attacks goes to the retirement program and 15% goes to the disability program. there is no opposition to rework the formula so that the life of the disability program would be extended so if you look at the trustees that oversee social security they said the disability trust fund is scheduled to run out of money in 2016 and the retirement is scheduled in 2034. if they simply combined the two funds or rework the formula as one big system the whole system

trustrust funds would be exhausd in 2033 so it wouldn't have that much effect on the retirement program because it is so much bigger than the disability program. it's not so much as the opposition that if you think about the way the congress works right now, congress doesn't do much work well unless there is a deadline and they are forced to do something. some folks that want to see the program in the long-term come into the long-term is more than 20 years because when you are looking at this many people and it's going to keep growing and growing as the baby boomers retire, they would like to shore up the programs sooner rather than later and some people would like to use the 2016 deadline shoring up the disability program to tackle the larger issue so it's not so much the opposition to making a simple transfer its just a debate whether they can use the deadline to look at the bigger problems. >> host: what about people that want to see the disability case processing system come

online? when are they going to see the system come to fruition after so much investment? there's a chart from one of those reports you were talking about on the delay showing consistently there's been a 24 to 32 month estimate of the time remaining on the creation of the system that happened in 2008, 2010, 201113 and although they still somewhere between 24 to 32 months away. >> one of the consultants told social security you need to have somebody in charge. one person responsible for this entire project and so he appointed an assistant deputy commissioner to be in charge of the program. and i talked to her and asked her that question and she couldn't give me an answer right now she said she didn't own the whole system was going to be up and running.

>> host: are their estimates for the more than $300 million? >> guest: the answer is no there are no estimates. right now they spent 288 million. >> host: we are talking to the ap and it's your money segment of the washington journal. we will take your calls and questions. charles is in huntersville north carolina on the line for independence. good morning. also thank you for taking my call. i had to comment on the it projects across the board in the federal government and i think the federal government has one of the worst it records in the world for the completing projects and that annually they know that millions of dollars were wasted in the seals it in the federal government and why this one project is being investigated by the subcommittee when they know there are enormous waste of the federal government in the it that they

are so bad at. >> guest: if you think about it, the federal government is a huge purchaser of it. there are computer systems that run domestic agencies whether it is health and human services, the veterans affairs canada healthcare .gov social security administration. so i do think that there are problems across the government that they found and the reason why they are looking at this one is because this is what congressional investigators have found and they feel like they have to start somewhere. >> host: kathy on the line for independence. >> caller: i have a comment and then a question. my comment is my husband and i that have been together for over 30 years filed our taxes this year the same way we always do with the same account in that we have had for 14 plus years and

low and behold someone had already filed our taxes for us and got no refund. my husband and i both work very hard and we are just everyday middle-class americans. so what i want to know is -- excuse me, i'm a little winded. if the irs can't even process refunds from everyday americans whom they've been processing my husband and i have been doing this for over 30 years then how do we expect the social security administration to run any program especially like the new obamacare program and i will take my answer off the air. >> guest: very sorry that happened to you. i've covered the tax policy as well and this is a growing problem. identity theft. one of the things these identity thieves do is if they can get

your social security number and there are a lot of different places they need that and your birthday as well what will happen as early in the filing season, soon after the irs starts ticking tax returns they will file a fake return, get a refund antherefund and when thee person go to meet coco's to file they will come back and say some of these are already filed and have already gotten a refund. this is a growing problem and has been for a number of years. >> host: is that an improper payment clicks >> guest: it's in the billions of dollars. i can't put an exact number on it. i can tell you that it's a growing problem that they are trying to address. the irs takes great pride in turning around and issuing refunds quickly and often the

issue refunds before all of the paperwork comes from your employer or bank or broker if you have investment. and only then after that paperwork comes in do they realize that they have issued a false refund. so they are taking steps to try to shore the system up to get faster reporting from the employee or independent and things like that but as long as they are trying to get the refund after you file the return and they don't have the ability to get this kind of a third party reporting they are going to have this issue. >> host: kansas city missouri on the line for democrats. >> caller: yes i have a question and a comment. the question is this. the irs tells you that 52 you can retire but then they put a limit of $15,000 you can make over the social security you get. and you are left practically living on welfare and food

stamps if you are 62 and if you have no kind of pension or anything. we are retiring and a lot of us don't have pensions so we have to liv live under $15,000 if we retire at 62 were we can wait until we are 66 and collect the full amount where we can wait until they are 70 and get 138%. why don't they take the limit off the 15,000, let us wait until we are 66, select the social security and then wait until w they are 70 and collect the 138%. rather than having to go to welfare or food stamps. my comment is this is getting to be a thing where we are retiring at big amounts of baby boomers and what is the government going to do?

>> guest: she raises a very good issue. i look at some of these numbers and more than half of all people applying for retirement benefits do so at the earliest possible moment they can when they turn 62. delay the retirement system is set up. if you wait until 66 to retire today. they are reduced benefits because you are taking them early and what people really need to do is they need to do a hard calculation and his is a hard thing to do how do you think you are going to live and how much money do you think you are going to need as you grow old. some people have no choice but to take the benefits as soon as they can. you can find a job, you are destitute and apply for benefits.

other people perhaps retiring too early because they are not realizing they are going to live another 25 years that they are inevitably going to get less money out of the system because the retire early. yes there have been some talk about raising the retirement age again raising the full retirement age or the early retirement age. there is a lot of opposition to that on capitol hill. folks like us i said at a desk or a runner out at the capitol for my job and other people work outside with their hands they do physical work. it's hard. it's not easy to work until you are 67, 68 or 69-years-old that is a difficult issue they do have to address. people have to be honest with themselves about how long they think they are going to live and how much money they need to retire. >> host: on the line for independence. good morning. >> caller: good morning. i'm speaking from the references of someone that's been involved

in public service for a very long time. i think the biggest problem is why we are having the problem here that the rest of the government in terms of procurement in all phases. government work is looked upon as liability and not as a resource. the problem that's very important is the people that do the hiring from the government have to know more than the contract and the consultants that they hire because they have to prepare contracts and requests for proposals and be able to coordinate the work of the various contractors. they have to be experts in technology and legal and be able to supervise the work of many contractors. where the bottom line is they have to be more knowledgeable than the contracts that they

hire. and i think that is the basis of the problem. congress feels they want to hire and pay the ability that they pass we are going to keep running in these problems people have been overrun on everything. >> host: is scrutinizing the probleproblem a disability in te processing system? >> guest: is a plus. excuse me. i daughter brought me home a something from daycare last week i'm starting to shake. one of the problems is the way the consulting firm pointed out was that as they went along there wasn't enough scrutiny going on with the contract. they didn't give them enough detail of the capabilities that they needed. they didn't have a single person overseeing the broad scope of the project. and he's absolutely right that

the agencies need to have people that understand the projects and the needs to oversee the budget. >> host: how much competition was there in this contract in the actual development of the contract was this how many companies were bidding on the contract? >> guest: i don't know. i wasn't around when the contract was first awarded. i read some of the documents about that. i don't know that it was competitive and i don't have the information on that. >> host: waiting in new york on the line for independence. good morning. >> caller: thank you for having me. two points. one is a question. does the regular social security account that go to people that are retired or those accounts affected by the people that will not be able to get disability from social security in the future? that's the first thing. the other thing is something that i'm thinking.

shouldn't contractors in the industry be more directly involved in supporting the framers for people that work for them and i can see this might be some kind of a ruling or a law. the question is how many disability claims are valid on 60 minutes that possibly 30% of the people that claim were claiming falsely and i can see this because people are starving in these parts tha but they were showing in west virginia who need money because there is no other welfare system for them. so we have a problem with an balance in the country. who are the managers and who are the people supposed to be in congress looking at these equations and trying to balance in the proper ways. it seems like a headless government in this country. >> guest: he raises a couple of interesting issues.

one of them is that in fact two thirds of the people that apply for social security disability are denied at their initial application. as i said before when you first apply for disability benefits you go to a state agency. two thirds of those are denied. 2.6 million people applied last year. if you get the night you can go back and reapply to the agency and if you are denied again thad then you can appeal to the administrative law judge appointed. that's different than a regular judge in administrative judge that works for the agency and they make a determination on your case. this whole process can take from start to finish more than two years. administrative law judges interestingly tend to approve about half of the cases they get. there's a couple reasons for this. sometimes people start off with disabilities that get worse over time so perhaps they can really be disabled at that point. other times there might be flaws

in the system they need to look at so this is an ongoing issue and one of the big reasons so many people have been applying for benefits and we see this anytime there's an economic downturn the number spikes. back in 2010 is almost 3 million people a year so it started to level off a little bit. this number has been growing for a couple reasons. the demographics, the baby boomers. you are more than likely to be disabled or get a disability if you are 50 to 65-years-old as opposed to younger. a huge group of people approaching the retirement age all moved into the tail end of the baby boomers turning 50 this year. historically more women have been in the workforce. this is not a new phenomenon but going back 20, 30, 40 years whose female workers have now publicly for benefits if they get disabled. that has increased over time. and also, just that's happening

recently with the economy. if you think about it a lot of these people probably are not provided to get to benefits when the economy gets bad and they apply for the benefit but some people may be disabled and have a job and an employer that makes accommodations for them they have no place else to turn into the turn to social security. >> host: we will get to as many calls as we can. becky is in michigan on the line for democrats. good morning. we will go to bruce waiting in illinois. good morning. >> caller:. i was laid off in 2009. i'm 59-years-old now. i have disabilities and they

keep getting worse. applying for disability could be a two-year process. i have no income. my unemployment ran out two years ago. the fact i live with my mother and i care giver for her. what are we supposed to do, where are we supposed to turn? you are a reporter it would seem to me that there should be some investigations into the people between the ages of 55 and 62 that have been laid off, or terminally unemployed still need to try to file for unemployment. >> guest: when you first apply for benefits that last phase lasts for more than 100 days so that isn't two years were quite a year. a third of those people get benefits.

the standard for getting the disability benefits is high. as a legal standard is you have to have a disability that is expected to last at least a year or result in death and be so severe that you can find no job in the economy whatsoever and that is a very high standard it's not necessarily the jobs you had before. it's any job in the economy. >> host: on the line for independence. good morning merry. >> caller: i'm 53-years-old and on disability. and it took me six years to get disability. i was the ninth twice and went before judge moore advocates and within two weeks i got disability. i didn't have a lawyer. i kept notes on everything and they had me having an alleged

aneurysm and i have a huge aneurysm and i had to have it cold and a stint. >> guest: is one of those claims that would be processed under the new system that we talk about in this segment. >> it is to handle the claims that go through the state agencies and eventually into the cases that are appealed to the administrative law judges. so as i said a multi-step process if you are denied you go to a state agency and to get denied and reapply the same agency and get the night again and apply to the administrative law judge that is the first step in the process and right now as it is envisioned that will eventually include that part of it, but as we are not even touching base with that.

>> good morning. my question is why can't the congress of the united states of america replace the cash or the securities in social security if they withdrew and replaced them with treasury notes were returned notes of some sort basically worthless paper? i would like to know why they can't replace that and i will take my call here. >> i hear this a lot from folks that talk about is the trust fund real. back in 1983 when the congress and the work and revamped social security they created a system to workers paid more in taxes and benefits athan benefits as r the course of about 30 years. so the trust fund was built up and has about $2.8 trillion.

they do what they are required by law to be but the treasury bonds in the social security trust fund so when the rest of the federal government however as we know has been spending more money than it takes in and so we have been borrowing from the trust funds and the first places they go to social security trust fund. they've been running huge deficits in the social security trust fund and of course spent it. it is there in the sense that the social security administration has the treasury department have $2.8 trillion in treasury bonds payable to the social security beneficiaries. the rest of the federal government owes the money to social security so if someone is standing outside of the

government you might say that's one part of the government owing it to another part of the government and that's true. a different way of looking at that is as long as there is a balance in the trust funds, the social security administration has the legal authority and obligation to pay the full scheduled benefits. the trust funds are still growing even though right now the system is taking less in tax dollars than it spends and benefits. however they are still growing because the interest of their earning just like the other bonds. that will stop sometime in the 2020s that will reverse and the trust funds will start to shrink unless the congress acts. around 2033 or 2034 they will run out of money and the system will have to survive on the incoming taxes. the importance of those balances are that as long as there is a balance in the trust fund that the agency has the legal authority and obligation to pay the full scheduled benefits once the balances go to zero because

only pay the benefits are supported by the payroll taxes which would mean a significant cut in the benefits. >> host: what is next for the processing system when it comes to congressional oversight? is the congress staying on top of this? >> guest: the folks at the house oversight committee tell me that they are looking into this. they've made a request to the agency for the communications regarding this contract and computer program. i don't know that there is good to be hearing this but i wouldn't be surprised if there are even people see where that leads. >> host: thanks so much for joining us in the money segment today. >> guest: thank you. joined us on this morning's washington journal. this is about five minutes. >> host: i wanted her to anthony capaccio joining us by phone. good morning.

i want to start with the situation in baghdad the report being thrown out what is happening in the city this morning? >> guest: there isn't a lot of major news organization coverage because they don't have a major presence at the moment. it's confusing but it's going to add to the whole notion that the iraq he government is not worthy of u.s. support and we should focus on aiding the kurds. i think this will play out in the next day or two but clearly ballot he is holding on and that is going to strengthen the resistance of the u.s. citizens and lawmakers and feel that it isn't worth any pilot being shut down basically. >> host: he's staying in power on the deadline. can you explain what's actually

happening there and what the legal status of nouri al maliki is? >> guest: the party was meeting this weekend to name a new prime minister. he obviously is finding that decision that had been laid out of the recent elections in the timetable had been endorsed by millions of iraqis. you get the sense that this is a final from your nose at the sunni population, the united states. he had been a good ally for a number of years but this may be the final throw of resistance, his final way of saying i'm not going out quietly but it has no tv and political implications. >> host: anthony capaccio is the bloomberg news correspondent. let's turn to the u.s. is doing right now. what is the latest on the strikes of where they happen and

what are they targeting now? >> guest: we have not had an announcement since yesterday morning. it looks like there've been seven or eight different strikes and we put out these announcements but you have to read them carefully because they lay out one or two or three individual strikes in the northern iraq he area. pretty interesting is that my sources are telling me 90 to 100 planes are circling around with tankers into various navy air force aircraft looking for targets of opportunity kind of waiting in place. that's pretty amazing is the release so far we are talking about hitting individual targets like the mortar positions, the mobile artillery trucks, armored personnel carriers z. the united states is a pretty good picture of what is on the ground.

they take the individual feeding or stationary targets almost at will because we have the air supremacy over there. there is no air defense threat. people need to realize we are not writing the close air support these are the united states u.s. is picking out individual isil targets that appear to be threatening to go into the refugees in the mountains. we did so precisely as a testament to the investment of billions of dollars of tactics over the years. but it's also a testament to the 50 or so intelligence flights that have been going on for the last month and a half over there barely are getting a pretty good picture of the ground. >> host: earlier you mentioned the kurdish forces from the front page of usa today. the airstrikes bring an early gain and nothing but a senior

kurdish military officials said the troops have gained control in the towns of northern iraq that they had previously captured. what is the strike meant for the kurdish fighters? >> guest: what they meant is this is the first time isil has gotten their nose bloodied nonetheless and the first thing you can do is individual small groups have to shake the confidence of the fighters and leadership that the united states can basically. and it's hard to tell from washington about this but i think in the next day or two we will get information in those areas where the u.s. has been striking into these are short-term tactical victories and by no means is it going to imply that the united states or iraq can dislodge isil from the games that it's made in the last year and a half those are going to be painful. but the tactical victories on the ground of pitting targets

here and there, letting them know the free ride just going through and hitting the artillery, that may be over at the moment. >> host: as we said yesterday some lawmakers and former u.s. diplomats talking about whether the united states should keep the troops in iraq on the ground now. is that happening among the law makers and diplomats or are you seeing that the pentagon and sources on the ground in iraq? >> guest: bush read the marker in 2003 that we were going to get. obama and the maliki government couldn't agree on the legal protections for u.s. troops. this is history going to iraq in the first place which seems to be not part of the debate. this is all shifted to blaming

the current white house rather than the bush administration for going at it in the first place. the iraq he army that we left behind was about 220,000 strong. we ha have spent $25 billion on helping build the military up. there's 400,000 or so state police and local police and national police. a huge force against 10,000 albeit a very powerful force. so you have to wonder what we got from the investment and whether we stay there or not. >> host: bloomberg news correspondent thank you for joining us from washington journal this morning. >> host: the pentagon announced a briefing and we will have that live it 2:30 on our companion network, c-span.