american diplomacy. an american history t.v. on c-span3 seven and nine in eastern on the presidency. hillary clinton and linda johnson talk about the white house he is a betty ford. sunday at 2 pm eastern purchased and legal experts guess the supreme court case hustler magazine versus falwell. and the impact on editorial cartoonists 30 years later. watch this weekend on the c-span network. >> is the house is ready to debate the farm bill, catherine boudreau joins us. a reporter for food and agriculture from politico pro. what are the key details of the farm bill and how long is this authorization for federal farm program funding? >> the bulk of this sweeping legislation is geared towards a supplemental nutrition assistance program for food stamps. necessarily the most controversial aspect of getting the farm bill pass.

nutrition accounts for eight percent of this bill so the chairman has proposed imposing stricter work retirements between five and seven million people that are enrolled in the snap program and then of course, the other 20 percent of the farm bill is spent on commodity subsidies for farmers, also crop insurance programs that they pay into but their premiums are subsidized so that is where the government comes in. then that pays out when there is a disaster, like hurricanes or wildfires that we saw last year. of course, there is also assistance with implementing land conservation practices and funding for world development. those are really key aspects of the farm bill. >> you mentioned snap of course, the food stamps program and the fact that the farm bill usually gets quite a bit of bipartisan support. but the food stamps are

something that seems to be splitting the parties mostly along party lines. tell us more about this issue. >> certainly, yes. the snap program has 42 million recipients. and as agriculture chairman conaway wants to have stricter work requirements on a subset of the people on the program. between five and 7 million people would be subject to the stricter work requirements. they would have to work at least 20 hours a week or be enrolled in a job-training program and states would be required, mandated, that is new, to offer spots and job-training programs. of course it is very expensive. they would say probably $9 billion over 10 years on foodstamp or/and space benefits and then some of that money would be spent going towards the state work program. but that is pretty controversial because i think that there is a lack of data on the success of the state work programs and they estimate it

would take upwards of a decade to get this up and running and be able to offer all of the spots required. democrats have rejected this proposal pretty much. during the committee, they did not vote for it at all. it is on party lines and usually the farm bill is tasked with this in the middle of democrats and republicans. also lawmakers who do care about the snap program but not necessarily have farmers in the district.that seems to be broken and i think we can expect that the farm bill had to be passed in the house with mostly gop members. >> let's take a quick look at your article. the headline conaway races to nail down farm bill votes before the house floor debate. as he mentioned they will need some support from mostly republicans. how exactly does that break down?

democrats have been pushing their members to oppose it. what are republicans saying to their team we met. >> house leadership is certainly selling this as a way to get a component of overhaul welfare programs. something not to energize the midterms. we get that is not just following unnecessary death years but taking a bit of persuasion to get the gop on board. and some members of the house caucus on thursday spoke to the chairman, he says there are concerns about the work requirements of snap and has concerns about the agricultural components of it. the dairy program and there are small dairy producers in his district. i think they're looking to offer some amendments to the bill. they want to be able to offer this amendment in order to have greater support in favor of the bill and i mean it is possible

that world democrats could peel off and vote for it but i think it remains to be seen and is hard to gauge at this point. of course there are members of the republican committee and some persuading as well. it is something that the chairman is working on throughout the weekend because the boat is coming up pretty quick next week. >> and president trump hosted a meeting at the white house recently with both the house and the senate agriculture committee chair. also agricultural secretary. what came out of that and do you think that the house and maybe later the senate version would change? because the white house? chairman and the senate, we were talking farm bill specific

and interactive. and news reports early this week. which is backed by the director. conaway after the meeting, said that some of the. and so making it will fall. the end of the day incident fargo needs to go to conference. it will be interesting to see whether that version can get back to the house because you know, the senate has, the chairman has said he is not interested in giving a large overhaul in snap because it would be extremely challenging to get 60 votes for something. of course that has a question conaway is he having trouble getting support for this version which is the most conservative it will ever be. can you get a more modern version through? of course, democrats will probably have to come up i

think at that point and his relationship with those on that committee have been soured through the process i think there are a lot of questions about how this will work and the importance of the chairman has asked the president to treat in support of the bill -- tweet in support of the bill. we will continue to follow you. thank you so much. >> thank you. >> on c-span newsmakers this week caucus chair represent mark meadows talks about the mueller investigation. and announces he is requesting an audit from the gao of the investigation spending. he also talks about the goals of his caucus.here is a brief look. >> you have been one of the biggest critics of the department of justice and how they have handled many aspects of the business recently. and you have gone so far to

suggest that the deputy attorney general should be impeached. you and chairman and as of the intelligence community have been asking for more information on their surveillance activities and their investigating activities. what is your issue with the way the doj has conducted itself, mr. rosenstein in particular. and where did the issue stand at this moment? do you, have they been with some of these meetings and treaties that had been entered into in the last few days? >> i think probably the issue, to answer question roughly is that we get more rhetoric. it's all about getting the documents. making sure that we actually get the documents that a constitutional right to have. it is our job to actually do

oversight. we have been requesting many of these documents since last november. so here we are and is six, seven months into the process. a little over 12,000 documents have been delivered to our office out of 1.2 million. at this rate, we will be way into the president trumps second term before we get even the majority of the documents. >> what kind of documents are you seeking? >> the documents, our investigation on oversight and judiciary really deal with department of justice and the fbi interaction. leading up to 2016 election. the investigations they did into the hillary email scandal, the investigations they were doing at that time with candidate trump and as we look at those interactions, many of

the documents we already have, would suggest that at least some bias that was going on. some improper activity going on. quite frankly, i think the stonewalling of the documents coming to congress with a legitimate request they highlight even further the fact that in have something to hide? i can tell you that we know and it has been reported in a number of times that information starts to come out and it comes out in little tips and dribbles. i mean, the department of justice knew all along that director james comey, the college professor friend was actually a special government employee. we had to find that out. the department of justice knew all along that director james comey shared his memos. indeed classified memos with

people other than just that particular friend. and yet, we had to find that out. and so, when we are digging and finding out new information that has not been voluntarily given to congress, it makes us dig deeper and quite frankly, we are finding more and more information. i support chairman nunes and his efforts to obviously get information that some of the information i am not even privy to because i'm not on the subcommittee. i don't need to see it. i am not really subject to that because it is really his committee. but the other part of that is that there is nothing in statute that would suggest that the actions that the department of justice is taking are appropriate. and so, you may get a counter narrative. all of you, you cover this and you get one side of the story from me and bon from another.

celeste make a little news here. i would suggest that i am willing to come back and join deputy attorney general, rod rosenstein. we will sit together. he can bring his talking points. i will bring my and will be able to go back and forth and you can moderate that. we will be glad to do that. but i am so sure of the evidence we have and the manner in which we have gone about this, that there is no good excuse that the department of justice will continue. >> just about have you spoken directly to the deputy attorney general? we reported they have concerns about an intelligence source of their is that could be compromised. and what is -- has injection been resented to and what is your response to it?

>> i have spoken to the deputy attorney general.not on a particular matter. i believe the "washington post" reported on. but that is a common reoccurring thing. every time is, these are national security secrets. we need to actually protect our assets. and you know what? they are right. it is exactly the reason why we have an intel committee. it is the whole reason why we set that committee up. so that they can see those types of documents on all of congress. we have actually even the authority to some of our colleagues and so, there is no plausible reason for doj to not share it with the intel committee. >> freedom caucus chair represented mark meadows, also discusses why he is dissatisfied with the justice department information sharing with congress. and the house leadership race for speaker. you can see the entire interview on c-span.org.

>> c-span, where history unfolds daily. in 1979, c-span was created as a public service by america's cable television companies. today, we continue to bring you unfiltered coverage of congress. the white house, the supreme court and public-policy events in washington d.c.. and around the country. c-span is brought to you by yourcable or satellite provider . >> next, former fbi director, james comey, talks about his new book, "a higher loyalty: truth, lies and leadership" with l'affaire editor-in-chief, benjamin wittes in washington d.c.. he also took questions from the audience.