>> "washington journal" continues. host: we are joined by guests

that take a look at the topic of economic host: we are doing this morning with thear economic hardship and the united states the house of going for broke podcast in washington dc joining us from newt york economic executive director thank you for giving us your time this morning. >> good to be with you. >> a lote of podcast so i want you to express in your own words the purpose of the podcast you go first. >> and we took a look at a lot journalism about america's economic challenges in everyday america, they talk about themselves and their

lives they get analyzed and observed but rarely given the privilege so going for broke takes a look at some of the severe downward mobility that a lot of workers have experienced and to give them the chance to explain to an audience what that is like real in the workplace to make three weeks worth of money last until the end of the month then the economic hardship reporting projects to explain a little bit more about it. but with the wonderful storytellers and then finally observed stories about what it has been like. >> i will let you take it upt from there not only the podcast but what else can you tell us quick. >> the economic hardship

reporting project and with the poverty so starting this organization to let people who are middle class and working-c class report and tell their ownn stories. with over 1000 and writers to write about income inequality from the richest too the poorest all those stories. and i was just realizing inor the course of running this organization that and then to hear what its sounded like and then i thought i want to hear the grocery store worker while colleagues are chasing shoplifters what is it like i want to hear what those whoso are being evicted and also ray tells his own story in the

podcast. >> how do you find the's people to talk to her tell youan the stories? >> we find them in a range of ways that is the address you can send in pictures a lot of people come from the slush pile and then things like twitter storms or the veterans are tweeting that who is writing their experience and then there is a ton of layoffs so unfortunately there is the hedge fund type for more than 20 percent profit then they laid off their experience

reporters so some of those people come to us. host: being a broadcaster yourself you are on one side of the microphone but on this podcast you are thef subject of one of the stories. >> that was not the easiest thing in the world to do. for a long time reporter the capital key on your laptop for the i-letter is not what you use a lot but i had experience lengthy unemployment and also challenges with my health and the confluence of those two created hard times. i had to come from behind to look at the arms length and talk about my own life. i think it is a good episode but alyssa had to work on me a little bit. >> when you made that decision did you do with willingly or was it hesitant?

>> i had to think about it because it did not come naturally. but i think there are so many who are experiencing the downdraft of the labor market when things get really tough the data tells a discouraging story. there you are to prepare for a time and take care of the obligations that remain and in times decline so that you cycle through jobs more quickly and it takes you a lot longer when you are in your sixties to find the next one. and intel as much from the vantage point of a man in that time of life and what we are all experiencing. host: i want to invite the audience into tell their own stories up through 10:00 p.m.

if you want to ask our guest questions if you are unemployed give us a call. >> the common themes that run through the stories what do you say they are quick. >> people who blame themselves for the condition they find themselves because we have a society that is very unforgiving to those who have an economic struggle. i see a lot of that and self blame for people who tell their stories that i also see a lot of little things that could be done differently we have a contributor whose mother could not afford hearing aids on medicare.

and actually health insurance doesn't cover hearing aids and that little fixer make a huge difference and also the smaller things when you live closer to the ground and economic struggle and that is what we try to capture and how do we capture that suffering and that struggle and who publish that with a "washington post" and i saw recently. host: same question. >> so as we emerge to give a flash outlook what is going on among workers facing

headwinds. and with those difficulties of getting a good night sleep and how that works against you to get the house one person put themselvesth through college with hopes of making a career of colleges andnd universities that the academic market exploded and fell apart after the 2008 / 2009 recession now they were behind the register at the supermarket. one of our contributors was a star reporter for a great old newspaper the san francisco chronicle and ended up to do various other jobs after the downdraft that was mentioned the mass layoff of american newspapers caught him even though he was a senior veteran member of the staff.

so as individual as a friend but also large streams of what's going on in the workforce and the challenges individual workers face. host: with the format of the program how does it work and how do you put the stories together? >> it is a mixture of atmospherics we visited washington heights up in the north west side of manhattan island with the daughter of dominican immigrants and it is a chapter of administrative burden and the challenges for people who are not english proficient have to fall somewhere and in effect the parents social worker is a tried to get benefits during the pandemic one of the chapters talks about how difficult it is to go to the bathroom when you are living on the street and some of the

stratification are the layers that show up even among working-class service employees when the challenges, there is serious policy with a lot of them we go to the world the workers and have and also we talk to then how they redesign these challenges and make these lives a little better some of the problems that exist for instance in the design of where homeless people sleep and it works against them getting we housed so there are some ed policy questions but also first-person stories and serious expository writing what they are up against in the challenges they live with every day. host: the host going for broke

and i should add that the nation magazine is also a participant in this project. >> let's hear it from you frank from west virginia thank you for calling. go ahead. >> on this infrastructure why don't let they american people vote on it and in north carolina and virginia and places like that there used to be clothing factories that the congress goes in there they don't ask the american people what they want or need. host: i suppose is host and producer one of the themes as i had a vision and a certain industry that went away now i have to do something else.

>> yes. that is a story we hear over and over again which just because things went away doesn't mean there isn't help. we do have stories people who have found second and third chapters. they are not quite as exalted as an earlier time in their life but they are back in their feet to see that again and again calling the forrest gump of the experience because in different places for a war correspondent and so these are the cycles people are going through an lc with one job for their entire career. >> this happen personally and directly? >> yes. i had to reinvent myself and i am now self-employed.

because a lot of places that reached out to me after my last employer went belly up they went outut of business and paid off the workers, they just stopped calling back and ghosted me and acted as if they'd never spoke to me in the first place. it happens and make a living and i do okay but i have had to reinvent the wayay i work but those mills in a lot of cases not just a question of walking in the workforce turning on the lights and going back to work that equipment is shipped to others where they make t-shirts and cloth and toys and other things. and then with the last 40 years of reengineering the american economy to offshore those jobs to get themm back in places like west virginia and north carolina.

host: spent thank you for taking my call. i am in a little bit of a different situation. i have no job. i have an adult child living at home with a grandchild because the economy is in the toilet. i spent the last three and half years living in another state taking care of my grandson while my son served active-duty military. it really hit me. but we are struggling. and everybody says now hiring. but there is, no wages despite everybody saying work for us we will pay you more, that is not the reality we are seeing here book.en so trying to reinvent yourself

is tough if you don't have the money to pull on your boots because you have the boots to pull on. that is where im. host: we appreciate your story. >> childcare in the united states is a crisis. if people are reluctant to go back to the workforce or simply the numbers don't work right down what you will make for a day versus what you will spend to get the incentive to go back to work they mock the idea that childcare was in the infrastructure bill when the first version of the biden plan rolled out it is a crisis it is distorting is distorting the economy. >> and with that class book

squeeze where and then the confidence had increased. >> and childcare in particular we have a non- child care system those to be responsible as well and the should be made permanent and then and then with that basic income to help people care for disabled loved ones and then we see with the biden administration even if this doesn't get through the bill and to be stymied. and there is a window and then

to sayed that is paid family leave is a possibility or childcare is an impossibility. that has been accomplished in the last year. this is a recognition and then kudos to her for doing the work. host: monica in kentucky is unemployed. >>caller. host: i apologize. this is sean in california who considers himself underemployed. >>caller: good morning. i was laughing about that kentucky color because you still had her on but i was so compassionate about the kentucky color it touched my heart because so many are going through but for my own personal life i am

underemployed. i received my masters degree in 2015 and i was not able to find a job after that. so i went back to one of my old fields and home healthcare. and still trying to pay my bills now i work in a case management position which i'm still underpaid and under positioned. during the pandemic, i still had to go to work i had to be mandated to be vaccinated and i had to pay the federal government $1300 so maybe

that's the forgottenen population i went to voice my opinion then we need more in that bill. and for the last 14 years. host: thank you for the call. >> i want to ask you what would you want to see? what would be helpful to you? host: apologies the colors already gone. so my question is it is a

common thing in our show. and then it's not the second act but sometimes it is a source of debt and and then to get these diplomas and then they can get a second job. so it sounds like the caller has fallen into that middle asclass and. >> talking about home healthcare work which is consistently some of the lowest paid work in america so in the middle of the title wave of demographic change.

and those that are moving into the late sixties and seventies and soon the eighties fayette we have not worked out a system where people can age in place without being institutionalized and home healthcare which can be an early warning system for serious health problems can be an early warning system to keep people out of nursing homes and hospitals saving society billions of dollars and we pay those people critical work she mentioned on —- mentioned $10.500 an hour and the burden of the work incidentally falls disproportionately heavily on women and immigrants. host: while you aree here and a long-term observer of washington played out over the last weeks and months with the build back better you have seen this how does it compare to other efforts to pass

initiative? >> this is stuffed with a lot of different moving parts which gives legislators on capitol hill the opportunity to pick off the pet peeves and because congress is so divided and the republicans are refusing to give any help on passing anything, it falls to a divided democratic caucus which is why there has been so much paralysis around getting these initiatives past. in the old days you would find complementary members who had interest that were included in a big bill to trade off the vote to sweeten something they wanted to get something they didn't want removed and thereby when the vote.

and those who simply will not vote for the bill under any circumstances which means it falls entirely too democrats and then you get an odd situation d with a democratic senate and the democratic house and the democratic oval office unable to move legislation. host: what about thee house side on this process? >> the fact we are even having these conversations, in the old days the infrastructure bill that mentioned humanst infrastructure investing in i education and care for seniors and childcare would simply have not even made it into the proposal stage. this has gotten pretty far down the road before people started to pick it apart so the idea what infrastructure

consist of have to broaden a little bit. and those that answer different parts of the common life. the fact we haveth to do legislation is not just people are dying to have government pay for everything that outside their lives have not offered a solution for the reason home healthcare workers are so poorly paid with such a critical job not because there is a system but in the face of there being no system. >> that is absolutely right. the human infrastructure the fact it has been given some space even if it is a granite wallcr of those we need to keep

our eye on. not sure how long hillary clinton said paid family leave but we are not ready for that this is happened in ten years the transformation of the understanding that the developed nations of the world to have infrastructure it has given the level thathi progressives were able to get the messaging out there in terms of language and human infrastructure so in my book it was a term that bernie thsanders used so these are the ways that will lead to change maybe not this time but next time. host: the podcast going for broke we are joined by the host and also alyssa from the economic reporting project. richmond virginia you are ond

the unemployment line. >>caller: i was recently awarded disability june of this year, 52 years old i cannot work anymore. the job i was at the guy didn't take out taxes anyway. it has been a hardship. my wife is 72 and in bad health with knee replacements and everything else. getting ready to go in for another one. they put me on medicare and i'm starting to get these bills. the money that we get per month does not get it they cut her down at $120. i called my bank this morning and we have six dollars. but they only over 14000. i have been trying to get it they said you will get it after your first social security payment and i called yesterday and it's been five

months they say i have to wait another month. i don't understand the concept of our leaders want to hand all the money outut to all these people. we workable lights to pay into this. what would you do if you into your bank and said i needed $500 and they said you better get a lawyer and fill out thehe piece of paper. you close the account and get i rid of the bank. that is our money. and we cannot work no more we depend on it. host: michael from indiana telling us hisy. stories. >> a lot of people when asked how long do you want to work? they will give a number or an age but a tremendous number the majority of americansns don't work until the age of a plant and there are various reasons why sometimes illness intrudes chronic pain that comes from theirn own working lives, shoulders or back sore knees.

we have an idea we have to work longer in order to support herself in life that is work after full-time work. but the mechanics of the systems that we have set up to do that asou we just heard from our caller in indiana, and often serve as well. disability is something thatt is resorted to by especially men across much of the country and has been the industrialized there is a broad swath into the midwest of towns where the primary employer is gone into large share of the older men in the working population are in disability we don't treat chronic pain very well. we keepp coming up with white-collar middle-class answers to blue-collar problems. we say had we make social security last longer? it looks like it will only pay

75 cents on the dollar in the mid- 20 thirties and the answer is we will just tell people they have too work longer. that is not at an answer. when you get out of bed in the morning your shoulders ache your back aches and your knees are killing is so the idea wishes teddy work another four or five years is not an answer for everybody. >> there is any difference between living to work working to live are dying to work so actually when we asked them to continue to be economically productive citizens that thinking back because we have a whole show of administrative burden where one of the subjects of the show was having trouble getting unemployment and couldn't fill

outil the form was not a native english speaker so a whole level of complexity what we discovered is that a lot of those burdens were put in place to maker it harder for people to get is not an accident that many of the mechanisms especially targeted to lower income people that is onerous and there to make it harder so that's a whole tradition going back to the thirties to create a welfare state that make it difficult for those for the goods that they deserved. >> a lot of this is done out of contempt or condescension or out of the sense that he said in the state capital any

vote to approve a program , since we're giving you this money we will make it hard for you to get and then it is maddening. host: our guest for the next couple of minutes at 10:00 o'clock today we will take you to a hearing special inspector general for afghanistan talking about in light of recent events and a frequent guest on our program you can see it on c-span and c-span.org we'll go to danny and yuma arizona go ahead. >>caller: thank you for taking my call. i am retired. i cannot afford to get an mra

on —- an mri that these illegal aliens can come in and get $450,000 each. where is the justice in that it doesn't make any sense joe and the democrats are running this country into the toilet thank you. >> no bazemore answer the more surprise that they'll get $400,000 that's not happening. >> good morning. >> just a comment i think a very large portion ofcy our problems in the economy is our trade policy and have been for probably two decades.

and the one that really stands out is the trade policy with china. corporate america is the real problem and we continue to kick that around like china is a bad situation is not china but corporate america. we make thoseoy trade policies and then we have a substantial amount of unemployment in this country it is our legislative bodies corporate america it is very problematic. >> the caller is not wrong we have had trade policies and have not benefitedha american workers. and indeed other nations and we should be looking at the corporate sector that is benefiting most from getting companies to do business in

china and not keeping as much business as possible. host: with the trend people willing to leave jobs they have a better paying jobs or a better rate how does that factor into what you are reporting and the stories that you tell? >> you mean the fact that there a great resignation is showing that there's another way workers are showing resistance this is a terrible job people are not protected especially essential workers and it's hard to forget that and to say i want to earn even $15 or $20 an hour when i was exposed byoy my employer so

people havet got cynical about the whole employment situation and they know they are in the drivers seat right now. it is good in the sense it is a warning and raising wages. >> before the pandemic you could look at a newspaper or turn on your local tv news and see an employer that listed 45 or 50 jobs with a line of 800 people stretching out from their front door to apply and that was theer sign of a certain kind of need and then having to up the ante and then address the conditions is a different power dynamic. so people are realizing that job has to be a better job in order for me to give my life to it. that power dynamic between

employers and workers has not changed entirely but if there is a couple of more chips onyb the employee side of the table, maybe that's not a bad thing. >> our guest are with us for a few more minutes. hello. >> this is one of the most ridiculous conversations i have ever heard in my entire life. r you are responsible for your children and for your bills. you are responsible for everything that you do in life. i live in an area where people are selling their homes because they cannot afford their cows just the house payment they are living beyond their means there are so many things to cover, it is ridiculous as soon as people realize as we become more responsible we have less problems. you are talking about giving people an income and free healthcare your health is your

responsibility. own up to it if you cannot afford something, you don't buy it i have a 2011 pickup truck because i don't need to buy auy new one. >> ladies say if you can't afford to have cancer you should not get cancer? >>caller: know. now you go to the extreme. >> it is not an extreme that a common experience. >> my dad had cancer he didn't pass way because he couldn't pay his bills. he had a job with healthcare. i am self-employed i buy my own insurance. if i don't sell i don't eat. i have been working since i was 13 years old and never had an issue because a voice been able to live within my means. host: you made that point so we believe that there.

>> yes. people should not live beyond their means in a should be careful about their finances. that some of the people we are talking to in our series did not do anything wrong. they didn't do anything irresponsible, they just felt the downdraft of the decline of the economy in the way that left them coping with downward mobility. we are not saying people areat not responsible or should be responsible for their lives are just that the structures that surround us to cope with some of these things should work better for the people that they are established to work for. that is a basic simple proposition and if you pay one third of your income in taxes and that is something you as a consumer should want as well. >>caller: you will see when you listen to going for broke

that each one of the subjects had one bad thing that happened and the collar has lack of empathy for the fact in human experience people get sick or have mental illness or lose their jobs or have nasty divorces or cannot get a job. there is a whole set of things that go wrong and usually it is one big thing and that cascades into many little things and also how we get back out of it. they are just handouts but redesigning innovation systemic change to keep people from going to the bottom. host: how can people find your podcast? >> you can find it on spotify or apple it is called going for broke.

host: thank you both from going for broke podcast thank you for giving us your time today. >> but a pleasure. thank you. "

continues. host: our first guest is grover norquist, the host: and the first guest of the morning mr. norquist welcome back to the program remind people about your organization. >> americans for tax reform is set up at president reagan's request in 1985 and our goal was to pass the tax reform act of 1986 when we