starting april 1st you can watch the top 21 winning entries on c-span, and you can watch all of the winning student can documentaries anytime online on student cam.org. the world changed in an instant, but media com was ready to get internet traffic soared and we never slowed down. schools and businesses went virtual. we powered a new reality because of mediacom, we are built to keep you ahead. >> mediacom, supporting c-span as a public service. along with these other television providers, giving you a front-row seat into democracy. always glad to welcome back nebraska republican, member of the house armed services committee and also served in the

air force three decades before coming to congress. congressman, i know there was a classified briefings for house members on ukraine yesterday. what can you say about the state of this conflict right now? >> well, the russian ground invasion has largely been stopped by the ukrainians. opwe've got to praise the heart and the fight that the ukrainians have shown and their history is one where the russians have killed millions of ukrainians. they do not want to be under the russian from and they are fighting like it. but the ground a party invasion has largely been stopped. the russians are continuing to bomb cities indiscriminately ordered the shell cities. and if it's war crime as far as i'm concerned. that's why it is imperative that america and the free world continue to provide the weapons that the ukrainians -- ukraine is winning this war, and they are going to need our help to do so. >> host: how much stock do you put into the russian promises of peace negotiations right now? >> guest: very little. think putin is a liar.

he lied up to the invasion, he said he wasn't going to invade. he had false reasons for the invasion, talking about, you know, ukraine having nazi's andd all the things that he said. zelenskyy is a jewish ukrainian. much of his familyy was murdered by the nazis. all the things putin is saying are n just lies. the other doctrine calls for deception, just basically lying to get them what they want and to deceive, to mislead. that is what they are trying to do. i think in the end, putin's goal was to conquer all of ukraine. he given three or four days. i think now he's trying to get what he can and trying i to call may be some of the land and hold onto it for as long as he can and call it a victory. >> host: with that assessment, president biden's lien in warsaw, for god's sake this man cannot remain in power. what was your view on that

seemingly ad-libbed statement? >> all of us would prefer putin not being in power and we would hope that the russians would put a better leader in the. but it was a mistake for the president to say that. he has been basically he's had four major gaps this week on ukraine and russia alone. what it does isee divide our allies and gives fodder for the propaganda. the president has to have better confidence. there's things we think about but there's things you can't say as president and is a five-time commander it's important that you stay on lessons and i will give you an example his comment created a divide between him and the president of france. you start talking regime change and that changes the whole dimension of the war. so the president made a mistake and he made three other ones this week that were similar in

nature. >> what were the three others? >> guest: he told them we were going to ukraine and that gave fodder to president putin. he also said if the russians used violence for weapons that would respond in time and he also said this week that the americans were training the ukrainians and poland and had to retracted. we've had multiple versions of that statement, but it's very important for our allies. democrats, democratic my critic phone call, republicans, 202-748-8001. and those calling in the white

house released a budget of more than $5 trillion budget this week. your assessment, the good and the bad of the document. it is a badhat budget. very standard if you ask me. looking at $73 trillion in spending over ten years, $7.3 trillion a year would be the highest spending of any budgets proposed by any president with a share of the gdp. so it's high spending they are going to raise taxes by about 2.5 trillion roughly. it's going to be $16 trillion in deficit spending or 1.6 trillion a year so this is a lot of spending proposing a gas tax that only hurts p the poor. they will raise the business taxes to one of the highest rates in the world so that isn't good for america's competitiveness. s.i think it's a bad budget. i hope it doesn't get too far is congress. >> host: do you think it does what it needs on the military

side for national security, 773 billion specifically for the pentagon? >> it's 4% growth that we have a 7% or 8% inflation so in real dollars it is a cut to the military which if you want to nuclear rise the triad it's an inadequate budget for the military. at least to stay even with inflation. i would point out on the domestic side they are increasing spending by 12% so looking at 12% growth in defense and 4% growth in defense spending. it needs to stay even and i were would say it is way too much. >> host: out of okeechobee florida, republican. good morning. >> caller: goodpu morning. yes. representative, i am a republican but i'm fed up with you people in our party. everything you've said soso far

this morning about russians doing this and that, why don't you look in the mirror because we go thousands of miles away to kill a nation's leaders and kill their women and children and you never say anything about it. it's okay for us to go thousands of miles and it's fine but let somebody on their border fight somebody right on their border that's not okay. i'm about fed up with you republicans. >> host: got your point. >> guest: i totally disagree with the caller. putin is doing an unjust unprovoked invasion of a country of 44 million people. he's killed thousands of innocent ukrainians. we shouldn't apologize or try to and by thebehavior way we went into afghanistan and

the taliban provided a top cover for al qaeda to kill 3,000 people in america on 9/11 and let's not forget saddam hussein we can look back and say we shouldn't have done that invasion in my view but we can't forget he invaded kuwait and iran and killed many of his own people with weapons so i don't think that we should be defending saddam hussein's behavior either. but to say that it was a mistake to go in there, to compare that to putin invading ukraine who did nothing wrong, a country trying to remain independent. they have a long history of killing millions of ukrainians. they want to remain free and it's in our national interest for an independent ukraine to serve as a buffer between russia n and nato. >> host: we mentioned your work on the armed services committee and you are the culture of the house baltic conference so you were assessing the poor performance of the

russian military. what does that assessment mean for nato's strategy here in the future of trying to plan for the defense of the eastern flank of nato and nato's strategy overall? >> guest: we will have more presence and more permanent forces. the number one request from the states is to have a permanent unit of some kind. maybe a helicopter unit. a permanent presence in the baltics and poland would serve as the russians have to know they invaded poland or attacked the baltics they are attacking america and we have that in a treaty with nato but it's important to have the forces there to make it clear.

>> host: democrats, good morning. >> guest: >> caller: yeah, hi. first of all, i think it is disingenuous as the first lady said that this guy, some of the things he says, the notion that there are no nazis in the region, and there is a group of folks who overthrew the government and they do call themselves nazis. and the notion that just because you have a jewish president, that there is no -- >> host: do you think the russian invasion of ukraine was justified? >> caller: what i will say is no i don't think it was justified, but used ukraine did do some things to ultimately antagonize the russians. the killing of the folks in the region that were russian-speaking and also eliminating the language. >> host: we will give a chance

to respond. >> guest: i disagree. it's more russian apology and i don't think we should be defending russians behavior. they've invaded the region. this was done by the russians. 1996 i believeia it was they signed a treaty with ukraine if they removed their nuclear weapons that they would respect of ukraine so they violated this treaty and so this is all on putin and russia and if we don't think it is a firm hand here then there will be the invasion of georgia next. the baltics are threatened. perhaps poland. we cannot be. what i hear from some of the colors, what i heard in the 1930s, very weak response to a

dictator. we have to have a firm hand here or we will have world war iii. i decided to disagree with of thecaller. this is all on putin and i think we stand with ukrainians and don't put u.s. forces there. i don't think the troops should be in ukraine or the airman should be in ukraine but we should get them everything they need to defend themselves. >> host: richard in louisville kentucky, republican. good morning. >> caller: yes. i would like to know where the good representative was back in march of 2021 when putin started lining off takes up on the border. and we justrt sat around. nothing was said and nobody did anything. once the man goes in, and stars murdering children, all of a sudden you want to comee to the rescue. you are a fraud -- >> guest: this poor gentle man doesn't have all the facts. congress was not informed of this until the first week of december. the administration knew about it

before hand the first week of december. i was sworn in and then the stinger missiles and by the way we didn't provided the stinger missiles. i alsoe was an advocate for anti-shipping missiles. i wanted to provide -- air defense and shipping, the high-end weapons to ukraine so they could maybe detour and change the russian's decisionouo invade but we were told the first week in december that russia decided to invade and i was an advocate and others were an advocate to help ukraine to be armed to do a better job defending themselves. i spoke out in december on and once it became unclassified, i was public about it so this isn't something i didn't do it once the invasion started. i was speaking about it months

earlier. >> host: about 15 minutes left. we spent the first half-hour of the program today talking about president biden asking, imploring congress once again for an additional more than $22 billion in covid relief funding. where do you stand on providing that? >> guest: i think we spend too much money as it is. there are hundreds, there's so much money sitting out there that hasn't been spent. and that was the issue with the last vote on the budget. we want to spend the money that hasn't been spent. there were too many democrats that decided they didn't want to do that. they would rather add to the deficit so it was taken out of the last budget but from this perspective if you want to spend more you need to find where that money is coming from. it shouldn't be added to the deficit. >> host: >> caller: iy, have a couple questions for thee congressman.

where is the money coming from that we are giving to ukraine we had no money for social programs in this country and then another thing, we are talking about i guess putin is committing all these war crimes. isn't saudi arabia doing that with weapons that we sell them and we do nothing about that. why is that? >> guest: fire and ballistic missiles into the cities i think saudi arabia has a right to defend itself and if we do nothing in yemen or the allies do not it will became a proxy state. that would be bad for america and our national security interests. let me stress in your non-ascending ballistic missiles in and firing at anti-saudi cities and that is unacceptable so there's terrorism going on there and we have a pretty hefty safety net in the country when it comes to providing weapons to ukraine i think that it's a wise

decision and i support the president in doing so and in some cases he's been too slow but he's gotten there, and i appreciate whether it may be a little timeliness to disagree with, but i think the president has gotre into the right spot in trying to help ukraine. >> host: on twitter, will you ask the congressmanan to comment on praising putin multiple times since the invasion began and asking forme his help against other americans, and assuming that he meant the comments about releasing any information you might have on hunter biden and wanting to know what the congressman thinks about that. >> guest: i disagree. i didn't think it was wise to call putin a genius and various comments like that, but he's not the president. joe biden is the president and that is where i put my focus. i disagree withfo the comments d i said that publicly. >> host: san clemente california, republican. goodst morning sir. >> caller: good morning. thank youmo so much.

congressman, can't thank you enough for displaying that flag on your vest. so wonderful we are supporting the ukrainians and really proud of you for standing up to a lot of heat by the way as you've seen from several callers that have called in. as a true republican, thank you for doing that and the question i have for you of course is how long can we continue to do this in other words this could be years of support for ukraine if russia continues to button down on this thing. so how long are you prepared to go forward on ukraine? >> guest: that's a great question. appreciate it. first on the comment i believe 95% q of the republicans.

when you hear some of the outliers that are trying to defend the russianan behavior, i think it's an outlier. you are talking want to come into or 5%. the likes of republicans find the behavior repugnant and we've got to call it out for what it is. now how far can this go i'm not sure russia can go on this long. the best information i have is that russia already lost 11,000 troops killed in action and many more have been wounded. to put it in perspective that's more people they lost in afghanistan. more people we lost in 20 years in iraq and afghanistan combined. we lost 58,000 over ten years they are on pace to do that in one year so i don't know how long russia can sustain the number of aircraft shot down, hundreds t of tanks but i do thk we have to help ukraine to have the weapons they need because if

we don't we don't teach russia a lesson we will give a black eye and blood hend knows in this process but they are going to do it again. we have to take it one step at a time. doing thet now we are right thing helping ukraine. >> host: what is the best weapon we can provide and do you see a different providing offense of weapons whatever that means and defensive weapons, is there a difference? >> guest: it's hard to classify some as offensive or defensive. when the white house spokes lady tries to use that as an excuse for what we are not providing the most important thing we can providing is high-end air defense systems. ukrainians need a resupply and we committed to doing thatin soi think that is good. the ukrainians asked for 225's whichh are russian-made aircraft they know how to fly. the administration has not been willing to facilitate that

saying the air missiles are adequate and i would point this out. surface-to-air missiles do notot hit tanks were convoys into the ukrainians need a weapon system that can hit tanks and convoys five, ten, 20 miles behind the lines and right now theyes have minimal capabilities and that's where we have to find a way to fill that knowledge and i would encourage the administration there's various capabilities out there thatra allow that and we need to get these tanks and convoys five, ten, 20 miles down the line and if we do that i think russia will retreat. >> host: less than ten minutes left if you want to ask your question, phone lines as usual democrats and republicans and independent. independent line, peter silver spring maryland, you are up. >> caller: i had a question about how disingenuous republicans are when they quote the tax rate on corporations and have so many loopholes

multibillion dollar corporations pay less in taxes than an american earning $100,000 a year. so the comment i find to be completely disingenuous. second i have a question about as an officer in the air force how long would it take to get the logistics in place to put a make into the service in ukraine? >> guest: i will defend our comments on the business taxes, 28% is too high. the average i is 21%. i will tell you in nebraska the average on this is 1%. so, it may be 21%. the average business in omaha or nebraska. about 21%. so, some of the facilities one were to examples out there do we want businesses to invest and i would say the answer is yes. are we incentivizing investment

at the new plants to provide new equipment and that creates more jobs on the production line, soe if you are building a new building or buying new equipment, that has many with other people being employed. so we want to incentivize investments, that is what the tax codee does. by the way, that gave us the best economy in 40 years with the tax reform and frankly it has probably done more to help us recover than anything else we've done. we've helped businesses recover with competitive tax codes. by defense what we have done their. when it comes to logistics it wouldn't take that much through poland or germany. i think that it would be an outstanding weapon we would have to train how to do it. what they are asking for is to 25's.e 25. that is the russian version of the 8-ton antiaircraft out there that are available. we could facilitate the transfer

that would be great but that isn't the only way. 225 centric we need to provide that capability. whether it's to 25's, remote piloted aircraft were these things called the switchblade drones that you fire and they hit the tanks. there's different capabilities and i don't care which one it has to be. we need to facilitate that. >> host: prairieville louisiana. good morning. >> caller: i have an observation and a question. i see wees have a bipartisan support for nato funding ukraine's borders to protect our nato allies. since the biden administration won't do it, how can we get nato involved to come in and protect

the southern border? >> guest: it's a great question. so many people see this as an eitherpl or. i see it as both. we have to defend our border and you are absolutely right. i think the implication here is this president is doing too little. practically nothing to defend the border. we have had a 20 year high of people illegally crossing the border. by the way we've had a 20 year low with deportation. so, we want a president that defends the border. we have a record amount of fentanyl crossing the border right now and a record number of people dying of overdoses of fentanyl. so, it is the president's job, the constitutional duty and he's not doing it. so, congress to pass laws the president has to enforce them and i think that he's going to lose big in november, partially for this reason. the americans are fed up with

his lack of action on the border. >> host: should congress have any say of the listing of the title that the pandemic border restriction that we talked about in the last segment? >> guest: we could pass a law to do it, but we are not the majority. i can guarantee the majority would support that. then majority in the house i guarantee speaker pelosi wouldn't bring that forward. she would support it. the have a 50/50 senate. if president biden wants to get the priorities in the budget, to give some priorities we want and i guarantee that it would be hamuch the highest of the priorities.

>> caller: when you vote against the budget bill why do you take some money for your district? that's one. two, when it comes to ukraine, why does poland want to send them to germany and make us take the blame for it when they can just take pilots out of ukraine and put them in poland it would be like nebraskad asking for hp and sending it to wyoming. i think the vantage point they want to be by themselves. they want to have assurances that america, germany, it's a team effort, team responsibility. they are afraid if they do this on their own, rushahd will attack poland. so this is their effort to ensure the decision that will have their back. this is something that has to be done publicly. we could have handled it privately and handled the transfer in a better way.

right now though america is opposed to the transfer but it doesn't have to be to 25's were other capabilities that will provide what is needed. so i don't want to be dogmatic. but i do think we can read better iner general. when it comes to opposing the budget, we have to negotiate a better budget bottom line. the budget he put out was $16 trillion in deficits. and we have a budget that is much more reasonable and will point us towards or go in the right direction towards the balanced-budget. >> caller: i will give you the best ones. we all know that consumers are what makes companies. ii am tired of hearing companies threaten to leave the country or

not pay back the benefits what they read from consumers purchasing their items or services which makes them wealthy or gives them the revenue. and we all know trickle-down economics does not work. this is a theory fed to the american public so the republicans have an excuse to make sure to keep taxes low for themselves. zelenskyy we all know and there is a fine line between dictatorship. with russia and moscow and putin we have the strongest economy in 40 years after the tax reform. we have the lowest income wages faster than inflation and a higher percentage and higher income earners out there. so having the competitive tax code attracts the businesses back into america. i want america to be the most

competitive country in the world. and when you have a tax rate that is higher than 90% of the other countries and a regulatory burden that is very burdensome, you lose businesses. i want americans to be well employed and wages declining faster than inflation. this president, inflation is at a 40 year high. the average failing has now lost $400 a monthil and buying power. it's the number one instrument for the swing voters and moderate voters because we are spending too much money so now it's costing too much when you fill up the gas tank and it started about a month after the president was inaugurated. >> host: republican of nebraska, senior member of the house and services committee, always appreciate you stopping by the washington journal.

>> it was a great advantage to know what it was like to work in schools because the education was such an important issue both

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we welcome back to the program democrat of nevada, serving on several key committees of the house including foreign affairs homeland security and infrastructure. congresswoman, let's start with president biden's $5.8 trillion budget request that was released earlier this week. what do you like about it, what don't you like it, and is this a good spending plan? >> guest: well you know, budget is an inflation of your priorities and