"washington journal" continues. host: joining us for our last half-hour this morning is congressman mark pocan who serves on the appropriations committee, education and labor committee as well. let's begin with oil and gas prices. the move by president biden yesterday, your reaction. guest: it is a good move. i think we should be more aggressive with some of the oil company executives. gas prices started going up last

march when in texas their energy grid was not properly supported for the weather. they had some outages that affected the processing and the next thing you know, gas prices shot up and never went down and we have recordings from oil executives where they said they increased production in order to return more for shareholders. they did not give a damn about consumers. that has had prices up. ukraine is having additional facts. the president is doing the right thing. this is glad -- this is one thing where i am glad the oil companies are coming for a hearing because there is more to the story that involves price gouging. host: a poll found that four in 10 americans blamed the biden administration prices for gas prices -- blame the biden administration policies for gas prices. are you concerned about this? guest: we should be talking

about the reality of this which is price gouging by oil companies for over a year. we should put pressure on them. the president said he would release more oil and the price per barrel went down. that shows you the artificially high price that has been out there and that is the right thing the president is doing by going after those companies and congress having hearings on that. we have to get the really out there. otherwise, republicans will rally around joe biden money to rise gas prices, as ridiculous as that is. a number of people start believing it. we will get the truth out there and eventually these oil companies will realize in addition to getting unnecessary subsidies and other things, they will start really upsetting congress quite a bit if they keep gouging our constituents. host: the house energy and commerce committee will hear testimony from the oil company executives about their business practices and the industry wednesday, next week at 10:30 a.m. eastern.

watch on c-span3, c-span.org, or the free video app. what would you ask of the oil executives? guest: i am not on the committee but what i would ask is, refer to some of the tapes we have where they have literally said they are getting increased year ago because they will make sure they secure their shareholders. they have thousands of unused ability in federal property and other areas do additional supply and demand and not taking vantage it. they want to preserve these. at some point, the federal government has to quit taking it too easy on them. when it comes to certain things that benefit their company's, they should be just as concerned about the consumers especially at a time of war. the fact that they are not shows lack of a patriotic nature in their companies. we should treat them different when it comes to subsidies. host: losing onto the president's budget.

you said -- moving on to the president's budget. what did you mean? guest: the last two years, if you ask people with the biggest national security threat this country has had, it clearly was covid-19 and yet we cannot use defense dollars for covid-19. there are a number of national security threats from the pandemic to cyberattack to climate change that we should be putting more dollars in because they are national security threats. the way to do the defense budget , most of the money goes to defense contractors who often make vehicles that sink. the most recent class of aircraft carrier gets a toilet clogged and it costs $400,000 worth of chemicals to unclog them. you are literally flushing money down the drain. there are 800 efficiencies and in one year, they fixed two of

them. they are really treating us like pawns in many ways. too many lawmakers look at the defense program -- the defense budget as a jobs program rather than a defense program that it should be. a modern definition of defense would include pandemics and climate change and cyberattack and other things. if we did that, that is a different debate. it is about making sure the defense contractors continue to have very robust bank account. that does not provide for the national defense. host: from the president's budget proposal, this is from the white house and the crv gear $5.8 trillion in spending including $318 billion for defense. 1.4 trillion dollars in deficit spending. deficits would total $4.4 trillion in four years. the national debt would grow to more than $39 trillion by 2032.

congressman, how do you justify that deficit? guest: the president is bringing much of it down as he is trying to do many other things. we are going through a once in a century pandemic. we have made major investments. the real story is that we spent $1.9 trillion on the american rescue plan putting money in people's pockets, jobs, putting kids back into school, getting people into jobs. then we passed $1.2 trillion in infrastructure bill. we talked about that for decades and we finally got it done under joe biden and the democrats last year. those are two major bills that will have a huge impact on american families and will help with wages and other things combating the inflation that has been driven by covid. i think we are coming out of a pandemic. this is another good budget by the president. i would argue we need a different definition of defense

so we spend our dollars wisely. spending in healthcare, education, and other things, they are proper investments and we will get people out of covid, back to normalcy in a quicker way. host: it sounds like you are a guest on the budget despite the defense spending -- it sounds like you are a yes on the budget despite the defense spending. guest: there is a company in my district that makes a part that goes on the ships and every year they asked me to buy more ships than the department of defense asks for because they make a part. you extrapolate that by congressional districts and you can tell why we did not audit the pentagon like we do every other agency. that is a problem. it is not a jobs program. it is an issue of national defense and national defense should be about national security threats which includes things like pandemics and the budget does not. when it comes to the budget, the president did right on absolutely everything with the

exception that we need is congress to have a big debate about what defense is and i think with just a few word changes, we could invest in these other areas. host: let's invite viewers to join the conversation. phone numbers on your screen. you can talk with congressman mark pocan about the rising oil and gas prices, about the budget proposed by the president, or the latest economic numbers. let me share with you, these are just out. the u.s. economy added 431,000 jobs in march. this is from "the washington post." the u.s. has averaged 541,000 job gains for year -- job gains per year. 93% of jobs lost in the pandemic are now back, congressman. guest: these are great numbers. you would think if it was not

for the last four years of the trump presidency where the republican party became a cult, that you would have a president who has dropped unemployment like that, who has invested in infrastructure, who has done as much for the economy as he's done despite the inflation caused by coming out of covid. not the president's fault, but he once in a century pandemic. this number should be at 70% but because of the political rhetoric we have been swimming in during the trump administration, it is harder. those are solid numbers and joe biden does deserve credit. host: dave, armstrong creek, wisconsin, democratic caller. caller: i wish you were representing me instead of who i have. i want to point out that blaming the president for the price of gas at the pump is ridiculous. it has never been that way. one of the previous callers pointed that out from president to president. during the pandemic, they could

not sell a barrel of oil. the price was down, it cost them more to drill than to sell. they are trying to make back the profits that they lost. i know republicans always bring up, he shut down the keystone pipeline. it was never going in the first place. it was never built and it was going to pump oil from canada down to louisiana to be refined and that was going to go on the global market. the price of oil does not have anything to do. we do not make the price of oil. that is market-controlled. those were the points i wanted to make. guest: the caller is right. thanks for calling from my home state. it is exactly what we have said.

we have recordings of these executives who have said that they were going to go back into production. this is going back a year ago when there was less usage because of covid. instead, they wanted to return more for their shareholders. out of corporate greed, prices went up for everyone. now there is a real reason with the war that there is fluctuation and the president is addressing it. but a president does not set oil prices but oil executives can rip off consumers. host: edward in colorado, republican. caller: thank you for taking my call. i wanted to ask you a question. do you know anything about nasa catalytic converter that was invented back in 2002? it reduces car pollution and basically is 100% efficient. existing catalytic converters

are only 70%. they do not work when you first start your car up. we are all after clean-air. we are all after electric cars to purify the air and make everything less dependent on falsely fueled. this type of converter can be used. i am looking at the article right now. it is cheaper to put on cars. we can make a transfer in clean-air. do you know anything about that? i have asked this question several times to different people that are interested in less use of gasoline. it can be used on industrial engines. host: congressman? guest: not offhand but one of the products -- points you brought up is important. it is not just about the environment by converting to clean energy. it is about having to rely on

certain regions of the world that are more volatile that sometimes we put a lot of money into the pentagon in order to make sure that we are able to maintain that flow of oil. there are a lot of reasons why we should be more concerned about converting to clean energy. i have a .5 kilowatts of solar at my home. when i get the bill for $13, that is the all-time time low i get with the year. there is nothing like paying $13 for your utility bill. when we do that, we are not having to rely on other countries and other things that cost us money, including in the pentagon budget. host: don, ohio, independent. caller: hi. first, i would like to see the government roll back the subsidies for the oil companies. i think they should exist on their own profit margin. as far as the supplies, capping strategic supplies, -- tapping

strategic supplies, i think it is wrong to tap those strategic supplies because they will have to be replaced and it cost more to replace that oil than to put it there in the first place. guest: i completely agree with you. it is absolutely ridiculous that we are supplying any kind of subsidy to seriously profitable industries who clearly did not care about consumers. unfortunately, some of the regional politics where the jobs are interferes with that. what the president is doing is trying to address the high gas prices and this is one of the few things he can do. but in the long-term, if this does not give us one more reminder why electric vehicles make a lot of sense and why we need to invest in them, which the president did. half a million charging stations in the infrastructure bill across the country. the quicker we convert over and the auto manufacturers have been working with congress to do this, the better off we will be

so we do not need to have these at the debate. host: shay in missouri. caller: i would like to point out these people that are blaming biden for the gas prices and the inflation, they are going up in the other countries too and i wanted to point that out and see what he says about that. guest: that is a great point. how is joe biden affecting inflation in europe? the rhetoric in washington is always really deep. i have to go home and shower at the end of the day, there is so much of it. i have been a small business owner. i was 23 when i opened a small business. i have had all kinds of price increases. it is economics 101 or maybe even economics 99. when there are supply and demand issues, you will have an increase.

because everything opened up at once last year and there were a worldwide increase for goods and we do not make enough things in the united states and we are relying on overseas production, there is a scarcity because everyone wants everything at once. scarcity drives prices up which is inflation. it is really very basic what happened. clearly, joe biden did not do that. a once in a century pandemic dad. -- a once in a century pandemic did. we are coming out of the. -- we are coming out of it. that is just the reality. people who try to take advantage of this by blaming the president , i hope people can see through it and i hope people take them as credible. host: dennis, texas, independent. caller: good morning. i would like to ask the congressman how much oil was put in the reserves under the trump administration when the oil was

so cheap that they were trying to get gasoline away? if i'm not mistaken, i think it was during the trump administration. host: the first year of the pandemic, is that right congressman? guest: i am not sure if i call the full question. host: he was wondering when there was no demand or the demand was low for gas during the pandemic and the market was flush with oil and gas, then how much did the former president put into the strategic reserve? guest: i want to stress, this is a solution right now the president is doing because it is something he could do to affect oil prices but there is not much he can do here in that is the problem. what i do not want to do is have people get lost on the strategic reserves. more importantly, i would hope that this drives home the point that we need electric vehicles and we need to come up with other renewable and clean energy sources so we do not have to

rely on these repeated it, whether -- rely on these repeated events in the ab worldwide events. -- repeated events, whether it be worldwide events. the president did that in the infrastructure bill. we need to do more of it as congress. i hope that the public because the pressure on members of congress. eventually the leaders will follow. i am a big believer in that. people need to call congress and demand us to do more and eventually it will happen. host: cornelius, a republican out of indiana. good morning. caller: good morning. i do not know if you know julia ludlow, she serves the fifth congressional district here and her husband died of covid-19 and my dad did too. i have comorbidities and stuff like that.

i believe you need to look at fauci and find out how these chinese communist designed it. my dad thought the communist chinese, he was a korean war vet . we look at dr. fauci -- will you look at dr. fauci to see how this stuff was found out? guest: sorry to hear about your family and my mom also passed away about a month ago. i am mad about that but at the same time, i was following the science and so far there is nothing that points to the theory that is out there. there are a lot of republicans around here love to want to fight with china at all levels. this is a good way to keep those contractors wealthy. but i do not believe it is real.

there has been lots of information that we looked at and it is still not coming up. you always want a reason why. i completely understand. especially when it affects your family like it affected my family. i have nothing to point to that as being the reason why we have covid. host: richard is in kenya -- richard is in virginia. caller: i would just like to say with the gas prices, why not bring up a bill for the american people, send stimulus gas checks out and put the republicans on notice and let them vote against the american people. at least the democrats will show that they tried to help the people of the united states with the gas prices. host: let's take that idea. guest: i apologize.

i missed what he said. host: he said why not give americans ate stimulus check to help with rising gas prices. guest: what we are doing next week on wednesday, bringing in oil executives to answer for themselves for holding americans hostage, gas prices is one of those things we can do. we have done stimulus checks. they were important for people to get by. i want to make sure we did not get into a repeated pattern of having oil companies not only rip off taxpayers by giving subsidies, but rip off consumers by exhorting prophets. we have to expose that and the democrats are doing the right thing by having that hearing next week. host: theresa in florida, independent. caller: good morning. i have a brief comment. i watched "washington journal" in the morning.

i would like to settle the division in our country. that is why i'm an independent. i do not think it helps when politicians call other parties cults and i would like the politicians to try and bring us together more. guest: i totally understand. i hear that a lot back home. i have been doing this for almost 30 years. i have never seen it this bad. the rhetoric under donald trump. now you have republican members of congress. you do not get in trouble for going to a white nationalist conference. that is ridiculous. we are not getting upset because he called zelensky a thug but we are upset because he is exposing something that is happening. that is what we have become because the republican party has become a cult of a personality.

i wish more republican leaders would be like liz cheney and defend the republican party. we could have differences. liz cheney and i disagree greatly on the pentagon budget but i respect the fact that she is willing to fight for the country over her political party. until we get more people in this modern party to do that, that is the reality. infrastructure, the fact that that was not a unanimous vote after we all talked about it for years, they did not want to give joe biden the victory. joe biden got a big victory and he got something done for the american people. that's it have been -- that should have been celebrated by everyone. host: a republican. caller: i was wondering on strategic oil, when you pull that out, how much was it when you put it in and how much is it going to cost when you put it back? isn't that just kicking the ball down the road? as far as stimulus checks go, he

is one of the largest state tax on gasoline. he wants to take your gas tax and have somebody process it and give it back to him and write checks and give it back to the people. how much sense does that make? host: congressman? guest: you are right. donald trump did try to get infrastructure done and failed. he could not get it to the floor when republicans were in charge. that is why joe biden deserves credit for it. $1.2 trillion last year we passed. stimulus checks, that may not be the best answer. that got mentioned before. i would rather make sure the oil companies are not ripping off consumers. on the middle country -- on the middle question, on the

reserves, i do not think anyone wants gas prices to stay high. the president is doing the little that he can and this is one thing he can do to reduce gas prices. let's at least let him try to lower the price for consumers. host: what about this latest round of relief for covid-19 aid? where does it stand right now with negotiations in the senate, with senator mitt romney? what do you know about what this package may look like and what will it do? guest: we think this and it will send a bill to the house. it will be around $10 billion. the white house asked for $22 billion, much of it for domestic reasons. some of it for international vaccines because if we do not do that, we will have the variant and it is not in our best interest to have more variants. this is central funding. have you ever sarah was before

the appropriations commission yesterday explaining that they are running out of money in areas to help. we have to get ahead of the pandemic, not just responding to the pandemic and part of this is responding. part of it is trying to get us ahead. i am glad they are working in a bipartisan way and when we get it next week in the house, i think it will happen and we will get the president to sign it and that will be helpful. host: what will be in there for the individual american? guest: there is money around testing, there are about dollars -- there are a lot of dollars for therapy and testing. these are dollars that we have to budget for that we have doing for quite a while and because covid still exists, we need additional dollars. i think in this case from what i understand, $1 billion. we need more for international vaccines.

i would hope that we can figure out some ways to do emergency funding to help on that. the problem we have is the republicans said dollars came from unused existing dollars. they are not that many unused existing dollars in covid. let's be smart about the pandemic. let's get ahead of the next pandemic and ends is what the biden administration is trying to do. host: you said this and it will send you the bill to our what is the timeline for getting it passed? guest: i never predict descendant although i am hoping it will happen next week -- i never predict descendant -- the senate, although i am hoping it will happen next week. host: what happens next in the legislative calendar? guest: then we are off. we are in districts for the next couple of weeks. even though we just finished a couple weeks ago, the fiscal

year ends with the arm of his bill. we just got the appropriations budget and we are getting the secretaries to go over the budget. there is a breathing period. we had less this year but we will get the process going and hopefully get everything done by the september 30 fiscal year. host: congressman mark pocanele

the seat vacated by rob portman. >> welcome to voters first, the 2022 ohio u.s. senate democratic primary debate. sponsored by the ohiodebate commission . coming to you live from central state university in wilberforce ohio.