is whether a representative payee duly appointed can use the benefits for the cost of care of the beneficiary. we think the plain text of 407 a says the answer is there is no violation whatsoever. social security disability benefits were intended to provide for the special needs of a disabled child to assist them in the transition to adulthood and to provide them some relief from the burdens of their disability. in the state's concept as it would use those funds without any heed to the best interests of the child, no dollar of social security benefits received by a disabled child before they reach their 18th birthday would be available to meet those special needs because the state of washington refuses to acknowledge an obligation under the social security laws to determine what expenditure is or is not in the best interests of the child. >> washington department of social and health services versus the guardianship estate of kefler, saturday on at 6:00

p.m. >> c-span around the country on channel 119. "washington today" continues. >> more evidence that republicans don't want to extend this tax cut. they talk about extending it but are unwilling to do anything to make it a reality. >> democrats in the senate have the sort of decided to link up with the obama campaign and make sure that are on any bipartisan discussions that occur it actually doesn't lead to a bipartisan agreement. >> and so as they say, it's deja vu all over again as house senate conferrees continue to scramble trying to meet the deadline the end of this month to work out some sort of agreement to extend that payroll tax cut in place through the end of february. the president and congress wants to seep it extended through the end of this year. but this question, how do you pay for it?

welcome to hour two of "washington today." thanks for being with us. meanwhile critics saying that the president is abandoning his appeals to limit the role of money in politics the president's campaign is now encouraging donors to give generously to the kind of fund-raising groups he once described as a threat to democracy. his speech in 2010, the campaign is now urging supporters to give to the president's super pac led by two former obama aides it has struggled to compete with the tens of millions of dollars collected by similar groups with republican back. one of those is american crossroads and crossroads gps. one programming note, stephen law is the head of american crossroads. it is a republican-based super pac. he'll be with us part of our coverage at the cpac conference taking place later this week here in washington. we'll have our conversation with him on thursday evening. a federal appeals court saying california's ban on gay marriage has nos effect other than to lessen the status and human

dignities of gays and lesbians. the court is declaring the ban to be unconstitutional. supporters of the ban say they will take this case all the way to the u.s. supreme court. and some new developments on the situation in greece with the prime minister getting closer to announcing a deal with creditors to reduce its debt. that gave wall street some good news as the market rising 33 points. let us begin with the lawmakers on capitol hill, democrats and republicans 20 of them arguing for nearly three hours and according to roll call, no closer to consensus than when we began. that 2% payroll tax cut which includes the medicare reimbursement rate for doctors known as the dock fix will all three set to expire february 29th. in addition to the dwindling clock, conferrees are under pressure from house and senate leaders to move quickly. here's how the leadership played out earlier in the day.

we'll begin with the comments of harry reid as he spoke to reporters on capitol hill. >> the payroll tax is important to keep the money in the hands of the middle class. that's why we should be getting serious how to extend that still the end of the year. so far republicans as we just got a report of what they've been saying here, are talking about the payroll tax but not willing to do anything about it. at the conference committee today, all they did is talk about ways to cut. we know that there's going to have to be cuts with some of the man dapper to programs. we understand that. but there's going to having to also be something done with tax incentives enhancements reven s revenues. they're unwilling to talk about that. we're right back where we were last december. instead of finding common sense solutions, the republicans are talking about things that have nothing to do with middle income taxes. like the keystone pipeline. rolling back regulations to keep our air safe, and our water

clean and pure. these tactics are stalling, more evidence that republicans don't want to extend this tax cut. they take about extending it but simply are unwilling to do anything to make it a reality. today i heard my colleague, senator mcconnell, on the floor claim that republicans support extending the payroll tax cut based on recent history, i'm very, very skeptical of that. i watched the speaker last night on an evening news show, long interview. and he was anything but enthusiastic about the payroll tax cut, using the same mantra that they use all the time. well, we'd like to do that but the democrats aren't serious about spending cuts. and the spending cuts it seem always come from the same place, middle class. the last time senator mcconnell assured the world that republicans extending the payroll tax cut was just a few days before a majority of his own caucus voted against the republican leader's own payroll tax legislation.

meanwhile, the republican leaders in the house are paying only lip service to doing the right thing, but they appear to be at odds even with their lip service to their own members of the caucus. yesterday, one tea party member of the house of representatives said, and i quote, tax holidays are just bad policy. close quote. and another said, quote, this payroll tax holiday is just a gimmick to try to get obama re-elected. so you can see why i'm skeptical. we've seen this movie before. i hope republicans will come to their senses and soon. i overwhelmingly margins, the american people say they want us to close corporate tax loop holes and ask millionaires to pay their fair share. these are the kind of common sense policies we should be talking about, not tea party riders. >> the comments kf senator harry reid, the democratic leader from nevada. in a moment we'll hear from senator mitch mcconnell, the republican leader. i want to go back to a story we

talked about in the last hour. the chairman of the committee is dave kemp. did he urge leaders of both partieser to "back off and let the panel try to strike an agreement." congressman camp is also the head of the house ways and means committee. he met with reporters saying the comments from the leadership on both sides, both the republican and democratic leadership is unhelpful in trying to work out some sort of agreement. again, the big issue is how to pay for this, a bill that would cost upwards of 150 to $160 billion. some are calling for means testing for social security and medicare recipients, just one of a number of proposals being put forth on the table. so far, no agreement. here's more everywhere senator mitch mcconnell as he took reporters' questions also on capitol hill. >> democrats and republicans are dragging their feet on this payroll issue. you are -- you say the democrats are dragging their feet for political purposes on this payroll issue. it appears we're back where we

were in december where both sides are pointing the finger at each other. are you concerned this is going to go right up again to the deadline which did not end last time for many republicans? >> yeah, i am concerned about it. not because it will make us or them look bad but because we're not getting the job done. i mean, can any of you remember a time when a party that controlled most of the government, the white house and the senate, basically decide to cash it in a year and a half in advance of an election and say we're not going to do anything anymore? remember the white house deputy press secretary back in december said the last thing we have to do, the last thing we have do before the election is the payroll tax holiday. so, they just want to cash it in a year and a half in advance and not do anything? because it's unpleasant to have to deal with republicans? look, i think the facts speak for themselves.

there's a bipartisan agreement to extend the payroll tax holiday to the end of the year. our friends on the other side don't want to pay for it by cutting anything. anything. in previous discussions last year, we had identified we thought a number of spending reductions on a bipartisan basis that would be okay to adopt. as senator kyl points out, pre time you bring them up now, they back away from them. so look, i mean, you all look at the facts. and try to figure out here who's telling you the straight story. my counterpart, the majority leader yesterday accused us of wanting to poimp children because the house passed payroll tax bill, which is the underlying bill in the conference. includes the boiler mat provision.

12 of his own members are in favor of it. i don't think senator wyden is in favor of poisoning children. is that the kind of rhetoric while the conference is meeting? it is ahmadinejdine designed to outcome? i think the fakes speak for themselves. >> senator reid reaching out to you at all on the document they're working on on the payroll tax alternative? is there any possibility of consensus coming out of the senate between the two of you? >> well, we have a conference that's a real conference. we think conference ought to the function and ought to reach an agreement. and you heard from two of the conferrees who are anxious to get an agreement. we don't think the we ought to just say to the american people, we're not doing anything the rest of the year, by the way. we're just taking the year off and all we're going to do is campaign. it is a bipartisan agreement that we need to extend the payroll tax holiday through the end of the year. now let's get about it. all this name calling and

obstruction, you know, a lot of talking about obstruction. the majority is the obstructing the senate, not the minority they're the ones who are keeping us from advancing the ball. and they've been remarkably candid about it. >> and so the blame game continues on both sides of the aisle. democrats saying they don't want to see taxes or democrats saying they want to raise taxes in order to pay for some of this and republicans saying no to any new taxes just part of the overall debate on this payroll tax policy that expires at the end of this month without an agreement, sam goldfarb is joining us live on capitol hill. thanks as always for being with us. >> thank you. >> so what's going to happen next? it seems like we saw this play out in the fall, again in the winter, an extension for two months and we're back to where we were last year. >> yeah, i think that's about right. maybe the only difference is that this time, there's this is

formal conference committee made up of members of the house and senate that are working to try to resolve these differences. and so you're hearing a lot of the same things from the party leaders, people like mitch mcconnell and republican leader in the senate and harry reid, the democratic leader in the senate, sort of taking swipes at each other. but people on this house, senate conference committee sort of saying okay, we're making slow progress and they're a little bit more optimistic. >> let me ask you about paying for this because that seemed to be the bulk of what they talked about today for about three hours. 20 members of this conference committee and yet according to all accounts, there's really no noticeable progress. >> right. they talked before three ideas that have been put forward by house republicans, and democrats basically said that they didn't like those proposals particularly two out of those three proposals.

i suppose the, if you want to be optimistic you would say those are just three proposals and that there may be others ha they might be able to reach an agreement on. there is baby a disconnect between what we're seeing in public and maybe what is starting to happen behind closed doors where one of the lead xwoeshiators senate finance committee chairman max baucus said they were starting to meet in private and discuss offsets. he wouldn't say what offsets in particular they're discussing but there might be some path to an agreement there. >> what was your reaction to be congressman dave kemp who essentially said to his leadership and the democratic leadership, back off, let the conference do its work? >> i thought that was interesting because chairman camp is pretty close with speaker john boehner of the republican in the house. and he doesn't usually sort of criticize boehner. obliquely or directly. so it was notable and sort of showed you how camp, people like

camp and people like baucus really want to sort of be left alone so they can sort of slopely go through this process to try and reach an agreement. meanwhile, people on both sides are trying to sort of seize the political advantage and people like camp feel that that doesn't really help them much. >> we're talking with sam goldfarb of cq roll call. let's talk calendar. the house is here this week and next week but off for presidents' day week. that leads to the february 29th deadline. >> right. i mean, the conference committee might be making slow progress and might be trying to remain optimistic, but even they acknowledge that they really don't have the much time at all and there's a real disconnect there. so it's -- i guess that's what's led some people to speculate that they might do another short-term extension just 0 buy time for a little bit more negotiations. on the other hand, some people say that they really don't want

to do that because they just don't want to do these short-term fixes. they just want to get this issue out of the way for the rest of the year so they can campaign for ahead of the elections. so it's hard to see how they can get it done, but they're doing -- i guess they're trying hard to get it done in a very short period of time. >> let me ask you the obvious question that we hear so often on the "washington journal." can these folks agree on anything? is there anything that they can work on in terms of domestic policy issues in which there is bipartisanship? >> that's a good question. i think that fundamentally, they all want to extend this payroll tax cut. they all want to extend unemployment benefits. that is something that they agree on. when it comes to measures that would reduce the deficit or in this case measures that would pay for an extension of those

policies, anything -- any amount of pain there's a fundamental disagreement, you know, democrat you've heard it a thousand times, want to increase taxes, republicans cut spending. and they're just very far part from each other. >> sam goldfarb of cq roll call. thank you very much for being with us. >> thank you. >> you're listening to "washington today" being simulcast on c-span3. check us out at c-span radio.org. a long-term outlook that many say congress needs to work on, one of the issues that senator ron widing put forth as ben bernanke testified on capitol hill. last week he was before a house committee. today before the senate budget committee. >> i want to ask you a little bit more about the shocks to the committee that you the have been discussing. you talk about the pace of the recovery being slow and particularly for the millions of people who are hurting,

unemployed, underemployed and that all of this really comes together as part of a sluggish expansion that's left the economy vulnerable to shocks. so i can see plenty of shocks. the payroll tax debate bogging down into a quagmire and talking about two months or another short-term effort. we mentioned europe as another one. mentioned the question 69 sequestration and you know, to me, that will alone puts a very negative spectacle you know out because it would mean that in a lame duck session in the 2012 congress, you would see, again, the same sort of flailing that you did after 2010. so my first question to you on the shock issue is, doesn't it serve to shock our economic

system just to have all this delay and week after week of bickering and inability to get decisions on whether it's payroll taxes or others? isn't that in and of itself a shock to the system in term of what it does to business confidence and predictability and uncertainty? >> well, policy uncertainty is certainly one of the things that businesses complain about, makes it harder to plan. you know, we face the same issue as regulators with regulatory uncertainty and obviously, to the extent that greater clarity can be provide, it would be helpful to the economy. >> and is it fair to describe that as yet another shock to the system? because to me it, everything i've been trying to do, i'm going to ask you about tax reform in a minute -- has been to try to feg out how to force action early because when you don't, what you're most likely

at a i'm when you have a sluggish expansion to see a reduction in confidence and predictability and the like. is it fair to say ta delay in this kind of climate when it comes to getting the payroll tax issue worked out and others that that in and of itself is a shock to the system? >> i would cite the example of the of debt ceiling debate last summer which was clearly a shock and very probably affected consumer confidence and financial markets. more generally, loss of confidence that agreement will be reached or uncertainty about what agreement will be reached is a negative for confidence. >> let me ask you about the quep, i mean, to me the anecdote to economic shocks are the cushions, the kinds of cushions that start us on the road to predictable more certain kinds of opportunities to promote economic growth and tax reform strikes me to be right up at the

top of the list. and as you know, supercommittee, we have senator portman here has done very good work on this, did it in the supercommittee. a lot of that work has been done now. i mean, there are tough tough political calls to be made, of course, to address tax reform, but the principles are pretty clear. much of what was done in 19826, cleanout a lot of the junk, the special interest breaks, to hold down rates and keep progressivity. wouldn't long-term predictable tax reform be the kind of cushion that would help address the shocks that you're concerned about for the economy? >> predibltability is good and also a good tax code in itself promotes growth. most economists agree a simpler, fairer, broader base tax code would be constructive for growth, yes. >> and on the converse of it

all, wouldn't piecemeal changes where again, we go through another round of temporary credits, temporary extensions, modifications to this provision, that provision, wouldn't that contribute to the uncertainty and the lack of predictability that would make it hard for us to grow? >> well, senator, as you fully appreciate, politics is complicated and sometimes not everything is feasible and from a political point of view, but from an economic point of view, obviously the more comprehensive and clean the tax reforms or spending reforms can be, the more likely they'll be good, efficient from an economic point of view and the more likely they'll reduce uncertainty. >> i think your points are well taken, mr. chairman. my certain is, absent the kind of comprehensive reform that i think would be a strong cushion to the shocks that you're talking about, i just hope that the country will see how

important it is to steer away from yet more piecemeal kinds of changes that make this broken tax system even more dysfunctional and don't give businesses and consumers the predictability they need to generate the growth that you are talking about. thank you, mr. chairman. >> the exchange between senator ron wyden, a democrat from oregon, a member of the senate budget committee as he questioned ben bernanke, the chair of the federal reserve. other headlines that came out of today's testimony by the fed chairman, his indication that inflation will remain low at around 2% for the foreseeable future. electrical rates will stay at their current level, near zero in some cases for the next two years, but raising more concerns about the jobless picture in this indicating we could see an uptick in unemployment and more concern about those underemployed. the entire programming at c-span.org. news tonight from the prime

minister of greece who has postponed a meeting with heads of the political parties supporting his caretaker government. it's the second time in as many days as the government and international creditors haggled over terms tore secure a second aid package. the greek prime minister will meet with leaders tomorrow morning instead of tonight. there appears to be some movement in working out an agreement. a spokesperson for the private creditors in xwrooes saying the prime minister will tell eurozone finance ministers that the contents of the deal will reduce the country's massive debt. one of a number of issues that we raced with steve lease han man who writes for cnbc.com. >> i lease it's one of those things i have to believe it when i see it. it's been out there, what was that about a week ago, that it was going to happen on the weekend. look, it's an interesting set of facts on the ground in europe. it looks like they very stopped the bleeding when it comes to broader europe.

the european central bank has come in with a massive program that has a sort of analogy to the quantitative easing program we're doing in the united states and flooded the banks with money. i think taken some of the insolvency or the concerns over italy and spain off table. that has left grooets as the sole immediate problem that's out there, not that there aren't huge and massive long-term problems for europe. if greece can get solved and needs to get solved with european money and there seems to be sufficient amounts of it out there of course with a massive private sector haircut, which means they agree to reduce the value of the amount of the bonds they own and take a hit on the value, then that can go a long way towards helping out the u.s. economy and helping out the european and global economy. bernanke believes europe is at or close to being in recession. he did say u.s. banks have reduced their exposure to be

banks. he did offer don't fool yourself. if there's a major financial shock in europe, it's going to be felt on these shores in a meaningful way. >> the comments of steve liesman. he writes for cnbc.com. first two points. angela merkel saying there is no way around greece and that xwrooes is in a very complicated situation that quote from the reporting of bloomberg news. the elections scheduled for early april in greece and citigroup raising the possibility that greece will be porsed to leave the euro within the next 18 months, raising the possibility everyone 25% now the to 50% if the greek government is unable to reach any solid reforms that would stabilize its debt and lead to the path to more economic stability in greece you're listening to "washington today" here on c-span radio. >> and some other news today, first to wall street. the dow was up 33, closing at

12,878. nasdaq up 2 and s&p also up 2. the white house today saying it wants to allay the concerns of catholic church affiliated employers over that new requirement for them to provide birth control coverage regardless of religious beliefs. jay carney did not say how those concerns could be addressed. he said there were a lot of ideas for doing it and continued to defend the new policy while making it clear the white house is looking for a way to calm the firestorm some say that's erupted since it was announced last month. a policy chief who resigned from the susan g. komen breast cancer charity today says she stepped down to allow the organization to move forward. karen handle told reporters she had become a focal point in a dispute whether the komen organization should give money top planned parent hyde. she said officials started discussing policies in 2010 and

were concerned some roman catholic churches had encouraged donors not to give to komen. and said she was tasked with helping develop a policy that kept komen on neutral ground on the abortion debate. komen first said they would cut off funds and then a couple days later changed their position. here in washington, d.c., the city council has made it easier for guy and lesbian couples who marry to get divorced. provided they live somewhere that would not recognize the divorce. under current law, one member of the divorcing couple has to live in d.c. for six months before starting divorce proceedings. donald trump will be conv t converting a building on pennsylvania avenue into a luxury hotel. the trump organization has been selected to redevelop the old post office pavilion. the post office was completed in 1899 to house the u.s. post

office headquarters and at city's post office. it has a 315-food clock tower, second tallest structures in. the capital otheren hat washington monument. it has a food court and shops that is largely indicator to tourists. and some news from overseas in a presidential race in russia, vladimir putin today pledging to cut traffic privileges for officials who routinely bypass moscow's of traffic jams by ignoring rules of the road and driving into on coming lanes. there are about 900 officials in moscow who have the blue lights allowing them toef ignore traffic rules. vladimir putin running for president has promised a drastic cut to just a few dozen. he is expected to keep those privileges though. back in a moment with more

"washington today." >> take c-span radio with the with a free c-span radio aps for the iphone, ipad, ipod touch and blackberry. audcrow streams of c-span radio and the three c-span television channels with events from the white house, congress and on the campaign trail, along with the "washington journal" live call-in in the morning. book tv and the sunday talk shows opt weekends and supreme court oral arguments, plus podcasts all free with the c-span radio apps. >> and you're listening to "washington today" on c-span radio. the obama administration today defending its decision to urge fund-raisers to back the outside group known as those super pacs for the president's own re-election effort telling the reporters the choice to reverse himself was approved by the president himself. we heard from jay carney. news broke late last night the campaign announcing it was not go