war in vietnam and the presidential race with south dakota senator jorge mcgovern. and throughout the month of may c-span radio brings you some of richard nixon's phone calls with future presidents ford, reagan and george h.w. bush, with key white house advisors alexander hag and charles collison and fbi director j. edgar hoover starting may 5th and airing every saturday in may. the nixon tapes on c-span radio. welcome back. you're listening to "washington today" here on c-span radio, some news today, late this afternoon on capitol hill the house is going to vote friday on a republican bill that would prevent interest rates on federal student loans from doubling this summer. it would be paid for by cutting money from the president's health care overhaul law. the announcement from john boehner coming the same day the president was wrapping up his two day three state tour to college campuses. yesterday in north carolina and

colorado, today in iowa at the university of iowa. it was a rather abrupt announcement by the speaker of the house who said that the president was looking for a fight when really there was not one if congress fails to act the student loan interest rates will double from 3.4% to 6.8% in july. it's an the election year increase set by law unless congress blocks it. could it affect as many as 7.5 million students when both parties are competing for the vote and a affection of the youth vote. here's more from capitol hill as the speaker of the house john boehner made the announcement. he was joined by congressman john klein republican of minnesota and chair of the education and workforce committee. >> back in 2007, a democrat controlled congress put in place a law that would double student loan interest rates this year. republicans and democrats on both sides of the aisle here on the capital have long agreed this was a problem that must be

addressed. right now president's economic policies are leaving a recent college graduate 50% of them are either unemployed or underemployed. today i'm pleased to announce that on friday the house will vote on a bill to extend the current interest rate on federal student loans for one year. we will pay for this by taking money from one of the slush funds in the president's health care law. you know, this week the president is traveling the country on the taxpayer's dime, campaigning and trying to make a fight where there isn't one and never has been one on this issue of student loans. we can and will fix the problem without a bunch of campaign style theatrics. i know this issue well. it took me seven years to work

my way through college and working every job i could get my hands on. what washington shouldn't be doing is exploiting the challenges that young americans face for political gain. and shouldn't be sticking to small businesses with a health care law that's causing, making it more difficult for them to hire workers. let's fix the problems for young americans and leave the campaign theatrics for the fall. >> speaker? >> yes, sir. [ inaudible ] >> this slush fund has been used to offset other spending and had been done so on a bipartisan fashion. it's a reasonable and responsible way to deal with this problem that the democrats themselves created five years ago. [ inaudible ]

>> no. >> that's exactly the right question. we need to be working towards a long term solution to this issue, a solution that brings the market into bear. we're looking at the possibility of variable rates so that this is not a political decision every year or every two years or every the election year and so this, this fix that the speaker has just outlined which will extend the current 3.4% rate for one year and pay for it without adding $6 billion to the debt or billions of dollars in taxes to small businesses this gives us the room to work for that long term solution which we all know that we have to reach. democrats, republicans and how to and senate. >> republican congressman kline. the president talking about this issue, his third stop at the university of iowa earlier in the day. he's back in washington tonight. carrying out some of the same things demanding congress act on this before july 1st.

that's when student loan interest rates would increase to about 7.5%. here's the president. >> now the good news is the senate introduced a bill last night that would keep student loan rates from doubling. that's the good news. [ applause ] >> what's also good news is some republican senators look like they might support it and i'm ready network with them to make it happen. that's good. but i've got to tell you, the republicans who run the house of representatives have not yet said whether or not they will stop your rates from doubling. and they've hinted that the only way to do it is if they cut things like aid for low-income students. so let me scratch my head there for a second. think about that. we're going help some students by messing with other students. that's not a good answer. how many people think that's a

good answer? i didn't think so. one of these members of congress, you know, sometimes i like just guesting these quotes because i'm always interested in how folks talk about this issue. you've got one member of congress who compared these student loans, i'm not kidding here, to a stage three cancer of socialism. stage three cancer -- [ laughter ] -- i don't know where to start. what do you mean? [ laughter ] what are you talking about? [ applause ] come on. just when you think you've heard it all in washington, somebody comes up with a new way to go

off the deep end. [ laughter ] and then you've got to spokesman for the speaker of the house who said we're, meaning me, my administration, we're just talking about student loans to distract people from the economy. now, think about that for a second. because these guys don't get it. this is the economy. [ applause ] this is the economy. this is about your job security. this is about your future. if you do well the economy does well. this is about the economy. [ applause ] the president on the campus of the university of iowa earlier today and the president making reference to senate action on the student loan interest rate issue, senator mitch mcconnell speaking out earlier today here in washington. >> really the only question is how to pay for it. democrats want to pay for it by raiding social security and

medicare. and by making it even harder for small businesses to hire. we happen to think that at a time when millions of americans and countless college students can't even find a decent job it makes no sense whatsoever to punish the very businesses we're kourntsing on to hire them. it's counter productive and clearly the wrong direction to take. so let's be honest the only reason democrats propose this particular solution to the problem is to get republicans to oppose it and to make us cast a vote they think will make us look bad to voters that they need to win in the next the election. they admitted earlier this week to use the senate floor as an extension of the obama campaign. so no one should be surprised that they opted for a political show vote over a solution. what republicans are saying is let's end the political games and solve the problem like adults. this is an easy one. the only real challenge in this debate is coaxing the president off the campaign trail and up to

the negotiating table to get him to choose results over rallies. >> senator mitch mcconnell on the senate floor earlier today. essentially here's what we have. a senate plan that would keep student interest rate loans where they are but would pay for it by raising taxes something that the republicans say they won't go along with. then the house plan would take the money from the president's hearth law the house and senate out next week the house will be voting on its plan on friday and the debate continues. meanwhile in the house of representatives today by a voice vote approving what is called the digital accountability and transparency act that would increase transparency on federal agency spending and its aimed squarely at what happened with gsa and some of the spending at those conferences in las vegas totalling in excess of $800,000. the sponsor of the bill is darrell issa. he spoke on the house floor. >> the american people have a right to know that taxpayer

dollars are well spent. we have a responsibility to stay up with the times as government has grown, waste, fraud and abuse and mismanagement has increased. today, however, the technology is before us if we simply embrace it to do a far better job of accounting for every dollar spent on behalf of the american people. that's not just the american dollars that are spent by the federal government, but dollars passed on to private-sector, to the states, to public entities and nonprofits. today as those trillions of dollars are put out we find that we don't know where they are spent. at best we know the first place they went to. under the recovery act often called the stimulus, we can all disagree or agree on how the money was spent. but unlike previous appropriations, under that act we found a way to do a better job of tracing the dollars.

tracing the dollars through recipient reporting. a system that although it cost a little bit to do, ultimately once set up saves money. the data act before us today will literally track those trillions of dollars in a way not done outside of the recovery act. quite frankly we owe a debt of gratitude to the recovery board for showing us an effective system on which we could build. just a few days ago our committee on a very bipartisan basis evaluated the gs a's lavish spending. they explained to us that part of the way they spent $830 plus thousand was to cobble together as they put it multiple baskets of money. meaning if you didn't know and couldn't trace how they spent their money you wouldn't know that it was spent on a mind reader and a clown. you wouldn't know that those ten

trips essentially were publicly funded trips so that key executives could have family vacations. with the data act we expect that and many other wasteful practices to be brought to an end. some of them will be brought to the end by the ranking member and our work on the committee. but a great many of them will be brought to bear by the american people being able to search online and learn what they currently cannot learn. the data act has been a bill that has been unlike many completely bipartisan. the minority and the majority have worked hand-in-hand. we come to you today with a bill that has been agreed to and that will save, i repeat, save billions of dollars. additionally, we do, in fact, amend some of the abuses under the gsa scandal, and do so based on the good work of representative dennis ross of

florida who introduced strong language to do exactly what we're doing today. so, before we go on, let me just say that i want to thank the ranking member because the work on this bill, the reason this bill is before us on suspension is we've been able to work hand-in-hand with members of the majority and minority and with key staff on both sides to make sure that we have a bill that will pass the house hopefully on a unanimous basis and clearly will see the senate send a message it's time for accountability generated from bipartisan work in the house and i reserve the balance of my time. >> comments of congressman darrell issa coming as the house passing a bill that does impose tough limits on how much the government can spend on krengss and creating a website to allow anyone to search for information on federal spending. joining us live with some perspective on this story is jonathan strong, a writer for roll call. thanks very much for being with us.

>> thank you. >> how did this come about? it was a voice vote, not a lot of debate. there was agreement with what with the spending of gsa. >> on april 2nd, inspector general of gsa released a report of about $823,000 conference, lavish expenses in las vegas for about 300 people and ever since then the new details about waste and abuse at that agency continue to come out and so in that political climate 13 people at the agency at gsa have either resigned, been fired or placed on administrative leave. and so we're seeing now some legislative action to try to rectify some of the problems that were unveiled by this scandal. >> not a lot of debate on this. it was a voice vote. >> yeah. i'm not sure if there would have been a lot of debate ordinarily but certainly right now you don't want to get in the way of the bill that is a, response to

a scandal. >> your colleague reporting on some developments on the senate side of the capitol when it comes to government travel. what's new on that front? >> one of the interesting things, the house bill from darrell issa is are primarily about transparency, that's the agencies would have the report their expenses. and the measure would cap the total cost individual currents at $500,000 and slash the total amount spent on conferences annually by 20%. so there's actually some spend regular ductions in the legislation as well. >> congress clearly trying to get ahead of this story. there needs to be compromise or at least agreement between the two chambers. what will happen next >> we have to see. there's some other bills that's coming out and there's still, i understand, quite a bit of new details to come out about the gsa scandal in the way of waste and abuse at that agency and intimidation by people to keep it from coming to light. so i don't think that we're at

the end yet, and you know they will have to rectify the two bills and we'll see what happens. >> let me ask you, we've been talking about this issue, the house of representatives will be voting friday on the student loan interest rate issue, the debate continues in the senate. in terms of the calendar, those it's a busy week in washington. what will happen next week? >> next week they are still deciding but primarily right now the progress on legislation has slowed to a crawl because we've gotten no to an the election season. we're seeing land swap bills, a lot of resolution, commemorative coins that will be sold for famous people, things like that. not a lot going on. >> jonathan strong covering this for roll call. live on capitol hill. thank you for being with us on c-span radio. some developments on the campaign front. we heard from republican

presidential newt gingrich in which he would turn the page on his campaign. he's going begin suspending his campaign next tuesday. the expected endorsement of mitt romney. meanwhile, there's an article about mitt romney's post- primary plan. but the chair of the republican national committee asked about another development today the rnc officially endorsing mitt romney as the republican nominee. >> first question comes from josh here. your line is open. >> hi. thanks for doing the call. i wonder if you could clarify your comments from earlier today about mitt romney and rnc. one of the headlines i saw is that the rnc endorses romney. your endorsing romney or making the fact that he seems to have locked up the nomination. >> i mean, i'm not going to -- i don't know what the label is. but the fact of the matter is, i

think as a practical matter here at the rnc, historically there's been a moment in a primary contest when the rnc names a particular candidate the presumptive nominee which allows the rnc to then move forward with coordinating its efforts with that particular person and what we did yesterday after yesterday's victories that mitt romney had in five states is that we went forward as a committee and i directed our staff to start opening up lines of communication with the romney campaign that included people from the romney campaign to act as sort of communication liaisons with us and we spelled that out. i'm sure you're aware who those people are so that we could be effective in moving forward and coordinating our ground effort and making decisions as far as

victory centers and various levels of outreach that need to be moving forward. so this is a function, i think this is a serious and important move forward by the republican national committee in recognizing mitt romney as nominee presumptive. which i think we all understand is important. >> in a teleconference with reporters earlier in the day asked the question that's part of turning the page if you want to call it that. we heard last night from mitt romney a pivot point for the campaign in a new speech we covered live here on c-span radio and c-span television saying a new beginning in america starts tonight that speech in manchester, new hampshire. mitt romney spending today and tomorrow in new york raising money for his campaign effort. well, ginger gibson and alexander burns of politico put it this way. newt gingrich tlaefs race in any number of roles. conservative conscience, romney surrogate and campaign guest or

possibly persona nongrata. the former house speaker stayed in the race house speaker stayed in the race too long and it will make it harder to win back his political prestige. >> we're going to stay very, very active in working out the details of our transition, we'll have information to the president in the next couple of days, i am committed to this party, i am committed to defeating obama. we'll find ways to be helpful, i think it's pretty clear that governor romney is going to be the nominee and we need to do everything we can to make sure that he is effective. >> newt gingrich officially announcing that he will be exiting the republican race. so in templgs of the timetable, he is essentially leaving the race but will not formally endorse mitt romney until next

tuesday. any surprise in any of this? >> the surprise is that he hung on for so long. he lost alabama and mississippi to rick santorum, it seems sort of odd that he waited until tuesday, the explanation that we got was that it takes him that long to get his supporters and friends and family to washington, someone who's been following the candidates for months now, it doesn't take that long, i have learned. so i'm not quite sure why he's waiting that long to announce endorsement for mitt romney. >> as you know, santorum hasn't formally endorsed mitt romney. last night he came as close as he has come to saying he'll endorse mitt romney. i think santorum is in a

position at this point where he's probably trying to get something for himself, whether that's a key speaking role at the convention, or promises on some of the issues from mitt romney, you know, we don't really know. but all of these guys were out of the race, the only cart they have left is to wait to endorse romney and see how things are politically at that point. >> romney last night turning the page, and as you indicate today, his strategy is to, quote, be in the face of the president at every opportunity. can you explain? >> we have seen romney really take it to the president's issues, and constituency that are at the heart of the base of electing president obama and to support president obama, we have seen him in event after event after event.

we have seen him at factories of women owned businesses. he unsolicited came out for the lower stafford student loan rates and was talking about the young voters, young voters and women, it's tougher to get closer to the heart of the democratic presidency even then. >> mitt romney now spending the next couple of days raising money for his general election campaign, but last night, he did indicate some of the themes that he's going to run on, what have been the reviews of his speech in new hampshire? >> he got reviews, wolf blitzer on cnn last night called it terrific. but if you take a step back and sort of think about what he said, there weren't any -- certainly no new proposals and very few specific policy problems at all, it was sort of an emotional sense of where the

country is and where he would take it. but it was also a very different speech than what he had been talking about during the primary. he didn't say the word conservative once. and in speech after speech during the primary campaigns he was sort of at pains to convince people that she was conservative. when he spoke at cpac a few months ago, now in terms of the general election, the word was missing entirely from his campaign speech last night. >> what about the youth vote, and also the hispanic vote. what do you these that does to mitt romney? >> he's showed that he's some 15 to 20 points behind the president among hispanic voters, he knows that he needs to make up ground among those groups of

voters, in order to win a lot of the key swing states that are going to decide this election. >> the story titled mitt romney's post plans. thanks for being here with us. you're listening to cspan radio's washington today. he has campaigned with mitt romney and now he newed speculation that senator marco rubio is on the short list of romney's vice president search. the florida republican speaking today at the brookings institution, it came just four weeks after he formally endorsed mitt romney, two days after campaigning with him in pennsylvania and the goal of the speech was to talk about u.s. foreign policy and his view on what needs to be done with regard to relations with cuba, with latin america, with europe, with the military. and he took questions from

marvin c arkalb. >> you have made this report about a continued strong america and a leadership sponsored by america. how concerned are you, however, because this also comes through in your talk about the rise of the new isolationism. perhaps sponsored by the number of people in your own party. that's why i'm raising it. >> well, i'm not sure that this inward looking tendency has been new. i think as bob points out in my book and many of you have written, it's always been a tendency of america to not want to get engaged in the world if we don't have to, we don't really enjoy getting engaged in politics around the world. but the president's called upon us to do that. that combined with some of the domestic issues we're facing today and the challenges that i outlined lead to the natural

tendency to say it's time to look inward again. i remind people that there is no such thing as just an american problem. if every aspect of our lives is directly impacted by things that are going on around the world, i think that's always been true, but that's increasingly true given the global nature of our economy today. so i think that's why it's critical for us to explain to people that in fact everything they're going to do today, from the price of the food they're going to eat, to the quality of the air they're going to breathe is directly related to decisions being made overseas. >> let me then be specific and ask you about afghanistan, which is a subject you barely touched on in the talk. but if you take a look at the latest polling data. >> sure. >> it's clear that more and more americans are getting fed up with a continued american involvement in afghanistan. are you confident that the afghan armed forces will be able to pick up security for themselves in a time frame that is, quote, acceptable to the

u.s.? >> that partially will depend on us and will largely depend on them. but partially it will depend on the commitment that we make. i think there's been tremendous -- specialized operations and there's great reason for optimism there. as far as the rank and file of the military divorceforces, thee concern. part of the instability about his future is because folks in the region are not sure about what our long-term interest is. if you think nature toe and americans are going to be gone in a few years, you start hedging bets, you think it might not be too smart for me to be too cooperative because the people that are going to be running this country are going to make us pay the price. the long-term agreement, hopefully the details will be announced soon. hopefully will start to give some certainty about what the

nato countries are going to play in that region. >> in other words you're saying that our remaining in afghanistan is more important than the desire of the american people to get out? >> the desire of the american people is the fact that we have lost elys and treasure there. to th there's a certainly level of natural fatigue at conflicts. i think it's critical for public policymakers to clearly explain and persuasive lly explain to t american people. no our presence in a strong and stable afghanistan will give