moving forward but now over a longer time frame. a new national report says up to 7.5 million students missed nearly a month of school each year making them much more likely to drop out before they graduate and what's more startling is only six states track chronic absenteeism. the study estimates up to 15% of students nationally are considered chronically absent. and u.s. telecommunications regulators announcing today a spectrum set aside to connect wireless medical devices for more than convenient health monitoring. the federal communications commission said that it is scheduled to vote on may 24th to adopt a plan for so-called medical body area networks. the idea is that doctors could monitor a patient's vital signs at home or in the hospital via low cost wearable sensors attached to the patient's body and wirelessly connected to the machines that process and

display the data for doctors. currently such centers have to be attached directly to machines by wires making it more difficult for patients to leave their beds. back in a minute with more "washington today." >> on q&a, robert carow, his book the years of lyndon johnson, the passage of power. >> he wanted to be vice president and majority leader. if he had succeeded, he would have been, and all of a sudden think what you would have had. you would have had a president who had a vice president who had his own independent source of power. the senate could be independent of kennedy. then at the same time virtually -- but that fails. at the same time he submits this letter to kennedy which generally asks for general supervision of various government agencies, something no vice president has ever had before. he asks for an office right next to the president in the white

house. he asks for his own staff within the executive wing. and he thinks he's going to get these things. >> this sunday 8:00 p.m. eastern, robert carow, his book "the years of lyndon johnson." waterboarding back, this is "washington today" on c-span radio. mitt romney in jacksonville, florida. florida, of course, a key state for democrats and republicans in this presidential election year. and michael shearer of the "new york times" saying the republican candidate condemning plans by a billionaire investor to run a $10 million advertising campaign that links the president to the reverend jeremiah wright. mitt romney saying he repudiates that effort. the story first broke this morning in "the new york times," a story that the reverend wright issue would become front and center in the 2012 race and mitt romney making a point to clear up the air on this in his stand on this potential $10 million atad buy. >> good afternoon. on the aircraft this morning i

was asked by someone here about whether i had seen "the new york times" article with regards to a pac that was presumably being formed to attack president obama and if i had a reaction to it. i had not seen the article at that point. but i read the article on the aircraft. as i read the article, i want to make it very clear i repudiate that evideffort. i think it's the wrong course for a pac or a campaign. i hope that our campaigns can respectively be about the future and about issues and about a vision for america. i have been disappointed in the president's campaign to date, which has focused on character assassination. i just think that we're wiser to talk about the issues of the day, what we do to get america working again. talk about our respective records and so with that i certainly hope that you get a chance to see our first ad.

that will come up i think in a couple days. it will be a positive ad about the things i would do if i were president. it's contrasting with the president's ad which came out again as a character assassination ad. so my own view is that we can talk about a lot of things, but the centerpiece of his campaign is quite clearly character assassination and the centerpiece of my campaign is going to be my vision to get america working again and provide a brighter future for our kids. emily. >> when you say character assassination, what specifically are you talking about? >> i'll let you take a look at it, but obviously his effort to look at my work at bain is to try to characterize me in a way that isn't accurate. my effort at bain capital was in every case designed to try to make the enterprises we invested in more successful, to grow them. there's a fiction that some have that somehow you can be highly successful by stripping assets from enterprise and walking away with lots of money and killing the enterprise. there may be some people who

know how to do that, i sure don't. our approach was to always try to make the enterprise more successful. and the purpose of the president's ads are not to describe success and failure but to suggest i'm not a good person or not a good guy and the think the american people will know better than that. this should be a campaign about the future and who can get america on track again to create good jobs, who can do a better job for our kids. it's about jobs and kids, and having to campaign focused on character assassination is one of the things i find offensive among many others in the pac description that came in "the new york times." if that's accurate, why, obviously that's something i repudiate. >> again, mitt romney responding to today's story in "the new york times." the story about a plan from joe ricketts. he's a billionaire, the founder of -- you heard a moment ago the

combination that came from mitt romney saying he wants to focus on the issues, not things that have come up in the past including the issue of jeremiah wright from the 2008 campaign. joe biden is in ohio, another key battleground state, claiming mitt romney wants to have it both ways on the auto bailout credit. he also took aim at mitt romney's background at bain capital. mitt romney responded to that also today in jacksonville, florida. here is the vice president from oh ohio. >> in the 1990s there was a steel mill in kansas city, missouri. it hadn't been in business since 1888. romney's partners came in and eight years later the company was bankrupt. romney and his partners added to that company. i think it had like $13 million in debt when he took the company over.

and he added on top of that another $520 million in debt. eight years later it was in debt over a half a billion dollars. 750 workers lost their jobs, their health insurance, their life insurance, and much of their pensions. now, of course, that happens sometimes. we know that. i saw it in scranton. i have seen it in wilmington in the steel mills, i have seen it in the valley here. but let's look at this. what's troubling about this story is that the 30 executives they put in place to run the company, they walked away with $9 million. the 30 executives. and romney and his investing partners walked away with $12 million. that's romney economics. two sets of rules. one for his wealthy investors and the other for everybody else. now, look, folks, some of romney's defenders say it's not fair to criticize romney for

this, and they go on to point out that it's not the job of investors, not the job of bain capital or any other company like that, it's not their job to create jobs. it's their job to create wealth for the investors. that's true. it's their job to create wealth for the investors. if it creates jobs in the process, good. if it costs all the jobs in the process, okay. it's to make sure their investors get a return on their investment. but that's not the job of a president of the united states of america. the job is much bigger than that. [ applause ] the job of the president of the united states is help business m businessmen. businessmen and women, small and large who have to worry about everything from environmental controls to whether the street is paved to all the things that

affect their ability to do business. and our view it's government's job to not run their business but help them. help them have an opportunity to have the best infrastructure so that a road to which you can drive up to buy the automobile, and by the way, parenthetically, imagine, imagine if our republican friends hadn't stopped us from our infrastructure bill, imagine if we were rebuilding the roads and bridges in the valley that needed to be built? how many thousands and thousands of jobs would be created and how much that would increase the productivity of every business in the valley. that's government's job. is to help people who are looking for jobs, to look out for the entire nation, not just one segment of the nation. >> vice president joe biden in martins ferry, ohio, the setting for today's speech wars in the

southeastern corner of the state standing before chevy cruises and it's outside a chevy plant. the vice president taking aim at mitt romney on the auto bailout and also on mitt romney's background with bain capital. this is "washington today" on c-span radio. the headline at politico.com, closing arguments wrap up in the john edwards' case. josh is joining us live outside the courtroom in greensboro, north carolina. thanks very much for being with us. >> good afternoon, steve. >> let's begin with kind of your own observations and then we'll go to the details of the case. what was it like inside the courtroom? what were the dynamics? what was john edwards' expressions and what were the closing arguments for the defense and prosecution? >> well, edwards had a pretty somber face on during the trial and also during the closing arguments whenever the jury is in the room. i think he made an actual effort to look like he was being serious and wasn't treating it

as, you know, a trivial or joking matter at all. and, you know, the spectators were generally fairly quiet. there was, i think, a fair amount of tension. could you tell from the lawyers who have been, you know, at trial on this case now for about four weeks and obviously have been involved in the case for in some cases a couple of years. so you could tell that it was a really crucial moment. edwards had his daughter, cate, there in the courtroom along with his parents. they have been at the trial almost every day that it's been taking place for the last four weeks or so. and the central arguments that were put forward by the prosecution was essentially that this scheme that took place in 2008 where a couple of edwards' donors were giving money to support his mistress, that it was so involved and so

complicated and that edwards was talking to the players involved so many times that common sense simply dictates that he knew what was going on and that he had arranged what was going on. and the thrust of the defense argument was essentially that the prosecution case rides very much on one figure, a fellow named andrew young who was edwards', you know, close aide to edwards and the fellow who posed as the father of edwards' child that was the product of the extramarital affair. and they said that young was basically dishonest and pointed to testimony that he didn't have a reputation for honesty when he worked for edwards. so that was the thrust of the arguments, but i would say also an important thing the defense brought up was sort of the suggestion that the whole trial was an effort to put edwards on trial for what would basically be a moral failing, to try to

use the legal system and the criminal court to punish him for an act that really was a violation of the bonds with his family more than any violation of the law. >> each side had up to two hours for closing arguments. the prosecution took an hour and a half and the defense took about an hour. i'm not a lawyer, but it surprised me, and maybe i shouldn't be surprised, that the defense was so short, that the amount of time that they took not necessarily today but in defending john edwards was wrapped up so quickly. you were in the courtroom. what did you take away from that? >> well, they did by the end of the day today take their full time. they just took it in different chunks. they did take their time today, but you're right the defense case as a whole was fairly short. tornado watches really just a c couple days of witnesses. they decided to forgo a couple of the witnesses they had talked about calling. check talked about calling cate

he sa edwards, rielle hunter. the defense chose not to call her. the lead defense attorney abbe lowell said in court today that was a deliberate decision by the defense to try to focus the case in on the issues of the alleged campaign finance violation and to kind of push into the background the broader issues of the affair and covering up the affair because, as i say, the defense's argument is that that's really a personal matter. that's nothing that somebody should be on trial in court for, and i think they felt that some of those witnesses might have led to highly emotional testimony that might maybe distract the jurors, confuse them, or perhaps make them feel unsympathetic to mr. edwards. >> john edwards facing six felony counts. if counseled guilty, he could potentially face up to 30 years

in prison. the jury will have the case tomorrow with instructions from the judge. what will those instructions be? >> well, some of the instructions are pretty critical here. the key phrase that relates to the instructions has to do with trying figure out whether these payments that were made by the two edwards' donors were really campaign contributions. there's really no dispute that the two donors made these payments around $1 million or perhaps more to cover miss hunter, the mistress' expenses, ranging from sort of luxury travel to the rent of a home in california to even her ob/gyn bills for the child that she delivered who was a product of the affair with edwards. so there's no dispute that spending took place. the case really comes down to the question of whether that was a campaign contribution, and the judge is telling the jury or told the jury this afternoon

that they have to decide if basically the main purpose, the real purpose was her phrase, of these contributions was to support edwards' campaign and if they conclude that the people who gave the money would have given it anyway, notwithstanding whether or not a presidential campaign was under way, then these can't be xran contributions, and edwards can't be guilty. the other thing that's pretty complicated that she has to explain to them in the instruction is that to find edwards guilty, the jury has to conclude that he knew what he was doing was illegal. most of the time when you're charged with something in court, a criminal violation, ignorance of the law is no defense, but in this case it is a defense. and the prosecution will have to prove that edwards knew that these were illegal campaign contributions, not simply that he knew that the donors were giving money, and then that could actually be the hardest thing that the prosecution has to do in this case. >> and finally, will you be spending the weekend in north

carolina? do you think the jury will have decision by tomorrow afternoon? >> well, a lot of co-watchers think it's possible they could have a decision. juries often return verdicts on a friday afternoon so they can put the case behind them and move on with their lives. but it's not clear given the volume of testimony, about 3 1/2 weeks of testimony, the six charges here whether it's really possible for the jury to plow through all that in one day. that's uncertain. certainly abbe lowell, the defense lawyer, was urging the jury to do that, to take a quick look at this and say there was not enough proof that edwards knew what he was doing was illegal. so all the other factual issues become sort of irrelevant. the prosecutors were pleading with the jury not to do that, to go through the evidence piece by piece and then sort of see what they conclude at the end of that process. so we'll see by the end of the day tomorrow where they stand. i probably will head back to washington over the weekend and come back down for the deliberations next week assuming

they go on. >> josh gerstein joining us following the john edwards case. the jury how nas the case. deliberations will begin tomorrow morning. thank you for spending time with us here on c-span. >> thank you, steve. >> this is "washington today" on c-span radio. we welcome our listeners coast to coast on xm channel 119. we're streeped on the web at c-spanradio.org. two senators going after facebook and its co-founder eduardo salve rin over his decision to renounce his u.s. citizenship unveiling a proposal they claim would bar him for anyone from defriending the u.s. in order to avoid taxes. the statements today from senator charles schumer of new york who is joined by senator bob casey of pennsylvania. their so-called expatriate act would subject high earning ex-americans to a steep capital gains tax. >> mr. savarin says he's a

global citizen, but just so happens the country where he's chosen to reside singapore has no capital gains tax. this tax avoidance scheme is outrageous. he has turned his back on the country that welcomed him and kept him safe, educated him, and helped him become a billionaire. this is a great american success story gone horribly wrong. eduardo wants to defriend the united states of america just to avoid paying taxes, and we aren't going to let him get away with it. we are here today to announce the ex-patriot act which will stop savarin's scheme from succeeding. first, our proposal would sigh that if an american who has either $2 million in net worth or an average income tax liability of at least $148,000 over the last five years and then seeks to renounce his or her citizenship, they will be

presumed to have renounced their citizenship for tax avoidance purposes unless the individual can demonstrate otherwise to the irs. the strong presumption is that they left for tax avoidance and the beg your pardon is on the avoider to show they didn't do it for tax purposes. if it turns out that the individual has renounced for legitimate reason there will be no penalty. if the irs finds they threw away their passport to avoid taxes they will be subject to 30% capital gains tax on future investment gains in the u.s. regardless of where they live. this piece would eliminate any gains for announcing your citizenship and the 30% rate on capital gains in keeping with the tax rate that is already applied on foreigner's dividend and interest income makes sense. if it is determined the

individual has renounced their citizenship to avoid taxes, they would be barred from returning to the united states period. they could not set foot in this country again. current law is already supposed to bar reentry for individuals like mr. saverin, but there have been problems with enforcing it. in 2011 a record 1,780 people gave up their u.s. passports up from 235 in 2008, but because the 1996 law contains no enforcement provisions, no individual has ever been barred from returning to the united states for tax avoidance. our bill fixes this. so our two-prong plan is simple. if you renounce your citizenship to avoid paying taxes, you can't

set foot in america again and any investments you have in america will be taxed in the future at 30%. >> with more on this facebook story and tomorrow's ipo, we're joined on the phone by julia borstein joining us from menlo park, california, outside the facebook headquarters. thanks for being with us. >> my pleasure. >> why such a frenzy for one ipo. >> i think want just because the biggest tech ipo in history, the fact facebook has over 900 million monthly active users means so many people are not only familiar with facebook but use it on a regular basis and they see how it changed the way they communicate and also changed the way businesses interact with customers. it really changed the way people do business. >> there has been discussion

back and forth among those that use facebook, general motors saying it will stopped paid advertising on the site and ford saying they found it very beneficial for the car maker. >> that's right. we heard general motors say that they are no longer going to be paying for ads on the site and will maintain their presence in terms of having facebook brand pages which they can do for free. general motors is only spending about $10 million on ads and spending about $30 million on creating content to fill those pages and for those ads, so some people i talk to say it is kind of a weird way to advertise on facebook and they point to what ford has been doing and investing the money in actual ads as opposed to other content is a wiser way to market on facebook. look, facebook has a very successful business model so far based on the $3.7 billion in revenue it brought in in 2011 and 85% of that came from advertising, so losing general motors will not hurt facebook's bottom line. it does show that facebook

advertising does not work for everyone. >> tomorrow of course will be a profitable day for mark zuckerberg and the co-founders of facebook, something that washington keeping an eye on including the co-founder who is renouncing his u.s. citizenship. are you following that part of the story? >> i am. i am. the question is eduardo saverin. he wants to renounce his u.s. citizenship and says it was something he was a brazilian citizen and resides in singapore and something he has been interested in doing for a while. of course the timing is suspect. you know what i think about this, it is interesting. he would save himself roughly $70 million tax bill by renouncing his u.s. citizenship but the guy is worth about $4 billion. do you have to think that someone is worth $4 billion wouldn't worry too much about a $70 million tax bill. >> we're talking about julia boorstin outside the facebook headquarters. what is it like? what are people talking about? >> there is a lot of excitement.

there are about 2,500 -- 3,500 employees based here at facebook headquarters and facebook is hosting a big event tonight. they're doing a hack-a-thon that will start at 7 p.m. pacific and go all night long and until tomorrow morning when facebook starts trading on the nasdaq, so it is going to be an exciting night. if you have ever heard of a hack-a-thon, what it means is facebook's employees, about 1,000 of them have rsvped will hang up, eat food, there will be a dj and they will work on their projects. they started with engineers coding all night long and creating new products for facebook, and this is designed so engineers can create new bells and whistles and product for facebook and something they're not doing as part of the daily job but it also means that people who are not engineers who work on other things for facebook but designers or advertising can take time and try to be creative and come up

with something that's outside of their daily responsibilities that they think would be a fun addition for their company or something else creative or separate from facebook. it is a time to be creative and hunker down and have a lot of fun in a dorky engineer way. >> finally, somebody following the story, what will will you be looking for tomorrow? what questions do you think you will be asking this time tomorrow? >> well, i think the big question is what's going to happen to the stock after it opens. we do expect the stock to start trading towards the top of the pricing range, the top of which is $38, and there is expectation that the stock will pop tomorrow. we have seen some of these internet stocks get a goo good pop after they open and really interesting to see how facebook trades and how much volatility there is, how high it goes and where the stock ends at the end of the day. obviously there is a lot of interesting going into facebook and we have heard that it has

been over subscribed, so you can see how high it flies tomorrow. >> julia boorstin of cnbc joining us from menlo park, california, housed facebook headquarters. thanks very much for being with us. >> thank you. >> you're listening to washington today on c-span radio. an anniversary today and next month, next month will mark the 40th anniversary of the break in at the watergate complex that resulted in the resignation first ever of a sitting president. that was in june of 1972, well, less than a year later on this date in may 1973 the watergate hearings playing on national television. this was precable, prec-span, and the networks abc, nbc and cbs covering these his tr i can hearings and a senator from north carolina sal irvin gaveling in the opening statement on may 17, 1973. >> today the select committee on presidential campaign activities

begins hearings into the extent to which illegal, improper or unethical activities were involved in the 1972 presidential election campaign. senate resolution 60 which establishes the select committee while adopted unanimous by the senate on february 7th, 1973, and among the provisions every member of the senate joined in giving the committee a broad mandate to investigate as further as possible all the ramifications that the water grate break in which occurred on saturday, june 17, 1972. under the terms of the authorizing resolution the committee must convene a study and render its report on or before february 28, 1974. while the necessity of that report will reflect the considered judgment of the committee on whatever new legislation is needed to help safe guard the electoral process through which the president of

the united states is chosen. we are beginning these hearings today in an atmosphere of gravity. the questions that have been raised in the wake of june 17 break in regarding the under guarding of our democracy. if the many allegations to this day are true, the burglar that is broke into the headquarters of the democratic national committee at watergate were in effect breaking into the home of every citizen of the united states. if these allegations prove to be true, what they were seeking to steal was not the jewels, money or other property of american citizens but something much more valuable, most precious heritage, the right to vote in a free election. since that day credit dually has pre veiled among our pop lis and is the constitutional duty to act