>> would you agree it would be exculpatory for the community to be able to say that 100,000 americans were affected versus 300 million americans. >> i am not comfortable with the word exculpatory. obviously, people would be happier if were smaller numbers than if there are larger numbers. >> one thought i have is that i think it's important to distinguish between transparency in the existence of a broad program versus which i think in general there should be more of -- versus transparency with respect to how decisions are made on who to target, where i think that is something that there should not be transparency on. and to me, the founding error in the metadata program was that

when president bush instituted it and president obama continued it, they didn't have an open discussion about whether the country should have such a program. and actually that seems to run through a little bit of yesterday's opinion by judge lynch. even dick cheney. this is something that i discovered in writing this book that nobody had ever seen before. when he wrote his dissent in the iran-contra matter, he said if you have a hard foreign policy or national security issue, a wise president first would not engage in excessive secrecy, and, second, a wise president would have a full and open democratic discussion in which he would attempt to persuade the public of the need for validity

of a broad program. >> the concept delineating between the number of people affected or how targets are picked, versus the program itself, i think is valuable, and it gets to a question that i would like a from everybody on. there is a trust problem that now exists, for whatever series of reasons. >> an example of a concern that i at least have was revealed through a "usa today" piece that came out last month that revealed that the dea had been conducting a metadata collection program ten years before 9/11. one of the concerns and maybe this is possess mitchell or paranoia depending on who you ask, is that stopping a program

like the telephone metadata collection program that is ongoing under authority how do we know it does not show up under another 30? >> it is a sincere question that pre-much everybody, because there's no reason to hold the community to such a paranoid standard, but how do we get to that point? >> i think this question is a real challenge because of the compartmentalization of the staff they do for information protection reasons, but you have to ask the question read what, and you have to parse the answer in order to ask follow-up questions. when you ask, are you doing this under this authority or are you doing this, meaning the witness at the table in front of you, that individual may only know a piece of it, and they may say, no, i don't. but that doesn't mean it's not lurking out there in some other corner of the agency and some of the agencies are very big and even the witness may not know what is going on in every corner of the agent cig they are testifying on behalf of.

so it is a real challenge, and one of the challenges for the intelligence committee is it is a relatively small staff while it's spread across a wide number of things, you may only be one deep on any particular program or any particular agency. and if that agency is billions of dollars to have one person going through that entire agency to determine if there is a program hidden in a corner of it, it becomes a difficult challenge without access to the kinds of add it tools available in other places. and the other charge almost -- it resembles a litigious environment in terms of questioning. it feels like opposing counsel deposition, where i'm going to ask you this question, now i will rephrase and at again. which -- i think a lot of people in the intelligent community come with a deeply engrained

attitude. they are looking for ways to not necessarily reveal everything. on the armed services side, what i found on a committee is when you ask questions, the answers were much more fulsome. they may say somebody else does that, but that is not my program, but let me talk to you about some of the things. the answers were much more -- much broader on the armed services side than on the intelligence side. >> does anybody else have any thoughts? >> i think a little dose of reality is useful here. number one, remember that the intelligent committees knew about these programs and knew about the bulk collection program. and by virtue of the -- our statutory requirement, if we do another bulk collection program you'll know about that as well whatever authority it's done under. number two i think in the last two years the intelligence community has come to recognize the reality of leaks.

and i think that it would be a brave intelligence official who would say, well we're going to go ahead and re-create a bulk collection program. number three, it's important to remember that this program requires the cooperation of the telephone companies. to be unlikely you would be able to secure the cooperation of telephone companies in a program that was re-creating this. so i think that the prospect that this program could be re-created under some authority. sure if you had a sufficiently wide conspiracy of people who were willing to disregard all of these possible outcomes it is possible. it is not going to happen. >> i would just say, though i was on the committee at a particular point in time. and i would say serve on the committee is like the movie "memento." you only know the moment that you're in and don't have a sense of context before or after.

is probably true that post snowden leaks that the committee has recognize that without a greater transparency the committees than they did at the time i was there. i started it was democratic in the bush administration. so it was a little bit more adversarial. the idea that members of congress have the confidence to say we know everything that is happening and we don't -- then there is nothing out there if revealed we'd be upset about is not something that they would have felt confident in saying. that was not just because of a suspicion, but because they had had examples of programs that they had not previously been briefed to that had been ongoing. and as a result, on the committee, we conducted an investigation into what keeping the committee fully and deplete completely informed truly meant because they as members of the committee felt they were not fully and completely informed. >> i have one thought.

i think today the shelf life of secrets of major programs is far shorter than it was during the cold war where you'd have some program secret for 30 years. i don't think that's ever going to happen again for a variety of reasons. "a," is that true? and "b," if it is true, what implications does it have for how the government and the congress should relate each other? >> i think it's definitely true. and i think that as i said -- i think we are now in the position where everything that is undertaken by the intelligence community involved an assessment of what happens when this leaks out and is this -- is this program worth -- are the benefits we get from that program worth that kind of risk. >> if that is a change, it is a recent change.

the d.e.a. program you started out with lasted 20 years and only came to light this past january. i would also say that to the extent we are talking here principally about section 215 section 702 and maybe fisa's trap and trags, we are leaving aside a huge number of programs that operate under executive order 12333. and staff may know what level of oversight exists over those authorities, but some statements by the members of the intelligence committees have suggested that the committees were not fully informed about those programs is by the fact that they have had significant indications for the indications and privacy of u.s. persons. and i think that is supported by recent reporting that the senate intelligence committee is working even now on compiling what is called an encyclopedia of executive order 12333

program so maybe there has been an uptick in the oversight of those types of programs but i don't think that historically and necessarily before 2013 that was the case. >> and what reform if you have an idea would convince you that was not continuing or had a shorter shelf life or weren't bulk? >> a different type of congressional oversight. one possibility would be to have congress involved in assessing in a way that fritz talked about the church committee and we are talking about transparency today and making some of the assessments around what should be disclosed to the public what types of high-level description of the authorities the government wants to use can be usefully disclosed to the public and to the extent that the intelligent agencies want new authority and to the extent that

the debate around usa freedom is whether we are confining the types of requests that are made to targeted grand jury like requests or whether usa freedom is designed to open up the door to data mining of americans' information. i think that's the type of debate that we believe should be happening in the public sphere and that the opinion yesterday suggested should be happening in the public sphere. >> could you briefly run -- >> could you briefly run through what was happening yesterday. >> sure. yesterday the second circuit decided aclu versus clapper which was a challenge to 215 bulk collection, bulk phone records program. the case was decided on statutory grounds. the court concluded the plaintiffs had standing to sue, that their statutory claims were not precluded, and that the bulk collection of phone records was

not consistent with the authority that congress granted under section 215 when it passed that law or when it reformed 1861 in 2001. >> and the order is staid, correct? >> it was remanded to the district court for orderly resolution of what happens next in the case. >> bob, i have a jurisdictional question that i honestly don't know the answer to. the court of appeals for the second circuit, they say that this is unlawful. obviously there's an opportunity to appeal to the supreme court. but the fisa court of review is also an appeals court. does fisc have to listen to this opinion if it stands? >> i'm probably not the right person to ask that. i think the answer is no. i don't think that the second

circuit of appeals has direct authority over the fisa court. it is something they would take in account, but i do nothing this binding upon them. >> does that change given that the harms that the second circuit acknowledged are felt in that jurisdiction? >> again, i'm not an expert in appellate jurisdiction. i do not think that is relevant to the question whether the second circuit has binding authority over a court that is not within the second circuit. i do not know, patrick, if you have a different view on that -- >> but the injunction would be. if they got to the point where they issued an injunction that would be binding against -- >> it wouldn't be binding on the fisa court. it would be binding on the persons who received -- >> the defendants in the case are the agency officials. so an injunction of the second circuit would be directed at those officials.

>> but there is no injection. -- injunction. and i have to think that that -- i don't have to think. the court made quite clear that was a deliberate decision not to issue an injunction and allow this to play out in the political process over the next couple of weeks. >> this touches usa freedom, nobody knows what is going to happen with it. in the event there is not legislation that changes the recording requirements, would you expect to maintain this same level of transparency have now >> yes. >> and potentially looking to increasing it? >> we have for the last two years issued a transparency report and i would expect we would continue to do that. >> fritz, in your book, you have a number of harsh words for judicial sub serve --

subservience. they undermine democracy by discounting the relationship between american democracy and citizens' access to information about what the government is doing. is this case a turning point? >> this is a court being more aggressive in an area where the courts for the last 20 years have not been. the judge you clerked for, potter stuart stewart actually back in the '70s expressed pretty powerful arguments worrying about too much sectsy. in the mink case, where the supreme court held courts could not look at foya documents, but they said they ought to amend the statute, which the congress did, potter stewart said, well the secrecy system leads to cynical my yopic and even

corrupt decisions and then in the pentagon papers case. i'm picking on you because you clerked for him. complimenting you because you clerked for him. in the pentagon papers case, potter stewart said if everything is classified then nothing is really classified. the courts were pretty open to challenges to the government under foia and in some other areas. and then they started just automatically deciding in favor of the government over the last 15 years, at least. i think they're afraid. they're afraid they could be wrong and they're afraid to do what courts often do and deal with subjects they're not experts in. i think the courts themselves say this. the several respected judges say

that we roll over in cases that -- where the government -- a foia case and a state secrets case where the government raises a defense or in the foia case tries to deny information. maybe this is a harbinger of courts being more willing to stand up. of course the climate always makes a difference. and they're reacting to how the public and the congress reacted to snowden and they're saying, hmm, maybe it's not quite so squary as we thought to go against the government. >> i want to move on, because -- again the time. mika, how might this ruling influence the politics of this, the congressional will? >> i think the second circuit put this back in congress' lap and said, look congress did not

explicitly authorize this bulk collection program under 215 and if they want to be explicit about that they need to act. they made note of the time line. but their analysis of the 215 program suggests that they would not look kindly upon it the way that it's currently constructed. i also think that the politics of this right now here in the house, it's unlikely that you would get a clean reauthorization of the existing program through. and so the real question for senator mcconnell is do you take the reform legislation or do you let the program expire? >> so to move on to instruction -- i want to highlight this. the first time i read about this is in 2013 it was a reuters report.

detailed and i will ask patrick to explain it and bob to comment, but to present the severe dissonance that exists in terms of what this is. nancy, i think patrick you may have clerked for her, described it as phonying up investigations and said she'd never heard anything like it. and senior dea officials called it decades old, a bedrock concept. and nancy was a judge, by the way. patrick? >> so just to describe a little bit what we see in some of the criminal cases we litigate and what the article described and subsequent articles have expanded on especially in respect to the dea's hemisphere program and the recent disclosure of bulk collection of foreign phone calls in and out of the u.s. parallel construction is an effort to construct a parallel source for certain evidence in investigations.

it often occurs in circumstances where we see it or believe it may have happened where the government investigators obtain information using one authority which is potentially controversial or novel or legally untested in the courts. and they rely on that authority to obtain information in the first instance. investigation proceeds with a benefit of that information and they subsequently obtain the same information using a more traditional law enforcement technique like a rule 41 search warrant or a subpoena for a billing records. one example would be relying on the hemisphere program or even the 215 bulk collection phone records program to identify a person via their phone records. building investigation, using that information, and then using a subpoena targeted at that now known person to obtain the same phone records, and when you end

up in court, at the point of a prosecution, telling the defense only that the records were obtained via the second method via the tradition subpoena that doesn't raise any eyebrows. and never disclosing the fact that agents were tipped off or investigators relied on information passed by intelligence agencies that was obtained through fisa, executive order 12333, 215 or one of these other authorities. and this is a violation of the discovery rules and constitutional rules that entitle defendants to seek to have an opportunity to suppress the fruit of the poisonous tree, to argue before a court that the surveillance was unlawful and

that the government's evidence is derived from that surveillance. >> if nancy says she had never seen anything like this, she is disingenuous. if you take references to 215 out and substitute for them confidential informant, this is something that has existed for decades. the government does not have to disclose the identity of a considerable informant who provided a tip that started an investigation. the relevant factor in terms of discover opportunity is the evidence that's being used at the trial against the defendant the fruit of other activities. and there is a well-developed jurisprudence about what is and what does and does not constitute the fruit of the poisonous tree, and including concepts like independent source and attenation. and this has long been the law. it is no different in the concept -- in the context of these programs. the fact that a government agent was alerted to

the existence of the defendant by a particular source does not necessarily give the defendant the right to suppress that basis unless the evidence was derived under standard fruit of the poisonous tree rules from that tip. >> do those standard fruit of the poisonous tree standards apply in the context of bulk collection? >> why wouldn't they? >> i would add two things and say i strongly disagree that the identity of a confidential informant which it is true, there are cases that talk about whether defendants through a balancing test are entitled to get the name and the -- >> or the existence of the informant's tip. >> i don't know if -- >> it is. i was a prosecutor for six years.

>> but there is also the problem -- >> does the judge know in that context? >> sometimes the judge knows and sometimes the judge doesn't know. >> the other problem is that prosecutors are deciding for themselves what is derived from the surveillance. that decision is never put before a court, ever obviously put before the defendant, and the government has an interest in reaching a determination and from what we're sneeg the dea disclosures and structuring its investigations and the trail of what is recorded in the agents' notes and reports and court applications to suggest that in fact those sources were not relied upon when they were. and that is problematic. the government has an interest in making the chain from point a to point b look attenuated as possible in order to avoid court review of these programs.

and we have seen not least in the context of 702, that the government has used an extremely narrow definition of what qualifies as derived evidence. >> to bring us to the oversight perspective, but mieke, did you ever hear about this? would you have or should you have? >> i wouldn't have. on this question of parallel construction, how information is used in a court case, on the intelligence committees you are predominantly concerned about how the programs work and how they are used in a national security context. that was about traditional espionage and nation state adversaries. there's a lot of ground to cover. the idea you would figure out how particular pieces of information be used by agencies not under the jurisdiction of the committee is not something that you would normally look at. and you know, this is also true when you talk about these old dea programs. two things working against the

intelligence committees there. one is the memento problem. while the dea might have briefed the committee at the time the program was initiated, members of congress and staff turn over, and so over time, you lose that institutional knowledge and members of congress who come in a new congress will say i have no idea even though the committee might have been briefed a few months before that person was elected. and the second is that the intelligence committee is more focused on national security agencies and not a law enforcement agency. so we might not have spent as much time looking at what the dea was up to, assuming that that was covered by people focused on other kinds of oversight. >> to bob it sounds like there is at least one path here where the information is collected, analyzed. if an american turns out to be a defendant, the decision about whether or not the admitted --

is not considered by a judge. it's not reviewed by at least hi psi. perhaps by beside judiciary but other entities that was just discussed. at one point it does their oversight? >> is routine in all cases that decision about what evidence is turned over the the defendant are made by the prosecution. that is the way the system operates. it is the case that when intelligence surveillance authorities are involved there tends to be more disclosure to the judge of the existence of those on a classified basis than there is in non-surveillance areas. fundamentally, this is the way to criminal justice system operates. the prosecution has a large file. it looks at rule 16 and the brady rule and determines what gets disclosed to the defendant. >> i'm like the hear from fritz but patrick, if you have a response?

>> i don't think i have meaningful things to add to this. >> i think in terms of illustrating how deep this practice goes and what it keeps courts and defendants from considering, the dea program that is described in the "usa today" story is a good illustration. that is a program that has been around or was around for 20 years. it is a program that agents interviewed in that story said they consulted virtually every day. and yet that program didn't come to light in a criminal prosecution until 2015, until january of this year. and if -- if a program that's used that widely and is not -- i believe that program was not even classified is kept from defendants in such a wide range of cases i think there is a need to reevaluate how parallel construction is being used. and maybe more generally to understand the legal rationale

that underlies it within the justice department and how these government agencies are make unilateral determinations about what is derived from what. >> i think we have to wrap up now. unfortunately, as much as i'd like to keep this discussing this. there was one last thing. this showed up yesterday. star in burr was voicing a serious and lengthy defense of the section 215 metadata collection program. he said, and i do not know if there has been time to clarify, but in the statement he said that 215 provides for the collection of all phone call records and i.p. addresses. now i don't know exactly if he misspoke or something else. so i am not going to propose to bob something about whether or not this is ongoing because i

suspect your answer would be that you couldn't answer but it's i do want to know as somebody who wants to know what the law is. >> we have been clear about what that 215 program is. it is a telephone metadata program. and that's all it is. >> but could 215 be used to authorize an internet dragnet? >> probably not. it -- i think there is some significance to the fact that it wasn't at the time when they instituted the telephone metadata program i think it is public knowledge that they instituted an internet metadata program that used different authorities and i think there was a reason for that. >> i think that is fair. fritz, i just want to give one more chance you for you to comment. parallel construction conversation, detailed, but what is striking is there such a profound gap between

understanding of whether or not it's legal or illegal. does that bring anything up for you? i mean -- >> the only thing i thought of is not precisely relevant to -- but i believe the nsa had in addition to this program of shamrock of picking up every telegram, they had a watch list program. and how people got on to that and what happened to the data that was collected i have the vague memory that two attorneys general looked at that and said that they didn't think that the way the information was getting from the nsa to prosecutors was appropriate. and they tried to put an end to nsa providing the information from the watch list to prosecutors. what theory they had, i don't remember. but if i were look for history on this issue on either side i would go back and say what were -- one wasáb

>> i work at the sunlight foundation. thanks for joining us today. mieke, you talk about the memento issue with congressional oversight. and members is there inadequate record-keeping around some of these things to make it hard to track over congresses? i'd love to hear a little bit more about that.

>> so it had been i don't know if that problem has been fixed. we had transitioned between spaces, and the challenge of finding congress' own legislative history, even the classified legislative history so you could go back and look at what previouscongresses had done was quite difficult which reinforces the memento problem. trying to go back and find information that would not necessarily be in executive branch control but hearing records, internal documents prepared by the committee staff for the committee having classified annexes which is a committee produced document, not having that history on site and readily available made it more difficult for members to be able to do historical comparisons. >> one of the answers to that problem, which is a real problem, is the existence of the full-time professional staff and permanent staff of the committee

and it's in fact a disadvantage to having staff members accompanying each individual member because every time you have rotation on the committee your staff turns over. these committees have people who have been staffers for many years and have the institutional knowledge that can help them with this. >> the senate have both. they have both a professional staff and the person who will help an individual member -- >> i know that leadership does not give them enough resources. >> they are terribly under resourced. it's horrible. >> i will quote you on that. >> dan? >> hi, dan from "the intercept." i wrote earlier this week about how the nsa computers can and do extract text from voice, and is a pretty transformative technology. it certainly makes it a lot easier to search phone conversations in bulk. the public still wouldn't know about this but for the snowden archives.

how could we possibly as a society debate implications or establish limits for technologies like this or is it none of our business? has congress been briefed on this? have they weighed in on this? >> dan i think that story is what is wrong a lot of the media coverage of this and i think even edward snowden says that he thinks a lot of the press reporting has gone too far. that story made absolutely no decision between technical capabilities and legal authorities. there are all sorts of technical capabilities that nsa has. i am not commenting on the existence or nonexistence of any such authority. the question is when are they used and what are the legal authorities under which they are used. and i think that that's something that a lot of the press reporting completely ignores including that story you wrote. >> how would i find out since i asked everybody. >> you know what the legal authorities are. we talked about that. you know the authorities under which nsa can collect.

it doesn't use any technical capability to do things it's not allowed otherwise to do. >> anyone else with a question? >> thanks for all the panelists coming out today. really appreciate it. mieke, i'm former staff, and i did not work on the committee myself but i worked for one of the committee members mr. holt who, bob, i think you knew and had quite a bit of interaction with. and one of the things he always complained about was this 20 questions problem. but the thing i want to ask today and this is my 20 question moment has the icig by itself or in concert with the other igs taken a comprehensive look at

all of the surveillance programs and activities carried out "o" under all these authorities that you have discussed whether patriot act fisa or whether 12333 and >> the answer is no. other outside bodies have been doing does, president's review group and so on. two, the resource implications of that and frankly the number of taskings that the icig gets from congress are such to make that impractical. so the icig has not done this. there was a comprehensive look a number of years ago. we just released some governments that were declassified with a multi-i.g. look at earlier programs, and we have just released those. they're not been anything done in recent years. >> i have a quick questions and we have another one.

fritz, should -- i don't know if most americans realize that there is a secret court, if you will, in america. is that appropriate? right? is there -- should america have a secret court? i guess it's just that simple? >> it is not so new, by the way. i mean, when you have search warrants granted in an ordinary criminal case it's done in effect by a secret court. and i think the existence of fisa among the public is fairly well-known. a fair question, to me is shouldn't fisa do more to hear the other side and i think they definitely should and they would be well-served. it would make them better. it would make them more believable if they did more to hear the other side in arguments

and whether that's as counsel for a target, which is a little difficult to do because they can't really reveal that someone is a potential target. or it's a general amica suit comes in. but in a way that remark of mine i think shows where fisa has been misused recently where instead of it deciding particular cases, which a court has jurisdiction to decide cases and controversies and doing it in secret when you're deciding if someone's records should be looked at doesn't trouble me. but i think they were asked over the last years and they agreed to do tasks which really are not the proper role of a court. make judgments sort of on administrative issues. >> what about when they reach issues of law, to put it

broadly? right? so the definition of relevance which is at contest -- >> it depends how it comes up. u don't think they should sit around as if they're second circuit in the case trying to understand what relevance means. i don't think they should sit around and just abstractly talk about what cell vent. i think to do that without an adversarial presentation is inappropriate and far more likely to have them make mistakes. so they'd be better off in having a more adversarial process in any matter which is beyond a -- should jon jones' reports being looked at? >> people talk about special advocates, but that is a person but that's a person who is making arguments hypothetically

in the abstract. what about the possibility that someone who was served with an order from the fisc could have standing to challenge that order to put adversarialness in the process? >> that's true now. people who are recipients of orders have the right to challenge. what the usa freedom act does is provide for ability for the creation of a panel essentially a panel of cleared lawyers who the fisa court could appoint in the kind of case that fritz is talking about that presents a substantial issue of law or policy to come in and make an independent presentation that is not now made. >> do you think the fisa court should be deciding policy questions as if they are sort of a little branch of the legislature? >> that is not different from what courts do in other warrant

situations. there are cases where magistrates are presented with applications for search warrants with respect to new technologiance the judge has got to make that decision and the judge makes that decision in the abstract without an adversary presentation. the different here is that we are setting up a -- because there is less other review of fisa court decisions than there is of warrant applications we are setting up a process and i think the administration indicated it supports this whereby when these kinds of issues are presented to the fisa court there is an opportunity to bring someone else in to present a different view. i think the distinction or one of the distinctions that fritz is talking about is the difference between a particularized demand for a criminal suspects or suspected

foreign agent record and programatic review of the 215 program or minimization or targeting procedures that govern 702 surveillance. there isn't a particular person who is the suspected foreign agent or the target of that surveillance that ever comes before the fisc. instead the fisc is weighing in on whether the procedures themselves, almost akin to whether the government intends to apply the right formula for when it decides how to go out and target people. but not any application to a particular person. and that even former judges of the fisc has commented that that change for the fisa court has been a significant one from where it started in 1978 and where it is today. >> i think it is true. what we've done is we've taken a whole category of activity that generally speaking and throughout most of the world have no judicial supervision at all, and up until recently was considered an inherent executive

function and we've brought the courts into the system. so actually, what it has done is it has increased judicial involvement in activities that previously had no judicial supervision whatsoever. >> i think this is one of the ways that parallel constructions becomes one of the hot points, right because in a way it's where bob's description of the legal history and value of the fisc court doesn't translate perfectly into anned a adversarial setting on the other side where information has remain classified, is not end up for the defendants, or the existence of it does not end up before the defendant. i would add for the staffers in the room that the special amicus in the usa freedom act does not have access to privileged information, which would be great if that got fixed before it got enacted. >> what is it -- what kind of privileged information you think the special advocate should have access to? >> this is the rule of construction in the amicus

instruction. state secrets, executive privilege. >> i think it's clear that the amicus will have access to classified information. i do not think the amicus will is access to the internal opinions and "n" the executive branch. >> i don't think that the amicus should have access to that. information that is privileged, seems to be waiting for not yourself or anybody who is currently in office, but at some point it seems like there is wool to be pulled over their eyes. another question. >> ginger mccall of the electronic privacy center. i'm a frequent foia litigator, and i obtained documents that should the department of defense is developing not just speech to text, but also speaker recognition technology. i have two parts to my question. the first is, if the government doesn't believe it has the legal authority or the intent to use

that kind of technology why spend taxpayer dollars on it. it seems it would pair quite well with what the nsa is already doing. i do not think it is an accurate corollary to liken an informant to a government program like the nsa collection program. government program triggers certain fourth amendment protections that a private voluntary informant would not trigger, so that seems an inaccurate corollary. >> we disagree on that. on the first one, i am not saying the government is not using these techniques. i'm not acknowledges that these techniques exist. i'm just saying that they don't expand the authority of the government to do anything that it cannot legally do now. >> there are private sector people who are expanding the speak to text.

the fact that the government develops technologies that are better developed by the private sector should not be a prize to anyone. the government will spend more and do it more slowly. but speech to text capability is not necessarily that is something that automatically pernicious if you are saying okay google or talking to siri you are using speech to tex technology. >> but when a private company does it, it is a bit for revenue. when a government doesn't come it is an expression of the will of the country. >> it depends. if it's speech to text technology so someone who is driving a hum view down the road to talk to its navigation system without taking their hands off the wheel that is a different reason for developing the technology than using it to mass searching. that is an important question, where are these being used and underrun authorities, there are

benign reasons to develop some of these technologies as well. >> i do actually want to clarify. i have the documents on this. this is a technology that is specifically being designed to be used in telephone communications collection. it is being designed to be able to detect speech, then turn it into text and do keyword searches and recognize who the speaker is -- in -- specifically for surveillance scenarios. >> tell me what you think is wrong with that. >> not necessarily that anything is wrong with it, but looking for protections in place so there's not further privacy violations. you can see how this would be paired with telephone to selection capabilities the nsa already has. >> if nsa were to use that in ways that violated its authority, it would be a problem. if they use that in furtherance of their existing authorities and within those authorities, it is not a problem. the technology is not the problem. the legal authorities are.

>> i agree with you. absolutely. technology is neutral. what we need are protections that are built around this technology and for that we need transparency. >> i think the second circuit opinion reveals to us the critical issue of who makes that determination. this program, the metadata collection program has been going on for many years. it was not until the leaks occurred that it ended up having standing to be challenged before a court of appeals. what is the alternative, if not transparency? frankly, an adversarial system that produces an independent decision on whether or not this is lawful. >> whether or not what is lawful? >> whether it is the policy decision to develop technology that converts speech to text -- >> there is nothing lawful or unlawful about a technique that converts speech to text.

>> the implementation of it, then. >> what is lawful or unlawful is frz what communication the nsa collect, and under what authority. that is what we have been much more transparent about in the past. that's what is fully are the authorized congressional overseers. but the exist -- how it is that nsa is able to implement its lawful authorities can frequently be the kind of thing that does, in fact, cause a -- cause damage when it gets out there. i'm not specifically acknowledging or denying the existence of any particular capability. i'm only saying that the focus needs to be on what are the authorities that nsa is doing and what are the protections around the execution of those authorities? >> that's understood, but -- [ inaudible ] >> tell the fisa court we're doing what? >> tell the fisa court that you

were using speech to text on voice intercepts that were collected by a 702 or prism or what have you. >> so a, i'm not going to confirm or deny that's true. b, the fisa court order specifically dictate what we can do and what we can't do in conducting collection under 702. you have seen those orders. you know what they say. we can -- dan, let me finish. the orders provide what kinds of processing we can do on them. we do what those orders authorize. if the orders authorize it, we're allowed to do it. if they don't, we're not. it doesn't matter whether we would use speech to text recognition tools or whether we use 800 monkeys sitting at typewriters. >> there is nothing in those orders about using speech to text processing, so therefore you say you don't use it on 702 or prism? >> the orders speak for themselves and i'm not saying anything about speech to text processing. >> i would point out one more

thing as we get next question, which is that this also highlights a distinction that exists when you have the circuit opinion that we had, the question of whether or not an algorithm going through collected information counts as a search. that's a real question. and hypothetically speaking i would be very interested and you may know about this as well, don't mean to be picking on bob here, but if searching against it, against the database is a search under the second circuit but is not considered a search under fiske, what is a speech to text? does that -- is that a search? does that count as a search? >> so, i think the question on that is the particular communication that you are looking at, that you want to convert from speech to text, the question is how did you pick that out of your haystack, right? and so that's the -- that's the question that i think bob is trying to get at, what is that? is it that we're doing, right,

if it was saying, look, you have bulk collection of something, and we're doing it on everything, that's a different question -- if you're processing the entire haystack, versus processing selected communications, that's the question about the technology. you need to know what were the criteria for that selection. we used to have this debate all the time about, you know, in order to find a needle in a haystack, you need to build a haystack. people felt like you weren't looking at the whole haystack, you need a lower level of scrutiny about the formation of that haystack. but it wasn't like you were going back and then saying, okay, what is the level of scrutiny on the selection tool. this is in the early days and

things evolved legally since then. i think there is a real question that the second circuit pointed out, at what level is there a search. at what level is there an effect, right? and i think -- or someone affected. i think that's a question that as a country it is not clear where people come down in terms of the communications that they're putting out there into the world. this is a question about, you know, third party and metadata and the rest of that. i think that different people may feel differently about it. it is not until recently that we had a national conversation about that. >> shouldn't the arbiter be something that looks like the court of appeals for the second circuit rather than the fisa court? >> in what -- >> i think it depends on the context in which you're asking the question. if you're talking about the -- if you're talking about the 702 program, then, no. because you this challenge of particular -- within 702, you have a built in oversight structure. if it's something that is in a title 18 context, then probably yes. but i don't know that -- like in the 12333 context, i don't know you would get to judicial

oversight. i think it is a different question depending on what communications you're talking about, and what is affected. >> and next and last question. >> hi. this question is for mieke or fritz. i'm wondering if you can discuss -- i know there is discussion of this in fritz's book, but if attempts wall on a congressional oversight committee to get information declassified because it often seems as if while congress' tools for doing that are quite limited, congress doesn't often try. what are the obstacles to try to get information declassified, at least to request it in congress? >> so on the intelligence committee i would say the desire for declassification is lower because you're dealing with everything inside a classified space anyway, you're able to have the conversations in the protected environment. it is only when you have the conversation externally that it

is a challenge. i think for a long time before we got through a period of public debate, starting with the 702 debate, it was very difficult to get the community to break down exactly what was classified and at what level so you could actually have the public debate, the classification guides that would help members be able to have a conversation where parts of it were classified and parts of it were unclassified and to be able to describe that well. i think members of congress are hesitant for a variety of reasons to take unilateral action which they could do under the speech and debate clause or through votes of the committee to just declassify things absent executive branch input in part because they're so dependent on the executive branch for continued access to the classified information. and that really is i think the nuclear option in terms of putting information out there and so i think they are

cognizant of the ways in which it could become very difficult if they're revealing classified information in a way that could undermine security. i think because they also take their job to secure the nation very seriously, they are hesitant to do things they feel like might undermine the country. >> i would say congress has the power to declassify, but they have to go through a process and it is not easy. and some individual senator getting up and reading a classified document and say i'm protected under speech and debate i think is not a desirable way to go. but the committee can declassify, they don't have to wait for the president or wait for the cia and i think they are a little too subservient. but if you don't have a unified position, you're not going to have the power to do it.

and we did it sometimes. we did reveal some things that the executive branch didn't want us to. and we were right to -- the shamrock program was one example. we were right to reveal those things, but we had a sort of unity. and right now i think you're going to be very difficult, like in the torture report, to go beyond where they were would not be -- would not get, i think, a congressional vote or a leaders vote to allow it to the committee or -- there is two or three ways it can be done. so they have the power, they should be a little more willing to at least consider doing it, but you can't do it unless you have a very solid backing for the decision. >> this also goes to a question that really affects the quality of congressional oversight. that is the commitment of the leadership of the congressional

committees involved. and that really varies from member to member. i have worked for members who have pushed very aggressively for agencies to declassify information. personally getting involved in that conversation and pushing through the bureaucratic process that declassification might normally take. and then there are other members who would prefer that nothing be declassified at all. and the level of the members' commitment to having the debate in public versus having the debate behind closed doors. and the members' commitment to aggressive skeptical oversight versus a more friendly relationship really will change the quality of the ways the committees interact with the agencies. they set expectations as well, when you have a long period of time of one kind of oversight or another, they get use ed to that and then when change comes, it is -- it is a tough adjustment. >> we're over time. thank you to all the panelists. this was informative for me, i hope it was for others. thank you to bob because it is critically important to have the

intelligence community from the inside represented here again. so, thank you, again. thank you, all, for being here. here's what's happening on c-span 3 tonight. first a discussion on the causes of income inequality. then several days of the internet and tv expo held in chicago, including the fcc chair and commerce secretary. later a house subcommittee holds a hearing on a staff inging issues at the veterans health administration.

and family and friends of the late former democratic house speaker jim wright gathered last week in fort worth, texas, to honor his life. looking ahead to some of our live coverage here on c-span 3, the senate transportation committee holds another hearing on renewing federal aviation administration programs focusing on the agency's efforts to modernize the air traffic control system. faa administrator will testify along with the heads of industry trade groups. that's at 10:00 a.m. eastern. then in the afternoon at 2:30, a hearing on law enforcement using body cameras before a a senate judiciary subcommittee. live on c-span 3. there's been a lot of talk lready already on the 2016 campaign trail of the gap between the richest americans and everyone else. we'lln be talking about that topic here in this special

roundtable on "the washington journal." we're joined by scott of d mich manhattanae institute and michael ent console of the roosevelt 2013 institute.c ineq michael, first, president obama in 2013 called this issue economic inequality issue woagu defining challenge of our time. would you agree with that? >> yes, i think inequality is the doubling of top shares that are going to run away a real ce median class. median incomes are down 8% since 2000 in particular areas. aus e lot of unemployment. an >> and scott, runaway incomes, talk about the growth of guest: inequality. are we hearing so much because t this is an issue that is running be away?ca >> i think we have heard a lot odged aboutan it since the financial cry crisis because we dodged another great depression. there was a lot of economic anxiety for pretty good reasons.tended but inequality is high before ccupy

the financial crisis and tend to not hear that much about it. there was no occupy wall street, people weren't talking about it as a defining challenge of our time. i do think if the economy continues to expand that we're going to see inequality as an issue. >>al michael talk about the roosevelt institute and some of the policy precipitations that your group has put out on this ea issue. >> absolutely. we just released a big report and when people talk about economic reform in the past 35 years, they tend to emphasize globalization. they tend to talk about tech technology and skills and talk about sociology and family structures d and individual choices choices. we wanted to emphasize decision, the rules of the economy, how laws are set f up, labor markets are set up, just as much of a role, maybe even a greater role.

there's a lot of research in the past 15 years. a lot of these changes have not made the economy strongeratio and some cases may have weakened it.: and we think within our capacity viewers to show broader prosperity. >> you can check out the report at rooseveltinstitute.org. we're doing our phone lines differently as we talk about income inequality. income under $25,000, we have a line for you.20000 between $26,000 and $50,000 80 202-748-8001. between $51,000 and $100,000, we have a number for you. that line for those over $100,000, 202-748-8003. scott, your philosophy on policy

prescriptions for this issue. >> i tend to think that income as a inequality has been greatly overstated as a problem.hlight i tend to worry about opportunity and search that i not ma have done and tried to highlight that others have done doesn't make a very strong case in my view that if you care about inequality of opportunity that income inequality ought to be i the thing you target.m the bo i'm more concerned about mobility from the bottom. i think the way to do that is to at do a lot of experimentation at the federal level with programs that try to increase the skills of kids, change the behavior of progra parents. i think we have federal safety net problemsou that have bad incentives where people are discouraged from working saving marrying i think we e area need to have som oe reforms in the area of higher education financing as well, but i wouldn't tend to put forth an agenda that specifically is

trying to reduce income inequality. >> a chart from business insider on this to try to illustrate what we're talking about. the income inequality in this t country, this is the percent in change to 2012. red the blue line is the one running on the top is the top .01% l of earners in this country. the red line is the bottom 90% in this country. you can see thestay percent change in real income since 1980 staying flat for the bottom 90% and going generally upwards for the top .01%.op michael, is it just a matter of getting people more ability to break into that top .01%? >> no, e we don't believe so. there are symptoms of our economic ways. it's incredibly important to treat the symptoms.g you want to make sure people at the bottom have decent opportunities, young children arellne a investing.ules tha

but you need to tackle the underlying illness that there are a lot of rules that are channelling a lot of wealth upward. they are maredefining finance, gether corporations, labor markets and intellectual property that are all taken together create this divergence. if you look at the recovery, if it was a child, it would be in first grade. but through 2013 median incomes were falling while the top were going up. certainly it's not a recovery that's t broad based. it's a recovery that the 1% look looks like it's coming back to 2007 levels. that should worry us because these trends areor likely to xes on continue t going forward if we . keep the policy regime in lace. >> is it a matter of heavy taxes on that .01% to move money back down? >> there's also things calledpr market conditioning or predistribution. there's subtle ways from financial regulations to labor

market regulations to the minimum wage that set up the market to benefit some people versus others. we have tilted that to the top 1% and now it's time we tilt ittt, ee back. >> i imagine you don't agree. >> lots to disagree with. i think mike is right, the story they want to tell in the report is that the rise in income inequality begin ngt early 1980suences facilitated by the rule changes have had these negative ming of consequences. a big problem for the report is the timing of the story doesn't work out. so the growth in incomes in 1970s predating the run up of co income con concentration by a decade. productivity slowed in developed countries around the world. countries that had a lot of inequality, countries that didn't have that much inequality. there are a number of instances whereome the financial sector has

become. increasingly a bigger share of the economy going back to the 1940s. this isn't something where financialization since 1980 because of rule changes has has a produced any of the changes thatho we see. i also hopefully we can have a discussion about trends and living standards as well. refer the chart you referenced visually down plays how much there has been income growth for the middle class. it's been a 40% incident crease since 1979. not a whole lot of change since eghs for 2000 for sure. but we're basically almost back to the levels that were inship essentially all time highs for living standards in the united states. >> should note scott's website for the manhattan institute is manhattan.institute.org.

you can see that report. but we also want to hear from our viewers this morning. we have divided the lines different differently by income last year. we'll start with peter from valley cottage, new york on the line for those who made between $51,000 and $100,000 last year.. >> caller: good morning guys. i want to talk about the gorilla in the room. the congressional research service report studied tion immigration and middle class income to 2013.0 and found that as immigration slowed between 1945 and 1970 american incomes increased. but when immigration imm expanded, the incomes of the bottom 90% of america went flat and then drop dropped beginning in 2000. in the report to the senate judiciary u committee it was reported that the foreign born population searched 325% from 9 million to 41 million.

and as that happened, incomes of the bottom 90% dropped 7.9% in o 30,980 2013 from an average of $33,000 to $30,000.fact nowor naturally there's other contributing factors globalization, outsourcing, inflation, declining unionization, trade deals that are bad, advances in robotics k ec and technology, but when you have a glut of labor and you not be have a weak economy or slowly 1 growing economy, you're not going to be able to absorb all these people. we bring in immigrants legally compet who are competing with american workers and with this legalization effort that was being pushed a year ago they k. wanted to double that. >> peter is in valley cottage new york. michael, in your report, talked

a little bit about this issue of immigration. >> yeah, i think certainly having a large part of the labor force essentially be in the shadows of labor law and not having basic rights, basic protections, the ability to go to law enforcements or other a kinds of public agencies because who of undocumented status is a detriment to other workers who have to compete.ryone we feel that you can make the labor floor much better for s everyone by incorporating people formally. there's a lot t ofha different ways to measure this, but my understanding is that immigration has fallen quite o not dramatically since these great recession. we don't really see this renaissance of working class wages since then. there's a lot of other factors in play. a lot of people look at this and say it's a contributing at margins, but not a big contributor. >> i think i would agree with what mike said. the research literature is kind of all over then. place on this

question.the i do think the call r brings up an important point, which is that a lot of the bcoul policies in the report could have benefits, but a lot of them could have costs as well thatn th are not necessarily discussed in the report, whether that's intervening in the economy at the risk of slowing economic wspen w growth, whether that's more way. spending on federal policies that would increase deficits has no potentially hurt economic growth that way, but i agree with mike about overall how important immigration ha ts or hasn't been for wage trends over time. >> in terms of more federal der spending henry kolb on twitter wants me to ask you specifically what youstru do about underinvestment in american infrastructure and american his gi workers. >> i think the infrastructure in the u.s., this is a bad time tovest cite the literature on this given that we just had this horrible amtrak accident, but i think evan soltis made a strong

case. he's a researcher that has been on a blog. i think he makes a strong case that the infrastructure crisis as folks like to describe it has really been overstated. we want to maintain our infrastructure spending for r w sure. i think what thehen recovery showed is that even when we boost e very spending on infrastructure it imp doesn't have very strong, so i especially short-term impacts on employment, on the income distribution. so i think infrastructure has been oversold as a way of boost s ing the middle class. >> income inequality, the income distribution in the u.s., our topic for the next 45 minutes or " so here on the washington journal. two experts, one from the roosevelt institute, the other from theki manhattan institute to join us. kitty hawk, north carolina, on that line for those who made under $25,000 last year. jim, good morning.one >> caller: good morning, how are you? r >> go ahead. >> caller: one of the problems i think we have in this country isthe the low savings rate.

without money in the bank, it's very difficult to negotiate any kind of union contract or just discuss those possibilities with -- your management.inet and i can recall my grandmother my grandfather was a cabinet maker and my grandmother had this jar in the pantry and she saved a dollar or two dollarsi she a s week and when she said what is that money for and she said it'si thin for a time when we go on strike so i can pay the mortgage and feedms the family. and i think that's one of the major problems in this country. earlier on another network i heard that people between 55 and 65, 67% of them have no retirement fund.year what's going to happen to those people in the next 10 to 20 to0 ye 30 years living to the tune of 80 or 90 years old? >> michael?

>> yeah, there's been a big experiment with 401(k)s and a lot of people say it's nowhere near delivered on the promise it had. people haven't ever saved that way. it's difficult to save individually out of yourself. people normally retire off their children or now retire off government pension or private pensions. i think thethe gap there is pretty big and pretty startling. it seems we have seen experiments where a lot of these private savingtu vehicles nt of essentially make good experiment out of the danish pension system that showed most people don't save on tax credits. the rich do because they can shuffle money. we call for bolstering social security. we think that's a time-tested solution. i think the reason for the decline of the strike, which happens much earlier, it happens in the 40s after a lot of changes in labor law so it brings down the strike level. i think indi there's a lot -- we

don't want to blame it on individuals and the idea that individualst workers aren't saving enough and that's why there's not strikes. i it's a function of labor law ses, t thathe cause edd that kind of change. >> i think that, again, this is one of these crises, the retirement savings crisis that has been overstated. that andrew bigs has some really good research showingent that our much official data that people use to gauge theed a question si of savings and how much income retireosse have understated older americans. it's a misreading o of those statistics that lead you to conclude we ought to t spend more on social security, which is really going to eat the rest of the budget along with medicare as things currently stand, even if we don't expand it. this is another area there are real tradeoffs to some of the policies in the moreport. >> income inequality is our topic of the roundtable this morning. here's another chart from d business insider showing the

wealth share in the united states from 1913 to 2012 of those in the top .1%. you can see once it was passed . about 2010 or so, that number over 20% of the wealth share in the united states is held by . those in the top .1%. we're talking about income inequality. calvin is up next from north carolina on the line for those who made over $100,000 last year. calvin, good morning. >> caller: good morning and kudos to c-span for the continuous excellent job you and your team do. the n a couple of things i want to quickly mention.n income one, the nature of a capital system is to have built-in income inequality. going back to europe which was the predecessor for our current system, there's always going to be those who have the capital and there's going to be those who are going to seek to work

using their capital. so income inequality is built in. second thing i would like to k mention is a book called the "the millionaire next door" by a couple of doctors. it was published back in 1996.and and in this book, it points out tl a couple things. it piggy backs off what the mill gentleman from north carolina mentioned, which is millionairesof their live next door and they are incon speckous because a lot of their saving habits spending habits, the values that they have in terms of emphasizing education, deferring immediate satisfaction in order to look at the long-term benefits of a decision, that's what really to makes people wealthy and prosperous. i don't think it's a total government thing, nor do i think it's a total take regulations away and just let the free enterprise solve the situation.n. it's going to have to really scott start with us as individuals. >> i think the caller makes an

interesting point that there are folks out therese who w are millionaires who might not expect or identify as such on the street. that said, as somebody who tends to worry lessss a about inequality than a lot of people it's really hard to overstate how tes. much inequality there is in the united states.ary i have written before the amount of inequality between larry ellison, who is often on the nd m charts as the richest person in america, the inequality between him and say mitt romney on the other hand is as great as the inequality between thedd top 1% and the average middle class family.uality so it is a astonishing how high se inequality levels are but you have to make a case for why that's a problem or why folks don't e deserve to make that much. >> as i said earlier, when you look at what's happening, you want to include sociology.errate

we think those tend to be ompared overrated relative to the normal conversations. e we want to bring in other d things. as for the kind of general tendency of inequality, rse, w absolutely. we have always hade ys h inequality in this country. large ones because you have bosses, capital, people who invest in companies and own them in people who workot o for them. one thing we have noticed is that a lot of those things change rapidly. ceo salaries are flat or te certainly doesn't have the explosive characteristics it does. finances, sharer of gdp, the rate of growth doubles in the 1980s. you see wages are linked to deregulation in the time period. there are different ways to set up with some people call the varieties of capitalism. ones more inclusive andd work better for more people and then there's other ways where it does tind to channel and come to the top. >> john is on that line for those who made between $51,000 and $100,000 last year.ears ago good morning, john. >> caller: good morning, about

100 yearuns something like if it'ssalary difficult for a person to understand something if their take salary depends upon them not understanding it. you can take the manhattan institute, american enterprise institute, club for growth and come apply that to them. as far as the income inequality the facts are there to back it f up.c-you it would be nice if c-span wouldthe have the roosevelt institute on as much as the other groups. you have the right wing think tanks on there too much. in as far as income inequality goes, the facts are out there. >> do you want to talk about your group? >> the manhattan institute is a free market think tank in new

york city. we basically advocate that government play a role where it can help, but in general we're aore lot more worried about government failure than we are about market failure.ion befo i was at the brookings institution before i was at the manhattan institute. so i think the caller is identifying some problems that are on both sides of the aisle for sure, but ultimately i would encourage him to read see. my own stuff on inequality and see whether i have the facts wrong. i don't think i do. >> it's manhattan-institute.org. >>in the roosevelt institute is the non-profit partner where we nor work to keep the legacy alive.we sta we started a think tank in 2009 in the aftermath of the crisis primarily focused on microeconomics and the financial reform. since then we have worked more on inequality releasing this big

report with our chief economist just like week. >> rooseveltinstitute.org if you want to check out that report. laura in pennsylvania on that line for those who made over $100,000 last year. good morning, laura. >> caller: good morning, it's both my husband and i making that. we're both - myngretired military officers. we worked hard, we're now retired so we're going to have a lot more. but i wanted to address president obama's conference on like he poverty.in it seemed like he was blaming racist cops and instead of he addressing the fact from all of these institutes, especially the heritage foundation, theri information on poverty, the number one group according to our census bureau are single chool family headed households. one income and barely with a ou wil high school education. so if you wait and then you get married, then you're going to he d have two incomes and you're going to build your way up and you're going to save. he didn't address the fact that

blacks account for 12 to 13%. these fatherless households, these kids raised there have much higher incidents of criminal behavior, school dropout rates, marriage drops the probability of poverty 82%. that is huge. if you wait and you get married and you commit to the mother of your children, then you can work your way up and not be trapped in poverty. >> michael, i want to let you jump in. does your report talk about marriage? >> what we emphasize is the causation runs both ways. sociologists talked to poor women having children and they say why aren't you getting married. they want to get married. they don't devalue marriage, but they find o out kmirtheir economicruns

weaker marriages. in a different world we see people with higher student loans are likely to delay marriage. we think of it as a larger incar question in thatce realm. in our report we do emphasize mass incarcerationrt as weakened employment for particularly people of color at the low end of the income distribution. that's a rule change where it certainly has gone way beyond - an any kind of cause benefit analysis to reducing crime and it sbebds to lock a lot out of the labor market. host we think there's really good effort to reevaluate a lot of our policy. >> scott, what data do you think applies here? >> well, ido le think the caller has a point on the one hand in that the upward mobility problem in ity fo the united states is in a lot of ways more of a problem of ca limited upward mobility for african-americans. family structure is a big part

of the problem there. but i would add a couple other things. another very big problem is the c extent to which people of color, particularly african-americans, are concentrated in neighborhoods that are 350r7 there was a report that came out by a harvard economist essentially finding that if you it grow up in i a poor neighborhood it does impede your upward mobility. the other point, while i agree family structure is is incredibly llege de important, it's much broader among the african-american community. among people who don't have a college degree, two-thirds of 7-year-olds, i think was the last bit of research i saw, are living with just one parent. so this is really a huge national problem, i think, that transcends race for sure. >> we havef about a half hour left in our income inequality roundtable this morning on a monday morning on "the washington journal." ant anthony is waiting in atlanta

georgia. goo anthony, good morning. >> caller: good morning, how are you doing? >> good. >> caller: i want to make a comment first about the obama quotes you made at the their we beginning. as you uesee, .01% doubled their e would wealth. but my question is what do you think would help the inequality are gap? you say education reform but people are going to school and then coming out in debt. so i just don't see where it's going? you know what i'm saying? >> scott, i'll let you start. coupl >> well let me identify a here i couple places in the report that i do agree with some remedies to reduce inequality. i think those are to the extent that there are government policies we have that are go unfairly protecting incumbent organizations, businesses or

where we're just overpaying for things as a contractor. so i think in the report they talk about defense contracting and that in a lot of ways, if you live in washington, d.c. you can't help but notice just how many very wealthy people there are. the lost of living in the town ere ar ise definitely soaring. so i think there are areas we re could increasegu competition and smalle if we included some deregulations that help smaller businesses break into markets where currently we have large corporations who are lobbying to keep them out, that's something that is hurting the national lot of economy. i think gincreasingly a lot of is cro conservatives would get behind this and oppose this capitalism. >> michael?ul >> i think president obama is broadly right in everyone should get one more year ofd education than they would have otherwise, but we do see a lot of o high-skilled workers moving intoa

lot low-skilled jobs throughout the great recession and it seems like a lot of the returns to higher education have kind of plateaued out. the idea we can educate ourselves out of this situation seems unlikely. the caller is correct onnden that end. our report has a lot of different suggestions. a couple would be emphasizing employment. under 5% as was in the late highe '90s, you'd see a lot more broad income growth. a higher minimum wagre holds up the low end of the distribution and compliments leaky organizations.salari a higher tax rate because it's a good way to raise revenue and provides a disincentive to stack up salaries. there's less informsment because of short-term markets. we discussed them inri the report. >> tallahassee florida, is next, brenda on the line for those who made under $25,000 last year. good morning brenda.

>> caller: good morning, i just wanted to say that i notice overyears in the years in my retirement, i worked 35 years in the private business, and after 35 years i had about $30,000 in my retirement. my husband worked for the state for 35 years and after he retier retired, unfortunately, he passed away withr cancer, but he had over $300,000 in his retirement working for the ees an state. and i would like to know how the state employees and government employees end up with so much in their retirement while private workers don't fair so well. i thi i'll take my answer over the air. >> i think the major reason is that what's called defined benefit retirement plans are more common in the public sector than they are in the private c sector.antees y that is your employer guaranteesrs

you a fixed amount of e retirement income depending on how many years you worked and what your pay was while you were working as opposed in the private sector where things are moving as employers contributing to private accounts that workersontrib are also contributing to themselves but not guaranteeing there's going to be a certain amount of retirement income every month upon retirement.en aefit lot of people on the left wish we had more of the former, the defined benefit plans that the public employees tend to have. the problem isare s what we're seeing in the public success tore is these pension plans have been nd it severely underfunded by lly star employers. it's really questionable whether a lot of folks, es prlly starting out today, are ever going to see that retirement savings in the end i.t it ends up that employers have prom to sort of takeis back some of get their promises and say you're not going to get as much as we promised you. then younger workers are getting less generous packages so near

retires can get the full mic commitment that was promised to them years earlier. it's an unsustainable model is the problem. >> michael s this a place where there's some agreement? >> i'd have to know more about the specifics of the plans, but when fdr envisioned social security, he managed a ty three-legged stool.d, priva social security for one-third of savings it, private savings and then you'd have an employer pension.r how th and however that was in those days it's not in play now.gone now if one of those legs are give. ing out with private pensions becoming less generous, we need : to rely more on the other two. private savings isn't doing it. we should think more about social security. >>the fort lauderdale florida, is up next, sam for those who made under $25,000 last tyear. cou good morning, sam. >> caller: good morning, and thank you for the verypl ement interesting topic.

the past couple calls have been geared towards retirement more than income quality t.re relat i'm fortunate in the fact i was bec able to auretire relatively young and it's only because over the past 12 years i saved practically everything i made. a caller earlier talked about l fo the benefits of two incomes or not so much it two incomes but being married and how that was wonderful for saving money for retirement. it's only after i got divorced and got rid of a spending wife that i was able to save any ity money but that's another story.argume when it comes to income inequality argument what causes it, how to solve it, et cetera it comes down to as far as i'm decima concerned the fact that the unions have been decimated over the past years. republicans, conservatives capitalists went after them with a vengeance and they have been knocked down to very small membership. youugh go back to the '50s, '60s,

my father was a union member. worked in a factory and made a good enough living that we even had a small home on the lake.you ta you can't do that nowadays. showe you take a look at those charts, the hosts showed one earlier sky wherero the upper income folks, ed their income has skyrocketed whereas the middle class or working class has stayed flat. what more proof do you need? there's other charts out there that show wealth, ownership of wealth where the top 1% own about 70% of the total wealth ofr the country whereas the lower 99% or whatever the number is owns practically nothing. so i don't have an answer to how to solve it.

i don't presume to be as smart s as your guests there but nevertheless, the fact is that tter. income inequality exists and it's gotten worse over the years, not better.lking >> michael? >> i liked his point that he brought up a lot of callers were talking about retirement. in addition to opportunity, most people care about security. are they going to be homeless when they retire? are they going to have to starve? in addition to helping provide a broader base of opportunity throughome, schools and early childhood investments, sized government is good at providing income security. that's a thing that needs to be emphasized more going forward. i also want to make sure our report is not trapped in n nostalgia that may not have existed in the way we think. this is a forward-looking report with investments igon technology. there's a real opportunity goingoes forward. but it could end up in a world b where it all goes to the 1% or in a a world we're all broadly more prosperous for it.

>> john is on the line, good morning. >> caller: good morning, how you doing? 196 i was calling to say something about the 1965 welfare reform. that's when all the inequality started. these people that got this ears. welfare and it's totally run rampant for the past 50 years. the income, the earned income credit, that's tax reform and everything and it's ridiculous that the government has supported these people.jobs out and i understand if you go out and work there's jobs out there. people canic get a job.ey wou

either picking up trash d not alongside the road or whatever. to hear they'd rather sit at home and not do nothing. that's my feeling. i'd like to hear what they say. >> well i think that the d have welfare system that we have in a l the country did have a lot of problems with it around to discouraging work. i think it still does to a 990' pretty large extent. but in the 1990s we implemented a number of reforms to cash will w benefits that people receive. they were time limited, they t wereo th work requirements, they were sent to the states and the states were allowed to be much more flexible about the rules for those poprograms. we made it more difficult for people to -- for poor people who didn't work. at the same time, the caller it eas alluded toie the earned income tax credit, which made it easier for poor people who do work. inco

the research has showed that it really induced a lot of lower income people to work. single mothers work a lot more than they used to. their incomes are higher as a result so i think it was a successful package of t reforms and i think we ought to build on it and reform our programs further. but it's really a different issue, i ithink, than inequality t: and the changes in inequality that we have seen over time. ta >> i think the earned income taxfull-t credit is a good program. the question is if a person works full-time, should they be in poverty? i think as a society we tend to think no.ch the questionip is what do we do t about it? it's making employers chip in more through minimum wage and taxpayers. both marco rubio and president obama proposed similar plans to extend the itc. they want to extend it out to men as well.several

>> on the campaign trail, several candidates one of the 16 ele key issues in the 2016 election? >> a lot depends on what wage growth doeske in the next few years. if we had really high income fferen growth year after year like in the late '90s, it would be effective. however, i think a lot of peoplesee more thought if we get below 6% we'd see more investment and wage if tha growth and wet haven't. if that trend continues, and i worry it will it's going to make us really re-examine how our examine is working. talking >> scott surprised hillary clinton is talking about this? several members of congress also talking about this as well. >> that's right. i think jeb bush is considering ople

a are candidacy. so it really is an issue i ll think, that a lot of people are of going to talk about in 2016. i think you're going to see e and inequality as an opportunity as a bipartisan issue and people ection have very differents sets of on solutions depending on if they are on the left or the right. income inequality will be really interesting because if hillary clinton is the nominee, she and her husband have done very well since leaving the presidency and i think it's going to be tricky for her to talk about inqualify. >> we have 15 minutes left. in this segment to talk about this topic with our roundtable tabl of experts. the roosevelt institute and the cranst manhattan institute, we'll go to mary grace who has been waiting in rhode island on that line for those who made between $51,000 caller and $100,000 last year. good morning. >> caller: good morning, i want to thank c-span first for having both sides speak like you always but

i do. ayou ar and i know some people get disgruntled thinking you favor one side more than the other, but i alms think you're fair and balanced. withe that, my question is for scott. you talk about how marriage really helps with inequality.ed the putting both incomes together. have you ever explored the variable of gay and lesbians and how they can contribute and? they have had so many problems in trying to get equal rights. and in some states as you know i they do not allow gay marriages and so forth. so i'd like to h know if you i explored that?a fe >> i have not personally. i think you have to distinguish a few issuesor. marriage is definitely important for inequality. it's more between the middle and bottom than it is for the top 1% versus everyone else. so when you think about o distin

inequality you have to i distinguish between those two issues. i supportt ef marriage equality. would it effect income inequality a lot? lesbi probably not because just the numbers of gays and lesbians are relatively small and not all of philos them want to get married. but certainly support it. >> michael any thoughts on this topic? >> i generally agree. it's been a big change and one for o the the better.last >> mary ann is in pennsylvania rning. for those who made under $25,000, good morning. >> caller: good morning, gentlemen. until this country i decides to orts take the jobs and look at them as importance instead of paying sports players so much money because they can knock a little ball so far or movie stars or ceos. a few years ago the beginning of the 2008 i wound up getting a r.

job in my early 50s as a case work er for children in youth. we started out at $27,000. i have two bachelor's degrees aching and a teaching certificate. that is horrendous for the importance of that job. it's a burn out job also. i lasted two and a half years and i was the fifth person to leave that year. i didn't leave until november. three more left after me. even until we decide, even teachers impo in 1998 i made $27,000 as a substitute teacher in a subject that wasn't even mine. we need to decide what's important and what isn't. people are putting their money in the wrong places but they don't seem to care as long as they have their dow thumbs on those telephones. pay attention, america. wake up, america. spread the wealth around.thou thank you. >> that's mary ann in pennsylvania with her thoughts. cornell is up next in waterford,e

new jersey. that line for those who made between $51,000 and $100,000 last year good morning. >> caller: good morning, gentlemen, the problem with -- income inequality is that and i don't want to totally blame the republicans, but the problem is w is that they do not want to have the wealthy to pay just a little more so that we all can prosper. i live in new jersey where we have the highest taxes and insurance in the country. and i'll be 59 in february. i'm struggling and wondering how 20 i'm going to make it in d in retirement and i've been working two jobs for over 20 years. and i don't see no end in sight. now another problem is that

children and grandchildren don't have a chance. the top 1 to 2% owns over 90% of the wealth. and they even have -- some even have able yo problem with raising the minimum wage. if you would have doubled the minimum wage, you'd still have problems. >> beforeel we go to the panel mo when youve say children and grandchildren don't have a chance, you mean a chance to move up into a different income bracket? >> caller: well to survive where wages are and the top 1 to 2% do not want to let the wealth be spread around. the unions are what created the middle class. the problem is in the public sector, unions are a little higher because it's usually y

friends and family and they are not going to mess up. i'm talking about state and local, but in the private sector, unions are are down to 7% or less. >> got yourmo point. scott, mobility issues, one of the issues that the caller is talking about there.en t >> yeah, and i think it's important to distinguish, i think, between the state of things and whether things are d if y getting worse or not. fifth so we do have upward mobility in the united states that is too limited. if you start in the bottom fifth, there's about a 40% chance you're going to remain there as an adult yourself. there's only a 30% chance you're going to make it to the middle class or higher. that's a big problem. now is it connected to income inequality? i don't think there's a whole lot of evidence. economic mobility has notne in novem fallen. there's a newng paper that came out in november that was looking at mobility in canada sweden orse

and the united states that found that actually for men it looks like the united states actually doesn't have worse upward mobility than canada t and sweden. so despite sweden having much less inequality than the united states. i do think it's important to be clear about what problem we're trying to solve and then to be very hard headed about whatim lem the causes of the problem are. >> michael, i'll let you talk about this as well, but want to show ourth viewers this chart from business insider. the probability of a child entering the topto e 20% based on 0% bas that child's parents. you can see for the lowest 20% shs very little chance the child will end upca entering the top 20%. you can see the chances going up as the parents income levels go up. >> the most important decision a child is going to make in his or her life is what parents they are going to have and that's not a decision they have a lot of leeway with.0 and 30 we see that as income inequality

has gone up in the past 30 years, opportunity has stayed relatively flat.as it was increasing during the '40s according to new research that's coming out from brown university. sot th when you look at in the past couple decades it may be flat but it's stillar really low relative to our peer countries. this is kind of the pop sit of what we would imagine. our inequality is high but our op opportunity is high relative to the countries of europe.we we're seeing that not in the m same way we'd like to. >> just a few minutes left with ver, our panel. dover, florida, on that line for those who made under $25,000 last year. good morning. >> caller: i am retired, but. i did just want to tell you a little my story as fast as i can. i wasn't just very poor, i was very very poor. and whe my dad had a 4th grade

education, my mom had an 8th grade. they followed the fruit -- i'm 83 years old. they followed the fruit and vegetable gleans and what have followed fruit and vegetable and what have you, even as a teenager they went to new york and worked and i stayed with a cousin of mine here and we never got one went red cent of government assistance. when i got out of high school, i went to work at a bank, worked for four years. i happened to marry a man with aching three degrees, accounting, theology, and ended up getting a teaching certificate and also acause master's in administration. he was a school teacher. and he chose to teach school because

he loved it and it was important to him and he saw how children that didn't have moms at home and didn't do as well and he insisted that i stay home and take care of our children and run the home. and that's what i did. he never made a living, but we ntee i lived off what he made. >> hey reba. me >> he i'll guarantee you if you figure that every dollar he made from the time he started working until he passed away three years ago, he did not make a million dollars in his lifetime. but right now i'm worth a half million. it's not what you make, it's k on y what you do with it. >> reba, as you look back on your life story you just told us is there one policy that was has d especially helpful to you or is this something that you feel

like you and your husband did on? your own? >> do what? do i feel like it was -- someth >> was there one federal policy that was especially helpful to you or is this something you felt like you did on your own? >> caller: well, we did it on our own, we never got any help from anybody, never. yet i raised three kids every one of them went to college every one of them sat in my family room couple years ago at different times and said momma i had the best childhood a kid could have. wed ki were the house, we furnished all the balls, bats gloves fishing poles, kick balls and everything for the whole community, and we were just -- and all the kids wanted to come y to our house. i mean, i was at home and my kids could bring anybody home as long as they were decent becausee. i ran this house, believe me.

they all knew who was in charge. >> sounds like a good place to grow up in dover, florida. re thanks for the call and for watching. i will on, let scott jump in. >> she brings up an interesting point that we haven't talked on, a little around unions in the 1950s and '60s. one of the things that's changed over time is that a lot more t women work, a lot of women choose not to, and certainly rk mor want to support that for those who do, but a lot of women wanted to work more than they did in the mid 20th century and we organized our institutions, our rules if you want to talk about rules, in a way where we male discouraged married women from working and we believed that a aid single male breadwinner should be able to support a family on his own and we you know, we paid men a kind of bonus in a workin

senseg to essentially maintain that h this traditional arrangement of men working, women at home. as that has changed over time and women got more opportunities in the workplace, this is one ofagnation the reasons you see real wage stagnation among men it is a shift from the old world to a more modern world where women have benefitted, where men have lost the kind of bonuses they got in the past and where to some extent income has shifted at the top as folks at the top have realized that we are not in this world where we believe thathat men should be able to support a family on one income, so i think that's one of the big things that's changed over time that te you do see in stats. >> and michael, about a minute left in this segment. your thoughts. >> for one women work force will be important in the fall, ct the people look at institutions

around child care paid family leave that effects women's ability to maintain a career. i am curious how the timing really works out. d income it shows there are a lot of social norms built out of institutions that effect income -- >> roosevelt institute if you t want to check out their recent paper on their prescriptions for this issue of income

. >> rand paul called for more bipartisanship. more candidates with recent books include former governor jeb bush in immigration wars. he along with clint bowl i can argue for new immigration policies. in "stand for something" john kasich calls for return to

traditional american values. former virginia senator james webb looks on his time serving in the military and senate in "i heard my country calling." bernie sanders announced his intention to seek democratic nomination for president. his book "the speech" is a printing of his filibuster against tax cuts and in "promises to keep" joe biden explains his guiding principles. ben carson calls for greater individual responsibility to preserve america's. another politician running for president, lincoln chafe ee in "against the tide" reannounced his time serving as republican in the senate. carly fiorina from hewlett

packard shares lessons learned from difficulties and triumphs in rising to the challenge. louisiana governor bobby jindal criticizes obama administration and explains why conservative solutions are needed in washington in leadership and crisis. finally in a time for truth another declared candidate ted cruz recounts his journey from cuban immigrant son to u.s. senate. look for his book in june. transition and infrastructure issues including amtrak are being debated in congress. on the next washington journal, we talk to david jolly of florida. then a conversation with representative gerald nadler on whether congress should renew

nsa surveillance that expires in june. washington journal live each morning at 7:00 eastern. join the conversation on facebook and twitter. coming up we are going to chicago where leaders of cable and telecommunication industry gathered for the annual cable show called the internet and television expo. up next federal communications tom wheeler on the adoption of open internet rules and why the internet service providers should be regulated. then a panel of cable ceos from companies including time warner and cox communications who criticize the new rules.

>> thank you. great to be here -- wait a minute. it is great to be here at ints the internet and television expo. you know cable isn't in the title of the show michael powell now said cable is a dirty word. i remember when the show was very creatively named something like catz 77 or things like this. then some young whipper snapper, and barbara you are, because nothing happens without barbara york, changed the name to the cable show. and now you've moved on from that. congratulations on once again