>> and at 8:00 on the presidency, gil troy looks at u.s./israeli relations from presidents harry truman to barack obama. >> i told the house of representatives i would commit political suicide if i didn't support the state of israel. this is the audience participation point of our audience. who said it? it was said, next sloid, jimmy carter. i fooled you. >> for a complete schedule go to cspan.org. this week on q&a, maya mayamacguineas. she taubs about the federal budget process and what to expect from the new congress and trump administration.

>> may ya macguineas, part of the responsible federal budget. what is it? >> i thought you were going to make fun of the name which happens regularly. it's been around for decades, in fact, one of the most distinguishing feature about it and important thing about it is it's very bipartisan and our board of directors are people who have been in this town in washington and they have run all of the budget organizations. so our co-chairs are governor mitch daniels now president of purdue, tim penny, leon panetta, democrat, republican, independent. and the board is made up of the people who have been the heads of the treasury department, the office of management and budgets the congressional budget office. house and senate budget committees. so basically it's a fiscal watchdog group with bipartisan leadership who have been involved in these issues so they actually know what it's like to have to legislation as well as give ideas and thoughts and zbruj our policymakers toy about more fiscally responsible.

>> our purpose in inviting you to be here and our audience has seen many times is to talk about the little things in budgets along with the bigger things. but why do you want to do this kind of work and how long have you done it? >> yeah, so i had no intention of doing this kind of work. i was working at a think tank, then i was working on wall street and i was looking at -- it was the mid-'90s and kind of pay attention to the bond markets and talk about deficits that were pretty small then compared to where we've been since. but i wanted to learn more about the issue. i started reading reports from the congressional budget office which i found fascinating. and something just clicked for me where, one, i've always been a huge political independent. i'm not drawn to being a part of either party. and two, i really wanted to understand why we are borrowing so much money when we were and what it was being used for and how the budget worked because of my interest in economics. and the more i read about it and learned about it the more i became worried about kind of the

trajectory that our country is on where we plan to borrow more and more. and it's certainly become worse over all the time that i've been working in this field. and i just think that sound budgeting, fiscal responsibility and kind of looking at it from a nonpartisan perspective is really the underpinnings of a sound and sustainable economy. and i think there's a lot of political pressure not to do things that are fiscally responsible so i think it's very important that you have organizations and a board like ours that can help policymakers to make some of the tougher koiss which in the long run are really important for the economy. >> this is going to sound like a nasty question. you've been around to a long time. you've done this since 2003, is that right? you've been there. >> that's how long i'ving at the committee for responsible federal budget, yep. >> the nasty type question is if all of these people that are on your board and the chairman have been in government and been involved in the budget process and haven't been able to do anything about it, why would this make any difference what

you're doing? >> yeah, so it's not a nasty question. it's the kind of question i think about organizationally all the time. but the truth is and i really believe this, i believe the fiscal situation in this country would be a lot worse if you didn't have the important policymakers who have been there, been in the trenches, out there pushes for us to be responsible. it is easy to borrow money and we certainly borrow a lot of it right now, but there are many, many bills, for instance, that pass that borrowed a lot less because of the pressure that this kind of an organization and there are others out there also put out there, the kinds of information, the kind of reaching out to policy maeshs, the kind of education that we do both in the grassroots and in the country. so unfortunately what it isn't like is a big ribbon cutting ceremony. we won, we nixed the wholization. but what it is like is if you don't have these kinds of watchdog organizations, we would be borrowing ourselves into oblivion, i think. i think there would be very little pressure to think about how we're going to pay for

things. think about what spending responsibly looks like. the reason i and a really terrific team of colleagues get up every day and work on this even though we know we wouldn't balance the budget today and is because we need a countervailing pressure because so many of the political pressures are to be fiscally irresponsible. >> so, where did you grow up? >> here in washington, d.c. never thought i'd come back. was never interested in politics and certainly never imagined myself being involved in budget policy. >> what did your parents do? >> mom was a reporter, dad was a lawyer. >> what was her name. >> carol macguineas. she was a freelance reporter. one of the neatest jobs, a travel writer. she was a restaurant reviewer. theatre reviewer and so we got to do things like go to chinese restaurants and order everything on the menu. they were divorced, so when i

live d with my dad, my mom coul would go off and travel around the world and write an article about it. a really neat job. >> why did you go to northwestern and what did you study? >> i thought it was steak chicago, but other wooids, northwestern is a terrific school. i start as a math major and quickly decided there was only so much math at least i wanted to be b doing. so, i switched to become an economics and psychology major. they still both baffle me. >> and then you went to harvard. >> for graduate school. i went to the kennedy school of government. >> so, you had to do well at northwestern. >> i did fine. went out and worked for a couple

of years. i worked at payne webber b and then boy, did i love the kennedy school of government. it was for me, finding a lot of people who like the same kind of thinki ing thinking. if you were creating a brand-new policy from scratch, how would you do it? there was so much expertise there, that was a great two years. >> one of the most interesting little nuggets in your background, "the washington post" editorial board for a while. >> so, here's what happened. i sent in an op-ed. and the editor of the board was calling back, this is great, they're going to run it. unfortunately, they turned it down, but person who covered xhibs was going on book leave so they asked if i could come in for two months and write editorials and it was fascinating for me. i came away from that, one of my favorite jobs that i had was working those two months because the work was so interest iing a colleagues were so interesting,

but another piece of is it's really neat to step out of your career and go try something you know nothing about. i know nothing about journalism. i didn't know how editorial boards work, how separate they are from the rest of the news rooms, so i learned so much. >> are they really separate? >> yeah, really separate. >> was the, were the grand family owners at the time? >> they were. >> did you get a sense of whether they had any impact on what the editorials say as a fmly? >> i get the sense they did not. they were involved. >> so, you were at brookings and what for people outside the d.c. area. >> what is a think tank, one of the biggest questions people outside of washington really wonder.

how many things are great jobs, but brookings is a terrific first job. because as a research assistant, you go in and work for smart seen quor fellow, gosh, if i were more mature and smart and went back the college, i'd get so much more out of it. getting paid to research these topics. i worked on the commercial banking crisis. a whole variety of economic growth. you learned how to do research, which is a great skill and incredibly different today in the technology era. i got to write about things. >> decisions made -- >> i think they used to have more impact than they do now.

feel like they're becoming more political to me, where they're more in line with a specific party and trying to give people, policymakers specific ideas that are often as political as policy oriented, but when i was first doing this, they were more academic. spent a lot of time doing research. i was doing regression angel is. that is when you look at a whole bunch of data and analyze it and try to figure out patterns and what variables affect different things and you're running models. i don't think they do that as much without research. they do more policymaking. both are important. but i really enjoyed the academic piece of it and i think it had an impact because the scholars of the big think tanks were so well regarded that when they said thing, they were treated as experts. right now, i feel in the coun country, there's really a regression and there's no monopoly on the facts the way

there used to be and it was kind of an easier period where people would come up with ideas and you'd have policymakers who'd say, i like that, and they'd run with it. now, everything seems disputed and debated. >> we have video of you in 2001. we have video and this is just a lit clip. about a minute. 2009. and 2016. when you were on a call in show just recently. just see the progress. >> the single most important step in strengthening social security is to boost national saving. higher saving rate channel more money into productive investment, creating higher economic output and wages. a large economic pie in turn will reduce the -- paying retirement costs. >> a share of the economy indefinitely. at some point, creating a vicious spiral. part of the trickyness is that we don't know when. we don't know what that would

look like. whether it would take the form of a precipitous plunge in economic activity or slow the damaging erosion to our standard of o living. i'd also -- budget process is broken. we are the biggest economy in the world and we are regularly operating without a budget in place. when we do these funding bills, which are supposed to happen, small bills one at a time where they will get scrutiny, you look at the government programs, you figure out what's working, what's not, you make decisions, make choice, which is what budgeting is. that process isn't happening anymore. >> last time they passed the budget. >> well, they passed a budget last year. but they didn't adhere to the budget. so, it's a great broad question, which is the budget process is so broken at this point that we have a whole process, a set of steps that have been laid out. and it's, there's a -- every year, we blow through it. as they're supposed to.

last year, there was a budget that was passed. a budget that was supposed to save $5 trillion. over ten year, budgeting is normally done in ten-year periods. they did pass the budget which was unusual because they haven't passed it for so p years before then they proceeded to pass a whole lot of legislation that was at odds with that budget. so the budget, which was supposed to reach balance in nine years, then led to policy decisions and laws that added $1.2 trillion to the debt. so, the budget, here's an interesting fact that i think is so much stunning. the budget isn't actually legally binding. it's not a law, so it has sort of a guidance of what you're supposed to do and there's no reprecussions if that budget isn't followed sork we did pass a budget, then blew through it last year. >> what was the politics behind the budget act of 1974? >> 1974, the budget act was

really probably the most influential act that has impacted where we are today. we're a long way from where it was at the time. they were building a whole lot of congressional strength around budgeting and so, the 1974 created one o f the best things that it created was the congressional budget office. as i was saying, their materia , which i find informative and balanced are what influenced me to start working in the budget, but it created the congressional budget office. >> let me stop you there. the congressional budget office. where it is located? >> i think on d street. in the middle the city. >> how dbig? >> probably thousands. >> who's the boss? >> the boss is is keith hall. >> who does he work for? >> congress. so, there are two big areas of

the budget. there's the office of management and budget. that congressman mull vainy is likely to be b the head of o under donald trump administration. the omb, office of management and budget works for the president. really, the chairman, people of the budget committees, are the directors of the cbo. the first director, she's so important in this whole field, but the first director was alice. >> on your board. >> she is and for those of white house care about budgeting, she's kind of the wisest leader we all have. of responsible budgeting and she created the institution in a way that i think really built it so that it was impartial and seen as credible and we need to have these outside institutions that people trust. >> here is keith hall, who is is currently the cbo director. >> if current laws generally

remain unchanged, the deficit will continue to grow. and debt held by the public would rise to $24 trillion by 2016 up from 74% of gdp at the end of 2015. it would be an upward trajectory. debt would reach 155%, a higher percentage than any in the united states. >> this is where we get a lot of people say why would i want to watch cspan. nothing against keith hall. >> we budget. >> he's talking, all the language. >> fair. >> we've talked about this before here. >> 2000 when george bush was taking office. $5 trillion in debt in the united states. at the end of term, it was $10 trillion.

it's $20 trillion. for about 44 trillion billion away from having $20 trillion in debt. people have sliced this process. >> a couple of points. once i was dial tested. here's something i learned. people don't like it when you talk about actuarial balance. there's this lines plumeting saying no, no new york city. >> what is it? >> it's how you evaluate the health of the trust funds that are part of social security. and to me, that's really important. that really matters, and it's how you talk about if you fix it, if things become and social security will be able to pay all the benefits they've promised to pay, but language matters. so it saddened me to hear that

even cspan viewers get bored of the budget. not om a dry and complicated topic, it's a topic where the number are so huge that they're not access bable to people. there's a big dilemma. you want to talk about these things in ways that are accurate and the accurate way to talk about this issue is what is the debt held by the public as a share of the committee. that's what's meaningful. i've lost most people at word three of that sentence. when you talk about debt say as a share of families, household, which is an easier way to understand, it's not as technically correct. so i think many of us struggle with how we talk about it in a way that's not overly politicizing it. or scare mongering it. this is a contentious issue. one of the things a lot of people -- technically accurate,

but very alienatinalienating. >> democrats always want -- republicans always -- is it that simple? >> i'm really a strong -- in that i don't understand political parties. no, certainly not really that simple. there are lotds of people who are republicans or democratings and there are lot of policymakers and they have their own opinions, so one of the reasons i'm not a big fan of o political parties is trying to oversimplify things. all democrats think this. all republicans think this. just because you have one position on social policy, you have a similar republican or democratic view. we're all free thinkers. we have a lot of dichbt opinions. i think it is accurate to show one of the distinctions between

republicans and democrats is their size of government. they think market ks make better choices and democrats tend to think they can fill in where there's needs or market failures, that the private sectors won't do as well. that has as an independent, i've thought i'd like to see a government that's smaller, but more progressive. i think there are a lot of people who have different points of view, so the generalizations are useful, but not accurate. >> if you watch president-elect trump's news conference this week and you heard him say we're quoing to build more f-18s, implying versus the f-35, which are very expensive. >> is that going to be significant enough, if he were able to get this kind of reconduction that would matter

to the budget? >> well, it would be significant in the area of defense. it will contribute in that every billion dollars makes a difference. the big problem with donald trump's fiscal point of view is that he has laid out overall policies, he has talked about the problem with a national debt and how it's bad for the economy and how he's proceeded to lay out a whole suite of policies that will make it much worth. he's talk iing about increasing spending, how you can change where some of the money spent. that's an order. but what he's, what i think the biggest issues are he's talked about trillions in tax cuts, trillion dollars of infrastructure spending and he's talked about not touching the biggest drivers of the national debt, which are retirement and our health care programs. there's no way those numbers add up and they don't add up to deal with the unsustainable fiscal path we're on. he's inheriting one o f the worst fis tall situations.

people think sometimes when i'm saying this, it's worst dmi. but it's doing okay. he's inheriting one of the worst fiscal situations that anyone has inherited other than president truman as define ed a the debt held by the public relative to the economy. that means our debt compared to the economy is is a almost at record levels. the heist since we came out of world war ii and of course if we do nothing to borrow another $9 trillion over the next ten years, that is before you talk about the new policy initiatives he's put forward that would add over $5 trillion. we're talking about $14 trillion in new debt. that makes no sense. it leaves us very vulnerable to economic downturns or emergencies. it will slow economic growth, the standard of living. >> how? >> let me give you an example about healthy, the importance of healthy fiscal policy. >> what's the word fiscal mean?

>> that's a great question. i think of it as how the budget interplays with with the whole economy. anything that affects the government's spending, revenues an spending. when we have the huge economic recession of 2008, our debt as a share of the was 38% of gdp. that meant and whether you like the stimulus or hate it, the government had two tool, monetary policy and fiscal policy, meaning that it could give tax cuts, it could spend more, do a lot of things to begin up the economy and we are headed into a very, very deep recession. our debt now relative to the economy, is twice that high. and it's twice as high as it has been on average historically. into the next recession, the normal length of business cycle, we're likely to be closer to the next downturn than the last one. we don't have the same fiscal fire power ready because our debt is so much higher. that means borrowing will be b more difficult to do.

we're more vulnerable and because interest rates have been so low for so long because of our monitory policy, you have some out there who say we should be borrowing anymore. then suddenly, your dependent on them. that could happen in the u.s. really quite easily. >> i want to run a clip from this year. january 4th. of senator rand paul. on the floor of the united states senate. talking about, this is what republicans are for. >> this is the blueprint that republican party says they're for. $10 trillion worth of new debt. i'm not for it. that's not why i ran for office. not why i'm here. not why i spend time away from my family and my medical practice. because debt is consuming our country. there is a time and a place to

debate obama care and i'm more than willing to debate that, but this is a budget. this is a vote on a budget. they say it's just a fwimic. just a game. the numbers don't mean anything. well, the numbers don't mean anything, put numbers in there or conservative numbers in there. i for one will put forward a conservative opposition to the republican majority's budget. i will put forward a budget that freezes spending and balances the budget over a five-year period. >> what are the chances that they will ever free spending over a five-year period? >> well, first, that is the only senator who's halloween costume last year was the national debt. he dressed up as the $19 trillion national debt. he is someone who cares about this issue. you were asking before, do republicans really want to cut taxes and democrats want to increase spending. and that part is probably true

for the most part, but what they don't want to do is the hard part. so democrats are more likely to say we'll raise taxes. neither party really is eager to do those hard parts and we've seen that when it's come to cutting pending. it's easy to talk about cutting spending. we have two parts of our budget. one is discretionary and one is mandatory. mandatory is excuse me, discretionary is about one-third of the budget that every year, as part of the budget process, has to be approved, so it goes through this process. you decide how much is going to be spent. >> name something. >> defense, energy, education, worker training, so, actually, most of the pieces of what people think of government as big is discretionary. >> mandatory. >> two-thirds of the budget that doesn't have to be approved. kind of on automatic pilot. if someone qualifies for it, they get it. social security, medicare,

medicaid. veterans benefits. interest on the debt. things that government doesn't approve every year, they're just paid automatically. they're growing more quickly. so, when people talk about freezing government, the first thing is people kind of lose their nerves. they think, wait a second, freezing social security benefits, your grandmother is not going to get her benefit? that's really not the right way to budget. >> in a lot of respects, the last eight years, only three or four years has had an increase. >> that is the increase that reflects inflation, but social security grows with the economy an has kept pace. so, social security as a program, is one of the fastest growing programs there is. >> let me ask you this though. you mentioned this earlier about a trust fund. if i had a camera and would want to go somewhere and look at the social security trust fund physically, where does it exist and is there money in it? >> so, recollection is that i saw the social security trust fund filled with bonds virginia in a filing cabinet, now, a lot

has changed. i bet they've got computer back up files for it as well. but the social security trust funds collected money, more than it had to spend out in many, many years because we knew the baby boomers were coming and moving into retirm. the only place the social security fund could invest is in government bonds. that means the extra money is used to buy government bonds, they're similar to the normal bonds, but you can't sell them on a similar market and the money is lent back to the government and then the government uses it for the oh spening programs. every time i'm on cspan, people call up and yell, somebody stole the trust funds or you're saying we shouldn't get the money. the it's a very contentious issue, but technically, they are filled with legitimate legal ious from the federal government that they have to repay. they are repaying them, now the

interest on those are being paid and soon, they'll start to repay the principle. the trust funds will use all of the government debt for bonds that is in there. up by the early 2030s. and people talking about there being problems in social security, right now, our promises of benefits are more than we have a plan to pay for. we're going to have to raise taxes or slow the growth of those benefits, but if we do that today instead of waiting until the last minute, we can make very modest changes. we should have done it ten or 20 years ago when we knew about the problem. the trustees have been warning us every here. this is one of the hardest issues. we had a president whofbs going to fix it with waste, fraud and abuse. >> so, is is this going to go on for ever and they're never going to go anything about about it? >> this issue is so hard for

politicians to vote, quote unquote right way. which means paying for things. doing less or paying for more. we borrow hundreds of billions of dollars per year. that makes sense in a recession. not when your economy is strong. we have to make these hard changes and they involve straight up raising taxes, cutting benefits, entitlements. those are things every pollster will tell their politician to stay away from. people don't demand this. people care about the debt, but they don't really know that when they go to the voting booth they need to vote for someone who promises to raise taxes or cut spending if they want to make progress on this. and the parties have a real incentive not to fix it. the leaders of the parties, they love the clobber each other with this you want to do social security. you want to raise taxes. this is used to bludgeon each other politically. assuming you're a budget chairman in the house of representatives.

he's going to the health and human services department or social security, medicare and all that stuff. just wanted to show you a clip of him talking. >> we ought to begin any discussion on budget process reform where it all began. our institution. article 1 of the constitution gives congress the power of the purse. the authority to determine the federal government's level of taxation and of spending. over the course of many years, and many congresses, through both republican and democratic leadership, the legislative branch has seated too much of its authority to the branch. we've given the president and regime too much power which has weakened the framework of our democrac democracy. >> i don't want to sound disrespectful, but we've heard that language for years and year this is this town and we've heard that members of congress say we've seated too much responsibility, depending on who's in the white house. now, that gentleman's party has the white house. what are the chances when he

gets down into hhs, that he will feel the same way. about budgeting? >> well, i will say kudos to chairman price because he spent a year developing detailed budget processed reforms, which he's put out there and he was talking through his plan. i think in that very same speech and there's some really good ideas there and they're about changing the b kinds of budget rules so that we can do more budgets. so that the budget's more likely to get done and move through congress. so, i -- a member of the administration, he'll say we have more power. o with the house, and it's very different to talk about defense. we're seeing this right now in repealing and replacing obama care, it's really easy to message it and say we got to get rid of this, but now that they own kind of the government decisions, and you have to figure out what you're going to do to control health care costs, to not blow up the budget and

maintain coverage in whatever form they decide is their goal, it's a lot harder. and so, i think the question is, less will there be more power, a power play for the executive. my sense is that congress will be doing much of the detailed work of this, but it will be how will they reconcile that republicans have always talked about the debt and wanted to balance the budget in nine years. that has been their goal for the past budgets. now, they have to put forward the policies that are going to get you there. in the past budgets, the republicans assumed they would repeal obama care and save 2 trillion with a t dollars. now, they just put forth the beginning of this process. a budget with that center paul was talking about, which has reconciliation instructions and only requires to save a billion with a brk dollars, so all the money they were going to save on it wasn't going to happen. lost a lot of the potential savings. if you're not willing to make

the choices of how to get that budget to balance or i would say i honestly would say try to balance the budget in nine years is much more than we need to do. we just need to get the debt, so it's thot growing faster than the economy. then we'll be on a a more susta sustainable path. but if they have the power when they talked about when their budget was more messaging, that will be a real problem for them. i think it's people like chairman price. we're going to have bipartisan deals on how to get these things done. but he's opinion willing to talk about these issues. i think the question within the administration and administration and congress or they have a president-elect bto talk about them on the campaign trial trail and we haven't seen him yet willing to put forth the policies that would get this budget somewhere close.

>> paula white, she is a minister, the one that's going to be at the inauguration on the stage doing the invocation and donald trump is being interviewed by her. let's watch. >> nobody knows more about debt than i do. i owe billions and billions, but i'm a professional. i know what i'm doing and it worked out very well. i had a lot of friends who went bruft, you'll never hear from them again. in the early '90s, when i was in trouble, i owed billions and in a sick way, i love debt because in good times, there's nothing better. in bad time, it comes back the to bite you. we talk about debt, the assets and liabilities of debt and generally speaking, it's a liability. especially if you're not a really skilled professional. >> you said a lot of your

friends didn't come back. why did you make it? >> well, i think because i never, ever quit. i don't give up and you have to be born with something. god has to have blessed you with a good brain. >> there's a lot in that. in the background they say she was flown by trump to atlantic city and given bible lessons and some of his friends say that's when he came to the lord in his own life. but when you're watching this, what are you thinking? about what he's saying? >> well, i was thinking about debt. he talked a lot about his exmeernss with debt and it seemed as though he felt those apply to the federal government. for instance, we negotiated the

debt. the debt of the federal government is really a different beast than any other out there, it is the backbone of the global economic system. people say iing we don't need t lift the debt ceiling, which is a bad idea. we don't default on our debt in this country and shouldn't be considering doing it. >> how far can you go with it? just keep running that debt ceiling? >> no, what you should do is instead of lifting the debt ceiling blindly, you should increase the debt ceiling if it is to pay for bills you ever entered into. what we need to do now is put in place a plan to deal with the cal challenges and that's the part that never comes. there's all these antics and heartfelt speeches on the floor about how we're doing this to our children and grandchildren. then they lift the debt ceiling and continue to put in place plans to borrow more.

where many say we need to put a place a plan something like simpson boule. the kinds of idea that look at how you reform taxes, health care, pick social security, get savings out of spending and use all part of the budget to borrow less in a way that would be pro growth and help get us on a sustainable path. >> how big is your board? >> about 30 people. mouch do you spend a year? >> about 30 million. >> how many people work for you? >> 18. most of them are policy. we have the smartest policy team. we have an engagement team, people who do public education, so i think it's a really great team of people.

>> i have an article here. it -- the most prominent and respected. it's an interesting, talks about you throwing a glamorous dinner party. >> i have thrown a lot of dinner frs republicans and democrats together. they want to get things done. doesn't seem like a great job b from what i can see. they have to raise a lot of money. they have to do a lot of meetings where their party. and a lot of them are policy

wonks. we throw a lot of policy dinners where we bring in experts and talk b about i'm going to hopefully do something on health care really soon or talk b about what policies will grow the economy. and we do it with republicans and democrats together because they always talk about the loss of, they don't live here anymore. on the slooiidelines of the soc games. it's good for them to get together with the think tank experts and talk about these issues. >> auk about the base ibs. what are you doing? >> at a restaurant. where we can find a space. we've done them -- >> are you allowed to buy them dinner? >> under a serp amount of money, or certain amount or they can pay for their own, which regularly happens or you can just have appetizers and not give them very good food. >> how do you decide who should come? >> people who have been interested in policy. basically, anybody is welcome to come to them.

anybody who shows an interest in it, but trying to figure out who will be interested in talking about health care. the one i'm interest ed in now, economic growth, how we're going to grow the economy. >> there's evidence that you canceled one. >> i think it should be republican an democrats. i don't want do dinners where you're talking about political strategy. it's important to have people talking to each other from different perspectives. >> what about people that don't want anything to do with the democrats or the republicans and think that's the problem here in washington. because they say both parties are really alike and in the end, all they care about is getting re-elected. what about the independents? >> here's what i think. i'm struck. my kids are 10 and 12 and i try to figure out what it is you're

supposed to be teach iing your kids. i think being a parent is an interesting experience. one of the things we all teach your kids is you don't always get your way and you have the compromise. that's one of those great lessons or just because you believe something, believe it passionately, but also understand where others are coming from. to me, one o it have things i'm kind of struck by is how this incredible intense partisanship is so opposite of that basic point of view, which is believe things passionately, but believe that others who have different beliefs are good as well. to think someone has a different opinion is bad, i don't think anybody comes to the office and says i want to do bad work today. and wad thibad things. for me, again, we all have different beliefs and people have passionate views about what the government should be and i respect those. i have them, too. but i think that the experience of listening to other people's perspectives is one of the most important things that everybody is trying to be part of

governing should be connected to. >> in this article, they talk about the so-called deal between john boehner and barack obama. for some $4 trillion, what's the story on that? the back story? >> those two worked so hard and i think they were really close to having something done. >> you remember what year it was? >> 2011 or '12. >> doesn't say in the article. it was 2012. >> and they were so close, both had members of the party who were nervous about it and it was a negotiation where everybody was worried about whether they were having a fair deal. it would have been incredibly fair. similar to the simpson bowles framework, which would have saved enough money where the debt was no longer growing

faster than the economy and made changes to all part of the budget, but one that was respected, kind of republican agenda. democratic principles the policies needed to protect the most vulnerable. i think they structured a plan that was close to doing that. i never got the sense some of the political leaders were australia bought in as they were. boehner was really a good leader on this and they walked away because a lot of dichbt things going on in the negotiation that kind of broke down trust and really hard to do. i think we have to keep in mind that at the time, this was the beginning of basically congress was having a hard time getting much of anything done. things are breaking out. there are two camps. not only because of the debt is so important, in my mind, this was a really important event and would have succeeded to show we can still work together. since then, i feel like any kind of ability to really grapple the tough issues with democrat

republicans and democrats together had broken down this country. >> before you got this job in 2003, this is 2000. this video. and the chairman of the budget committee is a man that ran for president this time. and there's another familiar face here and i want you to talk about this. >> you're going to have a budget that does not spend one dime of the social security plus on anything else. in fact, my protege on the committee, paul ryan and i, will go to the floor at some point with a formal lock box proposal that prevents the raiding of social security, not just for this congress, but i would hope for all. so, we in fact could stay out of social security. >> so, john kasich and paul ryan sitting there on the committee. hadn't been there very long. i've been in the town forever. i heard them talk about this

raiding of social security trust fund. why did they still do it and was it lyndon johnson that changed the whole frame on that? in other words, using the social security trust fund so he could stay on a balanced budget? >> so, the problem is, there have been a lot of great minds trying to figure out how you fix this. the problem is because the trust fund has to buy government debt, because that safe, there's been talk, oh, should it buy stocks? people are nervous about the federal government buying billions and billions in private sector stocks, so, the safety and the appropriateness of government debt has been what the, what has guided us to use the trust funds to invest only if government debt, but because it's how it finances deficits, your by definition giving money that makes the deficit less or affects the surplus, but we don't often. the lock box, which was an interesting way to kind of try to roll this money off, doesn't really work unless you're

running surpluses so you don't need that money. once you're taking government treasuries, they're taking it from social security. if they're running deft sit, it's going to get spent elsewhere. we wanted to find a way, one, i wasn't doing this, but they wanted to to find a way to build up savings, so when that was needed for the baby boom in particular that's so large, that savings would be there. but the government never found a way to actually save that money. it's there, because if the government was borrowing somewhere else, if you're borrowing in one place and saving this another, it means you're borrowing more on the part you're borrowing, so it's your overall federal finances that are affected. >> let's talk about the future. you have a couple of young kids. 12 and 10? >> 10 and 12. >> when they become 25 and 23, what's it going to look like if

nothing changes? >> so, the interesting thing about our country is people talk about whether we'll have a crisis. are we going to fix this problem or have a crisis. i sort of think the answer is somewhere in between those two. i don't think we're going to have this big debt deal that i so think the country needs to really put us on a stropger path because partisanship is so strong and this issue is so tough. it's a lot easier to compromise on things that are easier. the only way we get compromise is that both get what they want. so we end up bow rowing more from it. >> so, i am not optimistic that we're going to have some big, sensible deal. >> got to keep working on it. we have to keep working on it and try to let things not get worse because the other thing is i don't think we have a fiscal crisis. we borrow in our own currency,

we're a politically stable country and so, we are able to borrow. so i think what happens is he muddle along and that basically means -- described as the termites in the basement. is the termites. we don't see it. i think the result for my kids and everybody else's kids and it's a reaction for us, is that our standard of living will be lower than it would have been otherwise. bottom line is we don't make very decisions for our budget. it's the vast majority over 80% of it is consumption. 20% is investment. roughly $7 goes to people over 65 for every one for people under 18. that's the federal budget. this is not a long-term strategic budget. we borrow too much. that means too much goes to

interest. the fastest growing part of the budget, interest payments. that is the single fastest growing part of the budget, so, we are too dependent on borrowing, that we're paying so much in interest that's squeezing out other priorities. that slows our standard of living. when we're spending so much, we've got to spend a lot today, but don't want to pay for it. that means our economy won't grow and so our kids will have a low oer standard of living than they would have in a far more globally competitive environment than we could have dreamt of. >> since 2008 or so, anybody that's a saver in this country has gotten a short stick. they've gotten like .25% on interest on cd or savings. what happens if we've got $20 trillion in debt. what happens if all of a sudden, the interest rate goes back to 7 or 8%? >> that's back to the kind of it feels like a credit card teaser rate, so, we are so dependent.

we have such a high debt load. our debt payment, aren't all that high considering how much debt we have. because rates have been so low. but if and when they go up and all signs are that they're sarting to now, if they go up 1 percentage point, our interest payments will go up ten years by $1.3 trillion. if that's just one percentage point. >> and we're talking four, five. six trillion. >> massive change, so then you start the inflation will kick in. that's not going to be b a good thing for a lot of folks either. >> savers will benefit. >> solve some of it. but you've brought up a really important point. different people have done well or poorly based on the fiscal and monetary policy. so, savers have done poorly and could deeply when rates go up, whether it's housing or stock. all kind of potential for

bubbles in the economy to me, the broad le sop of that that it's not a very secure -- it's a very scare economy, for people doing what they're supposed to be doing. working, saving, trying to put money away for their kid's college education. there's not a lot of security. and when i look at our budget, i actually think one of the things we need to be doing is building a federal dpovt that's able to deal with with a new challenges of this economy. we have a federal government that's built for the challenges of the economy decades ago. right now, we have a lot of people, the president had a budget where he recommended an idea for wage insurance. we don't even have a national discussion on it, but one reason is we don't have any resources. we've allocated them to already. most of the budget is pre preallocated to social security. we have little flex bable thety, so i'm worry ied that our budges

short-term focus. i'm worried we don't invest enough and have enough flexibility, so when there's opportunities or challenges, our budget can react. it feels like it's cemented, instead of nimble and smart. everybody knows this economy is changing the pace of change. it's faster than we could have envisioned and we are not equ equipped to be dealing with that at all. >> another member is -- peterson. he spent a lot of money over the years on trying to balance the budget. and you had to raise money for, you set up a lottery organization? >> we set up something called fix the debt. a grass roots organization. the committee focuses on kind of the washington think piece, then we set up fix the debt, which was going to rally around getting a big debt deal in and that had chapters in a lot of the states. >> how much money did you raise? >> $35 million. >> what puts money into

something like this? >> that was private sector money. it was more, almost all private sector and individual money. >> is it still functioning? >> yes. >> who would hear from fix the debt? >> it had hundreds of thousands of members who hear from us regularly. it's the, so i look at it as we have a wonky where we talk about debt an actuarial balance and those things. we write big policy papers, then fix the debt has a couple of -- it's people who siped up because they were worried about the challenges and want to focus on it. so i was just talking this week with one of our members in colorado. who wants to work on how you build more of a state chapter in colorado. >> do you run fix the debt yourself? >> i run it. >> so, how do you maintain this

balance? >> does it give money to congress? >> who do they give it to? >> fix the debt right now doesn't spend a lot of money. so when we thought there was a couple of years ago, we used money to build state operations to travel around and get a much larnler staff, now that we don't take anything, focus more on the committee for responsible federal budget and fix the debt was, we do, many events out in the states with our state chapters as i can. but we are mainly saving those resources pr an opportunity for a bigger deal. like i we need to get the grass roots interested. >> here's nine sec seconds of what he said. >> spend money on preschool for

kids, but not cutting taxes for corporations. >> spending money, i mean, this is they want to spend money on corporations but not on kids. you've listened to this rhetoric for all these years. how do you know when somebody in politics is telling the truth? >> i think gosh, here's what we do. we spent a lot of energy last year lobbying, pushing against tax for corporations because they weren't paid for. we have a very strong position that any policy, whether it's a tax cut or spending increase should be paid for. but you have a lot of folks who politicalry r saying something's one sided. we get this all the time. the right set, oh, you're just a -- really just a, you just want to get rid of enhitmentitl. we want to make sure the debt is

staepable. pay as you go. this is part of an important comprehensive economic plan. the problem i think with fiscal politicses is they use it more for defense than trying to achieve it. folks will find the importance of fiscal responsibility more often when trying to do the policy they don't like than when they want to make sure that whatever they put in place is equal. >> we've run out of time. i want you o tell folks if they're interested. >> i hope so. >> how do they get there? >> the committee for responsible federal budget. you'll get really great, unbiased and pretty wonky budget papers sent to you. we have a summary of everything going on in washington. that's crfb.org and you sign up

there. then we have the fick the debt website. if wrou don't want to replay as many details but want to know big thing, then you could sign up at fix the debt. again, i think it's really important to say we are not partisan. not trying to push an agenda. we are equal, equal opportunity fiscal responsibility pushers. that means we push against unpaid for tax cuts, business or individual. we push against on paper spending programs. we don't have a position about what we should be doing. we have a position that we should be doing it and in a way that's fiscally reasonable because it has such a profound effect on the economy. we love to hear from folks. it's really an organization where we have feedback from people all the time. they can get involved, sign up for either/or both of those. we'd love to have more people because this whole issue isn't going the change. unless voters and citizens are willing to tell their policymakers they understand some tough choices have to be involved and they're going to

change the path that we're on, which right now, is an unsustainable fiscal path and t going to keep the economy from being what it could and should be unless we kind o get this stuff. >> our guest has been the president of the committee for responsible federal budget. maya macguineas. thank you. >> thank you. for free transcripts or to give us your comments about the program, visit us at q and a.org. they are also available at cspan podcasts.

>> we found that public officials, people who really govern this country, that it's not congress, it's not the president. it's bureaucrats. write the bills and regulations that have the force of one and we found out that they don't think much of ordinary americans. >> sunday night on q and a, benjamin ginsburg, professor of political science and chair of studies an johns hopkins university, talks about his book, washington gets wrong. the unelected officials who actually run the government and their misconceptions about the american people. >> what do we learn? we learn we elect a congress that makes the law. the president executes the law. the courts review the laws. that ain't exactly how the system works. much of what we think of as the law consists of rules and regulations written by bureaucratic agencies.

by bureaucrats who are not elected by anyone and who often serve for decades. >> sunday night at 8:00 p.m. eastern on q and a. david kustoff spoke with cspan for a profile interview. prior to being elected, he served as attorney to western district of tennessee. he hopes to focus on national security, health care and tax policy. he represents the aig district of tennessee. >> congressman, what did you do before you came to congress? >> i had been a practicing lawyer. and was honored to serve as the united states attorney for the western district of tennessee for a few years, couple of years during president bush's tenure. and i've enjoyed the practice of law.