professor christine blasey ford has agreed to testify tomorrow before the senate judiciary committee about her sexual assault allegation against a supreme court nominee brett kavanaugh. judge kavanaugh will also testify at the hearing. we'll have live coverage thursday starting at 10:00 a.m.

eastern on c-span3. you can also watch on cspan.org or listen on the c-span audio line. we continue to bring you unfiltered coverage of congress, the white house, the supreme court and public policy events in washington, d.c. and around the country. c-span is brought to you by your cable or satellite provider. >> veterans affairs secretary robert wilkie talks about the senate veterans affairs oversight committee. and live at 5:00 eastern, a news

conference with the u.n. general assembly at 5:00 p.m. tonight democratic senator kim cain debates corey stewart in the virginia senate debate. c-span, your primary source for 2018. saturday at 6:00 p.m. eastern, the "wall street journa journal"'s matthew hennessey discusses his book "zero hour for gen x." >> if you're a millennial, google helped you get through high school. if you're a mel len yillennial, wikipedia helped get you through college. your whole life has been shaped in this technology in a way that

previous generations never experienced and in ways many of us never imagined was possible. in key ways, this was the thesis of my book. that makes millennials different from the rest of us. and on sunday at 2:00 p.m. eastern, francis eukuyama talks about his book "identity, the demand for dignity and the politics of resentment." >> it can be shaped by leaders, by schools, by education, by the way we talk about our shared history and our shared values, and i think that's an important past that lies ahead of us. >> and on sunday at 9:00 p.m. eastern on "after words," carol anderson discusses her book "one person, one vote" and how this president is ruining our democracy. >> if you look at the real world

history of the right to vote, it's been extremely contested and it's been violently challenged on many points, right? >> absolutely. one of the other things i talk about is that america is really an aspirational nation, and it's in those aspirations we, the people, we hold these truths to be self-evident. leader of the free world, those kinds of aspirations. it's based on those aspirations and not those kind of hard-core reality where people have fought in order to gain access to their citizenship rights. >> watch this weekend on c-span2's book tv. we're joined by bob bixby. he is with the concord coalition and serves as their executive director talking about funding of the federal government and other matters. mr. bixby, good morning. >> good morning. >> a little about the concord coalition and the approach you

take. >> we were started in 1982 by former commerce secretary pete peterson. the idea was to be a bipartisan public education organization focused exclusively on the federal budget and the rising debt and things that we could do to prevent that. >> mr. bixby, leading up to this point, there were concerns about a government shutdown and if that would take place. could you walk our viewers through about the concerns of why we came to the point -- why we're coming to the point of potential shutdown? >> every year congress needs to pass 12 appropriations bills to keep the government agencies funded. that total is about 30% of the federal budget, so it's important to keep in mind that there are other parts of the federal budget, too. but this is about 30% that goes through the annual appropriations process that congress gets to control on an annual basis. if they don't pass all of those bills to fund the government agencies by the end of the fiscal year, which happens to be september 30th, sunday in this

case, then those agencies are not funded. they can't function because there's no authority for them to spend, so the employees would have to stay home, and whatever services those employees would be providing wouldn't happen. so every year we seem to have this cliffhanger where congress waits until the last minute like kids doing their homework, and so we don't have funding for the full government approved yet. three bills actually have passed, so those agencies wouldn't shut down. but the rest of the government, including a very big bill that's up for a vote today, still has yet to be passed. and that big bill, assuming that it passes the defense and labor, health and human services have combined two big bills, if that passes it also as what's called a continuing resolution which

would fund the other agencies that don't have their funding already approved until december 7th, the idea being that they would come back after the midterms and finish up the bills that they haven't finished. >> the vehicle for that is h hr5167. what's the price tag on that bill? >> $851,000. there's a little bit of political symmetry there in that republicans want to spend more on defense, and the democrats would like to spend more on domestic agencies like labor, health and human services, so they package them together, and they actually greased the event this year by raising the spending caps that allowed them to spend more, and these are the bills they primarily wanted to spend more on. so this is a little better of a

political bargain. for those of us that worry about the federal deficit, that's not a great bargain when you say, let's decide to spend more. you'll get what you want, we'll get what we want and pass the bill. >> federal strategy also includes the fact that by attaching the funding to keep the government open, they're attaching two bills that both sides, for their particular reasons, like? >> right. it's becoming almost impossible to say no. frankly, i don't like the idea of a government shutdown. it's a dysfunctional thing, so i'm all for it. >> aside from the likelihood of the government shutting down at this point, what do you think? >> it doesn't seem likely. the wild card in the equation is president trump because he hasn't explicitly said where he would sign or veto this big spending bill. the issue there is funding for the border wall. he wants to have more than the senate has provided.

and that's not in this bill, but it's not in any of the bills that are about to be considered. so when he's thinking about leverage for the border wall, one option would be to veto this bill and try to force congress to give the money that he wants. >> bob bixby talks about the spending bill and other matters. if you want to ask him questions, democrats 202-748-2000 and other numbers. you talked about passing the bill. what does it do for the nation's debt? >> the government is running a budget deficit somewhere around 800 billion this year. it would probably be 900 billion next year closing in on a

trillion dollars. and congress doesn't have a plan to reduce the deficit any time soon, so the funding bills this year will add to federal spending. at the same time the other pot of spending, the mandatory spending, the programs that run on auto pilot like medicare and social security, they go up automatically by a couple hundred billion dollars a year. and so federal spending is going up, congress is looking at another tax cut. they passed a big tax cut last year looking to extend that. so i look at all the functions of government, and spending is going up and revenue is not keeping pace with it. so the budget deficit is projected to keep going up over a trillion dollars. in a growing economy, that's an unusual thing and a bad thing. >> are republicans under this administration, have they taken

a dir a different approach to these spending matters, particularly what it does to debt and deficit? >> i think so. even though these are big spending bills, it's important to remember that 900 billion in total 900 billion is around 1.3 trillion. lats a lot of money and only 30 percent of the federal budget and between the mandatory spending and the debt, that is the rest of the budget and that part is growing the fastest and so republicans have been focused on keeping the lid on, as much as they can on the discretionary programs. no one is attacking, no one is trying to control the mandatory spending programs. so i should also say you know, these bills, the discretionary spending bills defense and nondefense. they did reach a compromise to

help control spending. >> we have the concorde coalition. website for that organization. first call for you comes from houston, tex. you are on with bob bicsby. >> boy, that was quick. i was not expecting that. good morning, guys. the thing i thought about when they talk about not okaying this because of this. the main thing we have to get done is get the bill okayed so that all of the bills are paid, and we don't have a government shutdown, my question would be, i know he said only a third of your total budget, but i am thinking that if we had our,

wall the problem is people coming over from different countries, it is a different issue but if they were made to pay taxes. we wouldn't have to worry about money and we would have plenty of money and so my question is to ask you know. if the spending bill is not okayed because of the wall, why wouldn't we have an option to raze our budget. >> thank you, caller. that is an interesting question, gene. i think if immigrants come here and work here legally and do pay taxes. but one idea is you are talking about the dreamer and people who are already here. legally or otherwise. part of the advantages is that

they are working and paying tax and bring for more revenue. frankly we need that we have's declining work force. baby beerms are getting older and are retiring and one of the problem for the federal budget, there are not enough workers it is a budgetary issue and not wrong to link then and if we had increased legal immigration and tough on the board examiner build a wall if you wanted to, and i think increased legal immigration would help the budget situation. you still have to look at the big spending programs and probably adjust revenueses that you have now and you are on to that.

and paying more taxes. >> that they can help me on the phone. and i have two how much will it go in defense? and the second one is the other part for the democrats. how much of that budget is going to second education. >> i think those things are very important. and that is for people who get paid more for having skill and degrees and stuff like that. >> well, the defense is somewhere around $650 billion. the total, i don't know exactly we spend on some of the

investment programs that we talked about, but it is a whole lot less. >> and if you look at the appropriation's bills and total defense spending and nondefense spending is split 50/50. of the nondifference portion a fairly small part goes to worker training and things that would be constituted as an investment and that is a problem with the federal budget. this follows on the last call. we do have a declining work force. that have to be more productive. and work force training and making workers more productive and helping the private sector

invest. i think if you are to look at part of the federal budget and say it should be increased that's the part with human and physical infrastructure investment spending. >> and that is 8000 for democrats and independents 202 in 2002. you have questions, and a government funding shut down and bob, i will show you the deadline. it could be more of a cost actor. is that what you are seeing involved. >> sure. that is important to bring out and as we borrow more like anybody else. we have to pay interest on the debt. that is 300 billion and will be 400 billion next year and 900 billion in ten years and within

the next couple of years, interest on the debt would be more on national defense. that is an alarming statistic for me. it shows the budgetary can have more increased borrowing. that will have the affect of squeezing out money on investmentes and we talked about it in the lastcul. keep in mind interest rates have been low. they are beginning to creep up again now. since the great recession, interest rates are slow. and they play low interest rates. that is one of the reasons along with the increased borrowing. the interest costs to the federal government will sky rocket in ten years. >> how much of that will did

upward because the federal reserve decides to increase interest rates. >> that has a big affect. it depends on how big they raise rates and to what. >> the cvo is making a projection and anticipates that the federal reserve will raise rates from where they are now. it will be fairly low by standards. and they will have to play more on the borrowing cost. that is from arkansas. john, good morning, you are on? >> yeah, i am tax paying american and i think we spend way too much on the military. i understand we spent more than eight countries combined and we had 800 military bases around the world and 130 countries

yesterday, trump said we spend 700 bellion this year and 700 billion next year. people wonder why we can't get a decent health care program. we spend it all on missiles and bombs and we have enough bombs to blow up the world 100 times over. we ask north korea to give up the nuclear weapons. >> you have the numbers right on the military budget. you know, spend and certainly is a lot of money. it is an important function national security. there is no doubt it is cut from defense spending. and that is a political judgment

and that is how much of the budget goes for defense and nondefense. i would point out the really big money in the federal budget is the health care programs and medicare and medicaid. social security. so, if you are looking to getting the budget under control. so, just cutting back military spending. >> we are going to go to a live event. up can watch the rest on c-span.org. we'll take you live to the press club in washington d.c., where heather wilson is speaking. >> and the issues they see in the u.s. air force today. if you are on twitter, we