of the government? the answer is no. a bail contract is a three party contract. the bail bond is a contract with the court. in that respect, i guess, there is some contractual duality f d follow through under the bond contract. >> we can keep talking for another hour. unfortunately, we have run out of time. i would like to thank the criminal justice project director for the lawyers' committee and the executive director of the american bail coalition for being here with us today for this great conversation. thank you. >> thaufrnk you. >> pleasure. starting here shortly, a hearing on legislation that

would require the president and vice-president to release their tax returns. president trump has kept his tax information confidential. previously ly previously, all presidents have publically released that information. now this hearing was supposed to start about an hour ago. it's being held by the house ways and means committee. members are voting on the floor of the house right now. we will bring this to you live here on c-span3 as soon as it starts. you will be able to watch it live online at cspan.org. tune in with the c-span radio app. we will see if this starts momentarily.

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>> waiting for this hearing on legislation that would require the president and vice-president to release their tax returns to begin. the hearing held by the house ways and means committee running behind schedule. it was set to begin about an hour ago. members are on the house floor for votes, and we will bring you this hearing on the president and vice-president's tax returns live here on c-span. just waiting for things to begin after votes end in the house.

[ no audio ] >> while we wait for this hearing on legislation that would require the president and vice-president to release their tax returns, we will show some of today's washington journal. members are currently on the house floor for votes. >> welcome back paul glastris. good sunday morning. thanks for being with us. your cover story, looking at the democrats and what you call their geography problem. you looked at the 2016 election. what did you learn? >> the democrats have a problem in that their voters in both

2016 and 2018 democrats got more votes than republicans. 9 million more for the u.s. senate in 2018 than the republicans did. yet the democrats lost two seats in the senate. in 2016, hillary clinton got 3 million more votes than donald trump yet lost the white house. the problem is obvious to anybody who looks at the map. democrats are clustered in a handful of coastal states, overrepresented in those states, and too thin on the ground in places like ohio, missouri, wisconsin and so forth. >> this is from "the new york times." for those who forgot on election night, donald trump winning the electoral vote with 306. hillary clinton at 232. these states, pennsylvania, ohio, michigan, wisconsin and iowa, were considered key to the democrats. you can see as you mentioned the coastal states, the upper midwest and out west, this is a county by county breakdown. you can see the sea of red with

the blue along the coast and in colorado. primarily, the flyover country is republican country. >> that's right. democrats have been wringing their hands trying to figure out how they can win given this democr geographic spread. there's hope they can do better in the south, georgia and texas. candidates performed pretty well in 2018. we're offering a different idea, which is how about democrats get behind rebuilding the economies of these flyover states and that the key to doing so is recognizing what -- there are many things that led to the decline of the economies in the middle of america. growth of the economy of a handful of metro areas on the coast. we think the biggest thing that happened was 30, 40 years ago, the federal government changed

policy when it comes to competition and antitrust. for almost a century prior to 19 1980, the u.s. had policies in place, lots of policies, to make sure that every part of the country could compete. then around 1978, first with carter and then with reagan, the federal government decided to gut those policies. what we have seen is this incredible new geographic inequality. for 50 to 100 years prior to 198198 19 1980, incomes between my hometown and new york city were coming closer and closer together. that was true all over the country. we were having a convergence of income. what's happened since that time is we have had this divergence of income. most of the country is falling behind. a handful of states and big metro areas. if the democrats want to solve

their geographic problem, we're saying, they need to get behind -- frankly, both parties need to get behind solving the geographic inequality problem, which is an economic problem. >> beyond that though, if you look at the traditional base of the democratic party going back to franklin roosevelt, harry truman, even john kennedy, winning the farm vote, what changed? you talked about some of the changes over the last 40 years. specifically to that very rural farm vote that moved from democratic columns to republican columns, what happened? >> that's a very good question. a lot has happened since democrats did well among sort of middle west farmers. a lot of middle west farmers are longtime republicans, as i learned when i was a reporter out there. i think the rural areas have fallen behind the metro areas for a long time. in their desperation, democrats didn't seem to be providing

answers to their problems. republicans offered answers to their problems. you could presume the answers were right or wrong. but they did provide answers. what we found in our reporting is that what farmers respond to is not talk about rural broadband. there's some real needs there. or tariffs. they are upset about those, too. but they tend to give donald trump a pass on those because they think the tariffs are temporary. what they feel, many of them, feel is that it's what is really constraining their income and raising their costs are these agra big monopolies that raise the price of corn, seed, fertilizer and reduce the price of their output, their grain, livestock.

so i think that democrats have a shot at reversing some of the decline in their farm -- in the farm -- support from the farm belt by adopting this policy. >> in one of the side dbar piec. we are dividing our phone lines differently. if you live in rural america, 202-748-8000. for all others, 202-748-8001. send us a tweet or join in on the conversation on facebook. looking ahead to 2020, we may have a rortd numbecord number o

democrats running for the presidency. do you sense this message will get to the democratic candidates? >> i think it has. cory booker who announced this week has given strong speeches on antitrust. if aim i think we're seeing it. >> we're hearing from sharon brown, democratic senator from ohio. on a tour through iowa this weekend, in new hampshire next week. >> i imagine he resonates well with a lot of middle western americans. he is a very kind of straight arrow midwest guy. what i read is some reporting saying when he sits down with farmers, they are telling him sort of what we reported in our magazine.

>> which is what? >> if you want to reach farmers, talk about industry concentration. >> let's get to your phone calls. blake is calling us from maryland. good morning. >> caller: hi. how are you doing? >> fine. >> caller: i listened to the comments. i was surprised nobody calling in nor the moderator mentioned facial recognition software was used. it seems like you should look at the facts before deciding something is important before the governor should be dethroned. >> it doesn't look good for the governor. there's support for him to go. democrats have a strong lieutenant governor waiting in the wings. i don't know the truth of the accusations. i can't imagine he survives.

>> the con flikflicting stories indicating he was in the picture and then saying he is not. >> yeah. very odd. "the washington post" made a pretty interesting distinction today. they said, he was a ready. he supported george w. bush. he ran admitting that and said he changed his views. if he also had said, look, i had racial views that i'm not proud of, that are in the past, and i have changed, he might be in a little bit better position. that's not how he ran. >> let's go back to the issue of democrats in rural america. the senator who is on his dignity for jobs tour in iowa, new hampshire and elsewhere, as he launched, here is part of what the senator had to say. >> people -- democratic

activists act like our party has to choose between advocating for strong, progressive values that excite our base, which we do, or talking to working class voters about their lives. for us, it's not either or. you govern by speaking to progressive values and fighting for workers. you campaign that way. you win that way. that's why we will always do both. >> you know, it is a great challenge for the democrats to choose between issues of representing different groups. they call it identity politics or culture issues. i don't think it's quite fair -- >> the subcommittee will come to order. i regret in the delay. we had some votes on the floor. good afternoon to everybody. let