on cspan 3. democratic presidential candidates are campaigning throughout new hampshire this weekend. cspan has coverage today at 6:30 with joe biden. on saturday cory booker is live in new hampshire at 5:00 p.m. and on sunday, california senator kamala harris speaks in gilford. watch live coverage of democratic presidential candidates sunday kamala harrisr a discussion on the youth joini for a discussion on the youth vote in campaign 2020. he's from the generation progress action. first, what is the connection

with the center for american progress? >> it's the young adult advocacy arm and we work with 18 to 35-year-olds and with and for young people for the most pressing problems facing our nation and our generations. >> we'll talk about generations particularly the millennial generation and generation z as it's known. define the two terms first. >> roughly folks born between 1981 and '96. we have been thought to be the youngest generation out there. but in fact, generation z is of voting age. they follow millennials. you have 18, 19, 20, 21-year-olds in the age range. >> every election cycle there's excitement about the potential for the youth votes. and then every cycle without fail the youth vote has the lowest turnout rate compared to other generations. back in election 2020 -- 2018 i apologize, it was 30% lower than

60 plus-year-olds. do you have any expectation that that pattern is going to change in 2020? >> yeah, absolutely. so i would actually reframe that a little bit. we had the highest turnout in 25 years in the 2018 midterms. 10% jump from 2014 midterms. which is in fact nearly a 50% increase overall so i think what we take away from that there's great opportunity here. as you mentioned 31% voted which means 69% didn't. so there's huge opportunities for inroads and yet the movement and the advancement there is hugely promising for us going into 2020. >> how do you get up to the rates of 60 plus-year-olds who -- the turnout rate was under 70% in 2018. are you ever going to get there with the youth vote? >> i think there are systemic challenges to the youth vote that dates well before

millennials came to voting age and fixes like reregistration, same day registration, things that matter for the young people. 60 plus aren't going anywhere. they have gotten their house, they're registered to vote and vote at the same place year after year. millennials move. right? you're in college, out of high school, somewhere else you move for a new job and you have to reregister again and even if you move a few streets down. >> are any of the barriers being lowered by the time we get to 2020? >> they should be. if the majority leader mcconnell would stop blocking hr 1. >> what is hr 1? >> it would increase access to voting especially young people in terms of providing automatic voter registration. if you moved you can show up and register the same day. and combating the influence of big money in politics. he's called it a power grab.

i think what's happening is the desire to keep the power they have stolen. >> hr 1 known as the for the people act that we have talked about here on the washington journal and in the past. in this segment of the washington journal as we talk about the youth vote, phone lines are split up a bit differently, asking you to call in on phone lines split by age if you're 18 to 35. 202-748-8000. and you're over 62, 220-748-8002. you can go ahead and start calling in now as brent cohen, you talked about the barriers to actually voting. what are the issues that are going to be driving the youth vote in 2020? >> so we have organized around five key areas. climate change is huge for young people. it's polling high. important. it's one of -- we're the ones dealing with the repercussions and as well as our kids.

criminal justice reform. we have suffered through mass incarceration and time to end mass incarceration. and gun violence prevention. 50% of homicides, gun related homicides involve young adults under the age of 30. that's hugely disproportionate. immigration. we have seen it with dreamers. we have friends, colleagues, classmates who were and are dreamers. and having those protections rescinded was hugely impactful for us. also the humanitarian crisis that the trump administration has created at the border impacts us personally. either because we know folks or for older millennials with young children, we see the children in cams and being cared for. and the student loan debt. and we know the rates around default hurt a little bit -- around home ownership, the ascension into the middle class

and assuming debts is a big problem why people are having trouble getting there. >> are you in favor of eliminating student debt in this country? >> we need to cancel the student debt in this country. >> there's the bernie sanders plan to eliminate all student debt and elizabeth warren is a tiered plan of how much debt would be eliminated contingent on how much your family makes. >> so we put out a report that has six policy options. i think the two considerations are simplicity, so cancellation of student debt it needs to be simple for the borrower to receive that and two is equity. making sure we're targeting those at risk for default an most at risk for other systemic oppression this this country. including things on wage discrimination on the back end. it's critical that that happens here. >> "usa today's" editorial board after bernie sanders put out his plan, said that bernie sanders

and elizabeth warren are pandering to young voters with their student loan plan. here's what they said in the editorial. the most obvious thing tosy to they're making fools out of people who scrimped and saved to keep their borrowing down. they undermine the concept of debt as legal obligation. >> yeah. well, it's clear they don't understand what student loan debt is. that's the bottom line. the cost of college has risen eight times faster than the cost of wages over the past 40 years. we're in a situation where we have for profit colleges that are doing predatory lending, not too dissimilar from the mortgage crisis is and you have people who scrimped and ate ramen noodles and are trying to pay it down only to find out that their level of interest has gone up and they owe more than when they first took out that student loan. i would encourage the editorial

board to look at the issue more and understand it. >> one of the other things you're organizing around is criminal justice reform. this is something to bring young people out to the polls. i wonder what you think of the first step act. the act that president trump signed into law, has touted as his achievement on criminal justice reform. >> no question there's some good that came out of the first step act. i think people are specifically with the retroactivity of the sentencing which is a hugely beneficial thing to happen and there are things that are problematic including the expansion of electronic monitoring. the way it was written expands in some ways the criminal justice foot print. it is not just that we have too many people in jails and prisons but too many people under the control of the criminal justice system. i think what's more problematic is trump isn't touting the first act as he's touting at look what i did for black people and for people of color when every other policy out there in fact harms

the very people he's here to help. >> we're taking your phone calls. we'll put the numbers on the screen for you as we hear from betty on the line for 60 and over. out of virginia beach, virginia. betty, you're up first. go ahead. >> caller: good morning and happy fourth of july although this is a bad one with that rotten parade that trump's putting on. anyway, about the youth vote, i think the youth vote -- i'm a progressive but i want to say one thing. i'm still for joe biden. i guess people in my age group, a lot of them are still for joe biden. i like a lot of these progressive ideas very much, but in my opinion, just my opinion, some of the candidates that are far out on the left they might win the nomination, but not the general election if they're too

far out on the left. for me, i'm going to vote for whoever the democrats put up. i mean, you know, i like mayor pete. i like kamala harris. i didn't like her going after my guy joe but she had her point and she made her point and maybe she could up going -- >> let me ask you. you talk about going about your guy, joe, betty, i wonder what you thought about congressman swalwell going after joe biden echoing john kennedy telling him to pass the torch to a new generation. what did you think of that exchange? >> caller: i love him and one of the reasons i love him -- yeah, he went after joe too but not as forcefully. she had a right. she's fighting for -- to win the election. but i love eric swalwell because i'm very much for gun control. this is the third community that

i have lived in that had mass shootings. i'm originally from sandy hook, connecticut. then i lived in charleston, south carolina when that terrible shooting happened in the church and i went to the pastor's funeral. i had people in my building that went to that church. and then now we had one here in virginia beach so at least he's for gun control. but look, half or more of the people up there don't have any chance of becoming the president any more than i do. they have a right to be up there, they have a right to run for president. but a lot of them they're taking up -- they're taking time away from people from serious contenders. >> that's betty in virginia beach. brent cohen, what do you want to take from that? >> well, i think young people are going to be 37% of the electorate here going into 2020 when you think of millennials and generation z. i think we have a wealth of candidates up on the stage.

what was so impressive about the two nights was the fact we were able to have two days of policy conversation without name calling and without throwing lies which is a pretty significant contrast from where we are with the trump administration. whomever is running for president, what's most important is they're speaking to and connecting with a wide array of people including young voters. >> when you say they're 37% of the electorate, you're not saying that you expect that 37% of those who vote in november of 2020 will be under 35, are you? >> we're saying 37% of millennials and generation z are eligible voters. the question is how do we motivate, engage, turn out folks? the main way to do that i would argue is to speak about the issues that matter most to millennials and generation z and to address those issues. >> we'll let you speak to somebody in the age range. mike is on the line for the 18 to 35. how old are you if you don't

mind me asking? >> caller: i'm on the tail end, 35. i want to say to your guest, the democratic party has been pandering to black people since the 1940s. so to say donald trump is pan r pandering to black people because he said it's an issue an i'm a black man myself i think it's ridiculous. let's go to the point of having a conversation on solutions. not saying well, he's pandering but not talking about the 20 democrats up there who are pandering. now the issues of student debt. student debt is a real issue so maybe you can touch on this point as well too. student debt a real issue, i'm a teacher myself and i'm trying to go through paying back loans which i should haven't to do. i wouldn't think. but why are you not talking about the colleges who are raising the prices? why are we not talking about the colleges who are putting in all of these unnecessary courses, the classes that students have to take in order to get their

degrees? if you're serious and your organization is serious about student debt why not talk about the colleges and not complain about the loan program that was put in place to get people in debt by saying, hey, you can take out as many loans as you'd want, but don't worry. you'll have to pay it back every now and then. that is -- >> yeah. absolutely. so there's two points i want to raise, one of criminal justice reform and one on college affordability. on the criminal justice reform front, look at trump's stances on this wholistically. i'm going to leave out the fact that he continues to call for the execution and then the guilt of the exonerated five from the central park five. but that underlies what his policies have been on this issue. so you look at the appointment on jeff sessions and bill barr. these are two men who literally have fought every step of the way any type of criminal justice reform. in fact, in the case of bill barr wrote the book for mass incarceration. and so when you look at his --

>> what is the -- >> he literally wrote out the memoir on what it looks like to use mass incarceration, the need for the drug war, the need to ramp up here. and hasn't disavowed that in the last 30 years as many people have who have looked back on the policies and say you know what, i went too far. and that there were -- not even unintended consequences but impacted the communities too harshly. so i think it's really important to look at the trump record in that context. secondly, actually one more thing on that point. they in fact tried to roll back criminal justice reform so significantly they were trying to prevent people who went through the diversion program to become federal employees. they'll set up by states and localities and courts so that people don't end one a conviction record. so they don't get impacted with barriers to jobs and he wanted to require people to fill out whether or not they ever had been in one.

3,500 people spoke out against it. and a number of advocates on the right spoke out against it and then the white house pulled it back. but that's trump's record on criminal justice reform. on college affordability you're right. this -- we strongly believe i strongly believe any debt forgiveness, cancellation, needs to happen hand in hand with college affordability plans. in fact, college affordability has been part of the debate, largely in part because of advocacy under the higher ed not debt campaign which brings more than 80 organizations together. we need guardrails around what affordability looks like. we need to make sure for profit colleges are not preying on the most vulnerable students out there. we need to make sure that we have plans, whether it's debt free college or free community college or, you know, there's a multitude of plans out there beyond tuition out at the center of american progress that addresses it going forward so we don't end up in this situation

again. but we what need to do is recognize that the system as if failed over the last 30 years and put low income, middle income students into huge amounts of debt that isn't forgiven by anything even bankruptcy. we need to address that for the next generation. >> ft. washington, maryland, is next on the line between 35 and 60. pamela, good morning. >> caller: good morning. i have to disagree with brent when it comes to the difficulty of registering to vote because i don't think it's any harder to register to vote for young people nowadays. actually, i think it's easier because you have the advent of online, you know, things you can do online. now they basically -- if they have a car they could go when they -- you know, when they renew their license, they can register at the dmv. when i was younger, we had to actually, you know, go to the places or