c-span3. tonight, patrick charles and legal scholar brandon denning talk about the second amendment and american gun rights from the drafting of the bill of rights to more recent decisions that have shaped the current debate over gun control legislation. watch tonight beginning at 8:00 eastern and enjoy american history tv every weekend on c-span3. surgeon general nominee dr. vivek murthy and dr. rachel lavine testify thursday morning before the senate health, education, labor and pension committees. watch live at 10:00 eastern on c-span3, online at c-span.org or listen on the free c-span radio app. tim phillips is joining us now. what is your group? >> we're a grassroots organization across the country.

around 3 1/2 million americans from every walk of life have worked with us, taken action with us to try to remove the barriers that hold every american back from living their version of the american dream. >> you're here to talk about the $1.9 trillion aid package. what in this proposal would you support? >> we want anything that the government does at this point to be timely and targeted. and really helping the folks in need. too much in this legislation doesn't reach that goal. i thought the paycheck protection program in the very first c.a.r.e.s. act last spring, we supported that. it was an important program. it was laser beam targeted to help businesses keep their folks on the payrolls so they didn't lose their jobs. we supported that and it was -- there were some problems and abuses, there always are. but it was a good program that helped a lot of americans, especially lower income americans who were -- that job

was their lifeline week to week. stay on payroll, so we support that. that program is a good one. the initial individual payments to americans back in the c.a.r.e.s. act, we also supported. at this point, though, the government has appropriated $3.7 trillion to the pandemic. that's more than anything ever in american history. and the kicker is, a trillion of that money has still not yet been spent. it's still not yet actually doing what it was supposed to be doing. we're urging the biden administration to take that money that's already been appropriated, it's there for schools, it's there for vaccination rollouts, it's there to help people hang on during these tough times. let's get that money out the door and into the communities and into individual hands rather than simply throwing another $1.9 trillion at it and the last thing i'll mention, so much of the money in this current

legislation, it's not related to the pandemic at all. $350 billion of it goes to bail out big spending states and cities that have been fiscally irresponsible for decades, many of them, and that's not fair. and it's not helping with the pandemic. and there's money in this bill that also bails out insurance companies. that's not a proper use of supposed pandemic relief that will simply go into the pockets of already very wealthy insurance companies. there's a lot in this bill, that's not a good idea. it's kind of a partisan ideological wish list and we're urging them, the administration and congress, take that trillion dollars that's still sitting there, it's not out the door, it's already been appropriated, and get that out where it can do some good before simply throwing, you know, more legislation at this. >> we want our viewers to tell us their views of this $1.9 trillion economic aid package as well.

republicans, you can dial in at 202-748-0001, 202-748-0002. text us with our first name, city and state as well. do you disagree with former president trump that each american who is making a certain amount of money should get a $2,000 check as he proposed late last year? >> we do. we think at this point the way to go is to get this economy open with the vaccination program, speeding already toward that goal. put the funding into expanding and rapidly getting shots in the arms of more americans. and let them live their lives. this pandemic has hurt people struggling socioeconomically

more than it's hurt the well to do. there's no question about that. simply dribbling out government subsidies is not the answer. the answer is, let's actually put the money where it can do the most good. let's get the vaccinations done. let's get schools reopened. parents are struggling and so many children are falling behind and the teacher unions, frankly, need to show some flexibility and let the schools reopen. the cdc has said they do believe that can be done in a safe, responsible fashion. that's what we ought to do rather than the government keeping focuses kind of on a string with subsidies. let's get life back to normal again and let's move more rapidly to do that. let's put aside political considerations. it does seem like this administration is -- some of the unions, the teacher unions and others may be looking more at politics than actually getting, you know, children back into school and folks working again

and economies are reopening. the last thing i'll mention on that question, i look at a state like florida which has tried to walk the line between protecting its citizens and getting the economy open again for people to make a living and to support their families. and their results have been good. they've been as good or better than a lot of states with more draconian shutdowns, lockdowns that have hurt a lot of people, especially those struggling at the margining. >> we want our viewers to join in on this conversation. i also want to get their reaction and your reaction, mr. phillips, to senate majority leader chuck schumer on the senate floor defending the go-big approach. >> if we don't act enhanced unemployment benefits will expire for millions of americans in need. if we don't act, millions of struggling families will miss out on direct payments and an

expansion of the child tax credit. if we don't act, we risk the same, long slow and painful recovery we experienced after the financial crisis in 2008 when congress did too little to get our country back on track. the worst thing we could do would be to slow down now before the race is won. we will not, not do that. >> tim phillips, how do you respond? >> the government has gone big. no one would argue that $3.7 trillion, which they've already appropriated, the most money in american history, we've been around a long time. that's a lot of money. they need to make sure that they're using that money to help the folks who were struggling. and i mentioned earlier, up to $1 trillion of that money is still just sitting there. politicians like to kind of talk big sometimes rather than roll up their sleeves and actually dig in and do the nitty-gritty

work of making sure the money they appropriate gets to the people who need it. that's a trillion dollars sitting there. that's not out the door. it's been sitting there and in some cases for a long time, months and months and months. we would urge the administration, the various government agencies and frankly congress, because they have oversight of this money, to get it out there. let's get that trillion dollars that's still sitting there out there. in the meantime, let's take steps that are targeted like a laser beam to actually letting folks get their normal lives back. it's been almost a year now, 11 months, 11 1/2 months, states need to reopen. we need to get the schools reopened again. they're not talking about that. and they should be. i can't tell you how many parents, single moms, especially, who need to work, are struggling because those schools have been closed for months and months and months. it can be done safely, a lot of private schools are open. they've been open for months

already. the public schools need to reopen. so congress needs to frankly do the tough work. frankly it's easy to kind of throw money at problems. but they don't want to do the hard work and the hard work is getting the economy, getting schools back open again. i would love for majority leader schumer to sit down with the teacher unions and parents and focus on our children who are being left behind here. and they need to get those schools reopened. we need to get the economy going again. that is far better than government spending trillions more in some broadway that doesn't actually focus on the biggest problems we've got. getting the vaccinations faster to americans. it needs to speed up to get to well more than a million people a day. and we can focus on that with a lot of this money. getting the schools reopened, getting this economy going. that's our message to majority

leader schumer and to president biden. >> bob, ohio, democratic caller. >> caller: yes. thanks for c-span. listen, mr. phillips, i wonder what planet republicans living on like you. mnuchin had $500 billion that he kept. donald trump and his family got millions of dollars. and they got it for their businesses. and then you sit there with american for prosperity, you mean republicans for prosperity. you don't care about anything but tax cuts. you're all just plain greedy. >> let's get a response from mr. phillips. >> bob, we did support the paycheck protection program. and that was an early program under the c.a.r.e.s. act that i mentioned earlier. it was designed and did a pretty good job of getting money, government money, to businesses. many of them small ones.

the focus was to be on smaller businesses, to keep their employees on the payrolls so that while this pandemic raged, especially in those early months, that those layoffs and unemployment did not dramatically expand even further. we supported that. and it was a -- there were some issues with it as any big program would be starting from scratch. but it did a lot of good. there were abuses. you're right about this. some big businesses that shouldn't have been getting it. they filled out the forms and got it. they were exposed in most cases. and that was a good thing. some of them had to give the money back, which was a good thing. but we did support that paycheck protection program. we did support the initial individual payments to americans in the c.a.r.e.s. act. it was an unprecedented moment in this country's history. so we have supported those efforts and the irony of what you're saying is, the people hurting the most because of this pandemic are people struggling

at the margins. they're the ones that are disproportionately being affected by this virus and the ones who are losing their jobs. i think, especially in the restaurant and hospitality, hotel industries. they're being devastated. and the answer to that is to get this economy open again. some states have taken a lead in that. i mentioned florida, tennessee, some other states like that. we would urge those politicians in both parties to do that. that's the answer. the answer is not government continuing to spend money that frankly the country doesn't have. it's all going into debt at this point. and who knows when that will call us bankruptcy or terrible inflation. again, it will hurt those at the margins the most. it won't hurt the rich as much as it will hurt poor folks. so that's the answer. get this economy going again. it can be done safely rather than having government kind of pick winners and losers with our

tax money. >> george in jacksonville, florida, republican. good morning. >> caller: good morning. let me give you three points here. first, biden's first executive order should have been to build one or two more vaccine factories or lease out existing eighty-ones from other pharmaceutical companies. by now we would have been in a position to go ahead and vaccinate almost anyone. i did my second shot yesterday, and they ran out of vaccines. number two, each one of these guys did one thing that i really like. john dingell got approval for a piece of equipment which cuts our health care cost in half. it used some pretty sophisticated stuff, artificial intelligence, quantum waves, frequency, et cetera, and every doctor should have one. that would be about $18 billion.

then the third thing is housing. health care costs are expensive for poor people and housing is expensive. a few cities in the united states are doing the right thing. they're basically giving housing to people, and then they pay it off especially people who work in restaurants, et cetera. but they build small little houses or they're using shipping containers. we have a massive number. maybe 8,000 or $10,000 each, and they can slowly pay it off. if they leave that company, they can go to the next company and they get their money back. >> okay, what do you think of what you just heard? >> i like george's first point. i really like. what we're calling for americans for prosperity is any funding from the government needs too be timely, targeted to this virus and temporary. his first point about extending

vaccination hits all of those. we do think that the administration working across lines with republicans and democrats should use their focus, make their focus rapidly expanding the distribution and the creation of these vaccines. you know, that happened in record time. this operation warp speed, to develop these vaccines. and it happened in part because americans in the drug and pharmaceutical and science community, they were freed up from government barriers, regulation and red tape, to just go create in a desperate moment, and they did it. it's historic what they did when we took the shackles that too often government kind of puts on them that inhibits the ability to get out there and create and knock down these barriers that hold people back, in this case a vaccine that was needed. and so we do think that's where any additional spending ought to go, to expanding more rapidly

the vaccination efforts, to expanding -- to getting schools reopen again, doing what needs to be done there to get them reopen again. that's what we mean when we say timely and targeted. and early on it was that paycheck protection program, so that first idea that george has there about focusing on it, we do think that's important. one last thing about that whenever you think about government often we think about government simply spending money or putting on additional rules and regulations. sometimes what government can do to really help people is to pull back rules or regulations that hold them back from creating needed products like this vaccine that we got, and that's an example of government doing that. >> your question or comment. >> caller: yeah, i'm concerned this next relief package is

going to be partying like it's 1999. that's just my general. >> okay, jane. let me get in dale who's in riverdale, maryland, democratic caller. >> caller: mr. philips, how are you today? >> i'm good. >> caller: i save my calls to speak out for the truth. i would imagine you've heard of the book "dark money," which outlines koch brother activities, which of course just happens to be americans for prosperity. that's company you work for. this idea you're a grassroots is really kind of silly, and you know that. but i'm really calling just to let viewers out there, you know, look at this through your reality, which is you're there to represent the super rich.

so that's pretty much my comment. >> well, thank you. and it's a sad one, in all candor. we believe that free speech is a good thing, tat having folks on the left and the right and in the middle like we're doing right now having conversations with each other, that's a good thing. and that's what we support in americans for prosperity. this past year looking back at 2020 there were groups on every side of the political spectrum that under the first amendment are allowed to operate out there. and we think that's a good thing. we think more free speech is the answer to bad speech or to speech that is not going in the right direction. so we're proud of the work we do. 3.5 million americans from all 50 states and literally from every walk of life have volunteered with us to try to make america a better place. so that's our goal and we're

proud of it. to jane's comment before that partying like it's 1999, we agree $3.7 trillion have already been appropriated. again, that's more money than for anything in american history. more money than for world war ii, the linden johnson's war on poverty in the '60s, et cetera. so we think with that trillion dollars still unspent the politicians in both parties should really work to make good use of that money to actually help americans where it's needed most. and we believe that's in expanding the vaccination program faster, getting schools opened up again. helping free parents especially and folks at the margins who are struggling economically to live their lives again. that's the best thing we can do to create a good, healthy economy once again in this

country of ours. >> tim, how much money do you get from the koch family sph. >> we're proud to take funding from the koch family. it's a small total of the amount we spend. >> how much is it? >> i don't share any numbers for any individual american giving out -- i actually think that it's a good thing to have free speech protected. and part of that means privacy protection. we see big tech concerns all the time about the loss of privacy. this is another area where americans can see their privacy lost if legislation passes that congress, by the way, is calling for -- some in congress are. that would actually chill free speech and harm the first amendment. and we don't think that's a good idea. right now when you look at organizations c4 or c3 organizations across the spectrum, left, right, center, we hit all of them equally. and we think it's a good thing to have groups out there working

and pushing for good policies and helping folks. and a chilling effect there's a legislation called hr1 would actually harm free speech in this country at a time when frankly we need more free speech. jane from indiana, an independent. >> caller: good morning. thank you so much for c-span. i heard you mention unspent money from a previous package. and i've heard other spokespersons say the same thing, make the same reference. it would strengthen your case if you could tell aexactly where that unspent money is, what level is it? is it at the government level, state level, county, what department? exactly where is that unspent money from the previous package? if you don't know, please say so. thank you. i'll take my answer from the television. thank you. >> caller: absolutely. and that's a fair question.

there's money out there for schools, for unemployment, for those who have lost their jobs during this pandemic that's still sitting there waiting to be used. the biggest problem is a lot of times states, the money goes from the federal governments to the state gumps. and that transfer, the government's not super efficient at that, and so it's in the transfer from the federal side to state -- to the state side or locality side. the second area is a lot of the programs, as i mentioned unemployment or as i mentioned schools, takes a while to get through the pipeline. there's literally dozens of layers of bure accuracy from washington, d.c. at the highest levels down to the point in a local field office where that money is used for rubber hitting the road. and it just takes long time. and it's hard work to grind

through this. i don't have an exhaustive all $1 trillion of it located. but we know it's there. we know it's across the board. it's on the health care side as well, helping with health care reimbursements, that's another area where it's been slow in being distributed. and so i think when you're dealing with that much money, these are historic numbers. we've never seen that kind of spending. the government is usually -- again, they're not it most efficient. it's not what they do well. and when you give $3.7 trillion more than, again, for anything ever in american history, i'm not surprised that a significant percentage of that even months later is still sitting there. >> ronda in freehold, new jersey, democratic caller. >> caller: hi, good morning, america. i have two comments i would like to make. first on the stimulus package. this stimulus package is so

badly needed it's incredible. it's needed for schools. it's needed for our cities to rebuild themselves and to create jobs and to help the small business owners. so i am totally at agreement with the fact that you guys have a problem where $1.9 trillion when you had no problem giving that to the richest people in america under trump's tax policy. >> okay, let's take that point. what about the president's tax cuts -- former president's tax cuts? >> the tax cuts and tax reform of 2017 gave every american a tax cut in every income bracket from the top to the bottom. every single one. took a lot of americans who were paying the lower rates completely off the tax rolls. so every american who was

working benefitted or looking for work, by the way, benefitted from that tax cut. also it did something else. it cut the corporate tax rate. we had one of the highest corporate tax rates in the world, higher than europe, our competitors in europe and asia as well. it lowered that to 21%. and people think, oh, that's only helping the big guys. there are a lot of smaller american corporations that were more competitive and could hire more people as a result of those tax reforms and tax cuts. and i think the proof is in the economic numbers from 2018 and '19 and early '20 before the pandemic took hold. unemployment was at record lows. american manufacturing was back. job creation in the american manufacturing area was up. income levels were up. and specifically income levels and employment rates for

african-americans, for latinos especially were the highest they had ever been at least since they've been recording those numbers with the bureau of labor statistics. that tax reform and tax cut it lifted up this country and just about everyone, and it was a good thing. it's just an ideological partisan wish list from one party. and i'll give just a couple of examples. $350 billion of it goes to bail out in the next two, three, four years big spending, states and cities that have spent way too much money. places like new york or illinois that are not fiscally managed, and that's not fair to states that do pay their bills and are more fiscally managed. if that money were appropriated in this bill and goes to illinois, for example, folks

living in wisconsin, you know, right next door that are better managed, it's not fair for them to have to pay for illinois. and so that's part of. the second thing is it dramatically increases the federal minimum wage. and what that does is make it about twice as expensive for small businesses to hire new workers. and it eliminates jobs for a lot of americans who do have minimum wage jobs because employers won't be able to afford them. in fact, the congressional budget office, congress' own office that analyzes this information, they even say over a million jobs will be destroyed, wipeout if this federal minimum wage is increased to $15, and that's not related to the pandemic. let's get these schools open. i can't tell you how many parents i talk to especially lower income parents who are struggling. they're having to juggle remote

learning, which is not as effective. our children are falling behind. this money that's being spent, this $1.9 trillion, it's not going to do anything about it and the politicians know it. they already have the money they need to get these schools open again. and if they come to congress with very specific needs they have on that front i think congress in both parties will listen and take appropriate action as additional funding is needed for these schools. but here's an idea for you. why not on education if they want more money, let parents, families, single moms or dads, let them have control of that education money to make the decisions they think best rather than the school bureaucracy that right now is not getting the job done on reopening these schools? that's a thought. let's put the money directly to parents who are the ones suffering the most along with their children, by the way, who are falling behind.

>> tina is our last call in huntington, pennsylvania, republican. >> caller: hi. thank you so much for taking my call this morning. i've been waiting for this topic for i can't tell you how long. this is not a relief bill for the american people. we're going to get a little bit of change out of this. i am so angry especially for the stimulus being -- or the rail system for silicon valley to be hidden in this bill. as far as the tax cuts under trump, they were a godsend for my children. all of my kids with the exception of one are currently unemployed with small children. and in pennsylvania we just went back to school but yet i still have to pay my school taxes. they're not allocating the money where they need to allocate the money. this will not help the average

american. it's going to help the big corporations and these lobbyists, and it's really sickening. all they need to do is give us -- open up our country, let us work. give us a moratorium on federal taxes for a year, and our economy would come back with a slingshot reaction. and then instead of offering all of these big companies these loans, offer them to the middle class at low interest or no interest and allow us to pay off everything we've incurred as far as, you know, credit cards and loans to help our families get through this. >> okay, tia, i have to leave it there. tim philips, what about her ideas? >> she makes a great point. this is not about the people. it's a partisan ideological wish list chock-full in this $1.9 trillion bill, and it's not timely and targeted in solving this pandemic and getting our

nation back to work again. and there's already the money there to do this. so i agree with a lot of what she's saying in that regard for sure. health and human services secretary nominee javier becerra is testifying in this confirmation hearing before the senate finance committee today. if confirmed mr. becerra will be the first latino to head the department. live coverage here on c-span 3.