were burned alive at that time. there were these same democrats who did this. they called it david and the group or a religious sect. for some reason they were not liked by the u.s. administration. they cannot push them out of the house. they put the house on fire. 80 people, men, women, children got burned alive in that house. do you realize what human-rights is? well, i believe the officials of america and some european countries should feel a little embarrassed and should not open their mouth and say anything they want to say.

. we will bring you the annual radio and tv correspondents dinner, including president

obama's speech. on today's program, mary agnes carey and today's news and phone calls. washington journal starts now. >> good morning. the senate health committee continues to mark up its version of the health care bill. president obama will be attending a prayer breakfast. we begin with a look at the economy. a story posted on the government

deficit. the government spent one nearly $150 billion in may more than it took in. twin threat facing the agenda. and there is a story on inflation out today. the economy and inflation is our first topic today. call the numbers on your screen. you can also send us a comment on twitter. let's look at some headlines. there is a story on inflation and the federal reserve. people who worry about

inflation may not have fully grasped the ramifications of american households leveraging. the pullback is going in to prop up a faltering economy. at every level of society, the demand for cash is unprecedented. meanwhile in today's wall street journal, a report on a story twin threat jobless rate deficit. flags have been raised as the president who is so personally popular is losing ground on some of his economic policies. there is little he can do to please everybody. if he pulls back on the economic stimulus, he may be pulling back on green shoots. he expects the unemployment

rate to reach 10% this year. rising joblessness could trigger pressure for another injection of spending. let's take our first call from new york on the independent line. caller: donald trump was on with larry king and was asked about real estate. and he said that he sold his home for $100 million at the height of the market, because he feared that the high oil prices was the cause of the bank's collapse and the economy. i am a professor of business and i can give you my view of. what bush jr. did was that he

changed the inflation rate. when oil hits over $50 a barrel, for the last three years we have over 7% inflation. busch jr. change the inflation numbers. remember he had inflation and a than excluding food and energy? let me give you a number over 40 years of teaching. what ever the price of oil is, if it is $20 a barrel, the inflation rate is 2%. if it is $70 a barrel, it is 7% inflation. what people are missing is that 0 allele is 25% of the profits of all the company's world baud -- worldwide.

$50 a barrel is 50% of the profits. when you are building a home you are talking about $50 and will -- a $50 a barrel. i am paying two hundred dollars more a month in fuel, and $200 more month in my car. what obama should do is the same thing clinton should do. george bush blocked 10 billion bar. of oil after we invaded iraq, take the oil reserves -- war reserves, put it out on the open market and sell it. host: next from arkansas. caller: i am very wary about inflation.

of all of the bank bail outs and auto bailouts. this president has created the hugest deficit in history, that our children and grandchildren will never be able to pay for. he should return to the bush tax cuts that created jobs, and put money in many american pockets. host: the bush tax cuts are still active. they have not been repealed. caller: great. this president needs to continue them. host: virginia on the independent line. caller: this is worse than inflation.

if they don't extend the bills again, they are worried about obama putting debt on their children, but they do it themselves. with their credit card, if you over extend yourself, and you are worried about 5%, maybe you should cut back on your spending. host: do you have credit card debt? caller: i have one credit card. i am paying it down, and i will have it done before the end of the year. people want to put things on cards, and they look at obama and say, you are running up the deficit. look at your own personal finance. save a little more. then things like inflation

deflationary although bad won't affect you so much. host: on the front page of usa today. foreclosures are heading through the roof. the obama administration, $75 billion plan has been back -- be set by backlogs and delays. many people get in accurate information from lenders. what we are doing is am barking as expected says one man. banks were not geared up for this. let's go to our next call from the democratic line in brooklyn. caller: good morning. i am concerned -- that are talking about inflation.

we had the people taking care of this country the way the democrats -- he did a pretty good job. they took money from everybody. they invaded iraq without a reason. it is sinful the way the bush administration robbed this country blind. and with halliburton robbing the country blind, sending the money to the war and put it in their banks. our problems come from the people that is running it. shell and all those companies.

host: republican line from new york city. are you worried about inflation? caller: i would like to say it the last caller is wrong. bill clinton did not do anything great. the great man behind that came in with his budget four times is newt gingrich. it was a republican house. all we do is fight back and forth. they should both be responsible for what they did with our national debt. both parties are wrong. we should wake up and demand that our debt be paid off, whether we use our own oil, whether we find solutions which newt gingrich has a lot of the

solutions. i hope he runs for president. they all lie and they tell you what they want. people should wake up and stop fighting. our country is going down the tubes. host: how should we pay off the deficit? caller: taxes to bring back our companies that left. cut the corporate taxes from 35% down to 12%. capital gains tax, cut it out. in china, there is no capital gains tax. you will see the stock market go back up. we will start having a little bit more confidence. but nobody thinks like that. they better wake up. if you give stimulus checks, of course it won't work. you have to cut corporate tax.

there are too many regulations in this country. i got a better stimulus bill. as americans, we all chipped in $10 a month to build our own manufacturers. host: let's cut to a clip. there was a speech today in iran from ayatollah khamenei. we will show you part of this speech. the >> the friday election was an epic. it is historical, it affected the world. some of our enemies in different

parts of the world intended to depict this absolute of victory and of this definitive victory. they wanted to indicate that as doubtful victory. some even wanted to show this as a national defeats. 40 million people voted for the revolution. 40 million votes were cast in favor of the revolution. people trust, they have their trust, but some supporters of candidates should also know that we will never commit treason and manipulate people's votes. host: this is a speech from

iran. ayatollah khamenei, iran's leader said the people have chosen who they want as president. delivering a sermon, he backed state reelection of president ahmadinejad. he said, but people have identified who they wanted. we are talking about economy. from massachusetts on the independent line. caller: my remark in this, i think we are using the wrong model for inflation. i think the alan greenspan type

of model, where he always insists that if wages go up, that is the cause of inflation. we have seen wages stagnant for 30 years. we have seen an explosion and housing prices -- in housing prices. they'd to devalue the dollar. a dollar that i turned 30 years ago was worth a lot more than it is at today. inflation is down, according to alan greenspan's confederate model. i think we need to use a new contacts, context to determine what causes inflation. inflation on an international level, it is monetary. low wages is not the solution to

inflation, it is the cause. i think we have to as a nation, embraces a new business model, and a new social model. i think that is one of the things that barack obama was talking about in his campaign. we are all in this together. this whole exposure of what has been going on in the housing markets and the madoff thing, it shows that when americans come together like we did in world war ii, basically americans have

to come together and look at ourselves as americans. host: let's go to the next caller, on the independent line. caller: i am concerned about inflation. i read a book called, bad money, in that book they identify a situation that george bush made during his first years in office he redid the way we calculate inflation. we used to have a way -- going back 10 years -- we used to have a bread basket of things where people used to check prices in grocery stores, all those things like groceries, gasoline, were all included in that number. now it is gone.

the what -- now we get a watered-down picture of inflation. our inflation numbers are 3-4% numbers under what they really are. what would we do about it? we have to start paying for things. everybody wants tax cuts. the wealthiest americans get the best deal. the rest of the people, though wages have stayed stagnant over the years. we have to get back to a point where we pay for what we spend. the federal deficit has to be brought down some how. money in, money out. we put more out than you have to get more in. host: going now also this week

in business week -- another story talking about home prices saved by 2012 we may finally get back to this boredom. though years should be long enough to recover and for the nation's housing inventory to shrink to more reasonable levels. to the next call on the democratic line. caller: this is a republican talking point. we have been dealing with this since 2004. i remember when cheney and bush got up and said, these things don't matter. like the deficit and the trade imbalance, because 2% of our

gross gdp, so it doesn't matter. now that they ruined this country, this country was falling apart since 2004 and nobody said a thing. they destroyed the stock market. the stuff that obama brought up the other day, it will continue to be ruined. host: republican from maine. caller: i am worried about inflation also.

it will attack anyone. we have to first understand what it is. they blame it on bill clinton or george bush or newt gingrich for the congress. inflation, by definition the increase in the amount of money in circulation not backed by monetary standards, you are attacking the wrong problem. if you are going to put a face on who caused the inflation, it is the federal reserve. the face on this is alan greenspan and his successor, ben bernanke. they are inflating the money supply. we have not seen all of the consequences of that yet, but it will destroy our currency. people in america should at

least try to understand that, and go to people who were warned of this before it came about. i recommend the book meltdow"men ,"m i think people need to understand that and read up on at and concentrate on the institution that causes it, the federal reserve. host: 1 of the things that the president outlined this week was overhaul of our financial regulatory system. today in the new york times, they write about how it is already being met with separatism on capitol hill. they signal an unwillingness to

accept the white house is a recommendation, expect -- especially expanding the power of the fed reserve. inflation is just another word saying i have to deal with higher prices with a little money i have. nothing new. next to raleigh, north carolina. caller: my concern -- i would like to compliment the last caller on him being informed. my issue is not necessarily inflation. it is hyper inflation. the way we need to deal with this as a country is not a bailout, not injections of money. it is not necessarily getting rid of the federal reserve as a whole. we need to do what franklin

roosevelt did. he declared this country bankrupt, and great organized it vas -- with infrastructure projects. then he had an exchange rate system. until we do that, we will suffer the consequences. and hosthost: 2 new york next. caller: talk is cheap and actions speak louder than words. i heard president obama, i don't call him met me -- my president. last week in a speech he made, here is iran fighting for democracy and he is not doing a thing. he is taking the easy way out, straddling the fence.

i then worry, like you said inflation, hyper inflation. the cbo tell them not to spend the money. he was a community organizer. he does not know anything about how to run a business. these people do. have a wonderful weekend. thank you. host: to michigan on the democratic line. caller: if you are living in michigan, ohio, we are in a recession. the country needs to -- the republican party needs to help this president bring this country back together. they stood on the fence when

bush, cheney, and that gang robbed the country blind. now that obama is in office, all they can do is criticize him. help get this stuff straightened out. host: what do you do in flint? caller: i work for a water pollution plant. people are struggling. people in the car industry. everybody i know is unemployed. eight years ago, people were working and still building cars and doing well. now people are struggling. it is due to the poor management of the last president. host: we will be back shortly. we will be looking at the status of health care reform next. we will be right back.

them every weekend booktv has the latest nonfiction books and authors on the cspan2. saturday on afterwards, writers and artists from the garden of eden to today. the history of the world through a collection of 600 short stories. afterwards also airs sunday night at 9 eastern. books on the economy, a former investment banker exposes the mess of the recession and what it will take to recover. and why capitalism is the way to ease poverty.