>> there are some who say that as president, i shouldn't have stepped into this at all because it's a local issue. i have to tell you that that part of it i disagree with. the fact that this has become such a big issue i think is indicative of the fact that race is still a troubling aspect of our society. whether i were black or white, i think that me commenting on this and hopefully contributing to constructive as opposed to negative understandings about the issue is part of my portfolio.

host: the president yesterday on comments about harvard scholar henry louis gates jr. we want to get your president's thoughts on -- your thoughts on the president's statement yesterday, specifically on what you believe the last couple of days, statements made, what it says about race. host: a lot of the papers, almost all of them, treating the president's comments yesterday, making it their headline news. here's one from the "boston globe." "obama moves to quell gates fewer your."

-- furur." "cooldown period." president obama stops short of apologizing for police but called both in an effort to move past the controversy and focus on learning from the incident. again, even the international papers playing a part in this. the "financial times" this morning makes it their lead editorial. a misstep and a distraction. here's what the editors write. you'll find it in the lower column if you have it. they say on such issues mr. obama has a problem, both as candidate and president, he has eschewed identification by race to avoid finding himself grouped with more outspoken african-american politicians such as al shortstop ton and jesse jackson. when it comes to speaking about race, mr. obama is damned if he does and damned if he doesn't. more broadly, mr. obama's election is a huge step forward.

it does not make the u.s. a post-racial country. every day the country injustices remain. to too a gulf of misunderstanding between many whites and many blacks. again, we want to get your thoughts on what this whole issue says about race in the united states. host: let us start off with sammy on our republican line in jacksonville, florida. sammy what do you think? caller: good morning, pedro. thank you for taking my call. first, i think the president should apologize to this officer because he first said that he didn't know anything about the details, anything happening. and then he went on and called him stupid. i think he should call -- he

should publicly apologize instead of dancing around the issue. host: moving passed that, do you think the statements of the last couple of days have at least some insight on what it says about race in the united states? caller: well, i think it stirred things up it made everybody on each side mad. it stirred things up. and another thing. i wish the president would quit blaming the republicans for everything, like his health care. host: let's leave it there only because we want to stay on topic this morning as far as our question is concerned. mackinaw island, michigan. good morning. caller: good morning. i think the president is right on speaking out. for many, many years we've been trying to brush this under the

forest. he's the guy to bring it to the forefront. i don't think he has to apologize to anyone. we're all americans. black, white, yellow, pink. whatever the case may be. and he's the president of the united states. and for him to see an issue that hasn't been spoken about other than cable news networks and so on and so forth, i think worse than the president mentioning the stupidity of the law enforcement, as soon as they entered the man's home and he showed them his i.d.'s, saw pictures of him, this is my home, the case should have been ended. host: you said it was a good opportunity for the president to move forward on this issue. how do we do that in your

opinion? caller: well, i think all the people that are, you know, negative about the issue, and the press instead of pointing out the negative things, the president said, a decent man. then these people instead of yelling at each other from across the yard, so to speak, bring mr. rush limbaugh into the forefront. because this guy is a piece of work. host: washington, d.c., robert on our independent line what statements by the president over the last few days say about race? caller: yes, pedro i think what it says about race is that america has got their head in the sand. america appears to be still a racist and bigoted country. you will hear from a lot of these folks in the rural areas, some of these rust belt areas, in the middle of the country areas, who will never see anything positive about black

folk. they despise the president because of his color of his skin. the news media, they hound whatever he says that doesn't come out correctly or perfectly. it's a constant plot against him. i think what's shameful is the fact that they put the two people, and don lemon of cnn and cnn and no one's talking about the issue with the major of the united states army who refuses to go to war or fight for this country because there's a black man. that says it all for me. and it should say for all other americans who really have a heart or a spine. i think it's really shameful that they brought up two black people that they had in cambridge that you could see on the news conference that they only had two black folk up there. both of them spoke negatively about mr. gates, in his own home i think that's shameful. and america should be ashamed. and why aren't we following that

gentleman that said he would not fight for this country because of a black man as president. host: back to the issue then. how do we move forward on this issue? caller: we have to bury our soul in public and have this discussion that white america has been unwilling to have and black america, the intellectual part of black america, the so-called folks who have made it through the upper echelons of education and standards in this country need to sit down, bring this out and need to have that discussion. and then and only then can we move forward. american history is clear. it's evident, it is profound that history speaks for itself. police department experience with black folk speaks for itself. host: next call, augusta, georgia. tim on our republican line. good morning. hello? are through? caller: yes. my name is tim. i'm calling from south carolina. what i was calling about is i do

not -- i've had trouble with the police myself and i'm white. but when i was younger, i was not very smart. i always got in trouble. i got two and three disorderly conducts for the same thing and i'm white from a white officer. and every time was because i did something stupid or said something stupid. now that i'm older and more mature i know better than to talk to those cops like that because they never know what they're going to run into in a certain situation. and for someone to call this guy really smart, intelligent black man and then he's talking about this cop's mother? i mean, that takes him way back to like the seventh grade or

something, in my opinion. host: so what do the events of the last couple of days say about race in the united states? caller: i would say that obama has got it on his mind that it's never going away. he has not appointed one white conservative to any significant job in his cabinet or anywhere else. i think this guy has got it against white people. and we're getting tired of it. we've done -- we've bent over backwards for black people. host: the "daily news" in their editorial section. "president beg pardon "so i how they title it this morning. they say the lessons that facts matter and that we may judge -- it says my hope is that as a

consequence of this event this ends up being what is called a teachable moment, where all of us instead of pumping up the volume spend a little more time listening to each other, try to focus on how we can improve relations between police officers and minority communities. the president said, a point well taken by all. including the editors. washington, d.c., anthony, on our democrats' line. we're asking folks what the president's statements on gates and the events of the last few days says about race. caller: first of all, thank you for taking my call. i appreciate c-span immensely. i have to address that last caller. i understand how police officers can be in terms of if you are one ounce of disrespectful or if you say something, something that they don't like, they will arrest you no matter what color you are. now, i agree with that. but the key thing is, is that it is disproportionate in terms of african-american people in terms of being disrespected by police

officers, abused and mistreated. and number one is that i'm not sure what the caller meant -- that last caller meant by white people have been bending over backwards for black people. and everything that most black people i know, they've earned it. no one has bent over backwards to give anything or go out of their way in terms of my experience. now, in terms of barack obama and what he's done so far, i think that he's an african-american man and he understands the african-american experience. so when he says that the police officers were acting stupidly, i agree with that. because they were acting stupidly. there was absolutely nothing that they established after that this was his house that they should have done to arrest him, mr. gates. so the key thing is, is that

officers will escalate black and white officers support each other no matter what because they are officers. host: on twitter, someone who identifies himself as lunar ranger, writes that president obama's timing is bad. he should be focused like a lacer on health care plan not racial profiling at this point in time. bakers fields, california. good morning. caller: yes, sir. your first name is pedro, correct? host: correct. caller: no disrespect to the previous callers and the person who twittered, he's the president of the united states of america. he can focus on everything and anything. point two, he only made this stupid remark in terms of the officers' behavior toward professor gates. now, i'm sure about whether it's been confirmed about whether or

not gates made a remark about the guy's mother. the bottom line, as for what the previous caller said, since gates obviously identified who he was and identified the home in his name, therefore the officers should have said, oh, sorry and squashed it right then and there. but obviously because he lost face, whatever, did what did he and it resolved in that. and quite frankly, what it says about race, to quote in this particular case, racism just like violence is merge american's apple pie. that's sad when you think about it. hopefully we'll try to focus on that, like you said in a previous -- quoted the previous column, hopefully we can have open dialogue and get stuff like this settled and focus on health care. but bottom line, president obama, like it or not, is the president of the united states. he can say what he wants when he feels like it. somebody asked him the question. he gave a legitimate answer. that's all that matters. people need to deal with it. host: and that's derrick on our

independent line. one more comment from twitter. "it is refreshing to have a leader who can speak his own mind without needing the approval of aadvisorses. the president is a free thinker." "the new york times" gives a little bit of the process behind recent statements about race and talks a little bit about the thought process of how he made those statements. it says that mr. obama first discussed with aide thousand address the arrest during -- with aide how to address the arrest during a meeting before his wednesday news conference. his use of the word stupidly, that evening that generated angry responses from cambridge police, mr. obama who said he was surprised at the response, discussed the issue over dinner with friends at his home in chicago on thursday during a qib trip there for a fundraiser. on friday morning, they said they also talked through it with

mrs. obama. and right next to that there is a picture that you can see from the news conference that was held friday in support of james crowley, the police sergeant. and those are some of the people that were there to support him. new york, matt on our republican line. go ahead. caller: good morning. i don't think that that issue says anything. about race. it's reaction to the incident that says something about race. the incident itself was a response to a disturbance. somebody called it in. police went to investigate. maybe tempers flaired on both sides. but the president -- i don't support president obama, you know, politically speaking. but aside from that i think it was kind of unwise for him to interject himself into the situation. it's a local issue. and did he so without knowing the particulars of the incident.

so he brought this on himself. by using the word "stupid" he kind of fanned the flames a little bit. it wasn't a very wise move. so when he doesn't have his teleprompter, he doesn't say the smartest things sometimes. >> georgigeorge. host: georgia up is next. go ahead. caller: yes. i think that it was sad that our president stood and made the comments and everything about gates and the massachusetts. without the details or anything of what actually happened or anything, i think it would have been wise of him just to really just go around the question and just point blank say i don't have the details on this. but i think that overall what we're seeing here is that the jesse jacksons and the al sharptons of the world. i think that now adays in 2009,

the younger generations and everything haven't grown up with all the racial issues and everything. and i think that the race thing would stop and work itself 100% out if we didn't have all of the sharptons and jesse jacksons getting filthy rich and everyone jumping on the bandwagon and playing the race card. the fact of the matter is, the race card is being played day after day after day after day. and the bulk of the american people are just sick and tired of hearing it. host: on our independent line, charlotte, north carolina. david. caller: yes, good morning. i was calling basically to kind of reiterate the points of some of the last callers. i believe the gentleman from south carolina stating that in his younger days that he had issues with the police because of the way he spoke to them, not necessarily because of the color of his skin.

i definitely can say that i've had that issue quite a few times before. i think if any conversation needs could come up as well as a platform for minorities to speak, there should definitely be discussion about how police handle all situations, not just according to race but according to how they respond -- you know, how they're dealt with publicly, verbally as opposes to, you know, the color of someone's skin. and as to president obama's response, i think he definitely could have made smarter choices in his wording. but as far as calling them stupidly, that's not something you definitely want to hear from the president. maybe a more generalized statement like he's come out and

said. that's it. host: irvin, california. steve on our republican line. caller: yeah, pedro. good morning. the most upsetting comment by obama that i heard was not the stupid cops comment. it was it was his comment that when the cops showed up to investigate the attempted burglary, obama's comment was, well, any of us would have gotten angry. now, i don't know who he's talking about with us. but if my neighbor called and reported a break-in at my house and a cop showed up and it was me, i would have showed him my i.d., thanked him for responding and being so alert. i think he sat in reverend wright's church for 20 years, listened and believed everything the guy said. i think that the gates' guy was probably sitting next to him. thank you. host: does the statement of recent say anything else about the matter of race in this country? caller's gone. we go next to georgia.

carolyn on our democrats' line. caller: good morning. pedro, you know, it bothers me -- things haven't changed. but you can just listen to all the callers. and especially your white callers that's not independent or democrat. and just listen to the tone because it could be you with the darker skin, going into your house. and if that had happened to you, you being on c-span, nobody knowing who you were, but you -- the police come to your house and you tell them that it's your house, and you have to admit that all the policemen aren't that very nice, and some of them are prejudice, some of them are even, you know -- some of them are just wrong on the police force. you got people that's on the

police force -- not just the police force, doctors, lawyers, that's not all there. and that's just a known fact. but since president obama has been president, the only thing that you see is his skin. that's the first thing you see. and that's the first thing the policemen see, too. but the thing is -- the thing that's rooted in white people is that for some reason they think they right about everything. and i just have a problem with that. it don't matter what we are, a black person does, they always see the bad. they don't see the good. and, see, it's good in everybody. it's just that the news, they highlight what president obama said that the police acted stupidly. not that he was stupid. but what he did to that man was stupidly. and mr. gates had the right to respond whatever way he did.

because i felt like that police officer went into that house feeling that mr. gates was an intruder. not that he was capable of owning that house, sir. host: all right. we're going to have to leave it there. one more response from twitter. host: harlem, in new york. juanita, on our independent line. caller: good morning. i think president obama was right. he had every right to say something about that. he, himself, has been profiled as a dark-skinned person. whatever. it doesn't have to be an african-american person. dark-skinned person. they don't care. the thing is professor gates was in his house. and the president reiterated that. you've got these neocons calling

up saying that professor gates has done nothing wrong or president obama has done something wrong. neither is true. these white folks know about racism. they know about lynching us. they know. they know. you can pass by a street here in harlem and see where they used to dress up to go to a lynching party. and they'll pick somebody and have their picnic baskets there spread out to lynch somebody. host: is there a way to move forward as far as your discussion? caller: we can move forward. but those people who are staying in that same mode who think president obama has done something wrong, they've got to move forward. host: on our "newsmakers" program, we got to speak to the minority whip from south carolina. one of the issues that reporters spoke about was the gates incident. >> and remember that we can be no more no less than what our

experiences allow us to be. having said that, i would say that i think the police officer in this was responding to a call. the question to me was if this was a neighbor calling, what was the neighbor's role in all of this? did the police officer take into account that the neighbor may have over reacted? so there are so many variables in all of this that i think that nobody is -- certainly the police officer has a record that seems to be admirable. i've watched him on the tv. he seems to me to be a good guy. i think i'm a pretty good guy. but there have been times when i've over reacted. and that is just human nature. host: again, if you want to see that full interview with james

clyburn, the minority whip from south carolina, sunday morning right after this program at 10:00. and you can catch it again at 6:00 in the evening on c-span. one more call, great falls, virginia. fred on our republican line. caller: yes, good morning. please, i have two points, let me finish. first, thank god mr. obama is a good president with a new idea. the old problem, he put his finger on it. what is the freedom? if you cannot talk free? and the point is, he's trying to say something new and nobody wants to let him because it's something new. it's always difficult to hear something new. and the other point is the police, when they become policemen, they think they can

judge, a rest, prosecute us. on the minority, 26 years being here, i had my dog with no leash and they arrest me because i didn't have i.d. they charge me $1,600 because i didn't have a leash on my dog and they didn't like the way i talked to them and respond to them. host: so out of all of that, thenning and especially since -- then and especially since we've been talking about the events of the last couple of days about race, how do we move forward and what do you think about that? >> thank god he put his finger on some old problem. i hope he starts to move something, because this is an old problem. and nobody has gowts say something. host: we'll leave it there. we appreciate all of you who commented this morning. the president and others have said that the events of the gates incident has detracted from the eshoos of health

care -- eschewk of health care. as they talk about the various wranglings going on as far as negotiating health care legislation. talk to us on where we stand as of late. jennifer has been following this. out of all of the events of the past week, where do we stand as far as legislation being passed? guest: oh, man, that's a $64 million question. we're definitely farther back from achieving that bill than they were earlier this week. on friday we saw democrats fighting with democrats, trying to get this bill through the house. we saw the blue dog democrats and henry waxman and house leadership trying to negotiate a deal friday with one of those

days in the house. they say passing legislation is like making faucets, nobody wants to seat details. friday was one of those days where it got really messy. each party was accusing the other of trying to stall the negotiations. but they ended the day saying they're going to go back to the drawing board and try to come up with a deal on monday. they're trying to pass a deal to get the bill through the house energy and commerce committee without having to kind of change the rules and scoot around them to get the bills to the house floor directly. guest: i think i read a quote this morning saying if nothing is available by monday or tuesday, the likelihood of having something done next week is greatly in question. guest: it definitely. the speaker of the house will give members 48 hours to look at a bill before they have to vote on it. but they're leaving town on friday. so they kind of have to still put this together by wednesday.

but it's not even through a committee. one of the last committees yet. so it's going to be very tough to get this done next week. steny hoyer said on friday that they may extend the session into the following week or wait for votes until after they get back in september. host: the photos this morning that i referenced going into this had henry waxman standing by mike ross. the discussion has been going on between democrats and leadership to those who identified themselves as moderate or blue dogs. what has to be said to those to get them online with us? guest: well, at this point they're an completely separate pages. and friday really highlighted how far apart they are. one of their main things is the public plan. the blue dog democrats do not want a public plan that states on medicare rates. they said those rates are not divided equally flout the country -- throughout the

country, where as other democrats want to go with that route. and that's going to be a big bridge to gap. they're just giving themselves until monday or tuesday to get that sorted out at this point. those may offset other issues as far as controls, you know, how this plan will be structured. so friday when they left town, everybody expressed confidence that they're going to come up with some kind of compromise by monday or tuesday. but it's going to be a significant challenge. host: on monday, a caucus is planned to work through this bill? guest: well, yeah. they're going to continue negotiations. if they can come up with a compromise, they're going to continue through the markup process on monday or tuesday. it's going to be an interesting couple of days. host: house energy and commerce didn't meet the markup this week. is there anything scheduled for next week? guest: no. they're going to continue these negotiations. and henry waxman, the chairman, said he hoped to have a markup

monday or tuesday. you know, like i said, they're really far apart on these issues. it's going to be interesting to see if they can come together in just a couple of days. host: jennifer haberkorn covers this issue for the "washington times," washingtontimes.com if you want to read her writing and other stories that they have. thanks for your time this morning. guest: thank you very much. host: for another perspective on health care, joining us from philadelphia is richard moore. he is the state senator, democrat there. also served as the chairman of the joint committee on health care financing. senator moore, could you talk about -- a lot of people look to your state as far as a model for how a state deals with health care, issues in the state. could you briefly tell our audience your role in what is done in mases mass as far as melt care is concerned? guest: well, i've been directly involved with the crafting of the legislation.

back in 2005 we finally passed and governor romney, at the time, signed into law in 2006 and implementing it that year. senate president terry murray and i have been following it very closely in fact, we added an extended versions he would call health reform two, last year, focusing really on doing more with quality improvement and cost containment. but it's been one that -- it's still a work in progress to some degree. but so far we think very successful. host: and so for those who have insurance, what does it do? and what does it do for those who can't afford insurance? guest: well it does several things. first, we require it as the discussion in washington is to have an individual responsibility mandate. everyone has to demonstrate when they check off on their income tax form that they have health insurance or that they were not able to find an affordable plan. and actually the people can go

on the connector, which is similar to the exchange that's being discussed in washington. there's a formula that develops what is an affordable plan. the connector manages that if someone cannot find an affordable plan, a couple of things happen. if their income is below 300% of the federal poverty, they can get a publicly supported plan. for 150% they get totally covered by the government plan. it's a sliding scale, up to 300%. but if it's above that, the connector has plans that they the private sector competes. and actually, they kind of issue like a good housekeeping seal of approval on the plans meeting the credit or coverage requirement, having all of the right things that we think are needed to have a good solid health coverage so if they can't find in that mix an affordable

plan, they can seek a waiver. if the formula shows that they don't have an affordable -- an ability to afford the plans that are out there, they can seek the waiver in those cases they still resort to the emergency department for care, which is what we've been trying to get away from. we have seen a significant reduction, a 40% reduction, in the use of the emergency departments for free care. we're up to 97.3% i think was the latest number of insured. so it's a really -- relatively small number of folks that don't have insurance. those, they need to have waivers in order to avoid a penalty on their taxes. host: how do you pay for this? guest: in starting back with governor dukakis in the late 1980's, he advanced a major health plan. a lot of it got repeeled because it was too expensive when he left office. but one of the key pieces was an agreement with the private sector to fund what we called

then the uncompensate order free care pool that paid for the cost of someone showing up without insurance at an emergency department. it was the business community, those folks that self-insure, kicked in a significant portion of money. the insurers put money in, the hospitals put money in and the state a much smaller amount. it had by 2005 when we started our effort to change the equation, we had over $1 billion that we were spending on free care. and the decision was made then that why don't we rather than pay for free care as such, why don't we help people get health insurance so they can get primary care? they can have a regular doctor, get their checkups, get their vaccinations, whatever they need and be less likely to show up in the emergency department where it's much more extensive care. guest: richard moorks our guest for a half thundershower talk

about that state's -- half-hour to talk about the state's health insurance. also, we have a special fourth line set aside for those who live in the state. and if you want to comment on your health care system. comment or ask questions of our guest. 202-628-0184. senator, could you tell us then -- you talked about homentsz, how they react -- hospitals, how they reacted. what about insurance companies, how they reacted initially to this proposal and how have they faired under it? guest: actually, they've been very supportive and cooperative. maybe one difference that we have in the northeast that isn't true across the country is that all of our major insurers, blue cross, which is about half the market, are all non-profit. so they don't have stockholders to try to please.

they really put whatever technically -- you know, if it's not a profit, but whatever surplus they have back into improving the quality of care. so it's a little different system than across the whole country. across the northwest is a similar version. they have been very supportive. it expanded their customer base. of the 430,000 new insured that came about in the last two years, about half of them are totally private. about -- i think it was 130,000 were people who were working for an employer who provided insurance coverage, hadn't taken it up for whatever reason. many of them were younger workers and thought they would live forever so they didn't think they needed health insurance. but with the insurance mandate they were required to do that so they took advantage of their employers' plan. and to their credit, the private sector, the employers are now paying in many cases about 75%

of the costs of these newly insured of their employees, have continued that. there's been very little slippage. so the insurers have stayed with it because they get the broader base. we have probably about 50,000, 40,000 to 50,000, people who don't get it through their employer but are now privately paying for it. they can afford the rates that are there. interestingly, the insurance rates of the plans of the connector manages have only gone up this year a little over 4% which is about half -- a third in some cases, of what the premiums' increases have been generally. so it seems to be working quite well. the issue has always been a lot of the critics say, well, it's costing a lot of money. well, it's not costing a lot of money. the revenue is dropping in the state so that's been a problem of our ability to keep subsidizing. but it's not that the costs have

increased anything more than it would have. i think the case can be made that the health care increases have been somewhat less because we're not sending as many people through the emergency department which is a higher cost health care. and we're keeping them healthier. there's some really heartwarming stories of people who hadn't gone to a doctor because they didn't have health insurance, knew they couldn't pay the bill. when they've got the health plan that the state had passed, finally went. in several cases they had been diagnosed with cancer. one actually third stage colon cancer. and they were able to get treated. they believe the ability to have insurance saved their lives. host: our guest is with us. we'll take a few calls. first up, south plainfield, new jersey. debra on our democrats line. you're on with senator richard moore. caller: thank you for taking my call. i love your show. i wanted to ask a question regarding the fact that i'm a middle class woman a white

woman. i am insured through a very highly known corporate american company. my salary was recently cut by 5%. all of the employees across our company had their salaries cut because our c.e.o. decided that we weren't making enough profit. so people like me who make under $60,000 a year can barely afford in a state like new jersey to keep our home, our health care and to pay the co-pays that we have to pay. my question has to do with how do we get the doctors across this nation to come up with a system where they regulate their own charges without having the government tell them to do so and have them become reasonable about what they charge in their offices and in their hospitals, things of that nature so it helps people like me to be able to afford our co-pays. i have united healthcare. i can't afford it. it's not the best coverage anymore. every year the coverage comes down a little bit more.

they provide you with less coverage for really important things. i pay $40 in a co-pay just to get a pap sneer once a year -- pap smear once a year. that seems highly unreasonable to me when i'm already giving them over $100 per month to support my own health care plan, not to mention what my company is putting in to support that health care plan. host: senator moore? guest: actually, there are several factors we're addressing in massachusetts. i think the president and the congress are wrestling with to try to resolve within some kind of a national plan. around $60,000 -- i haven't looked at the latest chart, but i think it would be very close to if not within the 300% of federal poverty that would in massachusetts qualify you for some degree of a subsidy. in addition, you would be looking at in massachusetts, the second bill that i mentioned, the quality and cost containment

bill, we will be starting this fall a practice where the medical community, the providers, the hospitals primarily and the insurers each have to demonstrate the ration y'all for -- rationale for any increases of either the price of the service or the premium of the insurance and premium in other costs of insurance as well. they have to do that publicly. the attorney general of massachusetts can and i'm sure will challenge any increases so it really gets to the bottom why are these costs going up? is it just they feel like it? can they document that it's going up? a lot of the cost increases are negotiated between the pay or the insurer, usually. and the provider. we're going to be focusing very much on the negotiations to make sure they have thinking of the consumer, not just their own operations. i think we will have the ability to review and find the cost drivers, actually in the system.

now, if you weren't in that 300% of poverty and qualify for subsidy and you were just a bit over somewhere, in whatever amount that would be, would you go on in our case the connector or nationally they call it an exchange website and go through the cost calculations. and if you were found to not be able to have an affordable plan it would be granted a waiver. and then you wouldn't be penalized it wouldn't be the best care in a sense because you still rely on emergency departments. but it would be at least a care without penalty. host: we had a viewer asking on twit better that 300% below poverty. what is that figure? in a sense, could you give us how that works in real world numbers? guest: i don't have the latest chart it gets revised every year by, i believe, the commerce department. it's around $60,000 for a family of four. for a single individual, it's probably

around $27,000, $28,000. guest: next call, toledo, ohio. dave, on our independent line. caller: yeah. how are you doing? i just wanted to talk about this insurance issue. about congressional insurance and how they got the best insurance that anybody could ever wish for. and the thing about it is their insurance is flawless because, first of all, they're getting it through us, the taxpayer. we're the ones that's providing the great health care and the lifestyle that they live with the salary that they get paid and everything else. yet they're saying to us that we're not good enough to have the same kind of health care that they got. but why not? we're the ones that pay for them. and if you think about it in reality, it seems like those guys, congressmen and the rest of those guys, are the ones who you might as well say that are on welfare, soaking the system. we're the ones that are suffering for it. guest: senator moore, could you apply that to your own

experience as far as what legislators in massachusetts get? guest: we don't get that great a deal. but it is a good deal. but we get what all the state employees get. it's a system where depending upon when you started with the state, if you either pay now under the current budget, you pay 20% of the cost or 25% of the cost. and actually, that's about a standard, i'm told, by our insurers that most businesses are paying around 70% of the cost. there are a lot -- you can't get a group insurance plan as a business if you pay any less than 50% of the match with the employees. i think the president and others have talked about the federal plan being a very good plan. they want to extend that to others. i think they're using that as one of the models for what they call a public plan as to whether that would be the kind of benefits that would be available to those who could not afford a

private plan of their own. host: do you have direct discussions with president or his team or secretary about your plan in massachusetts and how that could relate to a larger plan? guest: we had a leader meeting back in early march. i had an opportunity to raise that with the president, offer the states not only of massachusetts but vermont, maine, and minnesota and others, over the last few years have been moving ahead in the absence of federal action, have been working to extend health insurance to our members. we've talked -- i was at a meeting at the white house about six weeks ago attended by secretary cebelius in discussions with her about that. i know they've looked at the massachusetts plan and they've will the executive director of our connector authority has been in i think fairly frequent discussion with them. i know that we have actually on senator kennedy's staff, john mcdonogh yo, who was a former

representative. he's been on for a little over a year now on senator kennedy's health staff. he helped with us in writing the bill in 2006. so he's very familiar with the issues. one of the concerns we have, actually, in massachusetts and i know i've talked to folks from vermont and maine and the other states that moved ahead, was that while we are honored and think that they're on the right track with things like the exchange to help people find the insurance that we think they're on the right track with an individual responsibility mandate for those who can't afford it, for an employer mandate, mandate for employers to be part of the action. and if they don't provide health insurance will at least contribute something toward the cost of the uninsured. things like that that are working very well. one of the concerns we have are some of the ways -- and i think

a lot of people perhaps do. some of the ways the plan might get paid for. they've talked about, perhaps, having a maintenance of effort requirement for maintaining medicaid enrollment. well when we started our overreach, it was three years ago, we've enrolled over 100,0 100,000 who were eligible but for some reason had not signed up. a new state starting out that had not done the same aggressive enrollment activity that we and a number of other states have done with those states starting anew would get 100% for the next five years under some of the plans. we'd like to see a little fairness in how the plans get paid for. when we did health reform, massachusetts, one of the linchpins was continued federal funding to help us.

we had a waiver through what was called an 1115 waiver with medicaid. it was up for renewal. the feds were pushing us to pay for it a little differently. in working largely, i think probably the key with senator kennedy in working with then the bush administration and more recently now with the obama administration, in helping to negotiate a waiver of the part of passing our plan, the bush administration agreed that the plan we had was to try to expand insurance coverage, the right way to go. and they granted the renewal of the waiver at the time. subsequently, still with the bush administration, governor patrick in massachusetts negotiated an even more generous plan. and the federal government said to us, well, they're willing to give you the increased revenue that you need, and we're going to give you increased flexibility because we don't have an annual cap for the three years. it's a three-year cap to maintain. so the administration in boston

has more flexibility in how we deal with our -- administer our program. they said we're giving you that because you said -- you did what you said you were going to do. you passed a plan. you have expanded dramatically insurance coverage. we have the insurance mandate. we have one for auto insurance, too, but we do much better with the health insurance mandate. frankly, we're 97.2% insured. i think we're down in the high 80's or low 90's with people driving around without auto insurance. host: we have a chance to hear from lynn, massachusetts. bill on our democrats line. go ahead. caller: good morning. i appreciate your time. my question, actually is, could you try to dismiss some of the horror stories that have been told by the republican party on c-span which i see and watch every day faithfully as many horror stories about waiting lines and not allowed to have this operation and that

operation. could you please kind of dismiss some of them horror stories that have been told by the republican party on c-span? like i say, i watch it every day faithfully. there are many stories coming out about our state. i appreciate your service, senator. and i'll hang up and listen. guest: actually, i don't know of any waiting lines for care. in fact, we've expanded the opportunities for care. we've now enrolled so many people, that one of the issues is getting them the primary care providers that we need. we have in fact, established a plan to help encourage more physicians and particularly nurse practitioners to enter into primary care. there haven't really been waiting lines. there are some physician that closed their practice to new enrollees, whether they're of a subsidized plan or not. they want to contain the size of

their patient base. but we are really making the connector, doing the job of connecting. people -- the health insurance, also helping them to find primary care providers. the issue has not been -- i think they're using -- they may be talking about in some foreign countries that are called single payer or the government paid for program there have been some waits for particular types of treatments. and some people end up coming here. i've talked to the ben jump health mien -- bell jam health minister. he said they get people coming from england who don't want to wait for procedures. england will pay something toward it but the individual has to have the funding to make up the difference. but massachusetts, as far as providing care, has not been a major issue. like any state in the rural areas, the western part of the

state, cape cod, there are fewer providers to deal with. everybody wants to live in the boston area it seems. and one of the things that we're doing with our funding to help expand primary care is to encourage in fact require, people who we help to pay down their medical debt when they get out of medical school. we want them to work in area that are under served. one the issues we find that the health reform hasn't solved yet, we're hoping that if the federal government is successful, they might look at this as well. is that while we have probably in massachusetts one of the highest per capita numbers of primary care physicians compared to other states, they're not always available at the time you need them or you think you need them. and in fact, sometimes even a primary care physician will, when called, will say we'll go to the emergency department and i'll check in with you the next day. we need to discourage that sort

of thing. we need more availability in the evenings, on weekends. so part of our incentives we're looking at now, encouraging people to encourage the providers to be available essentially round-the-clock. obviously some of the physicians want their quality of life so they would not get the bonuses in payment if that were the process we moved. host: texas, jim on our republican line. caller: yes. thank you for taking my call. i just had a question. i have followed the health care debate pretty closely. i've read, and it didn't come from republicans, i've read from your own newspapers that it's health care that you have up there that's been kind of a mess. it's cost a lot more than what you all thought it would. and you're going to either have to raise taxes to make up the shortfall. and i even heard the comment the other day that pat riley was going to run for president, they better hope that they don't look at his health care plan that he

got started in massachusetts because he could hurt. and i would just like to know if you can tell me how much more has the health care cost than what you all projected. thank you. guest: actually, we have a great resource in the source of the massachusetts taxpayers foundation, which is an organization that has a great track record of doing economic analysis and tax analysis. they are largely funded by support from th business commun. they have a good solid research base. they have recently had on their website -- you can find their research where they look at the costs of health care. and the reform, they indicate, has not really impacted the cost of health carat all. health care at all. we still have the cost of health care, not so much the cost of reform. that's what we're working on

like everybody else is. the health care costs have gone up nationally. they've gone newspaper massachusetts, too. -- up in massachusetts, too. we have seen an increase over the last three years that we can perhaps attribute to the number of uninsured and being now covered of about $88 million a year compared to education reform which we passed in the mid 1990's. that's gone up over $150 million a year. over the same period of time. so we're holding the line better than we are in education, certainly. every state's wrestling with the same thing. i would certainly not characterize the activity of the health reform as you suggest. i would say it's been a terrific success. one of the issues we have is that people who have criticized, usually come from two extremes of the philosophical spectrum. those who believe in what's termed the single payer,

basically a totally government-supported health program, don't like it because it isn't single payer. it's still based on employer-based plans with a significant private sector input, both from employers and from individuals who can afford to purchase the plan. and then there are the folks that are more of on the other end of the spectrum, kind of the libertarian philosophy that believe any government influence is too much, and therefore because there is some government influence in regulation, that's a problem. but if the support and the polling that's been done throughout the last three years, by several respected polling organizations, put public support at around the 75% level and even higher. if you say should we repeal it, there's a strong reaction to that. so i would characterize that as what you're reading, whether it's whatever the source, oftentimes you need look at what their philosophy is when they're

presenting it. host: massachusetts on our independent line. caller: senator, i'd like to thank you for your service and your leadership in bringing this forward. i do have a couple of concerns. one is the affordability of our plan for the under employed. i have a family member who is on the state insurance right now and works, due to the present economy, only two part-time jobs. so it doesn't have employer-based insurance. and it is becoming a burden for him. and secondly, certainly in massachusetts, we have a luxury of some of the world class health care facilities and doctors. and there has been a concerned voice about a potential brain drain should we go to

government-paid health care and reduce the economic benefit that some of our leading minds could enjoy as leading physicians. so i'd like to you address that. and once again, thank you for your service. and i look forward to meeting you again. >> thank you very much. i think if you try to take the last part of that as, first, the brain drain. one of the physicians, we are fortunate have now four medical schools is in the state. three of them in the boston area and the university medical school in worcester, that we are working very closely with particularly the state university but with all of them on trying to encourage physicians to go into primary care. my own physician who was at the university of massachusetts, the clinical side of the medical school, teaches primary care. he's the chief of medicine. and he says, you know, when he

asked new students and medical students to think about going into primary care, their response kind of is, well, you know, we could go into primary care and maybe make about $150,000 a year and work pretty hard or we could go on and become a specialist and make maybe $400,000 a year and not work quite so hard and have a little bit of a quality of life. we need to look at how we pay for primary care in particular but care in general. we have just completed one of the requirements the legislature asked the administration to do last year in our quality and cost bill. it was to look at how we paid for care. and can't we pay for it more ficialtdly and get better quality -- efficiently and get better quality out of that? the payment -- it's been recommended that we move away from service where doctors are basically required every 15 minutes they really need to see another patient in order to get

paid. what they want to earn and need to earn to make a living at some of their own costs so we're looking at really going to a global, what's called global payment, where you're paid really for the outcome. whatever you have to do that's within the standards of medical practice to provide care and is adjusted for risk and things of that nature. how to better pay for care of the patient not just the number of patients you see. and we're seeing that, experience with that payment system, seem to be working pretty well in north carolina and other places, parts of the country in the midwest and minnesota and michigan areas. we're moving more in that direction of how to pay for care in a way that will reward the physician for doing the right thing. host: i'm sorry to interrupt. we have time for one more call. gainesville florida, independent

line. caller: yes. thank you for taking my call. i wanted to see if the massachusetts situation perhaps answers some of the common objections to a public health care plan. one, calling it socialism. working as a nurse for 10 years and in a major hospital in central florida, one that's called a magnate institution. some people understand that label. i've seen how health care decisions are being made, the level of care and the length of stay being decided according to insurance guidelines instead of medical criteria. and this is not what we should be doing. i think that, you know, it's not socialism. and if it is socialism, it's not as bad as neglectism. the congress has enabled the health care industry to become slave masters of the american population. host: we'll leave it there. senator moore? guest: we've been working very closely with efforts.

the issue is not just extended stays but one of the major things that we in our state and a number of the other states are focusing on now and really should be part of an international plan is a serious evident infection control. too many people get sicker while they're in the care of the health care facility and not sometimes -- so infection throws a major theams requires constant effort by all the providers as well. and we're really looking at how dofn people get readmitted -- often do people get readmitted. they leave usually too soon and don't have the right guidance and sometimes don't follow the right guidance. so patient education is important to prevent riyadh missions. that'missions.

just as right now, congress last year agreed to those who were using health information technology in prescribing. the federal government is already putting a sizeable portion of money into that system and needs to continue that. that helps to us coordinate care. if everybody has electronic patient record if it is secure and different providers can utilize that, that will help keep people out of hospitals and help make sure that the care is delivered at the best quality. host: massachusetts state senator richard moore, chairman of the health care financing committee. thanks for your insights on how your state deals with health care. the latest issue of "time" takes a look at the final days of president bush and vice president cheney and their relationship. massimo calabresi will join us next to talk about this story and take your questions. we'll be right back.

>> later today watch a interview with frank mccourt talking about "angela's ashes" today at 6:00 p.m. eastern on c-span 2's "book tv." >> this weekend on "afterwards," author harry stein tells how his life has changed since crossing the political spectrum from left to right. for the entire schedule go to booktv.org. >> sunday, harvard law professor henry louis gates jr. from a 2006 discussion on the african-american experience, 10:00 p.m. eastern on c-span2's "book tv." >> "q& qsa" sunday, susan jaco

jacoby. at 8:00 p.m. eastern and pacific on c-span. >> "washington journal" continues. host: of all the stories going on in the world, the cover of your magazine this week looks at the former relationship between the former president and former vice president. why is that? guest: well, we had spent some time speaking with the officials of the bush administration about a fight that had taken place right at the end of the administration over whether or not to pardon cheney's former chief of staff. we managed to pull together a story that not only shows some interesting tension between the president and the vice president in their final days but also says something about how they've behaved since leaving office. guest: and the fight, as you describe it was over scooter libby. guest: that's right.

the former chief of staff. very powerful and influential man in the white house. especially at the beginning of the administration when the architecture of the war on terror was being conceived and implemented. he's a very smart man, very close to cheney. people called him cheney's alter ego or cheney's cheney. and he had, of course, become entangled in the controversy and eventual investigation over the leaking of the identity of a covert c.i.a. officer in the period right after the beginning of the war in iraq. host: what eventually happened to scooter libby? guest: scooter libby was convicted march 6, 2007, after a lengthy investigation of two counts of false statements, one of perjury, and more importantly of obstruction of justice. in the leak investigation.

he was not convicted of being the leaker, the person who leaked valerie plame's identity to the media, but of obstructing the investigation into that leak. he fought that verdict for a few months, but eventually faced jail time. at that point president bush stepped in and commuted his sentence but left the conviction and some of the other penalties in place. host: which goes to the genesis, the main crux, of your article as far as what happened in the final days of what the vice president wanted from the president. guest: that's right. vice president felt, in words that he used repeatedly throughout this debate, that not issuing a full pardon to scooter libby was equivalent to leaving bodies on the battlefield. he felt and argued that libby had been wrongly convicted, that it was a case of faulty memory

or a case of he said, he said against another journalist who had undermind libby's defense, and that bush and the administration owed it to libby to pardon him. the president, on the other hand, and reporting, found most of the staff, including the white house lawyers, political advisors and others felt that the president had already done enough in commuting the sentence and that libby had, in fact, broken the law and deserved to have this conviction stay in place and not to be pardoned. host: if you're interested in learning more about the relationship between the former president and the former vice president in the final few days of the administration and want to ask our guest about it -- also, you can send us tweets via twitter and e-mail us.

one of the things that you talked about or at least wrote about was, i guess, well, could be described as the passion the vice president had over this issue. guest: that's right. we heard from a variety of people throughout the president's advisors of the intensity with which cheney pursued this issue and the depth of feeling. one senior bush aide said he had never seen the vice president as exercised over an issue throughout the entire eight years of the presidency which says something given everything that this administration had gone through. he was on it from the moment after barack obama's election all the way through the final days of the presidency to the point where bush told him the week before obama's inauguration that libby would not be getting a pardon. cheney refused to accept the decision, argued back against

the president, showed his disappointment and disagreement, managed to have the issue brought back up over the final weekend and was, again, told that libby would not get his pardon the day before barack obama's inauguration. host: the news magazine has a graph of the various players. one of them is patrick fitzgerald. for those who may not remember, who is he? guest: he is the u.s. attorney in the northern district of illinois, chicago, u.s. attorney, seasoned prosecutor. he was appointed by the justice department to investigate the leak and then eventually was the lead prosecutor in the case against libby. he argued very passionately through the case that not only had libby made false statements but that those false statements had been, as they say, materially misleading in the pursuit of this investigation

and so had obstructed justice. and one of his famous statements in this case was that libby's actions had put a cloud over the vice president, and that that cloud remained there because prosecutors, thanks to libby's obstruction, had not been able to get to the bottom of what the vice president's role in the leak had been. host: i say all of that because a viewer asked via twitter that fitzgerald -- the viewer says that fitzgerald knew that richard armitage was the leak from day one yet continued his partisan investigation to hurt the bush administration. guest: this was one of the arguments that cheney made throughout. and that supporters of libby have made throughout. his case in response is, it doesn't matter what the origin of the case is, can you not lie to prosecutors and you cannot lie to investigators. and, indeed, interestingly, just about the most powerful statement that bush makes on this and in some ways the most

powerful statement he makes on justice throughout his entire presidency came in the commutation statement. the initial statement that he made, saying that he was not going to pardon libby but that he was going to commute the jail sentence. he said something along the lines of our entire system of justice relies on people telling the truth. and if somebody doesn't tell the truth, particularly if they serve in government and hold the public trust, it's particularly important that they be held accountable if they lie so that was the argument against the idea that the armitage leak had been the source and that it should have ended once fitzgerald realized that libby was not involved. host: how would you describe the reaction, emotion, what have you, from the vice president when the president wouldn't grant his request? guest: well, several people described it to us. what happened was both sides had made their case in an oval

office session about a week before the president and the vice president were to step down in mid-january 2009. a day or two later there was one of the regular morning meetings which the vice president still was present every morning. and at the end of the meeting bush pulled cheney aside, told him now for the second time that libby would not be getting a pardon. and cheney was visibly upset, people who saw him said. he voiced his disagreement and his disappointment with the president. people were sorted of struck by the fact that under these circumstances normally one says, thank you, mr. president, for your consideration. so cheney distinctly was not doing that. he was visibly disappointed, disagreeing, and argue back. host: indiana, victor, on our republican line. good morning.

you're up first. caller: hello. i already got my answer to my questions a little bit earlier. but here's another one. why did prosecutors keep on going after if he already know that armitage was the leak? secondly, why did it go on so long without the media or the prosecutors come out and say that it was armitage? because i remember during these times how they just tore up bush and cheney over this whole thing and let it ride. and the democrats had a field day in congress and in the senate over calling bush a liar, you know, the way they did. that's how obama got in.

because prosecutors -- guest: well it's an interesting thing. officials are sensitive on both of these points. first the idea that once fitzgerald realized that the leak -- well, one has to be clear of one thing. the article that identified valerie plame as a covert officer was published by robert novak. so the initial issue was finding out who novak sources were. and, indeed, as you say, richard armitage, deputy secretary of state, powl powl's deputy -- colin powell's deputy had spoken to novak and had identified plame to novak. however, what he was doing was part of a much broader effort that fitzgerald found was underway in the administration. and this is very well documented and, indeed, not denied by any of the senior administration officials involved.

in fact, one senior administration official said to me the fact that there was an organized effort to push back against joe wilson, valerie plame's husband, who had niche ain'ted this debate by publishing an article in the "new york times," the fact that there was an organized pushback against him does not show -- is not evidence of a conspiracy but rather is evidence of a white house staff that was not asleep. in other words, wilson, plame's husband, was saying things about the administration. the administration admits everyone involved admits that there was an organized effort to push back. part of that effort to push back included identifying valerie plame as wilson's husband. and that is documented in notes that fitzgerald found in the vice president's office and in libby's office. so that organized push by several people is now very well known. so his investigation wanted uncovered that this was going on on a broader level, then

continued to try and find what the original genesis of it was. was it only armitage who had done it on his own or was armitage acting as part of a larger, more organized effort, perhaps directed from the highest levels of the white house? this is what fitzgerald said in the testimony. so that was always fitzgerald' justification for continuing after he found out that armitage himself had been the direct leak for novak. why did we continue covering it in the media and why did the prosecutor continue going? this really was a case as the prosecutor described it of potential criminal acts. there's a law against the disclosure of a covert case officer's identity. and that this was something that had gone on at the high yefl levels of the white house. and the evidence didn't end up showing it.

that was a newsworthy thing. host: savannah, georgia. warren on our independent line. caller: yes. basically i am an independent for one reason. both the democrats and the republicans have failed us tremendously. i personally feel treason has been committed by both parties throughout the last probably 40 or 50 years. and most of the stuff that we're talking about is peanuts. what they're really trying to do is to bring the middle class to a slavery workmanship. so we come down on the chinese workers. i don't know why do you business with the communists right now. host: charleston, west virginia. joe on our republican line. guest: good morning to you guys. good morning to the writer there. the libby question remains the motive here.

if he was not pardoned and the vice president was upset, i think would determine in a larger scope. i would like to you respond. how the vice president's response will have a legacy on bush's or vice president cheney will have a legacy on bush's legacy. guest: i gotcha. interesting. first off, on where libby is now. he is not in jail, obviously, because his sentence was commuted. he did have a $250,000 fine. for felony conviction which prevents him at least in d.c. and generally speaking elsewhere, from practicing law. he was a lawyer, a well-paid lawyer before he came into government. he is at a conservative think-tank now, writing and doing research. as for the question of the legacy, it is an interesting question. cheney himself has moved from government to american

enterprise institute, a well-known conservative think-tank here in washington, and has been very vocal about defending the policies of the bush administration and the war on terror, be they detention of terrorists at guantanamo bay or enhanced interrogation techniques or torture in the process of getting information about terrorist activities. the legal documents. he's been defending the lawyers who wrote the legal documents, underpinning both of those programs. bush, on the other hand, has remained quiet in texas, not getting involved in the debates. so the question is -- and your question gets to the heart of the debate in the republican party, and particularly among officials of the administration. is it better to engage with the obama administration now in a debate about these policies or better to stand aside and let the record speak for itself and

let history judge? bush has taken very much the latter position. cheney feels if you don't fight every step of the way, including for all of the tenants who were involved in prosecuting the war on terror from the start, that you undermine the legacy. so there's a debate there. it's an interesting question. host: so how would you define the relationsship between these two men? guest: everyone describes the relationship as intact. they are friendly. they speak on the phone. there are degrees there of warmth. some people still describe hem as -- them as quite warm with each other. other people, it's more of a distant relationship. host: boynton beach, florida. phil. go ahead. caller: good morning. thank you for taking my call. i'd lifort like to ask your guest if he's familiar -- host: caller, are you there?

caller: the case for prosecution bush, cheney, others. my question really relates to statements made at the end of his work. one of which is, is he correct in stating that there is no statute of limitations on murder and once they have left office that any federal prosecutor could bring charges? that's my first question. the second question is, does the recent information that was brought forward by bob woodward in one of his books regarding the information that became available to the president december of 2002, three months prior to the war, indicating knowledge of the absence of w.m.d. does that lend weight to that case? and my third question is, does mr. cheney's position regarding

prosecutions reflect his own fears of possible prosecution? thank you. guest: well, these are all question that one has to address right at the start of working on any project like this. universally, everyone we speak with says there is no likelihood of direct prosecution of bush or cheney on any criminal charges at all. and even if they were pursued, the likelihood of it making its way anywhere through the courts is minimal. there is a large respect in the law for the office, certainly of the president and of the vice president and the constitution, of course, grants them particular powers. and the president in particular, has particular powers as commander in chief in time of war. it should also be said, of course, that no one has ever come up with any evidence of a criminal act being committed by either men.

i should say as a footnote that one gets the impression from speaking with people who are involved in this process and generally who were involved in any of the investigations that were launched during the bush administration period. the federal prosecutors tend to take their jobs very seriously. they tend to be nonpartisan to the extent they can. and they give the impression of being determined to track down crimes where they think there is evidence of them. and that gets to the earlier point about why fitzgerald kept going. woodward's nugget about absence of w.m.d. and some evidence of that. i don't think it's ever been the case that anyone thought the administration was looking at what they considered to be a clear-cut, unambivalent set of

evidence about what saddam hussein might or might not have had in the way of weapons of mass destruction. i think the criticism has generally been that within the sort of murky area of intelligence on iraq, no matter how strongly they tried to define the case, within the murky intelligence on iraq, they were always inclined to see more evidence, more proof of weapons of mass destruction than they might have been if they were coming at it from a different direction. so i think that the woodward revelation just adds more evidence to a judgment that was perhaps skewed in favor of the greatest threat rather than perhaps a little more dispassionate. and then on the last point, cheney's fear of prosecution. the people we spoke with generally felt -- and these are people who know cheney fairly well and have been in touch with him -- that he's not personally

afraid of prosecution. he does seem to care quite a bit about the potential for prosecution of his lieutenants. now, whether that is because it's strictly a matter of loyalty and he believes they should be defended for what they did and that he's the person who can stand up and fight to defend them, as many people argued to us, of his friends and some of his colleagues argued, or whether that's because he thinks that there is the potential for a larger entanglement once they get involved in legal cases. he may have to testify once you have to testify at the expense of the time-consume and potentially you can get yourself tied up in legal trouble that way. host: one more call. dallas, texas, independent line. we hear from dan. dan go ahead. caller: yes, hi. good morning. i'm an immigrant from romania. aim a former u.s. army combat veteran what can i tell you of the past eight years bush administration, we came close tock a dictator -- to being a

dictator state than we've ever been in our history. the fact that cheney does not agree with bush is just a con sternation of the cronyism that was perpetuated by the republican administration. and cheney does have absolutely no right to talk about this. because as a former veteran of the united states army, i know that the guys in iraq, they were sent to war without any -- the proper equipment, their benefits are being denied. yet at the same time contractors like halliburton and blackwater, you know, they're getting paid hundreds of thousands of dollars a year that are being dolled out to republicans buddies. and they have the audacity to come out and say that scooter libby, who was basically a thug, who had evidence in a criminal investigation, should be pardoned. i think these guys are outrageous, have no sense of shame. they are dishonoring the memory

of every u.s. veteran who fought for this country to make it to great. and it's just -- they should ab shamed of themselves. and they should all be prosecuted. guest: well, it's interesting about the question of contractors in iraq. it's been a theme that's cox up occasionally mongs -- come up occasionally among the veterans of the war. there's never been any indication of particular personal profit in this for cheney. and i would say that there are intense feelings on all sides of this. and they include on the vice president's side. you could not but feel intensely about these things if you are looking for ways to justify programs, for example, like the enhanced interrogation techniques that fairly universally now are viewed as

torture, at least among international human rights bodies and among many human rights lawyers in the united states. so the intensity of the feeling, what's most interesting, is that the intensity of the feeling is still there very much for cheney. he does not intend to stop fighting. so i think that this is an issue that's going to continue. host: the cover story of the final days of bush and cheney on "time." massimo calabresi our guest. thanks for joining us. guest: thanks for having me. host: we are going to talk about life sentences. the united states new report by the sentencing project takes a look at who is receiving them. we're going to discuss that in just a few minutes. before that, wanted to give you another look at some clips from our "newsmakers" program featuring representative jim clyburn of south carolina, the house democratic whip. and during the course of the discussion had a chance to talk about the major discussion and topic of the week, health care. >> you know, it's kind of interesting.

i'm a big fan of harry truman, my favorite president so far. i went out to his library a little over a year ago. and one of the things that i took note of was that when he left the presidency, the one thing that he said he regretted not having gotten done was health care for all americans. the speech he made to congress was 61 years ago. we just had a presidential campaign, all of the major candidates laid down health care plans. so we spent two years talking about health care plans in the president's election. when we took over the congress, we've had 79 hearings on health care. we have had over 45 hours of markup in three different communities.

now, why would -- when you have this kind of backdrop and have all of this activity going on, i don't understand that. the fact of the matter is we have been very slow and deliberate in trying to pull this legislation together. and i'm very pleased with the process that we have. now, what we have is a caucus that's very diverse. you got 51 blue dogs, 42 african-americans, 23 latinos and hispanic caucus, you got new democrats, progressive democrats, asian-pacific islanders. we have all of these caucus that we have to deal with. and that is what this country is all about. that is the diversity of this country reflected in our caucus. so i expect for us to go through a process that's a little bit different from what the republicans are going through because they don't have the diversity that we have.

host: you can see "newsmakers" twice tomorrow. right after "washington journal" at 10:00. and then you can also see it at 6:00 in the evening. our guest represents james clyburn of south carolina. we're going to change topics right now with ryan king. he's with an organization known as the sentencing project. and for those who may not know what is it? guest: we're an annan-profit research advocacy program working on criminal justice issues. host: and you just put ow a new report looking at who gets life sentences in the united states. what's the genesis of this report? guest: well, we have been very interested in understanding the use of life sentences. the bureau of statistics collects a lot of this data and had not collected it recently. we had known there's been a rise in the use of people being sentenced to life, even more importantly, people being sentenced to life without the option of parole. as there's greater discussion at the state and federal level about the size of the prison population, the amount of correctional budgets being dedicated to incarceration, we felt it was critically important

to get a graph of the number of people serving these sentence and discuss the discuss and implications. host: from looking at this, were the numbers a main concern or actually the people involved getting life sentence a concern? guest: i think both are a concern. anybody who studies the criminal justice system will not be surprised to know that there's racially desperate impact in life sentencing. in anything from arrests all the way through. we see these disparts so when you're talking about racial disproportions. in the numbers we have one in 11 people serving a life sentence. that's a significant number of individuals who have the possible to spend the reneighborhooder of their life so when we're talking about locking somebody up 30, 40, 50ers years, to the tune of more than $1 million a person, it's important for to us look back at this policy and ask the critical question, for what purpose are we dedicating these resourceses. host: 140,000 people?

guest: 140,000 people, out of 1.4 million people in prison. so it's a significant number of individuals serving a life sentence. when you break that down to people serving a sentence with life without parole a little over 41,000. so those are individuals who at no time will ever be released. host: 2/3 of those with life sentences are classified as non-white. 68 -- or 100 -- guest: of the 6,800 people serving life sentences are justify niles. a little more than 1,700 of those justify niles are individuals who will serve life without parole, never be released. these will people who could be sentenced to 18 and life and never get out. host: why are these people getting these type of sentences over others? guest: i think that's where we get into the important discussion. the fact of the matter is these numbers have risen significantly. part of it is the numbers. part of the fact that we've gone up from about 12,000 or so serving life sentences back in the middle 1980's to the

significantly higher number of individuals that are now serving up to 140,000. and this has not been a direct reflection of crime rate. these are decisions -- the prison population increasing is a function of two factors. one is more people going to prison. and then the second factor is people staying in for a longer period of time. the more people going to prison element has received attention within recent years. there's a lot more discussion of alternatives to incarceration, diverting the level drug offenders, to community treatment. the community courts. it's important and critical that that discussion continues happen. but at some point if we're going to talk about wrestling with the world highest rate of incarceration that we have in the united states by a long shot, then we need to also talk about sentence. what this report hopes to do is get that policy conversation going. host: what would your organization like to see -- i guess what goes into determining a sentence? guest: i think when we're sitting down and determining what an individual sentence

should be, there's two things. there's the front end of what their sentence will be and the back end. when they're released. >> think with life sentences, we don't disagree with the fact that these -- many individuals commit very serious crimes and in many cases will probably for the safety of themselves and community need to spend the balance of their life in prison when we talk about life sentenceses or particularly what we advocate for is an abolition of life without parole is notion that when somebody's sentenced 20, 25, 30 years old for a crime and they're a very different person when they're 40, 5060, those individuals should have the opportunity after the pastime to sit before a professionalized parole board, have the circumstances of their time of incarceration evaluated, program participation, how they've been behaving, and should that professionalized parole board determine at this point when this individual is in their 50's that it is appropriate to release them to the community that option should be available. that's taken away with life without parole. and what you have are individuals in many cases who are some of the most well adjusted people in prison,

people who have really, truly changed, become mentors to a younger population. these are people who could go out in the community and assist but are not permitted to because we have this blanket policy from the get-go that says once you're in, you're never getting out. host: the study of no exit, the expanding use of life sentences in america. if you want to read it, go to our c-span website. we've set up a link there from the sense toking project. but can you also ask our guest questions for the next half-hour. if you are a former inmate or family of someone currently serving a life sentence and you have experienced or have a question to have, we set up a line for you to call as well, 202-628-0184. one of the parts of the survey looks at states. most of these life sentences, some without parole, take place. as far as the high amount,

alabama, california, massachusetts, nevada, new york. what's important about those states that just identify. guest: those are states that in some cases have one in five of their prisoners serving a life sentence. we think that when you're talking about a 20% -- in the neighborhood of 15% to 20% listed serving a life sentence, that is a significant portion of the prison population. not every one of those individuals is going to spend the balance of their life in prison. those aren't all life without parole. but those are people because of what we know about the nature of parole and the political nature of parole, particularly the role that governors play in a lot of states, a life sentence even with the eligibility of parole is not necessarily going to result in a person being released from prison. in many cases we've seen governors. we talk about the report of prior governors and the current governor of california, for example, that have stepped in, had a blanket policy where they have overruled the parole board. even though the parole board has determined should be should be eligible for release, the

governor stepping in from a political nature and prior governor, gray davis, said that the only people that will be released from the life sentence will be people being released in a pine box. that type of political tough on crime rhetoric that goes on in a lot of states. so for many individuals, even when they are eligible for pa roacialg even when parole boards determine they can be released that doesn't necessarily equate to somebody being ee reese load because of the political -- being released because of the political obstacles. host: so what usually goes into that determination by these boards? what do they look at? guest: there's a whole range of factors. it's going back to what the particular crime was, the severity of it. whether it's a particularly high-profile crime, that is frequently considered in a parole board. victim's testimony, the impact of the crime on the surviving family members. and the community. and then, of course, how the person has progressed while they've been incarcerated so they have been behaving themselves, taking advantage of programming. have they taken responsibility

for the act and accepted that? and wanted to move on and sort of repented for lack of a better word? and so those are the many of the factors of parole boards. unfortunately, i would also lay in that the political element of it is there as well. when you release somebody from prison on parole, it is a major risk. whether it's somebody under a life sentence or something in for a low-level drug offense. it's major risk if that individual rio fendz if your viewers, i'm sure don't need to be reminded going back to more than 20 years ago, if the furlough situation. when somebody comes out that's a political liability for members of the parole board or for the governor and for members of the legislature if they felt the institute of policies so it is a major risk. that is a consideration that's go fog go in -- going to go in to making that decision. host: new mexico, you're first. good morning. caller: good morning. mr. king, i'd like -- it sounds like i'm speaking to united states senators this morning. my reason for calling you is

because i'm concerned about mr. madoff. from the tone of your voice, it sounds like he is going to get parole eventually in the future, i'm assuming. i just don't know. it sounds like you have a job that i'd never want to have. but do you think mr. madoff will be paroled? guest: mr. madoff's sentence is in the neighborhood of -- i don't know -- i don't remember the number of his sentence off top of my head. but i think there are a couple of factors. his advanced age plus the length of his sentence was a dig duration coupled with the fact that in the federal system there is no parole, there's not a situation where mr. madoff would be released at any time early outside of some extraordinary action. host: so even in that case you have someone of a celebrity in the sense of what he did. it doesn't matter as far as the person involved, parole or life sentences could pair out that way. what i'm trying to say is does a

person's fame determine the length or the ability to get parole? guest: not in the federal system that is life without parole. states like pennsylvania and louisiana in the federal system there is no life sentence. every life sentence is a life without parole sentence so that individual is going to serve the balance of their sentence before they will be eligible for release. and in mr. madoff's case, the sentence language escapes me at this point coupled with his advanced age. i don't think he'll be being released. host: are there states rethinking it because of the costs involved? guest: there are states certainly rethinking the use of life sentences. but i think that the conversation around correctional budgets, as i mentioned earlier, focused upon front end diversion for individuals and drug and property crimes. and i think because of the population, these are many individuals committed violent crimes. these are people who have had a significant impact on community and family. and because of the political nature of that this is an issue that i think once legislatures

sit down at the table and talk about cutting costs, they're less likely to want to wrestle with this than wanting to advance drug treatment. host: we hear from a former inmate. georgia, go ahead. caller: yes. good morning, gentleman gentlemen. i'm a former inmate, like i was telling a young lady who answered the phone. i've been out for two years. i had a drug charge. i was a business owner also. i had my own business, trucking business. i basically got locked up. and ever since it's been so so hard to find a job. and, i mean, i believe i paid my debt to society. i was locked up with a lot of guys who were violent. i was locked up with a lot of guys who actually were rehabilitating themselves like i was. i took the chance. and i took every class that i could, even though i knew how to fill out applications already. and i knew how to do a resume. a lot of guys didn't. actually helped in that form i was in there. i've been out for two years. i already know the economy is

all messed up. i'm neither democrat, republican. i'm just a guy who was a democrat who just doesn't believe in the system anymore. i believe that once you get rehabilitated, you're put in a box. and everybody just views you a certain way. and it's been very difficult, very very difficult. guest: your story, you be of unfortunate fatly -- unfortunately, is a common story. it's part of a broader set of policies. what we identify as the collateral consequences of having a felony conviction so for an individual who was incarcerated above and beyond their time that they're in custody and any obligation of being under community supervision after the custody, they also have barriers to certain services, for example. so whether it's having a drug con fiction, not being able to access benefits or federal student aid, for example, not being able to vote in a number of states vague felony conviction. or the difficulty in getting a job. they're both formal and informal barriers that are in that.

you have the formal barriers, certain industries where you are explicitly prohibited from working in law enforcement, for example, if you had a felony conviction. but it's the informal, the one that you're pointing out. that's the real tragedy. which is the stigma of having the conviction. when there's a stack of resumes, particularly in a tight economy but even when the economy is plush, and there's a stack of resumes on a person's desk, they're going to sit down and that employer has the opportunity to go through each one if they can identify either through your resume cover letter or through conversation that you have a felony conviction, even if it is against the law to discriminate based on a felony conviction, the fact is it's very difficult to demonstrate. and we know time and time again from people coming out of prison, it's very difficult to lock up a job. and what's most tragic about that is the two best predictors of success of people coming out of prison and staying out are being able to get housing and being able to get a job. and unfortunately we don't have a lot of policies in place that help encourage those things so we have a recidivism rate for people who are released, to

about 2/3 of individuals released from prison. they are rearrested within three years. and about half of them end newspaper prison within about three years. i would say a significant contributor to that is both they take advantage of that opportunity as well as a lot of collateral consequences. the obstacles such as which you described. so i applaud you in your efforts to find a job. and i also empathize with you greatly. host: a viewer asked, how much has the privatization of prisons with for-profit businesses have to do with sentencing. there's a follow-up question do child killers and murderers get life? guest: for the first question regarding private prisons, private prisons are a significant growing industry. at the state level they were bigger in the 1990's. sort of the growth has leveled off. because i think a lot of the indicators of the cost savings of private prisons have been brought into question. but i think although private prisons get a lot of the attention with regards to industries, lobbying for tougher

sentence, for example. the focus also needs to be upon, for example, correctional officer unions and law enforcement unions lobbying for it as well. as far as the second question regarding child murderers and people convicted of rape, there's a broad range that results in life. not looking at every single case but certainly those are the types of offenses that would be eligible in many states for a life sentence. host: on our democrats line, louisiana. guest: yes, sir. y'all had a saying on statistics that 2/3 of the people serving life in prison are non-whites. well, i do research. there's a source book and federal document. that number would be right for the number of violent crimes they commit. i know they commit 62% of the

aggravate add salt, 45% of rape. and, of course, that doesn't even count the mexican population. so that 2/3 of them income jail for life sentences, they generally have committed murder, rape and robbery. so those numbers are correct. guest: one of the contributing factors to the disproportion ats in life sentence and in all incarceration is the actual crime measures, crime commission. but it's a bigger story than that. it's not simply the fact that our desperate rates of incarceration, life sentence are in religious to the crime. there are other factors that go into that. it's not purely particularly when you look at other types of crime, in particular, the reflection is much about where those law enforcement resources are directed and where those crimes are pursued so to speak.

by law enforcement. those arrest rates reflect that and there are a whole host of factors from law enforcement patterns to court case processing, pretrial detention, defense, all of these things contribute as well as crime rates to these desperate rates of incarceration that we see. host: susan on our republican line from baltimore. guest: good morning. my question, i guess, is obviously horrific crimes, when someone commits a murder or rape or whatever it is that they're doing, that the courts have determined that they need to go to jail for the rest of their lives. in the states, how many of these states have this over population? states that do not have death penalty. because, you know, some states have a death penalty, then

obviously they're killing the people instead of keeping them. i'm just curious. because everybody, they have a lot of pure rights or against death penalty. we still have to do something with the people, life without parole. how does that play into your statistics? guest: i don't know specifically overcrowding figures, weighing those over capital punishment. i think that's what you're touching upon. but can i say that the use of capital punishment is not significant enough that it would have an impact on the prison population. so, in other words, what i think you were getting at is do states that use capital punishment more frequently have a lower rate of prison overcrowding because of their use of capital punishment? that is not the case. there's no better example of that than texas, a state with significant prison overcrowding. also the nation's leader of use of capital punishment. host: from michigan, to the line

we've set aside to hear from stories from former inmates. anthony. good morning. caller: good morning. how are you doing? host: fine, anthony. it says that you, yourself, are a former inmate and that your step-mother also got life? caller: yes. we was from a little town in illinois where 14 of us indicted on drugs conspiracy. it's a small little town. and the majority of everyone pleaded guilty. but by my step-mom not pleelding guilty and taken to court, she received a life sentence. since then -- this is in 1996. the laws, like rule 32, changed that. she was sentenced under what you call ghost dope. that there was really no dope. it was just on statements what people had made. and also the law that was in

effect against powder cocaine all is being reversed. the sentencing commission said that there was really no basis for the rational -- [inaudible] because the substance was the same. even powder cocaine and crack cocaine. but now she still is in prison under this life sentence where the courts have proved that the way they sentenced back then was really unconstitutional. guest: is this -- host: he's gone. guest: i was going to ask -- he's talking about the crack and powder disparity that's in the federal system. i believe that was what the caller was referring to. and the courts, although there has been a lot of movement around -- and this is just very quickly. there are differential penalties for crack and powder cocaine

based upon perceptions in the middle 1980's that one drug was much more severe than the other, crack cocaine being moch severe than powder despite them being derived from the same sentence. they have been proven incorrect and there's an effort to reform those laws to equalize the penalty. there was a bill passed under the subcommittee in the house that would seek to do that just this past week. and there's a bill in the senate as well. but those changes have not taken effect. statutory changes have not taken effect yet. the changes by the u.s. sentencing commission, of the guidelines amended somewhat but have not reformed them entirely. host: what's the connection between those who receive life sentence on drug charges? goich well, i think ther cases r people depending on the quantity of the drug, the value, or whether there were firearms present, or repeat offenders that could trigger a life sentence. so there are situation where's there are people in the federal system and in some states who are serving a life sentence for a drug offense. host: a viewer asked or says

that it would make more sense to put drug offenders in a rehab house. at half the cost it would fix the problem. guest: that is when talking about two functions of the growth of prison system. more people coming in, staying for longer peertsz. where a lot of legislative movement in the last 10 years or so particularly as the correctional budgets place a greater burden on the states, has been around diverting low-level drug offenders. we have mountains of research now that show that rehabilitation programs and diversion are far more successful than just locking somebody up and putting them in prison for a drug offense and not actually addressing what the underlying cause of the drug abuse was. host: georgia on the democrats line. caller: yes. i just wanted to ask your guest there, and i appreciate him being on today, about if he's looked at other countries. how are they in terms of length of sentences for the same crimes, the means of incarceration? the american prisons are really -- they keep people

sometimes inside a two-by-four cell for like 23 hours a day. people can't vote for a long time. when they get out, they have a hard time finding a job. it's like we're harking back to the puritan past who people who were adulterers had to have an a. if you had did anything wrong -- it's like we had to point out the devil so we could feel successful, like we had to isolate the person who was an evil man and point to him. how do other country dozen this? guest: that's a great question. the fact is, we are from arrest through to the use of capital punishment alone in the global stage in terms of our use of the criminal justice system. so for life sentence in particular, the simplest way to put it is no country puts more people away for more types of offenses, for more time than the united states. so the notion that an individual would go away for a life without parole is generally far in what

we would describe as our pure democracies. there's really -- the fundamental difference, and this is my opinion -- this is a much debated point in the literature. but the fundamental differences is what the role of incarceration is. to what use are we using life sentence? are they for rehabilitation, for deterrence, for punishment or purely attributive? i would argue that our prison system by and large its implementation at this point in time is purely retributive. this is a tragedy. prisons back to the birth of the nation were seen as a humane alternative corporal punishment. they were supposed to be used in the rarest of cases and as i tool for rehabilitation for people who hadn't been able to respond to other community measures of dealing with deviant behavior. but now it's sort of the first response for this broad range of

offense. nobody else in the world looks at prison like that. i think the model in western europe, for example is one of rehabilitation. one of identifying the problem, dedicating the resources, and seeing it as a real tool of change. maybe the culture in the u.s. was like that in the 1950's and 1960's where there was the model and belief that we could change people. but that has largely been aabandonned to the current point. host: oklahoma city, oklahoma. reginald, good morning. guest: good morning. how are you doing? caller: i am calling in reference to my younger cousin who basically had spent time in prison. they gave him 1,600 years to life in parole for accused possession of drugs. and i was wanting to know when they say life without parole and 1,600 years for a drug offense, through my research i have never even realized people have. like jeffrey dahmer and people like that have never had extensive sentence like that.

is there anything we possibly can do in the legal realm to see what we can do to actually get that sentence reduced or anything, something like that? guest: unfortunately that would require the assistance of an attorney to sit and look at the actual case files. that's something that i can't do remotely. i apologize. host: one more call from columbus, georgia. we hear from william, according to the information we got, he received two life sentences. caller: yes, sir. host: go ahead, sir. caller: i don't know what the public actually thinks or doesn't think. i'm not a scholar. but i'm one of the people who received two life sentences at 17 years old. i went in and got a high school diploma, college diploma. they make you go through a ton of counseling. they don't train you or teach you for real world when you get out. thank god i've never had a

problem since i came home. but you can't get jobs. you can't get a respectable job. like you said, if they read a resume it doesn't matter. people just look at it and no thank you. . caller: there is a group of counselors when you come close to your parole hearing, you are put in counseling to see if you are remorseful, if in fact you do deserve parole. it is hit and miss.

i have had to the real life sentences. >> how long have you been out? caller: i got out in 1978. i am married with children. i did have cancer when i made parole. tesco was that a contributing factor? caller: it makes you wonder. -- guest: you wonder if that is a contributing factor. caller: at you try to go and live a normal life. there is no normal life after prison, especially with a life sentence. it just does not happen. guest: thank you for calling and sharing your story.

this is only way to get people to understand what the process is like. secondly, his case is a perfect example of why we're talking about parole need to be an option. -- needing to be an option. i think that is a factor into many states at this point. what we're talking about is having a policy in place where individuals will be able to have a fair shake before a parole board. host: we hear from chronic honor democrats line. -- veronica on our democrats line. guestcaller: good morning. can you hear me now? host: yes, go ahead.

caller: faq for receiving my call. -- thank you for receiving my call. i have a question. my son has been sentenced to 40 years. he was involved in a crime in connecticut. it is known for a lot of credit politicians. -- crooked politicians. she had a public defender. he has 40 years for manslaughter. -- he had a public defender. he turned state witnesses against him in the case. i am trying to find out if there is anything he can be done?

key will probably be like 50 when he gets out. -- he will probably be like 50 when he gets out. guest: i am sorry to hear the story of your son. fortunately, that is a situation where you need an attorney to sit down and look at case files to see if there's a valid point of an appeal. it is not something i can answer sirte. host: when you put these types of surveys out, who do you hope to reach? guest: everyone from the president to people sitting down and watching the show and the general public. our goal is to get a recognition that there is too many people and president -- prison. we want to begin a, versus -- we

want to began his conversation. -- we want to begin a conversation. host: this report is weak to our website. -- linked to our website. thank you for your time. want to give you one more look at a clip from our newspaper -- newsmakers program. our guest is james cliburn. -- clyburn. >> i am still an advocate of regular order. last week i said that even if we can get this note done -- vote done today with that consensus,

i would much rather wait another week if it meant consensus. i am all for trying to do this consensus among our membership. one of the things that will probably be determined is whether or not there is more consensus in the larger caucus the and within the committee. -- than within t commithe d. i suspect the speaker will make that determination. -- than within the committee. those that you might not be willing to allow a small group to hold up this any further?

>> i guess he knows this committee pretty well. if he feels that and he says to the speaker that is what he thinks should be done, i think the speaker would have to make determinations. i will let my feelings about this be known at that time. what i would do is continue, as i have been doing. i had six caucuses to make sure that what we're doing fine savers with the broader caucus. -- finds favor with the broader caucus. host: right now we have the ceo and president of a major

company. if you had to describe how this administration was approaching immigration reform, how would you describe it? guest: they are just starting. i think it is possible that come fall immigration will be in the first year. host: earlier this week you had an all at -- had an article as why you explain this as a legalization only approach. can you give an explanation? guest: we're talking about immigration reform. the question is what do we need to do? in the broad spectrum, we want to take the people who are coming into the country illegally and have them come legally. they're coming mostly to work.

not too many are coming right now because of the economy. we think it is harder for them to come legally instead of the legally. you can't divide that up to people that are already here or people that are coming in the future. we were saying that legalizing the people already here is important. we do not want to have an underground population. it is also a really important that if we need new workers in the future, which we will win the economy starts to grow, then we will need future new workers. it would be better if they come legally to. host: and yet the political context of making that happen is something that hindered the last administration's approach. have you changed things this time? guest: latino vote has become a

powerful engine. in 2004, 17.5 latinos voted. in 2008, 11 million voted. democratic and republican politicians are watching this. they care about the same issues that we all care about, at the economy and health care. they take a signal when a politician does not like immigration reform. so for the latino voters that will be a driver of an getting it done the way it was not in the past. guest: you are asking for a legalization who want to work in america when some many are out. hosthost:guest: it would be betr

people if they could bargain in the workplace. that would be better and more americans. certainly when the economy starts to recover we will not reveal the not just them, but new immigrants. -- we will need not just them, but new immigrants. they're still going to be at the bottom when the economy starts to recover. host: isn't just those? -- is it just those people? host: it will be more work for the guy who built the restaurant. guest: there will be high level jobs that americans do not necessarily have the jobs to do.

those guys at the bottom and top actually sustain jobs for the middle. host: democrats can call into this number. republicans, the line is on -- the number is on your screen. we have also set in a line for immigrants. make those phone calls. we could also follow up on c- span twitter. specifically, how would you advise this administration going forward and looking at the previous administration on this issue? d.s.l. what i think they should do -- guest: we need proper enforcement. everyone is sick of the situation with the law is broken. the law is a joke.

we need tougher enforcement in the workplace and at the border. we want to make sure that people who come are legal. we want to create a system where there is no easy legal immigration. -- there is no the legal immigration. -- illegal integration. we want to look for americans for the jobs first, but if it turns out the americans do not want to do some of these jobs, we should allow the immigrants to come legally. you should be able to go and get a visa and come over. there should be a realistic quotas. the market will decide. right now, we already lets in

about a million immigrants per year. the question is, is that each of? -- is that enough? realistic quotas. enforcement -- realistic coslaws that we actually in force. the most important piece of those three pieces is the more realistic quotas going forward. otherwise you're going to end up with a new pool of unlawful people. host: is a concern that they would not identify themselves? hosguest: we would require themo come forward and pay a fine and admit they have been here and pay back taxes and jump through a lot of hoops.

i do not think you want them to say fine, we do not care what you did in the past. if we want the people to come forward and say i did something wrong and make good on it. we were saying do not leave out on the pieces. if you just do a couple, it will not work. you need to meet all three parts for to work properly. host: the mexican government also has to cooperate. guest: exactly. how are we going to know who these people really are? how are we going to process them? in the future, the next thing is to make sure the people go through the legal pipelines as opposed to running over the border again. we will need the mexican government help to do this. hoekstra -- host: your honor

democrats line. good morning. caller: you keep saying we need these eagles to become american citizens to take the jobs that we do not want. -- you keep saying that we need these eagles to become american citizens to take the jobs that we do not want. -- illegals. how is this going to help us at all by legalizing them? how will this help us? guest: i totally agree with you that americans should get the job first. in a downturn, and a good time, it does not matter. in this situation you are describing, that is unacceptable. i think having people who are legally would help to regulate that.

it is hard to regulate something that is happening illegal. i happen to think that in a lot of businesses we need these immigrants to do jobs. if should not be my guest for the government's guest. we need to create a system where it is fair and legal and americans have the first shot at any work. host: a viewer writes, why do want to legalize people who have shown contempt for our laws? guest: you do not want to encourage contempt for our loss. when the traffic light works, we expect everyone to stop at it. when the traffic light is broken and read all the time, most people would wait for a while and go through. i would argue that our immigration laws have been broken.

not only have the immigrants violated them, we have encouraged it. we have said there is a job here, if you can run by the guy at the border, we will let you work here and not bother you. it was kind of a complex situation. we do not want to say fine. we want you to make restitution on that. i think after a while when you have 11 million or 12 million people living in the country if you have never undergone a security checks, whose names we do not know, who have been working hard here, it is in our interest to figure out who they are and get them into security checks. make sure they are asking for in getting market wages so they can under which it cannot undercut american's. -- so they can not undercut american's.

i did not talk enough about this. verify is a program that you use in the workplace to make sure that the guy standing in front of you is legal as opposed to any legal. and-- illegal. that is a key part to any application. we have to get over the system. it is not quite as good as credit cards. it should be a card that use light. -- should be a card that you swipe. that is a key part of the answer. it should be even tougher. there should be tough penalties. once we have a system in place

where workers can come legally, players who violated should have to be punished. host: of florida, go ahead. caller: i am sick of you people saying these people are hiding under the shadows. the police are not bothering these people. i am so sick of that. they're taking these american jobs. they're cutting the jobs along the freeways. americans will do this. they are doing everything. the use the benefits of. -- use the benefits up. you people are letting them destroy the country. i am so sick of these people coming in here and taking these american jobs. i am retired. i do not need one right now, but

these young people do. few people need to get off of it and get back to the american people in this country. guest: there are some things i disagree with and some that i agree with. i think americans should get the first job at the job. anything an american wants to do if should be able to do it, not an immigrant. i think most of the immigrants here are very hard-working. they are innovators. they are bringing fresh blood and energy to the country. i believe they're doing jobs that americans do not do. immigrants have been what has made the country great. they brought the energy and muscle. they have been part of our growth and vitality. i think today's immigrants are doing the same thing. i do agree with you that americans should get the jobs first. when the economy is growing, we have jobs left over that

americans do not want to do. host: of raleigh, n.c. your on the line. -- you are on the line. caller: a lot of the immigrants that have been here illegally -- legally, are they going to be american citizens overnight? the community is upset about this and a lot of the hispanic been in these. you're giving them a free ride, when it took me years and a lot of money to do with the right way. i have a green card. am i going to become a citizen

automatically because i have a green card, or do i still have to wait for the process to take effect before i can become a citizen? host: how many years did it take and how much did it cost to? caller: i started at 6 years old. my mother and my father were 73 when i got my green card. i lived in a border town and it was awful. i could not go to school. once i got here, that is not fair. those guys came over. it took a lot of money. i cannot give you a monetary and not because i was very young. five years and a border town is a lot of money. guest: serine s. -- fair enough. i do not know what the bill will

look like this time, but the bill that we considered in 2006 and 2007 made the people who were trying to get legal weight and do it slowly and pay a fine and pay taxes and jump through a lot of hoops and weight so that they did not get ahead of anyone thwaiting now. these people were legalized right away so they wouldn't know where we -- so we would know where tehhey were. i hope that is how they do it again this time. it seems to be only fair. host: back in 2006 there were several rallies taking place. do you think those memories will factor into the discussions going forward, especially when it comes to policy making?

a lot of people remember these because of the influence they had. guest: some people thought these were a new political force. some people ask if that is the right theway to get there. this time there were a lot of latino voters saying this was important them. host: tracy honor democrats line from portland, 0 oregon. -- portland, oregon. caller: i had and a friend deported. the hospital had spent $1.5 million on his health care. it obtained a court order to allow them to deport him back to his homeland.

they said they deported him either legally -- deported him illegaly. my question would be, how much do you think the impact of trading for illegal immigrants would be? we overwork these immigrants and under pay them. this is just a catch-22. it these immigrants need help or get sick, how much would you think is affecting the health care budget? guest: this is why you would want a system that would work legally. if he came here on the be set into was working on a job that we needed to be done and then he got sick, then what we would want to take care of him. he would be paying taxes in

that case. it is better if they come legally and make the same wages that americans make. we would have an orderly system where immigrants make the same wages. that we know exactly who they are. they are paying their full weight and taxes. i do not know what you do if someone gets sick. $1.5 million is awful if he was not paying taxes. if we're going to need them, if it is true that americans do not want to work on farms or in meatpacking plants or do not want to work as busboys, then we should try to get americans first, but if there are not and the americans taking the jobs, then we want them to come legally and pay taxes.

we certainly do not want to get them welfare. host: 8 you are asked -- a view er says that he had four of his buddies fired so they could pay taxes. guest: american should not be getting fired and immigrants getting paid less. that is not good for the country. we do not want to work that way. something went wrong and that is a true story. host: one more call from jacksonville, florida. caller: i have a couple of comments and then a follow-up question. i will try to be as quick as possible. host: make the top comments

first and then your follow-up. caller: when something does not work anymore, you need to adjust your thinking and do it differently. our policy in this country used to be we would take immigrants. we wanted to build our country. we do not need any more people. we have 30 million people unemployed. if we had 20 million ease legal immigrants, they could have those jobs. for you to say that they will not take the jobs is ridiculous. its 20 million illegals were not here, someone would do them. -- if 20 million eagles were not here, someone would do them. -- illegalswere not here, someone would do them.

guest: it is not just a matter of numbers. we should have a system where employers have to try to find american workers first. if the system was illeglegal, we could enforce that system. if we had an air tight system and had realistic limits and made sure the people tried to find americans first, we should definitely do that. i believe there are still jobs that will go and see. -- that will go empty. if you're fired as an auto manufacturer, you are not necessarily going to go pick up apples and washington state. there are lots of jobs, including farm work, that even unemployed americans are not that adjusted in doing.

we should not be guessing. we should make sure the employers of look for americans. skype believe that even with the toughest rules, there will still be jobs. -- evei believe that even with e toughest rules, there will still be jobs left undone. caller: did ever occur to you to find the employer if you hire an illegal? i bet we would not have any illegals in this country if we did something like that. guest: i agree with her. i do not know the amount, and a system that works, we should have tougher penalties. senator schumer is working on a bill that which he wants to have done an early fall. you think they have a lot on

their plate, but i think is possible that they might be considering this and late fall. host: you can find an article at washingtonpost.com. thank you. we will be right back. [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2009] >> later today, what's a 1997 extended interview with the late franklin court talking about its pulitzer prize book. that is at 6:00 eastern. this weekend on afterwards -- after words, harry stein. for the entire schedule, go to

booktv.org. henry louis gates, jr. 10:00 p.m. eastern on sunday. susan jacoby on q&a on sunday. this is at 8:00 p.m. eastern on c-span. >> 26 minutes from now -- open funds for 26 minutes. -- open phones for 26 minutes. you can send us an e-mail. financial reform of the financial-services industry. a concern by many on the capitol

hill. the washington post talks about all the principal players in this case or at least this issue differ on their opinions on how to pursue this. we have pictures of each of them. treasury secretary timothy geithner, ben bernanke, john dugan, and sheila bair. and here is a little bit of what the article has to say. it says on the question of creating a consumer regulator, ben bernanke argued that the work the said it does supervising banks' complement its works protecting americans from potentially risky financial products. john dugan said he was wary that this would give states the right to regulate banks interactions with consumers, making it harder for national banks. geithner students -- seemed to

accuse them of protecting their turf. he said that counsel would play a role deciding which firms were sufficiently intwined to require special fed oversight. the varying discussions and talks on where to go as far as financial regulation is concerned. also in the metro section, a house lifting a ban on needle exchange programs. the funding would give washington, d.c., a tool in the hiv fight. this is a move that could give the district and other cities flexibility in their efforts to prevent the spread of hiv and aids. democrats line your on.

caller: i agree with everything that the speaker that you had said. and the only issue i have is when people use the term hispanic. they think mexican only. there is lots of south americans and mexicans that tried to cross the border at mexico. when people say hispanics that are taking their jobs, they have to realize it is not just mexican people that come over and take the jobs. of course if we were to hire people for the same amounts of pegg -- same amount of pay, then the american people would go ahead and apply.

the educated people are taking the jobs that hospitals. the people crossing the border are probably not our most educated people and they are the ones that are taking the jobs. host: wayne from chicago, illinois. caller: the easiest way to get rid of the people if you're wanting to get rid of them is very simple. when someone comes to your house to " a job for repairs to your house, since they're stealing all the construction jobs, the best way is to go to a job site where they're working at and interview the workers and started speaking with the workers. if they do not speak very good english, that is a giant step off that they are illegal. -- tipoff that they are illegal. when you stop these small companies from doing that kind of thing, putting eagles and

people not from this country to work, then there they go. go back to your country. host: had you done that yourself? -- have you done that yourself? caller: know, i do most of the work myself. but that is my recommendation. host: the city of shanghai is taking dramatic steps of actively encouraging residents to exceed china's famed one child limit. for more than a decade shanghai has allowed couples to have two children and each part was an only child. family planning officials are to nudge up eligible parents harder with plans to push leaflets

under doors and make home visits to promote procreation. ohio on our independent line. caller: what irritates me about c-span is that you have someone like your previous guest and you have no one there that is giving a contrary view. i have been traveling around the united states for the past 20 years and i have seen so many obvious situations where businesses are making money. in raleigh, north carolina, i got up in the morning and noticed there were two vans coming in with the legillegal immigrants. the point that i am trying to make is why was nobody during

these 20 years penalized for running these kinds of services for bringing people all over the country to undermine american workers? it is not that american workers do not want a job, it is the people hiring these want to pay less and labor cost. host: michigan honor democrats line. -- on our democrats line. caller: in germany they have a system where you have to make yourself a person that will upgrade the country as an american. you have to have a degree. you have to speak the language. you just cannot cross the border and come in. they do not allow the people

who emigrate to override americans for jobs. they have to start at the bottom. many of us have started there. this is also degraded our money system, where our money now because of many poor people come into our country cannot afford what we pay here in america, therefore, when things are downgraded that means the economy-why ise our wages had a decrease in we are in the economic downfall. our children educationally have suffered because of the legal people -- because of the illegal and people coming in. i do believe we have to stop this. all emigration should stop.

host: we will leave it there. this is a story about afghanistan. they're talking about the upcoming election. saying it will not be perfect. richard holbrook's trip to the central afghan province coincided with president -- with the president's first election rally in kabul. he said the elections here will be encouraged. it goes on to another story in the washington post. he is talking about the capable afghan forces.

this says it complicates the u.s. mission in the southern part of afghanistan. said the push of marines to southern helmand will be determined by whether there are enough qualified afghan forces to partner with and eventually leave behind to protect afghan civilians. the commander of the marine forces said that urgent efforts are underway to dispatch additional afghan forces. afghan forces remain few in number, as well as short of training, equipment, and basic supplies such as fuel area some afghans quit because they're reluctant to work in the violent assault. the afghan troops heavily dependent on forces are hesitant to take on additional responsibilities. we hear from tracy honor republican line. -- on our republic in line.

caller: we only have a nation where 50% of americans pay a federal tax. is this going to be a huge voting block for democrats going forward? the system will not be fair. now it will be 50% with 12 million more. they will pay no federal tax. now it will be the free universal health care they're trying to push forward, food stamps and welfare and the list goes on and on, yet they will not pay federal income tax because their income is going to be low-income earners. isn't the system she was talking about going to set up a low class warfare? there are never a point to be equal class citizens. eventually they will be americans and be able to get the

same jobs. host: vancouver, washington. caller: we need to follow the rules of law. they break the law, they go back. i left my beloved california because i grew up and lived with what happened with all of the illegals. the lady that was just on was very unrealistic. these are poor people. they cannot afford to pay back taxes. do you really think they will follow the rule of the law and go to the back of the line? i do not think so. this is not right. they broke our loss, we need to stand up for our loss. -- they broke our laws, we need

to stand up for our laws. these people do to stand up against their own people and do right for all of their families. why are we allowing this to happen? host: as far as programming, we will have a special program of looking at the idea of race and the american criminal-justice system. if you can see that program at 7:00 tonight on c-span. -- you can see that program at 7:00 tonight on c-span. walter, great funeral service will be tonight at 8:20. -- walter congkrit's take funeral service will be tonight at 8:20 p.m. caller: when i was 12 years old

we had a john deere dealers and agricultural department would take the 12 year olds and teach them how to drive tractors. we would help the local farmers that way. we would go in there and they would get volunteers. they would go out and work the bales of hay. that is where we got our money. they have it now where the child labor laws would not allow -- that was a growing experience. we volunteered to go do it. we got to spend the money for that summer. the farmers and everyone was satisfied. host: fresno, california. this is our independent line. caller: i would like to dispel

rumors about the fact that they are saying that there are jobs that the americans will not do. the truth of the matter is, there just is not enough field jobs to support the number of people that are crossing the border from any country. we have already gone through carter and reagan who had amnesty. now we are living west the people from that time. they are the gang members that are here now. it is not right to keep using jobs that americans will not do, when that is not true. those people and those kids are now in every level job there is. they're working insurance, fast food, they're not only working in the yards, they are almost in every city county and every

major metropolitan area. the problem we have with most of it is that you end up being -- even if you are an american trying to get a job, all the jobs have been occupied by family members and friends. host:a viewer adds that even an open phones, illegals is a hot topic. caller: i am concerned about racial profiling. how do people know that they are easily go when they see them on a construction job? i do not understand how they know those people are legillega?

there are lots of hispanic people and other people who are legal and residents and citizens of this country who are trying to make a living. just because they happen to be a different colors and i am, does not mean they are illegal. host: there is an analysis of clinton's trip to south east asia. it says the trip propels clinton back into the limelight. she marveled over climate- friendly buildings and dining at a new restaurant where one of the menus is named after her husband. she bantered with journalists and a televised town hall meeting. what the secretary was asked as she talked about with her husband -- was her husband.

what did she make of the economy? she invoked the name of ben bernanke and timothy geithner before admitting that unemployment was still high. california, good morning to norman on our republican line. caller: it really surprises me that people are still trying to stir up some crazy way of doing this. i travel all over the world. i see what they're doing in foreign countries. they will confiscate your property if you read to an illegal anlien. the biggest problem we have is we tell them they cannot work here, but then you give them a credit card and driver's license and let them get

insurance and rent a home. stop letting them live here for threfree. if they do not have a place to live, they will not come here to work. host: this is an article looking at the astronauts living at the space station. all 13 of them are enjoying their first day off in more than a week after a series of grueling spacewalks. mission control told the astronauts you cannot stop to smell the roses at orbital speed, but you consider the view from the best seats and the house. north carolina on our independence line. caller: i was calling to make a comment that was said that the legal taleillegal aliens who dot

welfare. they get food stamps. i am an out-of-work construction worker who tried to get a job on a local peach farm. i went back and they had fields of the leillegal aliens. they will tell you they are illegal. they do not care. they want to march in our street and waved a mexican flag. that is what they're taught in the history books in mexico. that lady does not have a clue. she should go to mexico and lives. host: new york city, democrats line. caller: i would like to talk about immigration. every time i call i have been

cut off. i think for most american citizens, this is a very horrible thing that is going on. people here are out of work. everyone needs a job. i hear people talking about what we will not do. they have people who are working them and they are american citizens. i go out to la guardia airport and all i see our people from other countries. they come into our school system. we have to provide them a bilingual education. they are in the hospital's, which means they are overrunning the hospital systems. many of the women who come here

come here specifically to have babies. i can tell you that because i had a child and -- please do not cut me off. she said she is on vacation. she is coming here to have her baby. wake up, america. host: northfield, minnesota. steve on our republican line. caller: i think the lady was talking about legal immigration. i am a person who hires for production work. when the economy gets hot and the unemployment drops below 4%, it is extremely hard to find qualified applicants. simple things like people who

have held a job for a year. people who have not been fired. i am sorry to say, there is a good portion of the population that is unemployable. when the pool starts to get that tight, we need to increase the pool, or employers will seek overseas or moving their companies' overseas to find the workers. that is what i have to say. host: microsoft saying to avoid a new legal battle, they offer europe a choice of browsers. they will get a ballot screen that would let them easily download other browsers from the internet and turn off microsoft's stock default internet explorer. this could be available in

europe shortly after the official release of the software on october 22, the company's general counsel. houston, texas. caller: i would like to dispel the myths that the illegals are taking jobs that americans will not take. that is not true. we run an industrial plant. it is a terrible job environment. americans will line up down the street for $15 per hour plus health benefits. you have to pay workman's comp on those workers. the eagles were work -- the illegals will work for $10 per hour and no health benefits. the companies we compete with the hired illegals can cut

costs. you are punished in the marketplace and not as competitive. to load health care and cap and trade on employers who are already following the laws will make it even harder to compete. host: one more call on the democrats' line. caller: a senator got involved in north georgia. a man recorded the legal papers -- teh illegal papers. -- the illegal papers. they bring them in in busloads to work at our power plants.