>> a shot of the kennedy library where the bodyy of senator kennedy still lies in repose. the funeral will -- it will arrive in washington about 3:00 p.m. it will be part of a motorcade and then arlington national ceremony. there will be a private ceremony set to take place about 5:30 this afternoon. this is "washington journal" "washington journal" -- for august 29, 2009. for the next half-hour we will talk about senator kennedy's

legislative priorities, but we want to talk to you about the president's tax priorities, specifically the promise that he made about the not raising taxes especially among the middle class in order to pay for efforts including health care. host: here's the question -- can president obama keep his no-tax pledge? it is a story you can find on the left side of the page. "tax pledge is a target as deficits and debt grow." smewroys, lori montgomery, "during the last year's campaign, president obama vowed to enact a bold agenda without raising taxes for the middle class, a pledge budget experts viewed with skepticism. since then, a severe recession,

massive deficits, and national debt have only made this promise harder to keep. the obama administration has interested that the -- insisted that the pledge will stand. but the president's top economic advisers have refused to rule out broad-based tax increases to close the yawning gap between federal revenue and government spending and are warning of tough choices ahead. so we want your opinion specific this president rn wanting to raise taxes, if that could be sustainable. 202-737-0001 for republicans, 202-737-002 for democrats. two other electronic ways you can contact us, you can sand send a e-mail to journal@c-span.org. just a bit more from this story from loi -- lori montgomery this

morning, she writes "republicans are already on the attack. the same political transaggression that cost democrats control of congress under former president bill clinton and may have cost george h.w. bush his jop job. democrats say obama is unlikely to break his pledge before next year's congressional electric, and object that it would be safer to wait until his second term if a tax increase is unavoidable." we talk with kristin. caller: i don't think you are a republican, because you could pronounce gratten if you were. i just want to say, i don't hate

the obamas. i love to see an african-american family in the office. who wouldn't? his kids and family are enchanting. it is fun to have a young vibrant family. this is nothing about them personally. but the guy never has a job. he's a community organizer. sorry to say that, but i think a lot more qualified people were overlooked because they weren't black kennedys. >> what do you think he will do about raising taxes? >> i think he will do whatever his handlers tell him to do. he's praying that momentum will carry him through. i bet he couldn't find the presidential gym without someone telling him where to go. it's sad to see him there, i love seeing him on a personal level, like "people" magazines. of course taxes will be raised. i don't think he will wait until his second term, if he gets one.

i think they are coming. >> host: and that's a call from gratten, massachusetts. go ahead caller. caller: i have a couple deep concerns about taxes. i would tak tax the bankers tcha make those huge sums of money every year. i would tax the c.e.o.'s that make huge sums of money. and i have one real important question i've thought about for years. is there one member of the kennedy family that is without health insurance? i worked in the health industry for a long time, and i know there are people with his diagnosis that would have died much sooner. this isn't a slam about the kennedys, but i abstracted for a cancer registry for eight years,

so i have a pretty good insight. taxing isn't going to fix the whole problem. we have to lead a much simpler lifestyle in this country, and it can't be balanced on the poor like it's been for centuries. you have to start with people that are making money off the poor and middle class, but particularly the poor. that's where the greatest giving is often taken from the poor. the poor pretty much support the country. >> lewiston, michigan, that last call was from. the caller made reference to -- consumer thrift may last after the recession. this is a story by peter goodman out of austin, texas. one paragraph to read to you. this is what he has to say. he talks about slight rising in

consumer spending, but he says, "the great depression embued american life with an endearing spirit of thrift. the current recession has perhaps proven wrenching enough to alter consumer tastes, putting value in vogue. it's simply less fun fulling up to the spotlight in a hummer than it used to be." that's robert barbera, chief economist at the research and trading firm i.t.g. "it's a change in norms." lori montgomery's story in the "the washington post" is where we're pulling this story from. one more sentence, she said the rpt has vowed to pay for any new initiatives and to draft an over haul of the health care system that eventually would save the government money, driving deficits down. that's one more sentence asking

the question whether the promise to not raise taxes on the middle class can stick. caller: i think we should bring our troops home from afghanistan, you can go to americahighjacked.com. how can we break a promise when we are spending on all these wars in the middle east. bring the troops home. where is the campaign promise, sir? host: roger. caller: good morning, good to see you again. caller: this call not to tax anyone for $26 -- over $260,000 has already gone down. he raised the price of cigarettes for smokers that earn less than $36,000 a year. also, the town hall meetings being done around the country,

particularly the ones that he is doing is costing taxpayers money because he's busing in all the seiu folks that support his health care proposal. host: savannah, georgia, you are next on our democrats line. caller: yes, paid row, i hope you allow me to finish my thought today. you typically don't allow people to complete their opinions. i first want to comment on the caller who trivialized the fact he was elected from the american people. he didn't get passed over. this president earned his position. he was elected by the american people. nobody appointed him to that post. host: so your comment on our question this morning?

caller: the fact that taxes have been made such a cross word in this country. roads need to be fixed, bridges need to be fixed. the past administration left this economy in the dumps. we need to all pitch in and raise this country. taxes are not a curse word. we need to chip in a little bit in order to put this country back on track. host: we hear from another david. this one in oilville. if you have to lock at a map, where does oilville fall on that? caller: it is the northern suburb of bakersville. when you see in the movies what is a big shot of oklahoma oil fields, it is usually oilville. i think obama can keep his promise. i think obama's plan for economic savings is on the mark. let's face it, the medical industry as a whole, inflation adds 32% a year.

that's a lot of money to save. it starts tapping it each year. i think he has the right idea. i wish he i wish he would have exposed the prices of all medicare before we started this. he seems to be smart. he is going to let everything run its course and then come up with a comprehensive plan and everybody is going to jump on board. i think we have about 30%, but universal health care, 30% is the idea of the public option. 20% that don't understand it. host: another story stemming from "the washington post". this from the cash for clunkers program. says that it lifted consumer spending. that personal consumption expenditures adjusted for inflation rose 2% in line with

analyst inspecks and expectations. that was down from june. expenditures expected for august as well. the white house council on economic advisers estimated monday that athe program helped sell nearly 700,000 cars. azar aki,mon montana, you are next. stay on our republican line. caller: yes, abzurki, montana. i do not think president obama can keep his pledge not -- on not raising taxes on the middle class. i am disabled and receive social security disability, so i think i can relate to the many seniors

in this country whose numbers will be growing also. the thing is, very often i don't have to pay income taxes, however i pay real estate taxes, i pay sales taxes, i pay corporate income taxes. i believe that president obama is an intelligent individual, as are the democrats in congress. and i don't know if they just don't want to eanl that corporate income taxes are passed -- to acknowledge that corporate income taxes are passed on to consumers or that ultimately individuals pay taxes. and whether or not you are in a high-income tax bracket, a middle income tax bracket, or don't pay any income taxes, ultimately all taxes are paid biby individuals. >> if you follow up, you can

send us a -- "-- "that promise was made before we knew the depth of the recession. i think we need a value-added tax or national sales tax." savannah, georgia, go ahead. caller, go ahead. we'll go to the next line, bowie, maryland, gabriel on our independent line. host: good morning, paid row. how are you? caller: [unintelligible]

host: houston, texas. steve on our republican line. caller: good morning. i think obama can keep his promise, and i'd like to make a comment on the last caller. host: before you go on, why do you think the president can't keep his promise? caller: because he's [beep] host: we don't appreciate those comments about the president of the united states -- comments, especially about the president of the united states. host: tell me why this chief of staff was chosen? caller: he's probably someone

the governor can trust implicitly to follow what he would do in these situations, someone he knows is not going to embarrass him in anyway before he campaigns for the senate seat himself. host: so in eye sense, a placeholder. host: it's seff knitly that guy. george w. is a smart guy, but first and foremost, his loyalty is to the governor. host: tell us about his political reputation, what kind of reputation he has, especially among other governors in florida. guest: he's widely respected. he served as the governor's chief of staff for a year. he's basically running the state. he left the governor's office a couple years ago to go back to the private law firm where he had worked previously and has, you know, been very successful,

ok versusly, from the contacts and ties that he made while working in the governor's office. he was the one that actually ran the governor's successful 2006 campaign. the governor dusm bbed him the maestro at the end -- the governor dubbed him the maestro at the end of that campaign. he's from south florida. he was chairman of one of the local republican parties and a lawyer. host: brourd -- broward republican party, right? guest: yes. host: as far as those experiences, when is he expected in washington? guest: well, the senate reconvenes in a week. host: will he his own staff or -- guest: i don't think we know that. host: can you tell us a little about his personal life? is he married?

does he have feam family? guest: he'll be the youngest guy in the senate. he's married with three young children under six, so you can definitely see this night family as he's campaigning for his friend, governor crist. host: as far as his campaigning for governor crist? guest: he raised a record amount. he has the former speaker of the house, rubio, who is running a sort of insurgent campaign that seems to be making some inroads among the conservative activists in the party, but not so much yet in the polls. way behind in fundraising, obviously. on the democratic side, there's

really only one candidate, and that's meeks. host: do we know what martinez will do? guest: it is presumed he will go back to his home in orlando and work in the private sector, practice law, and probably be pretty successful as a former senator. you know, he talked about wanting to spend more time with his family. host: beth reinhold is a political writer. thank you for getting up early and giving us this information. guest: thanks. host: back to our calls on the president's pledge to not raise taxes on the middle class. our democrats line. caller: hello. can you hear me? host: yes. caller: yes, i absolutely believe the president will keep good on his promise.

if he should ever get a second term. and that's a big "if," i firmly believe that there would be a possibility in a second term that taxes may go up. referring to that caller from gratten, pennsylvania, this guy is not only an intellectual, he's a genius. and we haven't had a person in office like that since bill clinton. host: you added "that's a big if." what made you say that? caller: i believe the situation regarding the economy is not as good as say some of the economists are projecting. i don't think that's the improvement of this economy will happen any time soon. i think the market will rebound. a lot of the games you are seeing on wall street now are there because expenditures have

been cut down. it has been hard trading and with money being put into the stock market, it is ways basically cutting back on employment, cutting back on issues. and this is how the games are being demonstrated, on the market. i think the situation economically is bleekbleak and it will continue to be bleak probably for the next two years. my concern is that he may not get re-elected. again, he inherited this, but obviously people expect miracles. the man has been in office seven months and people are, you know, critics are saying he hasn't done anything with the economy yet. host: colleen on our democrats line, bullhead, arizona. caller: thank you for taking my call. i definitely think president obama can keep his promise by not raising the taxes on the

middle class because he needs to raise the taxes on the upper class. the small percentage of people in the united states who have all these millions and keep making more mills -- millions and millions, and then there are poor people in l.a. that get thrown out of the hospitals onto the streets in skid row in their hospital gowns and no help for them. in front of big tall insurance buildings. i think everything is upside down. it used to be back in the 1960's and maybe 1950's, into the 1970's where the people with the higher incomes paid much more percentage of their income, and that's not happening. the percentages have dropped, and more of the expense has been put onto the middle class, and i think it needs to go back onto the people that make more money and these corporations that have

their offices off shores need to get them back on shores or not be a u.s. corporation. i think the people, the small people in this country are carrying a burden. host: caller. caller: one thing i want to say first, that caller that mentioned the "n" word is disgusting. i believe our president could keep his middle class no-tax pledge. number one, they already got it in their budget, the health care bill has to be budget neutral, and with something like a cigarette tax, that's not an income tax rvings that's -- tax, that's a sales tax. one other thing for the middle class, we have already seen tax cuts for the middle class.

i have to say, pedro, as a republican, i see more savings in my income with president obama than with president bush already. and i thank you for this wonderful day, and god bless ted kennedy. host: tom braithwait writes what can be described as a check to the federal reserve powers. he writes ron paul the republican from texas has attracted wide spread support that could give congress a better check-over, the culmination of a 30-year campaign. ben bernanke was under pressure to bring it to the floor. now mr. frank has decided to introduce elements of mr. paul's bill and mr. frank is aiming to bring forward legislation that would safeguard the fed's monetary policy while enhancing transparency and creating checks

and balances for the bank's use of emergency lending powers. in the final 45 minutes of this program we are going to feature an author whose written a biography of barney frank in which he's interviewed representative frank and others. he is stuart weissberg and you will get -- get a changs to ask him -- chance to ask him questions. good morning from our independent line. go ahead. caller: yes. thank you. first i wanted to pay you a large compliment after keeping your cool after that comment from that republican freak from texas. the one thing i wanted to comment on was the previous administration did a tax cut during war time which is something that's never been done during the history of the country.

two, obama didn't really make a pledge of not raising taxes. he made a pledge he wouldn't raise taxes on anybody making under $260,000. on top of that, one tax he alluded to is making the tax dedeductions for charitable donations at a flat rate, which he said, and a lot of budget economy said, would pay for health care in and of itself. the argument that the republican party and the opponents to health care reform really doesn't seem to be a strong debate at all. so, i mean, do you have anything to say about that? host: i'll let the callers chime in who are listening to your thoughts respond. cecil, alexandria. welcome. caller: i want to extend a diamond on your crown for all that you do to accommodate the callers. regarding the previous caller who said that president obama

couldn't find the gym, i think anyone who first goes into that environment couldn't find the gym, and perhaps gorge bush couldn't find it even today. and as another previous caller indicated that indeed president obama stated that for high echelon tax brackets that he would raise their taxes since they have been receiving financial boon doing ls under the bush administration which i believe was stretched to a 10-year tax cut for the top wealthiest 1% of america's highest earners. finally i do want to commend her also and give her my heartfealt -- heart fealt thoughts to the

family of president kennedy. to some of our white southern brothers, certainly he was involved in the loss of mary joe kapeknes, but do you know how many mary jo kapeknes are on this earth because of the legislation he spearheaded? finally to the out casted in this society, you have lost one of your staunchest fighters and you better step up to the plate to save your own life. host: a time to remember. the pieces of legislation are -- "a time to remember, the ted kennedy has been a part of." that will be our topic this morning. types of subjects and issues that he taffled.

we'll get an issue to tackle that. you'll get an usual to tackle that with reporters as well. roundup, montana, on our republican line. blane, go ahead. caller: i don't believe he can keep his promise because that health care and everything else has to be paid for. my understanding is my grandfather, and my father, and myself, with our families, we have been insurance poor for all our lives, you know? we have insurance for just about everything. host: one more cull, knoxville, tennessee. if i may add also, it helps when you do eventually get -- talk to us if you turn down the

television. that prevents the feetback and helps the conversation go a lot smoother. knoxville, tennessee, good morning. douglas, are you there? caller: good morning. thank you for taking my call. yes, i believe that president gm obama can keep his promise, and i believe we all just have to pitch in. a person once said, "ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your consumer -- country." [unintelligible]

host: we'll leave it there. like i said, for the next hour we'll talk about senator kennedy and the legislation he was involved with. first, though, i do want to tell you about our "q & a" program coming up this coming sunday. you'll have a chance to listen to an interview that was conducted with dr. john garrett the chairman of the board of the directors of the chief of cardiac surgery. among the things he talked about, he said he will discuss what he wants people to know as they listen to the debate on health care. >> when you listen to the debate on health care, what's the worst thing you hear on a day-to-day basis? i hear people in these town hall meetings or in congress or where ever? >> i think the thing that scares me the most is just the thought of having the government having a massive medicare or medicaid

and having all the inefficiencies that brings, but also ending up with a system that is poor, a hospital system that's poor, and having demo ability to -- having a -- having no ability to offer an alternative to our patients. >> why would that happen with an all-pair or single-pair system? >> right now we lose 20% on medicare admissions. so if we lost 20% on everybody that came in, we'd have to do something different. and as administrator, the first thing i would do is limit our capital budget. so the new stuff that we buy every year, every year we buy $30 million worth of new equipment here, that would stop.

it would have to stop. we would have to layoff people because we would have to get down -- we'd have to make up that 20%. so the easiest way to make it up is to not buy new stuff. that's what we do in our personal life. but when you talk about health care, i mean, new technology is expensive, and the people that are driving new technology expect a return. on their investment. and if nobody is buying it, it will just be a matter of time before nobody is making it. nobody is thinking about it. and that's a disaster for our health care. host: and that's our "q&a" program. if you want to find out more information about it. in our next hour, a look at various pieces of legislation

issues that was co-authored by senator kennedy just to give you an idea what he did legislatively during his career. to give you a sense of the time of circulation, the 1964 civil rights act, banning segregation in all public playses, in 1965, the hart-cellar act, apolicy ishing immigration quotas. in 1966 -- the community health care centers established ann in an eament amendment to the economic recovery act of 1964. 1968, the bilingual education act, in 1970, statute to lower the voting age to 18, and 1972, title nine, in 1978, airline industry deregulation, allowing airlines to choose their, in 1990, ryan white act, 1991, the civil rights act.

1993, the health insurance affordability and accountability ability. in 1997, the state's children health insurance program, the schip program. 2001, no child left behind act, and the mental health pa rhythm ty act, that was in 2008 -- the mental health parity act. those are some of the legislations in which kennedy was involved. what do you see as a pattern in which senator kennedy was involved? guest: i guess i make a couple points. most of those issues came within the per view of one or two of senator kennedy's principal committees where he was active, the first was the judiciary committee, which he chaired fr a couple years in the 1970's where he worked on civil rights, voting rights, and immigration

and criminal code issues 1970's, then starting in the early 1980's, he was chairman or the ranking minority member when republicans were in charge of what were then called the labor and human resources committee where he dealt with health and education and some labor issues, and those were the two courses of his activity. he was a member of the armed services committee, never became chairman, looked after massachusetts' interests. the diversity that occurs, and i will make one other point and stop, is that a number of those you cited really were areas where was -- issues in which he was busy and productive in the bulk of his career. in the 1960's, and 1970's. so some of the analysis for the last couple days have said, he really got active after his -- after he lost the presidential campaign to president carter.

it changed in 1984, but he really was a very active legislator going on. host: what do you get from that list as far as his efforts and what he did? >> part of his philosophy was that the government should be there to help people. he strongly believed that, and that helped give him the kennedy liberal labor that he wanted to expand government to help people. you can see that in a lot of the legislation, something that he fought for until the very end, ways to help people through government, the schip for children, health care for children rg all those things were really part of his core philosophy. you can see that throughout the whole list of bills he's passed. this is about helping people. when you hear everyone talk about senator kennedy today, that's one of the recurring themes is that as the legislature he wanted to help people, and that's what you see in a lot of these bills. >>

host: you look at the scope, and a lot has been said about his reaching out to republicans, how willing were they to help him get this done? caller: in most cases they weren't willing, but kennedy had a reputation for getting things accomplished anyway. he maybe wouldn't get everything accomplished in one bill but he would get part of it done. and he learned that through his 47 years in the senate. you could see he was able to cut deals, and in some cases anger his own party by, you know, softening legislation in order to get republicans to go along. you can see that. he passed many bills with hatch, republican, the two of them collaborated together, and nassy castle balm -- and nancy castlebaum. they were willing to work with him because he had the ability to really consult a deal, and that's how he -- to really cut a deal. that's how he got it done.

host: so concessions were part of his effort? guest: yes. host: do you agree with that, rich cohen? guest: absolutely, he was a master. he learned it when he came to the senate at age 30. he had no experience here, and he was kind of a young pickup, -- he was kind of a young pup. we don't want to glore identify him. -- we don't want to glorify him. he was human. he really applies himself and becomes -- i think it is valid to say that he was one of the giants in the history of the senate and probably the giant of the past 30 or 40 years. host: was he a policy wonk as you would describe it? guest: no he relied on his staff

to be the real knowledge jinl wonks but he knew enough to get by and he encouraged them to work on these deals, and when he needed to be a wonk he did enough. i was talking to steny hoyer this week and he was talking about work on the americans disability act, and he said he knew a lot about the bill, it was hoyer's bill, but he said to me this week that senator kennedy knew as much about that bill as he did as the sponsorer of the bill. hofere he was previously the chairman -- he was previously the chairman of the judiciary committee, he also served on the -- many other committees. i say all that to say as a leader how was he in getting not only his own efforts done legislatively but what other desms wanted to get done as

well? guest: well, he was someone who was willing to help people move their priorities. i know that tom harkin was new to the senate at the time and kennedy pretty much put him in charge of the bill. harkin wanted experience on a big bill and kennedy was willing to hand that over to him and help him move an important priority for him. he did work with others also. he had a massive legislative output. he authored more than 2,500 bills and hundreds of them are now law. he was busy on his own getting his own legislation passed. guest: you asked about his being a leader. at one point in the 1960's, he became the senate majority whip, which is the number two leadership position, but then --

and i haven't seen this mentioned in the past few days, he lost that position. he was defeated by senator robert bird in jan -- janny 1971, not long after chappaquidic, which may have been why, and maybe it would have been different. no knows why. host: if you want to talk about the senator's legislative accomplishment, here is the number to do so -- 202-737-0001 for republicans, 202-737-0002 for democrats, 202-628-0205 for independentents. you can send us e-mail at journal@c-span.org. p.m. no child left behind is one of those pieces of legislation that has consistently come back

over the years. we know his efforts, but especially what you were both talking about in reaching out to republicans, especially republicans at the time, to the president. guest: i think kennedy liked the idea of the legislation, which for viewers is a law that requires schools to test students to ensure they are passing certain threshholds as they move through their grade levels. part of the problem was that states complained that there was no money. they call it an unfunded mandate. how are we going to get this done without support from the government. they have given us this requirement, but we don't have the money to get it done. so it was universally the -- unevergs versely not welcomed by educators, and he felt he had been duped by the bush

administration. so he was still willing to work with the bush administration, and he did, and he also worked with a prescription drug bill, and i think that became controversial as well. bush needed him on that, and he was willing to go along with it. so he did republicans, sometimes to his detriment, but other times it did benefit him. guest: and there are cases to follow susan's point, some of those republicans that ended up working with him, kennedy in 2001, on that bill kennedy chaired the senate labor committee. the chairman of the house -- what's now the house education and labor economy was john boehner. boehner was the house minority leader. boehner and kennedy talked about how well they worked together with each other, but boehner also said separately that a lot of his republican colleagues said what are you doing working with ted kennedy? he had to reassure them

everything would be ok. host: senator kennedy visited this program back in 2003 to talk about why he got involved. here's what he had to say. >> on the no child left behind, you know, we have about 11 million that are the needyest children in this country. and in 1965 we said as a nation, let's make a matter of national priority the poorest of the poor, the most disadvantaged of the disadvantaged and try to give them a level playing field so that they would be able to achieve their potential. we did that in 1965. president bush tried to do it with no child left behind. we have a good blueprint, but we haven't got the back-up. that's a question of priorities. so many things we do in the congress are a question of priorities and values, and for me, funding that program to make sure re we have small class size, well trained teachers, supplement tri services, and help for those children,

especially in the limited english speaking children, that is a national priority. host: again you have a chance to talk to both of our guests about those priorities legislatively and otherwise. bokia ra ton, charlotte, you are up first. go ahead. caller: first let me say i am a liberal democrat and have been for over 60 years and very proud. my mother was the only child of her family born in this country on the 4th of july. we were taught to love our country and love its people. and when i was younger, i asked my parents why are we democrats? and why are we liberal democrats? and they said because somebody has to look out for the poor, the sick, and the elderly. what a loss to our country. i would like to know who is going to work as tirelessly and

effectively as senator kennedy? who do your guests feel could pick up the mantle? host: susan ferrechio, why don't you go first. guest: a lot of people ask who could replace kennedy? and the answer is usually no one. he is an icon that will not be easily replaced. there are a lot of people in the senate who are liberal and fighting for those causes as well, but there has been sort of a shift into a new kind of democrat that's more progress ive. kennedy's philosophy echoed the roosevelt era of government stepping in to help people. you see the obama administration stepping in that direction, but there has been real resistance to that kind of movement. so you wonder if in the senate really -- and in congress in gen general -- if there is really going to be a place for a

lawmaker like that. guest: i had another point to get to this issue about how senator kennedy will be missed. it is one thing, susan was saying, that there are inevitably lots of members, democrats in the senate and the house who want to be active and staffed. they will be pushing them on various issues, but what kennedy brought that is not replaceable is a stature because he was "kennedy." because his brother had been president, because the family history goes back. his father was in the new deal. there is no one who comes to the senate now with that stat tour. -- with that stature of the family name, the history. host: republican line. juliette. caller: yes, the statement i

want to make takes a lot of explanation, so if you would allow me to complete my thought. the majority of your audience my impression is doesn't understand the form of government our founding fathers gave us and the form of government we're supposed to be living under. the 10th amendment to the bill of rights states that the power is not delegated to the united states, that's the federal government, are retained by the states or the people. and the legislation that you're discussing this morning, these social programs, are not given -- that power is not given to the united states, the federal government, it is retained by the states. any of those programs can be done and should be done by the states, and when the people are caused to look to the government for the provision instead of to

their own abilities, what the federal government does is makes slaves of the people to the states, it gives them -- host: and what is the question? caller: my question is -- or and the government school system has taught the people that the government is supposed to do these things and led the people to believe that they are entitled to these things. host: ma'am, what is the question? caller: well, the question should be what do we do to return our country to a constitutional republic? host: mr. cohen. guest: well if we put it in the context of senator kennedy who we are here to talk about, there is no question that the caller makes valid points that there has been an expansion of government, and senator ted kennedy was an important part in that, in pushing it, and he was kind of step by step

deliberately moved to expand government in a number of areas -- health, education, civil rights, et cetera. but one interesting point about ted kennedy is that most of the time -- most of his 47 years in the senate he served as a republican president -- he served in the senate there was a republican president. kennedy could have not done anything in those years without working with republican presidents and republican senators. so yes he expanded government, he was parts of efforts to expand government, but in virtually all these cases, he found a way to go -- do it with republicans. host: you talked about a shifting among kennedy's presence -- many --

guest: the democrats who are here now making majorities in both the house and senate, they can't govern that way or they won't be re-elected. host: cape cod, massachusetts. andrew on our independent line. caller: i want to say first off this is the first time i ever tried to call c-span and i got through, so to all your viewers, keep trying. you can do it. in response to what mr. cohen said in regard to the kennedy name, although i live in cape cod, i grew up in the rockies. the middle third of the country does not get the kennedy mystique. i -- that's juft what i called to say. there are a lot of people that just don't get the magic of that name. i will forever be grateful to

something that he did that was not listed in your list of legislative achievements. the child sip act of 2000 which was -- citizenship act which was pro pushed through by winl delahunt, senator of massachusetts, was heavily supported by senator kennedy, and as a result of that, parents of foreign-born children now enjoy a much less complicated citizenship process. citizenship becomes final at the time they are adopted. we were at the middle of a big labrynth of legislation that was curtailed beautifully by the package of this law which went in effect on midnight of that night, february 27, 2007, and for that reason, kennedy's agenda was not one who i supported largely, i will always be grateful to him for that.

guest: interesting point about that, what i was saying about all the bills he authored. there were so many bills -- i don't think there will ever be someone who comes along who can amass that portfolio of legislation. i mean, six days before he was diagnosed with a tumor, he made his -- the house had just passed the genetic nondiscrimination act which prevents health companies from diagnosing you if you have a predisposition to the bill. you say, oh, you're involved in that bill well he's the could sponsor of that bill as well. that's going to help a lot of people. not many people have genetic disorders like that, but there are thousands of people thousand who now are safe from losing their health care. he played a big role in that. not many people know about that.

guest: i go back to the first initial call the caller was making. i grew up in massachusetts, and i'm fully aware -- i fully agree, frankly, with what the caller said that the kennedy mistier technique, which is very strong, remains, obviously, very strong in massachusetts. we have learned, we have known for a long time, that it doesn't extend all that far or strongly or as much as it used to be across the country, as it used to, as it did certainly in 1960, and the limits of that kennedy mystique were shown in senator kennedy's unsuccessful campaign in 1980. so there are -- we don't want to go to -- we were talking mostly about kennedy as a wlor. -- legislator. certainly there are limits to that, no question. host: the caller mentioned

immigration and that he backed some of the first pieces of immigration. it was the abolishment of quotas and then in 1968 it would be the bilingual education act that was mandating schools to provide bilingual education. this is way before immigration became a hot topic here on capitol hill. it hals always has been, i guess, but in the last three years. guest: those laws helped lead the way to major changes in immigration patterns into the united states. before those laws most of the immigration for the 20th century was from europe. after those laws -- those laws encouraged immigration from latin america and from asia and a little bit from africa. but this is very controversial law. we've seen in recent years how it is almost impossible to pass immigration reform.

for kennedy to take on that issue in his very early years in the senate -- obviously there were other members who were involved -- but he showed his interest and skills in immigration. it is something he worked on for decades. host: if you are just joining us, we are spending this hour, we have a half-hour to do, looking at senator kennedy and his legislative history. huntsville, alabama, victor on our republican's line. caller: good morning, pedro. thank you for all the good work you are doing for the people here. we are talking about senator kennedy. the man is dead now. it is incumbent upon us to have a good perspective on the life he lived. what has been said, but can i use a package from the bible? it goes like this. talking about jesus christ now,

"though he was a child, he learned obedience by how he suffered. having suffered, he became the finisher of our faith." he redeemed his life by doing good. if you look at his legislation, all he is doing is making up for the imperfection in his life. so he went for the black suffering, the handicap suffering, women's oppression, every suffering around the world, and then to become a king maker by helping obama to become the president and then appointing joe biden to be his vice president. what a life. host: we'll leave it there, and just to add to that comment, i want to show you a little bit, this is back in 2006. the topic is civil rights. it is senator kennedy on the importance of equality and civil rights divisions. this going back to the justice department.

>> i think you have the sense from these opening statements our strong belief, this committee, that we need a justice department, civil rights division, that's going to be dwrond beyond reproach in -- that's going to be beyond reproach in terms of administering the law. this has been the key and denie fining aspect in the last 50 years in our march toward progress in knocking down walls of discrimination, and this particular agency has been in the forefront of that. host: the larger topic of civil rights and adding to that his efforts on the justice department. guest: it was definitely enormously important of his legislative career. you know, he talked about it all the time. and it came up very frequently. he vntwally -- he eventually left the judiciary committee, but it still became a big and important thing. i think again he was able to accomplish these things without alienating republicans. remember, civil rights in the

1960's was not a popular topic in the senate. he had to go head-to-head even as a young senator with some really big names in the senate, republican and democrat, who didn't want to deal with this. and he was able to do it without, you know, making enemies mple -- enemies. i read an anecdote that his brother was in the senate at the time, and his brother was making remarks that seemed just very, you know, inflamritri on the issue of human rights, and bobby kennedy ended up getting in an enormous shouting match whereas ted kennedy was able to get the job done. the civil rights issue was a tough issue, and he dove in as a new senator and was able to get it done. .

>> just a reminder what you brought up, it was 1964 the civil rights act banned segregation, and that was legislation created by senator kennedy. caller: i just wanted to comment. i think mr. kennedy has done a great job with the americans diseablet act. and former president bush and the first president bush, they worked tirelessly on that legislation and it passed. and i give mr. kennedy the -- you know, i give him all progress for that. host: can i ask why that specific legislation is important to you?

caller: i'm on disability myself. i also want to comment about everybody talking about, the former caller talked about the states required to do social work, a social bill. but, you know, what that leaves, that leaves that the federal government is supposed to help big business? you know, because that's what we've got now anyway, most of them are in the pockets of big business. guest: well, there's always conflict. we haven't really -- conflict is part of government and politics and what goes on in that building a couple blocks away here at the capital. we -- one topic we haven't touched on here, maybe i'll raise right now, is senator kndy's work on health reform. and clearly he, as he said in his speech to the democratic convention a year ago, that was the cause of his life.

that to some extent, considerable extent, it's a disappointment for him and for democrats across the board right now that they haven't made more progress on health reform and kind of the big question when congress comes back in a few days is whether they're going to be able to pick it up and to move health reform either in part of the tribute or legacy to senator kennedy or maybe not. so there's still a lot of issues, a lot of conflicts to be played out. and that will help to shape what happens to the kennedy legacy and what he stands for. >> you mentioned conflict. one of the things we haven't talked about is robert bork. not specifically legislation but at least an influential figure during that time. here's senator kennedy on robert bork's nomination. >> is land in which women would

be forced into back ally abortions, blacks would sit at segregated lunch counters. rogue police cound break down citizen doors. and school children could not be taught about e evolution. writers and artists would be sense srd at the whim of government. >> paint that into senator kennedy's history. guest: he made that speech less than an hour after bork was nominated. many people credit that speesm for the reason he never made it into the supreme court. it supposedly poisend the atmosphere so much that to this day supreme court nominations and confirmation hearings are incredibly political and contentious. people pin that on kennedy and say that he started it with the bork speech that we just heard. i don't know if you would agree with me on that. but oirtsdz people also played a role in that.

but that was really a defining moment for kennedy and i'm sure that many his torns say that he was one of the main reasons that bork never landed on the supreme court. guest: i fully agree and would add to susan's point that kennedy also played a positive role in terms of leading, paving the way for, particularly when democrats were president, for helping to get his kind of liberals, people sharing his views of roles, lu and justice and society, kennedy was instrumental in shaping the court, its membership, the courts and their membership and where they moved. and one example obviously is that justice steven brier now on the court since the 1990's had worked for senator kennedy on his staff. host: and even now, undoubtedly you hear the term borken comes

up. guest: right. host: dallas, texas. thanks for waiting. caller: good morning. i hope you will give me a minute or two. i've only been able to call in three times in 20 years. so much to mention as i've been listening to the two people this morning. regarding the lady who called in about leaving everything to the states. it really does saden me when i think about the children are listening. and when i hear all of the acrimony about how horrible the congress is, how terrible this government is, we can't trust anybody. those kinds of things i think sink in. my father always taught us different from that. i'm glad i grew up with a healthy respect for people

serving in the government. republicans, and democrats. until recently i've been an independent most of my life. but since 1994, the republicans have become so angry until to work with the democrats is considered a mortal sin. host: to that thought, how do you contribute that to senator kennedy? only because we have a limited time. caller: ok. senator kennedy as far as working, being able to work with the republicans, he was able to get one or two republicans to agree to something. but republicans are basically are against everything. guest: it's interesting what you're saying about republicans and democrats working together. orrin hatch was saying that the two of them would famously work together on legislation.

and the fact that the two of them could get together would really make it, would provide cover for either side. for democrats and republicans. to also go along. because they figure if hatch is doing it you can't appear too far to the right of hatch or too far to the left of kennedy. so it helped form a larger coalition. guest: i'll make a separate point. the callers from dallas, she's a political independent so this is -- my point is not about her but senator kennedy in his years in public life, his decades in public life traveled across this country, and my guess is he was in virtually every state but one place he never went was dallas. and there was a reason for that, because dallas was, had very painful memories for him for obvious reasons. host: can i take you back to 1970s. it was 1978 when he supported

airline industry deregulation. and -- guest: and i've been reporting for a long time. in my early years i wrote a lot about that issue and about senator kennedy's role there. and it says a lot about him in -- he played a vital role in putting that set of issues, cutting back on regulation of airlines and trucks so that, which he made the case that it would be a good consumer bill, would make it easier for more companies to enter into transportation areas. and yet, this was a controversial idea. he was changing what the law had been, that government had been heavily regulating airlines through the siffle air nautics board. those federal agencies are gone. they were put out of business by kennedy's bill. and he worked with republicans

on that bill, started with president ford's white house, and there were democrats who were opposed to what he did. and this was, frankly, i think it was one of his most significant legacies. guest: but he did it through advocating because of the committee he was on didn't quite have jushes diagnose over that. so he managed to use his power just being himself, pushing this issue. and he managed to get it done even though it wasn't a ket item for him. host: richard cohen reports for national journal. they were are guest for about 20 more minutes. north adams, massachusetts on our democrat's line. good morning to mike. caller: good morning. i think he has a remarkable record and i think it's sad that people on the other side will do nothing but try to pick apart everything that he has done as if they haven't done anything. i also find it remarkable that

you could take three men from a family as wealthy as theirs and they actually cared about working people and poor people and women and people of color and it's like one of the people i interviewed one of the praire groups said, he was one of us. and i think to believe that these three young men that came from a wealthy family could actually care about regular people is a lot easier to swallow than some rich spoiled kid from grenyitch texas going to texas and pretenting to be a good old boy. guest: let me make one point about the kennedy family. many of us watched i'm sure the memorial service to senator kennedy that was held this week at the john f. kennedy library. what was striking to me, and i thought the speeches were very impressive across the waterfront. but what's striking to me is

that there was so little mention of the kennedy brothers, of john and robert kennedy. obviously, there's no question that his brotsers were very important to him. but this week really has been about ted kennedy and about the working life, the career, the legacy in government of ted kennedy. and i think he created that and when -- and in one of the points is that when he came into the senate no one would have predicted that. host: in 1993 he was part of the family and medical leave act, in 1996, it was the health portability act. and states children's program. what does that mean for the average person? guest: all of these things

affect everybody. being able to move your insurance when you switch jobs, being able to keep it. he also was a big part of cobia. so many people right now are relying on that because of the high unemployment. family medical leave hugely important issue. schip, that's something not everyone is -- participates in. it's a program that helps poor children get medical care. it's 7 million children. just this past year was expanded. it was 4 million children, it was built up to over the past decade, and now it's added an additional 3 million. so that's a lot of kids and that was again a big cause of his is bringing health care to the poor. early in his career as a senator he tried to get health reform done and it didn't get there. it resulted in some free clinics throughout the country that he spear headed and he really wanted to achieve health

care reform never quite got it done. but you can see it in bits and pieces throughout his career. if you put it together, millions of people got health care thanks to ted kennedy. now, republicans would say maybe that wasn't such a good idea. the government shouldn't be providing all this care but that was definitely his core political philosophy, that the government should be doing more to help people. and clearly you can see it in the three bills you just said. host: i guess influence on health care where do you think it goes without him? guest: it can be argued either way but i think there are even some democrats who worry that this -- true, he hasn't been here for virtually at all earlier in the -- up until now and so in a sense his death doesn't change the fact of --

doesn't change that fact that he isn't here. but not having kennedy around -- it's harder for democrats to reach out to republicans. and, frankly, it's harder for democrats to tell their own people, their liberals to kind of get on board. kennedy had this skill because of his stature that he could tell democrats who were balking because, who felt that the bill was getting too weak, kennedy would say, get with the program and kind of take the long term and there's no one else really, people say no one else can do that, can phil that role. so i think it's possible. again, looking at the other side but i think it's quite possible that this is a further set back. guest: i also think the bigger question is what the situation would be right now had he been here the whole time. i think they would be in a

different place and i think the bill might be different. kennedy was careful about moving slowly and being careful, cut a deal. and right now a deal is not being cut between the two sides. republicans are not at the table other than a token sense. and you've got complete disarray within the democratic party within what direction the bill should go with. kennedy with all his experience, if the bill would just look different right now and therefore be in a more closer to the finish line. on the other hand, you have barack obama who clearly wanted what's the more radical form of the bill than it is right now. and you wonder would kennedy and obama have had to go head to head here. host: other places about the possible renaming of this bill to memorialize snard senator kennedy. guest: some people think it should be named not only for senator kennedy but that the co

author the other name would be john dingell, the dean of the house, the longest serving member ever in the house of representatives, congressman from michigan, and john dingell has kind of worked his whole life, in congress, on health reform as did dingell's father before him. so it's a long ways to go but if this bill is enacted i think there's a good chance it would be called the kennedy-dingell bill. guest: and even if it is, you asked what effect the whole kennedy legacy will have on getting the bill passed. i suspect, if a bill ever comes to the floor, that his name will be invoked to try to rally some on the fence democrats. but will the name itself, will the fact that kennedy wanted to get this done convince moderates and other people who have problems with this bill to pass it. i would say no, i don't think it's going to have that much of

an impact. host: george, go ahead. caller: man, oh man, i'm on here 20 minutes. letting people go back and forth, back and forth. come on now. host: you're on now. go ahead. caller: he was a great man. he is responsible for 60 million abortions in this country. ok? and chap quida. guest: it's interesting. one thing i thought was, i like to look at was the editorial cartoons of the week that talked about kennedy. you read a lot of the oh bitries and the writeups and it's in the 15th paragraph. it's not getting a big mention at all, really. and if you look at some of the editorial cartoons, you see it. there's this one cartoon that's got kennedy, a picture of a smiling yind and then a picture next to kennedy with horns and a pitch fork saying you can't consider one without the other. and that's true.

his life, he had his -- definitely had huge problems, especially in the early 90's. he came close to losing his bid for a fifth term. he had his own share of problems. no question about it. and he is a very controversial figure. guest: he was not a saint. and there aren't many saints among us. host: washington, north carolina on our independent line. mike, go ahead. caller: my question is, where is the leadership going to come thou that he is gone? i don't see any anybody out there that will take a political tomple. guest: i think there are a lot of democrat whose don't have a answer an to that question. and, frankly, the democrats need to find some leadership, needs to start, frankly, at the white house and president obama and he is probably going to have to be more hands on to try to move bill.

but this is, as susan was saying a couple minutes ago, this seems -- we don't know for sure but his death may very well could be a significant setback for the democratic party in part because -- well, put it more positively. if this is not to be a significant setback there are individual democrats who really need to step up. host: and who are those? guest: i say the bigger issue here, which is that is liberalism in the congress right now, is it kind of sidelined a little bit by sort of the new kind of democrat, which is what i would argue more moderate that's coming into play. and that is there really going to be room for nancy pelosi as the speaker of the house and she is clearly a liberal democrat and she is san francisco, her voting record, she and kennedy are closely aligned politically. but will she be the leader? she could be if the makeup of

the house was all that many liberal democrats, it's shifted now. so it's a little more factionalized. so i don't know if there's an environment for that kind of leader now. host: heywood on our democrat's line. caller: you keep talking about how kennedy this and that. and you always downloading and making him soun bad. but when bush was in office you didn't have nothing to say about him. you all, everything was good about him when they had the old senate seat open and everything, they didn't talk about bipartisan then. but now, since they got the democrats in office, they talking about bipartisan. they don't want to do this with them, they don't want to do that with them. what's becoming? now you're downloading kennedy

because -- republicans is always talking bad. host: what do you mean downloading kennedy? caller: you make him sound like he's a bad man. host: i'll leave it there. guest: well, i'll take one of the caller's points. there was in when republicans were in control, not so many years ago, president george w. bush, they often moved legislation without reaches out to democrats or without involving democrats. and the medicare prescription drug bill that susan talked about earlier, kennedy wanted to be part of that but ult mall matly the bill was enacted without kndy and without many democrats. and so now when democrats are in complete control, there are some who say they should do the same thing, do it on their own without the republicans.

but there are other democrats who say, well, look what happened to the republicans when the republicans i think paid a price by going it alone. and they lost control of republicans lost control of congress, they lost the presidency. there are down sides to -- there is reasons why over the years it's better often some people made the case that government works better with bipartisanship and it's a problem to go just one party on its own. host: richard cohen in 1970 he support add statute to lower the voting age to 18. why did he do that? guest: it was viewed as expanding the electorate. but it was 1970. let's think about the time. there were young mel men and a few women but mostly men who were fighting in vietnam. and if they weren't age 21, and many were younger, they

couldn't vote. senator kend aand others made the case that if they were able to go to war then they ought to be able to vote. and the law was changed. host: eark, charles on our republican line. caller: i wanted to tell you that bush approached kennedy like he approached the opposition leader in texas when he was governor, didn't work with him. great. he worked with kennedy, they raised more money for the education than ever been raised before. after the bill was passed, kennedy called him every name he could think of but president. kennedy basically, you're changing everything he ever stood for. he was great for giving people's other's money away, not his own. also, susan, you can think of this young lady in the back seat of this car sitting there

trying to grasp the last air that she had while he was saving his own reputation and his family paying off the co peck ni family so they wouldn't sue him. now, what next? when the next ku cluction clan leader, you're going to utilize him just the way you're doing. kennedy to change the actual thing that is the man did in his lifetime? host: do you want to take that? guest: he sort of embodies how many americans feel about kennedy. it's the conflicted feelings throughout the nation. he was a legend but his past was full of just some sordid things. and obviously the chap quidic accident, there are people out there who not -- i'm also from massachusetts, it was a huge

deal. and it's, people still talk about it, 40 years ago, and obviously kennedy was also a shrewed politician and he did have a lot of enemies. people who ran for congress specifically to combat ted kennedy liberalism. so he wasn't popular with everyone and certainly there are a lot of people through yut the country who can't figure out why he got as far as he did. and if he had been an average citizen would he have served jailtime for leaving the scene of the zept? or if he didn't have a wealthy family to bail him out would he have graduated from college? but ultimately he lived until 77 and he was able to accomplish a lot of good in that time, too. veragets i can follow up. there's, one of the famous quotes in ted kennedy's

political career was his debate in 1962 when he first ran and he was opposed by another democrat named edward mccormick. he said to kennedy, if your name was edward moore instead of edward moore kennedy your candidacy would be a joke. and he was a joke. and if this was edward moore he wouldn't have been elected but the point was he was a kennedy he was elected in massachusetts and then he served 47 years. host: the last significant we'll see in politics? guest: that's the big question right now. we'll find out probably in the next few days whether a kennedy will run for ted senator edward kennedy's seat. and if so, who would it be? it could be his widow, it could be his nephew who spoke at the memorial. but kennedy's final point, a number of kennedys have tried

to run for office elsewhere or have been talked about and they haven't been very successful. host: will we still see us sticking to the 145 day election? guest: the governor talked about appointing someone in the interim and i know that the legislature is heavily democratic and perfectly willing to go along with that. and then they can have the election in january. but in the interim they'll have a democratic placeholder. that will give the super majority they need to prevent republicans from fill bustering the bill. so that's big. host: one more call. caller: good morning. i just wanted to say that senator kennedy was one of the most influential figures of the past, the last century as far as legislation is concerned. basically, he came from a historic family. they gave a lot back to this

country. i wanted to give a few comments to that guy who said something about him giving away people's money. i think america has become so partisan and so social class that we can't even see the goodness in giving to the poor, to the sick, to the needy. and that basically his duty. he took advantage of it. he came from wealtsdzy family and he understood what it meant like to give back. and i think that's the biggest problem. host: so we spend an hour looking at legislation that senator kennedy was involved with. final thoughts? guest: this was today with the funeral, the burial of senator kennedy, it's in many ways it's the end of an era for the nation, for the democratic party, and life will go on, government will go on.

but it will be different without ted kennedy. guest: i agree. and i think a lot of that will be borne out in the health care debate that's going to start up in a few days. his absence will be felt. and the outcome of what happens with health care will be sort of representative of what will be the new politics that's been emerging in congress and senator kennedy was really one of the last of those new deal liberals. and i just think at this point that things are going to -- it's going to be much more difficult for someone like to him to come along. host: susan and richard, thanks for your time this morning. coming up, we will have a discussion about the economy. that will be with allen reynolds of the cato institute. but first wanted to let you know about the "newsmakers" program that you can see

tomorrow. the guest is dr. thomas freeden, the new director for the centers of disease control. and amongst the many things he talked about with our reporters is that of swine flu. this week the report gave an estimate on what the impact on what the united states would be. can you tell us a bit on what the cdc sees and whether you think some of the numbers might have been overblown or exaggerated? i think one of the numbers given was as many as 90,000 people could be expected to die from h1n1 flu this flu season. >> everything we've seen in the u.s. and around the world to date suggest that is we won't see that kind of number if the

virus doesn't change. but the presidential commission did a terrific job of giving an overview of what are the challenges in addressing h1n1 and what are some of the thing that is we need to do. many of those things are under way now. many of them are difficult. addressing influenza is hard. influenza is one of the least predictable of all infectious diseases. and that means that among other things we need to do lots to get ready in terms of our health care system. what would we do if we needed more people on ventilators? how can we plan to surge up? and those plans are underway. what can we do to vaccinate people as quickly as people when vaccine becomes available? how can we make sure that people who have underlying health conditions like asthma, diabetes, and who might get very sick from flu get rapidly treated if they get sick and flu is circulating?

zoo and that is our "newsmakers" program. you can see it tomorrow at 10:00 tomorrow right after the washington journal. if you miss that you can see it at 6:00 in the evening. allen reynolds from the cato institute joins us. give us your current take on what is happening as far as the economy is concerned. >> i think we've probably hit bottom on the recession. you'll have people say how can that be? the last two recessions unit was 12 to 15 months that the unemployment rate finally went down. but to say it has bottomed doesn't mean it's recovered. it takes a long time to get back, sometimes five, six years, so we will continue to hear sketism over the next years, year natch people say it's not a recovery, it's a jobless recovery. but it's bottomed out. >> when you say recovery, in

your mind, what are the tell tail science? >> one is the institute for supply management which is purchasing agents. they simply survey them. that has come up by almost 50% since the beginning of the year. getting better and better each month. business is doing better. that's in manufacturing. the nonmanufacturing also up. leading indicators are just what they sound like. we all know the most famous one stock market. stock market recovery matters because it affects people's wealth, because businesses can raise money in the stock market that way. and there's a whole bunch of other leading indicators. orders are up for durable goods are up. housing has apparently bottomed, believe it or not. not prices. but as the prices went down, sales went up. so again the bottom of a recession isn't proof of anything except that it's not

going down any more. recession means literally negative figures. we've probably reached the bottom of anyone tigfive figures sometime between may and aufplgt i'd have to say august. >> so if you see these eefpkts, what does this mean as far as policy decisions by this administration regarding economics or at least the economy as a whole? >> the government has very little to do with it. they like to think they do. the federal reserve has something to do with it. printing money matters. think of the stimulus program. everyone is raising the obvious point that first of all the money is borrowed so it's not a free lunch. but secondly, not much has been spent. and what has been spent on unemployment benefits. tax cuts. food stamps. you can't say on the one hand the program is working to reduce jobs and then you say the money is going to people who don't have jobs. there's a little paradox there.

fiscal stimulus doesn't work. japan tried it. the current head of economic advisers pretty well demonstrated it didn't even work in the great depression. they devalued the dollar and it was very inflationary, which turned out to be good when prices were falling. >> and yet we've had people tell you we have so many job starts because of stimulus money. we can repair roads because of stimulus money and that helps the economy. >> every time the government spends a dollar somebody receives it and they have terrific arguments as to why they should receive it. but the spending of money comes out of someone's hide, too. the government has to either borrow it which is out of the credit market, it has to tax it ultimately to service the debt. they can print money, but that delutes the value of the rest of our money. so the government has no free sources of money. it's only assumption that deaf sit spending is a free lunch

where all these theories come from. >> allen is our guest until 9:15 to talk about the economy. if you want to ask us questions, the numbers are on the bottom of your screen. you can e-mail us, and twitter us. there were a couple stories this morning that talked about the end result of cash for clunkers and tying it to consumer confidence. i think it was up 0.3% or something like that. as far as consumer spending is concerned, weigh that into our economic picture. >> people tend to overemphasize that. what do scapumplees spend? they spend out of income and wealth. i'm more interested in the fact that stock market is up, wealth is up. i'm more -- if business is doing well, then stocks improve, they hire more,

incomes grow. we don't have any trouble to get people to consume income. we have trouble getting income and welts. interesting enough, profits have recovered a little in the second quarter. that's a good thing. they were very, very low. they were down to 9% of national income, very low number. and of course in many cases they were negative losses. so as profittability improves, hiring improves, consumption takes care of itself. i think people have that backward. if we look at the source rather than how it's used, the source of gdp comes from business, the uses, gross domestic product, are consumption to be sure but that's not where it comes from. if it did, we could just make chad and bangladesh wealthy by dropping money and having them spend it. they just don't have that much wealth. >> let me ask a question i asked before. especially towards tax policy.

one goes with the other, i would assume. or in your mind. >> tax policy obviously is a cost just like any other cost. it's a cost of doing business. it's a cost of working. and it introduces disincentives if it's done wrong. now, the question is did the tax cuts help? is that the question? >> as far as -- >> are the prospective tax increases -- >> when people spoke of a $787 billion sfluss plan, i said no, it's a deferred tax increase because we've got to pay for it. and even if you don't literally pay off that debt you have to pay interest on that debt forever. >> so sooner or later that bill comes due. and that's true of the trillion dollars on health and all the other stuff. government spending is the

burden. but, yes, the ultimate pain is that somebody has to pay the taxes. >> are businesses going to pay more taxes under this administration? >> they can't pay it if they don't have it. the way i view it is that taxes are paid by labor and capital. i'm a supplier of capital when i buy stock or bond. and the businessmen tends to think of just the business tax per se but taxes on his workers matter, taxes on his stockholders matter and taxes on his employees matter. so the whole tax system burdens labor or capital. and since we need both, you can't really shift from one to the other. who pays the corporate tax? interestingly enough, economists are still at odds. >> why is that? >> we don't know. some people say it's passed on to labor, sometimes they say it's passed on in higher prices. consumers pay it. i rather doubt that one because world prices keep prices down.

some paid by stockholderers. maybe. raising the corporate tax rate would be pretty ludicrous because we have one of the highest corporate tax rates in the world right now. >> where does it stand now? >> if you take federal and state together, it's on the order of 40%. most of europe is 25%. japan is the only really high tax -- by the way, they're not doing very well. and of course we have a system in which businesses can be taxed under the individual code. and when the individual rate is about the same as the corporate rate, as it has been lately, that's about to change, more and more of them do that. they form s. corporations which are taxed as individuals, they form limited liabilities companies. and they form partnerships and tax themselves as individuals. so i would expect more of that to happen. people say the administration wants to raise individual taxes. that will hurt small

businesses. common republican argument. it's partly true. not everybody is going to reincorporate. but the bigger firms among those, and some are pretty big, will likely just form corporations. in the 70's every doctor and lawyer was a corporation. a lot of economists was a corporation. people know how to adjust to the tax system. that's why it's so hard to squeeze more ref new out of an economy that's heavy taxed. >> the first call up from michigan. frank on our republican line. caller: good morning. i suggest that the government, this particular government is, you can equate it to a family unit. you cannot spend more than you make. if nobody is working and there's no prospect of working, there will be no money coming in. so we continue to go further and further into debt. and some day, like all family

units, they'll have to face what they bought. it's almost a hopeless situation. i'm an old man, i'm 85 years old and i lived in the first part of the big depression. it's ludicrous at the best. thank you. guest: well, of course that's what i meant by saying borrowed money is not free lunch. the debt has to be serviced, the debt has to be paid down. we borrowed a lot and we will borrow more. they're talking about adding $9 trillion in ten years. that's an incredible number. is it something to get horribly concerned about? probably so. does it do doom us? i don't think so. but some people talk about mortgaging their future. you're mortgaging it pretty

quickly. and it isn't our grand kids that need to worry about it. we need to be worried about it right now. that's why you hear people talking about maybe we need a value added tax in america. soon. or we need to put tax rates up soon. both of those things can back fire on you because they weaken the economy so much you don't get much revenue. dangerous business. host: you talked about the aspect of borrowing money to pay for current things. what's our relationship with countries that we tend to borrow from? guest: well, that's the whole thing about china owning the debt. china owns less than $1 trillion. we're borrowing that much every six months now. who are we borrowing it from? americans, surprisingly. host: how so? guest: i guess because they're not buying stock. we know the savings rate is up a little bit for 4.5%.

but there's a big world market out there and there have been times when countries like china stopped buying u.s. debt. somebody else picked it up. so by itself, the amount of money is much more than trillions. it's huge. and the markets are huge. so for a little given interest rate increase, you can sell it to somebody else. that's not a concern of mine. that wouldn't be the way i would put it. i actually have a paper on that subject at the treasury website. if you go to treasury.gov and type my name in the search, i gave a talk at treasury about government debt and how it's financed. it's fairly optimistic. so i'm not typically a deficit warrior, but right now these are orders of magnitude bigger than anything we've seen, so i'm worried. host: democrat's line. caller: good morning. i have just two questions. one is that if you can explain

to me how the treasury works and how the reserve works. and one is private and one is government kind of situation? and is that from the bill that was passed? i mean, the bill that was written up by bankers in 1913 that was rushed through the -- i think christmas eve? and president wilson signed it. and that was on jeckle island, i believe. and the other thing is that as far as money is concerned, as far as foreign aid, are we the only one who pays foreign aid to other countries? are we the one carrying the burden for everyone else? and where is that money? is that money coming from us? and is it borrowed money that we're borrowing money and we're giving foreign aid to other countries? and it's mainly military aid and we're actually supplying

the -- host: i got it. guest: that's a lot of questions. ok, the fed is quasi private. but that doesn't mean as much. host: legislation by ron paul asking for more transparency. would you support that? guest: i suppose. i'd have to look at the details of it. the fed and the treasury and the government is kind of an insesstuss relationship. the fed buys government debt and credits the bank reserves and the banks then have with more reserves could make more loans, buy more securities and create more securities in the process. they're not making many loans lately but the reserves are huge and there's almost nothing to constrain them if the economy picks up. and that's a worry. the issue of foreign aid, we are not a big giver of foreign aid relative to say scanned naveion countries but yes it's borrowed money because anything we spend is borrowed money now.

so borrowed money from taxpayers, current and future and give it to some foreign aid, a lot of it is military obviously in case of israel which is surrounded by hostile countries, a lot of it is military, a lot is compassionate. but it's not in the constitution. if somebody asked me do you want to pay taxes to help other countries, i'm kind of a mean guy, i would probably say no. i mike make a voluntary contribution. host: indianapolis, you are next. steven, are you there? caller: yes, i'm here. my question is similar to the guy that just asked the question. and what i wanted to know is

with american people paying all these taxes, millions of people paying all of these taxes, how come they can't keep the economy afloat? how come the economy can't stay afloat without these american people paying taxes and they say that the taxes generate nine times the wealth? how come it's not distributed equally like it's supposed to be? guest: that's kind of a tricky question. distributed equally. of course the trouble is when you rob people to pay paul you discourage both of them. and on the same vain, we have a viewer on twitter who asks, raise taxes on the rich? it's about time they pay their share. we made them rich. they can give some back. a good try on that one. there's a lot of very

complicated, i actually wrote a book called income and wealth, it's a text book. so it's something i'm pretty familiar with. economists have ab expression called elasstissty of income. they've done a lot of studies and some of them by guys who i've sometimes argued with at berkeley, a french economists. what they find is that folks are very responsive to higher taxes on marginal earnings on the extra thousand dollars that you earn. and i mentioned one way they can shift between businesses and taxes and individuals. they can shift between holding stocks that pay dividends into tax exempt bonds. there's all kinds of opportunities to avoid taxes if the tax rate gets too high. so the art of plucking the goose without killing him, as somebody said in the french, about the time of the french revolution, is a tricky one. and raising taxes on the rich

assumes they are passive sheep who will sit there and be shorne. the evidence is quite the contrary that high marginal tax rates don't work. host: did we see some of that? that happened the last couple of weeks where now the swiss government is turning over information on swiss bank accounts? guest: that's a form of tax avoidance that i wasn't really referring to. i'm talking about perfectly legal ways of avoiding taxes. one of them is retire early. if you're a two earner couple, become a one earner couple. i have deliberately reduced my income dramatically because i had capital gains. and capital gains put my labor income into the top tax bracket. even though my -- i'm not complaining. host: brooklyn. caller: they're competing

health reforms running through the congress. what's your view as to the effect of if any of this is passed on the economy? thank you. guest: calling something reform is always the way to make it sound better than it maybe is. i want to look at the nuts and bolts. the reason is this is so contentious is there are winners and losers. cutting back on medicare to expand medicaid. and the insurance provisions are essentially to lighten the insurance burden on risky behavior and therefore implicitly raise it on folks who keep their weight down and don't spoke and so on and so on. for example, let's take a really popular one. insurance companies have to sign me up regardless of

preexisting conditions. well, then i won't buy insurance or i'll buy the minimum until i get sick and then i'll go and get a big cad lack policy. i think the whole thing is misconceived. i have -- i'm eligible for a government program, medicare. i choose not to do it because i don't like the program and i have catastrophic plan, so called, big deductible. and health savings account. i like that plan. i would not be allowed to do it under some of the proposals before congress. they're shovesing me into a government plan, med camplete and i find that the best doctors won't accept new medicare patients. medicare doesn't cover things i need, like a hearing aid. it doesn't cover glasses, it doesn't cover a lot of stuff. so you end up buying med gap insurance, which also has to fit certain descience. we should give freedom a try. let people buy the insurance they want.

it's illegal for me to buy the policy i want. host: you wrote a column hey big spender. can you expand on that? guest: total spending on health care is government spending plus private spending if you expand it by $1 trillion, the only way that it goes down is the private goes down. so they're fretting about this. the driver of the health care costs has been government. medicare and medicaid primarily but also some other government programs. and i also go on to say that the clinton administration kept a lid on it. and when that happened, inflation slowed down, government wasn't spending more. the hospitals couldn't charge more. everything went fine. then they expanded chip and medicaid and they ex-- a health

care plan for kids. and got more jeb russ with taxpayer money. and it's kind of iranic because medicare and medicaid are both broke. they have no idea how they're going to pay those bills. so when they say we're going to expand this program by cutting back on medicare, which makes seniors properly nervous. not me because i don't go along with medicare, they have to do that anyway. they can't say oh we found some money over here, we can use it to expand this. you can't spend less by spending more. all of these programs spend more. there's no other way to describe that except dishonest. host: oregon, ted on our democrat's line. caller: good morning. any wearks i'm just kind of wondering, i think it was in the spring of 2008 i came home and i had a check for $600 from the former administration. and i'm wondering, did we borrow that from china?

that would be the first question. the second question would be, i'm wondering, as an exmilitary air force guy, why the former administration ran the defense budget you should a different line in the budget. and then i guess my last question is going to be, what did we get as average americans from the $700 billion blout of wall street and the banks from mr. bush and mr. paulson? i'll hang up and take your response off line. guest: that's a lot. i got a $250 check from the government and i'm on social security and my wife got one. we're wealthy folks. i'm not looking for transfer payments. did we borrow that money? yeah. i'll probably have to pay it back with interest. but i got one, too. i didn't understand the line about the defense. did you? i didn't quite get that one. but i certainly understand the

bailout question. and i've written extensively on it. i think it was harmful on balance. basically scary. you had a situation where we were, the government was flailing around. this goes back to the bush administration. nationalizing some things, letting others go belly up. a lot of uncertainty out there. and certainly for stockholders in those companies, city bank or goldman sachs or ni of those thingses, the only thing you could do is run for cover. so the stocks fell. and that created a problem that the government set out to fix. they don't have enough capital. stocks are back up and they're all doing fine. but they're not up because of the program, they're up despite the program. i think it was most all of it was a big mistake. the -- we have procedures for dealing with failed banks. 84 of them failed already. there's nothing particularly wrong with that. there's others that can pick up the slack. some are still doing fine.

host: i think it was the fdic said 400 were on a concern list guest: there's always a lot on a concern list. they don't all go belly up. that still leaves about 3,600 others that are ok. and some of those are small. banks aren't as important as they like to think they are. and i say that at a former banker. with a bank that no longer exists, not my fault. host: if we glorify work, why do we tax it higher than investment? guest: because it's hard to tax investment. there was a philosopher of all things in england who dealt with this. because of that elasstissty of taxable income. if, for example, you put a high

tax on capital gains, people won't realize capital gains. that is they don't sell. and if they don't sell they don't pay. and they won't invest on things that pay off. they'll just invest in money market funds and cds or something like that. so you have to take behavior into account. and where the behavior is very responsive, the tax is most distorting but also least productive of revenue. we don't -- some of what is called a labor tax is tied to a benefit so it's partly a tax, partly a prepaid annuity. the medicare tax not so obvious. it's a really bad deal if you have a high income. and the ordinary income tax, we have fewer and fewer people paying it. to the point where the burden is borne by a very narrow slice. and the trouble is it makes it

very cyclical number one, very relie nt on the stock market. so when times are good both republicans and democrats without exempt more income, give out more tax credits, and all this generosity and then when times turn back they run broke and run scared. we need a broader based tax system. . .

>> if the end result is inflation, we would have been better off not doing that. the exit plan is very precarious. somebody talked about ben bernanke's reappointment and a guy who built the bomb should be responsible for dismantling it. do not get him off the hook because it won't be easy to get out from under desperate. not nationalizing and bailing out the water companies is selling. -- is silly. cutting interest rates is all right, to a point. it is natural. that may be ok, we will see. was a big mess. they can afford it and it is not doing good.

by the time it does any good, we won't need it. they should give the money back. host: knoxville, tenn., on a republican line. caller: i have watched c-span for years and depending on our situations at the time, people would call in asking about foreign aid. and how much we are getting in foreign aid? the standard answer that the politician would give is 1%. they would go on to make it sound like everybody pays more in foreign aid. since we have gotten into the trillions, which is very scary, what is 1% of the trillions of dollars?

i would like a figure on that. guest: i'm sorry i don't have that figure. i don't think the 1% is nearly that accurate. i don't get that large. you're talking about 1% of total federal spending. we don't spend that much in foreign aid. it is easy enough to find but i don't have at my fingertips. i have a colleague, chris edwards, who has written books on government spending that are fabulous. if you go to cato.org and look for chris edwards, he has all the figures on government spending. host: long island, n.y., on our independent line. caller: don't cut me off. $800 billion spent in building

bridges so kids can drive on it? $800 billion in iraq. you talk about money for food stamps. that benefits farmers and supermarkets and it has a multiplier effect. i wish that cspan would read the newspapers in january and december when we were losing 700,000 jobs. confidence is the point. there's a lack of confidence with republicans that led to a collapse in the financial system. as for the bailout, that was a good thing. you need banks to be intermediaries. if they did not get the $10 billion, they would have collapsed goldman sachs was a

bird -- able to pay back the treasury. guest: $800 billion on bridges, it is only $800 million so far. there are commitments but nobody is spending commitments. there are plans for the future. there is a quick comment versus spending on iraq. i was an opponent of the a iraq war, particularly the wmd story. i am with you on that. as with any other dividend to stop squandering on this or that is not the right way to go. host: what about the idea of inspiring confidence? guest: from the day of the election, everything went sour. i think we inspired a fair amount of fear. i want to get partisan on that. i did not like anything the bush administration did, either.

why here? because some of the changes are risky in terms of tax increases and regulatory stuff. suppose i am a holder, as i am, of a portfolio of health stocks? i am nervous about that. suppose a fear of nationalization of banks which was a headline on the same day of the inauguration. dear of nationalization of banks -- that did not happen but there was a lot of all unnecessary uncertainty. the food stamp multiplier -- multipliers are textbook stuff for which there is almost no evidence. they point to become keconometrc models. the kansas city fed did this once. i scored high but none of the forecasting models scored nearly as high. host: what is a multiplier?

guest: we give somebody food stamps, they go to the restore, and now they have more money, the grocery store. if somebody spent on unemployment benefits -- regardless what you spend it on. if you go to kmart and buy chinese goods, that is a multiplier in china. it is one of these goofy ideas. money is not free. people understand that the giveaway is a future tax. host: folsom, california, on the democrats' line. caller: good morning. let me take you back to eisenhower and warning us of the military industrial complex. all the concern over that health care reform is as if nobody is doing anything about our loss of funds until we try to revise the health-care system. nobody seems to mention much about the cost of the war, about

one trillion dollars? ñiit seems pretty minor compared to health care reform. i am wondering about the manufacturing base. is there anything we export besides war and guns and bullets? can get the manufacturing base back and focus on spending on something other than a necessary wars? guest: i am with you on unnecessary wars. afghanistan is one of them. many of them are. we had a war in korea and that is still a problem. we do not solve much with these wars. world war ii was necessary. by and large, i am all for cutting the military budget but there are other things that need to be cut, too. i think we are still the number- one exporter in the world but

others are catching up on us. exports were a surprising source of strength in this economy. we even had an increase in gdp in the second quarter of 2008 and we were about the only country that did in terms of final sales, taking away the inventory correction, second quarter of 2008 was up 2.7% and then down and then up and now we are up in the second quarter of this year. much of the reason for that was a big pot and exports. when your went down and japan went down sooner than we did, our export prospects were ruined. we export highly technical equipment but also services. ibm is largely service company. it is not a subject where you can ask what we subjects?

host: as far as your outlook on job recovery, what is your perception of the job market returning to strength? guest: that is one of the coincidence indicators. to time the bottom of the market, the last leading indicators were up strong. that -- that usually means something for three or four months. we have coincided indicators which tells what is going on now, retail sales which is up for three months. the job market is a lagging indicator and one of the last to turn. one of the reasons that the on plum creek mislead you is as the prospects improve, the irony is that people are marginally attached workers will come back into the job market and then they will show up as unemployed. if you are served it and they

ask if you are looking for work and you say "no." you might not be actively looking. as they come back into the labour force, the unemployment rate tends to go up. that did not happen last month for the labor force contracted. that is one of the reasons why the unemployment rate is a particularly poor indicator. it is worth watching and other indicators such as hours per week which were up last month, earnings were up last month. there were some positive figures in july but not enough of them for me. i picked on august as my time for a turnaround date. host: is there any where people can go on the web and look at these numbers to make sense? use of unemployment is one thing to look at but look at the employment ranks. is there a one-stop shop where

people can interpret these kind of figures and how would make sense? guest: of iowa's type them fred, the federal reserve bank of st. louis. -- i always tight in fred the federal reserve bank of st. louis. i type in economic indicators and that will take to the council of economic advisers with a lot of data. it is pretty readable. bls.gov is the bureau of labor statistics. some of it is harder to read than others. host: more call, atlanta, ga., on our republican line. caller: i would like to ask mr. reynolds if he could expound on

a question that a caller earlier had asked. he said he did not understand the question. the question was, the war is that we currently now have under the prior administration were funded from a different set of books that typically the war is funded with the general budget. he indicated that he did not understand the question. i was perplexed that he would not have an answer for that. guest: it's because i didn't understand the question. that was a good explanation. i now understand. they did not fully account for it when they submitted the budget. they were asked what they expected it to be in the future.

we don't know. we might get lucky and the war will end. they come back later in the year and they won a supplemental budget for the congress. they have to put something in there. it was not big enough. whether that is still going on, i don't know the current administration ran on a policy of taking resources out of iraq and putting more into afghanistan. i believe that this sort of what is happening. it is probably cheaper but, nonetheless, it is moving from one war to another. nobody likes wars. host: alan reynolds is the senior fellow from the cato institute . we will now profile representative barney frank, a biography written about him and we will take that discussion and come right back. host: ca[captioning performed by national captioning institute]

[captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2009] >> this month, the ninth circuit court of appeals for the issue of veterans with post traumatic stress and traumatic brain injury. what the oral argument today on c-span. in 1959, in the heat of the cold war, soviet premier nikita khrushchev took an unprecedented two-week tour of the u.s. peter carlson recounts that trip with nikita khrushchev's son sergei, part of the booktv weekend. as washington and the nation focus on health care, sunday on c-span, we will talk about dealing with the h1n1 swine flu virus with dr. thomas friedan,

head of the centers for disease control. we will also have a look inside the u.s. hospital system. on august 20, the only man convicted in the 1988 bombing of pan am 103 was released from its dutch prison. this weekend, once debate from the scottish parliament following the government's decision to release him to his home country of libya, sunday night on c-span. go inside the supreme court to see the public places and those rarely seen spaces, hear directly from the justices as they provide their insight about the court and the building. the supreme court, home to america's highest court. the first sunday and october, on c-span. as the debate over health care continues, cspan's health care hub is a key resource. go on line and follow all the information. watch the latest event, including town hall meetings and share your thoughts on the issue with your own citizen video,

including video from any town hall meetings you have gone too. >>"washington journal"continues. >> joining us now is the author of a biography on barney frank. what inspired you to write this? guest: it was an attempt to deal with barney's colorful career and complex life. there had never been a biography written about him before. many profiles but never a biography. i thought there was a need for one. i thought it would be an interesting story and it turned out to be a fascinating story. host: did you have any experience of working with them before? guest: i had first met him in the summer of 1971. we were both working for the massachusetts congressman. i was a summer intern and bernie was the new chief of staff.

/>b>ctlater, in the mid-1980's,k for him as the staff director and chief counsel for the house government operations subcommittee on employment and housing. i had seen him close up and see in inaction close-up and had known him for 35 years. host: he is seen on this network a lot. what would you say that the general perception of him are and how they differ from your perceptions? guest: the general perception is a tremendous intellect and sharp wit. he is viewed as extremely liberal which he is too large extent but in many areas, he differs from most liberals, crime being one. he thinks it is important to catch criminals and prison is a good form of crime prevention. host: anything else? guest: i think also there is the

perception, and i think it is true, that in the exterior, on the outside, you have a very gruff personality, some impatience, rudeness, abruptness, but beneath that caring personytk']. host:yq you say he has a reputation for being short. great time waster and does not suffer fools gladly. that is unless they happen to the constituents. guest: i had interviewed several former staffers who suggested that "get to the point" would have beenuárpáexk urále for t he entered politics after a

graduate student at harvard and got involved in kevin white's all of 1967. in kevin white's he went from a volunteer to his ì(lc@&c+ election. that was his entry into politics. ñ$e did-cñ that for three yearsd then work for congressman michael harrington in washington as his chief of staff. 1972, hev&ñ rrzl=ssn for the se legislature. he served in the state legislature for eight years before the seat in the third district opened up when they papel he did was issued, requiring father drynan to step down. it was the pope who created a

seat for barney. host: you said he was going for it -- through midlife crisis. to one more term in the state legislature. he was thinking of coming out at that point. as i recount in the book, in april of 1980, he was the keynote speaker at gay and lesbian awareness day at harvard. when he looked out at the group of students and2j others in the packed audience, he thought about how much it would mean to them to come out then. when it came time to do it, he just could not. two weeks later is when the papel edict came out and the seat opened and he ran for that seat. drynan was always reluctant to discuss the edict in public. even after the death of pope john paul roman numeral 2.

-- pope john paul ii. one time drynan spoke about it was when he was delivering a lecture at the university of the district of columbia law school. he spoke about his 10 years in congress and made reference to the papeal edict. he said he pondered what the pontiff would have done it the had known that i would be replaced in congress by barney frank. host: what has been openly gay done for his political career? guest: initially, there was a concern that it would hurt him significantly. when he came out in 1987, it did not. he has become a national gay icon, a leader. if you look at his career in the

state legislature, which began three years after the stonewall riots in 1969, it parallels the growth of the gay-rights movement. host: our guest is the author of a biography on barney frank. you can ask questions about representative frank over the course of the 40 minutes or so by calling the numbers on your screen. first call for this segment is evansville, indiana, on our democrats lied. caller: good morning. i have a comment about barney frank. i'm a straight, heterosexual blackmail. i have the utmost respect for by

frank. to me, he is one of the strongest democratic figures in politics to me. he gives some the people a general sense of justice. him being a gate jew must of been hard for him growing up. anybody out barney frank, you have to go to cspan because you are the best, fox is really a fake. let me get to the point -- if anybody doubts the true grit of barney frank, you have to look at his town hall meetings. look at his interviews when he goes on fox. that man is tougher than a two- dollar stake. do you think he has motivated

other openly-gay democratic politicians to run off that format? i know it was a taboo back in the earlier days. guest: yes, i think he has. last june, i had agreed with the publisher of the book, the university of massachusetts press, on the title. and once we agreed on the title, i wanted to make sure that it would still be accurate when the book came out this fall. i did some research and there were five gay men running for congress in 2008. none of them were expected to win. however, one of them from colorado had a good campaign and spent a million dollars of his

own money and of said the president of the colorado senate. it was say it's safe democratic district. this meant that he was going to be elected in the fall. i started doing some more reading about him and it turned out he was jewish. at that point, i was left with left-handed, wright added, and everything i read said nothing about that. i needed a baseball card with statistics on the back. i contacted him and i told him why i wanted to know. he said that i was ok with the title because he writes with his right hand, even though he is a switch hitter in baseball and plays tennis with his left hand. about a week later, i got an e- mail from him saying that he had been thinking about the book and if it sells well, you might want to do a second book, jared

polis, the story of the only ambidextrous, jewish, a day politician. i told my did not have a second book in him but to let me know when he becomes a committee chairman. host: here is representative frank. the caller previously brought up this town hall meetings and getting a sense of the man from them. here is a bit from a recent one. >> on what planet he spent most of your time? [applause] [inaudible] do you want to answer the question? you stand there with a picture of the president defaced to look like hitler and compare the

effort to increase health care to the nazis. my answer to you is, is a tribute to the first amendment that this kind of bottle, contemptible nonsense is so freely propagated. [applause] i am trying to have a conversation with you which is trying to argue with a dining room table. i have no interest in either. host: what would you add to that as far as the interchange? guest: i think that is typical of barney's career. the ability to come up with a rejoinder. when he was a state representative, it was the unfettered barney frank and you really saw him in action. my favorite instance, there was a debate in the massachusetts legislature on a bill introduced by barney frank to implement the

recommendations of the president's commission on marijuana. conservative representative during the debate took direct aim at barney frank. he said, if it is not a bill to advance prostitution, pornography, gambling, or to promote rights forum sexual, it is this bill. he said, mr. speaker, i want to know when the gentleman from the back bay will stop. he asked very indignantly and party got up and said," mr. speaker, i want to assure my colleague from new bedford that i will keep trying until i find something that he likes to do." host: louisiana, on our independent line. caller: i am happy that you mentioned barney frank's commitment to law enforcement and getting criminals in jail. my question would be does this

extent to himself and to the other people and the government that we currently have? i would refer to the recent allegations by biggest gagmen who was a translation for the fbi if he received drug money from the turkish lobbyist or chairman dodd who was selling nuclear secrets from the open market. i could go on and on, including let's talk about barney's me -- not being held for having a prostitution ring out of his own house. who is going -- who is getting thrown into jail? it seemed like members of the government are not. also, we should not be talking

about nazis but the recent bill that was passed in massachusetts that the pandemic response bill 2089 which will force inoculations. it has home inspections, incarcerations if your recent -- if you refuse to have the mandatory inoculation of these boys and vaccines. host: we will leave it there. guest: on the last point, barney has nothing to do with state legislature. when he first ran for congress and the constituent wrote in about rent-controlled, he responded that the reason i ran for congress with that i would have to deal with rent- controlled issues. he has nothing to do with any legislation that is passed by the state of massachusetts as a federal congressman. steve gobey was the male

prostitute who barney had had the scandal with. this was in 1989-1990. there is a chapter that deals with that incident in its entirety. what many people don't realize is that there was never any evidence that barney frank knew about what gobey's activities were in the important. the ethics committee found absolutely no credible evidence to support that. in many ways, because the ethics process is a political one and when matters come to the floor, i think barney received more punishment than he other hot -- otherwise would have outside the political context.

it is interesting that the ethics committee vote was 9-3 in favor of a simple letter of reproval which would not have gone to the house floor or anything like that. there were three republicans who insisted on more severe penalties. the one who was most outspoken was then-representative larry craig. host: he had a relationship with steve gobey, initially -- guest: he had paid for his services initially and it became a friendship. barney tried to steer him on the right path. what is interesting is that the people i interviewed, most heterosexuals' reaction was how

could he have done something so dumb. when i was interviewing a gay man, the reaction was totally different they were exploiting that it is not the same thing as a heterosexual male hiring the services of a prostitute. it might have been sex but companionship. you have to live like in the closet to know what barney frank went through. they were telling me their own experiences that they had had in their careers, sometimes similar things. that gave me a better understanding and a better perspective on that whole incident. host: you also wrote about the matter of parking tickets with steve gobey. guest: in some cases there was a ample parking tickets. if you get a parking ticket as a member of congress and it is on official business, it gets waived.

there were a couple of instances. it was a very small number. i believe it was written that a couple of parking tickets -- host: they were first de gobey? guest: some of them for -- or for him. -- some of them work for him. barney frank said later that the problem was the police officers didn't think my old chevy show that was a congressman's car. host: what about the press conference he held? could you explain a little of what happens? guest: when the scandal broke in the"washington times," he called the newspaper and entered all

the questions. that was to his benefit instead of having revelations coming through. he admitted what was true and denied what was false. that was something that perhaps bill clinton should have done up front and it is something that all less than but many politicians in a situation could have handled it. host: pennsylvania, nancy on our republican line. caller: 94 taking my call. -- thank you for taking my call. for such a smart guy, he did a dumb thing. you live in washington, d.c. and in that society and you say how smart he is. however, he is considered the

cause of the mortgage and housing crisis because of his decision in the bush administration. would you please comment on that? guest: that is a fair question. first of all, let me explain that i had finished by book in the fall of 2008. i had sent it off to the publisher. then, the financial crisis and economic meltdown came and i felt i could not, in good conscience, have a book about barney frank without dealing with that. i went back did more research and more interviews and rewrote the entire first chapter so that it focused on those events. if you go back to thursday, september 18, when secretary paulson and federal reserve

chairman bernanke were meeting with congressional leaders and telling them the extent of the crisis. at that time, barney recognized that bold governmental action was necessary. first of all, he felt it was important that there be a governmental entity to systematically determine which companies would get safe and which would not rather than the ad hoc determinations' by ben bernanke and secretary paulson. he referred to them as they loan arranger and his faithful companion paulson. barney recognize that action was needed. he aligned himself with the very lame-duck republican president to pass that legislation.

he knew up front that it would be a massive bailout of the u.s. financial system and it would be wildly unpopular with the public and the voters. he felt that the public interest required them to take some action. averting disaster is not something that gets political credit. you cannot have a bumper sticker that says, "it would have been worse if we did not act." if you recall the initial bailout bill but the white house sent to congress, it was a three-page document that barney like into a ditch any wish list. -- into a dick cheney wish list. the bill that came out of barney's committee was 100 pages. host: our independent line -- caller: in your book, in reference to the rent- controlled, he has four

apartments that are under rent control where the alleged prostitution was happening. he used one of those apartments to do his political campaigning. i was wondering if you covered that. did to cover his tax evasion for his property overseas so he doesn't have to pay taxes that we do. can you address the $750,000 that he found by accident that he did not do anything with with the irs. if i had done any one of those things, i would be in jail. if you covered that his boyfriend was on the directors for fannie mae and he spent a lot of our tax dollars pork barreling fannie mae to death?

guest: the first four or five things, there is no basis for, there is no factual support for. those are spurious allegations. with respect to the issue of fannie mae, there are a lot of charges that barney frank is to blame for it. as casey stengel used to say," you can look it up." from 1995 through the beginning of 2007, the republicans controlled congress, not the democrats, the republicans controlled the house. newt gingrich, dick armey, tom delay never said housat around d ask what barney frank would think about something. they couldn't care less what barney frank thought about things. it is hard to blame him for that period of time. he became chairman of the

financial services committee in january of 2007. by april, there was a bill out of his committee to provide stronger regulation for fannie mae and freddie mac. host: does he have an economic background or financial-services background? no guest:, he doesn't. when he became the ranking minority member of the committee in 1993-1995, he started study and learning in it himself. he was strictly a government major in college and graduate school, at harvard. no economic background. he learned all this by studying, reading, and the committee itself did not get into securities until a couple of years ago. he did not even pick that up.

host: on the republican line, raleigh, north carolina, go ahead caller: caller: this book is not a piece of literary art. it is a defense of a congressman's disgusting and abominable lifestyle. he should be an example of the whole some lifestyle of the united states of america, not some radical group that is demented. i appreciate the time to come on c-span. i appreciate cspan itself which is a wonderful democratic tool. i thank you. guest: barney usually gets a very positive or very negative reaction from people.

when you mention his name, there are very few people that come in that gray area. most people have opinions. as far as the book being a defense of barney frank, it is an admiring biography but it tells his story, warts and all. when oliver cromwell was asked to have his portrait painted told the artist," paint me as i am, warts and all." it does not scared any issues, airbrush any event or controversy. host: did you talk with the representative himself? guest: i did 30 hours of interviews with barney frank over a five-year period for the book. host: how many others did you talk to? guest: i interviewed over 150 other people. i tracked down, one of my

favorite ones was barney's 12th grade english teacher at bay on high school, betty harilick, who was 96-year-old, still very sharp. she told me that he spoke too fast, even then. she thought she should done something but he was a senior. host: tomorrow from 9:00 through 10:00, we have the author of a book about senator mitch mcconnell. you can see that tomorrow on this program. stuart weisberg is our guest for the next 15 minutes. caller: i make right handed, a jewish grandmother constituent of barney. locke -- like -- i have lived here since 1966.

neither father drynan or barney frank had been affected. they have tax-supported pensions. they did not have to say for children, a house, so they could live wonderful lives on the tax dollar. i forgot one of my points -- barney frank can also revel in his wit which is remarkable. i do not care what his life style is. i agree with some of his politics and disagree with some others. i find the fact that neither he nor father drynan considering a regular life impinges on their abilities to make a decision for the rest of us.

guest: the charges totally inaccurate. as i discussed in the book, when barney was elected to congress, he was one of the few members of congress who rejected admission into the congressional pension plan. instead, he opted for social security so that he would be treated just like his constituents. when he retires from congress, the only pension he will have will be his social security, like his constituents. very few other politicians do things of that fact. the argument that he will live on a government pension is totally inaccurate host: a wood, california. caller: high and thank you for taking my call. i am thrilled with barney frank. he is an incredible man i

disagree with the caller before me that said that because he is gay that he somehow does not represent her. whether we're black, white, gay, straight, these are our representatives and they are human beings. i am glad that there is someone like barney frank on the congressional area. i feel just as lucky to have peaked stark. ina left-handed, gay scientist. i feel being left-handed or gay does not affect who i am or what i do. thank you very much for your book. i will pick up. guest: thank you very much. the official release date of the book by the university of massachusetts press is september 29. it should be in most bookstores. host: what was the reaction from his family?

guest: it was total surprise. none of them saw it coming. a particularly barney's mother. barneyémç, as many gay men do, there was the camouflage of dating women. barney regularly dated women in high school, in college, and as a graduate student. at one point or another, the relationship always broke up. barney's mom was very surprised but also very supportive of him. as was his whole family. he had actually told his siblings about it in late april, early may of 1980, when he was

still a state representative, about a week before the drynan seat opened up in congress. when he called his sister, doris, to tell her he was running for congress and her husband picked up the phone, barney's first line was," the door is just closing." when bernie explained about running for congress, he understood what barney was referring to. host: miami, fla., on our republican line. caller: this german said that in 2007, barney frank tried to pass legislation or implement -- to put more control over fannie mae and freddie mac. in 2005, john mccain and president bush tried to rainbows -- reign those

institutions in an were stonewalled by barney frank and were filibustered by christopher dodd. as far as craig being the man behind the prostitution ring. where is larry craig now? guest: on the point that barney stone wall in 2005. barney and mike oxley had legislation in 2005 that are supported for a firmer control of fannie mae and freddie mac which the bush administration would not support. again, the congress was controlled by the republicans and barney was support of -- was supported. you can look it up. host: fla., on our independent line. caller: take your own supplies

and start looking things up. you told the lady that she was not putting the facts out about barney frank with his lover being part of fannie mae and freddie mac. that was true. why are you being dishonest to the people listening to you? secondly, i saw barney frank yell at the young lady in the town hall meeting. she sought -- she says increased up. as a senator, should he not be polite and honest to people instead of raving at them? that is ridiculous. this man is nothing but sugar- coated crap. guest: he has never been on anyone's short list for chief of protocol the earlier caller went through five items and i it said the first five or incorrect she then had a sixth and seventh item which i directed my

comments to. yes, hermoses was barney's boyfriend at the time and work for fannie mae and had a job with fannie mae. that is true. there is no intellectual dishonesty. that is a fact. to say that barney it was supportive of fannie mae or objected to legislation that would impact fannie mae because of that is ludicrous. during that time that bar a was dating hermoses, the republicans controlled congress, not the democrats. barney was not a committee chairman. he was not in the senate and did not have the ability of a filibuster. host: congressman frank is a representative not a senator. caller: i wanted to say that i

watch c-span a few days ago when barney frank coast of the town hall meeting in his district. i thought he handled it very well. as far as that lady about her being on another planet, she had a picture of obama with a hitler mustache. i can understand why he would find that reference very offensive because he was trying to help health care reform and for her to link him with hitler is completely bizarre. i don't think he yelled at her. i think that kind of ridiculous position she took with the president was justified. i think he made good points. he was talking about getting money from wealthy americans who have taken our jobs away but put the money in offshore tax havens. he said that we could get

millions, maybe trillions of dollars to pay for health care. host: in a few minutes, we will cover senator kennedy's funeral mass. senator kennedy comes up in his book. what was their relationship? guest: it was a close relationship and he has always been indebted to senator kennedy. in his first election for congress in 1980, it was a very close democratic primary. he was running against arthur clarke, a extremely conservative mayor in massachusetts. the week before the primary election, that wednesday night, barney had suspended campaigning for two days for the jewish holiday of rosh hashanah. and that wednesday, the cardinal issued a pastoral letter attacking abortion as a heinous

crime and simple act. he denounced politicians who supported abortion and called on catholic voters when they went to the polls that tuesday to vote against candidates who were pro-choice. it was directed against both barney frank and jim shannon in the adjoining district. the story went that that morning barney was praying in the synagogue and when jim chapman came into his office, his prairie -- his press secretary told what the cardinal had done in the press was clamoring for a response. shannon estelle barney frank responded. he could not respond because he is instead of praying. jim shannon said i am going to synagogue and i will be praying. after the holiday, barney did respond and explain that was an

issue that -- did not respond and explain that was an issue that he needed to turn the other cheek. it was ed bricken inbev responded for both of them, a very courageous act. it was edward kennedy that responded for both of them, a very courageous act. he very eloquently said that the tradition in the commonwealth is for voters to look at a whole range of issues when they go into the voting booth. barney has always been grateful almost 30 years later to senator kennedy for that action. host: we have time for one more call caller:. barney frank is a classic example of harvard hubris, fast- talking both those who has given congress a bad name. thank you. host: final thoughts?

guest: barney is the combinations the clash between harvard and growing up in bayonne, new jersey. it is a working-class town. it is that combination that makes barney so energetic, caring about the people he got from growing up in bayonne. from harvard, he got the ability to implement programs to, to come up with legislation, to be pragmatic. it is the combination of day on and harvard that is really the essence of barney frank. host: stuart weisberg is the author of the biography of barney frank. thank you for your time today. at 10:30 today, the federal mass for senator edward kennedy will start and we'll carry that live. until then, we will show you some scenes from that event.