look at the latest unemployment figures. we will discuss u.s. counter- terrorism efforts. "washington journal " is next. .

>> sprawling national apparatus failing to in i kate a single terrorist that fell through the cracks. 8 years after 9/11 and the architecture that was supposed to improve sharing and acting on information. the u.s. is better at collecting intelligence but as thursday's report shows. nowhere good enough. intelligence agencies had information sufficient to discover the plot that failed put it all together. the "washington post" goes on to say this lack of clear lines is disturbing in any business. it's in excusable when national security is involved. that the president of the united states should tell the cia to issue guidance of the timely distribution of intelligence

reports is unsettling to put it mindly. it's mind-boggling the president felt the need to instruct the director of national intelligence to take further steps to raise the standard of trade craft analysis especially analysis designed to uncover terrorists plots either this is boilerplate or the country is in a world of trouble. that's "washington post" this morning. here's the "wall street journal". failure to connect the dots. the antiterror education of president obama continued yesterday with the white house report blameing the white house report counter terrorism community as a whole from a failure to connect the dots of intelligence that would have prevented uma farouk abdulmutallab from boarding a plane on christmas day. mr. obama blamed no one in

particular for the failure and not even george bush. in one sense this is a refreshing sense the president said the bucharest stops with him. what's your opinion, william on the republican line your "first up". caller: yeah, you know it just doesn't seem to wash this whole story. i mean for instance. where is the video tape of the nigerian when he was in amsterdam? how come that is not made public. there's conflicting stories. host: that's that to do with the u.s. intelligence services. caller: it does have a lot to do - because we need - the public and our intelligence service should have privy to this film and american public should be able to make a judgement on this also.

host: linda, democrat in o high-. caller: well, i think it's odd they're demanding we see even this film that they're suggesting we didn't need anything when president bush all we needed was a banner over his head succeeding. president barack obama is admitting to mistakes. it's just so honest and refreshing see him admit to a mistakes and go from there. he could have blamed bush for the way it's been implementing. republicans denied money in new york that needed - they asked for additional money for securities and you have to remember that in other countries they may not be checking as well as we are. so i'm very proud of president barack obama and i'm so tired of listening to callers every day call in - i don't care, he's not

saying word terrorist enough. that's most the republicans can come up with? i'm just sick of the way they down trot this man. host: "new york times". president obama was right to take response for it. theb president. it was clear to see him take responsibility and insist his administration do better. it must. of course we've heard about the problems before in the months and years after 9/11 and while mr. obama did not create the current system he's now gotten an iter lesson in it's weaknesses and it's stubborn resistance to change despite the me a cull pass reform. there were clues about a white

house affiliate in yemen to attack the united states about uma farouk abdulmutallab accused of the trying blow a hole in the side of a detroit-bound northwest flight 253. the world is shocked. this is the lead editorial this morning. the government's report clilingly reports that the united states still doesn't have a single data pace with all terrorism information. incredibly it suggests the intelligence community doesn't know the current visa status beginning the no fly list. president has ordered immediately handling in security. we would feel more secure if the steps were not so basic and evident. they clarify under up great

computer technology. train and list and watch procedures and add more people and enhance airport screening. more than 8 years late are the u.s. has another chance to learn from mistakes and so does al qaida and president barack obama has his work cut out for him. west river, marry lynn. republican. how are you? caller: good morning. i wanted to comment i do not feel safeer in this country at all because i don't feel i'm being protected from terrorist actions. it's refreshing the president said we're at war with terrorists. i may be incorrect but i think this is perhaps it is first time he's ever referred that fact we're at war with terrorists. the point l i'd like to make ho sever, the current administration is so unbelievably income tenth at

handling this the newest reports are that the director of the national terrorism bureau was on vacation for 7 days after - host: two things joe. the system was set up after 9/11 during the push administration and michael lighter has been the national counterterrorism chief for 10-years. he began in the bush administration. caller: so what? host: did you feel safer a year ago? caller: i don't safer that this administration is charge. that makes no difference to me. he should have his head roll if he was visiting his son sk skii that's fantastic but it's his job to protect the american people. host: steve independent go ahead.

caller: good morning. i'm quite angry about the whole scenario and i think all-americans need to voice some anger too. it seems to me that a very fundamental check could have been made by the individual who reviewed and granted the visa. why could they have not made a simple check to the no fly list. that was the critical failure point and it seems to me, that we have a bunch of bureaucrats more concerned where they're going for lunch, than doing their jobs. >> connecting dots on terrorism is what we're asking this first half hour. (202) 737-0002 if you want to comment. (202) 737-0001 for republicans and all others. (202) 628-0205. twitter address c listed if you want to send us an a tweet or e-mail us at - what is that?

journalist c-span.org and at c-span.org you can read the unclassified report issued yesterday by administration. it's right there on the web page. usa today. review of christmas attacks shows disturbing complacency. it's natural with the passage of time. it's evident in the public as with government. travelers that felt the specter of another attack now complain about the cumbersome measures put in place to protect them but it can't be that the leaders will fail to keep their team on his toes. obama seems slow to grasp the an importance of the attack. three days to make the first public statement and then his secretary went on television to claim absurd. each know some of the proposed

fixings sound like things only a but cat could love. there's a lot of reaffirming and clarifying, issuing, strengthening and developing the system need as jolt. u.s. today writes. st. louis how are you this morning caller: seems like nobody connected the dots on 9/11. everybody was promoted after that disaster. everybody was after the failure on 9/11. i don't feel safe in this country at all. there was a report out yesterday for every predator drone strike in afghanistan for every al qaida we supposedly killed. we killed 140 civilians and murdered one point 5 million iraqis and it's all a joke. you don't have any idea how many

terrorists we're creating. host: charlie, republican from new york. caller: it's an - if an elderly woman boards an airplane and has knitting needles it's probably not her intention to hijack the plane. airline security has taken knitting needles away from 80 year old women and ignores the young mus muslim male who board the plane with no luggage. no one who'siq is above that of a walnut has any confidence in janet to keep this country safe. host: victor. independent line. what are your thought? caller: i've been listening to everybody's remarks considering

that they're afraid they're going to get hurt in this terrorist act. well i pledge to the american people, we the people who - i am part of the government, i will not let them that happen to all of the people. trust me. terrorist sam big joke. and when i say that, i mean by saying that everyone thinks that somebody out there is going to protect us. the only people protected is us. the american people. new host: bat energy rouge. >> caller: i apologize. yeah, i knew immediately when this started that - you know yesterday watching the - i watch c-span all the time and listening to them talk i was thinking of all the ways the

republicans, the right wing will decide to take whatever he was going to say. it wouldn't have been right no matter what he said but i found it so good to see my government working again. i mean, everybody seems to for get he's like boarded that plane in detroit. he boarded the plane in another country. we can only have so much control over every country in the globe but i think he's doing a great job, i really do and i'm sorry so many people give these tidbits of sound bites and they drill. i don't know why. thank you for being there to let some of us know the truth. have a good day. host: front page of the "wall street journal" as we take the next call from south field, michigan. republican. caller: how you doing? i'm calling in regard to the - i had a stroke but any way the

people are talking about the detroit thing. the whole network should have the do it. what they're doing, they're going to have a whole bunch of people in the corridor at the airport before before they got to the bomber. i know your tired, sir, but it is something wrong with getting in detroit. host: are the detroit news channels covering this pretty much nonstop? caller: i don't want to say. host: appreciate you watching. the "new york times" just to point this out is the only paper that did not feature this story as it's main lead. they talk about cutting down air pollution.

they do have a picture of janet and under that is where they head line the story. president barack obama orders steps to stem terror threat. mike in texas. independent. caller: good morning. dots i'm connecting is that now mr. - well the former head of the homeland security is now selling a 600 new machines to x-ray everybody and get us more secure. that's nice connection. i wonder if you've heard about the citer e-mails about the con spir sa conspiracy of laundering all the money on aig. check into it america. host: from the "washington post". few calls back a caller referd for the u.s. to pull for full

body scanners at foreign airports. the u.s. government will urge for getting of all body imaging scanners to detect objects held beneath people's clothing. announcement came thursday that there were detailed failures and security gaps that were undercovered in the december 25th issue. the "washington post" has a graphic detailing how, in their view intelligence is supposed to work. where the dots are supposed to be connected and who is supposed to do what. you can find this at "washington post".com or buy a copy of the paper for the full graph. over here they talk about how the list works. the list is called the terrorist identities data mark environment list and that starts here. there's 550,000 names on that.

then from there, hit goes to terrorism watch list with $400,000 names. every evening terrorists identities data mark environment dumps what it deems most important into a separate data base at the fbi run terrorist screening list. think used to determine who is not allowed to obtain a u.s. viva or board an airliner in orest tind for the u.s.. then it goes to the air travel select list. people's names that appear on that list. those that the government believes merits barring but are not disoccluded from flying. then there's the no fly list who are prohibited from entering an aircraft in and bound for the u.s.. the national counterterrorism center did not forward uma farouk abdulmutallab's name to

the master list making it impossible for him to be placed on the no fly list or selectee list. grapevine, texas. democrat. phyllis? you're on the air. caller: i was sitting there listening to the former caller and i hope you give me the same time you gave him. because he came down with a list. how far is this going to go? that this one guy got on a plane and slipped bu through the crac. when richard green got on the plane bush didn't come in for six days and i don't representative the democrats leaders getting on bush for allowing that. i don't remember that. - and this former mayor, got on cnn and lied and nobody called it. that was - and richard reid the

shoe bomber, that was pre 9/11. anybody with good sense that's followed that know it was after. that was the former mayor of new york. and - host: thanks for calling in phyllis and connecting those dots from twitter. i'm not going to try to attempt the man kerr. but u.s. supports dictatorship with egypt and weapons. they a rest and torture heree to supports al qaida. yemen connects dots on plane suspect. yemen provided the most comprehensive account on contacts between al qaida and the nigerian accused of trying blow up the u.s. airliner. and may have met with a cleric

who previously had contact with alleged shooter at fort hood in texas. in weeks before he alleged attempted to bring down airliners. uma farouk abdulmutallab met with al qaida operatives in a remote mountain region that was later hit with the air strike that targeted a gathering of the groups top leader. yemen's deputy prime minister. seattle? caller: i'm really disappointed the whole system. the problem is all over our country, none of them are not none, but less than 50% of them get x-rays and inspected and they all end up in the same airplane. whether you check the people or not, better than 50% of your cargo does not get inspected so

when they going to get serious and close the gap? host: chicago on the independent line. john? caller: yes, good morning. first time on. i've listened to you quite often. i want to speak a little bit to the war on terror. only because if there's a phrase that can divide a country. one phrase that can circumvent. 800 years of law, to justify havoc and i legal thing the ropes done. this is to do it. how do you have aware on the tactic? this is attack tick terror. it's a police action. this is investigative stuff that needs to be done. not this constant keeping everybody on edge. i just think it's very go k pho.

sometimes we don't do nice things and people don't like for us some of our tactics. - but just to perpetuate because there is no end to this. there never be. the only way to end it is to do the proper police works. it's a police thing. not an army war thing. that's really all i have to say. host: what do you do in chicago, john? caller: host web sits and runners verses. host: maryland. democrat? caller: there's a lot of companies that benefit from this so-called, war on terrorism. one company is the oil companies. they seem to benefit greatly from this so-called war on terrorism and military industrial complex. when this war on terrorism started there was a lot of oil men in the white house.

george bush. rise, they were all involved with the ail or the military industrial complex. there's a lot of people that benefit from this so they don't want this to stop. it's a distraction from the healthcare issue right now. one of the callers talked about 9/11. if you think president barack obama did a bad job - host: hello? well, okay. for some reason carlos has quit talking and is listening to himself on t.v. now. sarge tweee president bush didn't respond appropriately does not justify president barack obama's late response. stop with the kid games. james fair on o in the washington times this morning has along piece about the department of homeland security and it's role and responsibility

encounter terrorism and protecting the borders and he says lay-off homeland security department. just want to briefly go through some of what he says. he says nancy walked into harm's way when touring the sunday talk show ass the face of the administrations response. her statement that the system worked turned in the media equivalent of having a kick me sign on her back. what she was referring to was the department, system for alerting international flights worldwide in the wake of a threat. that system did work like a charm. unfortunately it seems she's referring to the aviation system designed to keep would be bombers off planes to begin with. it was pretty clear. uma farouk abdulmutallab should have been stopped before he bought his ticket let alone before he boarded a plane.

none of the levels of security between him and us were control i'd the department of homeland security. the decision to flag an individual for secondary screening comes from the no fly list. these lists are not controlled by, dhs. by law. congress insists the airlines do the screening. lists are made by the counterterrorism center and terrorist screening center. by law, congress directed the centers pe run by the director of the national intelligence and f bi, respeck savely. visas are issued by the state department. the department of homeland security sets policies for the counselor affairs office that issue sorrys is a and that has never happened because of squabbling between the two departments. taking them on might make sense if the latest attack was the department's fault but it

wasn't. dumping millions in aviation security might make sense if we can guarantee this won't a happen again but we can't. we have to block them before they start. that's better way than dumping more money into wasteful programs that try to child proof america against every potential terrorist attack. that's james from to washington times this morning and we'll talk more about the procedures and how the counterterrorism works with juan zarate a little later in the program. dan, republican, hi. caller: i'd like to comment on what i think is september tenth type of mentality that exists with administration. what i believe is generally the current administration lacks the security process so that people that are, you know enforcing how the rules are supposed to be

done are taking a more lax approach which i think is a symptom of a precept 11th process. i don't know what to suggest to make it better but i think something has to be done before more lives are lost. host: florida. independent line. caller: good morning. yes, i'm sorry i have a cold. well i got a couple of questions. on our - after 2001. the 9/11, they set up the commission and they took care of all these businesses and made all these appointments. where's the fella and i forget his name right now. that is working - who is islamic muslim and he's working with administration. they appointed him advise and reference to all of this um...

terrorism and he actually has been connected with this fella on the plane as well as the guy from fort hood and he's actually in our white houseworking through administration and i wonder why nobody questions that and my other question is why in the world would they a point - why did president barack obama a point the worst governor for the first 48 upper states? she had the highest crime rate of every government for collective in the states. caller: thanks for taking my call. i think this whole terror thing is a scam. every time some guy walks around with a bomb in his underwear we're expected to know about more vulnerabilities every day. it's a big joke to me. host: this is from the hill

newspaper. 9/11 commissioner. congress shares blame for 12/25 intelligence failures. poor oversight contributes. the lead hamilton stop short of blaming lawmakers directly for the attempted attack on christmas day. a former democratic house member noted congress refused to follow recommendations issued in 2004 calling on lawmakers to restructure the intelligence community. we said with regard to the congress we made those recommendations the most part we made. well congress didn't quite agree with that obviously. hamilton said the problem with poor oversight is intelligence community s screws up every now and then.

south dakota? caller: wish you guys would put on one of the eye-witnesses that saw how he got a government. an attorney from taylor, michigan, he has his own law firm and he was in earshot. there was another man with his underwear bomber and this other man did all the talking. he went up to the ticket agent and told them this guy doesn't have a passport to get on the plane but he is a refugee and would like to beat him on board and woman, said, no we can't do that and he said well we do this all the time. i'd like to talk to one of your superiors and they hustleed the two off and he never saw them again until after this event happened and none of the media wants to cover this. if there's any dispute about it all they have to do is get the

surveillance tape out and that should be easy to solve. looks to me like another government operation to me and they were ready to sell all the body scammers. it really smells to high heaven as far as i'm concerned. host: chairman of the national committee wrote a book called, right now. ♪ >> it was important on a number of levels. it offered an explanation for something baffling westerners in particular for many years and that was show trials and success

he seemed to have. >> sunday. bying gra fair on the life of or there wes ler on darkness at noon. koestler. sunday night on c-span's q & a. in fed we trust from wall street journalist on ben bernanke and the role he plays after the economic collapse of 2008. he'll interview the first director of the budget office. that's part of the weakest book t.v. on c-span 2. saturday president barack obama at large talks about ruth and the changing rules of women in the law and rights around the world. on c-span's america on the courts. >> "washington journal"

continues. host: marilyn geewax is chairman of the national committee and a 12 step program for defeating the obama agenda. politically, if you were a betting man, how many seats do you think that the gop will pick up or lose in the 2010 congressional election? guest guest the challenge with january as we continue the primary process. there's still a number of important districts around the country where individuals are considering running. we're having folks who are in, you know state legislatures decide together go to congress. there's a lot of moving pieces. it's hard to say exactly but the way the trend is going it bodes well for the republicans in the house and senate as well. retirements and fact that i believe there may be a few more blue dogs that decide to come the republican way because it's going to be hard to go back to

their districts and argue for the spend and the growth of government in districts that have no toleration for it. so i'm looking forward to some significant pick-ups. i don't know what thats. i can't put a finger or number on it in january. but i think that the work the,nrc and the national republicans congressional committees have been doing is going to yield some really good results in november. host: you going to have the money? guest: absolutely. and that's thing. it's an as speblth of last year that really has not gotten a lot of focus and a tension but hen you consider the fact that, we came into - i came into this job in february first. that was my official first day. the wave of legislation. president barack obama picked up 13 million new donors and the

democrats are flying high and so over the course of the next year we're thinking we're the little engine trying but we've wound up raising over 80 million dollars. we beat the democrats in fund raising on a number of reporting periods and at the end of the day i've had 8 - 9 million dollars to carry into this year, no double and i or debt. and i feel good about it. 14 million in virginia and new jersey and there's money going to build apparatus for operations on the ground and technologies that are going to be important for us this year and feel good about that. the budget i inherited had zero dollars at the end of the year in debt and i felt that was an irresponsible way to run the committee and it was not physically improved to start january with nothing. we did what we had to do to make sure we met our obligations to campaigns and our state parties

and had money in reserve to begin the new year and i feel good about where we are. host: you outline some of the mistakes you believe e republicans made particularly in the last 8 years. guest: yes, and i think the party is in a period recovery and some people don't wanted to add mitt that. well that's not what a lot of folks in america say. i think the last rasmussen poll had in popularity, we were 22%. tea parties 35 and democrats 32. so we clearly have a gap between the american people and party. and i think it's the responsibility of the national chair and chairs around the country to fix that. and the way you begin to do it is to acknowledge this is where we've made mistakes when you grow government and spend money and go against the principals so important to defining the party for generations you walk away

and create problems and we sought results in 2006 and 2002348 losses at the pole and loss of confidence and faith in the party and so i think now we have an opportunity once we acknowledge where we've gone wrong and stand firmly on principals and lead into the future with positive ideas and a new direction. the american people will come to us and i think we've seen that in new jersey and virginia with their elections. host: you talk about the tea party groups in your book right now. are they the future of the republican party? guest: they are to the extent that they're part of a conservative network of activist. some of my friends there are former republicans. they're independents. they were identified as reagan democrats. it's a cross section of america. our opportunity as a party is to open arms and well come people

that want to be part of what we think is a principals leadership that takes america and helps us build infrastructure and empower people. so, i have reached out my and and said let's work together. we're fighting the same cause and fighting about the same principals of free market and free enterprise. lower taxes. a confidence marketplace and not trying cow down to those that do not have our best interest in line and with that kind of message - but then following it up with action, where we actually follow through and act on those things and make sure we control the spending in washington, that we lower it's influence in businesses in our daily lives i think we'll turn an important corner. host: is that part of a national platform for the

republicans? guest: i think so. it really will come down to what individual candidates can do in their communities and how they translate the message and principals. you saw in virginia and take the principals that define them and they're leadership and translate it into economic and transportation policy and people understood where they wanted to go and decided that was better than where they'd been. that type of relationship needs to be re-established. newt gingrich and dick army gave us a contract with america and they understood what america was looking for at that moment and they were willing to put their names on the line for the party because of those principals. what happened is since then we've strayed a way from the things we said we would do, and that's about coming back and doing something.

host: if you'd like to talk with the chairman of the national republican committee marilyn geewax. iraqi want to show you a chance to respond to articles. this article is about you. about the republican national committee. don't know whether or not you consider him a friend of yours. guest: not really. host: says fire him or shut up. guest: little bit of a hot head. i'm very passionate about this job. i'm very passionate about this party. i gr grew up in this town and me a decision to become a republican because i heard a man talk about in america that recognized my potential and recognized what i could do as a black man in this city. surrounded by democrats talking about a whole lot of other things i couldn't connect to. programs and institutions. no one was talking to me about

what individual cans do and how freeing sit to be able to access the american dream. my mother had a fifth grade education and worked in a laundry material in this town for 45 years before retiring makes 3 dollars and something an hour. she understood why the american dream was denyd to her it would not to her son. she created that pathway and when i heard ronald reagan speak, he sounded like my mother and things she was saying to me that i could do. that connected me to the party at that moment. here i am some 33 years later sitting at the chairman of the chairman of the republican committee. that was apart of when i ran for the united states senate. i feel so passionately moving this party forward. i like to call it turning the elephant and embracing this new platform and ground. larkly created by abba rock

obama that came on the scene and shook it up. how does the party reach out and touch this generation of voters and tell them that this party wants to empower you, not the institutions of government? this party wants to help you create a pathway to have that relationship from the bottom up. i get a little hot headed sometimes because i don't understand all the noise. i know it's part of the job but i want us to focus on helping mitch mcconnell and john baneer in the congress push through the legislation to keep america moving in the right direction. and the folks out there in the grass roots feel this party will be true. it's principals and lead from the principals during this century. host: there was a new poll saying who was the face of the new party. john mccain came out on top.

do you agree? guest: he's one of the many headers in this party. i remember the july when john mccain was up against the wall. i remember july seeing him in an airport in 2007 by himself catching a flight and no one paying attention to him and his determination and perseverance through that campaign to come out as an nominee is a lot of something that people should admire. he represents so much this party has to offer along with mitt romney and sarah palin and governor palete. we have the leadership that's out there and guess what's going to happen? over the course of this year and early next year, individuals will begin to emerge who will contend for the presidency that want to represent the principals of this party nationally for the presidency and that's exciting to watch. you know i think people shouldn't be surprised that, the

leadership is there and they're ready to get the job done. host: "washington post". steel's comments put congressional republicans on the hunt for a muzzle is the headline. brad wood house of the democratic national house committee says you're the gift that keeps on giving. guest: [laughs] well, try to wrap the gifts. the reality is look, this job is tough, it's important, but the more important thing that we do is that we build the team and put the resources in place, we run good candidates and they reflect the principals that define this party. if we don't do that it doesn't matter what michael steel says or congressional leaders. we'll not garner back the su part is in the face of the american people. we'll remain at 22% or worse in the poles in terms of popularity

or identification and we'll have lost our way permanently and i don't believe that will happen and i don't want it on my watch. i remain to get out there and spend time on the streets. i've you downtown halls. i try to reflect back to the hill, what folks out here are saying. their frustration when people are told they're un-american to disagree with what the government is doing. the republican party will step in and say that's wrong, we know better how to lead but we need to demonstrate that every single day. these people are watching and they're ticked off. it doesn't matter. remember people used to say i don't know about your congressman, but mine is a good guy. you know what they're saying right now. not only does your congressman stink, but so does mine. they're looking at this thing from both houses.

leadership better pay attention and not take it for granted, otherwise we're going to be in a world of hurt in november. host: finally before calls, there's been criticism in the press about you're going own a book tour pro moiting right now while serving as chairman. guest: i wrote this book and you know in 2008 before i became chairman. and due to publishing circumstances at that time, and then, you know, got into the chairman's raise, it didn't get published so the reality is i updated it to include things that have happened since then. then of course, sarah palins book came out and you didn't want your book on the shelves when that hit so this is something that's been in progress for a long time. i think it's an important way forward. i really do. i see it's a blue print to move forward. taking important steps.

saying we have a br problem and owning them. we're the conservative party in the government. to try and stop the liberal, democratic party is a good political exercise and this is one way for that. host: marilyn geewax is author of, right now, a 12 step program for defeating the obama agenda. first up. republican line? caller: good morning mr. steel. i'm going good. i'm a small businessman. been in business 34 years and i'm one of the 70 percent of the population or businesses that generate the jobs that everybody talks about and all they talked about as far as initial administration. finding a way for me to borrow money that i can't pay back to grow my business. my customers don't have jobs or they're not spending money. that's probably the problem 70

percent. small businesses have. we're not going to do the business because our customers are not spending the money because they don't have the money. my concern with the republican party s the fact that now we talk about poles and it's conservatives democrats and independents. the last pole i saw, we had 40 percent of the nation is conservative. 20% in there is democrat and 36 independent. it bothers me the republican party doesn't even go into the poles. if guest: well i think that's point - we're getting blocked and tackles out of the frame. our responsibility right now as leadership, political leadership. activists around the country, is to figure how to put ourselves back on track. i've said from the beginning the way you do that is to talk about the issues that are attached to our principals if we're a party that believes firmly as we do in

creating pathway for entrepreneurs then let's talk about that and fight for the fact that this is not the way you grow jobs into what's obama and nancy pelosi is on the hill. how do you do that when your layering more regulation and taxes on top of them? why don't we cut the capital gains tracts and eliminate it. get rid of it? why don't we cut the unemployment tax or at least give a break in time for small business owners to be able to regain they're fiscal strength. create real pathways to credit and capital with not a lot of string as attached to it? there's proactive steps that should have been taken and can be to get small business owners back in the game. you're absolutely right. you're the one to turn this economy around. not these institutions and government and if we don't trust you and have faith in your

ability to do it in the past, we're not going to get it done and everybody will wind up looking for the government to find the solutions. host: bob, democrat. florida. you're on. caller: good morning mr. steel, in case you didn't know. racheled byo invited you on her show and i hope you go. you can demonstrate to the public how to officially the tea bag a person. host: try to keep this a civil conversation. please don't call in just to make cross remarks. tom independent line. please go ahead. caller: good morning mr. steel. okay. i got two quick questions for you.

first, when you were running for senate, back in 2008. guest guest 2006. caller: did you not have a democrat bumper sticker on your car? and number two question, why after criticizing rush limbaugh pretty severely one day, did you do 180 degrees the next day and apologize to the gentlemen? i can't understood that. host: tom who did you vote for in 2006? caller: the incumbent. mr. steel? >> there was no incumbent in the i raise. the incumbent retired. there was - i don't have bumper stickers on my car and certainly wouldn't have a democrat one on my car and with respect to rush

limbaugh we're good friends there was no need to apologize because there was no offense taken. host: is rush included now in the book? guest: no. i don't focus on personalities at all. i have a lot of people saying why isn't sarah palin in the book? this is not about a personality in the party but just about the party. those of us who are out here fighting every day to grow the party. in fact, the book is dedicated to the grass roots. everyone that's licked a stamp or stuffed an envelope and had a role to play in fighting for our issues so this is a very much a grass roots book written from a grass roots perspective because that's how i began. knocking on doors and having my face with doors slammed on it. but it's tough but it's important work and a lot of

people do it every day to help us and i appreciate it. host: mr. steel, what are your expectations of the upcoming tea party convention with the former sara palin as headliner? guest: that's going to be exciting to watch. i'm not unfortunately, have gotten all the background what that event will be like, but i expect it'll be across section of america coming together to express strus administration and also aspiration that leadership will do one thing and that's listen to them. and that's something i've tried to emphasize in my book right now. listen. my mother used to tell me when i was a little boy. the first thing you got to do is shut up and listen to people. when i ran for office in maryland and so forth, you know we took the time to listen to people and that's what these folks are going to be gather the

information and hear. i think it'll be exciting to hear sara talk to them. host: gary. baltimore. republican line. caller: i want to take a moment to thank you for the work you're doing and there's a lot of republicans out there that have been on the fence and we appreciate the work you're doing and direction. all the effort. my question for you is this, in the next run of elections when hopefully we do get a little more control back we're not going to be the party and will continue to push healthcare reform. there is lot of good work that needs to go on there although what we're seeing is not the best route to take. i want to hear we're going to continue fighting that good fight. guest: my goodness. absolutely. you have to give enormous gratitude to the leadership on the hill who have fought

valiantly to get those issues before the american people. we've watched mitch mcconnell and john baner and team on the floors of the house and senate propose, measure after measure, tort reform. how do you do healthcare without tort reform? i don't understand that. so small businesses can pull their businesses and get competition going. reforming the healthcare saving as count provisions to expand them to allow great eer flexibility. there's so many aspects of what needs to be done in healthcare that i'm not in the bill that's before the congress right now for consideration. that we'll continue to fight for and be able to close the gap or indeed take control of one or both chambers. you bet we're bringing those issues back to the floor. host: you see similarities between this year and 1984?

guest: that's good question. i think some aspects are similar but the environment is different. the attitude is different. your seeing, almost like it's accelerated. newt gingrich and i were talking about this and he's such a phenolal understanding of - not just history, but where we need to go and he was talking about how in 1994 he and dick army were able to bring the contract with america to america in september of that year. a lot of people think it's long and drawn out but it was a short period of time part of the political discourse. now we're at a point where something like that is relevant. people looking and they're hungry for seeing what direction they're going to go in and what the leadership will be doing and where the stakes are. this is a very much an accelerated process. people are much more energized as we've seen over the summer

with town halls and 91 event last september. there's a level of activism two years out and certainly out from this fall's election that we've not seen before. that's why i've been very direct with elected officials around the country. don't look past this. don't take any of this for granted. you better calculate that people are watching your votes and actions and they're taking note and they'll come after if if you don't get it right. host: gary, indiana. randall, democrat. caller: yes, i have a couple of quick meant comm comments. i hope you bear me out on this. i never understood why educated people have the views that there are really black and white people. if the premise is wrong in the beginning, the conclusion ultimately is always wrong so i

they say i've never met a black or white person. they're political tools. republicans have stateed so many phoney arguments over the summer from the president's birth. it's just been the political disthe course m has been so phoney that i really just can't even take the republican party serious as an alternative even though i will say this and grant you this, there are things that you say your party stands for that i do share those values. cutting capital tax gain, helping small business. but because of the political discourse it's so phoney you understand what i'm saying? . .

let's be creative in our process. and what i think certainly what the republican leadership is trying to do is get those issues in front of the people to show, this is what we think

a better alternative is. and i think that's where people want to see the debate ultimately come down. what are our choices? i hear people say, what do the republicans stand for on health care? what are you going to do? i check off the list that members of congress have proposed or whatever, and what i realize was a lot of it was they didn't know. so we need to educate, we need to inform, we need to be out there in the community sharing these messages but not doing it in the context that randall discussed where you're doing hot rhetoric and making a lot of noise, talking loud, as james brown said, and saying nothing, but really focusing on what people are trying to do. that's what kris christy and bob donald did in their races. they talked about the issues that they were concerned about and then people responded. host: one person in "the washington times" said that the traditionally large donors were not giving -- they were

dissatisfied with your leadership. newt gingrich was quoted of saying, some old timers in the party are uncomfortable with you because you come from a different background. i'm paraphrasing quite a bit there. but i just wanted to get your response from that. guest: i do come from a different background. i come from this background. i grew up here in washington, d.c. i'm an urban kid. i cut my teeth on the politics of this city with the likes of david clark and john ray and marion berry and eleanor holmes norton watching them maneuver and fight for this city. and so my experience is very different that most state chairman and certainly national chairman. but with respect to, you know, our major donors, you know, ralphie boyd doesn't know how this works. i don't know who he's talking to. in typical fashion, you know, a lot of things are gotten wrong.

if you have a major donor for the republicans or democrats, those individuals run businesses that got socked by a recession that was one of the worse in 20 or 30 years. so they didn't have the resources, the extra cash, if you will, to play politics. and there was a lot of slowdown and a lot of, you know, lack of access to those dollars to do the things that you would normally do. however, we have put in place some creative strategies to bring our donors back and beginning in july or so we started seeing major donors coming to the table and being a part of the game again. whether they were old-timers or whatever, it doesn't matter. my goal is to create the environment so that people want to give and support the party. we're also targeting a lot of young donors and new donors who

can help us and want to be a part of this. last month we made our budget for our major donors, we were 262% of budget. so we were well in excess of what we needed to raise in december, the same in november, the same in october. so a lot of that is a ruse that some folks want to put out there, he can't raise money, but i raised $80 million and i broke a lot of r.n.c. records. i have cash reserves going into this year when my predecessor had a budget of zero dollars that the committee passed. so i think before people write stories they need to maybe talk to me and get the facts right. we've been very proud of our donors who have given of themselves at a time when it was tough to give. i have, you know, respected those dollars very much because i don't want to waste them.

and we spent them wisely. we won elections with those moneys. we invested in the party with those dollars, and we saved. i was banking 50 cents on every net dollar i brought in the door and i beat the democrats five or six months out of 12. now, how are their major donors doing? because if their major donors are doing that well then i shouldn't be beating them. major donors are major donors. these are individuals that have the wherewithal in good times to give. in tough times they are concerned about their businesses and their families like everybody else and politics becomes a luxury and they don't give or don't give as much. so you need to be creative and find ways to incentivize them and i think we've found ways to do that. host: independent line. you are on the line for michael steele. caller: good morning, mr. steele. guest: how are you? caller: i am in a hospital.

i am so glad to be able to talk to you. i have a few quick statements. some that you may not be familiar with. i was a tea partier before tea partier was cool. i'm a conservative. i'm a constitutionalist. and for years, you know, we're the people that supporting ron paul and protesting against the taxes and the taking of our constitutional rights and so forth. and what happened was when it grew and began to get attention and the people started coming out was when the democrats began to see that obama was just like bush. guest: uh-huh. caller: i wanted to make a statement just quickly. the fact of the matter is we were called patriotic because we did not, conservatives did not support the war in iraq. iraq having nothing to do with 9/11. and now we're still called unpatriotic because we don't

support obama. but i want to tell you -- excuse me -- i'm so sorry. host: can you wrap this up? caller: mccain is a republican. ron paul is a conservative which means the protector of constitutional rights. guest: well, i appreciate that. i think she reflects -- hopefully you feel better, by the way. i think she reflects again a growing sentiment that's out there in the country that's reflected in a new kind of activism. as i said, it's accelerated. it's moving beneath our feet. the question for both parties -- are you prepared to move with it and how do you capture these moments? not capturing these individuals saying, be a republican, be a democrat, but capturing the spirit of what they're talking about. this constitution of ours means a lot to a lot of people. and while we may not jump up and down and wear it on our sleeves every day it's in our hearts and it's in the things that we do. and so when we see it threatened and see it

undermined or when we see it being used in a way that is not reflective of its purpose we become concerned. and i think when you look at, for example, the fact that we're going to be trying terrorists here in the u.s. courts, that has real concerns to those who see the constitution being used to wrap around and protect the very men who want to destroy that document and destroy the principles and the foundations of this nation. and so individuals like dani and others are very concerned and leadership has to address that. you know, you can't sort of gloss over it and say we're doing this to show that we're better, that we're standing up to what we say we are as americans. well, i don't think that does that. i think that that is looking at a national or an international situation through a criminal

justice system and not what it really is. terrorist acts against the united states. and so you need to treat that differently and you do not give the people that want to undermine the constitution to use it against us. host: if president obama gets health care legislation and signs it, will that be one of the issues that you use in the election? guest: absolutely. health care will be an ongoing issue until it gets resolved in the way when the government doesn't stand between the doctor and the patient and you're looking at a system that is bottom up. the situation is you've created a bureaucracy to solve cost problems. so if cost is the issue, if that's the driver, then what do we need to do to address the costs, to bring those costs down that creates greater

competition in the marketplace so insurance companies, there are not only three insurance companies you can go to in my state. i can go to the four over there or the seven that are over there. you create competition. and you do other things. the other thing is if you have 40 million, 33 million, 10 million people who are uninsured, look at the systemic reasons as to why they're uninsured and begin to address that. that again does as the republican leadership has been saying eight or nine months doesn't require a whole cell takeover of 1/5 of the economy. you have to figure out how to bring those people in that is consistent with your effort to lower the cost does not increase the cost. and yet this administration wants to bring in 33 million people and has yet to tell us exactly how much it's going to cost and how do we pay for if. host: time for a couple more calls for the r.n.c. chairman

michael steele whose book is "right now: a 12-step way to defeat president obama and the democratic agenda." caller: i'm a bit of an amateur media junky. i'm not terribly political. i call myself centrist with a little right leanings. abc comes first and then nbc comes second and then i watch some of the fox guys and cnn guys just to see how the tone is different. back in the day the news media tried to stay in the middle. even though you could tell they were leaning a little to the left. guest: right. caller: now it seems to me they are not even trying. they were pretty much entrauveraged in the left. and i'm wondering as a political person, how you can -- how we can call them out on

that and try to get them to at least come back to the middle? guest: that's a good question. if you figure out how to dabble in this area let me know. it is a conscious decision by the network or the individual sfation and how they want to project the news. that is why you find now, you know, folks relying on programs like this where they have unadulterated access to conversations and hear directly from individuals' perspectives that they've not been exposed to before and they go fought internet. and they can then more freely decide where they want to go. if i want to see a particular piece i can download it, look at it and move on. i don't have to be indoctorated to a whole other things. the media is going through a whole enormous transformation. the political parties are trying to figure out what it means. certainly at the r.n.c. we invested a significant amount of money and beginning to

upgrade ourselves to get at least the parody with in new landscape. getting rid of websites and creating web platforms so we can more intertangably connect people to events and issues. we can create the social networkings that are important out there to carry on the conversation and more and more importantly listen to what's being said. so i think what we found right now is while you have, you know, fox, you have msnbc, you have all these other networks that are doing their thing, people are realizing, i have a little bit more freedom and a little bit more choice here than a lot of people think i have. and they're beginning to access it. so i don't know if that will necessarily change the behavior of some networks, but i think in the long run it will because they will want to be more of a spot that will draw people in, not the ones that will always agree with them.

host: james in maryland. go ahead with your question. caller: good morning, mr. steele. host, what is your name? host: peter. caller: i'm a first-time caller. host: welcome, james. caller: i was calling to ask mr. steele where he said -- listening to the people. if he listened why does him and governor earle lose the race? he would have heard what they were calling for, the republicans weren't doing the jobs that needed to be done. for eight years they were in charge more or less. and nothing was done about health care except for the part d medicare which me snuck through in the middle of the night. i watched it all night. i am a democrat but i listen to fox. i listen to glenn beck, hasity, o'riley, chris matthews, keith

observerman. i christen to it all -- keith olbermann. i listened to it all. i didn't graduate high school. i went back and got a job and they sent me back to school. the constitution says -- i hear you saying about the constitution says this and says that. the constitution never said that you had to have firemen to take care of anybody's house to take care of a fire. the constitution never said you have to have insurance on cars. if you have a car you have to have it insured. host: james, what would you like michael steele to address? caller: why did they lose the race in maryland if they were such a great listener? guest: well, governorer lick and i did -- governor erlich and i did the unthinkable. the last republican governor

before governor was speer agnew. and the people of maryland decided they wanted to take a different course. i think when you look at governor erlich's record and think of my responsibility on behalf of governor of small business reform and certainly dealing with a number of other issues, we met, i think, what we were asked to do. and we were able to reach people and talk to them. we, like so many others, got caught up in the political climate of that day. there was a general mood, anything republican was a problem for folks. what you have to understand, james, is that governor erlich was retired from office with a 62% job approval. and it had very little to do with what the governor was doing but had everything to do with the fact that people wanted to send a message to the republican party and he was the only republican governor that

year to lose. we are still a very democrat state in maryland. and they -- and they felt that they wanted to send a message. and i've had a lot of democrats since then say, boy, did we get that wrong in 2006. but my hope is that the governor comes back. my hope is that the republicans come back and re-establish the opportunity for maryland to be a two had been party system where the voters get to decide and competition is a healthy thing. so governor erlich was not unelected nor did i lose the senate race because of our views on the issues. we did listen to the people and they responded. but i know the governor heard, i heard many times, i just couldn't vote for you. i had to send a message to the party. you know, that's what happens in politics. people find ways to get a message through. sometimes their casualties in that process.

host: what would republicans do different this time? guest: donna, what would we do different? i think what we would do different first and foremost is acknowledge that we've learned the lesson, that we have -- we have made the mistakes that have put us on the outs, if you will, with the american people and that we will now step forward with a bold vision in bold colors, as reagan used to say, that reflects the concerns of the american people and that are addressed through the policies and the programs that we think will empower you and uplift you. the government is not -- should not be in the business of managing and controlling and deciding. the government should be in the business of creating pathways so that you can access the american dream however you define it for yourselves. and so our party, the leadership of our party,

elected on the hill, our governors around the country and certainly the political leadership in the states wants to create those pathways to empower families and communities to achieve the american dream. and we're going to fight for that but we're going to start by listening and definitely stay true to what we believe, the principles that have grounded us for generations. host: michael steem is chairman of the republican national convention and author of this new book, right now a 12-step program for defeating the obama agenda. thank you for being on "washington journal." we will look at the economy and jobs next with marilyn geewax of n.p.r.

>> after the fraud allegations in afghanistan's 2009 presidential and provential elections, the u.s. institute of peace looks to may and what reforms may have taken place. we will have that discussion live at 10:00 a.m. eastern right after "washington journal" here on c-span. in the afternoon, the alliance for health reform has a discussion looking at health insurance exchange proposals in the house and senate health care bills and that's at 12:15. over on c-span 2, republican pollster kelly ann conway looks ahead to the 2010 elections. and later secretary of state clinton will commemorate the 15th anniversary of the international conference on population and development looking at education, reductions in infant child and maternity mortality and universal access to reproductive health. we'll have our speech at 2:50 eastern on c-span2.

>> i'm always concerned about the potential, unforeseen consequences, unintended consequences in new regulations, new regulations of any kind acts as a tax. when you tax or regulate something you tend to get less of it. you tend to din minish it. >> in weekend on "the communicators," robert mcdowell, net neutrality and the wireless industry, 6:30 p.m. eastern saturday on c-span. >> "washington journal" continues. host: marilyn geewax, senior business editor for national public radio. ms. geewax, what is the economy in? guest: we've had job losses of two years. since december of 2007 we've been losing jobs and people are -- you can measure a recession all sorts of ways but for all americans, jobs is really what

determines if the economy is good or not. so we're looking at this report that's about to be released in a little bit from the labor department, and it will tell us whether or not we're actually starting to gain jobs or if we're still losing. host: what is the prediction? guest: most economists are seeing it as a break even. we're not adding them but not losing them. some economists think we've lost another 10,000 jobs in december. others said, no, we probably gained 10,000 jobs. one thing that's important to remember, this is an economy with 131 million jobs. so 10,000 jobs either way, it's kind of a rounding error. it doesn't matter that much but psychology matters. if we find that this report comes out and we've gained jobs, then that's great. host: the government gives this figure once a month, correct? guest: yes. host: and we seem to have knowledge of what this figure is ahead of time? guest: just economists estimating. there is a lot of excitement when this number comes out. the economists not being the

most interesting people but people wait and watch this number because it's pretty good data. it's payroll data from employers. so we're guessing right now that the economy is improving, but when this number comes out if could cause euphoria on wall street if it's a positive number. host: even if it's less than the predicted -- has the government set any predictions? guest: no. host: this number comes out in about five minutes and we are going to have marilyn geewax on the set and she's going to be able to react to it and analyze it and talk about that. we are going to talk about where some new jobs are coming in too. let's say the number is zero, what happens? guest: it's kind of wishy-washy. people are glad to see that because remember last january we lost plm 3/4 of a million jobs. now if we're just up to the point where we're not losing jobs anymore then that's good. but what people are hoping for is we're actually at the point

where we're adding jobs. but keep in mind what a really high hurdle this is to get over to get the economy back in some decent shape. we've lost so many millions of jobs, seven million jobs just since the recession started two years ago, but we have -- people were already unemployed even before the recession began. so cumulatively we have about 15 million americans who are seeking jobs and can't find them. so when you're talking about 15 million people who want to come into the job market and you have constant growth. there are new graduates that will be coming out in may looking for jobs, we need to add about 300,000 jobs every month for the next four years to get ourselves back to a decent labor market. so this is -- you know, even if we come out with 10,000 jobs this month, it's just the start of digging our way out of this tremendous hole. host: what if the unemployment rate is officially at 10% right

now nationwide? guest: yes. host: if it goes up to 11%, what happens? guest: well, it's an interesting thing because what people are watching more now is job creation rather than the rate of unemployment because think about it. what they consider the rate of unemployment is the number of people who are seeking work. well, a lot of people just got so discouraged, some people just decided to stay home with nair kids and they're not seeking work. they have just been out of the job market. if they start seeing some of their jobs getting hired they may very well come into the job market. they say say, now my kids are back in school it's not so bad. maybe i can find a job so now they become job seekers. by adding more people of what we consider the active labor market, you may actually see the unemployment rate rise even as job creation is increasing. so what most economists are really trying to pay attention to is, are we seeing jobs being created? are we seeing that rise in optimism? and this can have a real

psychological effect. we do things like measure consumer confidence because we want to know how people are feeling. and getting jobs growing guinean if it's small, even if it's just a start, it is good psychologically. it will get us kick-started a little bit. host: well, marilyn geewax has also been working on a series this week on where new jobs are. where do you find them? guest: well, at national public radio we decided to take a look at where some of the new jobs are coming from. so this week we have been looking at areas where people feel excited about their jobs. we looked at nursing, for example. there are a lot of nurses, yes, you have some bad hours and it's a little bit difficult butter in' excited about nair possession. video gamers, green jobs, financial services, people are starting to find new jobs in that again. so we are seeing some positive areas of growth. and one of the things, you know, that we're really looking at is will these new energy

jobs, are we just going to reclassify old jobs, things that people have been doing for years, weatherizing -- putting in new windows, if those get counted at green jobs maybe we don't have so much growth. but if we have new jobs being created, things we never had before, wind turbines, solar power, certainly the obama administration are hoping those are green jobs. host: are you seeing job growth or potential? guest: yes, we are seeing some growth but most plea it's potential. one things that's interesting at n.p.r. is we have a facebook page where we've encouraged people to send us their story about where they are finding jobs. it's funny to have people say, they're going to school. they just decided not to look for a job. they're just going to go back to school. and that's actually creating lots of job in retraining and education. so there are lots of jobs now for teachers for all the people who realize they are going to

need new skills. host: what about geographically? guest: the east is doing better. the east coast is perking up. mid west still really bad. the south is lagging. the best place to look for a job is actually more towards the northeast. host: marilyn geewax is our guest. she's senior business editor at national public radio. we are talking about the economy. we are talking about jobs. if you go to npr.org'l week on the new jobs. 202 is the area code if you like to talk to her about business and economic related issues. 202-737-0002 for democrats, 202-737-0001 for republicans. and 202-628-0205 for all other c-span -- for all others. cspanj@-- for our tweets.

caller: we have a demand problem. not as many people have enough money to buy things. and if you have that kind of a problem what you got is the common consumer doesn't have enough money. and with that kind of a problem you're never going to have any kind of growth. and i think that -- guest: that problem is coming to the floor right now with rising gasoline prices. one thing that really effects people is the cost of gasoline. and if we don't get good job growth then you have people who are trying to find a job. me can't even -- even if you find a job you can't afford to drive to it if gasoline goes back to $3 or $4 a gallon. host: what's driving that cost?

guest: we have had a cold winter. there is demand for home heating oil. we also had demand around the world has been perking up. not so much in the united states but in asia things are getting going again. so just a number of factors are coming together where you have oil prices starting to rise again. and when you go to the pump if it's $3 a gallon and you have to drive around and look for a job, this cash squeeze that he's talking about is really a problem. people really need to get back to decent paychecks and also hours. we haven't seen a whole lot of pay raises. i mean, people just need to work longer hours and they need to get more money for that work. so that they can restart that consumer spending. host: new augusta, mississippi. republican. you are on the phone with marilyn geewax. caller: thank you. thank you for taking my call. i am a big fan of mr. steele. and i'm a supporter of the republican party.

i send money to them. my question is, where are all the jobs when the democrats got elected, where are all the jobs they promised through the government and, you know, they were going to rebuild the infrastructure? we've got bridges here that are simple projects that wouldn't take four, five, 10 men that would put them back to work. where are the jobs that the democrats promised? guest: when president obama took office last january, we lost about 3/4 of a million jobs in that month. so he came into a very difficult situation. and democrats would argue that when you were losing 3/4 of a million jobs a month to get to the point we're adding jobs now that would be considered an accomplishment. opponents of the president would say it's not enough. that there are still lots of --

it's still a terrible job market. we're at double digit unemployment and one could make an argument either direction that things have improved and he deserves credit for that or you can point out that it's still a pretty tough job market. host: unemployment stays at 10%. as you indicated earlier, that's not the number that you are looking for necessarily. we're waiting for the full report. guest: the full report. this is what passes for an exciting moment for people who follow the economy is waiting for that number to see what the job creation was. host: communistdog tweets in. unions negotiates pensions for their workers. what's in store for the american people now with less unionization? that question for you. nen on top of that, do you see growth in manufacturing areas? guest: two questions, one on manufacturing and one on pensions and retirement. you know, this is a very

interesting time to think through, how are we going to go forward with retirements? because in the 1990's there was really a push towards moving towards private savings for your retirement. the 401-k plans were popular because the stock market was rising. but we've had such a terrible stock market in the last couple of years that people are disillusioned for 401-k's. they really want to go back to the traditional pension. as that person has pointed out, traditional pensions is something that unions pushed for and companies don't want to get involved in. so you have disillusionment for the 401-k's but you don't have a strong driver for pension plans. so where we go with this in the future is unclear. on the issue of manufacturing, actually, that's been coming back. people are ordering more. we've seen some strengthening in manufacturing. but, again, this is something that got so battered. it was so far in a hole that trying to restore those

manufacturing jobs is questionable whether we'll ever get back to where we were in manufacturing. host: 85,000 jobs lost in december. guest: oh, boy, 85,000 jobs lost, gosh, that's a terrible number. wow. 85,000 lost is a surprise. i think that takes everybody by surprise. gosh, that's a lousy number because we had 11,000 lost in november. there was real hope there the economy was gaining momentum. and really in recent days there's been a changing in attitude of a few days ago people would have said, well, maybe we lost 30,000 jobs in december. and in recent days optimism has risen so much that people thought it was up to zero or maybe even a gain. if we lost 85,000 jobs in december that's not encouraging at paul. host: what effect will that have? what will we see happen?

guest: it's important that these things bounce around a little bit. maybe you just had a little bit -- we got a little alead of ourselves in november. maybe there was too much hiring done in november and people decided to lay off again in december and wait and see how the economy was shaping up. so maybe this is -- the trend is good but this is a one-minute blip. still if we go to the capital right now and we went to some democrats' office there are hairs being yanked buss this is not a number you want to come into the state of the union address with. it's definitely -- i think will be seen politically setback. besides politics but people's lives. 85,000 jobs were lost. host: and isn't holiday hiring makes it high? guest: the labor department

tries to take that thing -- that noise into account. you know, what you really were hoping for there is we would get some momentum, a springboard into the new year where if we had -- if you had come out and said, you know, we picked up 10,000 jobs, that would have i think caused a little bit of euphoria on wall street. and this is just going to be a bit of a downer. host: ok. as the report comes out from the labor department, we're getting the associated reports in real time. a sharp drop in the labor force, a sign more of the jobless are giving up on their search for work. kept the unemployment rate at 10%, the same as in november. analyze that for us. guest: again, when people start feeling more optimistic they actually come into the labor market. so if they're not hearing that their friends are getting jobs, if they don't see any help wanted signs, then maybe you say, maybe i'll stay home.

even though we lost 85,000 jobs we didn't get a higher unemployment rate because the job pool -- the labor pool didn't grow because people are still that discouraged. and, you know, sometimes people just think, you know what, i am going to shovel drives for the winter. i don't feel like leaving the house. gas is so expensive. i am not going to drive around looking for work. host: it actually effects the national economy? guest: it helps hold down the unemployment rate. but -- so we have a better looking number. when you talk about how many millions of people are sitting at home underemployed, unemployed, working short hours, not getting raises, not getting bonuses, you put it all together, it's a grim picture for workers. it's a real -- you know, ongoing problem that the administration has to address. host: revisions to the previous two months' data showed the economy actually generated 4,000 jobs in november, the first gain in nearly two years

while it lost 16,000 more than the previously estimated in october. guest: in is back to what i said. these things can bounce around. so we thought that in november, if i'm hearing you right, we thought in november we were still losing jobs and in fact we had perked up a little bit in november but, see, that could contribute why december was not a good month for job creation because to the degree that anybody was going to do any hiring maybe they did it in november and now they're just taking a wait and see attitude so they're not really adding jobs. and then you get to the end of the year and maybe some businesses just decided, small retailers might think, this turned out to be a not great christmas season and we will give it up. people may start close down some businesses and that's why you're seeing some job losses. host: bob, independent line, franklin, indiana. you are on with marilyn geewax of n.p.r. caller: thank you for c-span.

this is a government of the corporate, by the corporate and for the corporate. and also our national news media is owned by corporate. and that's why -- the real problem is nafta, unfair trade practices. we shipped out all our manufacturing jobs and government jobs create debt, manufacturing jobs create wealth. guest: you know what, one of the things about nafta, though, is that initially a lot of manufacturing did go to mexico. that's the north american free trade agreement that joined together canada, the united states and mexico into a trade zone. initially it did seem that some manufacturing was going to mexico, but a lot of those jobs in mexico actually ended up going to china and other parts of asia. i don't know. i guess it's argue ble -- argue -- arguable, those would have

an impact on manufacturing in any case. and certainly technological change as factories become more automated they just use less workers. there are all sorts of arguments in that. host: minnesota, lynne, democrat. caller: my name is duane. host: are you from minnesota? caller: yes. how comes the government don't want people in poverty to get out of poverty? host: what does that mean, dwayne? caller: i'm a disabled veteran and live with my mother or my mother lives with me. if i make any money over -- basically if i make any money, they're going to cut my veteran pension completely. ok. i'm also on social security. ok. if i make over $800 a month

they're going to cut my social security. so you can't make any money at all if you're sitting in a place like i am and me and my mother can't make it right now the way it is. guest: well, first of all, i want to thank you for your service if you're a vish. we appreciate what you did for the country. on the issue of government benefits, i think that's what needs to play out this year. there are big decisions to be made on deficit spending. on the one hand government doesn't want to spend too much because they have we have this deficit problem. on the other hand we are frying to take care of vicious, take care of people who are disabled. so congress has some tough decisions to make about how much government funding we can afford for social causes like that. and when do we just focus on debt reduction? i think that's going to be a tough issue in the coming main.

host: maine, joe, independent line. we are talking about the economy with marilyn geewax. caller: yes, hi. do you hear me all right? host: please go ahead. caller: i just want to make the point here that seems like this -- no one seems to bring up the fact that 40 million, 50 million jobs have been lost to communist countries. they are basically doing all the work now that we did here. secondly, that all of the jobs we had on this green, they are all going to be made in china. there are no jobs coming back to this country. they're gone. i've been watching them go since 1977. even earlier than that we've been setting these things up. and the point is our country is basically been taken over by the stock market. they just wave their hand and it's an economic devastation. communities, cities, everything is being wiped out. you've watched it being tosh down and ripped apart just so the more they devastate the bigger beamer they drive. guest: that's another issue

that again congress and the white house will be dealing with is anger about the bonuses we're starting to see for bankers again are coming back. wall street's been making money and yet we're seeing these very dismal jobs numbers. so there is -- the economic argument is that if wall street makes money and companies are expanding then we can -- there's more money for companies to invest and expand plans, invest in workers. so a good stock market is good for the country. but there is this gap, a real lag between employment and profits on wall street. jobs are always a lagging indicator. i looked what happened back in the early 1980's when we lost jobs, especially manufacturing in the 1981-1982 recession. it took four years to get back to a fairly decent plabe market. once the stock market started perking up by late 1982 but it

really wasn't the job market that perked up until maybe 1986. so you always have this real plag of good times on wall street and hard times for workers until the jobs market catches up. again, that's another political problem. do you pass legislation that cracks down more on bonuses on wall street or for bankers or that sort of thing or do you get out of the way, try to hope that the market works quickly and that the successes on wall street fairly quickly translate into jobs for average people? host: what congressional action -- you talked about limiting bonuses. what effect would that have on job creation? what else can congress do to further job creation? can they do anything? guest: there are political arguments that are sort of -- you can make complick arguments in different direction -- economic arguments in different directions. if you say to bank of america

you need to stop these bonuses. i met a lot of americans working in shanghai who were basically investment bankers, venture capitalists. they feel mobile. they can pick up and leave new york and move to shanghai and have a very good life and maybe they do their work over there. there's some fear if you crack too much down on bonuses and wall street that people will pick up and move to elsewhere and we will lose even that. so that's one argument. but other people are making a strong argument that really the problem in this country is the unfair distribution of wealth. that there's so much wealth concentrated in the stock market, in these bonuses, and the highest paid executives have done quite well and you look at the average wage and it's weak. the average person has not gained a whole lot in the last decade or so.

what we're seeing on n.p.r. and our facebook page, people are writing in, there's a sense of -- we've had more than 3500 people gone to the facebook page talk about their experiences. as i've read through these things i see people saying, we just downscaled. we just adjusted. we're living in a smaller house. we have less stuff. we have one car now. whatever. they are just adjusting their expectations to lower. and meanwhile on wall street they're not particularly adjusting their expectations. they want those big bonuses. so i don't know. you are at an interesting point in the economy where there's this big gap in the for funs where a lot of people on -- fortunes where a lot of people on wall street are making money. politically how do you respond to that, hew will people feel about it? these are tough questions coming up in the 2010 elections. host: where there surprises on

where the new jobs are? fwoip i think if there's -- guest: i think if there's a surprise in there it's maybe -- i guess -- how can i put this? one of the things we're concerned about is the jobs are growing in places that you would think. health care, education. you know, a lot of those sort of service sector jobs that will start to come back. i guess the thing -- i looked at it, hmm, i hope there's stiffle a lot of innovation out -- still a lot of innovation out there because we can't all be nurses and teachers and go for the safe jobs. we really need people to be the next microsoft. we need somebody to creates a new google that ends up hiring 10's of thousands of people. we need more innovation. one of the sections was the tech sector. will we have new ideas coming out of that sector? i think the thing to worry about is, are we going to -- so

many people have been so harmed in this recession in terms of their jobs that we hunker down and say go for the safe jobs, i will do what i know will lead to a job. instead of saying i want to be an entrepreneur to go out and start a new business that someday will hire fens or hundreds of people. -- tens or hundreds of people. when we keep going, hunker down and take the safe jobs, and i certainly understand that, but we need to spur that entrepreneurial spirit to create the microsofts of the future that will hire tens of thousands of people. host: do you foresee given that the report, the labor department's reported 80,000 jobs lost in the month of december, 2009, do you foresee federal reserve doing anything? do you foresee a statement by the president? do you foresee the stock market dropping today? guest: likely things to happen. maybe if you were someone who

was wanting to get a loan, it's hard on the people that aren't getting jobs. for you, maybe this is good news because it probably makes it less likely that the federal reserve will raise interest rates. the fed has been sort of hanging back, keeping interest rates very, very low. and waiting to see what happens with the economy. if we had had, say, 85,000 jobs added, the fed might say, time to start to inch up interest rates a little bit. so this news tamps down the desire to raise interest rates. and so if you are somebody, a small business, someone who wants to, you know, borrow money for whatever reason, lower interest rates are in your best interest. so that's good. i think probably plit -- politically, yes, the white house will respond to this news. and for the stock market, you know they're crazy. who knows. the likely thing is they anticipate so much. it's always hard to make

predictions before the markets open. the futures was waiting. everybody was waiting to see what this report would say. and my sense is i think this is going to be disappointing and that it could harm the stock market. however, having said that, if you talk to economists long enough you know there are two hands. on the other hand, some people might interpret this as good news because there is a little bit of a growing fear about inflation coming back. as i was talking about gasoline prices. if the jobs market takes off too quickly then maybe we drive up inflation. the demand for energy increases. the demand for, you know, gasoline to drive to work starts to increase. so some people who are worried about flaring up inflation and rising interest rates, we had already seen some interest rate hikes in china, maybe the market will interpret this as good. we can have lower interest rates and less inflation for a longer time while the economy

more slowly builds towards a turning point. host: portland, oregon, gene, republican. you've been very patient. you are on with marilyn geewax of n.p.r. caller: yeah. i just feel like the media, there's such a divide in the way that people believe now. you have the democratic belief system, you know, as i can see it is that government is the answer. and then you have the republican belief system that the private sector is the answer. or the entrepreneur spirit is the answer. what i -- i've been in business for 30 years. and what i see happening now -- i have friends across the u.s. there are so many businesses that are on the verge of closing even just from the fear of new taxes like here in oregon we are going to have a new tax that's going to be what they call like a gross income

tax or something that because all the corporations aren't paying. and so the thing is when you have that kind of media that's promoting a certain belief system on most of the networks and then you have the other side which maybe is the glenn beck side which is giving numbers that are saying these things and then these people are saying these things, isn't there a fact that in the government today that there's a socialistic view which means the government is better to run things, and there's a capitalistic view -- guest: on this controversial about taxes -- on this controversy about taxes, i hear from both sides there are some people that are very concerned about rising taxes and that could discourage business. that could prevent people from wanting to earn more because they don't want to hire marginal -- higher marginal fax rate or higher property taxes. taxes are obviously a burden on individuals and businesses.

but i also hear from businesses who are worried about things like infrastructure. they also want government to keep spending because the roads are too crowded and the bridges are falling down. so some businesses and some people say, no, we really do need to keep up those -- increase our tax revenues because otherwise we have this terrible crumbling infrastructure problem. and ultimately a failed transportation infrastructure system is going to hurt the economy more than higher taxes right now. so again that's something that politically people have to work out. right now, what do we need more? spending for infrastructure, to improve our roads and to create jobs, or do we need lower taxes? key debate. host: associated press story, stock index futures tumbling after the government reported they cut more jobs than expected. the labor department said the unemployment rate stayed at 10%. 85,000 jobs lost last month. more than the 8,000 expected

that you talked about. the report signals that many jobless people are giving up on their search for work. dow futures are down 34 or .3% at 10,511. what does that mean? guest: well, the psychology matters. back to what i was saying. even though this number is -- when you look at a job market of 131 million jobs, 85,000, you know, sometimes they revise these numbers, they're not -- host: as we saw earlier. guest: statistically, if you're one of the sfistics, if you are one of the people that lost your job, it feels pretty painful. if you stand back and look at the big picture the economy, maybe they'll revise it next month and it wonet quite as bad as we thought or whatever, but psychology -- won't be quite as bad as we thought or whatever. do they want to buy appliances

this year? time to buy a new washer or drier. people are so discouraged they are not looking for work, if employers are still laying off people, that's bad psychology to start the year off with. so i think that's what the stock market is going to respond to, is that there's this real concern that, oh, man, we are not out of this yet psychology and that's not good for investors. host: what other numbers besides the jobs lost or gain, what figures do investors and economists look at? guest: now the big attention will turn to the corporate earnings season. the year ended december 31 for most companies. not everybody is on that fiscal year. but most corporations will start reporting what happened in the fourth quarter. and again this is that kind of complicated scenario where it may be that all those job layoffs will boost profits.

maybe companies made money in the fourth quarter because they're squeezing so hard. we've seen tremendous increases in productivity. corporations are just literally telling people, work harder, work faster. and because of the fear of losing your job people do work harder and work faster. also, there's new technologies to help you become more productive. so we may be seeing that even though they're laying off employees they aren't necessarily having less output. so if we continue to have these productivity gains where we're -- we have a lot of output, that may lead to profits for corporations. and that would spur wall street and they'd be happy and then maybe that would eventually trickle down and all that. it sets up a cycle. you need to look at when the corporate earnings start to come out in coming weeks we'll have a better sense of the overall direction of the economy. host: just a few more minutes left with our guest, marilyn geewax, who grew up in youngstown, ohio, close to cleveland, ohio, where loretta

is on the line. please go ahead, loretta. caller: oh, good morning. host: hi. caller: hi. it seems as if the republicans that are calling in they want to blame obama and the administration for the problems that we are currently going through. but these problems were based on the eight years of fiscal nonoversight, the wall street golden parachute pay scam where the more executives screwed up the higher his pay was, we gave away all of this tarp money that was supposed to save the little people. guest: well, again, these are political arguments as to what started this, but certainly in the midwest, the trouble began

a long time ago. i grew up in youngstown. the steel mills started going down in the 1970's. and it was hit by that recession in 1981, 1982. things got better for the region in the 1990's. in the recent years, you know, it's political arguments as to who was at fault. the thing was the midwest, the area around cleveland, detroit, those areas have really taken a lot of manufacturing hits with job losses. and probably still more to come. so there's a lot of good reason for people to be angry in those areas about, and whoever you want to blame, well, that's a political argument. it's certainly true that there are just real problems with employment in the industrial midwest. host: missouri, carl, independent line, you are last for marilyn geewax. caller: i am last. and i'm going to -- you there?

host: we're listening. caller: be short on time. first, let me say this. i'm 75 years old. i have masters in three business disciplines. my i.q. is at genius level. i built businesses, sold businesses, worked for multinational corporations. .

caller: the united states became the no. 1 country in the world in income inequality. when that happens, the masses of people do not have enough money to buy the products that they make or the services. guest: again, this inability to purchase things, the lack of demand we're talking about, it is one of the key factors to watch here is going to be the gasoline prices. every time the price of gasoline goes up 10 cents, $14 billion comes out of consumers' pockets. that is money you could have spent at a rest on -- at a restaurant. instead you're putting it into your gas tank. if we want to boost demand, that is the work -- the worst thing

we cannot is rising gas prices, and yet that is what we're seeing. it may be the same scenario as the w, that the economy took a fall, it will bounce up, then go back down again. if we have a lousy job market and rising fuel prices, that could increase the likelihood of a w recession, a double dip. into the new year, the estimates are that it is a 10% chance of a double-dip. maybe the chances have risen. host: if people want to see your work on line -- guest: we would love people to go to npr.org and get comments. and also at npr's facebook page, you have an opportunity to tell us about what happened. there are great stories out

there. host: to use them on the air as well? guest: we also follow up on the stories and just listen to the conversation. i've done a great deal of reading those comments. it gives you a great chance to look what happens around the country when you hear what people are saying about the job service. host: is your website easy to navigate? guest: npr.org -- just look at the jobs think it is right there on the front, i hope. if nothing else, you should be able to go to facebook and type in npr and you'll be able to click around and find us. host: marilyn geewax, thank you. about an hour to go in" this morni -- "washington journal" this morning did you go to the

united states institute of peace panel on the election. we have juan zarate coming up, a former counterterrorism adviser to president bush. we will talk about some of the other issues that we have been discussing this morning, terrorism, etc. but we have about 15 minutes worth of open phones. we will put up the numbers did lots of public policy on the table this morning, or any other public policy issue you would like to discuss. you will be right back to take your phone calls. actually, we will take those phone calls now, it looks like. i was a little confused. go ahead and start dialing in. as we get you dialing in, i am going to reach over here, because i thought we were going to take a break and i would have

a chance to reach over and grab those articles. so part in that. we will begin taking those calls in just a minute. we have some articles that are unrelated, basically, to some of the topics that we have talked about this morning. but still, you might find some interest in them a. the first one i want to point out is from "politico," a long analysis piece -- i would commend you to go to the "politico" website. david rogers covered congress for years and years and years at "the wall street journal," and now he is at "politico." it is headlined "cool obama takes tehe heat." i would just come and that you go to politico.com and read the piece for yourself.

in "the new york times" this morning, "surprise anxiety for favored democrats in massachusetts. mark the copley had seemed so certain of winning the special election -- martha coakley seemed so certain of winning the special election on january 19 that she barely campaign. but the dynamic has changed in recent days. the news that two democratic senators will retire this year in the face of bleak reelection prospects has created anxiety. it says that a ground when it is improbable give the democrats outnumber republicans in massachusetts by two-one. a tight to it than expected margin in the closed watched race -- but a tighter-than- expected margin in the closely watched rates would prompt soul- searching among democrats nationally." here is a health care story, one

that you might find interest. "hospital cuts dialysis care for the poor in miami. to chip away at a deficit, miami's public hospital system stopped paying for kidney dialysis for the indigent this week, beating some patients to rely on -- leaving some patients to rely on emergency rooms for their life sustaining treatments. a total of 175 patients were affected by the decision by jackson held system, which runs south florida's largest charity hospital, jackson memorial, and a number of smaller hospitals and clinics. it is similar to the situation at atlanta's public hospital, grady memorial. federal law requires that emergency rooms treat patients any serious medical jeopardy regardless of their ability to pay. for patients with 52-stage kidney disease, going without dialysis -- end bachus stage

kidney disease, going without dialysis -- end-stage kidney disease, going without dialysis could prove fatal." as marilyn geewax, our previous guest, was saying, gasoline and heating will cost more. this is in "you a sed usa toda'" money section in "the wall street journal," ex-bush lawyer accused of trying to kill wife. a former white house lawyer under george w. bush was charged thursday with the strangling and attempting to murder his wife. connecticut authorities claimed he tried to kill his wife at their connecticut home on wednesday by beating her with the flashlight and straggling her." ok, time for a couple of your phone calls.

joe, independent line. you are on the air. please go ahead. caller: good morning. well, i just wanted to comment -- these republican -- on bush cheney -- mr. cheney seems to be pushing the limits as far as rebuilding the loyal opposition. how far can the democrats allow mr. cheney to go with his comments before they actually speedup -- speak up and challenge him? how far his opposition to the government go before it becomes treason? host: next call. caller: it is about health care. i have heard people talk about it extensively for months, and not one time have i heard anyone say how much money is going to cost my wife and i per month,

per youear. there has never been any money as far as break out of monthly bills, how much is going to be paid. what i worry about -- i am a homeowner, and this is a really bad time right now. i am worried that they are going to to me like the irs, if you don't pay your irs bill. they will make you sell your home, and they will have your home on the block quicker than you can imagine. i had a problem once several years ago with the irs, and they said i had 15 days to come up with the money or they would make me sell my property. host: texas, independent line. caller: i would like to comment on -- your program were talking about the stock market and what was going on there. if this country passes cap-and-

trade, this country will be finished. cap-and-trade is really a ponzi scheme. there is a guy out from mit -- i have seen him on the air -- he lives in seclusion right now, because he went against the cap- and-trade, and he is really kind of afraid for his life. they fudged it all the numbers in england, and it is really a ponzi scheme did what they are going to do is take over the stock market, and when they take control of electricity, this country is done. host: a couple of articles on health care in "the new york times." "when senator ben nelson was negotiating with the majority leader over whether he would support the health care bill, he demanded that the federal government pick up the total

costs of our proposed medicaid expansion in nebraska, even though other states would eventually have to share the costs of expanding their medicaid programs. in perhaps the most pointed criticism yet, governor schwarzenegger of california, in his state of the state address on wednesday, said that california's congressional delegation should either vote against this bill that is a disaster for california or get in there and fight for the same sweet deal that senator nelson of nebraska got for the cornhuskers state. he got the corn, we got the husk. mr. nelson says he will fight for california and other states to get the court, to." that is in "the new york times," as is this story. "president obama has apparently embraced the cadillac attacks, an excise tax on high-priced health insurance -- cadillac

tax, an excise tax on high- priced help insurance plans. as envisioned in the senate bill, the excise tax of 40% would be imposed on the value of individual health plans over 85 $1 annually, and family coverage over -- $8,500 annually, and family coverage over $23,000. what is less commonly known is that those maximums include not just premiums paid by employers and employees for medical insurance, but also provisions for dental coverage and reimbursements and a flexible spending accounts and the health reimbursement arrangements and employer contributions to help the savings accounts. the employee is not technically on the hook for the tax, which would be levied on the employer or health plan administrator. but experts agree that that tax will be passed along one way or another to the employee, perhaps through higher premiums, lower wages, or cuts in other

benefits." next call, pennsylvania, rich, independent line, please go ahead. caller: first time i've ever gotten through. 85,000 jobs lost in december, so what people have to remember is jobs were made in november, a temporary employees that came to help retailers, and they lost their jobs in christmas tree why don't they do something like they did in -- lost their jobs after christmas tree why don't they do something like it did in the depression? you need to get something to get people back to work to get that out of the house, to get them working. you have government programs where people are able to work, making money, the cash for clunkers -- the american company did not get the money paid toyota was the biggest recipient.

-- american companies did not get the money. toyota was the biggest recipient. host: madison. caller: how are you doing, sir? my name is floyd, and i want to say no to the health care, because they have corrupt everybody to vote for it, i say no. to obama and nancy pelosi, and no, i don't want it passed. my grandpa -- he passed away, and he fought pearl harbor and world war ii, and we should go back like we used to to the old days, just, you know, just lower the cost of everything. we are going to far with the republicans. we had more jobs than we have republicans. host: from "the washington post," "man charged with posing as secret service agent. he slipped past security

saturday at the department of health and human services in washington, and was not stop until he got to the sixth floor suite of offices for secretary kathleen sebelius, authorities said. the man apparently left the building after being confronted by employees. he was arrested on tuesday on charges of impersonating a secret service agent, and was being held pending a detention at next week in the district federal court." here is an obituary from "the post" this morning -- the only recognized survivor of the hiroshima and nagasaki bombing. 93 years old, the only person officially recognized as a survivor of of the hiroshima and nagasaki atomic bombings at the end of world war ii, died january 4 in nagasaki. he had stomach cancer, according to japanese media reports. he was in hiroshima on a

business trip with a shipbuilding company on august 6, 1945, when the u.s. dropped an atomic bomb on the city. he suffered serious burns on his upper body and spent the night in the city. he returned to his home town in nagasaki, which received a u.s. atomic bomb attack three days later. on august 15, 1945, japan surrendered, ending the war." charlotte, north carolina, a democrat. caller: thank you for having me, sir. people don't understand that without a line of credit for your business, you cannot keep paying your employees. businesses are closing because no one has given the small business in line of credit. obama was stipulating last month that the stimulus money that was supposed to go to small businesses to help them reestablished themselves are not getting there.

bankers are not putting their money where it is supposed to go. the other question i have is i don't understand why the pharmaceutical companies, who pay billions of dollars for its taxes, are not sharing that with a universal health care plan. for mrs. go, is paid, like, $16 billion -- pharmaceutical companies pay, like, $16 billion. if they gave half -- the programs coming from overseas, selling drugs in the united states -- that would cut some the strain of having to come up with all that money. host: we have 45 minutes left in the "journal." juan zarate, a former adviser for counter-terrorism, will be our guest. general james jones, national security adviser, spoke a few

days ago about the administration's response to terrorism. >> i think the president takes this very, very seriously. in the aftermath of a fort hood, and this event, he is legitimately and correctly alarmed that things that were available, information available, patterns of behavior that were available, were not acted on. you know, that is two strikes. he certainly does not want the third strike, and neither does anybody else. there is no theater here in terms of how the president reacts. he is very concerned. i have been on virtually every conversation with them on all of these things and i can tell you

that he understands that the stakes are very high, he understands the standards he is being held to, and even though it is a very high standard, we're going to have to redouble our efforts to make sure that we reached them. host: juan zarate is the former deputy national security adviser for counter-terrorism during the bush administration. mr. zarate, could you give your analysis of the president's speech yesterday on the flight bombing? guest: peter, first of all, good morning, thank you for having me. i think the president's speech was an important speech, and the report that came out with it, laid out quite clearly what the u.s. government knew it before december 25, what we have learned since about the potential attack, laid out very clearly and honestly, i think, the failures that occurred. i think the president did a good job, actually, of laying out the facts, and also taking responsibility.

you have to give him credit, john brennan, his assistant for homeland security and counter- terrorism, credit, and there seems to be no shirking of responsibility here. but what struck me was that this was more of a failure of the lack of -- of the strategic problem of attacking al qaeda on the homeland with the tactical information was available to the best government. that struck me yesterday, because that was not apparent in the information before but much of the information was more akin to we did not find the small pieces in the vast volumes of n that. that struck me yesterday, as a former counterterrorism official, but also as a citizen. host: what about the fact that for the last 10 years, almost, since 9/11, we have a new

intelligence apparatus in place. is information shared differently? are we succeeding in making sure that people are targeted? guest: i think absolutely. one of the things we need to be careful of is sloppy analogies between what happened here and what happened before 9/11. but the president, as well as john brennan, did a very good job of explaining that yesterday. this was not a 9/11-type failure, where you had intelligence that was stovepiped, capped by different agencies, not allowed to be shared by law, as well as by culture. we actually do have a very good system, given all the reforms of the past eight years, that actually not only collects vast amounts of information globally, but has it available and is sharing. the problem here is that there was not a prioritization of the nature of these threats, and it was not a connecting of the data that was available.

that is what the analysts are supposed to do, frankly, and that is where the failure lies. host: it was in one of the editorials this morning, it could be "the new york times," but in "the new york times" lead editorial, it says, "80 years after 9/11, the government still does not and -- eight years after 9/11, the government still does not have a single terrorism data base." guest: i think there is a reason you did not have the database. there is information about foreign citizens, communications, that cannot be blended with information about suspected american citizens. host: why not? guest: there are civil rights, civil liberties, constitutional issues, with non-u.s. citizens of versus u.s. citizens. that was not the issue in this particular case, but to suggest

one huge database with all the information about potential terrorism suspects -- we have got to be careful, because when you are looking at investigations, you may be looking it innocent individuals, and to put them aside as potential suspects. the other thing i need to mention -- we need to remember that we have short memories and get our country and that there have been incredible successes -- we need to remember -- we have short memories in our country -- that there have been incredible successes. remember the december 2006 plot where al qaeda was planning out of pakistan through london to bring down 10 airliners over the atlantic. that was a very serious threat, perhaps the biggest threat since 9/11. the intelligence system we put in place, the sharing we had with the brits and the pakistanis, actually support to

that well in advance. we tend to forget those in -- that actually thwarted that well in advance. we tend to forget those instances. host: "the washington post" this morning has a large chart that outlines the different lists and all the different communications that are supposed to happen, and it begins with this tide list. could you describe to us what the tide list is? guest: there are gradations of the databases and lists. the tide list -- i would just call it the tide list -- is the master list of all potential suspect individuals. that number is over 550,000 individuals of potential

suspects. host: that is the master list. guest: that is the master general list. but you have to be careful, because not every name in that list means that the individual is a terrorist threat. from there, you have additional screening of those individuals, with information available, where they are able to identify people who prevsent more of a direct threat. that goes to a more refined listed from that, there are lists created for those who pose more of a danger to aviation. the no-fly list, which means you don't let somebody on the plane, because you think they might blow it up or taken hostage or do something nefarious with it, and the other list is a selectee list, where you take a person inside and you give them extra scrutiny. the problem here was that the suspect in the case, abdulmutallab, was on the big list, and it was not the information to put him on the more refined list that would

give him extra scrutiny. that was part of the problem. host: when you come to the no- fly this, there is only about 4000 names there. is that comprehensive? guest: no list is comprehensive or perfect. host: but that is the official no-fly list for the united states. guest: that is. people need to recall that the u.s. government has tried to be strenuous about who goes on that list. those are individuals who are reasonably known to be threats to aviation, who may be operatives, who may decide to use the plane as a weapon. these are not just people who are potentially suspects who had an extremist conversation monday somewhere around the world. these are actors who are known to us or suspected to us to be very dangerous folks. a real good question here is sure that this be brought in? i would remind people, again,

since our memories are short, that when i was in the white house, there was a great deal of pressure from congress and advocacy groups to which will downed the list -- to whittle down the list. there were susan cries about the number of names of the list, mistaken identity -- were cries about the number of names on the list, mistaken identities. host: is the list smaller today than it was when you are in the white house? guest: the master tide this is bigger now. when i left, we were closer to 500. that is now higher. there was always an attempt to refine the list and make sure you did not have wrong names on there, bad names. part of it is the commercial interests. part of it is you do not want to unnecessarily burdened travel for the american public.

it is important for u.s. commerce. host: how often did you look at that list? when you are in the white house, your position was similar to john brennan's, except to get the position. guest: he took the position i had, but he is also the homeland security adviser. in theory, somewhat similar. host: would you look at the daily, because supposedly gets fed into a computer every night. guest: i would start and end every day reviewing the threats that had emerged either over night or during the day. i thought my responsibility was to make sure that we were giving you attention to those threats that appeared based on the information available, information coming through the system. again, i was at a fairly high

level. it works slightly differently than somebody on the line. i saw my responsibility as to make sure that we were looking at the priority threats and doing everything to ask the hard questions, not only of our intelligence community and law enforcement community, but our partners abroad. that is how we started and ended every day, and we have instituted this as part of the reforms in 9/11 and accretion of the counter-terrorism center. three times a day, the community, the counter terrorism threat community, did get together, continues to get together, to review literally a matrix of threats that are being laid out against the united states. sometimes those numbers come in terms of seriousness, in the dozens, sometimes they are a few, but the lists are in the hundreds of threats that are posted to the united states, literally every day. host: does the dni system work, in your viewpoint? guest: one of the things that

people need to recall was that the system was built to deal with the failures in the iraq experience. dien n -- dni was not necessarily an expert or model to fix the 9/11 problem. -- experiment or model to fix the 9/11 problem. it is not just counter- terrorism, but it is things related to north korea, iran, the big ticket items that the intelligence community has to be focused on. i think dni is still a work in progress. there had been hiccups' over the last year, some conflicts with the cia as to who is to represent the u.s. and the intelligence community abroad. but i think in general, the process in place for the counterterrorism community has actually worked quite well. i think folks need to just recall the successes that we had in light of, unfortunately, this

failure. host: our guest is juan zarate, former deputy national security adviser in counter-terrorism for the bush administration. cspanwj is our twitter address. margaret, a democrat, you are first up. caller: good morning. i hope you can clarify a couple of questions that this lonely layperson has regarding the computer system, and the right people get notified. am i to assume -- i have had these questions since the christmas bomb incident -- and i to assume that the computer systems that we have in place, and all the intelligence agencies, don't take the information as it is gathered,

pertaining to one person, and sort of cholesterol -- sort of coalesce it all and some kind of alarm goes off when it hits a certain level of danger? guest: that is a very good question, a good question not only for the layperson but for the expert. there are multiple databases that has that information about suspect individuals. what you have are systems that actually tried to track and manage information and to tie information with the various databases. but the important thing is that there is a human factor that requires analysts to actually do the prioritizing, and in some cases, pulling from various databases to actually look at potential threats. there would not be eight matching database or process by which anything related to some guy named abdulmutallab would

get compiled automatically. he would have to have analysts, -- you would have to have analysts, as we found out yesterday, looking at threats from al qaeda in yemen, saying that al qaeda in yemen is trying to find operatives that can get past the u.s. homeland, and then look for individuals or pipelines of individuals who may fit that category. that was the failure here. analysts were not taking that strategic problem and then pulling from the data that was available. it was available, and was noble. that is the -- and it was knowable. that is the unfortunate thing about this case. host: what is it your viewpoint on abdulmutallab's father going to the embassy, a well-known figure, worldwide in many circles, and reporting on his son, and that information not going further? guest: that information provided to our embassy in nigeria in

november it was a critical event. the analysts, the people at the embassy and the state department, did not describe enough importance to it, frankly. i think it was his judgment, in essence, as to the importance of it. -- i think there was a misjudgment, in a sense, as to the importance of it. we get hundreds of thousands of locked-in threa -- walk-in threat information all the time did most the time, -- all the time. most the time, it is not any good. that said, this was a little bit different. this was a prominent individual in nigerian society, not going to his own government officials, but coming to the u.s. embassy, telling officials that his son had gone to yemen. that should have triggered some -- the whole context of that should have triggered more concerned, especially as we learned yesterday, given that we

were learning the past few months that al qaeda in and was trying to find out if to send to the u.s. -- find operatives to send to the u.s. host: you are on with juan zarate. caller: this, first of all, is a very interesting conversation. there were two things in the news that were quite chilling recently. first is an interview with osama bin laden several years ago, that he was interested in bleeding america white. unfortunately, concentrating on large wars rather than intelligence -- wise intelligence gathering. host: could you explain what you mean? caller: i am of the opinion that the entire invasion of iraq was costly in american lives, treasure, and basically

misguided. whereas we should have been hunting down bin laden. guest: very good points. in terms of hunting down bin laden, that has not stopped. that is something that is of great importance the prior administration and this administration, is important in terms of the ultimate dismantling of al qaeda. but you're broader point is a good one, that he has talked about his ultimate goal of bleeding america of blood and treasure. he equates the current battle with the united states to the battle against the soviets in the 1980's in afghanistan, he ascribes to the mujahedin in his efforts the collapse of the soviet empire, and they want to see the collapse of the u.s. we need to be cognizant of that, in terms of how we react, ensuring that we do not overreact.

that is one of the challenges for this administration, not giving the terrorists to much of voice in this particular incident. host: when the president spoke yesterday, he talked about reforms for the intelligence community. i want to get your reaction to this. >> these reforms will improve the intelligence community's ability to share, analyze, and act on intelligence swiftly and effectively. in short, they will help our intelligence community to get its job better and protect american lives. but even the best intelligence cannot identify in advance of every individual who would do us harm. we need the security at our airports, ports, and borders, and with our partnerships with other nations, to protect terror from entering america. guest: i think the president has it right. we have to have a dual system that builds the intelligence picture to identify people who are a threat to us, but he will not be able to identify everybody.

you have to have security particles in place that can identify random individuals that have explosives on them. the one thing that is a bit confusing to me about all this is that i think one of the things we have done relatively well over the past eight years is prioritize the threat. you necessarily have to -- the volume of threats is so great that we get, and that the intelligence community, counterterrorism community, deals with. that is precisely what we have tried to do, and i think have been doing over time. for there to be a conclusion that we were not prioritizing properly, not giving enough resources to this problem, really, i think, struck me as a major default and a major problem, and certainly the president is right to focus on that. but it is odd that we were not focusing more clearly on the threat coming out of yemen. host: next phone call for juan zarate, jackson, new jersey. caller: good morning, mr.

zarate. this is a wonderful conversation. guest: good morning. caller: i have a concern about our own connect the dots, and national security. we have a mindset in this current administration that seems more intent on attacking the cia, our navy seals, the fbi, so on and so forth. it seems to me that it is very difficult for these people to do their jobs without being concerned about watching their own back. i think this whole eric holder thing with wanting to try these guys in the united states and bring the cia out to the floor to lash them a few times, or whatever they are going to do -- they want heads to roll -- i think these people live in a bubble and they want the wrong heads to roll. that is my concern. guest: the caller raises a very

good and important point, something i've been concerned about the past few weeks, and that is what all of these actions by the administration are doing to the moral of the intelligence community. i think one of the challenges that president obama has here is that he must demand accountability, he must demand that we do a better job, and given the information that we have, but was revealed yesterday, there were failures year. people need to be called to account and they need to improve. that said, the intelligence community, the cia in particular, feels a bit under siege. we had the incident in afghanistan where seven cia officers were killed literally on the front lines, and apparently, according to reports, trying to capture ayman al-zawahiri, al qaeda's number 2. these are men and women and institutions that are built to take risks for us, and if the ghost wrote -- if they grow so

wary of taking risks, we get out a bunker mentality that could make us less safe. the other thing to mention is that the debate about afghanistan has been incredibly important inappropriate, but one of the negative externalities' of the intense focus on afghanistan, and to a certain extent, the drawdown in iraq, is to not have a global picture of what really is the current threat. we had a margin information about this more direct threat from yemen -- we had emerging information about this more direct threat from yemen. the debate about afghanistan, the intense debate about afghanistan, the centrality of that, which is not in doubt, but that somehow attracted from, at least the political bird's-eye -- that somehow detracted from at least the political bird's eye view. i think to a certain extent it is a wake-up call for the political establishment and perhaps all of us that we need to be watching the adaptations,

we have to watch what is happening in yemen, what is happening in somalia, north africa. these are real problems. it is not just afghanistan. it is sobering, it is unfortunate, but it is the reality we live in. host: next juan call next zarate, -- next call for juan zarate, jacksonville, florida, a democrat. caller: i have a question concerning the way we are put under scrutiny, for lack of a better word, when we go to board our flights here in america. now, so much time is spent on, it seems, getting a group of names on a list who cannot fly. why isn't there a list done for people who can fly? with our database at today's technology, it takes no time to compile a list of people who are citizens, who are legitimate

americans, who have reason to be flying, instead of this list so that it makes it easier -- host: sorry about that. guest: you raised some very good points, actually. this is something that the department of homeland security has been looking at for the past few years. they had a pilot project to make it easier for business travelers to get through security, and that is a preferred travelers program, if you will. i think you are absolutely right. there needs to be a way of making it more convenient. but at the end of today, the list are not going to do it. i name based system is not ultimately secured. you are not going to be able to put all the good citizens on a list, either. this also points to the fact that the administration has to be careful here. we have to be targeted in a way that we enhance our scrutiny and security, because simply blanketing additional security requirements on airports and american business and folks

abroad may not make us that much safer, and actually may have a backlash effect, things that the bush administration had to deal with after 9/11 from friends and allies in pakistan, saudi arabia, algeria. we did not like all the scrutiny, the extra attention that they got as they were traveling into the united states. the administration is going to have to calibrate this well, or else we are going to see some of the very same backlash. host: well, there is a lot of noise in the media whenever something like this happens that we are fighting the last war, the last incident. are we doing that again with these restrictions, watching a satellite maps on airplanes, pilots putting out landmarks? i mean, really? guest: and the removal of the los -- host: shoes in the bush administration -- guest: that is right. particularly in aviation you have seen this.

the hole advent of magnetometers and aviation security started in the 1970's, when terrorists started taking planes over and taking folks hostage, etc. at each interval of innovation by the terrorists, we have had to adapt and put in place new security procedures. richard reid with the two bombings, we take our shoes -- with the shoe bombings, we take our shoes off. now you may be body scan, pat downs, different restrictions on the plane. in terms of that type of preventive security, it tends to be reactive. one of the challenges is can you get in front of innovation? interestingly, we knew that this particular type of explosive was not only developed and used by this group in al qaeda in yemen

but used for an attempted assassination of a counter- terrorism chief in saudi arabia. we actually knew that this type of device was being developed and was being hidden by this group. i think one of the failures was not to actually take that into account as we were thinking about security with respect to the airports. the other thing is that at some point, you cannot be so restrictive in terms of security, that you are going to choke commercial traffic that is so important to our economy and freedom. at some point, you cannot let the terrorists to dictate how we live. it is a victory for them. so it is a balance. host: next call is from baltimore, independent line. caller: mr. zarate, i caught a speech yesterday at american university on c-span.

i went to school for international relations years ago, and it seems like the elephant in th room has always been to me, and if you ask anybody who comes from the regions that are troubled these days, is the unemployment. you go into a taxicab and you asked the man the unemployment rate in eritrea oh, my god, it is a multigenerational unemployment issue. if people don't have opportunities, is this snake oil that we are trying to apply to a wound? you cannot stop terrorism if you have an endless supply of people who are willing to give whatever modicum -- host: appoint, thank you -- got the point, thank you. guest: absolutely right. you cannot kill or screen your

way out of the problem. there is much disenchantment. you look at yemen, for example. not an economy of any real sordid the demographic bulge of young -- not an economy of any real sort. the demographic bulge of young males. a very bleak picture in terms of what young males in a place like yemen can do and aspire to. that said, i think we need to be careful here. at the origins of al qaeda, including the elements here the continue to threaten us, don't necessarily come from the po or streets of cairo or other parts of the arab muslim world. these are individuals who are largely well educated, privileged in some cases, and we see with abdulmutallab, he came from a privileged family in nigeria, studied engineering in

london. we have got to be careful about too many generalizations about poverty or unemployment causing terrorism. i think the dynamic is different. there is an ideology and play here that is a living too much of the world, and that is that the muslim world is under siege, the west is at war with islam, that by the united states, and that there is an obligation, but religiously and politically, to oppose the united states had to fight it with, as they call it, legitimate jihad. we have to realize that there is an ideology at play that we have to undercut, and much of that, i think, will have to come from the muslim communities themselves. host: as abdulmutallab goes to court today, do you have an opinion on whether national security is threatened by his being in a civil court rather than a military tribunal?

guest: i don't think there is an inherent danger with having terrorists tried in criminal court. we have done it before and we can do it again the real question is the initial paradigm in which she is handled. are we trying to -- in which he is handled. are we try to gather intelligence and prevent further attacks, or are we trying to gather information as a side benefit of actually holding him accountable in the criminal, legal context? you can ultimately to book, but you have to do what first -- you can ultimately do both, but you have to do one first. putting him in the criminal system for for us the opportunity to get as much as possible -- forfeits the opportunity to get as much as possible. he was in london and was obviously recruited in some way. we are at a moment where, as the

administration admitted yesterday, there are additional threats coming from yemen and from this group. we need to know what that looks like. what is the pipeline? who is setting these individuals? how are they were quitting? how many others were there? -- how were they or recruiting? how many others were there? putting them in the criminal system does not give you that flexibility. i don't argue that you do not ultimately try him at some point, either in the military context or the criminal context, but you have to be clear what you are trying to do in the context of the threat. host: west virginia, republican. caller: good morning, gentlemen. i have a question, sir. with all the technology that this country has, why is it so hard to track down bin laden? i mean, you have a drones, all the intelligence. guest: well, technology is important and critical, but it

is not everything. we i dealing, especially when we're talking about the dark corners of the world were al qaeda has found safe havens, whether it is before 9/11 and afghanistan, over the last few years in western pakistan, or more recently in the hinterlands of yemen, we are talking about parts of the world where we don't have much access, where, in many cases, al qaeda has friendly environments, tribal elements, families they have married into that actually i did these individuals -- actually hide these individuals. and so is more than just being able to put eigha drone in the ear or a listening device somewhere. you have to get intelligence on the ground on where these individuals are t. with some of these parts and the

world, we just don't have -- for example, western pakistan -- we just don't have boots on the ground and it is hard to look in every case and every corner. host: your job in the bush administration, deputy national security adviser on counter- terrorism -- how much time was spent on that question? guest: we were focused heavily on that. as i told my wife when i was thinking about what i was doing with the rest of my life as the administration was coming to a close, i said that the two things i want to do -- i wanted to get the three americans held hostage in colombia out, which we did, thanks to their military, and i also wanted to find a way of getting bin laden, because it would be so important not just symbolically, but because he continues to play the role of galvanizer,

organizer of the movement. we have worked around the world to get information about him and try to find him, and not only him, but ayman al-zawahiri. this post with the seven cia officers were killed -- that appears to be what they were trying to do, trying to get closer to ayman al-zawahiri. i think we have got efforts under way. host: do you think bin laden is our ralive, from what you know? guest: i don't think there is any reason to believe he is dead. there are recent audio tapes that have been authenticated, and we think they are current. i don't think we have had eyes on knowing exactly where he is since tora bora.

there was a senate report out in a very good article in "the new republic" about the incident. but no, we think he is alive and there is an active effort to finding him and capturing him. no doubt it will be an important close to a chapter in the war on terror once he is either killed or captured. host: mike in pittsburgh, pennsylvania, a democrat. caller: listen, can you hear me? host: we are listening. caller: he hit the nail right on the head when he said screening people. what is wrong with -- if the airports will cooperate, what is wrong with having -- lines and lines of people born in this country, showing american citizenship, and another line of people coming in with the visas, and another line of people coming in from another country? host: okay, just add to that,

someone you might know at the heritage institute, writes about national security issues, talks about in "the washington times" this morning that the department of homeland security is not necessarily responsible for all aspects of homeland security. if he walks through, in this editorial, the different departments and agencies that are responsible for different parts of the layers of protection that are built to our borders. i just want to add that to the tenement said. -- what the gentleman said. guest: i think that is fine, although d -- that is right, although the authority has been consolidated and they have that ability. but dhs does not have the to

possibilit -- have the capacity to deal with all the counter- terrorism issues and the country. to the caller's point, part of this is being able to use intelligence wisely to figure out who may be suspect and who may not be. i think we need to be careful with profiling and making distinctions, because we certainly have cases where u.s. citizens, of both past and present, not only have been radicalized, but have joined forces with al qaeda. the headley case out of chicago, where a citizen was helping last party toward the -- helping lashkar-e-taiba. zazi, an afghan-american citizen, apparently trained by al qaeda and sent back to commit

some sort of attack in denver, on his way to new york. we need to be careful, because there is a home run problem that we have to contend with that is not necessarily feed into -- homegrown problem we have to contend with that does not necessarily fit into a clear dividing line. host: last call is from maryland. caller: well, good morning. thank you for taking my call. this is my first time calling, so i hope you will be patient with me. i am a sociologist, and i think the american people should notice that we are acting like a nation divided against itself, with particularly republicans attacking a sitting president who admits -- the republicans are admitting that we are at war -- shouldn't this be considered treasonous? it of violence