also a look atñr disclosures. that with richard dekaser. then a discussion on property rights in africa. "washington journal" is next. .

[captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2010] host: we'll talk about a lott of topics during the course of our day, but for our first 45 minutes, a look at the topic of bipartisanship. edward loose advising president obama to forget bipartisanship and as far as his agenda goes, to shoot for the moon. you can have a chance to comment in a bit but here are the numbers. -- host: and here is ed loose's column from today's "financial times." forget bipartisanship, obama, shoot for the moon. i want to read you just a bit of what he's talking about. he writes that leaving aside the electoral wisdom of pushing ahead with the messy products of health care reform --

host: it is better for a prince to be feared than loved. for all his intelligence, nobody fears mr. obama. ed loose finishes today saying that mr. obama is respectable but marginal proposals to kick-start job creations and investments are unlikely to do much to reset the stage for the next phase of u.s. growth. unless he can come up with something better, the moon will continue to look very far away. mr. loose advising mr. obama as far as getting an agenda done to give up the notion of bipartisanship and work as he describes to shoot for the moon to get an agenda done.çó we're goingçó to get your thougs on that. here's how you can do so. if you want to phone us, it's -3

if you want to send us a tweet, you can do so at twitter.com and our tag is c-span/wj. we'll read those and take those thoughts in just a couple of moments. if you could imagine, most of the new york papers today talking about the governor, david patterson, talking how he's going to not run for another term.

he quits race but won't step down as governor. to give us some context of what happens now as far as this race is concerned, jimmy volkin joins us on the phone. what is the likelihood that governor patterson will manage it? caller: he is going to work hard and he faces a budget that is due on april 1 with a deficit of $8.2 billion and growing and the governor despite the allegation, despite his announcement yesterday has said he will fight on. now it's not going to be easy. there are two things looming over his administration right now. his first is a probe by attorney

general andrew cuomo. the probe was initiated at paterson's request on thursday after it was reported by the "new york times" that paterson himself as well as the state trooper assigned to his protection detail had contact with a woman pursuingñr domesti violence charges against a man named david johnson who is one of mr. paterson's top aides and con dant. -- confidante. so paterson awaits the outcome of this probe. it's possible that it will fine the if he did have inappropriate contacting with a woman pursuing

what could become criminal charges, they did not arise to criminality at the time that the woman whose name has been largely withheld by the media decided to abandon her pursuit to them. she was seeking a permanent order of protection but she abandoned that request. but more importantly, this probe will focus on what did the governor know? did the governor give tacit or explicit support for the head of his security detail to meet with this woman? did the head of the state police a man named harry corbit know what was going on and whoa the full picture? and was the governor aware of this and when he said publicly on the radio to allegations against mr. johnson were "rumors." so we await the resultçó of thi probe and we're wondering if it will a nugget ofñr david patersr

>> is anybody pushing or at least trying to force a resonation from the governor? caller: people are not,ñr but ty are trying to tell him he should resign. johnñi lu, comptroller of the cy of new york said that given our current budget problems here in new york state and the problems that he faces inñi new york cit that governor patersonxd must g and the lieutenant governor who is widely represented by legislatures in both parties as well as union officials and business leaders as a man who has measured, balanced and who is going to, if anybody try and solve the intractable bubbling problem in new york for him to at least take over the primary responsibilities of developing the budget or at most for paterson to step down and let

ravech serve out his remain 3g00 days. host: you talked about andrew cuomo who is investigating governor paterson but very well could be carg run for the same position. does that mean for him not only his job but politically as he tries to manage it? caller: it's be the worst kept secret that he was going to run for governor. he's raised a boat load of campaign cash. some $16.1 million and he's met with people around the state. he is not yet announced his intentions. he put out a statement expressing sadness for what happened to governor paterson saying new yorkers will know his decision. the democratic state chairman said that cuomo is the prumtive nominee.

and heads of certain labor union have all said they expect cuomo to run and want him to run. so he's sort of the king in waiting. he can't announce quite yet because he is doing this probe of paterson and his administration. host: has governor -- or attorney general cuomo as some of the papers talking about this morning at least when it comes to this campaign how coy he's basketball. you've mentioned that. but if he did wanted to run for this position, what kind of things would he stand for as governor? what he would want to run on. some type of platform that he would like to see for the state of new york. caller: well, he ran for governor in 2002. so we have an idea based on the stance then he took then one of the stances he took now. he has for the last six months avoided comments on some of the

major issues in albany particularly budget issues. now, as in washington or as anywhere, when there's no money to go around, but just our heart. you have to cut education and health care, both are proposed here in new york. like our state park system, closer -- closure of 41 parks. and cuomo had duckedi these questions. he hasn't appeared publicly in albany for quite some time to talk about politics or to talk about the budget. but we know he will be a traditional liberal democrat and he is going to separate himself from the current system inxd albany which has proven itself to be toxic and it's special elections in the 2009 elections are any indication has been rebuked byñi voters similar to

what happened with scott brown, republicans have seen a resurgence in new york. we also know that andrew cuomo's attorney general might provide a key for some of his campaign. he managed to get it through the state legislature and sign into law that would facilitate and streamline the ability of new yorkers to consolidate their levels of government. if you live in a village, a town or county that has fire and library and water and sewage district. andrew cuomo has attacked this. he's attacked it as root of new york's high spending and high taxes and he has proposed -- stripping away for some of these local government. host: one more question, jimmy. you talked about resurgence and revpblets and they have a strong republican to rally around?

>> well, the nominee has had trouble raising money. he is the same man who ran against hillary rodham clinton in 2000 during her first bid and rushed across the stage and handed her a campaign finance budget to sign. so his chances are well, i don't know and hi should characterize them as well, but they are certainly not -- he's certainly not a shoo-in. host: i apologize, mr. vielkin is a contributor of nfha.

thank you for your time. caller: thank you. host: back to our topic this morning about bipartisanship. we remember -- you'll remember at the beginning, ed loose of the "financial times" giving the president advice this morning as far as bipartisanship is concerned, telling him to forego it in order to get an agenda done. we want to get your thoughts on mr. loose's thoughts or the idea that the president needs bipartisanship to continue an agenda. again, the number's on your screen. you can send us a tweet, you car e-mail us at c-span.org. manhattan is first up. phillipen our democrats line. go ahead, sir. caller: thank you for c-span. i absolutely agree shoot for the man. -- moon. could you imagine the roles were reversed? the republicans would steamroll over the democrats. it's calledñi the reconciliatio for using the 51 votes to push

through the health insurance reform. i absolutely 1,000% agree that they should shoot for the moon. i wish there was -- the public option should be buying into medicare. you know? there's younger people who don't use health insurance, who could pay like myself, item premium, i'm not talking about giving it away, but charge people. i pay $500 a month for my health insurance and i never use it. i haven't used it for 20 years. medicare should be told the public at full premium and not a giveaway. and lastly, if you'll permit me. democrats should use their 51 votes to push through meaningful bank regulation that i think before the next election, the most important subject that's out there is the idea that the banks are still unregulated. they're still in a position to

really hurt the american economy. and they need to be put into their place and if the democrats did those two things between now and the next election and do it with real teeth, they would show that they got backbone and again, thank you for c-span. host: franklin, independent line in richmond, virginia. caller: how are you doing? bipartisanship is the way to go. i mean, i feel like we can do it. if we can get the $78 billion recovery act, i feel like we can find a way. it's just so funny that scott brown was called 41st vote. bit i think he was -- to not sense into the moderate republicans and kind of rein them outside the box but for republicans such as richard shelby and senator bunny, the constituents felt ill with them. with those kind of republicans. their situation where is we have junior republican senators doing the job of deranking republicans

who just want to sit and do nothing. that's all i got to say about that. host: so do you think that bipartisan as you saw it in the stimulus sack could work in the case of health care? zape yeah. since we pretty much can get something like that done, it just shows you that pretty much corresponding on the other side, we can get something like health care done. host: anita springs, florida. connie on our republican line. good morning. caller: good morning. well, as republican, of course i think that we should start health care reform on a clean sheet and start with what everyone agrees on and fix the actual problems rather than having the government take over the whole system and socialize our health care. as far as bipartisanship, there's no bipartisanship on principle. bipartisanship for little details around the edges. but yeah, to some degree while

as an american stin, i would prefer congress to work -- citizen, i would prefer congress to work on this issue. with a fresh sheet of paper, from the beginning and not to have the bill and say let the trojans give a couple of little ideas. but yeah. but just keep in mind the hypocrisy when the rens have full control of house and senate and the presidency. if they would promise to, you know, keep the rules the same, the next time the republicans are in charge, that would be one thing. but a couple of things. so yeah. from one standpoint on principle, if the democrats believe socialism is the way to go for this country, then go for the moon. go for it. but -- but then don't yell and scream when the republicans do "tp cou one is talking points.

ebb says oh, talking points. talking points are simply those issues that most of the republicans or most of the democrats agree upon. so what's wrong with saying those and speaking them? host: ok. we'll leave it there. off of twitter, chris in bama writes that president ragan had folks like statesmen like tip o'neal to work with. who does obama have on the republican side? and he says this is an oversight of mr. luce's piece this morning. taylor, michigan, up next. ray. go ahead. caller: yes. for the moon and that the american people, they need a voice in something these days because it's all about big business.

host: tell us how you think bipartisanship fits into this. caller: well, it's a good plan for republicans and big business. well then they're all the time saying it's bipartisan. please vote bipartisan, but if it isn't, and it's just for the american people, they're solely against it. host: a little more from ed luce who writes finally mr. obama's bipartisan instincts contributed to the state of health care reform. he allowed a small group of centrist democrats to negotiate on a compromise. the exercise robbed him of three valuable months and seated the initiative to people who had no prior record of fighting for health care reform.

it also create space for the demagogue at town hall meeting which the bill was depicked as a trojan horse and seen as federal bureaucracy. the net result, no republicanñi results. los angeles up next. phil on our independent line. caller: hello? host: good morning. caller: good morning. i'm not an independent or a democrat or a republican. and so i guess before i can really make my comment, i would just like to ask you what exactly you mean about obama on the moon or something. host: the larger issue is that mr. luce is saying that he's advising, i guess mr. obama to forget his bipartisan instincts when it comes to getting his agenda done and just work on it for himself, and in essence, shoot for the moon in getting what he wants. caller: that makes a lot of sense. it seems to me -- let me see. it seems to me that our

president is just -- he's a president. he's not a kick. -- king. so the system being what it is, i mean, it's difficult for me because i'm just sort of -- i mean, i've watched the journals as much as i can, i listen and i hear some of the public make a lot of sense and some of the public i don't quite understand and it seems that the smarter people are the more confused they are. we've got so many of these issues and the public is present it in a certain way. so to me, i sit here and i watch and i think this partisan stuff is killing our country. if we can'tb. get on the same e the way our competitors in the international market do, we're heading for a hurtin'. host: long beach, california, on our republican line. bob is next.

caller: as far as the article shoot for the moon, the democrats is pretty obvious what they've done. they've shoot themselves inñi t foot. people want health care reform but they sure don't want this bill that's trying be crammed down our throat. in nancy pelosi's interview, not one of the people in that room made the comment that the american people simply do not want what they've put on the table. i mean, bipartisanship agreeing to agree obviously, that would be the ideal, but people want health care if they can afford -- health care that they can afford. they want to be able to buy and get the insurance that they need. they don't want some bill saddled on top of them that years down the road, someone else is going to have to pay for. it's the same as lyndon johnson in the great society. when i was 28 years old, i told

people don't vote for johnson because your kids are going to be paying for this. your fica isçó going to go from $174 a year to overpayingñi fic taxes $90,000. are you crazy? and this is the situation tat we're in now. anyway, as far as the health care bill is concerned, it's wrangling and nobody trusts the government period, republicans or democrats. it's a pathetic situation. it just makes me sick in california as a state that is completely in disarray. believe me. you couldn't find -- here that is meaningful if you wanted to. the unemployment department here in california is absolutely the worst. host: we thank you for your call. gives me a bit of segue because on our newsmakers program, we talk with the democrat from california, george miller. he's the chairman of education

and labor committee. a wide range of topics took place during this interview. among them was the discussion of ther the representative sion of charles rangel should stay in the house ways and means committee. >> sometimes in politics, you have to do difficult things and i can make a case why you should step down or he is entitled to your day in court and right now, our process mayçó not be a perft process or system but it is at these committees. i would hope they would wrap up their work as quickly and fairly as possible and then the congress would have to make a decision and i think that's what people were sort of being entitled to. >> as a chairman though, do you think he can continue to be effective in that position given all the questions surrounding him? >> it makes it difficult. there's no question about that. and he and the members of his committee and the leadership will have to discuss that. this all just happened on friday. and i think that we have to

review that. i think it's important that the leadership review that. it's not about dodging the eefrpbl i think you're trying do the right thing but sometimes the right thing in the heated political environment is very host: george miller, the chairman of the education and labor committee for the house. he's from california. two times you can see him tomorrow, 10:00 tomorrow morning after this program on c-span and you can catch him at 6:00 on our newsmakers program. we are asking folks to comment on the notion of bipartisanship and then getting an agenda done and specifically, getting president obama's agenda done. off of twitter, there's no identification but this person writes i think it's hammer time for obama. you're either with me or against me. against social benefits? then cut them all. this is again someone who doesn't identify themselves but you can contribute that way, by phones the phone lines will be on the screen and you can send

us e-mail as well. west port, connecticut. moses. caller: good morning. i support the president 100%, the shoot for the moon. check this out. two months into this administration last year, senator jim demain of south carolina declared that he wants the president to fail with the health care legislation. he said that's going to be -- if we pass this bill. then this was followed byñi rus limbaugh. he said he wanted the president to fail. if the president fail, that means that the whole country fail. the president try to, you know, be bipartisan, trying to work with the republican. who basically have no interest in working with this guy. some of this -- they have to show that they are a -- this

party, they have this image in the senate. yeah, they couldn't get anything done. so i could not imagine a republican having 50 votes in the senate. whatever they want to do, true. so please, tell the president. stop this bipartisan. stop. as long as you have good agenda, that is going to benefit. host: richmond, virginia, up next. marie on our independent line. caller: hello. host: hello. caller: i am -- i disagree with the mr. luce's statement shoot for the moon. i think that is absolutely exactly what bullies do and bullies don't always win and unfortunately, they may seem to win in the beginning but in the end, they always lose. i also disagree very much with

the president saying the other day and i watched almost every minute of the seven hours. however, he said that baby steps don't work. i disagree completely. we all started off with baby steps. that's what we are today. i'm 78 years of age and i watch politics all the time and i think we should go with the bipartisan effort, whatever republicans and democrats agree on and then we should pass that. let's start with our baby steps and when the money is available, we should go to the most prioritize our needs and go to the rest. thank you very much. host: before you leave, you said you watchedñi almost all of the summit? caller: yes, i did. almost every second of it and i think that nancy pelosi giving the end statements before the president at the end, he said that mr. dingell was going to be the last speaker, which is the

democrats wanted their few minutes in there. that's would have been better. but nancy pelosi's emotion and last-minute statement didn't help. and i also felt that one never learnings by talking, and only listening and i think the president had a marvelous opportunity to listen and learn with experience and instead of that, he talked and talked and talked and talked. and that's not what it was all about. i thought he was there to listen. i'm not against the president. i'm not against anyone. host: we'll have to leave it there. that was marie from richmond, virginia. she said she watched almost all of the coverage of the health care summit. you may have missed it. well, you can watch it for yourself tomorrow starting at 10:30 in the morning on espn and that's -- c-span. couple of stories from the papers. this is from the politicses in the nation.

washington "the washington post." inquiry saw carrie johnson writing that lost e-mails are of concern covering of critical period in 2002 when the justice department attorneys labors under heavy pressure -- host: that's from "the washington post." this is about the house ethics

committee sorry. two of the lawmakers a democrat from indiana and a republican from kansas may have tacitly tied request for campaign donations to earmark requests in violation of house rules after couple of columns are mentioned and cleared by the ethics committee friday. -- host: canyon lake of texas. sophie talking about bipartisanship-and-luce advising of the president forego that and shoot for the moon. caller: hi, cillian's my name. host: cillian, i'm sorry. caller: good morning.

i just want obama to just doing what they're doing. the health care summit proved that obama's an idiot and he can't take any suggestions without belittling people. and he's too air goonlt give a damn about. the funniest thing is how they said they wanted all the suggestion but we're not going to get any hint to anything. you know, i think that all this demonization of the house chair people, the hospitals, all this demonization, every single voter and obama himself sthouf give back all the money to all those people that gave him money from those places. and they should be fired. host: off of e-mail, we have this from paul who writes that i agree that the president needs to bypass the republicans if he intends to accomplish anything on this term.

-- host: la gang, texas, next on our independent line. mike, go ahead. caller: good morning, pedro. we have had bipartisanship. the republicans certainly jumped on board to spend another trillion in afghanistan. they pulled up just enough votes for the package and the bailout. gosh, if obama keeps on the way he's going, it's all bipartisanship. he did the afghanistan thing. i don't know what they're complaining about. i think we got plenty of

bipartisanship. if obama wants to have a second term, he will definitely do a public option on these insurance and these bankers need realize once you use the t-bank, you throw it away. >> from the front page of the "financial times." -- host: for retaining the fed's regulatory powers, as senators reap for a weekend of negotiations over the details of financial reform, mr. bernanke looks closer to getting his way after what has been a fraught

few months. calls the fed to -- host: chat mooga, tennessee, next on our republican line. laurie. caller: hi. i want to comment about the bipartisanship that i see a great deal of in washington and that seems to be that everybody is in agreement 100% on sucking up to their, to the people that spend the money on them, to get them voted in the office and everybody seems to be completely bipartisan on the fact that they're up there to look after their own skin and not the american people. and as far as trying to agree

with somebody on the other side of the aisle just for the sake of being called bipartisan, where's your conviction? it doesn't matter whether you're republican or democrat, independent or whatever. if you've got conviction, stick with them. do what's right for america. not what's right for your party. not what's right for the people who paid to get you in office. and that's about all i have to say. host: orange county, creativity. kalee on our democrats line. caller: i'm a democrat who is going switch to an independent and a part of that is my fault. this is not a surprise that most people don't like the health care system. i like everyone got caught up in the hoopla of wanting to nominate a rock star and create history and then no one was listening and the media wasn't

slushing it out very well and all of a sudden, we got what we got and we got the government we deserve. but first of all, luce missed the point as most of the media does. bipartisanship was never obama's desire. it was his salvation. he could not get an agreement when he had a majority. so this is not about oh, it's all the republicans holding it up. this is the fact that without republicans, he needs the republicans so those democrats who would have been tossed out of office had they voted for this craziness so they would have some cover. and also, a lot of independence like to point out that the poll says if you take this health care thing different components' by's, the people -- piece by piece, the people approve that. that's like asking people if they want a mansion on the coast and you don't have the follow-up question of are you willing to

pay $100,000 a year for the next 30 years of your life to pay for that snangs and the answer becomes oh, no. that's the problem health care. and if they just enacted the one law that says everyone must have emergency care insurance, that $30 million number is going to go way down because a lot of the people are people who can afford insurance. they don't want to have it. and only in america when an adult male at 26 or 27 years old be classified as a child. >> "the washington post." emissions bill would push a new approach saying --

-- host: chicago up next on our independent line. john, good morning. caller: hey, good morning. yes. i'm as well of the sentiment it's interesting to even calling into your program. you need to identify yourself as republican, democrat or independent even to establish to listen to your show. but, you know, some of the

sentiments as well. i'm an educated guy from chicago. i vote democratic and a lot of local things and i happen to have voted democrat, republican or what have you during the course of time. and i come from a large family. i remember in the 1960's, we were talking about the l.b.j. thing. and american values and i know i'm spattering from different things. but -- the first woman who is on the members of the new york stock exchange and she was talking on charlie rose and she made the statement. there was a call they called the good old boy network. your word was your bond. american. that's what the spirit of america is. george bush sr., you sue -- he was an american and he loved this country. and he talks about the story. he was on the house talking.

and tip o'neill and he walks over and he goes and lewisers in his scompeer he shuts up. he said you shut the hell up. we got a 430 tea tank. the spirit of america the earlier caller said the integrity. these are the things that makes other countries come in and what a beacon of hope. and this is the common sense, you know, ben franklin said i give you republic if you can keep it. as the american presidency and the american president once showed it's advance story. -- citizenship. and for people to identify what is going on is heard because the news media goof things up. everyone's pointh fingers and the fact of the matter is it's

clean. there are solutions but let's use our education and get information out there in a way so people can think clearly and express their values. that's all i got to say. host: ute characters new york. mike on our republican line. caller: good morning. host: good morning. caller: yeah. i believe that if they try to ram this through this reconciliation process it's going to be the final nail in obama's coffin. the way they're hijacking the system that we have. this reconciliation process was not meant to be used for this. and this will be the end of this guy. host: two more calls. nicholson, pennsylvania. bill on our democrats line. caller: good morning, pedro. i'm calling from nicholson, pennsylvania. host: where is it? caller: it's north of scranton. host: ok.

caller: about 20 miles north of scranton. i think it's clear that we're not going to be able to get a bipartisan bill. unfortunately, because of the -- we need to get these pre-existing admissions through. his rejection medicine is $8,000 a month. soaways he going to do now? is he supposed to give up and -- this has to be done. we've come too far. and it clearly you can see the republicans are not interested in the health care bill because they haven't done anything in eight years. they kill the clinton bill. so i just feel that president obama and the democrats have to get this done and if there are issues or problems, we'll have to deal wit. thank you. host: one more call. jacksonville, florida.

kathy on our independent line. kathy, are you there? caller: yes, pedro. host: go ahead. caller: you know, they need to do -- i'm talking about republicans, independents, all of them. they need to do what's best for the american people. i mean forget your title. it's all about the american people. the people who sent you there. you supposed to have a heart. you know? and do what's right. do what god want you to do. and treat people the way you want to be treated. it shouldn't even be a question, you know? host: but with that in mind, how do you handle the disagreements then? caller: well, see? if you do what you're supposed to be doing the way god wants to you do it, there wouldn't be an disagreement. just think about yourself, you know? would you want people treating you that way? and then you die without insurance, you know? when they could give you insurance. other countries have good insurance. and we supposed to be the richest country. better than any other country. but look.

we don't have it. and that don't make a lot of sense. just like jim. he mad because he missed a basketball game. and so he stopped and the senators, the senators. they are holding up $290 billion that -- 290 bills that congress have passed away just sitting in drawers. people want this president to fail and that means this whole country going to fail. that means them, their children and grandchildren. vorp what are you saying about bipartisanship as a whole? caller: if you can't get bipartisanship, you got to do what the best for the american people. host: even if it means foregoing bipartisanship. caller: if it means doing what's best for the american people. all these people that called in, they're calling it against their own, you know? they're own health. they want to go against their

own health. and that don't make a lot of sense. don't make a lot of sense. host: kathy, thank you so much for your call. she was from jacksonville, florida. that's it for now, but on our next segment, we're going to talk about an aspect of health care that's been brought up several times during the course of debate. it is medical malpractice. our guest is david kendall with the group third way. he is the senior fellow. he will talk about that. but first, a little more frape the newsmakers interview that we taped on friday. this is from representative george miller of california. and he was our guest to talk with reporters about a wide variety of issues. >> at the end of the day, you don't really get the savings. you don't get the efficiencies.

you don't get the restructuring of health care that the economists the providers, the people who are experts in the field tell us you need to have if you're going to go forward and you're going to truly have a chance of slowing down the growth and health care cost over the next 10 years, the next 20 years. you can't do the insurance reforms if you don't have everybody in a system where they have coverage. if people can't get insurance, with do they go? and that's why john mccain was for an individual mandate and now barack obama is for an individual mandate. the system doesn't work without that. politically, you can argue it any way you want but when you get down to whether or not america and its economy and its families can live with this surgeries you need this expressive reform. -- comprehensive reform. we have the most expensive system in the world and it's one of the least efficient systems. a lot of people get really great

health care out of it. but it comes with a huge price that's not sustainable. >> you can argue that whatever the democrat's view, what are they going to do to view this a? >> we're going to pass the bill. in sports, you say you want to quiet the crowd, score some points. and the passage of this bill, one of the things we know is right now, you see in the polling did a pretty substantial majority don't think we should give up on getting health care done. and the more people learn about the bil&v about the product, about what's in this legislation for them, their families, their children, their small businesses, the more they like the bill. the republicans have done a great job about arguing process. because they didn't really want to say they want to make medicare a voucher.

they didn't really want to say that they thought that people should continue to have pre-existing conditions, kicking them out. so they've argued process, processes, you don't understand it. so that's all been interesting. pass the bill and take it to the country. host: well, clearly that discussion was about health care, my mistake. but they do talk about jobs during the interview. you can see all of that on our "newsmakers" program with representative george miller of california. that conversation tomorrow at 10:00 in the morning. you could see it again at 6:00 in the evening on c-span. on your screen right now, david kennel -- kendall with the group third way. what is third way? guest: it's a think tank devoted to advance the progressive movement. host: when it comes to -- we're having a discussion of bipartisanship leading into this. when it comes on the topic of

medical malpractice. is it clearly an issue? guest: for a long time, republicans have been a primary party talking about malpractice reform but democrats are interested in this issue. they see it as real problem. we haven't put as good a proposal on the table as we should though. host: was it a key topic point as far as the summit that took place on thursday? guest: what was most interesting about the summit was the president suggested that malpractice reform was an area where there could be bipartisan agreement. there was an interest in his part to do that. host: do you agree that some type of agreement can be thought? guest: even if you can't get a bipartisan support for the bill, that it has bipartisan apeople. that's why we think malpractice reform is good for democrats to produce a bill that does have bipartisan appeal.

we've been talking about how to cap -- non-economic damages which is what you would get for, you know, the cost of losing a limb or something like that that can't be judged easily in monetary amounts. so we would not just cap the system, but experiment with ways of changing the very nature of the way that courts make decisions about health care injuries. right now, a doctor often feels second-guessed by the court system. and as a result, they order extra tests and that produce what's called defensive medicine and which means you're getting extra tests and procedures that you really don't need adding up costs. so we spend more in health care than we really need to. host: so you're saying that ways to do this in court would at least encourage the doctor not to perform so many preliminary tests? guest: exactly. host: give an example.

caller: if you have a headache, there's a small, very small chance that you would have a brain tumor, right? so a doctor could either choose to have the patient wait for weeks ski if there's an additional problem that occurs. or they can order a very expensive m.r.i. on the very rare chance that you would have the brain tumor, you could get sued? you don't order an m.r.i. that's an extreme example. that illustrates the uncertainly the -- uncertainty that doctors face. and maybe? the doctor didn't order the m.r.i. right away, they would get sued. host: you would have to ask the doctor to change their mentality. is that feasible? guest: well, doctors want do the right thing and there's a lot of reasons that -- a lot of ways they can and they need to change health care. there's a lot of ways that are

not just due to the fact that there's extra -- too many lawsuits. so we need to change the way we do health care in general. but doctors, i think in other countries can practice medicine without feeling like they're going to be second-guessed on the courts and that's important because our doctors need to feel like they can deliver the care that you need and nothing more. host: the congressional budget last october did son analysis for senator hatchman when it came to malpractice reform. if these proposals were in place, it could possibly lower health care cost. a cap is what you were talking about. --

host: are those good guide posts in your opinion or arely there's others that could be worked in? guest: the problem with those proposals is that they haven't solved the problem. what we see in those is we see some costs coming down a little bit and for the first time, the congressional budget office has acknowledged that there is defensive medicine and it is a factor in health care costs. but here's the problem. if we're simply trying to limit the number of lawsuits, we still don't fix the problem of how the lawsuits are handled once they get into courts. right now, when a lawsuit comes forward in a court or even before it gets to the court, a patient has rough time of it. if you're injured, you have to hire a lawyer to investigate the claim. the lawyer has to have a lot of time and money to up front to investigate that.

involving discovery of witnesses and of the injury and so fort. and that's a grueling process for everyone. and so instead, what we should have is a system where you basically get a doctor -- the doctor hands the patient a form and just like a patient's comp, we will look at the case. it should be that simple morefacients. if we had that system, it would take a lot of attention and it would essentially -- let's learn each problem. and let's see what went wrong and try to prevent it. that doesn't happen. we have over 100,000 people dying each year in hospitals because of medical errors. and the current tort system hasn't stopped that. host: our guest with us until 8:30. if you have questions about medical malpractice, the number is --

host: has your group advocated for a sense of policy when it comes to÷ñçó handling this? if so, what would you advise? guest: our idea is to have a whole set of state experiment on different ways of handling this kind of new approach to malpractice. one specific way would be having a haith court much like we have bankruptcy court or tax courts and even courts for vaccine injuries. this would allow for a different process occur where the judges would and the juries could have clear standards for what the -- how doctors are judged for

whether or not they -- whether they committed negligence or whether the could have been avoided or if it was simply bad luck. and by establishing clear standards, doctors would then have an opportunity to say all right, i know if i did this -- if i do this thing and if i do it in the wrongñi way, i'm goin to get sued and i'm going to have a problem.ñr  up. but if i do follow the standards, i won't be found liable. so -- libel. that's the clear standard. it's like a mystery about how the judges and juries make the decisions and it rightly confuses doctors about how to prevent the juries to prevent it. host: you say judges and lawyers fall into this thing? guest: we need to have lawyers represent their clients when there's complex cases. but they shouldn't be as important in case where is there's a standard kind of

scompror the should be compensated. you shouldn't need to hire a lawyer just to take care of the problem where your leg -- the wrong leg was cut off. that's outrageous that we have to treat patients that way that when it is an obvious error that. the composition just occur. host: you say a state by say it experimental kind of thing. are the states trying this approach? guest: some states already have in place various parts of what i would call health court. indiana has a very good way of a panel of a judge -- sorry, a panel of a scomplaur a doctor who -- a third person who decide ahead of time whether a case can go forward. and they do a pretty good job of weeding out some of the junk lawsuits. but so that's a part of it. that would help with the investigation of a case. but it doesn't solve the problem of what the criteria are that a judge and a jury use in making a

decision about malpractice. host: two calls. johnstown, new york, for our guest david kendall of third way. paul, go ahead. caller: good morning, gentlemen. pleasure to speak to you. my yes this morning is no matter -- i've listened to the entire summit hearing. i've listened to most of the news reports for the last, you know, three, four months on health care. there doesn't seem to be any specifics that i can hear about for example, what you're talking about. now president obama was saying that there's tort reform. but yet, listening to this mornings it sounds like everyone is still extremely unclear about what these reforms to be and as a taxpayer, i need specifics to know if i want to see this bill passed. another example is, you know, you say you're going to pick up the 30 million people that don't have insurance and i know some people that don't have insurance that should have it. but what about the people that

just choose not to work? they're sitting around. they're young people. they haven't motivated themselves. i mean, what's the motivation in this country anymore if everything is going to get handed to you? thanks very much for your time this morning. guest: those are both excellent questions. what's in the bill right now is a set of demonstration programs for alternatives to how the malpractice system is currently handled in our country. so the kernel of the idea in the bills already what we thing needs to go farther is there needs to be more emphasis on alternatives or the way in which the lawsuits are handled once they're filed. and so we think there's actually a really great opportunity for a federal state partnership where the states could share the savings. we really don't know how much can be saved. so let's have an experiment where the states can share the savings from doing the

malpractice reform and as result, we'll find out how much really can be saved here and what works best for both patients, doctors, and saving us all some money and so that's one idea. the other point about having some responsibility.

it's not a consumer friendly system right now. we need to make it easier for people. host: florida. caller: if those people in the white house are so against, you know, the health bill, against us having it, what we should do, we taxpayers should remove the insurance that we very much pay for, for them, we should remove it. i think they'd have a different attitude. thank you very much. guest: i think it's an excellent point. one of the problems in ourñi current debate is that people don't know who to trust in this current debate. i think a very simple thing that members of congress could do would be to say with the new health care plan, members of congress should be in it. that would be a clear signal

that if this health care bill didn't work out, that members of congress would know about it because they're in it. in fact, this is a provision in the senate bill. i think it should be in the final bill that passes. host: in this idea, one of the things usually determined in determining in cash value is pain and suffering. how do you determine that in these particular cases? guest: the problem today is that somebody with a similar injury, between two people would say, one person would get $100,000 in compensation the other would only get $20,000. there's this huge range. it's just not fair if it's the same injury. it's hard to put a value on, you know, losing a limb. that's a very hard thing. there's clearly economic consequences because you know you're going to have to do things and have an artificial limb put on and things like that. so that's clear. but what is a limb really worth to us? there are various ways we can do that. that's what's done in the courts. it's just done poorly and with a

wide range of results. but to do that systematically, let's have a panel of patients that can put some dollar values there because we have to and make it consistent that would be one idea. host: how many medical malpractice suits are filed a year? guest: hundreds of thousands. the interesting thing is only 2% of injured patients actually file a claim. most people who are injured don't even know they should did that or are afraid to confront their doctor or have an injury that's too small where the lawyer will tell them, listen, we couldn't get enough money to pay for the case. so a lot of injuries just go uncompensated. and unaddressed in the system. that's one of the reasons we have so many injuries into that could be prevented because there's basically no financial incentive to prevent them. host: in new york city, rick on our independent line. caller: hi. i'm just wondering, did you ever hear of the commission in new

york? guest: pleaseñi explain. caller: in 1975, which at this point is about 30 years ago, new york state tried to look at how they couldñé7ów3 reform the medl malpractice problem. there was something called the mcgill commission. the mcgill commission made a number of decent recommendations back in new york state. and, of course, theñi legislatue then looked at them to see what they could do about them, and they decided to do almost nothing. i think there were about 15 recommendations in the new york state legislature adopted, perhaps too irrelevant portions of the plan. but it might be a good thing for to you look back at and consider in any recommendations that you might make. the other thing that i would say, however, the main reason that i called, is that if you look at the typical example you gave of the person going for the m.r.i. for the headache, i think

any really thinking physician would order that m.r.i. in the appropriate setting. and when done in the appropriate setting, it wouldn't do anything -- if the doctor is thinking about when to order that test rather than just ordering it in a shotgun fashion, which i don't think most physicians do, you're not really go fog cut down -- going to cut down on the costs of procedures which are in the emergency room setting outrageous to begin with. you really have to decide where to do these tests, when to do these tests properly, and then you might do something toward cutting down -- toward not cutting the costs of the tests themselves but remember that the liability costs provided for the health care providers in the hospitals probably runs about 10% of their input.

host: we'll leave it there, sir. guest: you had a really good point, sir of the th -- sir.ñi we'll look back at thatñi mcgill commission report and see if there are similar ideas that haven't been enacted yet. the yes of, you know, how do we want doctors to improve the quality of medicine and making the right decisions, you know, medical care in general has gotten much more complicated. there are so few cases that are crystal clear. there are many more cases of sort of having multiple choices and complex consequences. so, you know, the court system has not kept up with that. when you have a court decision, you're look for bright lines. now this doctor did this thing and it was wrong and he should be sued, and there should be

lots of compensation. it's seldom like that. so we need a court system that begins to respect the fact that modern medicine has to make complicated choices, some of which do involve risk that the patients have. but at the same time doctors have to be more willing to be held accountable for their care. one simple thing that the courts don't capture is that a lot of people die from infections. a couple prominent people, recently, die from hospital infections. alexander hague was one of them. you know, one of the basic things that can you do to prevent a hospital infection is making sure all the doctors and nurses wash their hands before they touch patients. that you can't sue for. who didn't wash their hands? but that's the kind that people should be compensated for and why we should change the standard of malpractice cases to

whether an injury could have been avoided. host: when it comes to defensive tests or defensive medicine, how much of that comes from patients urging? guest: i don't think patients are interested in having a lot of extra tests. we go to the hospital, go to the doctor, we want to get out, get better as fast as possible. these are decisions doctors have to make on our behalf. host: there's an e-mail that the medical malpractice, when it comes to cost savings, the insurance companies pay out less than one half of 1%. maybe there should be limits on individual lawsuits. why is it a big issue as really it doesn't address the issue? guest: it does a couple of things. we don't know -- it could be as little as one half of 1% or as much as 4%, 5% oh, 6%. there's different study that should tell us different things. we're really not sure. but even a half of 1% is a lot of money in a $2 trillion health care system. so it's notñi insignificant. but the other problem is that

unless we have doctors who feel confident that they're going to be makingñr a decision that is t second-guessed in the courts, they won't be able to practice the kind of medicine we need to practice. the resources will get devoted to extraneous tests and not to the things that patients really need and can really help them. so i think both of them, you know, it's not the only problem. we have a lot of problems in our health care system, but it's one that weçó should be addressing s we go to healthçó careñi reformr host: our guest isñi david kendl of third way. we're talking about medical malpractice. lee on our republicanñr line. caller: yes. i have two comments and a question forçó c-span. first of all, i don't think the government should do anything aboy way it is. i think it should be done over. and my questionñixd for the gue, progressive movement is scary to me and i think it's very dangerous. i don't think the american people are fully informed abgut what you are planning. you don't like our constitution,

you're trying to change everything, you want to bankrupt our country. the question for c-span is, how come you never show anything about the culture of corruption on the democrat side? sandyberger, you never

i want to speak to that last caller who just called. in terms behalf we mean, all of our materials and what we want to see done to help improve america. it's available on our website. www.thirdway.org. we're not trying to hide anything. host: the website is on our screen. youçóçóñr can link to it througr c-span website as well. chicago on our independent line. good morning. caller: good morning. good morning, mr. kendall. it's a pleasure speaking to you. i have two questions. my first question, there is a study done back in the early 2000's and it determined that 95% of the malpractice suits brought against doctors were committed by 5% of the doctors. now, why isn't american medical association going after these 5% of the doctors? what is the problem? just like a corrupt cop in the police system, it sheds a bad

light on everyone throughout the system. and why isn't the american medical association going after these people? and my second question is, whyñr can't health insurance being treated more like automobile insurance -- the less you use it, the less you haveñi to pay? the healthier you are, the better you take care of your lifestyle, the healthier you eat, the better things you do. why can't people be rewarded, basically, for living a better lifestyle and, you know, taking care of themselves? i'll take your answer off the phone. thank you very much. appreciate it. bye. guest: thank you. they are both excellent questions. on the question of is it really just a matter of a few bad apples, that's partly true. the number of malpractice cases are clearly concentrated in a subset of overall doctors. but doctors as professionals are very busy and they're not very good at sort of policing themselves, as we've seen. so that's why i think you do need to have an external review.

accidents in medical care are one of the few areas in our country where there's no public investigation. if you think about what happens when a plane crashes, there's a public investigation, public reports, pilots and the airlines all learn from those mistakes. we don't see anything like that in medical care. so i think having some public oversight, public investigation, it's a part of the health court where, you know, whatñi happens today if you have a court case and you sue and you settle, typically the lawyers will agree to seal the settlement. so we don't ever have a chance to learn from what happened in that case. so we need to open x$s up, make it less ofñr añi problem for dos occur and to preventñrñiçós7xdr host: how many cases go to settlement rather than a fullxd trial?ñi guest: about -- first of all,

about a third of the cases are actually -- thatçóçó go forwardo the plaintiff. so you got one-third chance of winning your case. in terms of -- it's a very small percentage of people who are injured and then go forward with the case. it's an even smaller percentage of people wh go forward with court. so we're talking aboutxdñmóçóx fractions. host: california, republican line. caller: good morning. that last guy that called, automobile insurance, that's exactly what i want to talk about. now, here in california, the law requires you to have automobile insurance. right? guest: right. caller: they also require to you carry uninsured motorist insurance. now, when i first seen that, i said, wait a minute.

if it's a law that you got to have insurance, why should iñi well, i foundñr out it doesn't cost much, a few dollars iñr think, something likeñi that. well, i find out my daughter got run over in a state park byçó a guy, he doesn't have any insurance. she was injured. ok? here's what they do. they hire a lawyer to defend him to payñi you what you've got coming. so that's my theory about this. why don't they just make everybody who's got insuran@u payñr for uninsured doctors.

the bill includes an incentive for those who do takeñi more

responsibility for their care. thefá idea is toñi give people a discount on their insurance premiums or just a reduction in theirñi out-of-pocket costs if they take care ofñi themselves. some initial reports show that that can be very effective in lowering costs as well as improving people's health. like how well we eat and how we maintain our weight. we all can do a better job of that. so that's something we can all work together on and can help. host: logan, west virginia. we go to patrick on you're democrats' line. caller: good morning. host: you're on, sir. go ahead. caller: good morning. are through? host: go ahead, sir. caller: ok. a couple of questions that i have. one of the things that i've noticed, and i've watched on a couple of news programs here in the last couple of years, is that i've actually seen doctors who have quit their jobs because they didn't see enough patients in a day.

i think that's the biggest sb1 that we face with medicine today is that weñi tret people likeñr cattle and we tryo push them through, get in as many people as we possibly can. now, i fully understand that there are not as manyó doctorss what we probablyñi need. but i do think we need to slow down a little bit with our patients and get a little bit more time to talk to them and find out what's wrong with them.

guillermo a lot of my friends, getting older, started to have problems like that. and one of them got it wrong. they put the wrong side fix in initially. so today have it redone. so there are risks that we have

to be aware of. but i think on the hole, the health care system does deliver pretty well and very well in many cases. is to, you know, we have to be thankful for that. so the amount of time that doctors spent with their patients, though, a problem. and one of the reasons that they do -- you have to see so many patients is because they only get paid to see people in the office. one of the questions i often have is why don't doctors email their patients? sort of everyone else is emailing each other but doctors don't. so if you have your question, you know, that could be answered by just an email or a phone call, why don't doctors do that? well, the reason is they don't get paid unless you come into the office. so one of the reforms that is under consideration in congress is to change the way doctors are paid and say give doctors a fixed amount of money per month for each patient who needs just basic care. and that way they can, you know, not have to see you to get paid.

they can do an email with you or by phone, you know, whatever is more convenient for people. so i think there are lots of ways in which we need to change our health care system. we need to sort of proceed with we can try as we shift this and address these problems. but it's going to take time. that's another thing we're going to have to be patient with. host: does your group see a change in malpractice? guest: we think roughly relate hair spending could be reduced -- health care spending could be reduced over time ifçóçó we a malpractice system. but it's an uncertain number. we don't know for sure. it's an educated guess. so what we need to do is to see what the states can do in experimenting with them, give them strong incentives to change malpractice system so they can share the savings and make sure that there's the right legal conditions.

host: a few more calls for our guest. matt on our independent line, geo&mia. caller: yeah. i just have a couple of statements. my back gave out on me when i was 127 years old. -- 27 years old. and i think because the doctors -- they're in such fear of medical -- of getting sued and stuff for these reasons. i could not get help for my back. i went to four different doctors. i filled out things,ñr saying, years old, white, have tattoos. this isçó relevant. they would not see me. i had a couple of them tell me they don't give out drugs here, like i'm just there seeking drugs. and finally i had the doctor

that sees me now, he told me -- the way "got to him was my chiropractor gave out free x-rays. as a promotion deal. i got a free x-ray. i went in and finally started getting help with my back. but i also had to go through -- i have compressed vertebraes in my lower back, sciatic nerve damage, i have arthritis, terrible, real bad arthritis back there. but for him to give me the medicine -- and he's a great doctor. he helped me. but for him to give me the medicine that i needed, i had to take a series of nerve tests. and he itemly gave me a test that costs $500 and he gave it to me for $400. he was helping me out. but it's gotten so bad --

guest: do you have insurance? caller: no, sir, i don't. i don't have any insurance. i haven't worked. i was working in a kitchen and learning how to run kitchens. i blow glass. i've had to quit all of that because of my back. guest: that's a really good example of how things cascade. a simpem appeal problem like back pain because you didn't get good treatment up front and whatever prejudices were implied, i'm i'm sorry so hear about that. but here's the thing. we don't have a good health care system for a basic primary care. most doctors today are going into specialty care. specials are great when they look at a specific problem, they can solve that. but what we need is more doctors who can solve the general problems. it's part of those moving to congress includes the idea of increasing access to primary care and improving the kind of

care that's delivered for patients whose problems are not severe yet. and i think we could have done better in your case. host: one more call from kansas. joanne on our republican line. caller: hello? host: you're on go. ahead. caller: i really don't have any questions. i just wanted to let the person know that i have cancer of the colon. and it was not my doctor's fault. he did everything right. but he had a very poor radiologist in the hospital. he says, oh, it's just colitis. and i let it go for three years because i thought, well, i'm just going to hear the same thing again so i'm just going to let it go. and i went to texas to visit my niece. i was bleed from the colon.

and the doctor -- she went and made me an appointment with the doctor for a colon josko pi. well the doctor looked at the colitis and said -- told my niece, he said, thisñi looks suspicious, he said. i think we should take biopsies. and she told him, go ahead and do it because i gave him permission to do whatever she told him to do. he did it. and i had stage two cancer. guest: i'm sorry that happened. how are you going to do, going forward? how's the treatment going? caller. . oh, it's fine. i've been now -- that was in 2000. i've had no problems. and i thank that doctor for being observeant enough to know

that this was not colitis. guest: thank you for offering that story. that's a great reason for why -- the radiologist if it was a clear mistake on his part, you're probably never going to sue him. that's just not going to be something that's going to be easy for you to do. but what if you were able to just fill out a form, explain to somebody that it happened and somebody elseçó would investigate it for you? that seems like a much better way of handling that problem. that other doctor -- if there were a lot of those, those kinds of cases, then he might actually lose his license. but the important thing is that patients have an easy way to communicate the problems that they've had and somebody would investigate that for them. we have far fewer of those problems that you faced. i'm sorry about that, and i hope you continue your treatment and continue to do well. host: our guest does with an organization known as third way, thirdway.org is the website. david kendall, thanks for your time.

guest: thank you. host: we're going to look at the u.s. housing market coming up. first here's a look at the week's news through political cartoons.

>> "washington journal" continues. host: the president of woodley mark research is with us. what's the best snapshot, indicator, of the housing market right now? guest: well, right now things are look pretty grim. the month of january saw existing home sales weren't much better. going on here? and frankly, it's a little bit murky right now. we had a nice housing rebound

in place last year but it's been affected by a lot of special factors. we had tax credits that arguably pulled forward sales that might not have happened or would have happened later. and we also had, as most listeners are aware of, bad weather. december was cold eastern wetter than usual. january was also, at least colder and wetter, that is in many southern parts of the united states. so we had a runup in home sales last year which then steamed hit a wall in december and january. and the question is, what's the underlying trend? i think the best underlying trend is that we're seeing a modest improvement in the housing market. we probably hit bottom in sales, construction, prices, all major metrics of housing activity, sometime last april or may or thereñi abouts. we had an exaggerated rebound due toçó the specialçó factors, credits in particular. and then fellçó off a cliff or hit an air pocket, if you will, afterwards. but underneath is that a very, very modestly improving trend.çó

unfortunately we've got a long road ahead of us because housing activity on the whole is still very low by any historical standards. host: does that trend still depend on government assistance? guest: it does. i mentioned tax credits. there was a program to new home buy sores expire last year. then on november 24, the congress extended and expanded that legislation so arguably a lot of people who didn't know it was going to be extended and expanded tried to get in before the deadline. then we saw sales fall off because those people got in before the deadline and then the program was extended. your point is a valid one. we've got at this point this new tax credit which runs through the first half of year sos7 after we get through people will come back and try to exploit these new programs that have been rolled out. additionally, the federal reserve has been helping the housing market. it's purchased thus far about

$1.2 trillion in mortgage-backed securities. that's helped to keep mortgage rates low and housing affordable. host: there was a survey out recently looking at what's known as under water mortgages. they are by states still showing that nevada is registering at 70% of those with under water mortgages, followed by florida, michigan and california. what is an underwater mortgage? >> when you owe more on your mortgage than your house is worth. the reason that's a concern is because, as you might imagine, the incentive for foam walk away, default on the mortgage, grows as their collateral disappears and eventually becomes negative. those are all the markets. the ones where you saw the biggest declines. that's what happened. they saw subsequent price }lq(sr'es evaporated, their collateral and their foreclosureñi activities are at host: a program to help those with underwater mortgages. said it developed a principle for so-calledñiñi mortgages sav

fromñr foreclosure. (p' you expand? guest: sure. there's a number of options. or not, actually want to salvage the relationship as much as possible. they are, of course, reluctant to make compromises either on principle or on interest unless they absolutely must. but when push comes to shove, they will make those kind of concessions. so the fdic is trying to encourage those behalfors and the federal governmentñi is as well in particular, for people who are in such circumstances and maybe want to try to work throughout the difficulties rather than abandon the morality, there's a problem called -- the mortgage, there's afor theable. -- affordable. this is designed for people whose mortgages are under water to try to negotiate rezzluelingses. host: the white house putñr out program where people who were in questionable mortgages could be helped into more stable ones. how does that program stpwhork guest: that's largely the making housing affordable. it is working. there have been hundreds of

thousands of people who have ben fitted from this. now, of course, you have to ask the question, might not some of them had been helped absent the program just through the usual relationship with lenders? so it's really not possible to say precisely how manyhpmople benefited as a result of the prograe. but it has been helpful. and on the whole it's mitigated the downside to the housing market. host: rich dekaser, our guest. we'll talked about the u.s. housing market. c-spanwj is our twitter access and c-span.org is our email. the ability to get a mortgage st. so stringent now that even those who want to boy a home -- buy a home are left out? guest: in many cases, yes. the federal reserve asks every three months or so, lenders,

are you tightening, are you easing? terms for obtaining a mortgage. and for the past three years that number has been going steadily tighter. less so in recent months but clearly we're in extraordinarily tight circumstances. even then if you look outside of the normal range or what mortgage helpeders call conventional conforming, the standard bread and butter stuff that fan fan and fred goldman provide -- fan any may and freddie -- -- fannie may and freddie mac provide. various exotic products which by and large do not exist today. so we had this huge surge of liquidity. buying a home was almost as six appeal as being able to sign your name. that's gone as well. so part of what we're living through now is theñrçó fallout that whole did he backle. -- debacle. people who otherwise would have been able to,ñi especially low-income people, who were able to get mortgages at that time are completely shut out.

host: so if someone wanted to classify the ideal person wanting a home mortgage what kind of qualifications would you need? guest: well if you've got a good income level relative to the kind of debt you're carrying. and housing actually is, believe it or not,xd quiá affordable now. the problem is getting the cretyit. -- credit so if you've got the kind of income that can back up a purchase with reasonable carrying costs and you're not in one of these categories that wereñi so abundant three, four, five years ago,>xu$is isñi stil especially with the tax credits out there."çó host: first call, mobile, alabama on our democrats line go. ahead. caller: good morning. when you check out a mortgage, say like on $100,000 home, you borrow $100,000. now, when you pay that mortgage off over the course of the mortgage, you're going to pay back anywhere from, say, $200,000 to $300,000. so what my question is, when

you're under waterçó on a mortgage, are you considered under water based on the $100,000 you borrowed or based on the total payoffçóñi of the mortgage? principle amount or the original loan amount so if you have $100,000 mortgage and you took out that mortgage toñr buy $120,000 house and now that house is worth $80,000, that's the basis for being declared underwater. it's not the total paymentsñi interest on top of that as well host: caller, do you have a follow-up? caller: that's all. i was unclear about that. host: missouri on our republican line.ñixdñiñi caller: hello.ñr host: you're on,ñi sir. go ahead. caller: i was wonderingñi, how come y'all don't tell the truth about what really happened about this housing crash?xd theñi truth is you loaned peopl to buy theñr house anyway, they were bad risks, bad credit.

you%u enough of these that it caused it to crash. why can't y'all be truthful with the american peopleñr sayi what really happened instead of trying to cover it up with (!"ti u$at's all. guest: i think you make a valid point. there was a lot of that going on. this wholeñi new segment ofñr a principle my subprimed to generalize it the thinking at the time was that information a great thing tefpblet abled2 people who were previouslyñi sh out of the housing market to livwvhe american dream. the homeownership rate in america went to unprecedented levels, almost 70% a few years viewed as a healthy thing. the problem was that underlying much of this lending activity 1%ç!:(nzñiçó in the end vity proved to be false that home prices would not fall, at least not on a broad, geographic basis and not for a persistent

period of time so there was a lot of sloppy lending. i don't want to try to minimalize that at all.ñr it's largely those chickens that are now come home to roost.çó so that's not being swept under the rug. i think anyone who's a serious analyst of the housing marketñi will acknowledge that credit was too loose andñi particular⌜ segments of the population were extended mortgages too easily than they otherwise should have hostuoñi elden, missouri, up i next.ñi john onñr ourñi independent lin caller: yes. hello? host: go ahead. caller: i was wondering ifçóñi there was any help for me in of añrñr credit. years. i'm building my own house.ñi hope to have it finished in june or july.ñiçó but i'mñr building it myself.ñi is there anything for anybody like me? guest: well, it's not clear. have you savedçó up the cash?

you're using the cash toñi buil the house? guest: yes. guest: oh. ok. well, that's the mostñz conservative approach to homeownership around. jju to you forñiñ taking that course. also, i would hope that at a moment like this would you find some relatively good deals. two, three, four years ago, materials were relatively high.q ñr and various materials, for example, were all very high. so you're doing the conservative thing. you'reñr building a house, more specifically in cash. at some point you may want to take out a mortgageñi to try an liquify some ofçóñ!q investmen you've made in that house.çóñi now, your ability to do so is going to depend on a host ofñi factors. your income stream, predominantly your level of deceit that you're carrying. but i would suggest stay the course. you've done the right thing if at some point you need to get some of that money out, you should look for a mortgage. my sense is since would you have such a extraordinarily high level of equity, even if

you took out a mortgage 50% of the home's value as appraised, you should have no problem getting a mortgage. so there are -- the mortgage market is in dire straits but it's not shut off completely. and folks like yourself ought to have no problem accessing it. host: there's a story this morning that fannie may reported a loss of $16 billion for the fourth quarter what does that mean? guest: what that means is that the foreclosures are giving them properties which they don't want but they're stuck with them. then they have to bring those properties to market and recover as much value as potential. the recover have i not strong. $100,000 mortgages backing $80,000 houses. so fannie and freddie, like them have been suffering huge losses in recent years. they are now effectively nationalized entities. they didn't have the sol conveniencey to continue on their own so back in 2008 we took over those entities. and now they are effectively operating as arms of the government.

they are losing money. it's not clear how much of this will be recovered. it depends largely on what happens to home prices if we get a nice rebound, some of this money may come back. but for the most part the tax pay ser on the hook for what is basically a losing proposition, trying to make good on some of the bad loans that were made earlier in the middle part of this decade. host: is it hard to recover, the fact that it's hard to get a mortgage, you have a glut of houses being foreclosed on, house prices that are coming back are going to come back in a relatively higher state. with all of those combined is there even a bright outlook for the housing market? as far as trends are concerned? guest: directionally, yes. as i said, the principle -- let me start with the good news. as i mentioned previously, housing today is about as affordable as it has been in 40 years so for those able to get the credit, this is a good time to buy the house. most americans seem to recognize that. every month the university of michigan does an opinion survey and asks, do you think this is a good time to buy a home is in the response as of february

was, yes, to i think 73% or 74%. so housing is cheap. people know it. the problem is getting the credit to make those purchases and then in turn support home prices. now, historically you've seen lenders back away atñi moments like this. right? falling prices, large losses. no one wants to be the first to step back into that market. but once the housing market does stabilize and we steam see evidence of that over the past year, they'll begin to creep back in. so the hope for the housing market is precisely this. we have good fundamental questions in terms of home prices aed forability, and recognition of that reality. the problem is credit is tight if credit should loosen up over the course of this year as lenders get less and less skiddish about taking these large losses that could put the floor under the housing market i think that will be the case so directionally, yes, there are favorable trends. it's just going to take a while to get back to those lost values. host: do we have a him? place now where we won't see

bad actors giving away mortgages that should never have been given away in the firstñi place? guest: it's better. our first questioner asked about this. why don't we concede that bad loans are made? i think that's been recognized. and one of the big problems was that essentially we have a bifurcated mortgage system. on the one hand we had the regulated entities. they were watched over pretty carefully. then we had the unregulated entities where a lot of the more dubious kind of mortgage lending was going on. so what's happened now is that those are being brought underneath the same umbrella. for example, we have passed legislation which requires mortgage salespersons, the originators to actually pass certain tests. they have to meet certain u%iqm9ñ that was not previously the case. so we're improving what was a badly broken system. but there's still a furtherñi w to go. host: such as? guest: well it would be helpful, for example if many of these products which, again had merit and are brought back to market but brought back with more stringent terms. so, for example, 100%

loan-to-value mortgages for people with extremely low credit conditions is probably not a healthy thing. if the f.h.a., the federal housing administration, was considering this -- f.h.a. has largely been picking upñr all o these mortgages that previously were subprimed and so forth. they were once considering actually lowering their downpayment requirements to zero that would have been a bad move. so theyñi haven't. think going forward once we're out of the mess,ñr increasing that even further so that we're not bringing people into homes where the layer of protection, the collateral, so thin that any kind ofñr distress, marriag medical, divorce, medical problems or jobçó loss, would push them over the edge. host: irvine, california, next. our guest, sam, republican line. caller: yes. good morning. it's a pleasure listening to you this morning. first-time call they are year. i'm a renter. i simply cannot afford to buy a

house. i have conservativeñr values in terms of i keep my money in my pocket, as far as possible. if i don't have theñr money, i don't buy something. so my reading of the situation is that a lot of people who are now in houses with underwater mortgages, they simply couldn't afford those houseñr that they' in right now.çó so the blame lies squarely with the people with the loans not the lenders. so just analyzing it even deeper it seems to me that the tax code that the government has put in place favors home buyers. so a lot of people are insented to take out mortgages because there's a tax deduction on the mortgage interest. perhaps that a contributing factor to. state of affairs we're in right now. i personally just don't believe in theñi debt. so i never borrow money for anything, including a house. i just rent.

and i'm wondering if more people are of that attitude, perhaps the country wouldn't be in the situation we are in today in terms ofñiñi the finan crisis which arose from the subprime mortgage crisis? i will listen to your sponsor any comment you have on the tv. thank you.ñrñrkoñr guest: firstñr youñr made the r(getting in over their heads a not necessarily the fault of there's plenty of blame to go around on this and, you're right, borrowers did get in over their heads and lenders did push products that were in manyç((páqj inappropriate forñr borrowers. so ci don't think finger pointing is very helpful other than to acknowledge that there were problems across the boardñ i would go on even further to talk about international investors andñ'i regulatory agencies.çó sei plenty of blame toñlgo around. but yourj right, people got in over their head. to a large extent, this wasi basedñrñrñi on the view -- i ne digress for a moment.ñi

theñi perceptionñr that was in place at that time simplyñrñr w that home pricesñr wouldn't go down. they would go up.xd affordability diminishes, demand should suffer as peopleç see the consequence.

>> one of the differences between the housing market and the commercial property market is that housing clearly became suáted . down the pike. builders were simply experience going returns on their investments. they were bringing product to market. before the recession even began in twice, we had this huge overhang of unsold properties. it wasn't so much the case in the commercial property market. they can see rates were a little bit lofty but nowhere near the historic highñmq!q we saw in the housing market. the real problem in the commercial real estate market is a>x!ombination of things. number one, we've had negligentible job creation. it's jobs that fill the properties%$atñr create the ren thatñi supports the prices so it's been a long track record of negligentible job creation that's really contributed there. and the one similarity that we see between the residential and theñi commercialçóçó housing ma is that both of themñr were

quiity. various new financial instruments were created which supported purchases as well as building activity. and the commercial real estate market also got the dark side of that. when those markets then shriveldf up andxd disappeared, they suffered the consequence they suffered the consequence of liquidity credit now3 longer guest: what we saw when the housing boom was going on, as people were vacating the apartments, renters were become

owners and we saw downward pressure on prices in the rental market. arguably now you should see things going back the other way as people were no longer moving in the houses in large numbers. they should be moving back into apartments and there by supporting multifamily housing market. that would be the ordinary course of events. it's not happening exactly that way right now. again, because we put a recession on top of this otherwise severe housing market correction. so, there's not a lot of growth in what economists call net household formation. the gr=]q!á$u&timately drives the housing market is more people look for more homes. when you get a recession, and certainly a severe one, its likes which have we're experiencing, people basically team up. they move in with friends or family. and the demand that would have otherwise sloshed back into the apartment market isn't there so we haven't had that traditional offsetting relationship. host: columbus, ohio, is next. john on our independent line. caller: yes, sir.

actually, i didn't think it would take a nostradamus to see when you could qualify for a loan without showing proof of income. that was a sign that things were screwed up back then. and that was all over the paper. but anyway. my question is, sir, do you ositive economic indicator is a good idea? basically what it's saying is, hey, we're all in debt. why do they use that as a positive economic indicator? if i've got debt, that's a bad thing for me. but if the housing market -- new housing starts are up, 99% probably aren't paid for with cash. so it's all imaginary money. how do they qualify that as a positive economic indicator? guest: well, first of all, this is straight forward positive impact. new housing starts, by the way, are when ground is first broken property. then it typically takes about six months for that project to rise through to completion. rise thrhe construction of the

and that income is good for the economy. so in a very straight forward way to see housing starts or new housing construction starting to come up is a good economic indicator because it tells us that there's aktivity occurring back here and housing is no longer dragging down the rest of the economy but is actually contributing toúpro appealing it forward. i th$nk part of the question you're getting to is, is it excessive? is the building activity going on unjustifiably great so we get back into a glutted situation the likes of which we had a few years ago? at this point i have to say no. we've had such tremendous contraction in new construction activity that in certain segments of the market, new homes, for example, we see the inventory of product throughout for sales actually quite low. again, we'd have to go back to the early 1970's to see as few now the case. so i think the risk of a new glut coming down the pike is relatively modest at this point in time.

so your concerns are right. we don't want to get an imbalanced housing market. but at this point i'd say the the other direction. construction activity collapsed and the modest improvements we've been seing are compensating for the fact that we always need new homes, the existing stock of housing sees some atrophy over time, properties are taken off the market. and we do over the long run have a growing population in america. host: illinois, democrats' line. caller: am i on? caller: am i on?es, sir. caller: yeah. i just got a question. maybe a couple of questions. anyway good morning. thanks to c-span. i listen to it quite often. my question is, what's the difference between appraised value and taxable value? in other words what they have at like the courthouse. you know, your tax value. then also, the other we is, there a program -- is there a program, government or anything, for refinancing?

i'll hang up and listen to your answer. thank you. guest: sure. yes. the first question, what's the difference between appraised value and assessed value? assessed value being what is used for the purple h purpose of levying taxes mostly at the state and local level. the difference is that appraisals have to do with current market conditions. so an appraiser will look at your house and measure its size, its age, and various amenities, compare that to what had been comparable sales in the local area over the same period of time. that's considered the market or appraised value. the assessed value is often based on historic transactions years. that's especially problematic now. the values have been falling, market values have been falling, appraised values have been falling but assessed values have not been keeping up. they follow with a lag so as a consequence, a lot of people are paying taxes on properties which are higher than they

should be. now, there are, here, programs and ways that people can gó about challenging those assessed values. generally they gatch up after a few years but a few years can be quite a time to wait, especially at moments like this so contact your assessor's office, conduct an appraisal as i described, comparable properties in the same area, and submit that. hopefully for an adjustment going forward. the second part of your question was about refinancing. it depends. yes, there are programs. they depend on your personal circumstances. one, as i mentioned a little while ago, is especially targeted for these underwater homeowners, people who owe more than their property is worth. and making homes affordable is the federal program, at least, which is targeted to those individuals to try and encourage or work out with a mortgage lender that would enable a refinancing even though the equity isn't there to otherwise support it. host: an emailer asks, "i don't

understand why so many entities seem to be endorsing the concept of abandoning your responsibilities just because the house is valued at less than what you purchased it. a new car is valued at less than you paid for it the moment you drive it out of the showroom so what if a property values goes down, it does not mean it will stay down." guest: i certainly wouldn't encourage that sort of behavior. you're right. dit comment -- the commenter mentions that values vary. we are arguably at the low point right now. so if you made too hasty a decision to walk away on i property that you otherwise might be able to carry, you'd be doing so at a point in time when your losses would be greatest. there's always not just the stigma but the real reality of credit impairment, getting a new mortgage again would be difficult. .

host: miami is next. pam on our republican line. caller: good morning. i have two questions. i have seen where many banks in our area are more reluctant to let a house go in a short sale and rather than just have it go into foreclosure. for instance, short sale takes

so long, the lenders will stall and not make the decision whether to sell it or not and then the house goes into foreclosure. and i don't understand that policy. my second question is, there's so many investors here that are under water. what's a good recommendation of yours for the investors? because i don't think they would quality of life for a loan remodification -- qualify for a loan remodification. host: first with respect to short sales, that means the lender, the creditor will enable the sale even though it's not making full payment on the mortgage balance outstanding and will accept a partial payment and complete satisfaction for the mortgage. that's one way of working out. so, again, if i've got a $100,000 mortgage, the most i can get is $80 urks the lender might say that's fine. we'll consider it done and the deal is closed and over.

so there's always a negotiation going on. lenders want to try and do this only under circumstances where they figure it's their best deal. otherwise they want to hold out and get full value. it's always on a case by case basis. so it's very difficult to generalize as to whether they're being too tough or too easy. but the circumstances will dictate it. i think in the end the lenders will not want to take a loss, and if they view a short sale as their only option they will take it. there was a second question, i think it had to do with -- host: i failed to jot it down down. i apologize. guest: i thought it had to do with refinancing. host: jefferson township is next. new jersey. caller: the second part of that lady's question was why couldn't investors qualify for something. guest: sure. thank you.

investors are generally excluded from many of the mortgage refinance programs we've been talking about. and the thinking here is that there's a distinction socially between owner occupants and investors usually with a partner thetic speculator attached to that. so the various programs that have come down the past year and a half have been specifically targeted to owners in the view that they were most likely to be unwittingly taken in by market conditions lending conditions, loose regulation and the like, and that there as a consequence deserving of help. where as, investors/speculators were really trying to exploit a situation purely for profit, and that the taxpayers shouldn't be supporting that kind of activity. so, unfortunately, for those who were investors, people looking to buy a property, flip it a year or two later, hopefully at a gain and it's not worked out, there's not a

lot of public support. host: go ahead with your question now. caller: thank you. you know, 90%, from what i understand, 90% of the american people are making their mortgage payments. and everybody's house has lost value. why should someone that's making their mortgage payments even though their house may well be under water, have to be taxed to give somebody 40, 50,000 dollars off of their house and they remain in it? fannie and freddie mac are looking for more money. you know, it's very disingenuous that people who are responsible for this are the 535 people sitting in congress and the senate. the bankers who i used to deal in commercial real estate. and and housing. and 25 years ago, if you went for a mortgage, you needed 20% down or don't even bother going. then they got on this band wagon.

and this was all put about the american people by the bankers and the investment bankers particularly who found a way to defraud the american public and have a government go along putting trillions of dollars. because when fannie and freddie go, you're not talking billions, you're talking mabet a couple trillion dollars because i understand they own at least 603r9s of the mortgages garnted in this country. guest: thank you, caller. well one of the virtues about america is this belief in individual responsibility. and a lot of people are having a hard time swallowing the notion that there could be any support whatsoever for people who got into dire straits through false, perhaps only of their own. i think i would just point out that, again, there were a lot of mistakes made along the way, borrowers to be sure among them, but also regulators, investors and the like.

i think the nub of your question is, why should taxpayers provide any support at all whatsoever to these folks who are in dire straits. and it's a very difficult question to answer, but in essence what it comes down to is this. letting a neighbor default doesn't only asked that neighbor. the property falls into disrepair it affects the larger community and there can be times for a case made for there being subsidies to those individuals in the circumstances. now, the real challenge is seeing to it that only people who are on the margin and can be helped at the lowest possible cost to taxpayers are the ones who are in fact helped. that's why our previous caller was asking about investors. that's why investors broadly speaking are excluded from these programs. so in short, the argument is that the housing market collapse, which was quite severe, could have become even

more severe with falling property values, increasing loan losses, making credit even tighter as lenders are basically licking their wounds instead of looking for more business and the economic recession would become deeper and deeper. so as a fundamental principle i think you're absolutely right. people should in the end be responsible for their own decisions. but i think we need to identify that there are moments and hopefully extremely rare such as the present when providing some modest level of support can prevent a vicious circle from building obitself. host: missouri, barbara on our democrat izz line. caller: good morning. i have basically two things i would like to comment on. one is this promoted notion that the people who defautted on their mortgages are these unworthy people who got in over their heads to begin with. and my question is, inside of all of these millions of people who have lost their jobs,

identify never heard anybody talk about the people who default on their loans are people who look fine until they lost their jobs. i would like to know what percent of the people who have defaultted on loans are truly these so-called unworthy people who shouldn't have gotten their loans in the first place. and in addition, i'd like you to comment on the notion of these eekt -- equity lines of credit. i work in a banks and we've been selling lines of credit that people get the money based on their homes. there's no income involved. thank you. guest: so the first question was about defaults and the extent to which this is really due to economic circumstances, the environment, and i don't have an exact figure fr for you. but it's commonly accepted that the principle cause, the single most important factor that drives a person into default is job loss. that's why foreclosures have spiked so dramatically after

the recession began and job losses mounted, and that's what we're still living with today. you know, if you bought a house in even many cases where people had a 20% equity cution, if you're out of work and what we're seeing is extremely long terms, in fract unprecedented in modern history long terms of unemployment, there are those who very atlantaly cannot make payments and that is simply part of the reality that we're living. so it's not a matter of poor choices, it's also a matter of desperate circumstances. home equity loans are a very interesting subject. you mentioned home equity loans. you're at a lending institution yourself. these were a hot, hot, hot business. and, again, entirely predicated on boyant home prices. and the way they work is they are the second lean holder. so if the borrower gets into distress their first obligation to the primary, and then

secondly to the home equity lender. that was a piggy bank in recent years because when property prices were going up, people would include home equity loans oftentimes as part of their purchase transaction and enabled consumers to spend very aggressively as long as home prices were going up. now, the environment has dramatically changed with prices going down. now there's not only not the equity there for consumers to draw op to support spending, but lenders have pulled the plug to a large extent. this was a very, very popular loan product in the environment of rising prices. it is very difficult to get right now. and, again, because they're the most exposed behind the primary mortgage holder. so this is going to take a long time to come back and may never get, hopefully will never get as aggrezzive as it was in 2005 and 2006. but home equity lines of credit will continue to be a very healthy and useful product for many people. it's just very much a back

water at this point because home prices and valuations aren't supporting it. >> someone sends this. references an article in the star ledger of new jersey. guest: it's a factor. a couple points. number one, if you look at total property taxes on residential real estate, those have actually boon coming down over the long run. they hit their peek in the late 70s, and then there was a big adjustment in the 80s. so by historical standards, property taxes are not especially burdensome right now. however, they're going up. a lot of state, local governments depend upon sales taxes and property taxes which are being adjusted downward. as a consequence, this is what a lot of the fiscal stress is about and they're changing that by increasing their burden on

home owners which is unfortunately contributing to or helping preventing homes from being as affordable as they otherwise would become. now, there's not -- first it's not a huge part of the decision. the first part is principal and interest and other insurance products. so that wont be a deal braker. but at a moment that's holding back the recovery. and, unfortunately, there's not a simple solution other than state and local governments finding alternative revenues to move away from property taxes and that's not likely. host: ann on our republican line. good morning. caller: good morning. basically, the new jersey lady pretty much summed up what i was feeling. ave a questiontor mr. decazer. where was woodly park research in 2006 and 2007? and were you being -- were you on the front line of enforming

banks of the dangers that we were finding with this subprime lending and this free market for mortgages? and secondly, what will happen if this populous moving which i think is really taking root, and we go back and we tell the politicians that, no, we are not going to allow fannie mae and freddie mac unlimited moneys of tax dollars to support their endeavors? i'll take your answer off line. thank you. guest: sure. two part question. part one, where were we when all this was going down. it didn't exist. i was chief economist at one of the nation's largest mortgage lenders at that time, cleeveland base company called national city corporation. and the analysis and all the findings of my research wrr available not just internally

but to the public at large. in 2005, we formed a joint venture with a consulting company now called iah global insight and we put out quarterly reports from the first quarter of 2005 to the fourth quarter of 2008. i encourage you to look at those reports on woodly park research.com. they're still alife and well. and what they have shone and, at the risk of immod city, a good tracking of the housing problem both geographically and at time measuring the magnitude of the overhang. but unfortunately, that's not always heeded. whether internally the company i work with or more broadly in societies. so what i was saying is that there are major risks out there and identified them again by location, florida being pralmt among them. but that's not always sufficient for people, business decision makers who are in a

position of investing funds. so the sense at the time was, gee, you know, this is concerning. these degrees of overvaluation are extraordinary. and there's a risk of future price declines. but no clear appreciation of that risk was very palpable at the time. so a lot of investors were still comfortable pouring money into markets that were simply high risk markets. and it wasn't clear and things aren't unfortunately clear until after the fact. so now that's well known. the second question, what about the populous back lash against fannie and fred eafplt this is a recurrent theme, the notion of providing support to people who got into dire straits is something that runs against the grain of the american spirit and people are very uncomfortable with this and i understand that discomfort entirely. but as i mentioned previously, that has to be weighed against, balanced against the other

outcome which is the contagiousen, if you will, of foreclosures, property losses, their impact on society at large, jobs and so forth. i mentioned earlier that we do have a nacent, very tentative but nacent housing radio covery underway. it is not clear that would be helped by seeing a huge deluge on to the market of new foreclosed properties increasing the glut, driving down prices, inhibitting construction and so forts. so the real trick to return to this theme is not providing cart blang to people who made very foolish mistakes. if we can save some who are on the margin and otherwise put a little bit of a floor underneath an otherwise shaky housing market we'll get that right. host: one more call. steven on our independent lines. caller: good morning. i've been listening. mine's more of a comment. the housing market is in trouble because the taxes have

gone up. he's saying they haven't gone up. mine have gone from 1990 from $1900 to about $4300. that's one problem. the other problem is if, with the health care, if you're a homeowner, and you don't have health care, they're going to put the price on your health. so i think that's what's holding a lot of people back. guest: yes. first of all, just to clarify, real estate taxes are a problem. they are going up in recent years. the comment i made was simply in a larger scope of history going back to the 70's and 80s they're not as burdensome. but without a doubt they have been rising and part of that has to do with that lag between assessed and appraised value. i would encourage people to challenge values that they think are high.

secondly, with respect to health care. you were absolutely right here. i mentioned the causes of default and the causes of foreclosures, job loss being number one. number two and three on that list are marital dissolution, divorce, and serious medical problems. so, for the large population of america, which is uninsured, if they hit a wall they have a problem financially, that is likely to interfere with their mortgage payments and we are seeing quite a bit of that at this time. host: the website, if you want to check out the research that he has been talking about, serves as0their president. thanks for coming on. hope to have you back. iverageds my pleasure. host: coming up, we'll talk about african politics. the cover story of the christian science monitor is called the african divide. the author will be on our program in just a few minutes to talk about this. we have the story on our website.

[captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2010] >> as "washington post" international correspondent, tr reed has traveled the world. his books are not only about

travel but global views on contemporary issues, the united states of europe, the healing of america, and confew shs lives next door. join our conversation with tr reid and your phone calls live sunday at noon eastern. host: our guest is jeana moore, a correspondent for the christian science monitor and joining us from our studio in new york. you have the cover story on the christian science monitor called the african divide. before we go into the details, what was the interest in this aspect of african politics that drew you to writing this story? guest: well, identify been covering africa on and off for the last couple of years and even before that sort of studying the area and different issues. and contemporary african politics. and this is a really big problem, these issues of land across the continent.

it's something a lot of specialists know but very rarely gets translated in the media as something that's appropriate for laymen or nonspecialists to understand. it can get really technical and really wonky really quickly. and i wanted to find a way to deal with the continue nent -- continentwide issue. host: one of the lines that you have goes as such. you say that africa's most famous disasters many argue could have been prevented with changes in national land laws or better local conflict resolution. but for one problem. prevention doesn't sell. could you tell us first of all what you're trying to get at, and could you give us example that is we've heard of through history which could be connected to land ownership? guest: sure. well, you know, first of all, this idea that prevention doesn't sell is something that specialists know very well. and the conflicts that i

mention in this story are totally old hat to people who follow the continent or follow the issues. and to development experts, that sort of thing. there's nothing all that new in this story. and some of this has been going on for a very long time. but whether it's about land or not, we see over and over and over again that there's very little political will, there's very little financial resource, and other resources available to prevent thing that is we can identify and early warning signals for different kinds of conflicts. this is stuff people have worked out. we have the information we need. there's just a lag in using it to prevent what often gets cast then later as inevitable. so the point is we know what's out there. we know to a certain extent how we might try to prevent a problem. but we're not really good at the follow-through. and darfur is an excellent example. everyone now knows about the conflict in western sudan and

it goes through a lot of difference lenses sometimes called genocide and then there's a debate about whether it's genocide, and it's a complicated, complicated conflict. but one of the catalysts of what's going on there is a very old grievance about land policy, who owns what, who has rights to use what, and how. and that's something that specialists and generalists know. and so darfur is simply probably the most famous example of a place where, if we'd gotten in a little bit earlier, we could have maybe avoided some of the terrible suffering that we've seen since. host: you also list rwanda as one of the conflicts that has issues. guest: it's true. rwanda is the most densely populated country in africa. it's the size of roughly maryland. and it has today pushing 10 million people. and even before the genocide had around 8 million, 9 million people. that's not a land for an awful lot of people, especially in a

country where t is farming. so retaining ownership to land is an important issue. there's some who have said that lands scarcety was a contributing factor to the genocide, probably the most well known person to put that forward is jared diamond who writes the collapse. but other specialists have said this is a contributing factor. it's important to know that it's not as if land causes all the wars we have ever heard of buá land is often a catalyst for local fights, and those can turn into bigger fights. sometimes the land issues are across borders between countries, and rwanda is one case where land was a catalyzing factor. host: we think of africa as a large content. but how much of the land is useable as far as farming and thing likes that? guest: it's about 20% is airable.

so you can farm on about 20% of the land. that doesn't mean the other land is unproductive. there are a lot of forests, for example. there are a lot of mines in the democratic republic of congo, timber in liberia is a big issue. rubber is a big resource. so there's more land that is productive. but there's an awful lot of desert. wetlands, marshlands. place that is are not going to be useful in terms of earning an economic livelihood. so it looks big but you can't use every corner. host: if you have questions about land rights in africa, our numbers are on the bottom of your screen. again, this the cover story of the latest christian science monitor, it has been linked to our website. if you want to check it out for

yourself, africa's continental divide is how it's titled. how does one determine in africa who owns land? how is that catalogued? guest: that's exactly the question. one of many. but that's a big one. the notion of land ownership is not something you see across the continent until colonialism. and there's a certain extent that this is a gross generalization but it largely holds true. before colonists arrived from europe, land was communely owned and there were traditional systems of handing down land, of land use policies within communities. and it was something that people knew and understood and learned in their social systems as they grew up. with the colonists who were many, there's british in some places bell jans in others, portuguese, but they're coming from traditions that understand property rights. system tiesed with land titles

and deeds. and this idea comes with them to africa. and when they leave in the 60s largely, this idea is hanging around. and in fact, in a lot of places you have two systems set up next to each other, the statutory system which is something we would recognize with titles and deeds, and you have the customary system, which it's often called referring to african customs of communal ownership. and there's a lot of places where these two system clsflibt and collide and no one has decided how it's going to be worked out. and that's what is happening in a lot of places in africa now, are governments saying how are we going to work out the collision of these two system sns we need to figure out an answer to this system. i spent a lot of time in liberia for this particular story talking with their new land commission about what they're thinking about in terms of dealing with these colliding systems. but the story also mentioned some interesting examples

elsewhere in africa, too, where they have tried to figure out how to dweel this particular problem. host: there's a picture from the lie been national archive. what is that. guest: the eye beeria national archive is a very small room full of books and it has that smell of sort of an old library or a nice used book store. because a lot of these books are really old. liberia has since it started titling land has been recording those titles by hand and they have a staff of people whose job it is to write out the titles and folks will say, in liberia we can't resolve this conflict because i say i own the land he says he owns the land but neither has a copy of the title. and to get a copy you don't realize until you see this archive requires someone writing it down word for word. they're trying to modernize the system.

that's one of the things that's a priority in liberia now because there's some conflict even among the deeds. there might be three deeds to the same piece of land and it looks like three people own the land. but this archive really is the place of documentation for titled land ownership. and so that's where from the titled perspective all the work is going to begin. host: our first call for you is from houston. it's mary on our independent line. caller: thank you. first, i would like to say you really have a fine publication. i wasn't familiar with it until i dropped all my subscriptions to some of the national publications and i'm really impressed. have you seen your readership go up as people are disenchantd with our traditional news publications like "new york times" et cetera? second, i'd like to comment, my father years ago worked in

lybia for one of the major oil companies here in america. he was an oil and gas lawyer. and the land issue really impacted the natural resources of africa because the situation was so insecure that there was really no incentive for investment. they had oil wells but the minute somebody creates wealth or finds something of value, the corruption crowd comes in by the droves, everybody wants a piece of the action. they were even evicted not just once or twice and it became such a mess with everybody wanting a piece of the action that ultimately they pulled out and africa's abundant resources are going to be grossly underdeveloped because of this problem. do you agree with that? guest: i do.

that's really, that's an interesting point. i guess agree with it to a point. one of the things that interested me about this story is that the potential for solving this issue and of course that makes it sound very easy. but the potential for resolving these land conflicts is enormous in terms of what it can do for africa's ability to take advantage of its natural resources in particular. but also its human capital. and i really think that across the continent the place that is have been able to find redress for this problem, kenya comes to mind even though after the election there's still some questions that it's not totally resolved. there are also places that we consider generally stable and also doing pretty well economically. and i think that there is definitely a link between development and security in that way or economic "tp"vancement and security. and it's interesting because that's a problem that's both

foreign investors, local businessmen and ordinary subsistence farmers all they're is this security problem. if no one believes that the land is secure either that it's going to be protected from those who might want to take it or that one's rights to it are going to be uphe would by the prevailing system, then facing the whole enterprise just disappears. and that makes it as difficult for a farmer to invest in the seeds he needs to plant next year's crop as it makes it for a foreign oil company to make it feel like it's worth the risk of working in the niger delta. so i think that's certainly a lens that everyone can identify at each of these levels of conflict. and as for the readership of the monitor, thank you first of all for your kind words. and i know that we have seen a lot of increase on our website and our magazine is now about a year old i think. it used to be a daily newspaper and we switched to this new

format in order to capitalize on a lot of changes within the business and a lot of strengths that we're known for, in particular this kind of anlitcal journalism that we're talking about and as the magazine is doing extraordinarily well. so we're pleased with the direction that things are going and i'm pleased you're pleased and tell your friends. host: we have someone off twitter who asks, can you talk about the mines, the gold and diamond mines and why africans do not prosper but westerns do. and does that factor into the lands rites issue? guest: that's a great question. and in part, this is related to the security issue that the last caller brought up. but this is also about exploitation. and post colonial exploitation by foreign companies that are coming in and trying to capitalizing on a system that had been set up before but without the security it's difficult to make that wealth translate down to the sort of common man. the democratic republic of

congo is a great example of this. of course it's incredibly mineral rich. there is gold, there are minerals in and all these thing that is turn up in all kinds of electronics products, in our jewelry, thing that is westerners surround themselves with. of course, there's also a terrible war in eastern congo where in the last ten years about 5 million people have died. and there's a movement now to make mining more responsible or to source the minerals better and make sure that the minerals that are in our cell phones didn't come from mines in congo. and that's fraught with complications for a lot of reasons. but there's a great piece right now in mother jones about exactly this problem. and the reason it's so great is that the frame is why is one of the world's richest countries also one of the poorest. and the writer really goes town to -- to these places in these small towns and meets the

people who are involved in this mining. and there's no major investment because the region is so unstable, the country is so unstable. the political -- so the men who are doing this mining are miners out there earning very little money. and by the time it finally ends up in the big corporation's hands that can then get it to us, the little guy hasn't seen a whole lot of that money. so it's a systemic problem and it's as political as it is simply about who owns the mine. host: portland, oregon. democrat's line on. kiveragetsdz high. i'm interested in the way in which whenever people talk about africa and the problems that they don't dell fl into a lot about colonialism and its origin. you touched on it earlier in your comments. but really, africa had their own land systems prior to

colonialism. the settlers came in and messed it up and then we're trying to figure out why can't they get their act together. and i think that whenever we have these conversations about africa, it comes off as being as if the people there are back wards or can't seem to get their act together when the problem is in its origins is the colonial interference and coming in and the way that after they left distributing land to rival groups or in way that is cause conflict that we see still in there today. and i gezz one of the concerns i have just with articles such as yours or even i do plan on reading it, is just the whole focus doesn't seem to be on the colonial aspect but more on

what how it is that the people can't seal to get their act together. and i just want to ask you to spend more time commenting on the problems from the colonial aspect and how that set it up so that readers and listeners can know that it's not so much the african people not getting their act together but the colonial powers that came in that started this whole problem in the first place and post colonial people that are still perpting it. host: we'll let her answer the question. guest: well, i think you'll be delighted in that regard when you read the piece because it really is designed in a way to illuminate that problem. it's very difficult to write in a newspaper or magazine that's driven by recent news about a problem that roots are 100 or more years old. and of course colonialism as an issue is more than a century old. and so it can be very difficult for especially your journalists

to get that kind of context into a story. that's why you don't see it often in a weekly magazine. and in particular in the christian science monitor which values analysis and deep explanation, i have a chance to do more of what you're asking for. so i think you'll be pleased to see that there is an explanation of exactly what we were talking about earlier, these two colliding systems and what the legacy of that is. but i also want to caution that it's too simple to say that what the african problems are today are the result only of colonialism and caused by colonialism. and in fact, the phrase african problems were even -- i see what you're doing when you said this but the notion that africans can't get their act together. there are 53 countries in africa and the land problem, while it has very many general contours that are similar and its colonial roots are similar

is different in every country. and the solution is going to be different in every country. not simply because the cultures are different but also because the governments are different, the priorities are different, the people's priorities may be different so this notion that colonialism caused africa's problems i think is a little too reductionist across the board. and i'm also just personally not a person who believes in mono causality. i think that there's always multiple things going on. but i do think you're right that the that does belong in the discussion. host: when it comes to land rights issues, is it just a system where the governments in africa take care of the situations or do they see outside help from say the u.n. or other bodies in trying to negotiate this? guest: there's certainly a lot of help coming from other countries who are concerned about this. there are ngos that work very closely on this issue in liberia i spent a lot of time with the norweigian ref gee counsel which is doing tremendous grass roots work

mediating conflicts between individual land owners. they're working in a lot of places on thousands of individual land conflicts really trying to get them resolved so that people can move forward, but also so they're not lingering out there as a possible camt list for returned or renewed violence. and there are other organizations that work in different ways and countries in ways that are appropriate to what the issues in each country are. the millenium challenge has a large portfolio of land projects. the land resources institute is working around the world. there are a lot of people working on this from a lot of different angels. and of course u.s. aide is working on this. they have some great research on it. so it's not as if this is an unknown or unrecognized problem. there is a lot of interest and there's a lot of effort being made. but it's i think important that we realize that we can from the

outside support and nurture solutions. but these have to be solutions that are driven by those who live and work in these contexts and who know better than we do what the more appropriate solution may be. host: about 20 more minutes with our guest. she is a correspondent who covers africa, has the cover stóry looking at lands rights issues in africa and what it means for the continent. illinois, sheila, republican line. good morning. caller: good morning. forgive me for my voice, i'm getting over a cold. but i do appreciate the conversation this morning. for the simple fact that there's so many people that are not aware of how large africa really is. and i agree with the last caller. they once the westerners came and took over and just started destroying land, then these

people there started getting confused thinking that the helpers really being helpful instead of being used against them in my personal opinion. and it's bad. so i do appreciate what the last caller stated because i'm on a quest to teach a lot of our younger youth about my generation and my culture and god gin rights to their land. so if you don't know, then it's very easy to have someone bam boozele you and make you think that they're there to help instead of hindering. and a lot of the illnesses and thing that is occur today, is based on this once a time. and i'm sure it doesn't exist where the tourists are staying. host: thanks, caller. guest: there's an interesting story that i learned while i was in liberia that i think relates to one element that you mentioned which is the

education of people about their rights to their lands and how important that is is. there was a woman i met and she lived in pretty rural liberia. and she was the oldest daughter of her family but there were many brothers and the brothers had left to find jobs and when the war came they were scattered and she stayed with her family because her mother was sick and it's sort of a woman's job to take care of her moth anywhere liberia. after the war her brother came back and she had been tending the family farm for several years. and when the brother returned he said i'm the man, this is my land. you can't farm here any more. and she kind of said, what? and she was annoyed, clearly. but she also with that was deprived of access to sustenance and livelihood. farming is what she did to feed herself and she sold produce to earn an extra income. so without the land, she had nothing. and she didn't know what to do. he was the brother, he was the

last man left in the family both parents had died. and she felt powerless. and until a woman came to town doing a public awareness project about a new land law in liberia which gave women equal ownership rights to land. and all of a sudden, this gave her the possibility of staking a claim, a legal claim to the land as the child of her parents. and the law specifies that how to deal with a division of land amongst siblings if there's no will. so they were able together, because she also had a legal claim, they sat down together and negotiated an arrangement that allowed her to continue working on the land. but if she hasn't had that legal claim, he would have been per fictly within his lights not to have anything do do with her. so having the law helps and knowing about the law is clearly critical because if you don't know about what you do have the right to then you

can't assert it. but there's one other thing that i wanted to point out about this issue of western colonialism and the legacy of private property ownership and that sort of thing. of course it's a really complicated issue. but tortsdze side of private property rights in africa is that a lot of development wisdom goes that land gets you access to credit. so land is an asset by which you can get access to credit. and part of the cycle of poverty can be the lack of an access to credit. if you can only farm enough to feed your family and plant seeds next year, you may not be able to afford better seeds, probably won't be able to afford agricultural implemts that might boost your production on and on. and it's a complicated question. but there is this other side of what private property rights does for even the average african. and that can be to get access to credit that has been seen as

critical to helping to break the cycle of poverty or the pofert trap. host: our guest has her master's from columbia university. written for news week, and congressional quarterly. her current position is correspondent and multimedia producer. is there some type of video, photographic element to your story that we can find in the magazine? guest: there is in fact. you'll find a lot of the photo that is are in this spread, beautiful photos by a freelancer in liberia did terrific work on this and there's a multimedia slide show that uses her photographs and some sound that i captured that tells the story of yar and her brother lawrence, the story i was just referring to and will also introduce you to the woman who helped mediate the conflict. host: we'll show you some of the photographs on the magazine. our next caller, baltimore, maryland on our independent

line. caller: i was calling to ask ms. moore if it's really appropriate for the united states to be involved in the politics of african government. and isn't that just another form of colonialism? thank you. guest: thanks. that's a pretty frequent critique. and, you know, far be it from me to assume it's my job to tell the u.s. government what's appropriate and not appropriate to do. i don't have the expertise for that and they should rightly probably not listen to me. but the fact of the matter is that the u.s. government is involved in politics everywhere. it's simply par for the course. and politics is more than just walking into a country and saying we think you should do this this way. politics is economics, politics is trade. climate change negotiations. world trade organization

negotiations. politics is huge and t's a lot more than just the issues that we're talking about here. it's probably unlikely that someone who works for the u.s. government could walk into, say, zambia and say, here's a solution to your land problems. you're welcome. we don't have the same conteckedtull knowledge, the same cultures. there's all kinds of hurdles there. but that's recognizing the hurdles that are there and how important it is to have, to be guided by local wisdom and local politics and local decisions, and the needs of local people is different than saying well we should never be involved in any of it anyway. it's a pretty vast continuum and somewhere in there we can stake out responsible engagement. host: here in the united states we have a system of emnent do main as it's known where government can take over land profitable for the community at large. is there some type of

equivalent happening there in africa, especially where land ownership calls into question as far as who owns what? guest: there is. and how that works will be different in different countries. i can speak anecdotally from experience on this more than i can from having any great study or knowledge of it. but i spent some time in rwanda in the capital, which is a very bust ling, growing developing place. and businesses are really starting to take up there so there was a period where families who were living in -- get characterized in the american media as a slum but it's not a slum. but they were less well off certainly than a lot of the people who were living in multiroom homes. and so there were some hill tops where people were living in mud huts with roofs and that's an achievement but sort of the lower end of development there.

and businesses needed the land. and so there was a kind of emnent do main exercise called something different, of course, but these people were relocated and the formal plan involved compensation for the land and this is part of a broader project of land use in rwanda. it's a very zphricate project. duh it but it does happen is the point. and one of the concerns i heard from folks was what to do about that possible pending issue. across the world. not just in africa but around the world we're seeing cities explode. there's a great urbanization going on. and as that happens, as people move to the cities looking for jobs and a better quality of life, they're finding that there aren't quite enough jobs and not quite enough access to development as maybe they thought when they left the countryside. so squaters rights is an issue that has to be worked out. there's a big concern about an explosion of the confusion over

who gets to stay on a piece of land and whether a land owner who is not using the land productively, who simply abandoned a property but still has the claim to the land, what to do with those people, too, as monroe va tries to figure out how to take the next step and become even more economically viable. host: charles on our democratic line. good morning. guest: good morning. last time i was on air, the question i would like to ask is how much influence does china have with the chinese influence on the continent of africa in terms of lands rights management? and i take your answer off air. and thanks for c-span. guest: that's a really good question. of course we've seen the influence of china on so many levels on so many factors. increased rather quickly over the last, say, 10 years. the chinese are certainly very involved in development projects and developing businesses, the whole deal, across the continent.

a lot of new construction comes from chinese firms. and in every capital that i've been in, i've seen cranes or buildings, tall buildings but constructing these tall buildings and you'll see chinese characters on the top naming the construction companies. and there's other companies involved too but chinese presence is unmissable. in terms of land i don't know that they're looking to influence land policy or land reform policy per se but they are heavel involved in buying up vast tracks of land. there was a great piece by a journalist named andrew rice on just this issue. sometime within the last six month,. and he really explored how china especially and india to a certain extent are brokering deals with governments of eetsdzyopia, kenya, other places to buy just huge, huge

tracts of land and then take the rice, 2 produce that's farmed there back to china to feed this burgeoning population that they're not able to feed themselves. and so there's a lot of concern that that's sort of the next big problem. the other level of that is, is the government selling land that belongs to indigenous people who don't have paper work. that's what we've been talking about here this morning, the issue of indigenous rights and ownership is another thing that's global. it's not simply african. host: reston, virginia. go ahead. guest: thank you. i have two questions and i think you answered one. and the one that you answered is the continent of africa which most of the time the media characterizes the whole african continent, which like you said 53 countries, which need to be stressed out most of

the time. now, as far as the land is concerned, i think the issue of the land is mostly in the east of africa all the way down to south africa. you will not see this issue most in west africa or north africa except the conflict in liberia, which may be lending to the land issue. and i will take your answer off the air what, please. guest: sure. i don't see the same thing torks be honest with you. this is as much a problem in west africa, in my experience, reporting and researching the topic, as it is in east africa. of course, it's different in every place where it occurs not only nationally but i suppose also regionly. but i know anecdotally for example it's a problem in sierra lee own and there are issues to be involved in this

in guinea and there are surely more. we could go country by country. but you would want country experts to do that, not me. but i think that this general problem of land reform, land titles, customary ownership and also confessions to -- concessions to foreign companies and how to handle those is happening across the continent. different countries have different incentives for using different pieces of their lands in different ways. but i see it in west as much as i see it in east africa. host: staten island. caller: good morning. host: go ahead, sir. caller: good morning. i'm visiting from liberia here. i am particularly amazed and

[inaudible] about the article on liberia. but our government was one of those who recognize, but the question i want to ask is the land issue really in south africa and zimbabwe. as we all know, the land issue was between the british and the liberation movement. but in south africa, that issue of land has never been touched. i just want to know what you have as to how that may be involved in the future. guest: well, there is a project of sort of land rest tuition going on in south africa and there's a lot of criticism of it for being especially for being slow. you know, they keep missing targets and transfers aren't happening as quickly as they thought. but there are transfers of land happening in south africa as a way of addressing the kind of problem you're talking about.

scott, the sort of bureau chief for all of africa, justin and writes for the christian science africa's main correspondent did a great piece about not just the transfer of title and land but also the transfer of knowledge, which is incredibly important when you're talking about a system like this. part of what we've seen as a tragedy in zimbabwe was a similar transfer system in which there is no transmission of knowledge. and those who receive the land don't know how to manage the farms and then you have a food crisis, then you have an economic crisis. the problems become enormous. and of course it's not just the zimbabwe where that has happened. it happened in congo in the 1906s when the gold mines and the mineral mines that were left behind by departing europeans, were given to

cronies. and they didn't know what they were doing and is the mines shut down. you can see evidence of these places all across north kifu. there's a great image in this, blood and treasure and mother jobes, of an olympic sized swimming pool that still has a medal difing board and ladder as if they're waiting to fill it up again. there's too much complicated history in the meantime and too much insecurity in the presence. so it's important that knowledge move along with policy, whether that's formally or informally done. host: we have time for one more call. phoenix, arizona. edmund on our democrat's line. we have about 30 seconds. caller: thank you very much. i appreciate you for bringing this issue about land in africa and then the politics.