example, if the deadline to analyze the situation is too close -- is only three months away to win all u.s. troops will be in afghanistan. that it is not the time to analyze the situation. senator john mccain yesterday really hammer the point that the uly 2011 deadline to start withdrawing troops would that send a positive message. host: "the wall street journal" says that there were a long seconds before general petraeus responded as to whether it was a good deadline. caller: i was at the hearing and his pause seemed quite long. he went on to answer that he basically supports the president's policy and that the

one that the presence and was one of urgency in the official commitment to afghanistan. the chairman of the armed services committee was not very pleased with his answer. basically calling it a non- answer. a qualified yes in terms of deadline support is what they called ii. they also said the united states needs to be careful with setting time lines. host: the country and the media have been impatient. what is the message in afghanistan? caller: the focus has been in the southern area and the delay in the military operation. the most publicized offensive was there. there has been renewed intimidation regarding

corruption and fears of corruption in the fact that the military is not making the kind of means that they said that they were. obviously everyone is pleading with the public and congress to give them more time. more time to implement their strategy. senator levin, his biggest concern is that there is a not enough in the way of trainers in afghanistan. the fact that the afghans are not receiving any high-level military operatives as of yet. host: we have pictures of general petraeus fainting at the hearing yesterday. what happened? caller: as ssnator mccain

wrapped up his questioning time in his comments about the aabitrary deadline suddenly everything went silent and general petraeus that just slumped forward in his chair and appeared to have fainted. he briefly collapsed. his aides gathered to his bedside quickly. he recovered pretty quickly and was able to walk out on his own out of the room, where he was then checked outtby a senate doctor. it turned out that he was dehydrated and had not eaten breakfast. after a couple of minutes and some water he was ready to start hearing again. senator levin decided against it and reschedule the hearing for today. p- rescheduled the hearing for today. host: we will have live coverage of that on c-span freak. thank you. we are talking about -- c-span

3. thank you. we are talking about the gulf coast oil spill in the president's address. mike, what are your thoughts? caller: i am sorry about general petraeus and my thoughts and prayers are with him. president obama is getting more mature. i think that he came across as not blaming the situation on george bush, as many have. he has accepted the responsibility that he has as president for this situation. this is the problem of bp. not any particular president. it is president obama is responsibility. he is taking responsibility, and i must respect him for that. he also acknowledged in his speech the creator, and i think

the creator is on his side now. that will help him in this situation. as far as dangling in the ocean off the gulf of mexico, i know what it can do to our environmeets. it will hurt the wallets of every american, no matter where you live. april 15, 2011, we will realize how much of an effect we have had. host: what are the beaches like they're in sarasota? -- there in sarasota? caller: we have the widest beaches in the country and there are small dots of oil starting to appear. independent organizations giving be able to count on them.

the range is just unbelievable. what is really happening out there? i would like to see an pndependent body tracking and telling us what is going on. sometime between now and august fed in the hurricane season, it can carry things up into the southeastern states. host: " new york daily news" this morning says that "$1.6 billion is the economic activity at risk because of the spill. 2000 is the estimated number of square miles covered by the oil slick. 51% of the floridians that oppose more offshore drilling since the disaster, 114 million

gallons is the estimated number of gallons spilled. hazleton, missouri, bob on the democratic line. good morning, bob. caller: yeah, i think that a lot of the frustration people are feeling is that no one is being held responsible for this. the president has stated he is looking to determine who's as he should kick. quite frankly, if that was reagan, he would have went in there and fired the entire department can call the press in to show an empty office. host: can i get your reaction to president obama asking a former district attorney and inspector general to come in and be in charge of raising efforts for the mineral management service.

partially to eliminate conflict of interest to eliminate ovvrsight. what do you think about that? host: -- caller: frankly,,i do not know why they make it so complicated. they had a job to do, pack their stuff up and get the heck out of there. if they are not doing their job we might as well have an empty office so that we can put cops on the street that know what they're doing and willing to do their job. most of florida, k, independent line. caller: i was not -- host: florida, kay, an independent line. caller: i was not satisfied with his speech. many people live here on florida that work the shore.

bobby jindal is the only one that knows how to handle the situation. as far as i know, all he wants to do is tax us. host: these people with that these oil rig jobs, how much did they make? caller: is a new york city. $40,000 per year. host: that goes a long way? caller: it does in this area. host: some of these people that you know, have they lost a job because of the president's moratorium? caller: yes, i have a friend is not working because of this.

host: here is what the president had to say about the moratorium yesterday. >> i have established a commission. already i have issued a six month moratorium on deepwater drilling. i know that this creates a difficulty for the people hat work on these rigs, but for the sake of their safety and for the entire region, we need to know the facts before we allow deepwater drilling to continue. host: arlington, va., patrick on the republican line. good morning. caller: that is great. i called on the second of many -- may, 10 days after the rig blew up.

funny, we are almost in the same boat that we were in then. i watched it last night and i was not impressed other than we heard the typical bp is going to pay. we still have not heard anything about the cleanup. you do not have to wait until the leak is capped to start clean up. host: the president did say that he has deployed over 17,000 national guard members along the coast to compensate workers and business owners who have been harmed he will ask bp to set up an escrow account and establish a national commission to understand causes of the disaster and offer recommendation. caller: a couple fought off the top of my head. what if bp says no? and it winds up in court?

that is the first thing. i think they had a 75 million- dollar cap. second, there are over 30 offshore rigs operating in the u.s. right now. you know? so, it is not the there are not safety precautions in place, they are just not followed. thirdly, the 17,000 national guard troops are not active. he is more concerned about claims and not having unemployment than he is about fenian up. -- cleaning it up. host: here is some history from "the new york times" on oval office president -- presidential address history. "is only underscores the profound impact on his presidency.

that at this point in his present -- at this point in previous presidencies his four predecessors had already address from the oval office. "the wall street journal" has this headline on the commission, "there is a reoccurring pattern here. the former administrator of the environmental protection agency says that organizations model on institutions for nuclear power operation would not be a substitute for stronger federal oversight of could create the safety culture needed in offshore drilling." giving you an idea of what the

commission might be looking out last phone call, democratic line. caller: it is amazing to me how we have so much of this particular president. these atrocities, the banking industry, this oil, it all resulted from deregulation in the 1980's. if no one was watching these things just pop up. everyone wants this president to do everything right now. he is not god. he is a man. a living, breathing man. he has the best of the best out there trying to figure out how the cap this thing. other callers talked about getting things, and if bp is responsible and we take the

authority of going over their heads to step on their toes to talk about this problem, the+ liability is on bp. host: coming up next we will turn our energy to energy legislation. the legislation is on the senate side now with senator kerrey and senator lieberman putting a bill out there. we will talk with simon lomax of bloomberg next to talk about where this stands and what is in these bills. first we want to show yet -- show you footage they c-span producer shot less life of a party in how louisiana with folks watching the president's -- shot last night that of a party in the vienna with folks watching the president's address.

[unintelligible] >> mining is cooper. we are in venice, louisiana. >> this is your restaurant? >> yes, it is. me and my wife. >> my name is marlette cooper. >> we just watched the address. can you give me your reaction? >> he did not say no more than he did have time. he is saying me is in charge and he will do this and that.

what happened today was very frustrating. it hurts to see the idea of trying to do something and save our coastline and you do not have enough of everything. some of it was soaked up, but we do not near have the equipment. >> the executive director of the louisiana promotion board. our underlying concern right now president has put on the deep water, offshore drilling. if you look at the fishing communities here, these communities service all 30 of the rigs offshore.

phipps we have -- we have 30 generations of camp -- the fishermen here. brothers, cousins, aunts and uncles. and if one industry goes down, the other goes down. i am not sure the president understands the impact that the moratorium have on the fishing communities. it will devastate our fishing communities, devastate the state's economy, having a ripple effect nationwide. >> i think the president obama is clueless. i do not know that he feels what we're feeling. how can he faced this situation and sit there and say the same things weehave been hearing all week. he has no clue. not at all.

>> myyfather is a fisherman. he is 75 and still fishes. my son is in his 20s and he fishes. i would like to see him continue fishing to my father's age. we had a good life before this happened. we had a good community. we would much rather work. we are hard-working people. we would much rather go back to the old ways but i am afraid that this might change in the future. we may wind up losing it all. >> "washington journal" continues. host: simon lomax a bloomberg bloomberg news, the president last night talked about now is

the time. last night your web site had this headline that the climate bill lacked momentum. where does it stand now? guest: one year ago the house of representatives passed an economy white cap and trade bill. cap and trade is a policy in which you try to limit greenhouse gases from power plants and refineries. the legislation basically slow down in the senate last year. senators kerry and lieberman had been waiting to try to revamp the legislation and build a basis for new support in the hope that it could get past this year. going into the speech last night a number of senate democrats

that we spoke to said thee were not convinced that the oil spill in the gulf of mexico had put enough momentum behind some sort of legislation to regulate greenhouse gases. what will happen this week in the senate is they will get together and discuss not so much whether or not to do an energy bill, not whether or not they should try to make a clean energy, buttwhat kind of energy legislation and if it should include direct regulation of greenhouse gas. host: than what is the reason behind the senate calling this an energy bill and not a climate build demo guest: -- climate bill? guest: a little bit before the house passed its greenhouse gas bill the senate and natural resources committee passed a

bill with republican support to require power companies to buy more electricity from renewable sources like wind farms and solar farms, geothermal plants and things like that. there is a benefit in terms of greenhouse gases. if a power company purchases electricity from wind farm for a coal-fired power plants, you would not be directly imposing a limit on greenhouse gases. for some members of the senate right now at this moment it might be easier to accomplish that rather than something similar to an economy wide cap and trade bill. host: are there enough votes in the senate for this legislation?

guest: reporters asked senator kerrey that yesterday and he was quite frank that he did not have the votes now but he felt that they were close enough that he wanted to keep pushing. they certainly feel that the president's speech last night would have an emphasis put on clean energy, they could feel that they could continue to fight and muster the 60 votes some time before congress wraps up this year. host: they said that this legissation would be about energy sector jobs. can you explain to the viewers specific proposals that they believe will result in jobs? guest: this goes into that whole green jobs discussion. there are two political camps when you talk about trying to

encourage or require companies to generate more electricity, produce more energy from sources that are not coal, natural gas, or oil. the argument of green jobs is that if you require companies to get more electricity from wind farms, that will incentivize companies that make wind turbines to locate facilities in the united states that will create demand for steel that is used to make things like wind turbines haland that it will spe a lot of investment that lead to jobs. that is the clean energy, clean jobs comment. the counter argument you hear

from republicans and a few democrats is will those so- called green jobs and be more than the jobs you might lose in the industry? like coal mining, oil, or oil production. so, that is why there is such disagreement between republicans and democrats on this issue, the question of how soon the jobs will be created and how many there will be. host: when has the senate majority leader said that he will bring this to the floor of the senate? guest: he wants to bring about this month. this is his chance to take the temperature of the members of the senate democratic caucus. his view is that he wants to get it done in july before the august resort -- recess.

host: alabama, carol, independent line. caller: i have been witnessing firsthand the clean up. i also have a house on jackson's island, alabama. i think of the first thing that needs to happen is admiral aaan needs to ask the present for more backup, communicating to the president that cleanup is beyond the scope of the coast guard. we have seen skimmer's being rationed. we were promised earlier on that we would not have any oil coming on to the shore. all of a sudden it was ok for a while to be collected on the white beaches. we also have oil coming into he estuary ies and bays. every time the oil has

encountered boom, the boom has not worked. host: we are talking with simon lomax about energy legislation and climate legislation. giving everything you have just said, what would you like to see congress do to address the oil spill? caller: i think it is fine for there to be a moratorium. especially it is fine considering what came out yesterday. i do think that most of the gulf coast, we are not certainly first in solar energy. we burn coal, we need to limit fossil fuel and move forward in every way that we can with solar, especially in this part of the country. wind is not for every state. but solar is so obvious.

this might be our chance to move forward. host: what do you think about a windmill in the gulf coast rather than oil rigs? ocaller: they are not consistent everywhere. there would have to be a lot of monitoring. windfarms in the gulf, if it shows that the wind is there, that is fine. is not consistent. we have so many wind tunnels in our country, maybe this is not the place and there are other places of the country that would be more appropriate. hostt what did you hear from her, simon lomax ca? caller: i heard from her

considerable interest in reducing the fossil fuel energy in alabama, as well as a sense of urgency to address this bill. in the legislation coming up next month the path of the democrats will be to try to work out how to get more legislation to be passed to respond as quickly to the gulf oil spill and then to see what they can do on what the president called for last night. that is to look beyond the immediate tragedy in disaster in the gulf and work out what sort of an energy sector the u.s. should have 10, 20, 30 years from now. senator reid has said they he is looking for republican support