>> let me be clear as citizen and president. i believe muslims have the right to practice their religion as everyone else in this country. that includes the right to build in lower manhattan. this is america. our commitment to religious freedom must be unshakeable.

the right the founders musten door. >> president obama passing his support. we want to get your thoughts on this topic call us

host: talking about the reaction from legislatures. a big boost from mr. blooum. he's quoted as saying, i mraud his

the headline for "washington post" goes along to say the preference defends plans for the new york mosque. the new york post, their front page, he blesses ground zero mosque. to georgia on the independent line. the first of the topic caller: i i agree if we are going to be a country of freedom without punishing those who are

not fan atticks. >> what do you make up as the reaction of this story he's enacted a lot of bills. there's no immediate reaction. >> the new york daily news offers thoughts on this. president obama discerns credit awaiting the mosque just one problem, he adds. he shouldn't have made the statement at an event.

that's from this morning in the new york daily news. missouri on the republican line. go ahead. caller: i think it is 100% wrong he is defending this right to put this on ground zero. i don't think this should happen because of what they did to us. the president used freedom of religion. how do they factor that into your thought this is morning. look at all the men and women that lost their lives in the 9/11 attacks. the muslims did that. i don't think that is right at

all. >> little rock, arkansas you are next. caller: that last caller kind of took some thunder away. arkansas is probably one of the most ignorant states of the union. most people i talk to is constantly saying, the muslims did this, the islams did this. it's a bunch of terrorists. if they had built a baptist church there. the subject would have never come up. it is racism and religious intolerance and ignorance. >> what do you think about the

time he chose to weigh in on this project? >> this is one of the most idiot yik ideas of somebody arguing about a religious group. this is not a mosque. it's a cultural center, an art museum. they may go in there and have a great time. the people need to calm down host: according to political at

new york state >> i disagree with the president. i feel sorry for the victims families and the loss of loved ones if you don't believe like they believe, they'll take you out. host: some supporters say because of the location of the building it should be ok to be

there? caller: i disagree. i was devastated when it happened. i was working in valero, an oil company. i was watching the planes take off in philadelphia. build it somewhere else. it's not fair to the victims and families host: build it somewhere else in new york? caller: yes, just not near ground zero. host: back to the line. caller: believe me, you have freedom of religion. all the muslims are not radicals. if we hadn't stopped the white people from digging, they would

have destroyed our african cemetery. this is a free country. all the muslims are not the same. it's like us saying all white people are kkk. obama is doing the right thing. host: you support the president's support of this? caller: i support a lot of things he's doing, man. host: going to florida. caller: thank god for c-span. going further to say english is

not a language you have to learn to be considered an american. host: can you go to the topic at hand? caller: i support the president. host: how so? caller: i believe in freedom of religion. if your religion loose, you are out a job for five years. we need freedom of religion. freedom of language and economy. stop the hating.

host: texas on the democrat line. caller: my thoughts is that. well, i'm a black person. there's a lot that has happened to my ancestors in the past. what if every time i passed a church that the white race had, i feel they are plotting against us. that's nonsense. this is going too far. if they believe in god, that's what is going to help this nation. all of this hating and stuff is because a lot of these people don't believe in god.

if that's what they want to do. if they have a god to praise, let's come together to praise god. i believe if we come together in peace, we make it. this has gone too far.

host: p.s.a., maryland. caller: i think this is a

disgrace. it's wrong. if they want to build a mosque, build it in brooklyn. host: and shallson, indiana on the independent line. go ahead. caller: when obama suggests it should be established i know in this country, unless we get

ahold of big industry in the form of the right wing ism. they allow all these right wing people to put out these myths on tv. they know what's going on. this alleged racial society is only racial when the bigots are uncomfortable.

host: more from the president last night. jo we must never forget those that we lost tragically in 9/11. we must honor those that lead the response in those attack. from the firefighters that lead the response to the troops serving in afghanistan today. let us remember who we are fighting against and for. our enemies respect no religious freedom. these are not religious leaders, they are terrorists.

host: we are going to talk about the president's defense of the building of the mosque. if you wan to weigh in on this, call >> the next call from oklahoma on the line. caller: i am against his decision. with the voting of the last presidential election. over 95% of blacks voted for

obama. keep the blacks off the republican lines please. host: we'll leave it there and don't appreciate the comments of the caller. there is a map that shows where the president will travel next week. his journey will start him in milwaukee. he will head to los angeles, tuesday, he goes to sooet he goes to miami and then to vacation in martha's vineyard.

caller: if americans are christians, this is a christian nation. i think they should build that mosque somewhere else. host: what about this being an issue of freedom of religion? caller: you say you love americans and want to be an american. america is a christian nation. you come here and love this place, you should want to be a christian and not bring your religion and make it rise up in this country.

caller: saw radical christians took down a building and ten years later, be it to us to tell them fot to build it. no christian would do it. where is the uproar from the muslim community telling them not to do it. assume an iity is taken out of this. host: from the financial times, about alabama charging bp i'd

like to remind the folks calling in and wrapping themselves in the cloak of religion. the religion of islam and this secretary has something called sheria law. iran is under this law. it is really a political as well as religious cult that forces people to do certain things in a

country. women are subjected to ridicule and stoned to death. it is not just a religion. it's a political philosophy. i just want to remind everybody, it's not just a religious cause we are talking about here. host: what do you think of the comments the president made? caller: i think he was being politically correct.

you had thousands cheering. to say that this is a small group of people and not about islam. it is a white wash. marvin on the democrat line. go ahead. caller: if we were to do the same thing and try to put our religion there, that's all they are doing making a place for

their religion. you can't hate or disregard them host: this is a business section of the "washington post." requesting the panel reviews ensures the practice of propheting rather than making a lump sum payment. it is unclear whether service members and beneficiaries offer the affairs or service programs

holding in 28 billions a result. host: cleveland, ohio on the republican line. go ahead. caller: i was in new york on 9/11. i lived in new york. during 9/11, it was people helping people. no color, no religion. it was everybody helping everybody. this is a sensitivity issue. not a religious issue or color issue. i don't think it should be built there on the basis of sensitivity in regard to other people's feelings host: you you are talking the specific site two blocks away? caller: move it some place else.

the same way we were helping each other in new york during 9/ 9/11. host: good morning. caller: peace be with you. you know, peace is a state of being. presidents are like big league ball players. we want them to hit the long ball, grand slam. when going for the hit that they need, sometimes they walk or strike out.

i'm a pastor. i pastor one world life systems. we are not an old world new world or third world. we are one world. we are a human people with divine spirits in us. we are not a christian nation. we have free dm of religion. when we are talking about the last caller saying what do the people want locally? we are not going to go out to ohio and tell them what to do. they took a poll. 69% of the people in manhattan approve of the mosque.

we have become land of the fearful. i ask all of the callers, listen to ourselves. this is a wonderful effort by the muslim community. where my grandmother was widowed twice and raised eight children less than eight blocks from 9/11. host: what do you think the president's comments did last night caller: i think he stood taller

in not only what he said but how he said it. host: going to milwaukee. caller: i want to refer the listeners to two books obama wrote. one was the audience asity of hope and the other was the dreams of my father. in the dreams of my father, there's one quote there that said, this is obama speaking, i will stand with the muslims. should the political winds shift in an ugly direction. it is quite obvious he is much more for the muslims. we have so many jewish senators in congress. not one of them stood up and said we are friends of israel.

it is between the jews and the muslims, obama is on the side of the muslims. i can't imagine why all the jewish people in the country. congressmen and senators. i don't know what the population is. are they all sitting quietly? this is what it is about. this is the beginning of it. >> here is more from the president from last night's dinner. >> in my address, i said our patch work is our strength and

weakness. we are a nation of christians, muslims, jews and hindus and non-believers. that diversity can bring difficult debates. this is not unique to our hiem. we have demonstrated that we could work through our issues and values working through this today tonight, we are reminded that ramadan is celebration of a faith of great diversity and it has always been a part of america. the first muslim ambassador to

the united states was hosted to a sun set dinner. this was more than 200 years ago. >> the president from last night. the washington journal this morning has the results of a survey taken by trinity college. self identification by u.s. adults. 57.million identify as catholic, baptist 36.1 million. 2.7 identify as jewish, muslim 1.2 million. that's in the wall street journal. host: mairld on the democrat line. caller: good morning. i agree with president obama.

this has really turned into a racial issue jft like the war on islam to me. the immigration debate. it is always about people of color that there's a problem here. when timo think mcveigh supposed ly blew up, i didn't see white people profiled. i heard a white caller on the republican line say to keep the black people from calling. this is where this is going to. it is reported that 20% of people 18-35 in this country didn't even know what day or year the world trade centers came down.

that shows how ignorant people are in this country. it's gone too far. host: out of new york, u.s. consumers are spending more on cars and gasoline. retail sales rose

caller: speaking of gm, i saw them thanking the government.

host: can you clear up your first statement. he didn't say this is within the bounds of the constitutions. every time he signs his name, he's taking away something from us. host: what did you think about the constitutional rights. caller: people are asking to be consider rat of feelings. we have to be neighbors nobody is saying it's not

constitutional. there's no problem trampling on the constitution. caller: naz a classic caller. you asked him a question and you stumped him. it's like we didn't cheer in world war i or ii when our soldiers were killed. we didn't cheer in iraq.

like they sae say the muslims were cheering when this happened. we get to see what kind of people the americans are. we call ourselves a christian nation. one caller talking about we are a christian nation and they should change their religion when they come here. this is supposed to be freedom of religion. this has nothing to do with what happened with 9/11. i wish americans would wake up and listen to see how racist this country are. what religion were the kkk members when they killed and raped people. we don't blame that on catholic orz baptists. >> coming up, we'll look at the defense budget.

we'll have a chance to talk about all of that as well baltimore, maryland. thank you for waiting on the republican line. go ahead. >> let me say to the liberal who called in on the republican line spuing racist statements. good try. i'm a black republican. i don't know any white republican who thinks like that. my comment is, i'm tired of the president lecturing us americans how to be more tolerant to other

people. this country is tolerant. we already have mosques in new york city. i want to see the president to electric for the world about being more tolerant to christian americans. let's open it up so we can be tolerant to each other. the constitution is not a suicide fact. enough is enough. >> iowa. on our democrat line.

go ahead. i can't get over the arrow against of the republican party and the majority of christians in this country. this is the whole idea that has driven this country apart. christian beliefs pushed on everybody else. it is the same thing with abortion. if this is really about 9/11, there would be plenty of other things in this country that would have forced other issues in other parts of this nation.

be happy with what you believe but don't force it on everyone else. the meeting in the back room may not be over the federal agencies are responding by writing the rule bankers and executives. including who was president and what was discussed responsibly for ceasing the sale of

financial institutions. every two weeks, they will publish the names of will beyists thank you for taking my call. they are talking about supporting the construction of a mosque for a religion in and of itself that does not recognize. it's the christians and none muslims would educate themselves pick up a copy of the koran and

read chapter 5. a previous caller mentioned tim mcveigh. would we allow a memorial to be built to him? just a thought. host: we'll change gears and talk about the defense budget. announcing cuts as far as some aspec aspects. more when we come back.

>> campaign 2010, we make it easy to follow all freon your computer, any time. >> here you are senator. not a bad desk either. daniel webster used to use it. >> harry trueman hated this movie. at the time, he was seen as a senator from kansas city.

>> this weekend on book tv, the affects of center yoe types on learning. afterwards, time magazine said our view of war as adults. on sunday, former cia agent requires his identity be she'lleded with how to deal with iran. for a list of book programs. visit book tv.org. host: our guest to talk about defense budget cuts for the next

45 minutes from the defense office. guest: there's a lot of reaction for obvious reason. not just cutting the pent he gone contractor force but the joint forces command down in norfolk which has job losses in our economy. there are knee jerk reactions. "new york times" reported this week that the general officer cuts are 50. causing the most pain in the pent he gone. other than that.

focussed on a place where they need to find more resources. >> this is what he said do you

find common at with those thoughts? guest: generally speaking, reducing common at is good for those things what we have seen is swinging back. i can't say there is more cost saveings they are more highly

skilled he is skam inning the way of current war far. he mentioned this in the press briefing. you have a company command er n concerns about the knowledge base leading the pent he gone.

we are talking 50 in total. the u.s. invests a lot of money. we train up people that get promoted through the ranks to become a four star or even a one star. it is expensive. all those in the military become more joint making officers purple where you have

relationship and experience to help designate forces for different activitiesern the world. whether still needed, the relative functions will be maintained. >> here's what they had to say.

get your reaction to it. >> we appreciate the fact that second of defense is trying to find ways to rate our spending doesn't eliminate the need. it is hard to see how much they could determine that. the final thing we can all agree

on. how in the world the secretary can come up with a straight face and say they want to cut dollars and are willing to command and look you in the eye and say they are willing to spend a billion when every assisted. >> there will be job losses in virginia the members of congress raise a fair point. they need a risk assessment. they do their due diligence to

provide that. congress is a job of oversight. this is something that has to be carefully skam ined. we have seen everything from base closures to the cutteds. the analysis behind it is lacking. it is a fair point. to the other point, if you are eliminating command, there may be some value in skam inning why you would eliminate that depending on how much you co-would retain. >> host: did you meet with

secretary gates on this issue? guest: we did. not object that, he looks around the world and it is his job to explain the cuts in the interest. what we are spending today is a bare minimum. he looks around the world and sees terrorism. the string of counter insurgency operations. we have to do more with what we have today.

what he we are saying is a bear minimum. he sees the sgroeing on capitol hill for domestic programs and reduction. for our guests on the independent line, go ahead. this is the second time in three days. first of all on thursday, susan had the head of lobbying for the defense aerospace industry. i would expect someone from american enterprise would be on in a day or two to defend this. what is happening, they are realizing we can't afford the defense budgets and endless wars. they are circling the wagons saying, we have to figure out

how to figure out the lobbying procedures because the defense budget is such a white elephant and waste of money in so many cases. finally, why don't you get winslow wheeler on. i would bring him on about two hours and have him run down things. he seems to be non-party guest: i don't see defense budget issues as partisan. i see this as what we are asking our military to do. our global responsibilities.

there's no doubt the pentagon budget is huge. it ranges anywhere from $130 billion on up. in the peak of the iraq war, it's very expensive. . .

host: philadelphia, pennsylvania, republican line. john, thanks for waiting. go ahead. caller: i totally agree with both of the last two callers. we cannot cut the troops shy of any money. but at the same time, the pentagon has just altogether too much money. the same departments throughout the governments are doing the same thing as the pentagon. why just are the departments doing the same job? does it make any sense? you've got the f.b.i., c.i.a., pentagon. everybody's doing the same job. and how many millions are going to waste? guest: that's a great point. that's something the secretary talked about in his press conference, is the overlapping and redundant functions of intelligence in particular. intelligence analysis, collection and gathering is something that has been an industry since 9/11. something like 75% of all

authorities were just for intelligence, collection, surveillance, and reconnaissance. so this is an area where we can look to save some money. the secretary's goals are to save $100 billion over 5 years. you already cut so many references since last year that will save $300 billion. sos there no doubt that the pentagon is taking its share to become more lean and efficient and spend dollars more wisely. intelligence is ripe for restraint and spending. >> host: is it ok to cut the system? guest: i opposed a lot of cuts for a lot of reasons. i agree with a lot of the bureaucratic reform and i think he can go a lot further. there's a lot more money that can be saved and ways to do that. but the force structure cuts, are short-sighted for me, because the united states and the military is living off the fruits of the reagan buildup.

that was in the mid 80s. everything that the military tried and failed in and strives in give or take was built in the 70s and 80s. the average age of ships planes and tanks are well over 30 years for a lot of these systems and it's time to buy new ones. you have to recapitalize the inventory. the war and tear of wartime operations, you use things six and seven times more than you would in peacetime when you have a wartime operations tempo and everything is tired, stressed and rusty and has to be replaced. so a lot of these cuts came on the heels of what i think is this dire need to reset this inventory and it's being overlooked in the name of cost-savings. and i'm concerned about it. host: david on our democrat's line. caller: hello. i would like to ask who are the

current enemies of the united states? and i would also love to have her explain what are the potential consequences of the reduction in military force. of the united states. by reducing military personnel. guest: that's a great question. let me tell you what the secretary said. he said he looks around the world and he sees it basically as a more dangerous place. it's not getting more safe just because iraq's operations are winding down. of course, we still have a significant number of forces in afghanistan, about 100,000 right now plus nato and otheral eyes right now. but base -- allies right now. we saw, for example, in sudan and yemen, somalia, a lot of these countries the threat is not diminishing, it's disbursing. cyber is one that's ongoing. it's literally a part of our

life here. and to have that threat or access to cyber or to space or to the air or to the sea is something that the u.s. needs to continue to secure and that's not going away. in fact, i argue we're behind the curve. the failing states is one that's ongoing, the threat that when a government falls apart and the u.s. has to come help intervene, whether we just want to maintain regional stability or because that can spill over and cause mass humanitarian crisises, that's something that has not gone away. counter insurgency operations, the secretary also mentioned the raledmiltterization of potential peer competitors. he means china and russia. doesn't mean that we're going to go to war. doesn't mean that we're in an arm's race with china, for example, but they're embarking on the largest peacetime buildup of a military, unprecedented in history.

and you have to ask a question, why? china is building a blue water navy. we guarantee freedom of the high seas for every other country in the world. and to have that at threat with this carrier missile that china has we may not be able to li up the our treaty commitments particularly here in japan, taiwan. if we can't do that, then our responsibilities around the world are called into question and therefore are strained. host: bever hi lills, california. next for our guest. caller: good morning. the best anchor on the journal today, i believe. as far as the defense budget cuts go, a lot of people can blame the stimulus package, the

wasteful spending, why are we doing it now at this time of war. but it seems throughout the years there is a rhetorical audit or looking at as far as the defense budget goes because it's, like you said, so large. so it seems like we do like a quarterly audit on the defense budget. and i think people kind of need to understand that and not to start pointing fingers and raising he will. i also believe that -- as far as the defense budget goes, i think as far as benefits and pay, i think if they took a good look at who is getting paid what to do what, you might be able to cut some pork there and one more thing. you look great. have a great weekend. guest: well, i appreciate your

point on the size of the budget and the regular auditting and i totally agree. the pentagon budget is always under scrutiny for good reason. but at the same time let's put it in context of the entire federal budget. and i want to exclude even recent stimulus spending which is just as nomcal. the wurn of the stimulus bills last combreer doubled the department of education and the department of energy in one bill. so the pentagon growth has to be taken in context. it is less than one fifth and declining. it loses ground to all other entities funded particularly the big three entitlements, which is really the source. more importantly, the defense budget is about 4% of our entire economy. if you add in the cost of wars, about 4.5 to 4.9% is edging towards 5. but president obama is proposing a defense budget that will shrink to 3%.

so in context, the defense budget is small relatively speaking. it is of course a very large spending bill, but in context it is small. on the pay and benefits side, i think this is an excellent point by the caller. this is something that the secretary is starting to look at on the civilian side, particularly on the off of the secretary of defense. some flag and general officers. but looking at compensation for the military, for those in uniform. it's a conversation that washington doesn't want to have. it's a rational conversation that we need to have. sh this is something that we would love to talk ooth forever. but this is where the nation needs to examine how we need to pay those in uniform better. if you look at the whole compensation package for someone in uniform, 5 % of that is -- 52% is deferred inkind benefit. one in five people serve a full 20 years or more. those deferred in in-kind

benefits don't matter to four out of five people serving in uniform. but the cost to uncle sam and taxpayers is expensive. reforming how we pay those in uniform, not cutting but changing to more reflect the 21st century workforce is important and it should be part of this discussion. host: how does health care factor in? guest: it's the single largest as far as personnel cost in the defense budget and something that has to be examined. the secretary has talked about increasing co-pays, for example, for those in uniform, something that members of congress have rejected year after year. but there's other parts that need to be looked at aside from the co-payment issue. i think that there are alternatives to making the co payments more amenable to congress, which is perhaps a means tested basis. so, for example, you have a lot of flag and general officers who say i make $140,000 per

year. i retire, i get 75% of that, or whatever the numbers are. >> $140,000 cash. >> correct. >> and then you retire and you draw a pension from the government and their co payments are still $3 or whatever the number is. they can pay, afford to pay more. and that's something that legitimately should be part of this discussion. but med skl costs are no different than what's happening in the entire u.s. economy. premiums are going up, the cost exploded. it's no different for the government, particularly for the military. but there are ways that we can rein in that spending, whether you want to talk about defined contribution plans, switching military dependents to the federal plan. host: you said that the president's proposed budget will bring the defense budget to 3% of the whole of the u.s.'s whole budget? guest: correct. host: what gets affected most?

is it the human side where you have staffing and contracting or the weapons side or both? guest: what we're seeing post 9/11, even with growth after 9/11, it was to make up for all the defense cuts in the 90s. the cold war ended and a bipartisan congress, republican led, agreed with secretary clinton and cut the budget by one third, people and equipment. but the world and operations tempo for our military did not get any safer. and what we asked the military to do in the 90s didn't diminish. bosnia, kosovo, haiti, iraq, none of these went away. these missions. but we cut the military. so then we start 9/11, and our operations in iraq and afghanistan, with a force that was already too small anyway, we asked to go to war for the last ten years. so it has only helped us tread water because of the last 15 years at large.

but what we have really seen is a glowing imbalance in particular in the -- growing imbalance to the defense budget where personnel, we're seeing the best best trained, best led force in the world and it's expensive. as it should be. people are our most expensive weapons system. we're seeing an aging rescue force structure and imbalance where these outstanding professional core of people who do not have the best equipment any more. and there is an imbalance there. host: maryland, go ahead. caller: i would just like to say, the two points real quick. one is the war in iraq is bogus to begin with. if we're going to have this extended military engagement like in afghanistan, i mean, it's supposed to be a war on terror. where is terror on the map? can you point it out to me? no, you can't.

there is no nation called terror. so you can't have a war on terror. the war in afghanistan, we're giving money to, when bush was in office he was giving money to musharraff, and some of that money goes to the pakistani isi, the secret service who are paying the taliban to do work over in afghanistan because they're disputing that they're in line between pakistan and afghanistan. so so some of our money is going to fight us. host: so what does that mean? caller: we need to pull out of both wars. don't cut all defense spevending but we need to get out of these wars. $10 billion a month is preposterous. host: ok. guest: well, the caller raises a good point. the threat of terrorism is not

defined to any border. it's global, it shifts. it's always changing and not exclusive to iraq by any means. the enemies that the u.s. has been fighting, we are winding down combat operations in iraq, in fact we officially ended them there although some violence is continuing. but the enemies in iraq weren't inclusive to terrorist or al qaeda cells. there was also common criminals. it was shia militants, iranian forces et cetera. so there is a ders amount of threats that the u.s. was defeating in iraq. war is expensive. and afghanistan, $10 billion is what it cost. and up until two years ago this was deficit spending, and congress demand that they budget for better governance, frankly, and that's the right thing to do. these should no longer be

considered emergency supplementals because we have enough ability to say what it should cost roughly speaking. afghanistan is a regional u effort at this point, and fighting and winning in afghanistan require's a lot of cooperation and operations in pakistan as well as and i don't know that we're going to be able to separate the two. host: maryland, dan on the republican line. caller: good morning. i agree with her to a point that military spending should be assessed and whatever is being wasted should be dealt with accordingly. if they want to reduce this debt, they can get rid of the department of education. that can be handled by the states. they can get rid of the e.p.a. that can be handled by the states. reduce the ira, just have a flat tax. they don't need thousands of workers. homeland security, we didn't need this to begin with. obama care, we don't need that. we can stop sending billions

and billions of dollars to countries who hate us. host: what would you do to the defense department? caller: i would assess the defense department. this is our national security. if the department of defense is wasting money, that needs to be looked at. that's common sense. we don't want to waste money. but at the same time, we don't want to reduce our department of defense to where it is inadequate. host: one point made by doug zackheim this week on this topic was he asked, it was a financial times article. the biggest question, how long does secretary gates stay on? the longer, the more likely it is that this is all going to happen. how much is it connected to having these cuts happen to having the secretary in office? guest: they're inextricably linked. he yields a lot of clout in washington. he has the ear of the president and his buy-in in all of this.

he has the president's commitment to veto for defense bills to reduce funding on projects that he wants to end as programs and members of congress want to continue at least they have in the past several years. that's pretty significant. and he has pushed through the largest cuts to date in the defense budget during a time of war ever. and like i said, this started over a year and a half ago with over 20 major programs, weapons systems cuts, over $300 billion in their entirety. he was 95% successful, which is large unly unheard of. so they are required to see these internal to the bureaucracy to see these through, because back to joint forces command, she going to have to be commited to this to make it happen because some of it will be difficult for a lot

of people, understandably. and to legitimately have make the case and have a rational discussion, requires that he stay on board. host: there are criticism about the air systems and nave systems and they're expensive. what is being done about the land systems, a lot of what we'll see on ground conflicts like in afghanistan and iraq? guest: all of the services force structure is constantly under review. the secretary, as part of his cuts last year eliminated the army's future combat systems program and has replaced it with a new ground combat vehicle program and asked the army to deal with the fielding this within five to seven years. the army's medium-weight combat vehicles are 30 and 40 years old. they have to be replaced. there's no doubt about it. this will set the program back, however, i argued the army needs these types of vehicles yesterday. but nonetheless, there is a program in place to move

forward and the army is just under scrutiny even though our current operations are particularly focused on ground forces. or host: our next call, tennessee, charles on our independent line. caller: good morning. we were warned about this. we were warned about this from our founding fathers. you brought up the phrase in your party of conversations, america's responsibilities around the world. i would like for you to point out in the constitution anywhere where the framing fathers said we had responsibilities around the world. as a matter of fact, they warned us against as far as foreign entangelement. and the other came from eisenhower about the military complex. we have created a monster that has to be fed. and now we're in this can on dran where we almost have to start wars and keep wars going

just to justify the monster of the military industrial complex. so what do we do here? you know. we're no longer a country of peace. we're a country of war. like george orwell says in 1984, in his book, these wars are not being fought to be won, they're being fought to be continued. and you, ma'am, i don't know, you're a per pet tuor of war also. and it's ashame that we're in this condition now that this country has not heeded the warnings of the forefathers, not heeded the warnings of people wiser presidents than the ones we have now. guest: if you look at what's comprized the u.s. grand strategy for the last half century post world war ii, it is a bipartisan president of

both political parties has basically commited the united states to global commitments and treaty responsibilities and securities around the world. presidents who didn't want to get involved, for example, president clinton did not want to get involved in bosnia and had too commit military forces and the government to that effort, if you look at what the united states actually does around the world, we are a global country with global commitments and global responsibilities. now, if the u.s., if the president says we don't need to do this any more, if he wants to abandon certain foreign policy commitments, i would welcome that discussion, and then you can turn back to the military and say well now what capabilities can we abandon or what can we shed as a result of these decreases responsibilities? but what we have seen post world war ii is that no president of either political party has diminished, in fact, they have only grown under presidents of both parties. host: virginia, you're next.

go ahead. caller: i just want to make one comment. your guest keeps saying that military spending is going down. and that's not true. military spending right now is at its highest level in real inflation adjusted terms since world war ii, higher than korea, veem, and the cold war. that's what matters. the total amount of money is more than at any time and has grown under secretary gates. and so when she keeps talking about defense spending as a percentage of gdp, that's misleading because there are a lot of other countries who spend a lot less, and part of the reason they do so is because the united states does which she was just explaining, is do for them which they should be doing for themselves. so if you look at nato countries, excluding the united states, they spend less than 1.75% of gdp. so those are the statistics

that every american needs to understand. and i can't understand why people continue to allow this fiction to go forward that the united states is spending less on its military today than we did during the cold war. host: he says it's fiction. guest: in real dollars, the budget is expensive and it's growing. i explained earlier why that is the case. it's largely to make up for the shortfall that was instituted when we cut defense arbitrarily and without acknowledging that the u.s. military was going to continue to be engaged around the world. but two other indicators of the percentage of the federal budget and the economy, which are legitimate indicators the defense budget is declining and it is continued to decline. to use the gdp metric, it's relevant for a couple of reasons. from world war ii to korea to

vietnam the united states has spent so much more on its military as a percentage of our economy. during vietnam we spent almost 9%. during the cold war, 6%. today it's 4. that is important because we are doing so much more with the force that is so much smaller and we're spending this modest amount of money as a percent of the economy. but if you look at the federal budget and where defense falls in the federal budget, over time it's an inverted access defense spending with the big three, social security, medicare, and mid cade. less than 4% on the big three. today the big three is almost 10% of the gross domestic product and defense is 4. so you're seeing this inverse and it's going to continue. if left unchecked, the big three will absorb every federal dollar and it's something that policy makers aren't willing to talk about because we have to because it's the fundamental

job of government first to provide for the common defense. to not talk about reforming entitlements when you're talking about national security is a dereliction. host: georgia, you are next. democrat's line. go ahead. caller: first, i would like to say that this foundation is a right-winged organization that per pet wuts this monster of military industrial complex. if you listen to today's propaganda, we will be fighting in just about everywhere, every country on the face of the globe. we need to start bringing these bases home, five month. you notice, during this time we've got two wars. but the united states has not profitted from it because they're not making any of the manufacturing, none of it is done in the united states. it's being outsourced by the few. if you look at the billionaires that have come out of this war profit yearing, under george

bush, you can compare it to the millionaire that is came out of the great depression, when many people are suffering like it is now, you have very few at the top that are profiting from it. the heritage foundation is an organization that prop gates war. we do not need these wars. and that's basically what i have to say about it. host: the last call -- unless you wanted to respond. guest: i'm from georgia. i'm from atlanta. but i see the nonpartisan issue. this isn't about ideology, it's about defending the country. we are a small donor funded. we don't take -- less than 3% comes from private corporation. we take no government money. so there is no military industrial complex for my job. host: kirk, go ahead. caller: i want to say something to all these nut jobs. listen closely. sweat more in peace, bleed less in war.

that is the most important thing to take away from this. the bad guys aren't going away. those tyrannies aren't going away. they're coming after us. for those who think that 19% of our budget is too much to spend on defending this nation, you're crazy. they're out there. whether it's iran, or elements in pakistan or al qaeda or china, and if you want to have the right weapon system kill only the right bad guy, if you want bloodless war, you would better prepare to pay for it. that's the weapon systems, getting the right people. it costs money. you can sit around and wait for another world war ii happens where everyone dies or you can do it the right way where we spend enough money where we limit our casualties, civil casualties, and even enemy casualties. host: will these cuts be the only that he proposes? guest: these are a series that

he started several years ago. so his budget axe has been wielded for years and he has been very successful. the budget has not been immune to scrutiny. we will see more come over with the president's budget, the fy 12 budget and we will see more angst and scrutiny of these decisions. the last caller raises a good question that i think addresses a lot of other callers' concerns. the cost to the taxpayer is going to be more if you cut defense more in the hopes of saving and there are real consequences to make up for it. if you have to rebuild the military, in the 70s that's what happened in the 70s. in in the 1990s we cut again and to the real inflation adjusted dollars, the defense had to grow. it costs more to rebuild later

than to adequately fund defense in the first place in a stable adjusted level. host: their national security studies research fellow. heritage.org is the website. thank you for your time. next we'll take a look at what is known as for profit colleges, some in congress calling for more oversight and we'll talk about a representative with the college president and c.e.o. after we take a look at the week's news through the pen and ink of political cartoonists.

host: our next guess is harris miller, president and c.e.o. of

the career cleng asobeation. can you give our viewers a sense of you who represent? guest: we represent about 1500 institutions across the country, all post-secondary institutions, some offering certificates and diplomas, some bachelors and some post graduate degrees, including law schools, medical schools, and phd programs. all are operating under the triad, which means they have to be approved by the federal government, state government and one of the accrediting bodies. and the significance of that is only schools approved by all three are allowed to accept students who have federal what's called title 4 money, that comes out of the higher education act. collectively, the sector represents about 3,000 schools. we don't have all of them as members. and about 2.8 million students, which translates into about 10% of higher education today. host: would bit fair to say that these colleges would be

known as for profit colleges? guest: most are. host: and how do you define that? guest: everybody has to make a profit, whether you're harvard, the university of virginia, or a for-profit school. the question is in terms of your tax status, when you have a surplus at the end of the year, do you retain it and put it into some kind of pot of money that you can you, some people call it an endowment? or for more more investment or to distribute to the owners? if you're a for-profit school that means you're a business have to pay taxes, where as a traditional university or community college doesn't pay taxes. host: those for-profit schools, are they mostly brick and mortar, online, or a mix? guest: there are very few purely online. most of the schools have a hybrid model where some of their programs are on line, some of their programs require students to go to a bricks and

mortar campus or some combination of both. because some are career oriented by the nature of the education, it has to be hands-on. you can't learn to be a flebot mist on line. to learn to draw someone's blood, you have to be in a facility and work with that. to be somebody who gets an mba, maybe you can do much more of that program on line with only occasional meetings with your faculty and fellow students. host: would you give om some names? is the university of phoenix one of them? guest: it's one of the largest. it's not a member of my association but it is one of the largest schools. we have large schools traded on the stock exchange like itt tech and devy, we have some that are family owned. if you look at the history, it goes back to the middle of the 19th century. what has occurred the last ten

years is a combination of much more desire by people to get more education combined with the fact that our schools are so focused. you don't go to one of our schools to kind of find yourself the way you do in a traditional school. plus, limited capacity in traditional higher education, because that has grown much more slowly than the demand. if we're going to achieve the goal that president obama has set for us as a nation, which is to return to number one in the world by the year 2020, which mean's educating 10 million more people, we really are the only sector that has the capacity to expand to meet that goal that the president has set. host: a report looked at these schools, and one found, one covert testing at 15 for-profit colleges, found that four, encouraging students to submit false information. all 15 colleges made some type

of deceptive or otherwise questionable statement to undercover applicants such as misrepresenting the applicant's likely salary and not providing clear information about the college's graduation rate. would you agree with that assessment? guest: that was a disappointing day for all of us. there are over 200,000 employees to provide the best possible education for the students. and the fact that the g.a.o. found so many instances of people in either the admissions office or the financial aid office saying things that were incorrect or incomplete or misrepresentation or in some cases allegedly advising students to do something illegal is disappointing. so that is a wakeup call. we have in place systems in our schools and in the government but it's not enough. it's not working. so we announced a six-point plan to dramatically ramp up the consumer protection, dramatically ramp up the

compliance, because something has gone wrong. when i visit these schools, i know that people run them, i talk to the students, i spoke at a graduation two weeks ago at radio city music hall and watched students, many of whom were in dead-end jobs or unemployed who now have a degree or certificate to enable them to get employed. and 80% of the students, even in this tough economy already had a job. but even with those good news stories twofe make sure that we cut the opportunity and chance that is students are going to hear the wrong message from the schools to zero. we're adopting what's called a zero tolerance policy. so every school operator and owner is going to have to understand that yes we have a great system, that works very well in conjunction with traditional higher education, but you cannot say things to students which are inaccurate or incomplete. we have to be fully transparent

and understand that these students must understand everything that they are undertaking when they enroll. so what we're doing is developing a very simple, straight forward form that every admissions officer and financial aid officer will go through with every applicant line by line, not some legalees of 50 pages that you say sign here and say we disclosed it to you. very simple. and no way will there be be a chance that the student hasn't gotten all the key information. host: according to the g.a.o., is it the practice has been because they want more federal dollars coming in? guest: whatever the reason, whether it's a rogue employee saying things he or she shoopt, because the training was poor, or because someone told them to say the wrong thing, i don't care. it's happening too frequently. if the g.a.o. made 15 vezzites and finds 15 problems, that's a

problem. we're going to have to do things like mystery shopping. that's what this was. that was the g.a.o. sending people in pretending to be students. many of our schools already do mystery shopping but we'll have to do it more. if we see trends, if we see these kinds of problems, we have to call our members to order. host: if the schools get federal dollars in the first place, and according to the "new york times," there were $4 billion in grants given, but they already are a for-profit organization, why should they get more money? guest: it goes to the students. they don't get subsidies from state government it is way our state universities do and community colleges do. the students have a choice. they can choose to go to traditional schools. they can go to community colleges. or they can choose to go to our schools.

what has happened, unfortunately, is traditional schools by and large are in the race to the top to get that u.s. news and world report top ranking. and what that requires is you have students with very high sat scores, you have students with very high class rankings, a lot of ap courses. and that is highly correlated with is the wealth of the family. and what that means is lower income students and working adults, which is the demographic that is we tend to attract, have very few opportunities. really the choices they have are community colleges or to go to our institutions. community colleges are much larger but have their own challenges. we focus on having very small classes. many of our students need that kind of personal attention. they weren't the number one person in their class. in fact, many were told by their friends and neighbors and even their support group, you

don't want to go to college. just keep that dead-end job. our students tend to be older also. the demographic is closer to 26 than 18. but they're going to change their lives. they've decided they're not happy where they are. or they decided they need more education to advance their career. in education, a lot of teachers may decide they want to become an administer. many districts require them to have a master's degree. so these are students who are focused. but because they are coming from less affluent backgrounds they qualify for federal aid than much higher rates than students who would go to a harvard or university of virginia. traditional schools, very few students of low income or working adults are admitted except in the community college system. host: our numbers are on the bottom of your screen.

one more thing. a story this week in the "new york times" found that in 2009 the repayment rates for those applying to for profit colleges were 54%, 56 of private nonprofit, and for nonprofit it was 36%. guest: first, there are a lot of anomalies in the system. the data released last night, the students at harvard medical school is 24%. does that mean that all the harvard medical graduates are not paying back their loans? no. it means they're in a status called forebearance. so we have to drill down on the date aveplt generally, what we see is students who attend our

institutions and students who attend traditional schools, accept lower income students, have about the same outcome. the g.a.o. testified at a hearing last fall before the house education and labor committee that would explain student loan defaults as not the ownership structure, not the tax status, it's very highly correlated with the demographics of the students you accept. and because we are willing to serve that unserved population, which are lower income and working adults, just like community colleges we have higher default rates. host: first call is from colorado. chris on our independent line. thank you for waiting. go ahead. caller: i just want to say thank you for taking my call. i love watching you guys in the morning. you always have good reviews. and i want to thank the gentleman for taking my call as well. when you have this proliferation of for-profit

schools, what is the end, the value of a college degree? when you say 80% of students are receiving jobs coming out of school, you mean any jobs. and mcdonald's and best buy. you don't mean jobs in our field. because that's not what you said. it's just, you keep seeing this . you know, if we educate more people, then the infrastructure is going to get built, our economy is going to get back on its feet. that's not the case. you're cheapning the degree and you're exploiting minorities. that's all your doing. guest: thank you for calling in. i would have to fundamentally disagree with the value of our higher education. just on a technical basis for schools that are required to report their placement rates, and that is all schools that are accredited by the national

accreditors. when they say placement, it must be placement in a field relate to their field of study. so you can't train somebody to be a flebot mist and have them end up flipping hamburgers. it doesn't count. it has to be related to the field afstudy. overall, the placement rate is about 71%. that's not bad given a tough economy. when the economy was really strong and unemployment was really low a couple years ago, many of our schools were at 80 or 90%. in terms of the general be pact, many economists, such as dr. tony car vali at georgetown, and northeastern and boston and others have written about the fact that even today with our high unemployment we still have a skilled mismatch. we still have jobs open for people who have certain skills but you can't simply walk off the assembly line at a car

factory plant and become the network administer. you can't simply leave a steel mill that closes down and become a nurse. there is an education and training component. and we today have shortages of nurses in this country, we have shortages of people with certain technological skills. we have green jobs being created. and if you look ahead at people like professor bluestone and professor car vali to four or five years and more people start to retire, some of these shortages continue to be dramatic. so i believe not based on anything that we say, but based on independent, well respected research economists, there is a high demand for people with skills. the last point i would make is, again, all the economists agree is that the earning capacity of an individual with a high school diploma is much lower than someone with an associate's degree, which is much lower than someone with a

bachelor's degree or above. the lifetime earnings different shl can be as much as a million dollars. so not just for the traditional liberal arts school, but for people getting these technical skills related to specific career opportunities. host: nebraska, you are next. republican line. robin. caller: good morning. can we talk about the inflation rate of over the last years of the teachers pay? caller: i'm not an expert on teachers' pay generally. i can talk about our institutions. many use full time faculty now. historically the faculty would be almost all considered part-time or adjunct faculty. faculty who had a profession as an accountant and who in their spare time would teach accounting. but more schools are moving to full time faculty.

one is because our schools teach year round, we don't believe that june, july and august are some magical time that you take off for vacation, that's three more months to go to school. because schools teach in the evening, weekend, on line, we can keep faculties very busy in the class room. sometimes it's literally sitting in a classroom in a bricks and mortar situation, sometimes it's on line. so we're finding more and more that our schools are having a comnage. some faculty is being full time, so is being there as adjunct in addition to the profession they're choosing. in terms of salary, the market determines the sal rifplt we're in a competitive marketplace. some occupations like nursing, not surprisingly people who can teach nursing programs can get paid well because there's a shortage of nurses generally and then there's even a more of a shortage for nurses who have

a master's degree to teach nursing. what's most important and what i find when i visit the schools and meet the faculty at our various events is they are incredibly enthusiastic. our faculty are not hired because they have a great publication record. traditional universities, they want to know, if i hire a faculty member, is that person going to be well known in the research community? is he or she going to publish? you also want to make sure the person can be a good teacher. but the way schools develop their luster is because they have faculty who are primarily known for their research capabilities. and our institution, what really counts is their teaching ability, their ability to communicate, communicate in small groups, and take opportunities who may not be terribly comfortable in that situation. this is really a leap for thom, and get them to understand what they're doing and be prepared for a marketplace. host: what's the difference of

a credit hour in for profit and nonprofit? guest: some of them use with the traditional idea, which is three hours of classroom a week. and a certain number of hours for work outside. but some do it in more compressed time and do it in terms of projects, not so much you actually sit at a seat for a certain amount of time but can you complete certain projects or demonstrate a certain amount of knowledge. i'm very excited about what's going on because we have a situation where i think all of higher education is trying to figure out how do we get focused on outcomes, not just input. traditional higher education has said we're really good because of our inputs. we have these very prestigious faculty, these wonderful laboratories, class rooms, this computer system. and very few people are asking the question, what happens at the end of the day? do the students graduate in large numbers? are they able to take that education and turn it into an

outcome? for some programs and classes, it probably just doesn't make any sense to ask those questions. if someone is trained in liberal arts, you don't expect them to walk out of a program where they've been a classics major and become a clastics. but more people are asking is there a tie-in between this, whether it's higher education or our sector between what you have done for one, two, four years and what you're able to do after that. and i think what the faculty, administrators and bodies are working around is making sure we're not caught in that idea that you measure by how many hours you sit in a classroom but tied together with measurements of knowledge gain. host: how much does it cost more? guest: it costs the consumer more to attend a college, but the total cost is less. let me try to explain that. first, the average cost according to the college board is about $14,000.

that's lower than private, not for profit universities, which are about 23,000. but it's more than state colleges and universities which are closer to 8,000 or 9,000 and more expensive than a community college. why the difference? because every student who attends a state university or state college or community college is subdiesed by if taxpayers of that state in order to keep the direct costs of the student down. we don't get those subsidies. instead, the money flows through the student. which means the sturent, instead of delg a $10,000 subsidy that pedro wrote that never showed up, the student has to come up with the money through their savings and work or is eligible for federal grants or federal loans or state loans. so from the consumer point of view, that is his or her skin in the game, where as if you go to a comment college or state university, the taxpayer is paying for a lot of that

edscation. host: so that goes back to the concern by the g.a.o. because you're going to get more federal money in the long run. guest: no one is going to defend fraud and obviously the justice system will work. if those individuals commited fraud, that's the easy one. they're going to suffer the consequences, and no one is condoning fraud. the question is, the one we're more concerned about is if people are trying to do it right but they're not doing it right. they're not intentionally saying to the student, put a lie down in order to get your federal aid. we're more concerned about the gray area. is an admissions representative always understanding that yes you want to encourage the student to attend but you have to be as transparent as possible. you have to provide every bit of information. you have to tell the student what have our placement rates been. what is the loan amount you are borrowing in total. and, by the way, this is how

much you're going to have to pay back every month. you have to understand, the prospective student, that once you take out one of these loans, the federal government will follow you into your grave. you will repay this. this is not like a car loan, where if you don't pay it, they'll repo sess your car. the federal government said even in bankruptcy more student loans are not dischargeable. they have to get the student to understand the potential rewards and they're out there for students who go through our program to complete, but also understand the risk. this is not, for example, like going to a community college in many cases where the student may have relatively skin in the game, where because of the state government subsidy the student may be paying virtually nothing to go to the community college and say, well, if i don't make it no big deal. where as in our institutions,

if you are borrowing money, you owe that. so don't make this decision lightly and don't think of it like a car loan that you're going to walk away from. host: mary, go ahead. guest: -- caller: my concern about this situation, if it was simply trade schools where people went in to learn a career as far as a trade, there was a time when nursing was not a degree program. a four-year college degree. but it's the fact that associate's degrees, four-year programs, master's can be had in a year's time. that's not true education. and i see this constantly coming up when i see these colleges, and i'm very familiar with some of them, that will

only allow one economic theory to be taught. they become propaganda mills for what has got us from this horrible economic problem that has developed over the 30 years. and when students aren't allowed to learn how to think, to challenge ideas, to compare ideas, when a college demands that only one thing be taught, one theory, we're in trouble as a nation. host: we'll leave it there. guest: let me address your first part of your question. in terms of our professional programs, such as nursing programs, this country has a dramatic need for more nurses, people believe that somewhere between 40,000 and 50,000 people who are qualified to be nurses, who wanted to go into a nursing program were not able to do so before our schools

begand to expand it. even today there's more demand. the metric we have in terms of quality is that students who go through our program pass the test for nursing at or above the rate of nurses who go to traditional schools. and that's probably the simplest metric to see, that they have to take these same exams after they complete their programs as the nurse coming from a traditional school and they do just a's well or better. last year in this country, 10% of all new nurses into the field of nursing graduated from a private sector college or university. and they did that by going through our schools in many cases they did it more quickly because, again, we don't take off for surveillance. when you go to our -- summers. if you want to get a four-year degree, you can get it in three years because we don't waste the surveillance. but looking at the -- summers.

we see that students who emerge from our institutions do just as well as students who go to traditional schools. in terms of schools teaching a particular theory, i'm not aware of that. students who go to our schools who are pursuing either associates or bachelor's have to take, in addition to the training and education related to the career they're pursuing, they also have to take general courses the same way students who go to traditional colleges and universities. so they take history, english, math classes. but i'm not aware that our schools have any particular philosophy. it's like any other institution. they choose the faculty and in those so-called general education courses the faculty are supposed to teach a broad range of issues to teach those students how to think. but again, let's be clear. when you go to one of our institutions, it is not seen as a time to grow up.

it is not seen as an opportunity to change your major every semester as we know many students do at traditional schools. it is not a time just to find yourself. the students who go to our schools have to decide before they enter that they have a specific goal in mind, that they want to be a nurse, a senior person in the administration. they want to be someone in the arts. and they're not going to find themselves, they're not going to discover themselves. they're going to take classes and training and education and do internships and externships that will provide them the knowledge base and experience to go out in the job market with that preparation. host: club bus, ohio. republican line. jim. caller: thank you for taking my call. i have always watched these colleges with dubious merit. my concern is that they are a business and this represents corporate welfare. they are packaging their offering as a great value to

the disenfran chiced and those who are looking to better themselves. but they are for profit. this is a business. they have dubious merit. the programs, 90% are not worth the money that they cost. i can't speak to nursing. but 90% of them play on the dreams of people looking to better themselves and taking advantage at the expense of the u.s. taxpayer. that's my opinion. host: aside from nursing, what would be one of those programs? he left. . .

if you look at students who attend private sector colleges and universities i represent, over 60% of them obtain an associate degree within three years. the same students going to a community college, it is about 22%. we have some advantages over the community colleges. one advantage is our students are older and more committed.

they have more of a focused than an 18-year-old. there is another it vantage. we put a lot of resources in supporting our students. we have small classrooms. many of our students are facing obstacles that very few of us faced in college. they are working adults. 76% of our students are working adults. almost 50% or single parents. in addition to providing high- quality education, we also try to provide a support system around that. we do not succeed all of the time. over 60% get their associate degree. we are working every day to figure out ways to get higher and higher even though we have students that would be classified as being at risk. that means they are the first person in their family to go to college. that means they are working obligor going to school. that means that all and they

came from a poor high-school background. yet, we achieved over 60% completion. that is indicative of the fact that we will promote the resources to provide the support around the student in addition to the classroom. host: for-profit universities at to require a yearly statement. guest: if they are a publicly traded company they have to do that. all schools have to report their financial to the u.s. department of education. that is it called a performance ratio test to make sure the school has enough money to operate. the department of education does not want to get a phone call and hear that a college-shutdown and left 2000 students on the street. the schools are not publicly traded.

the schools that are publicly traded have to report fully. host: fargo, north dakota. kevin on the independent line. caller: hell are you guys all doing today? i have more of a comment, i guess. you know, we are kind of conservative, but we had a lot of liberals here, too. i was wondering, we have a lot of our kids going to other schools that are bigger and bigger schools. i was wondering, in getting a lot of questions from these kids. they want to know if they are going to be shut down because they have a conservative view. i did some raw data on it. they have a point, you know.

host: we will leave it there. what is the percentage of graduates to attend for-profit schools that get jobs? guest: it has to do with the accreditation process. if you are regionally accredited -- traditional universities do not have a specific metric that must be reported to them. some schools voluntarily report their placement. some schools must report their placement rate to be a creditor and be a creditor, in turn, as to check on that. the two largest are creditors are reporting placement rates of somewhere around 70%. it was hired two or three years ago when the economy was at full bore and unemployment was low.

host: you said earlier if he were in a nursing program -- >> if you cannot maintain this replacement rates, you have to shut down. for example, the katherine gibbs schools which trained mostly women to work in an office. back in the '50s and '60s when you had secretaries and they were typists and personal assistants. that does not exist anymore. a few years ago they closed them down because they could not in good conscience recruit a student and tell a student they would find them a job because that job simply does not exist anymore. that is of the marketplace works. if you fall below a certain standard -- a people below 70%, there will be serious questions raised about whether you can

continue that program. while students become aware of our programs to a lot of the marketing and advertising -- and i admit that we are doing it. we do not have sports teams. what convinces most students to enroll or not enroll is that they talk to someone they trust -- a family member, a friend, an employer who says that school is right for you and i know that school. our reputation is not going to go well, you will not get that endorsement its students are completing their program and not having a reasonable chance of actually getting a job. the reputation of the school host: goes down chattanooga, tennessee. you are next. caller: i appreciate you being on here. yours is a great organization. i have several questions. there will be changes in admission policies procedures

and compensation. where does c.c. a see that going? for-profit colleges have been on the cutting edge of developing practical programs to get people jobs quickly. what new programs d.c. emerging out there? on the student loan repayment problem, what do you think the schools that are in the lower tier, how will they respond to that? what specific things will they be doing? how do you see them responding in getting out of that problem? guest: as you pointed out, our schools had been the leaders in on-line education and not being routed in traditions that go back 800 years in this world.

we have demonstrated that recently in terms of quickly developing new programs, for example, in the green jobs areas. we get input from employers that they can provide education related to bring jobs. we understand this is a great future. traditional schools will start adding these programs. there is a whole review progress toward traditional schools. they usually take months if not years to adjust. secondly, the health-care fields is one of the fastest-growing fields. again, our schools because they are in constant dialogue with employers, it can make those changes. the first question was about admissions. our schools have to understand that what you want to encourage students to enroll -- many who are frightened to go to college because they had been told by

their friends or family that they do not want to go to college -- you have to present the potential rewards to the students. you also have to understand -- you also have to make sure the student understand the risk. admissions officers get enthusiastic about the benefit of the education that they do not fully disclose the risks. that is what we are talking about coming up with a simple form that every and missions of assert will go through with every applicant to make sure that every student understands the reward and the opportunity this education will aboard her. you got to be very clear about the loans. you have to be clear that that is a risk they are undertaking. in terms of the student loans and the schools that are having a big problem was to the loan repayment, cca has a default initiative.

when i first came here about four years ago, not a lot of schools participated, in part because there has been a pretty clear plan from 1992 until 2006 that student loan defaults were dropping dramatically. they were dropping across the board. i am not sure schools were investing as much as they need to. that has changed. the economy has slowed down. people had begun to default on student loans. deskill separate in much more effort. make sure you understand mr. or mrs. prospective students, you of this money when you finish the program or not. the government will find you and make you pay it back. let's sit down and figure it out. can you budget to pay this loan back in terms of your housing and your maintenance? we have to make sure that we are as good as possible in helping

students that will have trouble. they are from a bit lower socioeconomic demographic. we can work with them to help them understand that if they enter in at the station and applied for a long from the federal government or a private institution that it is manageable. do not get so carried away with it really be student that they do not understand the commitment they are undertaking. the cause of the concerns of congress, d.c. more regulation of this industry coming? guest: we really do not need new laws and regulations. what we need is enforcement of the existing laws and regulations. we have said this consistently. we are pleased to see that yesterday the secretary of education sent a letter to the chairman of the senate committee laying out specific actions that the department of education undertakes to increase the enforcement. we think that is a good thing.

we also believe the accrediting bodies will have to get more aggressive in terms of making sure the schools are falling not just the letter of the law, but the spirit. the states have to get more and bald. the triad of those three bodies have incredible bodies -- have incredible power to make sure the school stay in line. we welcome aggressive enforcement. the vast majority of the schools and the vast majority of the employees are doing it right. they are doing what is in the best interest of the student, the institution, and the taxpayer supporting that student. they are not happy to find out that someone across the street that they are competing with is cutting corners, is not telling the truth, is encouraging students to do a thing wrong. the great leveller is to make sure enforcement is widespread. the second great leveller is more self organization. coming up with a form that

everyone agrees on. no perspective student can walk out of an interview and say that they do not understand that they have to pay back these loans. i do not understand my monthly payments will be $600 a month. i understand that -- i do not understand that i was not guaranteed a job. host: one more call. good morning, iowa. you are on the democrat line. caller: i am it really upset about this. i understand people calling in and asking questions, but there has been documentaries done on these for-profit corp. colleges. what you are doing is targeting the poor. you are targeting the unemployed, the uneducated and you are taking advantage of their need at this time.

once the poor and the uneducated and the unemployed are privy to these corporations that have been trying to take the lowest of low, the money from the poor people to make a profit all of them is reprehensible. i know you are being investigated. there are people that have had your colleges. they have gone there. they are not qualified when they get educated to your colleges -- so-called education. people, i am surprise you are not calling and telling people how bad these for-profit corporations are. guest: i would encourage you to come and visit our schools.

800 students received their degrees and certificates at radio city music hall. tears of joy to slow down their faces because they did not believe they would be a college graduate, but now they are. they have a new career path. they are setting a model for their children that they can do it even though people have told them they cannot do it. you would have a much different opinion, i assure you. i encourage you to go to one of our schools. good to a graduation. are our schools perfect? no. unfortunately, i say as a taxpayer and a citizen, even traditional schools have a very low graduation rate. completion has to be a priority. our schools offering a service to the students into the country and providing needed education. if we are not doing it right, we will fix those problems.

but the fundamental importance of being part of the higher education system, to achieve president obama's goal is undeniable. we have to be -- host:career.org is there website. we appreciate you being on the show. we will have sensibly -- will have cynthia kelly. we will take a look at some of the the dish from nagasaki and hiroshima. we'll be right back. >> i will be a person who has stood up for the principles for the state of florida. i am going to fight only for the people of florida. >> if this campaign 2010. the c-span video library makes it easy to follow the election

cycle. it is all free on your computer, any time. >> there you are, senator. not a bad guess, either. daniel webster used to use it. >> daniel webster said here? >> harry truman said he hated this movie. at the time, harry truman was seen as the senator from the been the guest machine from kansas city. he thought the movie was looking at him and his relationship with the political machine back home. >> donald ritchie on washington movies and his new book sunday night on c-span's "q&a". >> this weekend on but tv, claude s. steel on education in the united states. afterwards, time magazine says

that our view of war as adults are shaped by our maturity. also, how to deal with iran. our 2010 full book preview. this booktv.org. "washington journal" continues. host: cynthia kelly is with us. we are here to talk about the 65th anniversary of world war ii. we know a lot about the specifics of history. we wanted to talk about some recent found -- some recently found out footage that shows some of the aftermath. when we showed that -- if you could tell us what people arguing as they look at this video. some of it is a little graphic in nature. "people see?

guest: you will see the utter devastation of the cities of hiroshima and nagasaki. they are so obliterated within 10 square miles from the center of where the bomb dropped. the city of hiroshima was flattened. these videos were so controversial for the army when they persalts them. the original footage was in black and white and taken by a japanese film crew. when the army discovered there was such footage, they confiscated it. then they decided they should have the record of it. the devastation, the housing that is completely collapsed. most of the buildings -- see a few of their standing in the distance -- were made of concrete.

many were made of wooden -- many were wooden structures. they were not very substantial. the blast created when sub 1,000 miles per hour. that swept through without -- swept through with a force. it knocks things down. general macarthur, who was in charge of the occupation of japan immediately after the war, he commissioned the army's film crew. you have probably seen "victory at sea." they had quality, hollywood- caliber documentary filmmakers to help the war try to capture the history. the 11 of them, two of them were civilian filmmakers, were recruited to go to 20 different cities that had been affected by the war. they focused on five out of 30 reels that they took on

hiroshima and nagasaki. host: once the video was shocked, why are we seeing most of this now? as it ought always been classified? guest: after the ticket, they decided it was inappropriate to release to the public. exactly why, there has been a lot of speculation. somebody interviewed colonel mcgovern it was in charge of the project. he was very surprised that it was whisked away by the air force and put into the archives in footlockers in security. it was really hidden away. eventually, they made their way to the national archives, but

they were still classified until the '70s. they were in classified, but nobody knew they existed. they remained out of sight and out of mind for decades. host: appropriate because of the reaction stateside guest: -- guest: this was coming after a very secret operation called the manhattan project, which was the effort beginning in 1942 and was studied in the years leading up to them, to develop the atomic bomb. there was a history of secrecy and not letting anyone get what they were doing, even the people who were working on the manhattan project. host: in your opinion, did that secret extent to how many casualties there were? guest: we know now because we

joined the japanese in many studies to calculate how many casualties there were. the japanese records were destroyed. nobody is exactly sure how many people were in harm's way in hiroshima and nagasaki. there may have been as many as 20,000 koreans who had been working for the japanese as slave laborers. they are unaccounted for. the records are in perfect, but we do know that about 54% of those in hiroshima and nagasaki who were in a certain 10-mile radius were killed by the bomb. in nagasaki, it was 70,000 people. in hiroshima, it was 100,000 people instantly killed. the effect of the blast was inversely related to the

distance where the bomb was detonated. host: basically, everything was level. guest: yes, it was. it was 5400 degrees fahrenheit. the temperature of boiling water is 212 degrees. it was thousands of times more and hotter than the hottest fire. birds were incinerated in mid flight. host: piquancy what is left. it will continue to be a graphic. we want to warn you. if you want to ask questions about it, here are the numbers. 202-737-0001 for republicans. 202-737-0002 for democrats.

202-628-0205 for independence. you can also send us a twister. here is robert on our independent line. caller: i am just curious, how many people live in hiroshima and nagasaki today? guest: that is a good question. i think it is 1 million or more in each city. i am sorry, i do not know. host: robert, do you have a follow-up? here we have areas that were totally devastated by two bombs. the areas have rebounded for lack of a better word. guest: there were studies about

the residual radiation on the ground. it rests remarkable. they found that the background levels in hiroshima a year later worked less than background levels elsewhere. there really wasn't a persistent detection of radioactive activity short of the year after the bomb and maybe even within weeks. there was something called the black rain that precipitated the radiation after the cloud had dropped its best and droplets of moisture that looked like marbles. that was within a short period of the blast. after that, the bombs were 1,900 feet when they were detonated.

the mushroom cloud wet 4 miles into the air. there was a lot of dispersion in the air as opposed to dropping immediately on the ground. host: talk about the effects of burning. guest: the burning happened in this instantaneous moment of the explosion. the heat of the blast was so great with the center being 5400 degrees fahrenheit that it instantly burned all animals, vegetables, minerals, children were playing in the open and disappeared. they were only shadows in some cases. the people you see here were probably outside of a mile from the epicenter, probably two or 3 miles away. the further they were away from the blast center, the far less

this is they received. on her skin, you can see the scars that formed from the burns. the blast of heat and radioactive heat was followed by a huge wind. 1,000 miles an hour. often, skin that had been blistered by the heat was pollard -- was followed -- this young victim has hair falling out. about four weeks or so after, people who thought they had escaped the blast and were not damaged as the first person with the skin stars were, the radiation was poisoning them. the japanese suffered from

fatigue, and vomiting, diarrhea, their blood count was very low. , their hair began to fall out and they did not know what it was. they call it disease x. they did not know how to treat it. it was undiagnosed. the first american to visit from chicago went to the hospitals. the doctors said they had medication, but they did not know what the disease was or how to treat them. about half of the people died instantly and the next have died within four to six weeks of acute radiation poisoning. host: philadelphia, pennsylvania, republican line. john. caller: truman faced a terrible dilemma.

obama this is a nuclear iran. do we bomb them with conventional bombs? who knows whether we would be saving people in israel or saudi arabia because iran could go ahead in a fanatical big finale drop the bomb. guest: i think the circumstances between world war ii in the present are so vastly different. back in world war ii we were the only nation that had atomic weapons. that is what we a cent and we were correct. we began the whole project taking that the germans or two years ahead of us. in fact, by the time we got started, they dropped out. they decided it cannot be done.

but today, there are many nations that have atomic weapons. as far as we know, iran made. i think it is a dangerous game. i think this is what we should have learned from hiroshima and nagasaki is that these weapons are indiscriminate. you cannot just target a military factory and not white al 810 square mile -- wipe out a 10 mile radius. conventional weapons are far more targeted. i think that has been the preference of the last several decades. host: here is president truman on his decision to drop the bomb in 1945. >> a short time ago, an american airplane dropped one bomb on

hiroshima. that bomb has more power than 20,000 tons of dynamite. the japanese began the war from the air at pearl harbor. they have been repaid many fold and the end is not yet. with this bomb, we have now added a new and revolutionary increase in destruction to supplement the growing power of our armed forces. in their present form, bombs are in proportion -- bombs are in production. it is an atomic bomb. it is the harnessing of the basic power of the universe. it has been leased against those who brought war to the far east. host: cynthia kelly, how would you add to that? guest: i think that truman had a

difficult decision, but it was probably easier than we think it was. you have to understand his decision. you have to put yourself into the context of the time and figure out what did he know, what was the way in? the caller said he was concerned with the invasion. we were preparing for the invasion of japan in november. be a set number of americans whose lives were saved has been a subject of contention for decades. we will probably never know. in the most historians agree that the dropping of the bomb did it bring about the end of the war. it had gone on for six years and cost 50 million lives. if you think about its -- he did

not use the weapon and we spent the equivalent of $25 billion building it, what would people think of truman if we went on and there were millions of lives lost? he had a tough decision, but there will be no consensus on whether he did the right thing or not. from his perspective, he was looking at some options that were not attractive and ending the war was certainly an attractive option. host: see city, iowa, democratic line. caller: my dad was on his way to invade japan at okinawa. he mentioned to me that i had -- i would probably not be around today if they had not jat the

bomb. what are the estimates on the number of deaths and injuries -- injuries that would have occurred if we had to invade japan? secondly, the japanese did have warning after the first bomb before the second bomb was dropped. the leadership of the country ignored the warnings after the devastation of the first bomb. that is why the second bomb was dropped. host: before you weigh in, i will add this. some contend that the atomic bomb saved but japanese and american lives. guest: i have had japanese television reporters that tell me that they are grateful that we drop the bomb. they had the same story, that they would not be here.

their parents and others would have been swept up in the war. the japanese were training women and very young boys and girls to fight in their homeland. it would have been a very bitterly contested part of the war. people were fighting to the death. the japanese, especially, would not surrender. in terms of numbers, some have low-balled it. the low end was 250,000. the other is in the millions. secretary james schlesinger was at a conference we had a few years ago. he said there was new information that the japanese had known our invasion plans and unbeknownst to our secret information, they had been

reinforcing that area, bringing their troops over the sea at night. the invading forces should be three to one against the and 80 invadee.t theinvan that is another perspective. it may never be able to be answered. host: alabama on our republican line. still ahead. caller: thank you for taking my call. have you ever been to hiroshima? guest: no, i have caller: not. i have been there. it is an interesting place. i was in the marines. i have been there a couple of times. the japanese people were glad to see us.

they treated me nice up there. i have great respect for japanese families. what is your position about the use of atomic bombs in the future? host: thank you caller. guest: after the brahms were dropped, oppenheimer do -- oppenheimer directed the project, had misgivings about the bomb and the successor bombs. he did not want to see these weapons turn into an arms race. he understood that this change the whole nature of warfare and it changed the nature of nations relationships with each other. no longer with the winner take all. there was no winning this war. gorbachev and reagan announced in 1985 after the geneva summit

that a nuclear war cannot be won and must not be thought. host: we have some audio of dr. oppenheimer talking about the manhattan project. >> some of you will see photographs of the nagasaki strike. you see the steel girders twisted and wrecked. they were many miles apart. some of you will have seen pictures of the people who were burned or hacked to look at the waist of hiroshima. that bomb at nagasaki would have taken out 10 square miles. because it is known that the project cost $2 billion and we dropped just two bombs, it is easy to think that they are very expensive. but are any serious undertaking and without any elements of technical novelty whatsoever, just doing things that have already been done, that estimate

would be high by a factor of 1000. atomic weapons can be cheap. host: what do you make of this town? guest: he is very serious. he was with the los alamos scientist after the war. that was an excerpt from a speech in 1945. as the author of "dr. atomic" showed he was an extremely philosophical person. he was very disturbed by the impact of these horrific weapons. he saw that this new generation of weapons brought the world to a different place. that we would have to draw upon our common humanity, not just

nation to nation, but person to person and realised that there are simple ways to resolve disputes. by going toward nuclear war, there would be destruction. there was no way in which he foresaw that you could have total shield against incoming nuclear weapons. host: tallahassee, fla. on the independent life caller:. thank you for taking my call. prior to the dropping of atomic bombs, there was considerable incendiary bombing. i was wondering if there was comparable to the speech of the aftermath of the discussion of the cities and the statistics for comparative purposes. thank you. guest: there should be.

part of what general macarthur's filming effort, a part of what you are seeing tonight in color, they looked at 20 cities. hiroshima and nagasaki were only two. our allied bombing raids started in march of 1945. they had basically devastated every city larger identity thousand people. tokyo lost 380,000 people in conventional bombing raids over two nights. the number of deaths total were something like 550,000. if you look at the photographs, it looks remarkably similar. if you just look at help latin that the areas were and the destroy sections of the city. the photos of the victims in

the hospital and how horrific the effect of the blast and the actor matt of the radiation sickness, that is what distinguishes it. caller: truman did not consult with any of the democrats are the republicans when the bomb was dropped. it was the democrats that have caused all of our problems to our history. they were the ones that all the slaves, they started the jim crow laws, they are the ones you said you could not shrieking out of be drinking fact -- felton if you were black. guest: i don't know what it was a political decision. i thought he was going to talk about general growth -- general grove who had a determination

to have these bombs are ready and to use them. because of the secrecy, there were not many people consulted on the decision to drop the bomb. there were those who later expressed that militarily they thought a demonstration might work better, but that is monday morning quarterbacking. i do not think this was brought to you by one political party or the other. i think it was a nation united by an enemy that was about to destroy the world. host: how long after the first bomb was dropped that the american public was made aware of what happened? guest: they were made aware within hours. chairman was actually on his way back from potsdam. he was steaming across the ocean. he had a press release by the

white house. there were many that followed. there was an effort to let the public know about this. there are some wonderful photographs of people in oak ridge, tenn., holding up a huge banner. they knew for the first time on august 6, that their efforts to build the bombs ingredients and so forth, although they did not know it had been successful. host: philadelphia, pa. on the democrat line. caller: as did at last they met, i am sure that when the public felt that the bombs had been dropped, i am sure you stood up and each year. give me a few minutes, please, to talk. you made a statement earlier on that the japanese are now thinking of this, banking you,

rather. that is ludicrous. that is like the bid -- that is like the indians thanking you for coming over here and murdering them and stealing their land. that is like these delays thanking you for being and lynching and raping them. you people would justify your murdering ways. guest: i do not think that was intended to be a thank you for dropping the bomb. they were glad the war was over. their nation had been suffering. they had lost a lot of their men to war. it had been very hard on the average japanese civilian. host: union, new jersey on our democrat line.

union, new jersey, are you there? texas ando cyprus, the independent line. caller: we know that tuskegee is known for escorting bombers in hostile territory. did anyone escort these bombers over japan? guest: there were observation flights that went with the bombing. there were usually three planes. there would be the observation plane that would take measurements of the bomb's blast as best they could. then there was the navigation plain that the royal air force had a member that watched. there were other observers in addition pauling at some distance -- following at some

distance. host: when you talk about the reaction of americans, how did other nations react? guest: 85% of americans polled were very pleased to note that we had ended the war. they had no idea what an atomic bomb was and how it differs from a regular bomb and what the attacks were. nobody knew what they were exactly. they just need the war was ended. they were very pleased. some radio commentators immediately began to talk about, "if we can do this and the physics are understood by other nations, maybe we should be worried that someone might drop one on us." there was this beginning of apprehension that followed immediately within the weeks following that this could lead to something that was not a

cause for jubilation. host: tennessee, republican line. caller: i was wondering, all those blast that they set off in nevada, i was stationed 175 miles from their. we could see the sky light up. i was in the marines. how far away do you think that dust and stuff will travel from a blast in a flat desert? guest: the winds are curing particulates, but the test in 1950 were detected first in

separate cisco and then in paris. these things eventually go around the world. chernobyl headed toward europe. it was in italy and then norway. it was much smaller quantities. host: andrew on the democrat line. you are on, the head. caller: i am 84-years old. i just want everyone to know -- you so late sorry. i am emotional. i think truman did a good job. fort lewis in washington was the embarkation point. we were expecting to go for the invasion of tokyo.

i was an infantryman. i am very emotional over the fact that truman did the right thing. thank you. guest: a lot of people agree with you and feel the same emotion of great relief. a lot of people had their loved ones on their way across the pacific. i had one veteran tell me that he flew over the pacific and it looked as if he could walk from debt to debt. the ships were set in many. they're getting ready pour this. paul newman, the actor, was out there. he became involved in this history and appreciated the work of the manhattan project

scientists and the people working to help end the war. host: where there may effects of people doing open-air test on the weapons? guest: there have been a lot of studies. after the war, they decided they needed to build and protect the bomb, build bigger bombs, and test them on land. they use the nevada test site as a place to test them. later date realised the fallout from these blasts had affected in the cattle and sheep of the ranchers in that area. there have been numerous studies on the health effects.

there are records that i suggest you look up. i do not know how they come out. there were certainly ill effects. that is something the government has to address. host: other cases of people in nevada getting sick? guest: that is something, too, where you have to check the records. there were a lot of claims from these blast. host: austin tx on the independent line. caller: it is my understanding that we did not need to drop the bomb. the japanese had no navy. they had no air force. they were cut off. this was really just a show of force to fight in the russians. what is your opinion on that? guest: i recommend you an

excellent book by a stanford professor called "racing b. anthony." he described these decisions from the point of view of, not all the truman, but hirohito and stalin. they knew that things were looking grim in terms of the ending of the war. this was a culture that was very militaristic. they did not want to surrender. even after the emperor had decided that they must surrender, but the first time in history the public heard the voice of the crane. there was an attempted coup. there were people that were very unhappy in the military about surrendering. that was not a monolithic decision on his part. it was very contentious.

they had been going to the soviets to try to broach a piece. they were counting on stalin to let german added that the japanese wanted to surrender. stalin had a mind that is all. the russians wanted to get the islands back that they had lost. they were moving troops. they were stalling part-time and were anxious to get in the war so they could have a role in carving up the far east much like they carved up eastern europe. host: we have another quote from president truman. >> we are now prepared to destroy ultimately and completely every productive

enterprise the japanese have a in in the city. we shall destroy their factories and their communications. let there be no mistake, we shall completely destroy japan's power to make war. will spare the japanese people from utter destruction that the ultimatum of july 26 at potsdam. their leaders rejected that ultimatum. if they do not accept our terms, they can expect a rain of bombs from the air, the like of which has never been seen on this earth. host: your comment. guest: he issued the ultimatum and, i believe, was going to carry through on it. the irony was we only had two bombs ready to go. there was a prediction of bad

weather. originally the second bomb was to be dropped on august 11, not so close to august 6, because the forecast was for five days of storms. the date was moved up to august 9. that is when the bomb was dropped on nagasaki. tokyo had very little information in those intervening two days about the conditions in hiroshima. everything was destroyed. 90% of the nurses and doctors are lost their lives. you can assume that the telecommunications systems were in shambles. the people had been killed. the word about the devastation in hiroshima had not yet reached the emperor. as i indicated before, it was not an easy sell that the military should surrender.

the second bomb was a one, to punch. groves was determined to do it. after it was released, truman said that was enough. he wanted to get the japanese time to get back to us. host: new jersey, the republican line, you are our last call. caller: i was wondering, when the bomb was first tested, is it true that the scientist who designed the bomb were afraid of a chain reaction that would destroy our country? thank you. guest: you are probably referring to the jetty site which is in the desert about 120 miles south of albuquerque. it was the first test of an atomic bomb. it was a plutonium