[captioning performed by national captioning institute] host: in nevada voters have a caucus today and they plan to air speeches from newt gingrich at 10:00 and mitt romney for 11:00. for the latest information go to our campaign 2012 site at c-span.org. in a reverse decision the susan g. komen foundation decided to restore the funding of planned parenthood many commenting on both sides. we want to get your comments as well for this first 45 minutes.

here is how to join us. if you want to call us, the lines for republicans 202-737-0002. democrats 202-737-00001 and independents 202-628-0205. or e-mail us at journal at c-span.org. or twitter. because of investigations on capitol hill plus of planned parenthood politicians commented. the republican from florida in a press release that was issued february 3 said the original decision to stop funding grants planned parenthood raised the equivalent funds within 24 hours. it is clear it doesn't need the komen funding.

i believe that planned parenthood could be and should be totally self-sufficient as with other nonprofit organizations and spare america's hard earned taxpayers received.illion it i will continue the investigation into planned parenthood's use taxpayer funds. this oversight is necessary because of its record of fraud discovered through state medicaid audits and its other abuses and illegal activities such as ignoring state reporting requirements on sexual abuse. that is cliff stearns, the republican from florida. the chief deputy whip on oversight and investigations from colorado released a statement as well. here is part of it. she says more troubling is komen's failure to employ a science based process. political concerns seem to be placed above the need for medically necessarily screenings.

i have grave concerns last fall seemingly during the time they decided to change the policy it enacted a new policy of refusing to fund the pursuit of life saving research despite the history of recognizing its great potential. given the resources of the organization and potential of the e.s.c. for breast cancer treatment and cure it disturbing komen has turned back because of state political pressures that led to the decision. political motivated grant process is the no place in the pursuit of life saving treatments and research. she was commenting on the grants given to planned parenthood. both of those guests will be on our program next thursday to talk about this week's decision and the funding issues and things along that line. our first 45 minutes are devoted to your comments. if you want to cull 202-737-00

to 2 for republicans. it is the e-mail journal at c-span.org and twitter it is c-span w.j. colorado springs, colorado is up first. lynn on the republican line. >> thank you. i'm a cancer survivor and two years out. i am a republican but i really am getting very sick and tired of the politics that have entered into women's health situation. that people are getting real tired of it. i certainly am. i don't understand why there has to be a platform for republicans. host: as far as politically motivated what do you think about comments that the decision by the komen foundation was politically motivated? >> i have done research and i'm seeing it has been since they

got karen ham mechanicphmechani hamill. it looks like it is bible belt oriented. they are all out of the bible belt area and then when you are out of there you have a totally different culture. host: she is the public policy senior vice president of the susan g. komen foundation. i'm other, finish your statement. caller: i think that i can see where they have been very careful about where their funds went. they fund research at kent state. it is under investigation. i'm sure they fund charities for the catholic organizations. it is under investigation as well. we have to get the politics out. maybe we need to change the politics. host: sterling virginia, in connection. caller: good morning. i would like to say that the pro-life, pro family social

engineeri engineering, they have tried with this restriction on abortion is neither fiscally nor morally conservative because it is enabling irresponsible parent being. i know a single mother who said her two best children -- well, they just didn't move all day long. they stayed in front of the tv for seven hours and it turns out they had fetal alcohol syndrome. i don't think this is responsible parenting. you can take the octomom as they call here in california. host: how do you relate it to the story susan g. komen foundation? caller: i believe it was politically motivated. it is just a big failure that

they tried to move into the family business. it has been a total failure. host: here is one from the twitter. it should be allowed to fund or not fund as the directors feel is appropriate. seems like they bowed to pressure. this is from plant parenthood about the funding it received federal funding since anyone 70. by law federal money can't be used by apportion. it received by $363.2 million in government grants and contracts. this was become in 2008 and 2 9 2009. contraception accounted for 33.5% of services in 2010. the abortion procedures accounted for 3% of services in 2010 as well. the next call is from new hampshire. independent line. caller: good morning. host: you are on. caller: i want to tell you first that i'm 96 years old, living in

assisted living. and i couldn't be more appreciative of your program than i am. it has made a wonderful difference in my rather life.red i want to speak strongly in favor of any help that can be given to planned parenthood. when i look at the pictures of those poor african women surrounded by children that they can't take care of, that they know will not live very long. i consider planned parenthood a blessing to our country where we raise children in the best possible way. host: what do you think of planned parenthood's role in the discussion over cancer screenings? the susan g. komen foundation, what did you make of the

decision not to fund them and fund them again? caller: i thought that was very good. appropriate action. caller: los angeles, california, lloyd is next. democrat line. caller: good morning. the important thing to remember is that planned parenthood helps poor women get cancer screening, breast cancer screening. that is what the komen foundation is supposed to be about. the very small part of what three do is actually abortion. so, for them to yank their funding it is obvious, it is a political move. they were succumbing to political pressure. one thing i want to bring up is that the republicans need to stop politicizing this abortion issue. most of what the staete, republican controlled legislation has been doing is passing bills to try to

politicize abortion. thanks for taking my call. host: when it comes to cancer screening planned parenthood says it is 14.5% of its services that were done in twe201 2010. with breast exam and care 747,000 cases actually done. when it comes to abortion services, which it is 3% of services in 2010 the number is 329,000 plus. from this week you may have, from the decision it bring become funding it was via web have i had yo that the found are and c.e.o. made its tphourplt that funding would be restored. >> we are not pulling any existing grants. affected.pwrpbgrants are not as we move forward we will implement new strategies that will allow us to serve more

women. we will never but to political pressure. we will always stand firm in our goal to end breast cancer forever. host: from that opinion, many opinions kind of stemmed from it including the social media world including this morning as well off of twitter this is donna 816 who says everyone knows it was politically motivated. next subject. columbus, ohio, john, republican la line. caller: here in columbus we have a bill called the heartbeat bill. the people who don't want abortion here or anything, i'm what you call a person that i believe that it should be the women that control that department. but as far as the komen thing, i lived in colorado for eight years and them people out there, they have a lot of power. i mean big power. and you are not going to stop their funding.

they will go right to the white house and tell president obama look, you tell us to calm down or you won't get back in this house next year. all i have to say is what is coming up now? like i said, i'm a republican and they are hitting people with the left, throwing things out there. you are not going to stop planned parenthood. they are too powerful. if you look in the state of colorado, them people have power out there. i mean big power, big power. that is all i have to say. america, look at what they are doing. they are changing the subject. they are not going to get their funding pulled. host: as far as the internet, the blog has a story -- bloomberg has a story looking at social media sites, campaigns that were launched on both sides of this issue. they say two-thirds of more than 3,600 sentiments were negative to komen according to net based solutio

solutions. about 250,000 people signed a petition on the moveon.org calling on komen to reverse the decision. so, a spokeswoman from a san francisco based funder petitioned 350,000 supporters. the political director said we have seen planned parenthood needs fierce defenders. they pledged $200,000 in response to the decision. you heard mayor bloomberg of new type of a similar process when it comes to money. john steinbeck off of twitter adding his thoughts saying when you donate to komen your money is no longer just going to cancer research. it is paying for killing pwaeblpwaebl babies. now to alexandria, virginia. caller: my concern with the

current komen situation is they said they are going to restore the current funding but they anything about the future. that is a concern of mine. then the large are picture for me is women being denied the reproductive healthcare that they need. particularly women who are low income and poor. there seems to be huge movement over the last 20 years by the republicans to take control over women's health issues and to make abortion not a science or a medical issue but morality and that concerns me that we women as a whole have not really pushed become on this and restored medical care for women.

host: how do you view the komen foundation and its work going forward? caller: i don't know. when i started reading the "washington post" article and also about who the top people are at the komen foundation, then you find out i think it is nancy brinker and handel, i believe, but one is a republican and two, the second person is one that said her mission is going to be to defund planned parenthood that concerns me because we didn't know about komen. as women we were supporting breast cancer research, participating in race for the cure thinking women at large were being helped and we find out that politics has entered the issue and they are making decisions to deny women their right -- not their right but proper medical care they can't find anywhere else because they money.ave the

that really greatly concerns me. so i'm thinking i'm not participating in race for the cure or in raising funds for komen until they make it clear whether they are going to continue to support planned parenthood. .

texas, bruce, democrat's line.

caller: talking about the planned parenthood. i believe that the woman should have their rights to have an abortion if it's an emergency thing or medical. and another thing, planned parenthood is a very good organization. it's helped a lot of women and -- it's helped a lot of people from dying from all kinds of cancers and stuff like that. i think they should keep this planned parenthood program up. host: will this be a political issue going forward, though? caller: i'm for it. host: as far as will it remain a political issue, not just one that's dealing -- caller: no it shouldn't be a political issue with the republicans. i think that they're trying to win the house and trying to, you know, the presidency.

it's all a political thing and it shouldn't be a political thing. it should be for women's rights. and not just for women's rights. it helps children and everybody else in planned parenthood. host: on our "newsmakers" program, which you can see on our video library, we had a chance to talk to ms. richards. this is previous of the incident this week. but we had a chance to talk with her. she talked about the use of federal money that is use ford federal abortion services. here's what she had to say. >> for more than 30 years, the federal government has not spent federal money to pay for abortion services. and so this is not about abortion services at all. all the repeels that the house made would only affect family planning, birth control and cancer screenings and prenatal care. that's important to remember. these are very strict guidelines.

the hide amendment has been around for a long time and that is true for planned parenthood and hospitals across america who provide a full range of reproductive health care. but no federal dollars except in the most extreme cases pay for abortion services. >> one more followup because viewers should also know about your budget. a $1.1 billion budget? >> we're the largest nonprofit provider of women's health care in america. we see 3 million patients a year, which is -- and we do it at an incredibly cost effective way. host: that was from march of last year. again, if you want to see that whole interview i invite you to go to our website and go to the video library. you will find a link to our programs. this from the "washington post" this morning. from the associated press.

also in the pages of the "wall street journal" this morning, this stems out of the bill that was passed for the federal aviation administration, it's a broad funding bill saying that was released this week and is expected to win final approval before the middle of february.

back to our story toobt susan g komen, restoring grants to planned parent hfment if you want to give us a call, the numbers are on your screen. if you want to send us a tweet, just as done richie did this morning.

illinois, good morning to david. caller: thank you for c-span. i think this was political but it was political by planned parenthood. they have $1 billion a year. if you give them money for the so called women's health, that's extra money for them to have abortions. in illinois, several planned parenthoods have been shut down. i am disappointed in komen by not sticking with more or less and values that this country needs again. anybody that needs to go where the baby gets the skin sucked off, the muscles sucked off and its bones sucked out with the abortion vacuum system. i just wish that i would like to say a prayer that god will show mercy on this country. when did women's -- when did abortion and premeditative first degree murder become women's health or rights? host: republican line, betty.

caller: i would like to say that life and death are in the lord's hands. and he says i set before you this day death and life. choose life. we don't have a right to murder babies. and this is ridiculous. this country is in trouble, yeah. and i think a lot of it is due to the abortion clinics. you close those down and you'll see a change in this country. because god is judging you. obama and hillary clinton have got a big hot spot waiting for them in hell. host: st. louis, missouri, ronald. democrat's line. are you there? let's try cleveland, ohio. caller: i am african american female and i think it is going to be a political conversation for everybody to come.

planned parenthood promotes genocide in the human race and the susan g komen foundation needs those babies bodies to find a cure for cancer. she can do it some other way. i'm i oo appalled and ashamed that she would support planned parenthood. host: had you been a supporter of komen at all before this story broke? caller: yes, i have. i walked in the race for cure. i know several people personally who went to planned parenthood. they didn't offer them no kind of contra veptive. it was strictly birth control and abortion, and we'll help you pay for it. and they're -- billing them 500 and they give them abortions to girls as fars eight months that i know of. i think that should be murder. planned parenthood should be

charged with murder. host: illinois, mary, republican line. caller: good morning. if you go to open secrets.org and search on planned parenthood, you find that they spend millions of dollars on lobbying. and if they're so concerned about women, then why is that money spent on lobbying? and it goes to democrats. who are the 26 senators that wrote a letter to komen? all democrats. and basically it's just another slush fund to get democrats reelected. if you do some research on planned parenthood, you find out that it's the democrats that are killing the black race. president obama, margaret sanger and the democrats are killing the black. host: annual lobbying efforts is the numbers that you can find thanks to the center for responsive politics. here's some of the numbers that we found this week. when it comes to millions of dollars this is the annual lobbying that's done.

that rose to over $2 million in lobbying money spent for pro-choice causes. that's money that figures from the center for responsive politics. if you look on pro-life issues, again the center for responsive politics numbers shows a number for 2011 that rises to $500 ,000. check out our site. wisconsin, kim on our democrat's line. hello. caller: you pronounced it correctly. i for one was not aware that susan g komen offered money to planned parenthood. people out there need to understand that men and boys also go to planned parenthood. my sons go to planned parenthood for their health because they have no hins.

i had no hirns. when i was pregnant, when my baby would be due. they never talked to me about abortion. the only time they talk to you is when you bring it up to them. and they do a lot of care for really low and very poor people. and health insurance don't always cover everybody on everything. especially women's health. we get discriminated against because they can give babies. they don't want for us -- to pay for us to have babies. i am really heartened by listening to all my american family out here beating up on planned parenthood who is out there trying to do good for our community. host: before you go, a couple of questions. you had said that you had found out about the komen grants to planned parenthood. what do you think about komen

going forward as far as your support for them? caller: i did give to susan g komen. i have family members who have had cancer. i've given my money to them. i've given -- i give -- or i donate to special olympics. i donate money to people who need help regardless of what their politics are. these are organizations that are out here trying to help people. and there are other people who are trying to gum up and just use it as a political tool. i think that's sad. host: what about giving money to the foundation or supporting them in other ways going forward from this week? caller: i will not give my money to susan g. komen. i will continue to give my money to the american cancer society if they're going to make a political statement out of this of trying to help people because men get cancer, too. and you always -- people are just beating up on us women.

and aabout the abortion thing i look at it as control. it's just one small piece, one small piece of our health. the adorgs thing. but as far as cancer goes, cancer is huge in our society. and we all need to help where we can get it to be diagnosed so that we can be healthy people. host: later on, we will talk about the economy. the jobless rate falling to 8.3%. and michael sheer writes president gets new hope on crucial issue but mitt romney must weigh strategies. that's the face of the "new york times" this morning. inside the "wall street journal" analysis about 1r5

minutes from now we will take a look at a new survey looking at freddie mac and fannie mae, people who have mortgages with them, a survey done jointly by propublic coand npr and we'll have a discussion about 15 minutes from now. kentucky, helen, republican line. caller: i have been listening to all the comments from all the people and i've just had a few things to say. first of all, i think i remember hearing president obama say it one time that he could not make a decision as to whether or not a woman should or should not have an abortion because he was not a doctor. he said he thought that it should be left up to the woman, her spouse, her health care provider, and her spiritual

adviser. now, for all these people who are out there calling him baby killer and all these kind of things, maybe what they should do is spend more time working on helping men to find jobs so that when their girl frepped or wife becomes pregnant that they can be more educated in the process and that they themselves are better educated so that they can provide money to help this woman through the pregnancy and be 18 years that it takes care of the child after that. also, it is a growing problem of young men raping our babies. that are ages 6, 7, and on up. you hear it on the news every day. and if these men are taught more respect for women and more support for what their families and stop running from door to door, then maybe we wouldn't have a president that you guys are calling baby killers.

>> michigan, steve, democrat's line. caller: as far as i'm concerned, i wouldn't donate to the komen fund just for the simple fact that they are making it political. host: paul cain in the campaign 2012 section has a story on republican freshmen and what they're saying about their presidential picks going forward this year.

>> above this story is a map look at nevada where today voters head to choose their choice for g.o.p. nominee. we invite you to stay close to our c-span 2012 campaign website as the day goes on and especially later on tonight as both mitt romney and newt gingrich plan speeches which

you can see on c-span and all the information on our campaign 2012 site. about 10 more minutes with this segment. virginia, melvin, republican line. hello. caller: i think a couple of your previous callers really reflect what planned parenthood is about and that's the population control. so

also sued them over similar allegations new york's case indicates the state may be free to pursue action. maine, good morning to raffle. independent line. caller: the previous caller mentioning the origins of the planned parenthood in the

movement, that was a really strong movement originating out of british. it's part of the british answer to world over population problem. bringing it down from 7 billion down to 1 billion so that they can manage it. that's what's going on. in many ways in our food has been compromised through poisons, actual toxic poisons. i mean, everybody thinks this is all nonrelated. host: let's keep it related to the topic at hand as far as the komen foundation. caller: i'm very disappointed that they would reinstate the funding for that. i applauded them in the beginning when that came out and now to backtrack, i'm so disappointed. but then we don't want a cure for cancer, either. do we? there's plenty of money in

sickness but no money for the corporations in health. host: this is andrew cramer writing about europe. orlando, florida. democrat's line. caller: it did not surprise me that the komen foundation would do something as cruel as cutting funds for cancer screening. that's the nasty way that the conservatives operate. at the state of the union

address, republicans were falling over themselves to give their sympathies to gabby gifford who was almost assassinated but if she comes back to congress and she supports stronger gun control those same republicans crying for her now would attack and demonize her. the right wing's nasty and hypocritical. host: baker, louisiana. caller: yes, good morning. about this planned parenthood. we don't care what planned parenthood does as long as they do it with their own money and not our money. and you know, everybody can give to whom they want to and they ought to be self-sufficient without government money. if they're so great, why don't

they shouldn't have a bit of trouble running on their contributions. the red cross doesn't have a problem. and other organizations. our problem is they're doing it with our money. and as far as obama, we're going to find out monday just what's going to happen with him on that lawsuit or his court date in atlanta that nobody has ever said anything about. and c-span is the biggest one of all that does not give us all the news. host: the constitution this morning, front page dealing with the jobless rate and the komen

story but also this story. palm coast, florida. chuck, independent line. caller: good morning. it's a wonderful day here in florida. about this komen foundation

thing, i would like to -- like the caller from maine, i'm disappointed in them. they made a decision based on principle and then denied their own principles what i think is for money. i think their donations started falling off or they were getting too much guff from their big doners and did just the opposite of what they know to be the right thing. as an aside, i would like to say i have my own idea what planned parenthood is. you go to school, you go to high school, you meet somebody that you think you may love, you go to college, you set yourself up for life, you get a job, you get married, and then you have children. that's planned parenthood. now, what planned parenthood does is they use the name planned parenthood for something that is completely opposite. they subsidize irresponsible behavior. and they take care of the unplanned parenthood. so i wish they would call themselves unplanned parenthood

and just be honest with us. and i think we would all be a lot better off if we all just decided to have children when we could afford to have children. host: that will be the last call on the topic. coming up, we'll have a roundtable discussion about a story that was released this week by the investigative journalist -- the independent journalist firm and chris arnold of npr. here's the headline of it. beths against home owners must stob. and this was toward the loan grantor and that owned by the federal government, freddie mac. we're going to have that discussion coming up. first, i wanted to let you know that if you tune in on both of our channels c-span 2 and c-span 3, a focus on bow mont, texas this weekend on both of our channels, looking at the history and literary life of the city where oil was first discovered in texas back in 1901. of course setting up the petroleum age in the state and

changing the face of energy supply in our country. if you want to know more information about this, go to our c-span.org local content site where our journalists have been all around that city learning about it and putting together video packages for you to look at such as a discussion that one of our journalists took up with mayor becky aims and she talks about the history and the economy of beaumont, texas. >> i guess what most people think of when they talk about beaumont's history is the top gusher happened here 111 years ago which started the oil boom in the united states. so we do have exxon mobile here, that's the largest plant, petro chemical plant. we sit right on the natches river and it's utilized because the port of beaumont is the fourth largest in the nation as far as tonnage is concerned.

and as far as the military port, one of the largest in the world. so our port is is extremely important to industry here but also just because we bring so much -- so many jobs in just because of the port being here. i believe that cities that have thriving downtowns or thriving cities normally in the mid 80s when the oil field or the oil prices plummetted we started investing in our downtown and have done quite a lot in the last 5 to 8 years. and i think that we will continue to grow based on what we see is happening in our downtown area. we have revitalized. we spent about $30 million in the last ten years. so i see -- that's what i see mostly. i do think we will continue to grow because of our relation as i mentioned earlier, the petro

chemical and oil field industry. and just to stay small enough to where we're like a friendly hometown but then also be diverse enough and make sure that we continue to have the discipline to put our dollars where they should be to promote the infrastructure so that -- that private investors will continue to invest. i think that's very important and that's what i see in our future. >> nevada's republican caucuses are under way today. tonight our road to the white house coverage includes the candidates speeches. throughout the day follow live reports and their results as tweeted by the nevada g.o.p. on line. >> "washington journal" continues. >> today we are featuring two journalists joining us from separate locations to talk about their new look at freddie mac. joining us from boston is chris

arnold serves as the correspondent. good morning to you, sir. >> good morning. host: and also joining us, jesse inesger he is joining us from new york city. hello. guest: hi. how are you? are host: i will start with you, cri. this week you both put out a report and here's the headline. let's go from it. freddie mac bets against homeowners. what do you mean by that headline and what's important to know about that headline? guest: well, the basic idea behind our story is that freddie mac is one of the gate keepers in the mortgage market. so they are one of the entity that is decides, can you or can you not qualify to refinance your house? and at the same time that freddie mac

and the new loan starts at the new rate. for the holder of the old loan, the payments have stopped. and so freddie mac has by

retaining the interest rate portion of those securities has really retained this kind of distilled concentrated exposure to and vulnerability to pre-payments, to refinancings when people reif i their mortgages. host: because the money is there -- as the money is being made and more of it when the interest rates are higher? guest: well, that's part of it. exactly. i mean, that's the main part of it is that a lot of these securities involve people with very high mortgages. 6.5%, 7% mortgages, way above the prevailing rates right now. so freddie mac seems to have chosen a lot of those very high mortgages to create these securities and that makes more money for freddie mac. host: so chris arnold from the housing side, is this a deliberate ploy by freddie mac to do this? >> well, we're not alleging that

freddie mac did anything illegal. nothing in our reporting turned that up. freddie mac says there's a fire wall between the investment side of the business and the side of the business that manages home policies. but at the same time i think it's absolutely fair to ask the question, credit is being tightened in a lot of way that is some people think don't make sense. the federal reserve has raised questions at the same time freddie mac is placing these targeted bets as jessie was just saying that pay off in a very -- and this is sort of a leveraged magnified way. this is sort of important to understand. let's say jessie and i are going to loan you $100,000 to buy a house. traditionally, the way that would work is that you, if you refinanced, we would get $100 back. so, ok, we're not making 7% any more off of you but we get our

$100,000 back and we can go give somebody else a loan with that money. but what they did is they sold off the right to collect that principle, that $100,000 and they only are interested now in these investments in the interest payments. that's sort of the reverse of these interest only loans that home owners get into that -- so be if you refinance, freddie mac in this situation loses everything with regard to its position with you. there's no principle to get back. it's just interested in that interest payment. and that's what makes this a very targeted bet. they're betting that home owners can't refinance. that's why you would enter into these sorts of transactions. host: because both of you write that those -- it's these type of mortgages that underpin the securities that freddie mac has. guest: yes. well, the mortgages that underpin the securities, we've

got say $5 billion worth of these targeted securities that are called inverse floaters. those are tied to a pool worth $30, $40 billion. >> host: so as this was going on, talk a little bit about the prospective on wall street on the relation and give us the wall street perspective. bauds both of you cover different type of beats. but give us the perspective and why it's important to know. guest: well, sure. what's important to know is that wall street has a big demand right now for mortgage-backed securities. it's a great time for fannie mae and freddie mac to sell. and fannie mae and freddie mac are major wall street players. they are involved in lots of structured financing. they have gigantic investment portfolios of mortgage backed securities.

but through their agreement -- and they were taken over by taxpayers in 2008 because they failed, and through their agreement with the u.s. treasury upon being taken over, they were told you have to reduce your portfolio. so right now is a great time for them to do that. it's a great time. interest rates are low, which means bond prices are high. thrazz lot of demand for this stuff and they could sell right away. so this is a wonderful time if we want freddie mac and fannie mae to sell their portfolios down thus being less risky to the overall economy, the financial markets, it would be a good time for them to sell. and what this story shows is that freddie mac is making it appear like it's reducing its balance sheet. it makes it appear like it's selling mortgage backed securities into market but it's actedly retaining almost all the risk of those mortgages. so it looks like those, the balance sheelt is going down by

say $30 billion but in fact they're retaining this risk of $30 billion in a kind of concentrated way. and that seems to violate at least the spirit of the u.s. government agreement with freddie mac if not the letter. host: both of our guests are going to be with us to talk about their story and the details of it. if you want to ask them questions, the numbers are on the bottom of your screen. first call from mips. caller: good morning. i wanted to ask both of your guests who they are, on the housing impact of people losing their homes and now they've

found out who was the cause of it. that's great. but i'm saying if the federal government is in both of these housing situations when it comes to apartments, rental assistance and i find that you have a lot of slum lords that are seaving federal funds and you have people living in these federal assisted apartments but you never hear the impact of that, which is it's a good thing that the housing part but it's just as much corruption and violations of people on public assistance and thing likes that and when you speak out about it you find yourself being harassed or intimidated. and when you try to call someone to ask them to look into it they sort of like have thousands and thousands of paper work. it just goes on and on. even though it's a federal assistance or however they say

it it's still slum lords. can you explain to me? >> go ahead. guest: well, there was a lot of different thing that is were brought up there. i think one of issue that we could pick out would be that, also my monitor's got this kind of crazy delay. if we could turn that off. it makes it hard to talk. one issue is the foreclosure prevention program that we're talking about refinances here today. that is one issue. this other is the whole issue with trying to keep people in their homes when they're having financial trouble. and those prasms haven't been going very well for all kind of other reasons that's probably another show. but absolutely there's a lot of frustration out there from a lot of real people who feel like they've done everything right to try to qualify for this federal program. called the making home affordable program. and often they just slip through

the cracks, the banks are not managing a lot of these documents right sometimes and there's a lot of frustrated home owners out there. >> host: minnesota, democrat's line. bob. >> thanks for taking my call. my comment is that i think they're hurting the economy by not letting a lot of these people refinance at a lower rate . and they're tacking money out of the hands of common consumer which is making the recovery a lot slower. and i think that since government money bailed them out, that they should be trying a little harder to help the economy and also in 1999 republican senator phil graham

of texas authored a bill that got theme peeze in trouble in the first place. host: and the caller brings up the fact that federal money helped bail out fannie mea and freddie mac and says that it should make it easier for everybody involved. go ahead. guest: well, the caller makes a very good point. as chris said, we're talking about refinancing so we're mostly talking about people who are current on their current loans and paying high rates. now, what would it do if we refinanced them at lower rates, at prevailing rates? it would put money in their pocket. first of all, they would go out and spend it. so that would be very good for the economy. it would lkb like a little stimulus plan. then, that would create jobs. it would also probably help the housing market. because people would be less likely to foreclose. -- default on their loans and then face foreclosure. now, if they were less likely to

default, that would actually help freddie mac and fannie mae because they are the inshurers. they're the guaranteors of the mortgages. they're on the hook ultimately. so in fact it would be better for them to push refinsing, too, which is one of the ironies of our stories which freddie mac looks like it's acting in short-term interest but against the long-term interest. so lots of refinancings would be good for the economy probably and estimates vary about who would benefit but people say there are millions of borrowers who could have a refinancing right now who pay too much on their rates anywhere from 10 to 20 million people could benefit combhled a lot of money. zpwhoo and is this a common economyications with firms that have a commercial side and grant looneds who have a business side? guest: there's nothing common

about fannie mae and freddie mac. they are unique beasts. and they're kind of cumbersome animal here because they're quasi public and quasi private. they have benefits from the government. they used to be private companies of course they were taken over by the taxpayer. and a lot of people think this is fundamentally untenable. in fact, our story about freddie mac's conflict of interest with these particular securities really exemplifies that they have a conflict of interest overall protecting the investment portfolio is often at odds with making home ownership more available to people who deserve it, making home loans cheaper. and these things are in conflict, incompatible, and probably need to be resolved by the government at some point over the next few years. host: so chris arnold, mary

asked guest: no is the short answer. but getting back to this idea. i think it's important for people to understand that take freddie mac. freddie mac is two companies inside of one company. and the one side of freddie mac was put in place decades ago by the government to helped set up by the government to guarantee mortgages. and what that does is it helps the u.s. mortgage market function. if jesse wants to get a loan and the banker says, i don't know. and the economy is kind of weak, maybe banks would be less likely to make loans like they would be right now when the economy is just barely clawing its way out of a recession, although things are looking better lately. so what freddie mac does is say

look, we're going to the loan. if he -- going to guarantee the loan. so that's a very helpful thing for the mortgage market to function. it greases the gears. it allows people who are qualified to get home loans. now, nothing in our story takes any issue with that. on the other hand, though, there's a separate part of the company that acts basically like a hedge fund and over the years it's acaccumulated hundreds of billions of dollars worth of mortgages and other investments and it's those two sides of the company that can be in conflict. and so what our story is about is on the one hand this one sort of helpful part of the company has to also set lending criteria. and some of the ways they've actually been making it harder for people to refinance the federal reserve, other entities are raising questions, does that rally make sense? if you look at that, you look at

the other part of the company and it's making leveraged bets to the tune of $5 billion plus that home owners won't be able to refinance, that's where we're pointing out, is this a conflict. >> host: so to that point, joe asks guest: here we're talking about refinancing. the loan has been made. so the loan has been made. and when we're talking about loans that are made and guaranteed by freddie mac or fannie mae, they're guaranteed by the government, they're guaranteed by the u.s. taxpayer. so a lot of economists are coming out and saying, look, if we're already on the hook for these loans, why does it make sense to make it harder for those people who refinance when by refinancing they're going to lower their mortgage payments?

so that's going to two two things. it's going to make it more likely for them to keep paying the mortgage because instead of 1500 a month it's 1200 a month. it becomes more affordable. and it puts an extra 300 bucks in their pocket to help the economy. so don't confuse this with oh somebody is going out to buy their first house and they don't have a job and they've got a crazy loan. that's not what this is about. host: our guest, chris arnold joining us from boston, jesse joining us from new york city to talk about their story released this week. freddie mac beths against american home owners. if you want to read it for yourself you can find it linksed to our website. republican line. mike, good morning. caller: i think it's a great story. and it really shows how disconnected the current administration is in understanding fannie mae and

freddie mac. and how much they do influence the mortgage market. you know, the administration currently holds them out as helping the consumer but in effect they're working against us. you know, they've tightened financial credit, they're tightened mortgages. it's pretty ridiculous. and -- host: can you take anything from that? guest: well, you know, i think that it's big problem that fannie mae and freddie mac now are guaranteing something like 70% of the mortgages market. i don't think that it's -- i think there's wide consensus among democrats and republicans the left and the right that this is a problem, that we don't want

a government-run mortgage system. there is an argument for government guarantees of mortgages. it's dated since the great depression. and it's not a great business for banks to be in the mortgage business because it's extremely risky. in this country, mortgages are wonderful products for the borrower because for this refinancing reason, which is that when rates go down, you have the option to refinance, you get to put that expensive loan back to the bank and get a new loan at a better rate. so that's a wonderful thing for you. and if rates go up, you hold on to your low rate loan and you don't have to pay higher rates. so all the benefit is for the customer and what that makes it is a very risky loan for a bank which argues for a kind of government involvement. but not necessarily to this extent. and certainly the whole investment side, as chris was

talking about, is really problematic especially when you get all these conflicts of i want rest. certainly when they were private companies and they were paying millions upon millions of dollars to their executives and having accounting scandals and the like, that was a deeply troubling business and they were lobbying and very powerful entities in washington. and i don't think anyone wants to go back to those days. host: on our democrat's line. illinois. good morning. caller: good morning. i have a couple comments. we have a mortgage already and we tried -- we keep getting these advertisements about lower interest rates. but there's a couple problems. we don't -- every time they give us this offer, it's for 30 years. we don't want a 30-year mortgage. we're older and we don't want that long of a loan. and if we request a lower amount

of years to pay this loan off, they up the interest rate. plus the fact that when we tried to when anybody tries to refinance their mortgage, they want you to include all your debt, include your credit cards, car payments, they want everything which ups your payment. and i don't think that's fair. why can't i get the remainder of my loan that i owe on my home at a lower interest rate without having to go any more years and still lower my interest rate? host: chris, when folks who have these types of mortgages that they're trying to refinance, does the lent of the loan matter or is it more tied to the interest rate? guest: sure it does. there are a couple of alarm bells that go off in relation to that caller's story. first of all, i think it's probably fair to say when you get stuff in the mail that says refinance, that may not be the best way to refinance,.

just what you described there a 30-year term at an interest rate of whatever 4% or 3-7/8. if you go down to a 20-year, you should get a lower interest rate for a 20-year loan. so anybody who tells you that you only want a 20-year loan they're going to give you a higher interest rate, just hang up the phone. that's not right. there's also an incentive in the president's latest round of housing proposals or legislation he is putting out there. they're trying to find ways to incent people to go from 30-year loans to 20-year loans to help people climb out of a hole that some are in being under water in the mortgage. if you go to a 2046 year loan you get back -- 20-year loan you get back up much more quickly than if you take out a 30-year loan.

host: for those who have loans from freddie or fannie can they be eligible for the other programs available by the federal government? guest: yes. well, with regard to hample which is the loan modification program if you're facing foreclosure that gets a little complicated. essentially you can do that through fannie and freddie. with harp yes it's specifically designed for fannie and freddie-back loans. these people are paying 7%, they could save 50 to a month. let's bring them down. -- 500 a month. it will lower the risk of default, prevent foreclosures. that should save the government money. and again, everything comes back to this hedge fund side of the business. if you just look at the let's call it the good side of the business, there's no prock with that. there would be no friction with allowing these folks to refinance if the government is already on the hook. it's on the investment side

that, oh, well, we've got $700 billion worth of investments, some of those could take a hit if we allow these folks to refinance. and you wonder, is there a tension that exists there that's having an effect on policy. host: how does wall street look at the housing industry these days? guest: well, there's deep skepticism about the housing market on wall street from a couple of points of view. the banks stocks trade rg trading very low right now. the main reason probably is that people are extremely skeptical about the asset values that are reflected on the balance sheet of -- from home mortgages primarily also there's a european financial crisis but that's a topic for a different day. so wall street is worried about it. the economic recovery is helping

banks stocks, helping the stock market in general. but the problem is that we've got an overhang of enormous numbers of homes that are in foreclosure. an enormous supply of homes that are unsold on the market. and some people sort of argue that the market is turning up, the case shiller index which is the most widely followed index still is going down although there's a delay on that. so people say maybe that's a reflection of the past rather than what's going on. but i think that the housing market is still in deep trouble and a lot of wall street people agree. host: so just to restate, this is joseph ramirez this morning asking the question. guest: what's happening is that yes on the one hand freddie is making new rules that make it

more expensive and harder to get. so fewer people can get refinancing. and when they try to get them they're more expensive. on the other hand, separately they're making investments that benefit from just so happened to benefit from exactly that. these harder rules. and they benefit from the inability for people to get lower rates on their mortgages. and what chris said at the beginning is very important that we've shown no evidence that these decisions were coordinated in any way. but the real central point here is that at some point you've got a c.e.o. and then you've got the federal regulator and they can see both parts of the business. and so they should see what the left hand and the right hand is doing and maybe put two and two together that this combination creates bad incentives. host: we'll pick up that point after this call.

mike, good morning. >> good morning. i have a question. i flive my house for 30 years with a conventional loan. and i refinanced with wells fargo last year with an fha. if banks are members of fdic, why don't we pay -- why do we pay a mortgage insurance? host: chris, why don't you take that. guest: well, you're going to ask me to talk about the inner workings of the mortgage insurance business. i think that mortgage insurance serves an important purpose in mortgage finance. you could argue title insurance, how come every time you refinance your home you've got to pay another 1200 to a company to come in and say yes the title is good and there's a lot of questions about that it doesn't make a lot of sense. mortgage inshurebes on the other hand is a way for the lender to

make itself, the bank, more comfortable making the loan. they say, well, look, if jesse, we're worried about you paying it back because you only have $5,000 to put down and it's a $to o 200,000 house, mortgage insurance make the lender more comfortable. so ultimately it's probably a good thing. when you get into restructuring loans to prevent foreclosures, when you get into having all these different parties sign off on a refinance, this is one more party that can complicate the process. but overall i don't think anybody would say that mortgage insurance is one of the bad guys here. host: illinois, republican line. we speak to lucy. good morning. caller: good morning. how are you today? thank you for taking my call. my question is, mr. romney says that they need the foreclosures

to go all the way down. i don't know what he means by that. but also, how do you make money, how many foreclosures and how many people he has affected with the foreclosures? and who else is making money by foreclosures? host: take up the topic of foreclosures, because fannie and freddie holding loans is one thing. but what happens if these loans tied to securities have, ends up more foreclosures, what happens to the structure? host: i do want to say that chris keeps talking about these bankers running away from me. i don't know if he's seen my bank accounts or something. i'm a little worried. guest: i have no known factual knowledge. guest: you know, the foreclosure crisis is terrible and foreclosures are a massively

inefficient way of resolving a home because it makes it much more expensive. there's a lot of cumbersome costs and it has answer larry bad effects. it hurts the value of houses down the block and in the neighborhood. but there are these maligned incentives from the mortgage servicing companies. they are, one, and those are mainly from the big banks. and we're not talking about refinancings here, we're talking about something else, foreclosure crives and modifications of loans here, which is separate from our story. but the servicers at the very big banks are ill equipped to deal with the massive downturn in the housing market and crisis that is leading to a lot of foreclosures. and they do often have incentives where foreclosures may be financially beneficial to them in ways that seem peculiar

and inefficient to the rest of the market. and so this is one of the reasons why people have banks have been pushing people into foreclosure rather than trying to resolve these by doing something like a principle write down of the loan chled then allow the borrower to stay in the house. and pay the new smaller payments on time. so it's been a big problem. the bush administration failed at grappling with it successfully. the obama administration has failed to grapple with it successfully. and the obama administration is starting again to try to deal with these problems and with their fingers crossed they're hoping that the economy turns up and eases these problems. host: arlington heights -- go ahead. guest: i could jump in on that, too. i think first to be fair to the obama administration, the -- and we agree on this. the program is seen as a failure

but it certainly is better than what came before and about 1 million people have been able to avoid foreclosure through this called the hample program. so that's 1 million people. is the glass half full or half empty? that's good. the program could have reached 4 million people and all the problems he was describing are the reason why. one sort of quick example of people can wrap their head around is the banks these days don't often hold these loans especially the first position loans on people's houses they sell them off. so when you're sending your check to wells fargo or bank of america or city bank, they are then turning around and just handing that money off to somebody else. a group of investors who has bought the loan. the reason that's important is that if you are about to go into foreclosure, it's not wells fargo or city bank or bank of america that's going to lose money. yet, they're the entity that has

to resolve the situation and try to find a way for you to avoid foreclosure. so right there is a disconnect. the way bank of america and wells fargo and these other banks make money is one way is collecting late payments. so there are consumer advocates who argue the way the incentives are set up the large banks are making money get strung along and they get a lot of late payments. o so there's all kinds of problems with the system and it's a complicated nut to crack. host: california, thanks for waiting. democrat's line. caller: thank you. effs hoping to get on. first i want to praise president obama. i am one of those people who did get the making house affordable loans in spite of the republicans and i was -- it lowered my mortgage and everything. unfortunately i rent a room and

a renter backed out so i heard about this keep your home california and initially i called in they said it sounds like i qualified. and then i got a letter before i even submitted the rest of my paper work saying it was due to my credit report. so i called them on it and they couldn't explain that but they said that i had to have like at least a third of the income to the rent to their loan and so i had to make like triple the amount of my mortgage, which is hard. so i had to like write up the rental i had. so does that sound like to you? but president obama is working for us no matter what lies they are saying and i thank god for that. thank you. host: let's move on to another call, connecticut, kevin republican line. caller: how are you doing?

host: go ahead. caller: i used to live in florida and i was knee deep in the construction housing industry down there. and the thing about it is that from a scenario of a home, then you go from the developer tacks on, that's capitalism. then you get a real estate agent comes on. location, location, location, and it wasn't just people with bad credit that had. it was people with aaa credit that speculated and bought multiple homes. wells fargo would finance a guy investing and so they sent him to a subprime lender. and the whole thing about this is that now it was all obpaper, but the equity was on paper. it wasn't realized, it wasn't liquid. so now the regular guy just bought a home to live in lost

his job, is out, and you're telling them that only a select few people are going to be able to get refinance on a loan through freddie mac. you know. and then also they want to bail people out, tax payers. host: jesse. guest: there was a terrible housing bubble in this country full of speculative investment. a lot of wildly irresponsible financial companies like countrywide and new century and america quest and wildly irresponsible investment banks. some of the most hallowed names in american finance, merrill lynch, city group, lehman brothers. and they caused a terrible crisis and economic crisis and that has caused a lot of pain for people. now, what -- and makes people angry justifiably. and it's hard to assign blame or

it's people have a trouble understanding who is to blame for this. now, today it's counter intuitive but what we need is potentially more lending, looser credit in some places. and this makes -- it raises the question of fairness. if that person is getting a loan, why can't i get a loan? it makes people very angry and politically unpopular. this is one of the things that's given rise to the tea party. so i think what the caller is articulating is a deep-seated anger and frustration about the bursting of the housing bubble, the irresponsible behavior, the lack of accountability at the top eeshlons of the people who perpetrated the bubble like wall street firms. and then also, this sort of counter intuitive notion that some lending is going to have to be applied to get us out of

this. host: so gentlemen i'll ask you both to chime in on this statement from doug. what would you add to that? guest: i don't think that there's a lot of people getting rich. there -- certainly fannie mae and freddie mac executives who seem to be paid very handsome salaries right now and that's a questionable thing, probably they're getting paid too much. but -- host: how much. ? guest: in the millions of dollars. the personal who was in charge of the investment portfolio was getting paid almost $3 million a year while these trades that chris and i wrote about were taking place. so that's a pretty handsome salary for a guy who is working for taxpayers. so but whether there's not a lot of hedge funds wall street people getting vastly rich

particularly in this kind of market right now. host: what would you say? guest: well, i agree with everything that jesse just said. i'd like to bring it back to that last caller and you could hear a lot of emotion. you've got a construction worker, i'm sure a big tough guy swinging a hammer who is very upset about this. and i think you talk to different economists, there are 10 million people out there right now, maybe 20 million people out there with government-backed loans who arguably a lot of economists are saying the fed is asking questions about this. why aren't these people able to refinance? save them $500 a month when you're on the edge and working three part time jobs to try to make it work, this is a really big deal. and there have been a lot of people push forg a long time for fannie and freddie to open up the gates a little bit and again we're not talking about making new loans and irresponsible ways to beam buying houses.

we're talking about people who are already in a home, the government is on the hook for their loan. what's the argument for not allowing them to get today's market rate interest rates so they can save a bunch of money? >> host: through september, 2011, total mortgage purchases equalled about $259 billion. . .

they are tough wall street-type coax. they were upset. -- they are tough wall street- type folks. they were upset. we talked to people. the story grew from that. group from people inside the industry seeing something they did not think was right. -- the story grew from people inside the industry saying something they did not think was right.

guest: there have been a lot of developments since then. he is right about the origins of the peace. since we wrote the story, multiple senators have come out with letters to president obama and the head of the regulatory agency that oversees freddie and fannie asking for an explanation. the federal housing finance agency that oversees them is acting as the ceo of the board of directors. they have confirmed our story that they have more of the exotic mortgage bets than expected or reported. they said they put a stop to it. that is good, but the problem is pretty -- freddie has $5 billion

on the balance sheet now causing concerns. the agency says they were complex and risky. they were incompatible with good management practices so they stop them. if they are incompatible with good risk management, they continue to be a good risk- management complications if you still own them. we feel like there are unanswered questions. we are plugging away at trying to report it. host: go ahead, costa mesa. caller: i am familiar with the lending market place. it sounds like the loans were packaged in a way that they created packages that should have never existed in the first place with bad variable loans and what not. when you create a package, it is very difficult to take it apart

and take what is good out of the package. these loans are being bought by foreign investors. how much money was paid to foreign investors out of these funds by tarp and everything else in regards to the packages they purchased? when they were made aware there was not value, they have to be compensated. guest: i think this strays from our story. our story deals with loans owned by freddie mac, guaranteed by freddie mac. the transactions we are talking about where loans were cut up, those were freddie mac boned loans -- owned loans.

anyone around the world can buy mortgage bonds. if they fail and they are guaranteed by the government, the government makes good on the guarantees. i do not know if anybody has done the numbers on how many of the payouts have gone to foreign investors versus investors in this country. that is how is works -- it works. host: philadelphia on the democrats' line. caller: i want to know what is really being done. it sounds like freddie mac is still all right. guest: jesse eisenger, hinted that the after-effects of your story. long term, what might happen on capitol hill because of your story? guest: 1 is the fate of

president obama's housing initiative, the things chris talk about. the second thing is, is grappling with how to resolve the entities. nobody wants conservatorship where we have freddie and fannie lost forever. that is untenable. there is a debate about what we should do about them. should we make them private companies? do they continue to have an implicit government guarantee that makes them the practice of public and private that got us in trouble in the first place? these questions are complicated and unresolved. with the gridlock in congress, i do not the kit will be resolved soon. these are issues that will have to be debated over the next couple of years. host: jesse eisenger mentioned

the regulatory side. what has been the response by the agency to your story and the practice? guest: edward demarco has been a controversial figure for a while now. the obama administration has been frustrated with him. he has seen it as his world to make freddie and fannie profitable for taxpayers, or rather to minimize the losses for tax payers. that sounds an admirable and like a wonderful thing. in fact, in doing so, he may not have been looking at the long- term guarantees. if we help out lots of homeowners where they will be less likely to default, this would be profitable for freddie and fannie. it would minimize their losses in the long run.

this week, edward demarco was hammered by senators. they really criticized him for having been lacking transparency, being incommunicative with congress. barbara boxer said she had one of the worst meetings of her life with demarco. he has been a defensive figure who has not come forward with clear information, particularly about this story. a lot of his statements have been contradictory and incomplete. host: tell us about the freddie mac ceo and the role he has played in your story. guest: he is leaving the company.

it is not related to our story. freddie and fannie are potentially in wind-down mode. ceo's come and go at this stage. we're talking about what happens next with freddie and fannie. they do serve an important role in the economy is in trouble and banks get nervous. that government guarantee is what can keep the mortgage gears turning. one thought is to have freddie and fannie sell off the investment funds that create conflicts of interest. maybe someday, and do away with them completely. have some entity that can into the market when needed to provide guarantees as sporadic lubrication devices. there are all sorts of ideas

being talked about. it is not clear what happens next. haldeman is leaving and will not have much a role in the. -- in that. host: we go to charles. caller: these homes that they foreclosed on, you put $1,000 down on may house. -- on the house. the market goes bad. they walk on it and leave it. the tax. has to pay for it. -- the taxpayer has to pay for it. do they lose money when there is mortgage insurance on them? we are thinking about buying a new home again. they have $99 down on the new home. host: chris arnold.

guest: we could use this question to talk about something. the mortgage insurance companies pay to cover the losses. most of the loans, 90% of the home loans have been sold off to other investors. it is the investors that would be paid back. there is a lot going on with insurance companies asking if the loan was done right. if this was a fraudulent loan. together, should we be paying this out? -- if this was a fraudulent loan that was put together, should we be paying the south? freddie and fannie are asking the same. maybe the government guarantee is void. they're putting back a lot of the loans on to the banks who issued them. bank of america bought countrywide. they have had a course of $10

billion in liabilities. -- they have had up words of $10 billion in liabilities. there have been battles going on about the guarantees. to be fair to freddie and fannie, it makes all this complicated. you have the party is fighting with each other. when you go to refinance, it creates friction. that is part of the problem. our story showed that freddie mac is tightening credit in ways that a lot of people think does not make sense. host: patricia is on the democrats' line. caller: i bought a home in texas. i have not been late on my payments. i tried to lower the interest rate. the mortgage company said i did not qualify because it is not a fannie mae loan. i have gone to several big banks

like banc of america. i told them about what president obama said how he would make it easier for us to refinance. they were like they have not even heard about that. it surprises me that they are in the banking industry and are acting like they do not even know what i am talking about i can refinance, but my house is at least $20,000 upside-down. i could refinance, but if the appraisal does not come in, they will not be able to do it. what do we do in this case? host: jesse eisenger? guest: people out of the mac end ma -- freddie fannie mae system are finding it difficult to get credit in this situation. one problem is the house value

has fallen so much the people are reluctant to make new loans. been reluctant to make a new loan based on a deeply under water investment. that is what some of the government programs are supposed to be doing, the home loan modification program that people have talked about. there has been some progress. it has made -- given some people help. there are a lot of people still to help. the reality is some people will not be able to afford their homes and will have to be renting. we had too many people owning homes they could not afford with loans that were too expensive for them. we will have to settle at some equilibrium of a better percentage of people in their homes.

that is the problem with the house in bubble. it creates losses, dislocations, pain for ordinary americans. host: connecticut on the independent line, a full -- ethel, go ahead. caller: after three months of non-payment by the owner, the investor starts to put a claim on the house, meaning they get paid already. what happens to the house? host: it is a technical question. chris arnold? guest: i believe when the homeowner goes into default, the investor on the other end of the loan receiving the payment,

after a certain amount of time, the servicer in the middle will start advancing the payments to bondholders until the issue is resolved. this goes down a rabbit hole that may not be worth going too far down. the other caller did not have a friend or family alone and did not qualify. there is help for other people. if you do not have a friday or fannie loan, you are out of luck. -- if you do not have a friday or for any loan, you are out of luck. the president and senior folks are trying to get an idea going where the rest of the people could be reached by the program. this involves legislation president is putting forward. the problem is political

onlookers say the chance of getting the legislation passed through congress is very slim. it is nice to say we will try to do this, but it seems politically untenable, especially since the way the president proposes to pay to help people refinance is with a tax on banks. that may sound good to the occupy folks, but he has not been able to get that through for more than a year. how likely is it to pass? host: we have about a minute left. what do you see as the future of the practice that you write about? guest: addition are asking where the story goes from here.

-- i guess you are asking where the story goes from here. we will see it where it goes. guest: there could be further investigation into where the scope, why they were shut down by the agency. the agency had concerns about freddie's risk management. as taxpayers, we want to know if the risk management is up for managing the portfolios and how the wind-down is going. there are a lot of questions. we are still reporting on this to answer them. host: the story is available on their website. thank you for joining us to talk about this.

coming up, a look at the latest unemployment figures. we will be right back. [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2012] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [cheers and applause] >> this weekend, we explore the history and literary culture of beaumont, where the texas oil industry got its start.

john roberts on the literary culture and challenges of running an independent bookstore. the author on teddy roosevelt's expedition to africa and europe. on sunday, the lucas gusher changed the economy of texas and helped to usher in the petroleum age. tour the dixie hotel, an infamous brothel. prostitution and crime tried until a crackdown. that is this weekend on c-span2 and 3. >> by 2020, at least half of all energy will come from non-fossil fuel sources. >> the first to use nuclear

power for transportation, the navy secretary on the reason for the new energy standards for the fleet. quickly are -- >> we are too dependent on volatile places on earth for energy. even if we get it, we are susceptible to price shocks. when the libya situation started in the price of oil went up $40 a barrel, but was almost a $1 billion of additional fuel bill for the navy. the only place we have to get the money is operations or training. our ships steam less. our planes fly less. we train less. >> that is on sunday night. >> "washington journal" continues. host: we're joined by dr. robert

feldman to talk about the latest jobs report released yesterday. what do the numbers tell us about the state of our economy. guest: i thought it might be useful to highlight the broad outline of the macro-economic framework. i think it will help to give some perspective to answering questions that come up. over long periods of time, the performance of the u.s. economy or real gdp can be depicted as a trend line moving higher. that represents the u.s. real gdp growth, averaging about 2.5% per year. without getting into the technical ins and outs, we call

this to a potential gdp or full employment gdp. macro economic economists broadly agree that fluctuations are a result of fluctuations in aggregate demand. we have the economy going up on trend over time. we have fluctuation around the trend because of changes in aggregate demand. sometimes the economy is above full employment. when credit was really easy and housing prices were going up, the economy was booming. people could get home equity loans. they could buy more things. there was increased demand. we got above full employment gdp. it cannot be sustained. you can do it for some time because people can work overtime. factories can push harder.

essentially, firms are competing for scarce resources. wages go up in that circumstance. prices go up. you get higher inflation. host: we are well below the full employment rate. the latest numbers have the unemployment rate at 8.3%. that is down from 8.5% in december. guest: sometimes we are below the trend line or full employment gdp. that is because of negative shocks to demand. we have the financial crisis where credit froze up. businesses could not grow. housing prices went down dramatically. people felt less wealthy. they demanded less goods and services. unemployment went up. it has improved recently. people felt less secure about their jobs. there was less spending. the falling demand lead to

recession. we're well below but a substantial margin. the economy is now about 7% below where full employment gdp would come in. during the recession, we saw the unemployment rate go up very high. recently, we have had an extended time of private sector growth. the most recent numbers showed the unemployment rate at 8.3%. expectations were that there would be 120,000 to 150,000 jobs created. it came in more light to hundred 50,000 jobs created -- it came in more like to under 50,000 -- 250,000 jobs created. that was good news. host: we are talking with

georgetown adjutant economic professor robert feldman. we're going to change the law lines a little bit for this segment. if your employer, give us a call. if you are looking for a job -- if you are employed, and give us a call. if you are looking for a job, if you have stopped looking. why were these numbers such a surprise? guest: these numbers are hard to predict. this is not the first instance where surprises have come in better or worse than expected. some contributing factors may have been that the weather was better in january. that helped with the construction industry. one surprise was that the

services industry picked up. we recently have strong performance in the automobile industry. all of these have not been built into people's projections before the numbers cannot. host: the weather can play into the jobs report? guest: it can for the factors that are a weather-sensitive. it takes into account certain seasonal aspects. during the winter, you would expect construction to be not as strong as in warmer weather. this winter has not been as bad or harsh as it normally is. that makes it easier for construction activity to take place. host: not everybody was so excited about the numbers. some are expressing concern about the numbers. this is congressman brady from texas yesterday.

[video clip] >> these numbers are encouraging. the unemployment rate going down slightly is as well. i have to caution you. it masks an underlying weakness in our economy. fewer americans are participating in the workforce than in 28 years. labor force. his summation -- the labor force participation rate has not been this low since march of 1983. the labor market is not recovering fast enough, considering how depressed it has been. host: your thoughts on his concerns? guest: is some good news in the numbers. there is also bad news for the labor market. the good news is employment grew more than expected. the rise in employment was broad-based. it was not limited to one or two

sectors. it occurred across a range of sectors in the economy. the other good news is we saw the unemployment rate fall to 8.3%. the weaker aspects of the labor market are also there. one is the number of people that have been employed for extended periods of time is at historical highs. we have 5.5 million people that have been unemployed for more than 26 weeks. the average length of time somebody is unemployed is approaching 40 weeks. as people become more detached from the labour market, they lose their skills. it makes it harder to find a job it makes it more difficult on the economy when the skills are deteriorating.

that is one week point to the numbers we are seeing. -- that is one weak point to the numbers we're seeing. host: tom is on the line. caller: i and self-employed. if the private sector is left to grow, it will take care of the problem. the jobs bill was never needed. we could keep going like this. guest: let me make a couple of points. this is why i tried to wait out the broad framework in the first place. when the economy is at full employment and the government is trying to expand, it is competing for resources with the private sector.

wages go up. you can get inflation as a result. interest rates go up. that hurts investment. that leads to changes. government expansion can hurt the economy. it is crowding out the private sector and not allowing it to grow as much as it might otherwise be. in the circumstances we are in now where the economy is below will gdp, the government is not crowding out the private sector. the more restraint the government shows in the near term, that is causing a further reduction in demand that can help keep us below full employment gdp rather than create jobs.

the other thing relevant to this aspect is the analysis. you can look at surveys done by the federation of independent aboutsses where they aske the most important problem. the single most important problem they are facing is the lack of sales. there is insufficient demand. the second point is if the government is spending more money on projects like fixing roads and schools that would otherwise need to be repaired anyway and if they were not, it would be passing the costs on to future generations, it hires a private firm. that firm earns more profits than it otherwise would. the workers earn more income than they would otherwise. they are going to spend money at

restaurants and other leisure activities. by the government increasing spending, it is creating more private sector jobs. it is not getting in the way a private sector jobs. shows jobs graph growth. it also has the government jobs that you were talking about. there were 14,000 jobs lost in the government sector over the past month. on the employed line, jared is from wisconsin. caller: the gentleman describes the perfect economic theory of business. however, alan greenspan kept

interest rates below because he saw no wage pressure. wage pressures would have prevented the bubble from occurring in housing. what was not discussed is the millions of undocumented workers coming across the border for work in this country of low wages. the cows are out of the barn. we will dig out of the mess slowly. we have to have a comprehensive immigration policy that is effective to prevent bubbles like this in the future. host: talk about his concerns about people coming in across the border illegally to take jobs. guest: i am not a lawyer or

making judgments on the legal side. in terms of the economics, the effect that will have on jobs and the unemployment rate, that very much depends on whether legal american workers would be willing to take those jobs that illegal immigrants are taking. if they are doing work that other americans would not take, it is not going to have a big impact on job creation. if they were doing jobs americans would be willing to take, it would have a bigger impact on the labour market and unemployment. host: anthony is on the line from titusville, fla. caller: this stopped looking for work number, i do not know where they came up with that. that means you have run out of unemployment.

it does not mean you have stopped looking for work. there is a negative aspect to the way they put that. host: are you currently looking for work? caller: i am a full-time student. the industry and i am in -- the industry that i am and requires a degree. i have been in the industry for over 20 years and never had to have a degree. i moved up to a systems analyst and held the position for several years. i was laid off when my company moved to the factory to mexico. host: do these numbers encourage you? caller: smoke and mirrors. the numbers mean nothing. what the professors have been teaching for 20 years has not worked well because of the situation we are in now. we can rethink economics and the

models they use. we can come up with something that works in america in our economy. host: talk about the models or his concerns about the way they come up with the numbers. guest: when we talk about discouraged workers, those are workers who have given up looking for jobs. those numbers come from sample survey data where people are interviewed and indicate whether they are unemployed, unemployed and actively looking for a job, or unemployed and no longer looking for a job. the people will indicate in the sample survey that they are no longer looking for a job are no longer counted as part of the labor force and do not enter into the unemployment numbers. i agree the economy has a suspects that are looking difficult -- has aspects better

looking difficult. gdp is roughly 7% below the level that would be required to be at full employment. we have gone through the incredible shocks of financial crisis, a housing crisis that are well outside the norms we have seen since the great depression. without some of the actions taken, including the stimulus package which economic studies show created up to 3 million jobs, the situation could be even worse. uc estimates that say if the government had taken no action -- you see estimates that say the government had taken no action, the unemployment rate could have gone to 15%. it is a bad situation but would have been worse without the actions taken. host: we have about 25 minutes

left with dr. robert feldman of georgetown university. he is formally with the international monetary fund. he held positions with the federal reserve in new york. he was heavily involved in work on exchange rates and the performance of the u.s. economy. let's go to iran, who is still looking for a job, in clarksville -- let's go to ron, who is still looking for a job, in clarksville. caller: a lot of jobs offer no full-time employment like walmart. everybody works 16 hours every two weeks. i was wondering how those figures figure in the 19,000 jobs. guest: people working part-time are counted as employed whether

they are working four hours a day, they are counted as employed. when you have an unemployment rate of 8.3%, some people counted as employed would really like to work longer than they are able to work. if you take into account those part-time workers that would like to work full time but are not able to find the work to do that, the unemployment rate would be higher, something over 9.5%. host: another helpful charts from yesterday's "washington post" shows the graph of the u.s. unemployment rate from 2000 on word -- onward. there is a large jump over

several years. here we are today at about 8.3%. it also compares the u.s. unemployment rate to spain at 22.9%. greece is at 19.2%. ireland is at 14.5%. germany is up 5.5%. let's go to st. louis. joan is on the employed line. caller: i am employed in the health care industry. i am in the "box office" type of job. -- i am in the "box office" type of job. how many of the jobs added work temporary -- were temporary? guest: whether people are

working full-time or part-time, they are counted as employed. i do not have a breakdown on the health industry. i think employment increased 50,000. i do not have a breakdown on how much was full-time or part-time. host: are you skeptical of the numbers? caller: yes, i am. in my area, we were downsized because of the expensive technology put in place. after the expensive implementation, we hired temps -- dig us out of the hole the implementation put us in. i guess we will crawl along at little productivity and

eventually the temps will go away. guest: these numbers are not numbers. in the u.s. economy, there are always jobs being created and destroyed. -- these numbers are net numbers. if you see an increase of 30,000, that does not mean just an increase of 30,000 in jobs. it is a net increase. 80,000 jobs might have been lost with 50,000 added. europe is going heavily for fiscal austerity. in the u.k., they're cutting back on government expenditures. we know what is going on in spain and other countries that have to cut back. when the government stops spending, that leads to a reduction in demand. it has an impact on the economy in the short run.

it causes the economy to get further below the full employment line. i am not saying we do not have a debt problem in the united states and do not need to deal with the debt issues, but when we are so far below full employment and need to create jobs, the government can be a useful tool for creating jobs. we have seen a job loss of over half a million jobs. that also means there is less income for spending. that has negative implications for the private sector. host: the bureau of labor statistics released numbers. the leisure and hospitality industry gained 40,000 jobs in industry -- january.

retail trade gained 19,000 jobs. information was down 13,000 jobs. that is one of the few losers we have seen along with government workers. guest: i think it has to do with technology and computers. it is hard to read much into the month-to-month changes beginning to look at trends over long periods of time. you have circumstances where figures have been revised and new benchmarks were introduced. they raise the figures by 163,000. the revisions raised the figures for november and december. an additional 60,000 jobs were created more than thought. in january when you have introduced a new data series, it can be difficult to find in the seasonal adjustment factors.

host: dean has stopped looking for work from michigan. caller: a lot of people just do not have a job. a lot are going to social services. they're picking up an income of something to pay their bills. i am going to retire. i have to retire. i cannot get anything until march. when they say it is only 8.3%, it would probably be up to 14% if you look at all the people who do not have jobs and have to go to social security or social service. people do not have money coming in. host: what would make you start looking again? caller: i go down all the time and look. i am going to atlanta to see if i can find something down that way. host: your thoughts on his

comments? guest: if you take into account those working part time who would like to be working full- time and ghost discouraged workers to stop looking so they are not counted -- and the discouraged workers who stop looking so they're not counted, the unemployment rate would be more like 15%. although 8.2% represents an extremely significant improvement from where we were a couple of years ago and is very welcome news, it does not mean we are out of the woods yet. it does not mean we do not have a long way to go until we get to full employment. the employment rate at full employment is roughly around 5%. to just take into account population growth, the economy needs to create about 100,000 jobs a month. then you do not have an effect

on the other plunder rate at all. you are just dealing with the increase in population. the economy is 10,000 jobs or more in the hole. we have a long way to go. we need to be creating jobs at 250,000 or more for an extended amount of time until we would be able to get back to a gdp at full employment. it is tough out there. host: cory is still looking for a job in manhattan. caller: you mentioned workers who have been out of the work place for more than a year off and begin to lose their skills. if i were a construction worker , i would not forget how to be a

construction worker. these employers, when you are looking for work, if you have so much experience they do not want to pay what it is worth. the employees looks for another job. the problem is the employers are sitting on profit. they will not pay the employees how much their work. they will pay a freshman worker less money and have him work two or three positions you need an individual for. the employer is winning. guest: there certainly are firms sitting on a lot of profits. if i go back to the survey evidence and other analysis, one of the major problems firms are having is that there is a short

fall in demand. sales are not high enough to cause them to want to demand more workers. if they had an increase in sales because demand was higher, that would contribute to an increase in hiring. host: robert is employed in greenbelt, maryland. caller: why not just accept the numbers that have been increased and the employment rate? there are discussions about people not looking for work. the employment rate is increasing in this country. the figures. that out. -- the figures bear that out. private industry and government have stimulated the economy to the point where things are picking up. this congress, their job is to

slow the economy up. they do not want the economy to do better because it makes the president look better. they are doing everything to make the economy appear it is in trouble. we are in trouble, no doubt about it. guest: there are various risks and headwinds the economy faces. the united states has to be concerned with stability in the middle east and the possible impact on oil prices, what is going on in europe, and whether that will negatively affect the united states. some of the difficulties that have happened in washington in trying to create more jobs, there seems to be a consensus in washington that we need to extend unemployment benefits. that helps the economy because people who get the unemployment benefits will spend the money.

it will raise demand. it will increase sales. it will help with job creation. it will help people unemployed. also extending the payroll tax cuts, this enjoys bipartisan support. it is something that should be passed and put into effect immediately some people have certainty to know these measures will go through rather than the uncertainty of whether they will get the money or not. another job creator would be to increase spending on infrastructure like roads, bridges, water treatment plants. this is the time to do it when the government can borrow and expensively -- inexpensively, the construction industry would be helped. if we do not fix it now, we're

passing the cost on to future generations. it may add to the deficit, but it is imperative we put in place a framework that shows how the deficit will be reduced. this is consistent with the kind of recommendations that the fiscal commissions were making. host: let's go to steven, who is still looking, from salzburg, maryland. caller: i retired from the state of maryland in may. i am looking but there's nothing out there for the most part. i called to give warning to people who are unemployed. i was in a supervisory position. i hired people in my position. i can tell you if you have been off for 99 weeks without a job, you are not getting a job. nobody is going to take you.

they are going to ask what you been doing for 99 weeks. they will say they will get back to you. guest: that is the frustration i have definitely heard. for whatever reason, employers may think the skill match is not what they want because people have been detached from the labour market. they think the skills have deteriorated so they are reluctant to hire them. the other aspect of concern is that you have a number of kids coming out of universities with bachelor's degrees in various majors. when we are at full employment, it does not take long to find a job. it helps to raise their future income. these days, finding a job is

much more difficult. that can have an effect on their lifetime earnings as well. host: this is a question from twitter. i want to give you a chance to respond. guest: i would refer the reader to the latest press release from the bureau of labor statistics. they are the ones who produced the numbers on the unemployment rate. their numbers show if you take into account the oscars workers and part-time workers that would like to work full time, the actual unemployment rate would be 15%. if you take into account workers who are part-time but would like to work longer hours, the unemployment rate is over 9%.

it is only 8.3% for workers working full-time or part-time, divided by the labor force employed, plus the people actively looking for a job. let me give you a simple example that might help explain it. suppose you have an economy that has 10 workers. five are employed. five are unemployed. the unemployment rate would be 50%. suppose one of the workers that is unemployed got discouraged and decided they no longer wanted to look for a job anymore. in that case, you would have four people counted as unemployed. you would have a labour force of nine. the unemployment rate would fall from 50%, even though the economy did not get stronger any fundamental way. the unemployment rate would fall

simply because the number of discouraged workers went out. that comes into play in the numbers the bureau of labor statistics produces. host: let's get through a few more calls. denise is employed in missouri. caller: i had been unemployed for two years. i had been working in the field for the health care industry in claims. i had been doing that for 30 years. i got unemployed. i went back to school. i am 55 years old. i had to go back to school because this was their demand to have some kind of education. i never had to have an education, but i went back to school. i thank god now that i am employed and make good money.

i do not understand when you say people have stopped looking. i was unemployed for two years but kept looking. i went on back-to-school. i got my degree. i found me a job. i do not understand people who have stopped looking for work. if you stop looking for work, you will starve to death. guest: congratulations you have the wherewithal to go back to skill -- school to get the skills he needed to find a job. when you were unemployed, whether or not he would have been counted as part of the unemployment rate would have depended on whether you would have been one of the people who participated in the survey done to measure the unemployment rate. they do not cover everybody in

the united states. they take a representative sample of people to come up with the estimate of the unemployment rate. host: annette is still looking in florida. caller: the unemployment rate in florida is hovering at around 10%. i have been unemployed for 10 months, actively seeking work. i am over 50 years old. this is the first time i have never been unemployed in my life. -- this has the first time i have ever been unemployed in my life. it seems as though the employers are discriminating against people who of been unemployed. have been unemployed for a long length of time and i believe there's also a discrimination for people over 50. when i am in the process of

applying, it seems as though employers are taking two positions and making it one position. they are not fairly compensating people. host: with the minute we have left, i wanted to give you a chance to respond. guest: i think there is definitely frustration out there when demand is below what would be necessary for the economy to get fuller employment. that essentially means that firms are not having the sales, the demand for their goods and services that they otherwise would want to have, and that means they certainly are not employing people. also, when you have an unemployment rate of 8.2%, that

does not mean it is 8.2% for every sector of the economy. the unemployment rate for youth is running over 20%, and i think that is very discouraging as well. host: thank you for joining us. we will be right back to take your calls on open phones. [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2012] >> by 2016, according to the imf, the world's leading economy will be a communist dictatorship. that is in five years' time. think about that -- if the imf is right, the guy you elect next november will be the last president of the united states to preside over the world's leading economy. >> , it -- columnist and author

mark steyn. he is a frequent guest host on rush limbaugh was the radio show. last sunday, your chance to call, e-mail, and tweak with your questions live at noon eastern on c-span2. >> nevada's republican caucuses are under way today. tonight, our route to the white house coverage includes candidate speeches live on c- span and throughout the day. follow live reports from the individual caucuses and live resorts as tweeted by the nevada gop where you can also weigh in with your comments through our facebook page. >> "washington journal" continues. host: for the last half-hour, we open up the phones to any public policy, as you want to make.

zero months are open, and they are the standard phone lines this morning. we want to also update you on some of the -- one of the stories we were talking about this morning, the occupy d.c. protest site that police raided this morning. a few articles today. the ap headline as cops converge. also the "washington post" headline. want to read you the headline from one of the local tv stations.

protesters will still be a lot of protest, but they will no longer be allowed to sleep over at the park. the sleeping over part, of course, was the biggest concern of some house republicans on the oversight and government reform committee. last month, they held a hearing about the park service's decision not to take out those protesters, even though some of them were sleeping at the site. let's go right to open phones. carol is on the democratic line in ohio. caller: i am waiting to get on

to c-span. he says it is open calls. host: go ahead. you are on the air. caller: i just wanted to mention something from the last segment. i am an unemployed worker. i have been unemployed for a year-and-a-half. i get a little sick and tired of when people say unemployed people are just sitting around. in my case and as the other lady said, i have been in school for the last year-and-a-half. the other thing i want to bring up the some people may not know -- when i got on unemployment in june 2009, unemployment compensation insurance through the federal government that congress passed, also unemployed workers not only got unemployment benefits but also receive pell grants. we have it here in ohio, so that is what i did. i started looking for a job.

i could not find anything, so i used the pell grant to go back to school, and i do not know of the federal government has made it known for unemployed people. i just wanted to bring that up. i have been in school. i just got in international business certificate. host: thanks for the call. continuing on the unemployment numbers that were released yesterday, the political ramifications that have come out, a few stories out. this from the "washington post" -- this today from sparks, nevada.

that again from the "washington post," talking about also bringing up the nevada caucuses that are going on today. right now, we are going to be joined by a writer from the "las vegas son quarter made to talk about the caucasus. good morning. -- "las vegas sun" to talk about the caucuses. what has been the story in

nevada so far? >> first of all, talking to the candidates. it has been busy several days with all four candidates campaigning state. santorum is not expected to do extremely well. he has not put much energy into organizing campaigning here. he did win an endorsement from sharon and go, who could maybe help. she definitely has some conservative following still in the state. yesterday was a lot of ron paul. he is very popular, and in the rural parts of the state, that money spent time in the reno area, the rural area, and down in las vegas. he spent a lot of time trying to blunt the news of the jobless rate taking down yesterday.

he just had about a 10-minute stump speech left in him by the time he got down to vegas. newt gingrich has had some campaign problems with his local staff and national staff not exactly agreeing on his schedule and what he should be doing. he spent some time speaking for a mega church yesterday evening, which was interesting. got him in a little bit of a different context. host: the latest polls that are out there -- the "washington post" has a few of them that have been in. the january 31 poll has romney up 45% over gingrich at 25%. is that what you expect polls to show when they come in tonight? >> poling is difficult in this state because turnout will probably be like. that gives an advantage to candidates who had a turnout machine like mitt romney and ron

paul. i think it is safe to say mitt romney is the front runner here. he was four years ago. spend a lot of time organizing the campaigning in the state. but ron paul has drawn intense and very passionate crowds everywhere he goes in the state, and he has had campaign stops here organizing building support and making sure they get to their caucuses this morning. host: thanks so much for getting up early this morning. if you want to watch all the coverage of the nevada caucuses tonight, you can go to the campaign2012 web site on c- span.org. we will also be following the mitt romney caucus it did tonight at 11:00 p.m. and the newt gingrich for president event at 10:00 p.m. here on c- span. let's go back to the phones. it is open phones right now. we're going to go to margaret from ohio.

good morning. caller: good morning. i am calling on behalf of my daughter on this unemployment bill. she could have stayed on unemployment and done better with her first part-time job because she did not make that much money. so she is working two part-time jobs in florida trying to make ends meet. she is almost 50 years old, and it is really difficult for me to sit and hear the unemployment rate saying she is going to be counted as two full-time jobs on the unemployment? saying that it is only eight "-p -- 8-point-somethin gpercent. when the senate was questioning the unemployed man, and he said it was really 15.1 when they questioned him further on

people who were unemployed. he said it was 15.1. thank you. host: banks. a few other headlines from around the campaign. this from the cassette in new york daily news" -- nick and drill against the nation's powerbrokers and took an unprovoked shot at manhattan -- newt gingrich railed against the nation's power brokers. that again according to "at the daily news" today. we go to the independent line.

are you there? go ahead. you are on the air. caller: if you want to solve the unemployment problem, the best answer would be universal national service for everybody over 18 to either carry a shovel or a gun or work as an aide. neither party has ever tried to bring the people involved in the problem into the action. everybody should have a skin in the game. host: jolt from north carolina. thanks so much. let's go down to virginia. denver and the democratic line in virginia. good morning. caller: good morning and happy new year. this is to your last guest. i wanted to get on, but i could not. i thought it was such a coincidence, you had across the screen that it was a five-month decline -- it was such a coincidence that five months ago, the tea party generated a

request to all businesses not to hire just to make president obama look bad. i wanted to know whether that might have had, you know, and affect -- an effect. i think the main goal is just to get president obama out of the white house. some people do not realize how they are, but they should be concentrating on making america a better place and getting people back to work instead of doing this for the people. host: moving from the presidential race to control of the house and senate, the congressional races going on. this from the "asheville citizen" today about the

announcement of a blue dog conservative democrats announcing his retirement this week. the headline that he did not want to be a career politician. the story says the ongoing redistricting process going on around the country had nothing to do with it. the democratic congressman who is going to be in charge of that effort of trying to hold shuler's seat is appearing tomorrow on our newsmakers program. that would be congressman steve israel. he talked a little bit about how the committee will hold the conservative seats that they have been charged to hold. >> privately, they are concerned

about going on the ballot and having adds vote against them with nancy pelosi being the villain of the ads, that it was difficult for the last time around, and they do not want to share the ad space with her again. what is your thought on that? has it been difficult for these folks to stay on the ballot? >> i have three responses, i guess, in alphabetical order and in order of priority -- medicare. medicare. medicare. this election is going to be about members of congress are for. the issue of ads against nancy pelosi is irrelevant when you have to stand up in the town meeting and defend to your constituents why you voted to end medicare for seniors in order to fund tax breaks for big oil companies. host: you can see the entire interview with the chairman of

the democratic campaign committee sunday at 10:00 a.m. and 6:00 p.m. on c-span. it is also available online at www. c-span.org. one other story from washington, d.c., about redistricting and the congressional election. yesterday, the florida redistricting plan was moved to the state senate. the republican-controlled florida state house passed a congressional redistricting map yesterday with the republican- friendly lines one step closer to becoming law. democrats are expected to challenge that map. going back to the bones, francis is on the democratic line from indiana. good morning. caller: good morning, america. i got to tell you, i just got back from cocoa beach. i was born in 1937. i am a grandma, and i love children. florida is a very rich state.

they have a budget over $40 billion. i met in the paper that they had 10,000 homeless people and 3300 were students. there was $900,000 in the budget to provide shelter for these people, and that governor down there took it away. i think everybody should watch how they take care of children. because they have no power. they cannot vote. the way you treat a dog, you know them very well. the way you treat a child, you know them very well. you know what? i stayed in a suite down there, and everybody was retired, crippled, or -- there was not in the children. i went to an art show, and i spotted one child. there were thousands of people that were old and baby boomers and everything, but one child. host: talking about her recent visit to florida. let's go next on the republican line to randy from citrus

heights, california. good morning. caller: good morning. first of all, i would like to address the previous caller from virginia that called the tea party people racist because they want to get rid of the president. i am a dues-paying member of tea party patriots and yes, we do want to see president obama be a one-term president, but i have a black girlfriend, and she does not think you're sorry races. at any rate, i just wanted to comment on the previous guest who was talking about how -- it was funny, the contradiction in his whole spiel. he said that the rate of unemployment, if you counted everybody who really quit looking, was the same rate that they said we would have if we did not do the stimulus.

basically, the stimulus did not do anything. the unemployment rate is really 15%, and there is a whole bunch of activity on the part of the mainstream media trying to make us believe there is a recovery. you look around on the streets, and the evidence does not coincide with what they are trying to push on us. host: thanks for the call. we are now going to go down to the independent line. conn, your next on open phones. caller: i wanted to talk about the cost of medical care, the government costs, medicare, medicaid. it is very frustrating for me. i have become convinced over the last year or so that the science is out there that could

essentially eliminate type two diabetes as a disease, cut way down on rates of cancer and heart disease. i recommend the book "eat to live" and has appeared on pbs. if people can take responsibility for their own health, and it involves changing your diet, but the science is really dramatic. he has all kinds of people who, for instance, were told they needed heart bypass surgery. they went on his diet and went back to their doctor two months later, and their veins were ok. they did not have to have the surgery. host: from medical policy to the president's energy policy, this from the hill in d.c. today.

federal agencies have given lawmakers more than 185,000 pages of documents. again, that is in the hill from last night. back to the bones, phyllis is an independent from countryside, illinois. good morning. caller: good morning, sir. speaking of obama, racism and all that, that is a bunch of baloney. however, the only difference

between obama and bush is that he has a better command of the english-language. now listen to this -- as president, he does not need a vote from congress to administer tariffs and sanctions. if he put the tariffs on all the foreign countries that ship to us, he could increase and what a tax evaluation of $20 an hour against those countries and bring the jobs back here. the other thing is he could bring all the troops home because that will save us over $2 trillion a year between the cost of the war's and our troops being over the seas policing the war, like ron paul says. the other thing is with medical, he could make a law, which is reciprocity, from state to state where any insurance can be purchased by any insurance company that is selling in the

health insurance or any kind of insurance, and they will then fight for the dollar and they will lower their prices just to get the business. host: brought up the possibility of bringing troops home, this from today's "new york times" -- and the disclosure of the

message comes at a delicate moment after the taliban announced that they would be open to a political office. if you want to read more about that, that is in today's "new york times." back to the phones, ernest from michigan on the democratic line. good morning. caller: good morning. the caller before me that talks about that the racism is not a player must have been living under a rock for the last three years. this election is not going to turn on just the economy alone. i would say 75% of it is going to be the economy. the other is going to the fact that what brought the tea party to power in 2010, and on january 21, 2009, many people in this country will come up and found there was a black man in the

white house and all the things they had been told about black people -- that we are not intelligent, that we have no skills and no energy to do anything -- now we find one leading the greatest country in the world. and that is what happens. republicans in new they had a weak field of candidates. you had one that is leading. there is nothing more to the leaders than arrogance, and they will not be doing much of anything. they have these subliminal messages they are putting out now trying to discourage people from voting and what have you so that they can win, not on the issues and not on the things that are of most concern to this country. host: an earnest from michigan with his thoughts on the republican field -- ernest from michigan and his thoughts on the republican field. one other thing mentioned in the -- a couple of papers about mark zuckerberg.

in "the financial times" to make -- facebook she faces tax bill of $1.5 billion -- facebook chief. you can read about that today. will try to get one more call in on the independent line from tennessee. good morning. caller: i have been listening to your program all morning. good program. i have a couple of things -- the previous caller before, the lady said the president could do executive orders. i think they need to understand that congress is the one who passes laws. the president can only have so much power. if he could have done that, we never would have any health-care bill. also said about the stimulus that it work -- one of your guys said on your show that did not make sense -- he said he did not hear it right -- he said without

the stimulus, unemployment would have been a 15% to 20%, and that is including unemployment of people coming in, so that is just a correction on the part. i was calling in to see people do not understand that -- i was laid off from the auto industry in detroit. i came to clarksville, tennessee, went back to school, got my mechanical engineering -- i have already had a business degree, but i got my master's in mechanical engineering and got hired at honda. i think people, if they go on line -- the auto industry is now hiring, but the problem is that you have to have some type of degree. i ask everybody who is out of work right now -- take the pell grants. the government does that tell grants, and you will go into a little bit of debt, but the bottom line is you will be able to get a degree so when you come back into the work force, you have a skill with that degree that you can find work much

easier. host: from tennessee, talking about recommendations for folks who are out of work. want to make sure to let you know about tomorrow's schedule on the "washington journal." another good show for you tomorrow morning. the author of "hurting donkeys, -- "herding donkeys: the fight to rebuild the republican party" will be on. also have ash jain talking about iran pose a nuclear program, and sheila krumholz talking about numbers that campaigns released this week. also want to remind you tonight to track all the nevada caucus happenings on our campaign 2012 website had c-span.org. again, we will be showing mitt romney's caucus event at 11:00 p.m. and newt gingrich