families that have been on welfare. this there also generations of farmers who have received subsidies. if you are going to test anybody, you need to test everybody. the poor poor people have no lobbyists, no power, so that his white they are going after them. but they going to go after social security recipients, veterans? where is it going to end? nobody lives a perfect life. just because people is poor, that doesn't mean and they have to live a perfect life. no one else does. i don't know, i think it is a bad deal, and republicans are

just looking to stir up their base, and it is just a shame. host: whether people agree or disagree, if they are living in one of the states where the proposal is being considered, is there are resources or database they can go to to see where things stand? guest: i don't think there is a unifying database. dhhs brief talks about legislation that was enacted at time. it is active in many states, and if you search on the internet, you will probably come up with news articles if it has been proposed. or call your state legislator and say, "is this proposed? this is what i feel." get involved. host: thank you for being here to explain the legislation being

considered in many states across the country, drug-testing focusing on people receiving welfare and in some states discussion about people receiving unemployment benefits. thank you for your time this morning. let me tell you what is coming up next this friday morning. "america by the numbers." this week we are going to be looking at -- it fits into what we have just been talking about -- state and local finances. where the revenues come from, how that has been trending the last few years. we will continue our discussion with you about that issue, how state and local governments are funded, and with the squeeze on so many states, where priorities should be set. until that time, it is open phones friday on c-span. call in for a topic that is on your mind. the numbers are on your screen.

got some stories while awaiting for open phones calls. "chicago tribune" following up on the spending issue for local government. "mayor plans to cap investing cash, but details are sketchy." "mayor rahm emanuel pitched an innovative public-private partnership but left more questions than answers about how it would be paid for and who would profit. toe idea is to tackle big t get projects for roads, rails, and runways, using mostly private money to get them done. as one investor noted, the investment firms are expected to be paid back, and the

administration acknowledged that the plan would require the public to pay for new services such as rapid transit service, meter line extensions, and expansion to high-speed internet access." that is from "the chicago tribune" this morning. of interest is the president's trip to new hampshire. "obama makes bush in new hampshire. it stands firm on energy policies, calls for end oil subsidies." it has become a tossup state rather that reliably republican. let's go to phones. patti, republican, you are on the air. caller: your last guest -- it is emeril to fund it -- immoral to find an addict or alcoholic and give them more money. it is not that we don't like the poor, like the left represent.

it is that we don't want them to destroy their lives and children's lives. also, it is our money. the other thing i wish c-span would do is take a look at solyndra, first solar, and these companies that barack obama gave billions of dollars to and are now going bankrupt, and how much they contribute to his 2008 campaign. also, when you are reading off of the twitter and the e-mails, you have a preponderance, about 75%, that our liberal. i wish you would have a better balance on that. thank you. host: thanks for the culprit only read what i get here pre. if more conservatives send comments -- send them money.

caller: that lady it earlier -- drug-testing as an attack on a poor people, and rick scott is trying to implement a bill that prevents convicted felons from getting any kind of federal government assistance. my wife and daughter cannot go to the doctor and i will be able to see my daughter. it is a form of oppression. .ost: here is a tweet gue no, answer to that. don't know any details or whether there will be coverage. the internet is full of coverage about the death of andrew breitbart. we have clips for you from a recent appearance on c-span. [video clip] >> i dedicated the book to

clarence thomas. ginni thomas came up to me -- i was at an event in washington, and i did not know who that he was who tapped me on the shoulder. she just told me who she was, and i couldn't deal with -- it is huge. you have no idea what that man meant to me, the stoicism he had when he went through that. i have gone through -- she sai gone through the shirley sherrod thing, and she said i wanted to bring slavery back, and no journalist challenge her on that. i am doing what no stupid white

person would ever think to do, to stand up to jesse jackson and these people who prey upon people in need. host: andrew breitbart in an appearance on our q&a program. go to the c-span video library and you will find it. dave, you are on the air. caller: i was hoping that on your "communicators" program that he would get a c l's of the tv broadcast networks -- ceo's of the tv broadcast networks on and ask them why they don't put c-span1, 2, and 3 on their networks. you don't charge them for that. host: we do. we are on cable systems in 100 million homes.

what is your thinking on having it on broadcast networks? caller: well, i've been trying to get c-span3 on dish network for years. host: keep up the good work. we would love to be on dish network. by a letter to the c e l and tell them you are a paying customer. caller: i don't think it gets to the ceo. host: maybe it will circle back and you will tell them you are interested. next up is charlotte, north carolina. caller: thank you, susan. i have two comments, one for the senator, the next one for the lady doing the drug test bid first one is the keystone pipeline -- there is nothing that justifies oil come from canada is going to be sold in

the u.s. oil is a commodity and will go on the world market. these republicans keep misleading us in reference to oil g. oil is not going to stay here if the price is cheaper. if it is in europe, it will go to europe. the lady talking about drug- testing, in reference to social security, a lady called about social security. social security is something we all pay for when we work. that is not an entitlement program. unemployment is similar to that id you pay, it they take it out of your paychecks. what you doesn't pay for, you

don't know what you got it -- and i am a democrat, i registered for barack and i will vote for him, but people should at least use the money wisely. food stamps? i live in charlotte, and i buy food stamps to get my food from the grocery store, because it is cheaper. it is something that needs to be done -- [unintelligible] host: can i understand how that process works? caller: you go there to keep food stamps. they are selling it. they want the money, they don't want the food. $100 worth of food stamps did you give $50, and you go to the grocery store.

give them the $50 and -- host: you have $100 worth of food. caller: and people know that. we buy the food stamps all the time, and it is the same old people that get food stamps. host: all right, going to jump in. open phones just a couple more minutes. on this same topic, "detroit free press." "citing mismanagement and reports of corruption, state officials are trying to stop paying the city of detroit more than $15 million a year in tended to help lower income residents. officials from the department of human services plans to urge that detroit city council to approve a transfer of the funds to a nonprofit agency."

next is georgia. mary, republican there. caller: hello, susan. "the ed show" and chris matthews on "hardball" are trying to get rush limbaugh off the air. this disgusting ed person, if i remember correctly, call laura and he has the, nerve to ask that rush be fired from his job. my friends and i are going to call his sponsors and we are going to make it pretty rough for mr. ed. thank you. host: "denver post" this

morning. "fears of terrorist using program leading to tighter security checks." "twice in the past three years, colorado refugees have been arrested on terrorism charges. they are among a few scattered across the country who have raised concern about the process. the obama administration launched a plan to prevent violent extremists from recruiting individuals and small groups to their causes. the most serious unrest in colorado has been najibullah zazi." last call in open phones is from san antonio, texas. greg, an independent. caller: i am a disabled veteran, and i get drug tested every three months in order to receive my meditations and benefits. if i test positive for some

illegal drug, i have to go to mandatory rehab. host: you think with regard to the welfare issue that they should be tested as well? caller: absolutely. why is it good for me? i did not ask -- i volunteered to be in the army, but i did not ask to be disabled. last week there was a mixup in my test and i had to go to do but work or i would not be able -- it was not that i tested positive, it was that i did not have enough medication in my system. i had to go give blood. right there, in front of everybody, in order to get my prescription. why is it not fair for them? they are receiving money also -- my money also. if it is is good for veterans,

it is good for everybody. host: final story. front-page of "atlanta journal- constitution." "rivals make pushed in georgia." for newt gingrich, his home state, and this is described as a make or break contest for him. all evening we will have results, but we will also have statements from the candidates and lots of time for your telephone calls and tweets and facebook postings on the results of the super tuesday. one more segment to go on this friday "washington journal," and it is "america by the numbers," state and local finances. we will be right back.

>> if you had said in 2006 that the world would be begging for the united states to use force again in the middle east within 3.5 years, everybody would have said you are crazy. >> brookings institution fellow robert kagan is not only an adviser to the romney campaign, but serves on secretary of state clinton's advisory board. >> there is a lot of continuity in a foreign policy, more than we expect, in on a broad consensus. what you are seeing here is a consensus that exists in the foreign policy community and overlap between the two parties. >> more for robert kagan and his latest, sunday at 8:00 on "q&a." >> bobby jindal is set to

for thehis budget state, more than $9 million in the red. you are listening to shreveport 's news and weather station. >> this weekend, booktv and american history tv explore the culture of should -- of shreveport, louisiana. "one damn blunder from beginning to end." then, to look at the 2000 books of the john smith novell collection. then a tour with neil johnson. sunday at 5:00 p.m. eastern, from barksdale air force base, look at the base's role in 9/11 and the history of the b-52

bomber. and from the pioneer heritage center, medical treatment and medicine during the civil war. shreveport, louisiana, this weekend on c-span2 and 3. >> rick santorum delivered a full throated defense of religion in public life on sunday, appealing to social conservatives who revive his presidential campaign mr. santorum responded to comments made by president john f. kennedy. >> i believe in an america where separation of church and state is absolute, where no catholic fellow can tell the president, should he be catholic, how to act, and a protestant minister can tell his parishioners for whom to vote, where no church orchard school -- is granted -- note church or church school is granted any public funds or

preference, where no man is denied public office merely because he differs from the president who might appoint him or people who might elect him. >> you can watch more of president kennedy's speech on our website at the video library. go to c-span.org confided at the archives and there. >> "washington journal" continues. host: it is time for our friday segment, "america by the numbers," where we look at government statistics that after an aspect of our society. this friday we look at the finances of state and local governments. so much discussion and debate in states about resources over the past five or six years. lisa blumerman is the chief of the census bureau's government division. you can tell what the team guys. how many people do you have doinat a gathering

this information? guest: we take the census of government every five years and we have a number of different surveys to measure this quarterly and yearly estimates. host: tracy gordon is at the brookings institution, a washington think tank, and she is an economic studies fellow. what is your interest in state and local government finances? guest: i have been following the budgets for quite some time, i know lisa quite well, and things have been interesting and fun to watch. "fun to watch" is in quotes. states like california have had protected budget battles. why are the states' challenge? guest: states like california, my home state, saw revenues declined -- at their worst,

about 17% below where they were earlier. suddenly we had to scramble to fill the gap between revenues and expenditures. and in some cases, only weeks after they close the books on the budget. about a total of $500 billion gap in revenues and expenditures during the recession. in some cases they had to cut things like education, health and human services, places where we have actually seen real spending decline. it is only a matter of time before people feel the impact. host: we welcome your participation in this discussion. tell us about what has been happening in your state or even local governments. your elected officials are making some of these decisions. are you seeing your taxes go up as a result of the need for more money, or services being cut? what do you think of all this?

if you were making the decisions, what would you do? lisa blumerman, one of the things that is interesting is how many state and local governments and there are. this particular charts gives us a picture. guest: absolutely. i've been working a data on governments for only a few years, and this is one of the most interesting things for me to learn and understand most people think it generally of the state government, and maybe their county and local government. they don't realize there are 90,000 governments in the united states. what you see on this chart is that we have a 50-sta -- we have the 50 state governments, thousands of general-purpose governments. host: how are they defined? guest: county governments, city governments, towns and townships. when people think of services they use, that is generally what they are thinking about.

in addition to those general purpose governments, we can also see that we have about 50,000 special purpose governments. it is in a special purpose governments that we get special districts. about 37,000 special districts. special districts are all priced by state law to provide one or a limited number of functions. this is where we have water and sewer districts, police protection, fire protection. in addition to that, we have a 13,000 independent school districts. host: when you at the census bureau look at this, is this the totality? or is this just the ones that you measure? guest: we need to distinguish between cities and city governments. we are talking about is the number of city governments there are. for example, when we think about counties, there are just over 3100 counties in the nation

come under terms of functioning county governments, just over 3000. move on to include the government's employ, and i would like to involve you on this one, because there's so much discussion about employees and where those trend lines are going. for folks at home, the orange color is 1957, the blue is 1987, and the green is last year, two years ago, 2010. this is what happened with state government employees over that time. up from 1.4 in the 1950's to 5.3 million people today working for state government. at the local level, 1957, 4.2 million, and now 14 million. the federal civilian work force, non-military, much less growth overall. 2.4 million back in 1957, 3.0 million today. give us some color around those

numbers. lisa will talk about, a lot of this growth has occurred around education. one thing to keep in mind about state and local governments is that they provide a labor- intensive -- a lot of private sector industries can benefit from productivity increases, doing things with more machinery, more capital, using fewer people, in the private sector there are always going to be a certain number of teachers in the classroom, cops on the street, firefighters on each block, and with basic economic factors, political realities, the voters seem to want more teachers in the classroom, not fewer. it could be that it is it so difficult sometimes to observe what governments are doing that people tend to focus on the input. it is for me difficult -- it is is very difficult for a mayor to eliminate a fire station.

host: this is the year 2010. you can see that especially at the local level, education employees far outstrip other sectors. guest: part of what we do when we do our annual survey of public employment and payroll is try to understand the industries in which government employees are working. these are the industries in which we classify people. education, as you see, represents the largest industry that our state and local government employees are working in. no surprise, as tracy just talked about, public safety is right before that, followed by social services and income maintenance. host: education remains quite local. look at the difference in the blue bar here, local employees versus state. guest: these education jobs are typically higher education jobs. if you look at the job losses we encountered, you see that they

are concentrated mainly in the non-education sectors, and within that, at the local level as opposed to the state level. state education continues to move along mainly because people are going back to school. people at their jobs are going to community college trying to refresh their skills. it is difficult to cut jobs in the state education sector. host: this is another comparison of how it has grown over the years, just looking at education. orange, 1957, state level. local level in 1957, 2 million, to 8.5 million. it would be interesting if we overlaid that with the population growth. guest: interesting that you bring that up, because we had the same question. we did look at that. within the census bureau, which collect demographic and economic information. one of the things we see when we

look at the growth in education at the state and local government level is between 8 1987 and 2010, the growth was consistent between those two time periods. local education was about 51%. when we look at population growth for that same time period, it grew at a rate of 27% over that period of time. when you want to look at the population growth, and i don't have data in front of me, one of the things you want to do, particularly with education statistics, is look at the number of children who are up school age. we took a quick look at population pyramids and saw that the number of children in that age group was increasing. host: let's get to calls. we will mix calls in with more charts. randy, you are on the air. caller: good morning. thank you for taking my call.

out here in california we have a situation much like they have in greece, where the state government is pretty much alone and operated by -- owned and operated by the left, by democrats. in greece it would be the labor party. thus making it really difficult for them to address any of the underlying issues of the budget when they relate to public employees, because public employees basically put them and keep them in office. they cannot go there. they cannot confront those people. we have -- in that way, we are a lot like greece. but we are actually worse, because greece isn't trying to build high-speed rail at the same time that they are bankrupt. it is really frustrating to see what is going on in the city. i feel fear for the rest of the

country, because these people think that they are too big to fail. a call sam is going to come bail them out. -- uncle sam is going to come bail them out. you guys across the country are going to be on the hook for the easy going on in this state. host: thanks so much for your call. california caller, a visible symbol of the pressures on state street anything for him about what is happening there? guest: california is doing a lot better than it was. the size of the budget gap has shrunk because of actions they have taken. they have cut spending and instituted a temporary tax increases, which have now expired. the governor is pushing to extend those tax increases and that will go before voters in november. an interesting development in california is facebook. the office there comparable to the congressional budget office

in washington, a nonpartisan analyst, estimates that depending on the success of their initial public offering, the revenues could improve by $2.5 billion. the gap could be either 6.5 or 8.5, depending on what happens with that one business decision. that is an example of a state that is very dependent on high- income individuals, capital gains, all of all sources of income. that makes it difficult to forecast. host: that is a good lead into this next pie chart we have. with the money comes from in state and local governments. guest: this pie chart shows the distribution of the sources of general revenue for state and local government. from the 2009 data, half the revenue comes from taxes, 53%. host: corporate and individual taxes? guest: correct. one of the interesting things about government is they have the ability to do all kinds of

things. they had a wide distribution and collect at the state and local law ave. host: charges in miscellanies general revenue. guest: it includes things like park fees, toll roads, hospital fees. host: paying for your driver's license. guest: exactly. 22% of the money that state and local governments have our federal intergovernmental revenue, generally coming from the federal government. it includes things like title went funding, medicaid. host: in our last segment -- that would be in this grant as money transferred from the federal government to the state. this the work has the story - -- this viewer has a story. guest: the rule of thumb for rainy day fund is 5% of total

spending. that is pretty uncommon. people are trying to think up ways to incentivize government to keep more money in the rainy day fund. redefines are actually doing -- rainy day funds were actually doing quite well before the recession hit. there is in some sense nothing that could have prepared state and local governments for the recession that hit. host: next is illinois. thanks so much, you are on the air. caller: it is amazing. we have california, then we have illinois. in illinois, less spending $3 for every dollar we take a -- in. we are spending $3 for every dollar we take in. we are over $75 billion in the pension fund, i have heard as high as $85 billion in the pension fund that we cannot make up. i am on the county board in hancock county.

the state is always between $200,000 and $300,000 behind in our ears in paying for services supposedly that they are giving us for, like, the schools. it is always said that they want more money, but i watched this movie, and i would gingrich both of the ladies' there if you what -- is moving wo -- would encourage both of the ladies there that if you watch this movie, "waiting for superman," it said that in illinois, 24% of eighth graders can read at eighth grade level, according to no child left behind. i am on the highway bridge committee. if we had a highway bridge of 24% of toll roads could be drove over, people have a state. in illinois, -- people what have

a fit. in illinois, we have a catholic school in this area that costs 20,000 -- host: i will jump in. a lot of examples about the illinois situation. thanks for participating. we saw that there are a lot more education employees over the years, growing exponentially at the local level especially. here is an illinois resident frustrated with the outcome. guest: i am impressed that he because the amount spent per student and he knows the outstanding debt in his state. it is sometimes difficult to get that information -- host: he is on the bridge committee. guest: sometimes people don't take the initiative. he is right. in illinois, the state has in some sense close to the budget gap by just not paying local government and vendors and

universities have a backlog of unpaid bills. that is one way that states can balance their budgets without really balancing the budget. 3/8 pint host: let's look at these pie charts. guest: they are showing us where state and local governments are getting their revenues. what is interesting to see is that state and local governments collect very different types of taxes that are reliant on different types of taxes. for example, if we look at specifically at state government tax collections, states rely very heavily on what we call gross receipts, things you purchase. he went into a store and purchased a jacket, the sales tax on that jacket would be included. this is another piece of the state government tax

collection, 34%, just over 1/3. nationwide, averaging out about 15% of tax collections, and other taxes include things like severance taxes and corporate license taxes. depending on the state, that can be very important to that state. host: 3/04 of the pie chart of 1 revenue source. guest: this game is 75% predominantly with the property tax, generally in local tax that is collected. a big portion of that is to fund education. host: jump in, because property values have diminished since the 2008 crisis. what has happened to that quarter of the pie chart? but they come at a lot of people watched these things have been waiting for it to oddly,-- \ of the -- in a lot of people who watch these things have been waiting

for it to fall, and it has not paid it takes time for property values to be reassessed and for the moneys to go out and for it to show up in government coffers. the thing to remember is that at the same time local governments are anticipating the drop in property taxes, they have to deal with things like state budget cuts. host: we have found bank lines set up regionally for this segment. -- phone lines set up originally for this segment. how much is being allocated in tiger economies, and offering a great comments, as several callers have so far. this compares what? guest: using data from our 2010 tax collections, this shows us how different states rely on different taxes for revenues. we have a few states that show you the diversity of taxes. some of the interesting things we see is that if we look at

alaska, that orange bar, 75% of their tax revenues falls into what we call the "other" category. that is predominantly the severance tax, based on oil production and reserves. host: florida is very well known as a state with no income tax. 83% of their revenue comes from? guest: sales tax. florida relies very heavily on the general sales tax. host: california, since we have been talking about its image, looks distributed a little more evenly. guest: california follows a pattern that is similar to most states. heavily supported by the income and general sales tax. host: the income tax is 52% of california's revenue, 37% of california's revenue from sales tax. next telephone call, arlington, virginia. hi, michael, you are on. caller: i wanted to ask a

question for your guests. what is the difference -- when i look at my check this out, state tax, federal tax, medical, stuff like that. i don't know, how was local in my county, for services, how do i know how much money is going to my local county services? it doesn't indicate on my check stub, and when i see and library closed down or a part that is no longer in service -- park that is no longer in service, and we make money and do this -- how much can we give to our local versus the state? guest: interesting question. divisibility of local taxes might not be so great because of things like property taxes. for people at mortgages with escrow accounts, it is automatically taken out. there is some literature is

showing that people feel differently when they received a bill for their property taxes. at the local level, local governments rely on property taxes, but it is read that you would have to tax withholding that you have at the state and federal level that you can see on your paycheck. guest: they sure do, but there are delays in that process. host: next telephone call for our two guests. michigan -- this is paul. caller: i am in great favor of a flat tax for everyone. currently, we have fox watching the henhouse. if we had a flat tax, it would

be everybody paying their fair share, and monitor the spending on television. you are unlimited with stations, and you could run it like a ticker-tape. if you needed 30 stations, we could set it up for 30 stations, but be accountable for every penny. when i was a child, i ran errands, and the most important thing i had to do was to bring the receipt. right now just at the politicians who are just accountable to each other, they are not accountable to anybody. guest: i would say that a lot of states to a good job of putting that information online, but i am all in favor of more accountability and transparency. host: back to census data -- nice lead-in -- total tax collection and the perring

grants to states from 1980 to 2010. total tax collections implies what? guest: total tax collections that the state receives at the aggregate level. it gives us a sense of the revenues coming into the state from 1980 to 2010. host: these indicate the recession years. guest: one of the things you see when you look at the chart is that for each of the recessionary periods, grey bars on the chart, you can see a slight dip in tax collection. for the most recent recession, quite a bit of a dip -- host: at the beginning of the recession, states were generally collecting $782 billion, and that drop by almost $80 billion since. guest: correct. host: at the same time, state and local monies are going up. guest: in this case, included in

the federal inner government revenues is the investment act money. while i cannot pull that information from the data we collect, et it is a big influx of funding that started in 2009 and continued into 2010. host: state government revenues dropped by $80 billion, but the federal government has kicked in an additional $535 billion. this is chicago. david, good morning, you are on. caller: two quick points about the real estate tax. the states with the highest real estate tax actually were the states with the increased volatility in the real-estate market prices -- least volatility in the real-estate market prices. it tends to cool off the speculation and does tend to

curb the prices, said the crash is less severe. i am looking at a copy of public management magazine, march 2010, that says that states should re engineer the property tax to fall more heavily on land. also, for the brookings institute data, the brookings institution several years ago did a study in coordination with the national league of cities, u.s. conference of mayors, and several other organizations, saying that states should move their property tax off of improvements and onto land values. i wonder if either of your guests is at all familiar with any of those things. host: before you go, people don't read "government management" magazine just for fun. [laughter] can you tell us what you do for a living? caller: i work for a nonprofit that is into development issues. host: thanks for your call.

guest: david is highlighting an issue that economists love the property tax. the land tax is something that philosopher/economist henry george was in favor of, and there are some folks who believe that we should move completely to the land tax. leaving that question aside, property taxes, because they resemble lead taxes, half of virtues. one is stability. they remain fairly steady over time, and that can help governments in dealing with the volatility in other sources of income income and sales taxes. host: donna asks on twitter -- which parts of the pie chart would lotto proceeds go to? guest: miscellaneous and general

revenue. host: more and more states are turning to gambling of some sort. an important thing about gambling revenue is that it is a drop in the bucket. it leads to a bit of a misperception that education funding is taking care of because we have a lot repaid in california, the lottery funds are about 2% of the total education budget. by no means is it enough to support the entire program, but every little bit helps. host: state government revenues and expenditures from the years 1980 through 2010. there is a big dip in this. guest: on this chart, we see both general and total revenue as well as total expenditures. we wanted to show your viewers both the total revenue and general revenue, because in some cases the general revenue, the green line, is a more stable

indicator of the revenues that governments have available to them. total revenue includes the insurance trust sector, liquor store revenue, utility revenue. those are excluded from general revenue, which is why you don't see that volatility. host: there is a small dip in the recession around 2000. these are recession years. then it climbed through the 2000's and in 2008 -- guest: what you are seeing is a reflection of the market volatility during the time period. host: if they held steady, there would be recovered. guest: uh -- host: if that -- guest: pension assets have recovered much of the lost value. host: staten island, new york. staten island has moved on. louisiana. caller: hey, good morning,

ladies. yeah -- host: we can hear you. caller: all these taxes -- i was watching the news last night on cnbc, and the iranian television put out propaganda last night about oil speculation, that there is some pipeline in saudi arabia that has been blown up, and oil price went up $10 a barrel last night, right before the stock market shut down, about 30 minutes before they closed. it went up $10 a barrel. about 10 years ago -- i live in louisiana and we have plenty of oil down here. i mean, this is speculation. the dodd-frank bill they put

out, it needs to go into effect now. we subsidize these people, $15 billion a year, and they are making record profits. it is time to wake up, america. thank you. had thiss right, we story at the beginning of the program about the incident with saudi arabia and oil prices going to $110 a barrel. guest: certainly there are people who would like to change the distribution of tax revenues to include more taxes on fuel, more taxes on energy. the difficulty is that the prices of those commodities are rising, so obviously that creates a burden for consumers. how do you balance those objectives of trying to do something that is basically taxing something we would like to consume less of, like soda and alcohol, but at the same

time make sure that consumers are not hurt much by that. host: we look at where the money comes in, and now with the get out it is span of, from 1992 to 2009. where the jobs are. guest: one of the interesting things about this chart, we see that while the dollar amounts might have changed, the percentage of total expenditures has remained pretty constant across all the expenditures. host: once again, education being the largest outlay. blue bar is 1992, and now it has grown to 2009, at $330 billion back in 1992, now $862 billion state and local governments are spending on education. what else is interesting in terms of growth? public safety -- everything goes up but the ratios -- it looks

like social services might be -- well, at 25 to 26. this comment -- that is a quotation from george washington to add to our discussion this morning. california -- a lot of california and illinois callers. maybe not surprising. caller: good morning. you have a chart or study that tells us what percent of the federal and state dollars have been spent on the war and how it affects the revenue? secondly, can you tell me how much of california income and tax revenue goes to the state,

the federal government, and how much we get back as compared to other states? host: thank you so much. there are studies out about states with regard to federal receipts and expenditures. do you take those numbers in? do you look at which states contribute more to the federal government and they get back? guest: we look at federal in your government transfers as well as state and local intergovernmental transfers. we don't have that information on our sleds today, but there is information at census.gov. host: do you know off hand -- guest: of the top of my head i don't have that detail -- host: all the numbers. the first part of the question was more spending i -- war spending. guest: it is a federal issue.

it is targeted, non-defense discretionary spending in particular, a small sliver of the federal budget, 30% of which goes to state and local governments. that is programs like the community development block grant program, transportation money, education money. as the federal government cuts that, it is a small proportion of the federal government but useful to some jurisdictions. host: the question when there is a large deployment of guard and national reserve from the state's -- to that affect state coffers? guest: i am not aware that it affects state coffers and in terms of the national guard. very small part of the state budget. host: when veterans come home, we often see they are the largest percentage of the homeless population. that would fall to state and

local governments. guest: unless the federal government is reimbursing for social service programs. host: knoxville, tennessee. hello to jim. caller: i am retired, and i know the numbers pretty well. state and local governments don't fight wars, but state and local governments have increased the proportion of a spending -- that we are spending. second thing that c-span is not covering -- "the boston globe" has always done a lot of work on a salary structure of government employees, salaries 20% higher, if you add in pensions and medical care. probably making anywhere between 40 -- the other thing, isn't any good to talk about how many employees there are, because you have got to get the ratio.

civilian non-defense was something like 300 or one word, and now it is 900. if you go to the state, the number of employees per million has skyrocketed. in 1900, you would die if you saw how low the ratio of federal workers to state and local. you have got to have the rate te. it is that government has become a way of making a living and winning elections. host: what you have to say for jim? guest: state and local government employees per 1000 people -- not for 1 million, but 1000 -- is lower now than it was

a couple of years ago, and that is because of the job cuts we have seen during the recession. host: what you might even with your notes -- --tguest: oh, it is so ugly [laughter] host: this is the trend lines to 2011. guest: 65 employees per 1000 people compared to 61 in 2011. i can show you a nicer graf without chicken scratches on it -- oh, dear, i can read these with me -- host: you can look at and i will take a call. caller: i have a question that is probably more. for mrs. blumerman. what was the census bureau's rationale for terminating the federal financial statistics program?

we use today in the florida legislature from the annual consolidated funds report and the aid to states report to compare florida's receipt of federal funds to the other states. i understand from talking to your federal programs branches that there is no alternative data source that will allow us to continue this into the future. i'm curious why the census bureau did this. host: before she answers, it sounds like you are involved in policy decisions at the florida at state level. do you have the figures for public officials? caller: i am not a public official. i do work for the florida legislature tried florida historically on a per capita or bases as -- per capita basis has ranked near the bottom in terms of receipt of a federal grants, compared to the other states. historically come in the last

several years, we have ranked 48 among all the states in terms of federal grant funding to florida. i am just sort of curious what was the rationale for the elimination of these data sources. guest: i appreciate the question. thank you for your use of that data products. we, too, enjoyed that product and recognize the value. one of the things we're talking about today, and it relates to the topic we talkingduring thesg economic times governments have to make difficult decisions about what programs to provide and what they can and cannot do. the census bureau had to go through a series of conversations and thought process season, and unfortunately they -- the consolidated federal funds report was one of the programs that was terminated.

you mentioned there was no alternative data source for that. while we had been continuing to produce the report and the federal aid to state reports, usaspending.gov came along. i would encourage you to look at that as an alternative bid at source. host: i will move to this and then we will come back to another chart. state government unemployment compensation revenue and expenditures, and you can see it's a pretty steady, and when the recession hit, what is happening here? guest: the red bark is showing you expenditures going out front unemployment compensation, $135 billion according to the 2010 data.

the revenues we were able to measure in that same time period is $75 billion. what we see over the last few years is as the unemployment rate has risen, so as the percentage of state government expenditures on unemployment compensation. for example, the state spent 2% of their expenditures in 2008 on unemployment compensation, 2010, 2.6%. guest: an important point about this is it uses federal funds. an important point was to pick up the tab for that extended benefits portion of the insurance program. it used to be that the federal government and the state government shared that second- tier. the federal government added a third tier and agreed to pick up the tab for the second.

the federal government helped a lot. the problem with unemployment insurance is states levy a payroll tax on employers and they build up trust funds, and that is what they are supposed to use to fund the program. those trust funds are often not adequate. host: you are looking for one set of debt in response to the data -- to the caller. guest: it is true the number of employees has grown, but part of that is because of driver's we have been talking about, growth in populations that consume services, growth in poverty rates, so it is important about those drivers as well as the size of the economy over all. the chart that i pulled out shows job losses in this recession compared to other recessions after world war ii, and you can see we are basically at a low point now 48

months out actor the start of the recession, and we are to% to blow -- 2% below. by this time after that recession, state and local employment was picking up. it is to make the point that there has been a drop in state and local employment and it has been worse than in previous recessions. host: it has been a great discussion, and it is a whole topic with could delve into, state obligations for pension funds. we are just about out of time. as we close, let's delved into this more deeply, but this is the defined benefit systems, what states are obligated to pay their public-sector employees. guest: we see the total cash and investment holdings. these are only to find benefit

pension systems. we can see the increase over time, and you see the sharp decline during the recent recession, followed by an upswing. host: do we know what their obligations are? guest: is available in other parts of our report. host: their obligations to public sector employees versus their holdings, said that is a good teaser for future segment. thanks to you for being here, and for you folks at home, we appreciate you being in our audience. we will take you right now to the brookings institution, and we have a live discussion this morning on countering proliferation, the challenge of nuclear -- we will take you to that now.

>> if you look at the american relationship with russian, are run has always figured as a big issue with that. u.s. policy is focused on how can you hinder, slow, stop, prevent these countries from moving forward with a nuclear weapons program. in the case of iran, there has been progress in slowing it, but in both cases those countries have moved for. north korea tested a device into a dozen sex and 2009, and all the u.s. government has not come to a that a firm conclusion at stew iran wants to have a ready made nuclear weapon, iran has made significant progress in its effort to acquire the capability to produce a nuclear weapon, or of the -- with regard

to enrichment. this will be a challenge to the president in 2013. we have an excellent panel today. i will give a brief introduction and lay out a plan for our discussion, and then open it appeared we will start with jonathan pollack, a senior fellow here, and longtime expert on north korea. with north korea there was news on wednesday that the north koreans have agreed to a moratorium on testing on and richmond and testing of long- range missiles. jonathan will put this in context of the difficult history that we have had north korea on these questions, as well as talk about what the transition from kim jong il to confront -- to kim jong un. suzanne maloney will talk about iran. today there are parliamentary elections taking place in iran,

and has been speculation about whether iran iran is reaching that point with the israelis to signing they are going to go ahead and conducting a military strike. describe -- suzanne will describe what is going on with that effort. robert gallucci is president of the macarthur foundation and spent a lot of time working on these issues, including as an assistant secretary of state for political, military affairs. after jonathan and suzanne, robert will give us advice on how we should fix the problem at what the policy should be in addressing these questions. there is a price for sitting in the middle chair. finally, we have strobe talbott, president of the brookings foundations. he grappled with these issues in the 1990's, and he will address two questions. one, what did these two cases

say about global order to deal with this global threat, and how do these kinds of questions by into politics in the united states in a political year. with that, jonathan, let me start with you. >> we meet propitious in the aftermath of simultaneous announcements from the ministry of foreign affairs in korea -- koreea about how we can resume talks if not outright negotiations. amidst the quiet encouragement of the moment, i thought it would be useful to review the history, how we find ourselves at this point, as we enter a third decade of negotiations with north korea over their nuclear weapons activities.

we cannot undo the history, but it is important to understand better where we are and what needs to be done. it is nearly 20 years since bob kelly sat down with north korean counterparts and today some of the same counterparts are still the negotiators. many of the issues arm the same. it is almost 10 years since the intelligence community determined that north korea had under way a covert, highly enriched uranium program which led to the breakdown of the agreed framework early in the bush administration and triggered north korea's immediate resumption of its plutonium-based nuclear weapons program that was followed soon after by north korea's withdrawal from the npt, north korea being the only state that has withdrawn from the non- proliferation treaty. it has been 80 years since north

korea -- eight years since a professor was taken to the reactor where he was able to handle a second piece of plutonium. a year later, north korea declared it had manufactured nuclear weapons, and later a tested a nuclear device for the first time. it has been almost three years since number 3 in the opening months of the obama administration, despite president obama's persistent plea that he would shake an adversary's hands if they would and clenched fists, north korea determined and stated it would remake on every agreement editor signed and it would resume nuclear testing. it threatens the lysing of an icbm, and it's said that it start and enrichment program

that had insisted it had ever done and the first place. and in the following year, again with the professor, he was shown the early resorts of the claims that it had been an on the spot decision to undertake enrichment activities. what you saw was a moderate uranium enrichment hostility with about -- facility with 2000 centrifuges in operation, which does not happen overnight or on a short-term basis. it is now 10 weeks since the death of kim jong il, and and he is identified with a formal consummation of the nuclear weapons activities in north korea that really go back many decades, well before the united states ever sat down to negotiate with north korea. north korea at this time has

declared they would undertake a moratorium on an additional nuclear-weapons testing, long- range missile tests, and would also sees enrichment activities underway, provided there," productive talks under way between united states and north korea." they would also consent, although it is ambiguous in the statement, to return of international atomic energy agency inspectors, where they have been absent since 2008. one other encouraging sign, north korea assented in its statement and claimed it would accept the 1953 armistice accord as the interim basis for

the peace and stability on the korean peninsula, the cornerstone was the word used, and since north korea has regularly trashed the armistice accord, we can take this as a positive sign. north korea has claimed yet again it is prepared to discuss denuclearization, but it is safe to say this is like groundhog day, the movie. we have seen the movie before. the question is whether the ending would be different this time around. we can all concede that with north korea all prices are subject to change without notice, but nonetheless, in the context of the passage of power from kim jong il to his son, this is a small window into post-kim jong il in north korea and weather on that basis we

might see any kind of revisiting of their strategies and policies. that said, the caution is appropriate that north korea has regularly and repeatedly declared that is a fully developed nuclear weapon state, that its nuclear missiles, weapons and missiles, are part andkim jong il's legacy, that more to the point that north korea expects to be treated on an equal level with the recognition of its standing as a stake in possession of nuclear weapons. all of this north korea has undertaken in the face of acute international pressures from its allies, former allies, from its adversaries, from the international atomic energy agency, all in the face of extreme economic deprivation. it is a commitment they take seriously.

united states and other affected powers have no illusions about where matters stand. north korea to this date, despite decades of negotiations, has never for bond any of the technical or material assets that it regards as critical to the suspending of nuclear weapons program. it deems itself and arrived nuclear power and expects to be treated as such. it receives heighten political and economic support from china, which has diminished the presumed pressure on north korea to shelve its nuclear weapons activities, and despite the statement of two days ago, north korea at various junctures threatened to test yet again, presumably this time with a highly enriched uranium device rather than plutonium device.

we remain i think, although we find ourselves perhaps under circumstances where we ought to at least sustain discussions with north korea, certainly, particularly if there is anything that would delay or impede their additional testing. but ample caution needs to be recognized in this process. the united states does not and will not accept the legitimacy or permanence of north korea's nuclear weapons assets. the u.s. has not wavered at all from its commitment to the cessation of all these nuclear weapons activities, and to their ultimate elimination. without which a normal relationship between north korea and the united states and the wider outside world is simply not going to be possible. all of this is in the face of north korea's efforts to pocket and retain its nuclear advances

and to assert that any effort at building and improving bilateral relations with north korea must begin with the acceptance of the north as a weapons states outside the npt, not unlike india, pakistan, and israel. the obama administration continues to advocate what it has called the strategic patients. the hopes of building a common front among japan , the republic of korea, china, and russia, a common framework within which the process of nuclearization can beat in cheated and pulled back. indeed, without which there cannot be any lasting stability on the peninsula or beyond. now, north korea will they believe the outside world is essentially inured to the

existence of these capabilities. is six years since number 3 tested a weapon for the first time. north korea may believe the outside world is prepared to live with these capabilities. wearing down others through its grim persistence and its attachment to these capabilities. but i think the persistence of their efforts ought to caution us about any kind of expectations for an easy or rapid break through. without engaging in magical thinking, we can look upon wednesday's announcement as a tentative first step, but whether it implies or suggests any kind of a near-term cessation and nuclear weapons activities, it seems to me is far more problematic. you have to be mindful that north korea often negotiates for technical reasons. there are a couple of immediate

reasons coming up. in april there will be elections. in december there will be a presidential election in south korea, and the north hopes to get a president more to its liking, and if your trip restrains its activities for the near term, the odds of getting what they would like would improve. at the same time, north korea is superb pitching on april 15 what it hopes -- number 3 is approaching on april 15 the 100th anniversary of kim il sung. cannot always understand or should not pretend we understand north korean motivations, but certainly we should be mindful that north korea it is not for going its nuclear weapons capabilities and interests for the provision of food assistance. we should not delude ourselves

to think we have an understanding of what an immense decision making in the north, but the tests will have to be in north korean actions more than in words to see whether there is any longer term way out of this extraordinary and very troubling nuclear history. the implications of this go well beyond north korea and well beyond east asian security, and with that, i will turn it over to suzanne. thank you. >> seems appropriate that we started with the encouraging case, although jonathan has injected and a program note of caution. it is necessary given the topic at hand to move to the less encouraging case. the case of iran, which at this stage has reached a state of deep disquiet both here and in a number of allied capitals in

particular. i wanted to start off by saying a few words about the state of play within iran, on the nuclear issue, and then raised a few issues for discussion. what you will hear is a degree of commonality as well as important distinctions between the iranian and austrian cases, and i look forward to the comments of our panelists who will knit these cases together. what we know in terms of iran's nuclear program has been confirmed by the latest report, which is the long history of the lack of transparency on the part of the iranian regime with respect to its nuclear activities continues to this day. the difficulty in acid tinning -- in as a training -- in ascertaining the production increases in the last few months, and the increased

stockpile is proving to be a considerable worry for the international community. with that, the launch of the enrichment activities and underground fortified sites which may or may not in vulnerable to even the most powerful u.s. but kurt-busting bombs is a factor which is influencing the timeline and the sense of urgency, which seems to in fact the body paulette 6 -- to in fact the body polyptych -- to infect the body politic here and in israel. one has the recipe of great tension and urgency within the region, which we are seeing on a daily basis. today in iran it is an important

day. it is the first time they will go to the polls since the 19 -- since the 2009 presidential elections. a schism within the conservative political lead along the lines which we have not seen in debt deeply fractious three decades of revolutionary history. today's elections are important. the simple act immobilizing citizens is one that has -- the simple act of mobilizing citizens is deeply meaningful. it has always served as a venue for day-to-day pork-barrel politics that has long term meaning for the balance. with that caveat, i can predict the outcome of elections and a

lack of the impact on the nuclear decision making. there is sheehan will tout the outcome today -- the regime will top the outcome as a slap in the face of the ayatollah to the united states and western states that have been engaged in prince sanctions that are having a real reach. the fractious as between a ahmadinejad will continue and play out any more public faction -- fashion. the racine sees itself and its fate and its -- the regime sees itself as caught up in its nuclear program. the circumstances we find ourselves in, the fears and ward jitters that are dominating here and elsewhere, and the level of sanctions and the type of

sanctions are making it ever more difficult to see a sort of functional negotiating process come out of the current circumstances. let me raise five issues i think are relevant for where we go from here on in iran. the first is establishing deterrence respect to the nuclear program as well as its other provocative activities. there is a sense that pressure works with iran, if it feels its survival is at stake it will feel restrained, and we have seen evidence that this is the case. it is not clear at this stage whether the threats are credible or whether they actually deter iranian provocative behavior or encourage it, and there is talk within the iranian press of the possibilities of pre-emptive axis, iran talking openly about carrying out those implications on the streets of foreign

capitals, against israeli and american interests. a real question about how we effectively deter the machine which believes any concession will be read as weakness and which believes that it cannot simply sit back if it sees itself under threat. the second issue i would want to raise is red lines. the bush administration believed that iran should not have nuclear dentistry, and as we have seen iran has amassed this considerable nuclear program and enrichment up to 20%, a worrisome level. how is it, that we know there is an increasing conversation about articulating the red lines that we can make these enforceable, that we can find ourselves constrained by them

and we are on to get sufficient level of buy-in from the international community. the third issue is the efficacy of sanctions. we have seen the most robust and meaningful international coalition and terms of the exerting international pressure on iran, conventional arms ban, u.n. security council resolution, and the agreement by russia to go above and beyond that. the european decision in 2010 and more recently with the announcement of a voluntary boycott of iranian crude imports to evacuate the iranian port totem -- petroleum sector. these sanctions are not having

the desired impact. the reality is there are no knockout punches with respect to this program, and there's nothing that is likely to be the cost and high impact as we have often found 6 is to be oversold we are finding that so long as the international economy is rebounding, demand for energy will remain robust and the market seemed unconvinced that a full-scale production of iran's supply can be absorbed without direct implications for the price of oil and the price of gasoline at home. this puts the administration in a catch-22 during an election year. increase sanctions will have an impact on the u.s. economy and the global economy. the balancing act will be difficult throughout the course of this year and beyond. the fourth issue is the question of how we approach iran. we found try to build modest

confidence building measures that create a process of trust is not effective with the regime that is convinced we're out to remove and and its survival. given the statements that the speech, how do we move beyond incrementalism? we know a grand bargain is unlikely to be realistic. what kind of an approach can we fashion? and the fifth and final issue, how do we work with our international partners? as i've said, we've had tremendous success over the course of the past three years in maintaining a very robust coalition, but moving well beyond that to encompass a number of european, asian, and even african states to try to exert new pressure and have a unanimous international

approach to iran. the level of sanctions, the concerns about military conflict with beginning to fracture that coalition. and i would argue that the key to dealing with iran over the course of the future is going to be identifying an approach and maintaining the most robust international coalition that is possible. look forward to the discussion. thanks. >> if it's ok, i would like to start by saying analysis from two regional experts that was subtle, intelligent, balanced, and wise. now for prescription. i think that these two cases are both difficult, but when we are thinking about what we ought to do going forward as a matter of policy, u.s. foreign policy, i northern case as

substantially -- and i put this in quotes -- "easier" than the iranian case. that is to say, i think the prescription is clear. it used to, and it still does seem to me, there are three broad categories for prescription with north korea, and it may within other cases as well. -- and it may be with other cases as well. one, there's engagement or negotiations. two, there is nonengagement, sometimes called strategic patience, sometimes called encirclement, various words for essentially doing little to nothing. and hoping for the best. and then the third is some sort of armed intervention, and it could be a variety. i don't mean to have that as subtle categorieser but that's how discussions have gone. we have not in a very long time, it seemed to me, gotten

to the point of the use of force against north korea, and we have swung back and forth between a policy of engagement and a policy that was essentially a standoff. it seems to me that engagement, when we can do it, is the better way to go, that this problem or what happens in north korea does not improve from our perspective by leaving it alone. the north koreans build more stuff, they test stuff, they're provocative in their relations with the republic of korea. things do not get better by ignoring north korea. so, i would generally think when we can, when it's politically plausible, engagement is the way to go. details of engagement is another matter. so, right now i'm pleased, happy. i think we're heading in the right direction in the sense

that the north koreans, for whatever their reasons -- jonathan laid out a couple of them -- wish to engage now. i think that's good. this administration wishes to engage, even in an election year. i think that's good. the republic of korea even in election year is willing to have us engaged and become engaged. i think that's good. generally, this is a good news story. it is not the happiest news, and the situation hasn't changed dramatically. it's going to take a long time if we want to get to where we want to get to. but right now, we're headed in the right direction. the threat from north korea, before we get to a little more on this prescription, is analytically, again, three pieces. first, most important -- and i want to linger on this point -- is the transfer issue. what i'm most concerned about and have always been with north korea is that they would

transfer material, nuclear weapons technology or nuclear weapons to another country or a nonnational entity, such as a terrorist group. that, as an american, is my principal concern, security concern. second is, of course, the impact of what they have done already and might do in the future in terms of the plans of other countries in the region. that is to say, we could shorthand that as a domino effect. over time, a robust nuclear weapons program in north korea with a regime that stays in place may not be tolerable for domestic reasons, either in seoul or in tokyo or elsewhere, and it could change the face of northeast asia and ultimately cause a rollback in a norm that's very important to the united states and the rest of the world against the proliferation of nuclear weapons. so i put that second. and third, of course, is use. i would be very concerned about the use of a nuclear weapon by north korea. i consider that very unlikely.

i do believe that when nations are dealing with nations, generally detemperatures work, and i think it will work in the case of north korea. but i don't want to exclude that, because as we all know, deterrents is a psychological phenomenon, not a physical phenomenon. and as a psychological phenomenon, we can get that wrong. and when you're dealing with regimes that have different kinds of calculations than we may have, you got to be particularly careful. but those are the concerns. for me now, there are two things to watch out for with respect to north korea. one is that north korea understands that this would be a bad time to do anything provocative with respect to south korea. in other words, sinking ships or shelling islands is sort of not on. and jonathan pointed out the reasons why the north koreans would well understand this, but i would think it would be a good idea for us to underline

that in our discussions with the north koreans, that that would clear the deal for negotiations for a while and we'd be back to another mode. second point, and this is a tad more controversial, i guess, i think we failed to do something we should have done in 2007, and that is we failed to tell the north koreans that they crossed an old-fashioned red line. an old-fashioned red line is that red line that, if you cross, up pay a consequence for having crossed. a new red line is a red line that you cross and nothing happens. i'm talking about an old red line, and in the old red line, i would like to draw, i'd like to have draw now, we missed this opportunity in 2007, north korea is told in a very high and very direct way that the transfer of nuclear weapons

equipment or nuclear weapons anywhere would lead to catastrophic consequences for the north. the construction of a plutonium production reactor in syria was an incredible move. we would talk about whether it was plausible. when i was in government, it was about a country transferring fissle material from one country to another, material that would fit in this glass that could destroy a city. would a country do that? north korea was nearing completion of a plutonium production reactor. the congses, as best i know, for that behavior, was that israelis executed their version of a nonproliferation policy. [laughter] but nothing that i know of, and i may not of it, i was not in government, still not in

government, was said or done to north korea for that. and i think that was a mistake. and i think a message needs to go that that is a principal concern of ours and the rest of the international community, and it's a nonacceptable act. so i put that out there. and finally, final point, and then i'll go to iran, i believe -- having noted that i think it is a good thing that the american administration is prepared to engage in these talks even in an election season. election season is called the silly season in the united states. there's a reason for that, some of you may have noticed. so, i hope that we can avoid -- though i don't expect necessarily to avoid references to appeasement or naivete or other efforts to undercut a serious national security initiative in the interest of

making this into a domestic issue in which the backbone or courage or clear thinking or whatever it wants to be absence of attributed to one candidate or another turns out to be a part of the political exchange. it wouldn't be good for the national security. i don't think it's the high road, and i hope we can avoid that. so, iran. the harder of the two cases, i make a few points that i assume people will accept. the first is that there's a nuclear weapons program in iran. that there should be no ambiguity about there being -- it is a classic nuclear weapons program. there are centrifuges for the purpose of producing enriched uranium with the capacity to produce highly enriched uranium, and moving now to 20% enriched uranium.

so, as an enrichment program, there is a plutonium program with the construction of a heavy water reactor and already a heavy water production facility in iran. both routes to fissle material are being pursued, in addition to all the necessary work to construct the triggering package for the fissle material, that is to say, an actual nuclear weapons package. this is a nuclear weapons program in iran, and a robust one, i would say, at that. second point is i don't know, and i don't know whether iranian leadership knows when they would decide to test the nuclear weapon, build a nuclear weapon, or produce fissle material, either separated plutonium or highly enriched uranium. i would suggest on point two,

though, that we may not know when that happens, and therefore, you can't wait for positive confirmation if you wish to do something before it happens. and the second point is the trigger here, in my mind, is the production of fissle material. it is not the testing of a nuclear weapon, the construction of a weapon, or the construction of a stockpile of weapons. it is the production of fissle material. because if you recall, the threat, as i laid it out in the north korea case, i said transfer was first, dominoes was second, and use was third. i have the same lineup for iran. my principal concern is transfer, that iran, which i suppose if you ask the department of state or the intelligence community in the united states what country on the planet is responsible for the transfer of more conventional weapons to groups we regard as terrorists, the answer would be iran. so, you give that country

fissle material, and you should begin to worry about the transfer of that fissle material or technology or actual weapons. but i start with the fissle material. so one, i don't know when it will be produced. we may not know when it is produced. but it is the production of the fissle material that to me is the key issue, much more so than that will happen further downstream. the third point here is that, as we look at what we might do in this situation, we go right to prescription, i have been very impressed with the creativity, energy, intelligence of the sanctions regime and the political will that has eventually gotten implemented in attempting to do something about the iranian program, which i regard as inconsistent with their undertakings, inconsistent with the undertakings, and

therefore, subject to all kinds of sanctions. but i have no confidence that any degree of sanctions will actually stop the iranian nuclear weapons program. i think the sanctions were the right policy. i certainly wish they were tougher earlier, butive no confidence given the row bust character of the weapons program that they will succeed in stopping a nuclear weapons program in iran. second, i tend to think that the only way we could be confident of stopping the program short of a change in internally produced change in iran -- i'm talking about an internal change in regime in which a new regime decided to go in another direction. short of that, i think. use of force -- short of that,

i think the use of force and repeated use of force as the only way in which we could be confident of shopping the weapons program, confident of stopping the weapons program. that said, i don't actually know the details of the military calculation. i don't know about the capacity of either of the two air forces to act against those facilities, how often, with what degrading impact on the program. i just simply don't know. i don't know whether there are other options. i can say words like special operations forces because everybody knows about this capability in both these countries. i'm talking about the united states and israel, obviously. but i just have no way of assessing our capacity to be successful at that. but i don't think i have that much confidence in stopping the program short of a successful use of force.

that means, over the long term, it might mean living with or managing this situation, and that seems to me a very challenging prospect indeed. so, i think i will stop there. >> at steve's suggestion, i'm going to offer a few thoughts on two bits of context here. one is the very specific or pair of specific problems that we're talking about here in the context of a global political order, and the other is to pick up a little bit on what bob has already put on to the table about the context of american politics and policy. with regard to the global order, i think we can all recognize and stipulate and welcome, but not go into too much detail on a progress that

has been made in recent years and in recent decades, there's a lot. and it's manifest in the fact that none of the major powers in the planet are at war with each other or in any likelihood of being at war with each other . a number of institutions have been expanded and made more efficacious in some ways, but with regard to the two existential threats that could turn this into a really lousy century that are us and the remainder of our lives and our children and grandchildren, it's not going very well. i'm referring, of course, to climate change, which is another panel and another lunch, and nonproliferation, which is today's panel. maybe it will even continue over lunch for some of us. there have been a number of references, most recently by bob, of course, to the

nonproliferation treaty. the nonproliferation treaty cannot be said to have failed. in fact, it accomplished quite a bit, picking up on its origins in the 1950's with dwight eisenhower's proposal for an atoms for peace program. there are a lot of countries in the world today that could be or could have been nuclear weapons powers, and indeed, seriously contemplated it and did more than contemplating it, and are not. but that takes us back to the four outliers that we now have. india, pakistan, north korea, and presumptively israel. and with iran knocking on the door, we have the very real possibility that the n.p.t. will fail, and there is much greater possibility of that

than any of the four states that i just mentioned coming into the n.p.t. as nonnuclear weapons states. and i would boil the challenge there down to the need for a much more concerted, imaginative, and urgent effort to come up with what i will call generically or with lower -case letters a more efficacious global nonproliferation regime that would do no harm to the n.p.t., that, in fact, would includen? tizz for countries to remain in the n.p.t. and perhaps even some to come back into the n.p.t., but at the same time, dealing with the four states that we are talking about. just one more point in that regard -- i mean, sufficient unto the panel are the number of rogue states we're talking about, which is two, but i want

to say a word about pakistan, which is i think in something of a special category. i think steve is right not to include pakistan as a rogue state for purposes of this discussion today. however, it is different, and in some ways, more dangerous than leaving iran aside. india, north korea, and israel. those are three very different kinds of states, two of them are democracies, one is emphatically not, but the one that is emphatically not a democracy, which is to say north korea is a cohesive state to a fault, i think you could say. whether it is sustainable over the long term is another matter. but i don't think there's very much concern about who controls the nuclear weapons program in north korea. the same is certainly true in india and israel.

that is not true, however, in pakistan. pakistan is shot through with fishers, tensions, ambiguities, some of which are very obvious to us from the headlines. a good deal of pakistani territory is not under the writ or governance of islamabad or the military headquarters. pakistan is obsessed with what it thinks or its elite still thinks is an existential threat to itself, and that's india, which is not an existential threat to pakistan. in fact, i would say pakistan is an existential threat to itself going back in some ways to its very origins, the idea of a secular state, the muslims of post-british india, had

tensions built in that broke in favor of islamism as we know. and then there's the role of the military, and the question which is either an open question or a question that can be answered alarmingly over the extent to which the military in scenarios that one can imagine would, in a cohesive way from the top down, totally control the nuclear weapons there, and there is an answered question i think or at least a presumptively answered question about how much civilian control there is of the nuclear weapons program and what the danger is, which i would say is acute, that nuclear technology and materials could, via pakistan, get into the hands of true rogues, and that could include rogue states, but it can also include rogue nonstate pacts.

so, i think somehow in this conversation and others, that special case needs to be taken into account. what i would say with regard to the american role in all of this is that historically we have ato the lob proud of. currently, we have a lot to be concerned about, looking to the future. we have a lot to try to avoid. the united states has been far and away -- i keep waiting for bob to advertise -- bob kagan's book, go ahead and hold it up. i didn't bring it, he did. the title is "the world america made," and it's sort of a footnote to that title, it's that an important part of the world that america made is a world with an effective global nonproliferation regime. we are losing, as a nation, our

ability to maintain the progress that has already been made and to make more progress that is necessary. and the cardinal examples of that are, i would say, first and foremost, the bizarre and shameful inability and failure of the united states government to get its act together sufficiently so that it could ratify the comprehensive test ban treaty. we are up to the unlucky number 13. it's been 13 years since the senate, i think, brought great discredit on itself -- and by the way, it wasn't brilliantly handled by the executive branch at the time, and i say that as somebody who was in the executive branch at the time. you boar no responsibility for this -- you bore no responsibility for this, bob. but that is really serious. and president obama, to his

credit, came in very much hoping to get rat fakes of the andrens -- to get ratification of the test ban treaty, which would have strengthened the issues, including the ones we're talking about here, but he simply couldn't. he got the new start treaty proposed, ratified. had he been able to develop momentum from that and get the ctbt done, we would be in a much better position today on everything that we're talking about here, which leads us to what's going to happen later this year. it's very hard to imagine an outcome in the november he electrics that will strengthen the -- the elections that will strengthen what will get ratified in 2013. even if president obama is it elected to a second term. in fact, i suppose on the sort of nixon goes to china principle, you could say that president-elect romney would be in a better position to

surprise some people, many of whom unpleasantly, by committing himself to ctbt ratification. in any event, that is a melancholy note that i feel should be struck tend of this conversation before we go to an open discussion. >> let me first thank the panel for all the enthusiasm they shared with us today. let me now open the floor to questions. could i ask, if you could identify yourself and affiliation, and put a short question forward. you should have a microphone coming up. >> director of the foreign policy program at brookings. i haven't been drinking this morning, but i was served up by bob and suzanne some analysis. situation in iran, which i

completely shared, but it really raises the question, one to suzanne, which is, is there nothing that can be done on the negotiation front to head off what looks like an inevitable military confrontation? and to bob, since your judgment was that the only effective way of dealing with iran's nuclear weapons program is to use force, and repeatedly so, if we get to that stage, is it better from a u.s. perspective for israel to do it, or is it better for the united states to do it? >> i would tend to be pessimistic with respect to a negotiating process in the short term, but i think it is our only long-term, viable mechanism for dealing with the iranian nuclear program, which is to say i do think that we can establish constraints that

are durable from the perspective of the international community, that we can arrive at a solution that is tolerable to both sides, although not preferable to either side. there's sufficient evidence in the past that the iranians have been willing to do that under pressure, and there's sufficient evidence in the past that even an administration less predisposed to engagement was willing to contemplate a negotiating process with iran. that said, i think that the difficulty at the moment is the time frame and the sense of urgency that has infected the discussion. if we are truly in a question of trying to beat the clock with respect to the zone of immunity, i am deeply skeptical that we will be able to bring the iranians to the table in a sufficiently persuasive fashion over the course of the next six months to extract the level of concessions that we would need from them in order to offer anything in terms of reciprocity from this side. and i think that is -- it is this period that we have to

navigate. moving forward, negotiations are viable. they would require, you know, painstaking effort on our side. i think they almost at this stage necessity the involvement of a third party that could play the same sort of a role that algeria played during the 1980-1981 arrival of the accord that ended the hostage crisis, interpreting one side's intentions and motivations to the other. and they would require a considerable degree of dialogue with all of our allies in the region, and i would expect the extension of specific security guarantees to the israelis in particular. that is a long-term prescription that is simply not viable over the course of the next six months. >> i worried when i was making my comments that they would be characterized the way you characterized them. i didn't mean them that way, so let me try to pull this back. just about 20 years ago, i was in government working for

strobe, and if i had -- [laughter] if i had that responsibility now, in other words, for policy, i would be working very hard on sanctions on the one hand and all these creative ideas -- and there have been a lot from very smart and able people -- to create some sort of option that would meet, you know, iraniani have been attrace idea of just getting 20 years of fuel assemblies, 20 years worth and delivering them. put them underground so it is all there. the fuel supply cannot be interrupted. how much can a cost? make it 30 years. they say the need to produce the

iranian. you have the in richmond schemes -- the in richmond schemes -- enrichment schemes. i look at it and say it is not going to work. if i was in government, i would be doing just what they are doing. as an outsider, i cannot say i would have -- the phrase i was groping for was much confidence is going to work. it is not that i think for sure the best way to go is a military strike of some kind conducted repeatedly. i am concerned about the consequences of the people who would die in the course of that act, the reprisals from the iranians, every place they have

assets and what it would do for what i hope would be a change in politics of iran. it may be constructed but i doubted. a high price to pay for this. i do not know the degree of military effectiveness we could have with a strike. i do not think there is another course that is open to us as an outsider looking in that i would be confident of really slowing the program down. it is that kind of a calculation. what did you ask me? >> the hypothetical -- if that

was the only alternative to prevent iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. >> i read a lot. we're more capable than israel of putting aircraft over target, sustaining that for various reasons overtime, restriking. i read a lot and i do not know if that's true. i am not the person to answer that question. i am with global insights. i haven't on fashionable question -- i have an unfashionable question.

moving close to a military option and crossing that line basically. i remember our concerns about india when they became a nuclear power, and pakistan and even china. we learn to live with these three countries as nuclear powers. a system of deterrence. why is it that we seem to close at the option of having iran become a "nuclear power," but not supporting the notion that the terence might still work in doing anything. but my concern saudi arabia and others and israel. israel has 80 to 100 nuclear weapons.

israel has a u.s. guarantee for its existence. this seems to be discounted in much of discussion in washington these days in moving for or against a military option. part of that package is that we do not include the notion that we can deter a nuclear iran from doing anything that is fundamentally disastrous for israel or for the world system. thank you. i think we get a lot of that. i get a lot of that. i think deterrence tends to work with states. i believe the terrence tends to work with states. even states with regard with somewhat less valued -- i believe the terence tends to work with states -- deterrence.

from that perspective you're quite correct. if they say, we have the nuclear weapons program. and there it is. what will happen? will the world fall apart? that will notbs be pleased with it. there are some other arab countries that will think about acquiring nuclear weapons themselves. i think we know we are talking about. i would say also that i do not believe iran would launch an

attack with its missiles, should it have missiles that could reach the united states, i'm not terribly worried about that. i do believe israel is in a different circumstance. there is a certain history, a certain character of discussion which has been troubling to me and i know it is to israel. i'm slightly more guarded in the iranian case then the israel case. with regard, they have the various words of capture, the transcending capture of this threat. i can understand that. i'm edging up to a point which is my first point. i am concerned about transfer.

i am prepared to embrace the terendeterrence. if you're dealing with somebody who values your death more than their life, they are hard to the tedeter. i worry that the country will conclude that transfer will not be discovered and that our capability to attribute material in eight nuclear device -- in a nuclear device is less than absolute. we have frantic means of doing that. we have not created that in an absolute way so that i can absolutely tell you right now that if anyone transfers anything someplace else and that turns out to be the place where a nuclear weapon is fabricated and then it is detonated in new jersey, i will be able to tell you who did it.

we're not in that world yet. right now there is a scenario that i worry about more than any other where i talk about nuclear weapons in today's world and it is scary. i do not want what i said to be simplified into that i advocate a strike against iran. i do not know the consequences of a strike against iran. i do not know what the iranians would do. i do not know the consequences in terms of how effective it would be. i would need to know that, too. i do not know of another way of dissuading this regime from its course. >> could i jump in?

what i will say is consistent with what bob put forth cautiously. my biggest problem with the idea of living with nuclear armed iran of course has to do with the pernicious and dangerous nature of the regime itself. it also has to do -- this takes us back to the core word. it is a different case from north korea, which is hemmed in by nuclear-armed, nuclear weapons state in russia, another in china, and then the rok and japan, which is covered by treaties and the nuclear umbrella by the united states. it is also different from india. the indians set off their

nuclear device and there was a sinking feeling that it is only a matter of days --- it was 12 days before the pakistanis did it. it you're talking about iran, is a different list. the uae has come up. we made some months keep egypt on the list of countries in the region. then it is bar the door. >> i'm from the international law institute. is russia on a list?

the interest of russia in iran part of the equation? >> you're looking at me when you asked by my colleagues -- of course russia is an important factor and has been on the solution end of the spectrum. the russians do not want iran to be a nuclear weapons state, for all kinds of reasons. that enhanced or fueled iran's capability to make trouble in various parts of the muslim regions of the russian federation. they would be more of a danger. their behavior has not been helpful.

i think the russians hope they can avoid iran becoming a nuclear weapon states and a war over iran. >> when i look at the way the russians look at iran, the level of risk attached to nuclear- armed iran, i think the russians feel a lesser sense of urgency. we thought maybe that is a bad thing but we can deal with it. that is part of the difference here. >> maybe. i think there is another motive, too. we spend some time on this in the 1990's when the russians were helping the iranians with their ballistic weapons program. i can remember yevgeny perman

saying this is one time we can maintain our leverage. we know they were in your camp once upon a time. they will be back and we want to make sure we have leverage. i will not try to justify the logic, but i think that is part of it. >> the institute for foreign policy analysis. you characterize the description as balanced, which will not disagree with except to say there was a great deal of caution expressed and i wonder what you would think of it rather than our thinking caution that are thinking maybe it reckless almost, at least one

that is energetic, robust, urgent and maybe a capacious one that has a chance to bring north korea back. shouldn't we now be looking to create opportunities out of what we have? we have seen some positive factors here. isn't this -- you describe this as an urgent issue, one in which we pull out all the stops and we make it work? we have had a conversation about the framework where you said it may have been flawed but it was the best agreement we could get. should we be shooting for what we want or what we can get? china was very little mentioned in today's conversation and that was sort of surprising. >> admiral.

so, i think that we should be creative, aggressive, etc. in a kind of philosophical way but in terms of how we approach these talks philosophically, there are two good reasons for that not being our body posture, our visible body posture. we should be thinking creatively. the dynamic with north korea. every time the north thought we want is something it was a lot harder to get it. my negotiating partner said to me before the elections in 1994, "i know you need an agreement

before your elections." if someone said, i know you need to buy this car, you see, i do not. this to me was bad news. i said it was untrue. they would have had to tell me that. american elections turning on north korea -- they do not know where north korea is. they do not care. i would not want the north koreans to think that this is for us domestically important, that we need this for regional balance. there may be some truth of the second part. i worry about how much they think we are invested in this.

there is the domestic political context. i have injected it here because i know it matters in this country and south korea and other democracies. i worry -- you notice the way it was put and others have talked about this. very cautious. they are poor mouthing that engagement in beijing to the max. i think they have to do that. these are both -- both comments -- in terms of how we should be looking at this, absolutely. i was trying to say that the alternatives are not there. the only reason you go into that mode of containment is because

you do not have the political bases to continue to engagements. containment doesn't help you. they are building up inside and contain it is not a good strategy. this issue does not age well. i am in favor of an aggressive intellectual approach. i would be making the case inside a government that would need to move. but that cannot be the presentation of the issue. >> that would be good. if i could make an added comment and i would endorse everything that bob just said. this is a strong preferential system here. we can see in some of the comments in the context of the announcement on wednesday --

number 3 is trying to put its best foot forward -- north korea. the americans are ready to move now. in the north korea rendering, they said the united states says it no longer has hostile intent. every administration has said that. they feel it is necessary to characterize it in this fashion. i am persuaded that the state department team that is responsible is mindful of the risks. they are trying to test the possibility that we can make some headway. for political reasons, we have to do this in a very prudent manner.

when somebody asked me, why can we move ahead with north korea? there are two korean states, not one. our primary loyalties and interest lie with the republic of korea. we should not forget that. the north and the south are fighting this battle with u.s. a claim to be the legitimate reinstate -- korean state. with north korea went to the highest levels, 5.6 billion dollars. historic highs. to win the $20 billion with south korea -- $220 billion with

south korea. they will ease their identity and that is associated with it adversarial view of the outside world. that is not overcome in a minute or year, but that's the real challenge yet to come. >> peter. i want to start with the question that strobe started out with talking about the turks and possibly egypt. i would see that as a need and i would probably be inclined to keep a recessed capability without moving to weapon is a should until i had somebody on my doorstep doing that, unless i was feeling directly threatened by the united states or israel.

i have heard iran discussing what they see as a security deficit. if sanctions are not expected to work and i have not heard that there is reason to suspect it will work as it did not with india, and if our strategic competitors think that a report iran isement with inevitable, what is -- going with a sanctions regime that will not work will consolidate the regime's hold on a populist and further distance those that might be sympathetic to us while passing up potential where we could be working on a mutual interest and resupply of

afghanistan or larger security interests in the region such as the ipi, etc. >> do you want to start? mostthink i'm the skeptical about the prospect of these sanctions having an effect during the time period that we need them to have an effect. i aniston the tendency that we have -- i understand the tennessee that we have to overoptimism. there was talk two years ago that the ban on petroleum sales to iran was going to hit iran's achilles' heel and forced the regime to take a much more moderate approach to its foreign

policy. all of these expectations have proven untrue. you can look back in history. it was the economic constraints the iran was under. they forced the ayatollah to do what he did not want to do. there is in economic dimension and the rational dimension to their foreign policy. the strategic decision making. a desire to see the next step -- the difficulty is that when we posit that pressure will work, the solution is always more pressure. you have a constant escalation of pressure. nothing that we can throw against the wall except enforced

embargo on their oil exports and that brings us to let military conflicts. these sanctions are not sanctions, i would argue, to bring about the stated goal of negotiations. they are sanctions which left in place will eventually expedite the process of political change, which is on the presence in iran and even today during the electoral process, we see an existence in iran which is deeper and wider than almost anywhere else in the region today. i see these as sanctions of contempt that are intended to degrade the capabilities of the regime rather than bring the regime to the negotiating table.

this is longer than what other decision makers that we have to affect their calculus. some sort of change in their decision maker on the nuclear issue. >> i wanted to make two points in response. the narrative that i proceed with and what weight on our best they could help from from the current strategy. my narrative begins not with some iranian government waking up and deciding they were threatened by qatar. it is born of a desire on the part of the shah . it is true for a persian position that is called

hegemonic. that is what the nuclear program was born of. i believe that is why it has been pursued. i do not believe iran is doing this as a matter of defense. i do believe this is still a dry for hegemonic position in the region. that speaks to part of what you said. as to where we could end up on our best day -- there would be palms slapping foreheads. "the pain is too much. we have to deal with this. we cannot give up our enrichment program." we want them to except the protocol, the inspections and allow the iaea to enter their

questions and go anywhere they want. there will be guided by member states as to where they should go. we would flushed this program. we would be sure that there was no higher level of in richmoenrt going on. there would not be a very good basis for saying that iran cannot have the program in legal terms. this is very suspicious and israel would not like it and we would not like it. it is inconsistent with the nuclear economy. ok. that would be the best outcome. the program operate low levels access to thenrichment,

country as necessary to be sure there was on a parallel program anywhere. no nuclear development work going on. something would have to be said about the research reactor being billed. this's a way out of without a strike and without a nuclear weapons program in iran. the problem is getting from here to there and seeing whether will beur heareheads slapped by palms. the europeans have been ready. the americans have been ready. the russians would love it. we have not got there. that has not happened.

>> we a time for a short question. please, short. >> i would like to thank the panel for their insight and ask a quick question. are there any useful questions -- lessons we can draw from south africa? >> sanctions work. >> so does regime change. >> thank you. good. >> that was a short question and a short answer. >> so complicated, 90 minutes. let me ask you all to join me in thanking the panel for the presentation today. [applause]

>> you'll be able to see this again shortly in art video library as c-span.org, the discussion on nuclear proliferation. most of the conversation centering on iran. we expect jay carney to take questions about iran in its upcoming briefing. "i think the israeli government recognizes that as president, i do not bluff. i do not go around advertising is exactly what our intentions are. i think our rate and the israel

government recognize when the united states says it is unacceptable for iran to have a nuclear weapon, we mean what we say." the words of president obama. >> in our bill, we tightened up sanctions in our bill last year and i think those are bearing fruit. i wish it had been done if you years ago. we probably would not be in the situation where we are right now where they are getting very close to having the capability, the ability to have a weapon. my concern is that we are resolute to make sure that when we say we're not going to allow them to have a weapon or not, it is kind of like -- i hope this

is not some wink and a nod because this is very important. >> you are not questioning the resolve of the administration? >> i hope that we're serious about it. >> you can see that entire interview with buck mckeon honor newsmakers program on sunday here on c-span. another former chairman on appropriations announcing his retirement at the end of his term. the daily briefing from the white house is coming up in about 10 minutes or so. we will have that live when it starts.

host: "politico covers the issue this way on its front page. they write -- host: senators rebuffed in an attempt for the contraceptive mandate. this spill brought on to the chamber floor. let's listen to some of roy blunt from one state as to talk

about the amendment on the floor. [video clip] >> this would allow more conviction to be an important factor in whether or not people compare -- people comply with new health-care mandates. there's a difference. now that we have health care mandates that could apply to these institutions, all this amendment does is extend the same privileges to them and others who have a religious belief or moral conviction. host: here is how the vote turned out with coverage and "the washington post." host: a quick look at some reactions on editorial pages.

"the new york times" editorial -- host: that is this morning's -- that is the "the wall street journal" and that was in support of the amendment. on the other side, "the new york times." host: two views from two

editorial pages about the senate measure yesterday, sponsored by roy blunt having to do with the health care law and contraception. we begin with oxnard, california, shirley. caller: i kind of am dismayed over some things going on in congress. not many people are happy with congress. it seems as though the tea party has some big influence on the congress. we never see them. they say, we are not supporting any candidates i saw them at a rick santorum rally. their influence seems very hidden and i wonder if there is a corporate agenda behind that.

also, america is being and intled bit by bi at wonder what is so bad about the american institutions. the kind of organizing and we could save a lot of money. i'm wondering what the republicans are so angry with obama. it is so complicated -- government is so complicated and there are so many armchair pundits and knowers of everything. i do not know why people are not more humble in this country. they need to educate themselves better. host: three different topics from shirley on open phones.

jocelyn, an independent. i am concerned about this country being a free country. there is freedom of speech and they're supposed to be freedom of religion. if a person makes a statement, anything they say about anybody that is gay, they lose their jobs and they have no life -- right about this. i'm concerned. even the churches are afraid to speak up. where is the freedom in this country anymore? and also, i think that when there are votes, the people are supposed to vote on gay marriages and things like that. all of a sudden, we cannot vote on these issues.

the judge's comment and make the decision. "we are going to vote for these things." i think these things are wrong. host: thank you, jocelyn. here is the front page story from "the washington times." this is a story from valerie richardson.

host: next is texas, good morning to philip. caller: good morning. i wanted to complain about the way they do these elections in the primaries. the northern state gets to pick the candidate is going to be. the seven states, we do not get to vote for the same people the people in the north get to vote for. host: are you proposing a national primary? caller: yes. i think that is what they should do. we don't get to vote for our candidate. if the north people don't like them, they kick the amount. host: who is out of the race that you would vote for?

caller: rick perry. he tried to be a real person. the with the jump on every level, he makes -- the way they jumped on every comment he made. host: here are the current number of delegates in the race for the nomination from the gop. this is a chart from "the washington post.' 10 states voting on tuesday. suggestions in a "the new york times.' " gingrich concentrating on georgia. he is spending five crucial days in the state which he regarded as the launch pad to a super tuesday sweep of the south.

a sign of encouragement from a supporter. host: next phone call is from brooklyn and we will move on to tulsa. gilbert, an independent. caller: i need some help in understanding why the call iran is call iran. netanyahu is coming here to talk with president obama and this is the same prime minister that talks so vehemently in the house and the senate against barack obama. he got 27 standing ovations.

for the amount of money and the material we have send. what is wrong with iran getting even one nuclear weapon? this is why i like ron paul. he speaks about war in the middle east. what are we getting from israel that would require us paying that kind of money to? the frightening thing is that, why attack a foreign country for what they want to do in their own country? iran to my knowledge has not attacked any other country. host: i will tell you some stories about. this. the big meeting is happening this weekend in washington and setting the stage for conversations between the

leaders of our country, the u.s. and israel. here is the story, a report from jerusalem. host: a prominent jewish leader is quoted as the most important encounter between the two.

host: that redline is referred to in another story in the same paper on the same story. putting all options on the table. host: there it is again. next up is a call from fort mill, south carolina, elija. caller: good morning. i wanted to speak to the issue of obama apologizing to hamid karzai in afghanistan for the burning of the korans.

i feel there is nothing wrong with anybody apologizing if somebody believes there's been a mistake. but an apology really isn't worth anything when people are so brainwashed that they cannot except an apology or they do not know how to forgive anyone for anything. why can they forgive? their god -- they are brainwashed and they have no idea of of how to be grateful for people trying to help them or shed their blood for them or to give them life. they have no idea how to except kind is. their ability to reason is gone. they belong to a cult and peeper -- and people better wake

up. host: do you believe that of all people of muslim faith? caller: all religions must be destroyed except for the islam religion, even those peaceful one. they will stand by that career and they are carrying if they are opening it up and they are saying all people should be destroyed, they believe to the faith of mohammed -- host: we will let you go, elija. we have a tweet from joe ramirez regarding contraception. host: michigan, christine, a

democrat there. are you there? we will move on. catherine from new hampshire, an independent. caller: i have been asking a question and i still have not received an answer. i have been wondering why -- people vote for their representatives and senators to congress. the people higher at the representatives and senators. why do they get to go to congress and they get to decide their own pay and retirement plans? why doesn't each state gets to make that decision? new hampshire's might have a different retirement plan than the state of delaware. or they might have different pay scales and so forth.

but anyway, i think if the states handle the money, then you would have closer -- there would be closer ties to what you think of as "we the people" in congress and i still have not gotten an answer as to why they get to decide and not the states. host: this week will have the census bureau government division chief and our focus will be state and local finance and will be looking at the size of their public sector employees and how that has changed and where the money goes and where comes from as part of that discussion and we hope to talk with you about your own state finances. good morning to call from west virginia, republican -- to kar. l.

caller: i like president obama. i think he's a decent man. i'm glad he was elected. a lot of your african american people that call into your program claim that if you disagree with his policies, you have to be a racist or a bigot. and, you know, you look at it -- 97% of african americans voted for president obama last time. say 90% of white people would have voted for mccain. that would have been racism, clear and simple. isn't racism on one side and not the other? let's be fair about that. host: that is your comments,

karl. next up is freddie from indianapolis. caller: i would like to speak about the oil situation. we were taught basic cabali capitalism. we know when the demand is great, the price is greater. the price is week when the market is flooded. we are exporting more oil than we are importing. what does that say? they seem to think that if we continue to drill that the price is going to go down.

they are not going to flood the market with oil. the price will continue to rise. i was listening to bill reilly of the fox network last week. he was almost advocating nationalizing oil in this country. i think that would be a good idea. look what happened to hugo chavez. people hate hugo chavez base what the media is saying. he nationalized the oil in this country. we then would be able to hopefully -- our government would be able to maintain more in this country and put it in the market in this country and not in the markets of other countries of the world.

your oil is being sold to every country of the world to -- brazil needs oil, india needs oil, america needs oil. the europeans need oil. that is a lot of oil. 20 years ago, brazil did not need as much oil as they do now. host: tom is an independent on open phones. caller: i want to speak about the senate thing, the women and contraception. to me this is an issue that should not be debated. to me, it represents -- why on earth is a bunch of fat, their 60's or in

7's telling younger women what to do -- or 70's? this is not right. host: we have a tweet from connecticut. this from the campaign trail in "the new york times" this morning. the president had his 100th campaign fund-raising event.

host: richmond, virginia, but morning to deborah, a democrat -- good morning to debra. caller: good morning. i agree with the last caller. they have been doing this for centuries. the other things helps a lot -- they're ok with it. insurance pays for that. i'm so glad that obama is an office. one guy -- he said that the black people vote for obama. who did we vote for before obama came into office?

let's be real about this. this brings about all these uncovered racism that we have had to go through two centuries. a lot of countries did not know the black people of america had to go through what we're going through now. and now they know. this is such a racist country. you understand? they do not want to treat other people bad, but treat their own people bad. host: thank you. we have about five more minutes left an open phones. stephen, a democrat emails us --

host: next up, houston, texas. caller: how are you doing? i just want to make a comment, hopefully, this time i will not go to jail again. host: getting cut off? caller: sometimes when i called i have a few problems. i'm not going to dwell on that because god is good. getting back to the gas prices, i see the arabs are about to get $150 a barrel. i don't know why are sitting attending we use a lot of will. our oil consumption is down here since he said we were addicted to oil. somehow more than two-thirds of

our oil is being sold overseas. i have no problem with chevron. every time i use my card, i did discount. i love them to her -- them. we're not against wealthy people. we are against people that have ill-gotten gain. i do not appear to me preacher's talking about how jesus -- how they started beating people up the temple that were diseased. [unintelligible] the last point on the keystone pipeline, 20,000 jobs? man up. 20,000 jobs. if we do our own oil and produce our own goods and open the reserves down in america, we will have all the jobs we want good god bless you, susan. host: we will be talking about

the keystone pipeline in just a few minutes. this is in the "washington post." koch brothers seek greater control over think tank. they're attempting to take control of a prominent washington think tank in a move that would expand their influence in conservative politics, according to court records and interviews. owners of the wichita this conglomerate to the ranks as one of the largest corporations in the world filed a lawsuit in kansas seeking an opportunity -- option to increase the 50% control of the institute. next telephone call is from fort

lauderdale, florida. caller: just quickly, this is my first time calling in. i have no party affiliation. i have family in dc on both sides. i just want to make a couple of comments on some of the callers. i find very distressing a lot of people in the united states are very uneducated about how our government works. i believe catherine was asking about the pay of a politician. we're the in the state's -- the united states. the people we elect to office are duly representative spokesperson of a public, not a democracy. we have a democratic process. it amazes me as an educator, and i am almost 42 years old, how little the american people know

about our government and how it works. it blows my mind. we sit there and talk about oil. i don't think anyone realizes the quality of oil than we have domestically is not as -- what is the word i'm looking for? not as high a quality of oil as around the world. what everybody is talking about our oil, well, it is not the same quality. we cannot use it the same way other people do. my question is when the really big for the senator coming on in any senator listening. why is it that we preach about democracy, go into the middle east and these countries to help all these nations find true democracy when we are so -- what are we passing bills? we have national holidays for everybody in the world, but why don't we have one for the

american people? why did we pass a bill that states on election day, the first of november, every single year is a national holiday? that way the american people can exercise their democratic right to go out and vote and have their voices heard to have a republic represent us? host: thank you. we are out of time. >> waiting for the briefing ticket under way with jay carney. the president will be speaking to the annual apec gathering in washington and also meeting with israeli prime minister benjamin netanyahu on monday. the president today in an interview warning his outbluffing about attacking iran if it builds a nuclear weapon, but also in the interview published with jeffrey goldberg of the atlantic, the president warned u.s. ally israel a premature attack on iran would

do more harm than good. we expect questions about iran and the speech this weekend at aipac. the news conference will be live when it gets under way. until then, back to ""washington journal" and a discussion on state effort to drug test for welfare recipients. host: on the phone right now, a reporter from "usa today" was written a piece about this trend in states around the country. how many states have acts requiring drug tests for welfare recipients? guest: there are two dead states that have active laws. missouri and arizona require testing for any welfare recipient with "results will suspect" of illegal drug use. florida had a lot, but it is in temporary injunction.

it required all welfare applicants to be drug tested. it is being challenged. host: how many states are considering it? guest: 23 states, currently. host: what is really driving the policy discussion? we know a number of states are having real fiscal challenges. are they looking at a way to lower the welfare roll cost or something else driving this debate? guest: i can only tell you with the supporters have told me. they're interested in making sure all their tax dollars and all the money they do have is spent correctly. they're saying they do not want it spent on drugs. they want to encourage people to be healthy and avoid substance abuse problems. really, they're trying to make sure that their money is not spent on drugs. basically saying those who test positive, one representative

told me, if you have enough money to buy drugs, then you do not need public assistance. there is this idea that drug users do not need taxpayer money. host: have any of the states that have deployed the law had enough experience with the to know what the outcome is? how is it changing society. guest: i was told by the aclu before ford had the injunction against it, i want to say about 2% of welfare recipients were testing positive for drugs. the other 98% were not. in most of these bills, people are being asked to pay for the drug test themselves and will be reimbursed if they pass it. we're talking about the state reimbursing people between $8 to $12. affectively costing states more money. that is what the aclu is arguing. the supporters are sponsors of the bill tommy the anticipate

"drug users" will not apply for welfare because of these laws. against that is how it is impacting society. host: what happens to those found positive? are they given treatment programs? are they arrested? what is their fate? guest: the people that fail the test, in colorado, at least, they're being told the people would lose their benefits but then they would be able to go into a state sponsored drug rehabilitation program where there would be able to a guest it clean and then reapply for their benefits. the the thing is, if people fail and do not want to go to the state-sponsored program, they would have to wait a year and reapply and see if they can pass the test again. host: yamiche alcindor is a

reporter, keeping an eye on states wanting to protest recipients. thank you for that overview. let me introduce you to our guest, an analyst with the center for law and social policy here in washington, d.c., and very much involved in this issue. you do not like the idea, correct? caller: correct. -- guest: correct. host: how new and i get is this? how did it first gets started? guest: it has been tossed around for awhile. michigan was doing it for a while after the law was passed back in 1996. it was suspended, like the florida law has been, by a court raising constitutional concerns. host: the right to privacy? guest: yes.

host: in spite of the to the suspensions, 23 states are considering doing this. so what is happening around the country? guest: i think it is part of a trend to blame poor people for the situation and say if you are poor and receiving welfare, in must be because of something you have done and not because of the economy and not because there are poor people looking for a job -- >> to people looking for a job better still available. host: drug-testing for welfare recipients. do you think it is a good idea? if so, tell us why. if you do not, tell us why. if the of experience with it either as a social worker someone who has had some period of time and gone to the process, add that to our discussion and help us round out our knowledge of it here at the table. our phone lines will be open. the canossa e-mail and tweet. all of that will be on the screen.

let's move into a bit of discussion about destruction, an argument you made. what do mean by a distraction from larger issues? guest: the state budgets are in terrible situations. many of these programs for low- income people are being cut from california to alabama. the most people who want substance abuse people cannot get it right away. there are waiting lists pretty -- there are waiting lists. i think it makes much more sense to take the money the states are spending testing people and actually use it to help people to provide services to people who need them. host: how expensive is testing? guest: he said $8 to $12 per test. that is much lower than i have generally heard.

i have heard more in the $30 range, and that is just in the test. there's all the bureaucracy. some legal prescription drugs will show up as positive and protests, so you need a mechanism to track who has a prescription for drugs? if people test positive, it probably with an opportunity to say something wrong. like baseball players having the same claim. you want those defenses. all of those in the cost of the testing program. host: i understand florida's version is the individual's pay for it, but if they test negative, if they're clean and i using drugs, the test is reimbursed. guest: correct. that may sound reasonable to a middle-class person for whom lang at $10 or $30 is not a big deal. people do not walk into a welfare office because they have money in their pocket. they can be pretty desperate. so having to lay out that money may mean they do not have bus

fare to get to the supermarket that week. host: are you studying and you know what happens to people who do not apply for welfare, although they may be in circumstances that would qualify them because of this test or people who are taking off the rolls because of this? where are they going? what happens to them? guest: we do not have data on it. florida's program was only in place for a few months. in general, depending on the situation, they may come back and reapply in a few months. in the cases of people who really are an addict, their children may wind up a protective services, in the foster care system. which, of course, is a whole other government expense related from its. it is much better if you can catch people not in a punitive way, the sec, if they do need help, -- but say, if they do been held, provide it.

host: people arguing in favor it, make the point this is public funds. drug testing is increasingly common in people are applying for jobs. why shouldn't the state, the people who support the state have the opportunity to say, we want our money well spent, too? guest: first, there is a legal issue that we do have protections against the government that we do not have against private employers. but more broadly, i have a library card. i guess significant mortgage interest deduction. i get public benefits. no one is saying they should test me in order to get all of those. it is only welfare we sing aloud and are so concerned about. host: that's get to the phone calls. drug-testing for welfare recipients. as many as 23 states are considering requiring drug

testing for welfare recipients. as begin with women, democrat. caller: hi. host: hi. caller: i think the drug testing thing is unconstitutional. host: so we should learn from experience? caller: you signed up for a job or something like that i did not have a job in the oilfields and stuff like that. it is just unconstitutional for recipients getting at. host: thank you. the always seem to be found unconstitutional, so why are still proceeding? guest: a lot of them have not passed. i think many are looking at florida and waiting to see what the court finds.

by now it is just a temporary funding. host: massachusetts, republican. hit thatmute button. caller: i will turn it down right now. i only got one hand here. host: are you ready? caller: ok. host: it is too loud. i'm going to put you on hold. caller: i did not turn it down enough? it is down almost to the end. host: i apologize. try calling back and get the television all the way down. sam, independent, georgia. caller: to the argument about it in public funds, in england, i'm understand all of the benefits,

in this way regarded as employment. it is obvious when they come to use the program, they're just using money they have put in. can you use that as an argument? this is pretty crazy to do this. guest: as you may have heard in the unemployment extension bill, there was a proposal in there to allow drug testing for unemployment benefits. this is sort of the thing the people who had jobs who paid into the system, but again, i think it is the overall thing of vilifying the port, frankly. host: i have some statistics on it and implement benefits. 2013, proposed $422 billion. $452 billion in year 2012.

2011, $473 billion. with regard to federal funding for welfare, look at those numbers. host: those numbers are going down. guest: i am not sure what programs your including. that is including some other programs. host: of cake, clearly, it is a bigger bucket. guest: welfare is not a technical term in the federal budget. host: could you explain how the welfare program's generally work? whatever the number is from the federal government, $16 billion, how does it make its way into

the people who need it? guest: since 1996 it has been states get a fixed amount and have a lot of flexibility in how they spend it. but all states to have cash assistance programs. it carries a lot from state to state. they choose what rules to apply. everyone has time limits and work requirements. typically, you apply and may be required to do an upfront job search and look for a job for a few weeks before your benefits are even approved to show you are actively looking for work. eventually, you're usually assessed and a sign to some sort of activity. possibly job search again, occasionally to education training. and certainly do not think there is enough of that. sometimes to work experience. a range of different activities. if you identify as having a substance abuse treatment problem, states will generally refer people to treatment and

except -- expect them to participate. there are still waiting lists. just because you're told you need to get treatment does not necessarily mean it bumps you up to the top of the waiting list. i was talking to someone recently in kentucky and have a great program -- not all the states -- called a targeted assessment program. their work with people waiting to get into treatment to do motivational interviewing and stay on top of them to keep them engaged and get them ready so when they do get a slot, they can take the best advantage of it. host: north carolina, a democrat. caller: good morning, elizabeth. can you hear me ok? it is a pleasure talking with you this morning. i think is a very good idea of drug testing. first, [unintelligible] let's test all of congress and see if there on any type of drugs at all. viagra or whatever it may be.

he who is without sin, let him cast the first stone. if you live in a glass house, you do not throw any stones. it is very humiliating as a man to even have to ask for nice talking with you, elizabeth. have a nice day. host: your response? guest: that has been a several suggestion that state legislators should have to meet the same requirement. i think it is amusing. but i think it is that welfare recipients are being singled out. host: and his description of saying welfare is humiliating for most people applying for it. this that the profile of most? guest: it is a process to make sure you do not possibly have any resources that you could possibly be using.

and to make you go through all the steps to prove you're looking for a job. many places yet to come in and literally somebody watches you on the phone calling people to make sure. it is a lot of scrutiny. host: and this model all came out of the welfare reform legislation passed to the clinton administration? guest: yes, with states having flexibility. it is different everywhere, but in no state is it a fun experience. host: corpus christi, texas. caller: i had a couple of quick comments. a lot of companies require alcohol included in the drug- testing. alcohol is legal. at the same time, i have known people who drink up their checks.

how is that when to be resolved saying that alcohol is legal? my second question i have been done and ask somebody this, we have been going on and on about what a horrible drug problem this country has been planning all the violence south of the border on america pause for his appetite for drugs. in the last 20 years, i have yet to hear anybody say, why is there such a drug problem in the u.s.? i would really appreciate it if you could possibly try to shed some light on that. because nobody says -- people proffer of solution's right and left, but nobody ever tries to get to the root of the problem socially or culturally.

those are my comments. host: thank you. guest: i do not really have an answer to the question about why drug use is so prevalent. statistics say it is about equally prevalent and all parts of society. from welfare recipients to people in corporate boardrooms, it is a problem in this country. host: this point about the difference and alcohol and drug testing? guest: that is one of the problems of the chemical drug- testing. it does that asked about our people functional? the screening tools that treatment providers use are really about functionality. it does not matter so much whether it is alcohol or an illegal drug, but is it getting in the wake of your parenting? is it getting in the way of your going to work? are you functioning? obviously, our loss of a somewhat different approach. host: clinton, illinois,

democrat. caller: my comment is, i do believe testing should be done when they start it and on and because if you have a job, even if it is minimum wage and you're using drugs and the test to, which they often, you lose your job. i think they should be tested. if they're on it, they need to get off it or something. host: a response? guest: i agree it is not helpful to be using drugs and people should get off it, but i think are better ways to go about it than drug testing. as i said, providing adequate treatment would be the starting point. host: is there any discussion about this thing proposed to the national level as opposed to state-by-state? guest: there have been proposals introduced in congress that would require states to do this.

they did not go very far. i assume it will come back as an issue. as i said, we heard about it on the unemployment insurance bill. so things that bubble up from the state due to of least introduced at the federal level, and we will have to see where it goes. host: baltimore, a republican. caller: just a little personal saying, i had never a couple of years ago who was an alcoholic, but the golden balls was somegal that got him hooked on crack cocaine. -- but he ended up in a vault was some doubt that got him hooked on crack cocaine he was on medicaid, food stamps, all being paid for by the taxpayers. his life went straight in the toilet. i believe of the county here in ohio that drug tested him at

least once a week for every two weeks, he may have turned out better. he was selling his food stamps to buy drugs. he was stealing the neighbors mail. checks, you know, all kinds of stuff. to sit there and say rehabilitation programs are fine -- they're fine, but if you do not know there are drugs, how do you rehabilitate? that is my point. guest: it sounds like this man was pretty clear. you did not drug testing, but you knew he was in alcoholic and using drugs. case workers can make those judgments as well. preferably with training so they're not just going based on stereotypes. but you did not hit them to take a drug testing not yet a problem. -- but you did not need him to take a drug test to see had a problem.

host: selling tweeted, what about the children? what happens to them? guest: i do not believe in the state has tested children. it is not clear what happens to the children who are tested. in theory, they can be taken in by another family member who can apply. my guess is in most cases, they're not getting help. these are extremely a vulnerable families and children. that is one of the scary things. you said earlier, maybe people who are using drugs will not apply. that means those kids will never get to eat or get the services they need. i do worry about that. host: tennessee, independent. caller: i want to compliment this program first for probably been one of the best programs in the country. i salute you and your brethren

moderators on the job you do, the calls to handle. particularly, i like the way you will call out a caller if they have their facts wrong or leaning too far extreme in one position. today, i want to address this drug-testing issue. i would say what is good for the goose is good for the gander with legislators, but we will go someplace else here. do the american people, if they were to get in front of a full faced mayor, take their clothes off, that would be an analogy for the way that lived the life style for the past 20 or 30 years. we have lived beyond our means. getting back to the drug issue,

does the american people now realize that coffee is a drug with caffeine in it? hear, alcohol and wine is a drug? with alcohol in it. we call different drugs gateway drugs. if your to take the caffeine out of the coffee and make everyone trinket, do you think howard schultz would be doing as well as he is doing with starbucks? if you to be out all out of the beer and wine and spirits, do you think people would be drinking zero beer? i don't think so. the way people have been living financially, morally -- i am

digressing. i'm just nervous. thank you for taking my call. host: thank you for all the nice words at the beginning of your call. guest: i would certainly be less functional without caffeine. more important, i think the goose and gander line is right. all of the bank received bailout money, we do not ask their executives to be drug tested. host: this severe, not necessarily disagree with whether or not recipients are using drugs -- this viewer, not necessarily disagree with whether or not recipients are using drugs has a different view. guest: there is a provision that cuts people off if they have been convicted of a drug-related felony.

many states to say, well, if you've been convicted of a drug- related felony, then you do need to test claim on a regular basis in order to receive benefits. that does not raise the same constitutional issues. there is a basis for that as opposed to just assuming all recipients. host: this reviewer on twitter -- guest: it was only in place for a few months. most people who tested did test plan and were eligible for reinvestment -- reimbursement. i had not figured out what has gone on and where the holdup is for everyone being reimbursed, but i personally lived in virginia and i know our state just rejected it because of the cost.

they rejected the proposal because it was found to cause the government more than it would save. host: the state of virginia. guest: it would cost more than it would save, so they put off the bill proposed. host: illinois, michael, a democrat. you're on the air. caller: thank you for taking my call. i'm interested in what the state is trying to do by testing the recipients of welfare, but the thing is, i really cannot see it being a problem but more so creating a problem. there millions and millions of people that are not on welfare -- i don't know if they're trying to prevent drugs coming into the country or whatever the case is, but i cannot see the drug test of welfare recipients to solving anything or accomplishing anything.

do you know what is going on with that? guest: the broader question of america's drug problem and how we're going to solve that is beyond what i feel competent to address host. host: here is an e-mail -- any comments for either of those? virginia, republican critic go ahead. caller: i am calling because of

other people stating we have to be drug tested in order to get a job. if we have to do it, i don't understand why people that are receiving our tax dollars do not have to be screened for drugs also? i know many families who are in the third generation of welfare. social services, food stamps. they never get off. they never get off. you see some of these people in the grocery store buying with the can on the food stamps, then pay cash for beer, stake, the rest of us -- i live on social security. a lot of us cannot afford certain things. but when you see people like that, you think your tax dollars -- using your tax dollars for things that are not necessary. when we start taking responsibility for our own actions in this country? the longer it goes on, the worse

it gets. i remember years ago that people were doing this and nothing was done about it. i don't understand why people are so upset the we're asking anyone that is receiving money from us to have a drug test. that is the least that could be done. host: thank you for your call. your response? guest: she said she is receiving social security. i wonder if she considers that a benefit from the government and should she have to take a drug test to receive it? host: republican, texas, he talked about his views on drug- testing for welfare recipients. >> i think it is time to stop subsidizing drug use the battle benefits. a winner, people went to work today in the dark -- i wonder how many people went to work

today in the dark. how many people will not get home tonight to their kids practice because they're at work? how may to other boy scout it will not be the camp out because they're working this weekend? how many people have one, two, three jobs, we take money from their paycheck to help people unemployed? it seems to me after listening to some money local companies who are begging for workers but cannot pass a simple drug test, who actually have good paying jobs for them but these workers to choose casually or otherwise to use drugs, it seems to me they're not one to be ready and willing to work. they will not have much of a future for themselves or their children. simply removing the block that prohibits states from doing common-sense drug screening by requiring people ready and willing to work. in some cases, to be abused

dollars to get people off the drug habit, to me, makes perfect sense. host: your response to the congressman? guest: he is talking about unemployment insurance and i think it illustrates the things we're saying. his strongest contests of the people working hard and the people who are lazy and not wanting to work. but if they're getting unemployment insurance, it is because they have a job and lost it. again, blaming people who are unemployed for the situation. host: do you suspect this may begin to move into other areas? are there other benefits also been discussed and targeted? guest: if you look at the proposals in some states, they talk about reaching out beyond cash assistance, again, programs mostly for the poor such as food

stamps and medicaid. again, it is only the people they don't like. i don't think there's a new test elderly people going into nursing homes who also receive medicaid. i think it is people singling it out. but it is not legal to actually include the drug test in as programs host: what are stepping benefits? guest: food benefits. host: if your said i would rather have a go for lie- detector tests for politicians and drug tests for welfare recipients. explain exactly how drug testing is bad for anyone. if a welfare collector is awarded of the state are the habit of find a positive statistics that would arise from the study? guest: well, how is protesting bad for anyone? first, it is embarrassing.

some people find it humiliating. i understand people go through all the time. mostly, it is a waste of money. why don't we have better ways to help people versus the few people actually do have a drug problem? in the person is really good for the companies that sell the drug test. host: next, georgia, independent. caller: thank you for taking my call. my mom actually worked in the social services in florida where she retired from. i moved away from florida and my children became school age. i did not want them in the school system down there. when i got divorced and i did

have to use some of the government programming while own discover business administration and then became self-employed, and now i own my own business. because i did not want work outside of the house and end up having two or three jobs like the other caller was saying, i could that be home for my children and do the things i wanted to be able to do with my children and not be there to put them on the bus and get them off the bus and do homework with them and boy scouts and girl scouts. i know, especially in florida, their biggest problem with the social services program, just from my mother's experiences, was a lot of people that were on the welfare system have people living with them that they were not claiming. boyfriends or husbands or whatnot.

those were the people that they needed -- they need more people working in the social services industry. that is where they need to focus, not necessarily drug- testing the actual recipients. they need more bodies in that area, and the welfare program as workers. they need to start training more people and paying more people to where they can actually go and make those surprise house visits, to make sure the people who are on these applications are actually the only people living in households. host: thank you for your comment. guest: i appreciate hearing from this collar because i do not think we hear enough about the people who may receive public benefits at one point in their life but it is temporary and they get jobs and are self supporting. people tend to think of welfare recipients as this other category of people who say welfare recipients for a long time -- whose state welfare

recipients for a long time it most people receive it and get on with their lives. the more we recognize welfare recipients are people like us and not those people, the less popular policies like this will be. host: the department of health and human services has done in a brief on this in the fall, drug testing will for recipients looking at continued controversies of recent proposals but we of talk a bit cost ine state's administering these tests. people can see in these columns. virginia decided it was too expensive a program. a temple to their consideration. in alabama, for example, 2011, cost and known. arizona, 2008, estimated to cost $3.4 million. florida, 2011, and known for the public they ran reportedly cost

to buy $7 million. idaho, 1.3 million for all. tunas 63,000 for 30% of participants. -- 263,00413% of recipients. state expenses are out of control. the cost and benefit equation. fewer people off the rolls is not in balance with the manage -- cost to administer the test. guest: the testing itself costs money. the actual test and the bureaucratic tape around it, but also people do not realize how low cash benefits are. in florida, a family of three only gets a little more than $200 a month. you're not going to say the whole lot of money squeezing

$200 or $300 or $400 a month might be more average across the country. the benefits are not that much money. it is not like you're going to be saving thousands of dollars when you take a family off. host: on twitter -- anything for either of those yours? guest: it is not one hunter% accurate you need the ability to retest. -- it is not 100% accurate, so you need the ability to retest. some of the drugs pass through quickly. marijuana lasts longer.

host: pennsylvania, republican. caller: good morning. i am a disabled veteran and i get my pension from the air force. i have always noticed the government always spends $10,000 to try to save or retrieve $10. it has always been that way. a lot of people run to civil rights -- their civil rights, but do not realize by doing that, they're stepping on other people's civil rights also like the taxpayer. if someone notices someone using drugs or out all with money

inappropriately, they should just turn them into the welfare office. testing is expensive. it is probably about $80 every time. i know because i have been on both sides of the government issue. if you want to make any comments about my comments, go ahead. host: thank you. guest: i think the point about spending $10,000 to save $10 is a good one. you can help them get the treatment they need. host: in the states that have implemented it, what are the rates of positive findings?

guest: florida found about 2% in the months they tested. more researchy-type things, not the folks doing drug-testing. social scientists or less found the same results. host: on twitter -- our next call is from st. louis, a democrat. caller: thank you for taking my call. there generations of families that have been on welfare, generation after generation after generation. there are generations of farmers who have received subsidies

generation after generation after generation. if you're acquitted test anyone, you need to test anyone and everyone receiving any kind of federal assistance. the poor people have no voice, and a lobbyist, no power. they do not vote. -- no lobbyist, and no power. they do not vote. are they going to go after such as secure as a prince next? go after veterans? where is it going to end? nobody lives a perfect life. just because people are poor, i mean, that does not mean they have to live the perfect life because no one else does. i don't know. i think it is a bad deal. i think republicans are just looking for issues to stir up their base at. it is just a shame. host: nelson will be our last caller on this topic. with the people agree or disagree, if they're living in

one of the states for the proposals are currently being considered, is their resource, a database that can go to find out where things stand so if they're interested they can get involved? guest: hhs brief you talked about did talk about the legislation that was active, at least at that time. i do not think there's a general database. it is active in many states. there probably be news articles if it is proposed or just call your state legislator and ask if this is proposed. get involved. >> president obama will visit when it -- walter reed. at of that, jay carney. we will have that live at 1:00. on capitol hill, norm dix this

return to the end of the term, the ranking member on the house appropriations committee. the senate was in briefly today. not much happening today after yesterday by 51-48 vote that blocked a measure allowing health insurance plans to decline to cover item if it is against the insurers religious beliefs. this is part of the transportation bill debate. congressional says behind the scenes, negotiations continue on which an immense about transportation will be allowed to vote. harry reid talked-about that on the senate floor this morning. here is what he had to say. and thankfully it's brought new signs of economic >> some recovery. not while we have millions of americans unemployed in this country. as we say in the senate, those on this side of the aisle, that's democrats, are not going

to be taking our eye off the target. that is a healthy economy. the bipartisan transportation bill before the senate is an important step in that direction. this bill would save or create almost three million jobs, yet my republican colleagues have caused the waste of about a month of precious time here on the senate floor in obstructing this very important piece of legislation. so it's with disappointment i'm going to file cloture on this transportation bill. it seems 85 votes begin debate on a measure no longer indicate a smooth legislative path forward. we would think with 85 votes that we would have timely approval of t bill, but that has not taken place. that's because my republican colleagues want to waste time on unrelated, ideological, nongermane, nonrelevant

amendments instead of talking about the nation's failing infrastructure. mr. president, there is no one, no one who thinks -- and i say that, no one believes that our roads, our highways, our bridges are up to snuff. they are not. we need significant work to bring them up to better condition. tens of thousands of bridges are in a state of disrepair. so republicans instead of working on this valuable infrastructure bill have been causing us to waste time on issues not related to this. have spent the last several weeks on a woman's access to health care. and, of course, the amendments that they have talked about doing in addition to that would weaken our environmental protection, would make our water

less pure, our air dirtier, this instead of rebuilding as i indicated we need to do our roads, our bridges. even again our better judgment, one republican leader said yesterday we had spent enough time this year on trying to repeal the health care bill, but they have had to retract that because the tea partyose up and said oh, we have to have more votes. they are meaningless votes, mr. president. everyone knows there is going to be no repeal of the health care bill this year. and so the republican leader who talked abouthis yesterday was talking about maybe doing what senator alexander and senator pryor think we should do -- spend our time on things that are constructive like getting our appropriation bills done. no, the tea party stepped in and now there is going to be efforts made to repeal theealth care bill. in fact, i read in the paper

today a complete flip-flop from yesterday. instead of not dealing with starting to repeal the health care bill the rest of this legislative year, now the word is the entire month of march is going to be spent dealing with health care. so, mr. president, it's time to move forward on this bill. hopefully seven -- that's all we need. there are 47 republicans. we need seven of them to invoke cloture on this bill. that vote will occur tuesday morning. all the nongermane, nonrelevant amendments, let them do it on a piece of legislation, mr. president, that is not so vital to the economy of this country. so we're going to move forward on this bill. i certainly hope that we can get seven republicans to join with us. there are 53 of us, seven of

them. now, if we -- mr. president, of course, i have always said i would be happy to come up with an agreement. they want to offer -- if they want to offer amendments that are relevant to what we're doing, that's fine, but that hasn't been forthcoming. i hope the weekend will give my republican colleagues a chance to reflect on whether they are willing to put ideology ahead of the economy. mr. president, three million jobs. and what have we spent our time on? an ideological issue to takx on tuesday morning. before the day's end, i will file cloture on a work product. it's a bill that hashe approval of barbara boxer, a

progressive senator from california, jim inhofe, conservative senator from oklahoma. we have now added to that something that came out of the finance committee, something that came out of the banking committee, something that came out of the commerce committee. all these measures have been relatively without any challenge. i can't understand why people wouldn't approve this. and what we added to this is 37 approved amendments. the staffs with the respective senators have been working for days to come up with amendments that have been filed but not offered, and these amendments, mr. president, have been approved by the respective chair and ranking members of the committees, 37 of them. so what we will be voting on tuesday will be that product. all of it, mr. president,

bipartisan, all of it noncontroversial, so that we can complete work on this bill. if we did nothing else, nothing else on this highway bill than what we are going to vote cloture on on tuesday, it would be really a good, strong, good, strong legislative day for this body. then we could have a conference with the house. the house has already announced that they can't do their senseless piece of legislation. even the tea party-driven republicans in the house recognize that was something that was a figment of someone's imagination to get it done. now they are going to do a two-year bill, like us. it would be easy to conference something like that. they may have some differences in some of the policy efforts, but that's why we have conferences. this legislation is critical. at the end of this month, the

end of march, the highway bill is no more. projects that are being worked on in hawaii and nevada and around the other 48 states will come to a stop. there will be no money. new projects won't be able to go forward. this is a really important bill involving billions of dollars >> obama changed the entire dynamic. >> look inside the new movie and best-selling book that gave the inside story on what happened in the 2008 president to campaign. >> i love those hockey moms. the difference between a hockey mom and did it all is lipstick. [laughter] >> their expectation coming out of that speech was that she was an on allied asset to the

campaign and for that 10 days immediately after that, she was. on the democratic side, there was a lot of concern as the mccain-palin take it came out ahead of barack obama. >> we talk about game changed, sunday at 6:30 p.m. eastern on c-span. or any time at c-span.org. >> if you have said in 2006 that the world would be begging for the u.s. to use force again in the middle east within 3.5 years, everybody would have said you were crazy. >> robert kagan is an adviser to the romney campaign and serves on clinton's foreign-policy advisory board. >> what i have been writing for years is that there is a lot of continuity in american foreign policy. a lot of a broad consensus. what you are seeing here is the kind of consensus in the

foreign-policy community and probably there is a lot of overlap between the two parties. >> more on foreign policy and his latest book sunday night at 8:00 eastern on c-span's q and a." >> even a person who is a senator, even a person who is president of the united states faces a predicament when they talk about race. they face all sorts of predicaments. the fact that there are americans are racially presidents -- prejudice. a much larger portion of the populace denies the realities of race, even now. >> sunday, harvard law professor randall kennedy. he is the author of five new books and he will take your calls, he knows, and tweets for three hours live on c-span2.

>> live at the white house waiting, for the briefing to get under way with jay carney. it should get underway shortly. president obama will head to walter reed national medical center in bethesda. he makes a comment at a white house conference on conversation -- conversation -- conservation. the president on monday will be meeting with israeli prime minister benjamin netanyahu. he warned he will not be bluffing about the attacking iran. in an interview today, he cautioned israel el that an attack upon iran would do more than -- would do more harm than good. we expect questions. he is meeting with the israeli prime minister on monday and he speaks to the annual apec

gathering on sunday evening. coverage of c-span this weekend. while we wait, we bring you a portion of this morning's "washington journal." >> we will talk about all of that. thank you for being here. host:"oil crosses $110 on pipeline explosion crisis died -- denied by the saudis." president saw to explain that the amount of oil we drove home does not set the price of gas on its own because oil is bought and sold in the market. the biggest thing causing the price of oil to rise right now is instability in the middle east. do you agree? guest: no.

out of the millions of people watching this, there is not one who did not learn in elementary school the basics of supply and demand. here we are in the united states of america with the largest recoverable reserves in coal, oil, and gas of any country in the world and we have enough gas right now that we could reach it we would have 90 years of natural gas. we have 60 years of oil. we could take care of it. this president has spent three or quartz for years doing everything he can to attack fossil fuels. he is doing everything he can to stop itv. everybody knows about the pipeline. the hydraulic fracturing -- i am from the state were the first hydraulic fracturing was job -- was done in 1949 than there has never been a case of ground water contamination from

hydraulic fracturing. he makes the statement over and over again. at the same time, he is trying to attack hydraulic fraction. if you cannot get any gas and oil out without using hydraulic fracturing. he is honest about itv. he is admitting it. he wants to end of fossil fuels. look what happened yesterday with steven chu -- he reaffirmed that the what he said in 2008 he still believes. that is, they want to have the price of gas out are around seven or $8 per gallon. they're getting out there. this is my design they are doing that -- by design they're doing that. i think people are smarter than that. host: here is the headline -- "obama calls again for repeal

of oil industry subsidies." guest: a lot of these subsidies -- manufacturers have this. it is not just oil and gas. if they want to take out anything to make it more expensive, the price is going to go up at the pump. everybody knows that. i think he is making a mistake. he has several months to try to recover from this thing, but he is the one who is responsible for the high price of gasoline. host: on the xl pipeline, i saw this note yesterday in " -- there has been an announcement that a portion of the pipeline beginning in oklahoma down to the gulf of mexico will begin construction. can you explain what is happening? guest: the president cannot stop it.

down through oklahoma -- it will start a little bit west of tulsa. that is a major intersection of all of the pipelines. this section is going down to port arthur, texas. the president cannot stop that portion because it does not cross outside the u.s. border. that will be ready -- that will get rid of some of the problems in oklahoma, but you cannot have it have an ongoing one direction -- have a pipeline going in one direction. the greatest jealousy is he was catering to some of the far left environmentalists and they are trying to think that if we stop this pipeline, they are not going to drill up there in the alberta stands. that is phony. they have made a commitment to the chinese that if the u.s.

does not have a pipeline, they will take it to the west coast of canada and they will give it to the chinese. it will not stop when they're not they are drilling. as if there is some reason to stop the drilling. >> -- guest: he cannot stop by to. -- stop it. he makes it sound like he is being pro-gas and oil. host: the oil and gas prices -- guest: the people are understandably outraged by the price of gasoline at the pump. i think he will be an issue in his court. host: for the 2012 campaign? guest: i think so. host: these are the issues that you have discussed in your book which was "the greatest host."

you have been a critic of those who advocate environmental policies rated -- related to global warming. i am interested in your promise in this book. the word hoax has a lot of connotation that is intentional. what are you saying? guest: let me find a definition i like to use. hoax is something except it or established by fraud replication. -- fraud or fabrication. would you have with the whole idea of the hoax is, there are people lined up to do very well financially. in fact, i have several quotes here by a top scientist who used to be on the other side of this issue. that may give you examples. -- let me give you examples.

anyway, those individuals -- there was a scientist marching on the street and during the flight for global warming. after he looked at this and how they rigged the science, he changed and now he is on the other side of the issue. there is also another young scientist who was a strong supporter of the alarmist. this same with a french socialist, a top scientists. he was the leader of the moment -- movement. it is all about money. host: do you believe that? guest: i will take his word for that. it was not long ago in "the new

york times"that they said that out gore will be the first environmental billionaire. -- al gore will be the first environmental billionaire. host: just to be clear, you believe that people who are very public advocates are doing this -- guest: some are. some are making a financial gain. most of them are people who -- i will tell you something funny. back in this thing for started, everyone at that time -- i was a casual observer. everybody said that man-made gases are causing global warming. i thought maybe it was true it but i did not pay attention until they came out with the cost. they said, the cost of this, if we were to have a path to kyoto

would be between $300,000,000,000.592455534 dollars per year. as time went by, others came in. they agreed that the frame has always been somewhere between $ 300 billion and $400 billion. i went back and recall the largest tax increase in the last 30 years and it was the clinton-court tax increase of 1993. that was $32 billion. i have to be sure that the scientists -- i question the science. susan, our phone was ringing off the hook with people calling in and saying that they were rejected -- we need to make sure we understand what we're talking about. the ipcc is the

intergovernmental panel on climate change. it started back in 1972 when all of the alarmists were saying there is another ice age coming. fast-forward to 1992 and that is when we had the earth summit. now we have the earth summit plus 20 taking place in rio. the most interesting title and the guy who did the research is a young man. we spent a lot of time on that, going back and showing specifically that it all started with the united nations. they're the ones whose data ipcc. -- who started the ipcc. then, -- the big party in copenhagen and obama had already been over there and's and

hillary clinton and john kerry. right before i left, we were in a hearing in the senate all of this available online. we take you live to the white house. >> i have a parent teacher conference that i am committed to making and so i need to keep this at about 35 minutes. [laughter] have you seen my kid's report card? >> i have a question about that u.s.-israel relationship. i am try to reconcile a couple of points about his approach. he would presume to tell israel how to handle security but that he also talks about how the israeli attack on a iran can be a distraction that will allow iran to accelerate.

he is trying to tell israel 0 what to do which is not to attack? >> we share our communications with israeli government, military, and intelligence officials. we share our diplomatic situations, the situation regarding iran's pursuit of nuclear weapons technologies, and ideas about what contingencies might breed what outcomes. that is quite different from who try to tell a sovereign nation how to make a decision -- how to tell a sovereign nation how to make a decision. >> when asked if he plans to wrap up rhetoric -- ramp up rhetoric about the red line issue, he said, we have options including the military option.

does the white house feel like privately and publicly, it has already gotten specific? >> i want to be clear that the president gave this interview and spoke about this issue. he, secretary of state, the secretary of defense, military leaders, intelligent leaders, are in constant talks with the israelis. we have a great level of cooperation and consultation. he is not -- does not need to communicate through an interview with israeli leaders because he communicates with them regularly. he has met with prime minister netanyahu more than any other leader. that is one thing. yes, the conversations that he and the prime minister have are

full of detail and analysis. i do not think there will be -- i think the israelis understand the policy approach to this president is taking. and what our view is of what iranian behavior is about and the time and space that is there for us to continue to pursue the diplomatic path, isolating iran and pressuring them to change behavior. obviously, we share information in the intelligence circle about what exactly iran is up to with regard to nuclear programs. >> the president describes his relationship with a prime minister as functional. almada -- dysfunctional enough?

>> -- is functional enough? >> some have described it as dysfunctional. he countered that is actually the opposite. it is a candid relationship. they speak regularly. you know, obviously, even very close friends do not agree on every single issue, matters of tactics versus strategy. it is a productive and functional relationship. >> yes -- the president elaborated and said that the relationship was functional and talked about the areas in which they agreed. he described it as more of a business-like relationship than a personal relationship. they talk about business more than personal issues.

does he feel that is simply to have more of a personal relationship with the prime minister -- that it is important to have more of a personal relationship with the prime minister? >> i think the president feels that the issue that folks are focused on right now with relation to the american-israeli relationship is one of paramount importance in terms of not just israel all's national security, but u.s. national security and global national security to global security. -- national security and global security. we have cooperation with our is really cannot hearts. we take our is really counterparts. it is clear what our approach is the rate that is towards iranian behavior -- it is clear what our approach is. that is toward iranian behavior.

when the president took office, the world was divided about what clearover iran's ambitions and iran unified. the reverse is true because of the approach the president took in leading the international community by demonstrating his willingness to negotiate with iran. if it were willing to demonstrate its commission -- its promise to hold promises. we have an unprecedented level of international maxin -- action against iran. relationship is sound. the president mentioned what is true about the relationship is

that israelis know that our friendship with isreal and -- israel is bipartisan. for -- americans understand that their relationship is the same regardless of which party is in power in israel. the president looks at this as not a political issue, although some here would politicize it. it is an issue of strategic vital partnership with israel and a matter of national security picks a is there going to be a joint -- >> is there going to be a joint press conference? >> i do not have any information on that. >> president obama called the georgetown university law students -- why? >> it was about a to minutes

ago. -- 20 minutes ago. i was in the oval office when he did that. that was one of the things that delayed the briefing. the president called georgetown university law student sandra fluke because you want to offer support to her. he wanted to offer his disappointment that she has been the subject of inappropriate personal attacks and to thank her for exercising her rise to speak out on the issue of public policy. i too was a good conversation. >> is that all you can tell us? >> well, i think so. that a good conversation for several minutes. -- they had a good conversation for several minutes. he feels the personal attacks that have been directed her way

are inappropriate. the fact that our political discourse has become debased in many ways is bad enough. it is worse when directed at a private citizen who was simply expressing her views on a matter of public policy. >> is this appropriate for democratic organizations to try to raise money off of this attack on her? >> i think that i will leave that to whatever organizations might agree with her or sympathize with her. the fact of the matter is, the president was expressing his support for her and his discipline in the kind of attacks that have been leveled at her and his appreciation for her willingness to express your opinion. >> one last question.

vice president biden at iowa state university spoke about contraception and he said that it got screwed up. why did it get screwed up? >> as you remember when the president made his announcement about what the approach was going to take -- he was going to take indirect his ministration to take with regard to religious institutions like colleges, hospitals -- the idea from the beginning, which we attempted to make clear, was that there was i to be a year-long time when we would work to achieve -- there was going to be a year long time when we would work to achieve religious liberty and provide contraceptive services to women no matter where they work.

what was clear is that for whatever reason, the debate was such that it became imperative to in his mind that we came up with a resolution in a for quicker a matter of time. we did that. he felt it was important that people are understand that he -- people are understanding that he takes religion seriously. his own experience with faith- based organizations when he was a young man demonstrated to him the importance they have in our public life and he believes clearly that we can extend this important health care coverage to all women no matter where they were and do it in a way that found that balance to preserve religious liberty. >> thank you. >> the last time the president

met with prime minister benjamin netanyahu, much of the focus was on the mid east peace process. is the focus on iran pushing that aside? over shattering that effort? >> there is no question that iranian be there is a front and center issue right now for this president. certainly in his discussions with the israeli prime minister , it is not the only topic they discuss. it is not the only topic of importance. the president is committed to doing everything his administration can to encourage both parties, both sides to come to the table and negotiate a two-state solution that both sides want.

this is the only way to achieve long-term peace in the area. that remains an important item on the agenda. i am sure it will be discussed. >> you have discussed the nature of the relationship between the two leaders. is there trust there? >> yes. there is a very clear understanding -- because of the level of cooperation at the highest levels as well as at the variety of levels i discussed of what we see it with regards to the iranian issue, what we see is happening there. what our policy is and why we are pursuing it. why we think a diplomatic solution where iran ounces nuclear-weapons is the best

option in terms of resolving this problem for the long term as opposed to temporarily. because there is time and space available to continue to pursue that path, to continue to pressure iran, to isolate it, to have the ever-increasing level of sanctions in terms of iran's economy -- that is the right way to go. it is the case that the president does not take any option off the table. everybody should be clear about that. he does not laugh when he says that no option is off the table -- bluff when he says that no option is off the table. i think he made that clear in the interview. >> when the president says, i do not bluff, does he mean according to iran acquiring the

capability or weapons? >> we are determined to present iran from acquiring nuclear -- nuclear weapons. one of the reasons why we know there is time and space to continue to pursue a diplomatic path with sanctions and diplomatic pressure is because we have visibility into iran's nuclear program. we have iea inspectors on the ground. we know they have not made that breakout move or is acquiring nuclear weapons. -- towards acquiring nuclear weapons. we will continue to work with our allies to ratchet up sanctions. to isolate the gene and the price they are paying is high and low the higher. that is a policy we are pursuing. >> on the president's call with

sandra fluke -- was he made aware of rush limbaugh's comments? >> yes. >> what does he think? >> i think he thinks they were reprehensible. they were disappointing. it is supplanting that -- disappointing that that kind of personal and crude attack could be leveled against something like this young law school student who was simply expressing her opinion on the matter of public policy and doing so with a great deal of boys. -- poise. >> is the president frustrated that of the republicans have convinced the other republicans that he is too tough on israel and too soft on iran? >> as you know, but for some

folks, there is an overlay of domestic politics here. i know this from being with him when he discusses these matters, this is a matter not of domestic politics, but american national security and the security of our close ally, israel. these are serious issues. he made it clear in the interview he gave to the atlantic -- he is fully focused on the threat that iran represents to the u.s. sent to the world along with israel. his policy has been designed from day one to prevent iran from achieving or acquiring

nuclear weapons. >> reports on israel say that the prime minister wants the president to spell out but red lines that the u.s. should not cross pick say the president addressed that in his interview yesterday. he made clear that when we talk about the auctions -- options available for the u.s. -- we take no are fed off the table. -- option off the table. that includes the military option. however, it is our policy that the best opportunity we and our many allies on this issue have of resolving the threats posed by the potential of iran to acquire nuclear weapons is by doing it diplomatically.

by pressuring them to change behavior so it makes the decision. its leaders make the decision to forsake pursuit. we have time and space to continue to pursue that policy. i think the president made it clear that it is not strategically in the u.s.'s interest to dry and explicit line as to what hypothetical action by iran would result in a specific reaction by the u.s. he has made clear what our policy is. he has made clear that we do that rule out any options and responding or in dealing with iranian behavior and that is the

way it will remain. >> one more on a purely political question. the president crossed the hundredth fundraiser threshold in the 2012 campaign. which -- it is being used to beat up on him for his reelection then on the affairs of the state. is this a result of citizens united? at this point, george w. bush had that have as many fund- raisers as the president. >> it is hard to know -- it -- the president has been engaging in political events because that is what its required to run for president and to be reelected. it is also true that, as i

understand it, there is an enormous amount of support for the president and a desire to participate in these political events. in support of his campaign. the fact of the matter is, it is still -- i hesitate to give a percentage, but it is a small portion of his time. he is still enjoying the fact ex- he does not have a primary up -- the fact that he does not have a primary opponent. the length of the other campaign is yet to be determined. he knows they can go on for a long time. he is able, because he does not have an opponent, to spend relatively less time than he might otherwise have had to have spent if he had a primary. there is no question that as we

get closer to the fall, the president will, as every incumbent president has, the spending more time campaigning for reelection. >> we should not conclude that these should be starting earlier to cover the impact of superpacs? >> i refer you to the campaign. i do not know that he has started earlier. he may be more successful at it than some of his predecessors. >> minutes after speaking with the president, [unintelligible] it was talked about -- the message of the president of georgetown university. this was conciliatory and supportive and talekd about the need for more -- talked about the need for more civil discourse.

given that rush limbaugh's for more discipline and -- -- >> the president expressed to sandra fluke that he was disappointed that she was the subject of these crude attacks. i think that it is fair to say that reprehensible is my word. these were unfortunates attacks. >> unfortunate? >> inappropriate. reprehensible. the president called her to thank her for speaking out on a matter and doing so with great poise. and to express disappointment

she had been subjected to these kinds of attacks. my understanding is that that is not quite the complete quotation from the president of georgetown. i will leave it to you to check- in. >> last night at one of the fund bursars' in new york city, the president made a -- fund-raisers in new york city, the president said that people would be able to see the difference -- repeatedly, we have heard officials say that they expect a tough race in the fall. given the fact the president does not have high regard for the way the gop candidates are conducting themselves, is it still the case we expect a tough race? >> i take issue with your

characterization of what is said. what we have seen from the competition on the other side to produce a nominee for the republican party is that the matter who the nominee is, assuming it is somebody from the current field, the policies are very much the same. the policies are essentially a reiteration of off and on steroids of the policies that got us into this miss. they say, we do not need to regulate wall street, even though the financial crisis is the worst since the great depression and the fact is, wall street was operating on its own set of rules and a contributing to that. we do not need to regulate or prevent insurance companies from throwing people off when they get sick. weekend to throw off the many

hundred -- we can throw off the cover americans who have now have insurance coverage because of the affordable care ads. we should -- according to the policy proposals put forward, which are quite similar to the ones that our friends on the hill put forward, we should not just a -- not only should we not take a balanced approach to deficit and their reaction, but in dealing with this, we should give a bigger tax cuts to millionaires and billionaires' while making life even harder for the middle class. the president believes that in a choice between those policy positions on the economy and the ones that he has pursued and is presenting, and that he believes his up to their better. -- his options are better.

>> [inaudible] there have been a number of arguments made about international relations. the president was asked about iran and syria. he said he is not happy with trigger happiness. >> are those your words? >> yes. he says that is why -- my question to you is, you said we want to make our views known so that everybody knows it. do these views count for the white house? i also have a standard question about the election process. >> of course the views of

russian leaders count. we have an important relationship with russia and we will continue to have that. we have been in regular consultation with russian government officials on this very issue. the fact of the matter is, as you know, we disagree with the decision by russia to veto the u.n. security council resolution that would have supported the arab league's approach 0 -- proposal to jori transition in syria. as regard to the trigger happen is, anybody who has watched a minute of footage of the assault by assad understands that the trigger happiness is all on one side. y carried out in the last 24 to 48 hours is disgraceful. it is terrific. it should be condemned by every nation. we call on every nation to join

with the friends of syria to take action to prevent further brutality and further murder of >> do we not have to move away? >> have you seen any sign of the government troops being willing to do anything other than slaughtering the syrian people who are demonstrating for more democracy? i do not things up. -- i do not think so. >> does the president follow the elections? >> this by my interest in history with russia, -- despite my interest and has drea with russia, i know he is aware of the participants. thank you very much. i apologize for having to leave early. we will get back to you. thank you.

[captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2012] >> his last question -- this is escalating violence today it. france closing embassies today. yesterday, before the senate foreign relations committee, testimony about u.s. policy toward syria. we will show you part of that hearing next. >> this year will come to order. i apologize for being late. i was on the floor. >> we appreciate everybody coming here to discuss this serious situation. serious it is in the heart of the middle east -- serious sits in the heart of the middle east. -- syria sits in the heart of the middle east.

everyone cares about what happens as to non-state actors like hezbollah and hamas. al qaeda, through its affiliate in iraq, appears to be trying to take advantage of the unrest cast -- chaos. already, as many as 9000 civilians have died and many thousands have been displaced from their homes. in the syrian city, there has been indiscriminate shelling for three weeks. hundreds have died. the city is running low on food and medical supplies. given the indiscriminate killing of its own citizens, and given its back of the hand to the global community as well as to the regional powers that have tried to intervene, it seems

clear that the al-awsat regime -- assad regime is going to fall. the water the endgame, the messier the aftermath and obviously, the more complicated the in between. the prospect of a full-fledged civil war is a stark reminder that a terrible situation could become much worse. with potentially devastating consequences for neighbors -- and adverse implications for the broader middle east. the question being asked here in the congress as well as elsewhere in america and in the world is where do we go from here? america may have little direct leverage on syria. the recent friends of syria conference internees was an important moment that could galvanize that community against the outside -- against the ass governmentsad. . -- assad government.

the full focus of the global community is indeed. the last year has shown that when the world axe with one voice, motivated -- acts with one voice motivated by the cause of freedom, during the does not seem so fierce. that is why the russian and chinese veto the at the un security council was a disappointing. it actually extended to assad political life line to use violence against his own people. we need to encourage the russians and chinese and it certainly let them know that while we would like they're positive involvement, -- their positive involvement, we are able to do much more if they block of progress that the

security council has made. the arab league and jcc have wrapped up their pressure. the eu enter key -- and turkey, a close friend, have done the same. the un general assembly voted 137 to 12 to democrat down. two weeks ago, the senate passed unanimously a resolution introducing -- introduced by this committee condemning the regime for its brutal crackdown. there are still serious questions about various opposition organizations. including especially the syrian national council and free syrian army. they share the goal of getting rid of assad they have travel some distance in the last year. they have not yet unified in the

way that the libyan transitional national council did. i believe it is time for us to re-double our efforts to update with the political opposition to try to ship their thinking to understand it and identify the leadership. to encourage them to coalesce into a coherent political force. with the creation of friends of syria group, there is now a multilateral mechanism for supporting the syrian national council and other political groups with technical assistance. it is true that many syrians themselves remain on the fence, especially members of the minority groups. they are horrified by the regime's atrocities but they are also terrified by the potential for broad scale secretary in stride. -- secretary strife.

we need to put national aspirations ahead of personal ambitions. to get a court we -- rigid to categorically dismiss problems. the nation needs to understand that the international community's board will also be contingent upon their ability to speak with one voice that represents the full diversity of syrian society and also embraces the values that will bring the global community to its side. the debate has started in congress and in the area of about whether and if so how to support the free syrian army. it is critical that we all proceed with extreme caution with our eyes wide open. there are serious questions to be answered about the free syrian army. it is not too soon to think about how the international

community can shape its thinking or encourage restraint. we should encourage the free syrian army to subsume itself under the leadership of syrian opposition. finally, we are all concerned about the disposition of see. 's biological and chemical weapons. biological and chemical weapons. the administration is engaged with respect to this particular challenge. they're working diligently to make sure that there are contingency to prevent these weapons from falling into the wrong hands. i urge all of my colleagues to be fully supportive of those efforts. to help us work through the complexities of this situation and i want to emphasize that this is not libya or egypt. this is not -- this is a far more complicated and difficult proposition. to help us work through those complexities today, we're joined

by two of the most accomplished members of america's diplomatic core. i am pleased to welcome them. robert ford and jeffrey feldman. he understands -- they understand. ambassador ford has worked to engage with the people of syria during his tenure. we all want to commend you on your courageous and important efforts that you make to distinguish between the clientitis that embraces those abroad and your own connection to the values that you represent.

you had to leave the country because of threats to your own safety. he returned and continue your efforts and of the embassy finally closed because of the continued deterioration in security. we thank you both in advance for providing your insights. >> thank you, mr. chairman. i join you in welcoming secretary feldman and the best afford. we appreciate their leadership. ambassador ford and his team in syria were especially courageous and they deserve great credit for documented evidence of the syrian government to cut the aggression against its people. our hearing today takes place amidst the deadly violence that grows -- and degradations of the assad regime that is inflicted

on the syrian people. since our last hearing on syria in november, the death toll has risen dramatically. we are confronted by horrific images of dead depths to which assad is to preserve his horror preserve his power. -- preserve his power. international organizations were brought together. we need to focus attention on humanitarian needs in syria. in the absence of russia and china was a relinquishment of their support as permanent members of the u.n. security council. yvette's in syria what impact the u.s. national security and the interest of our -- event in syria will impact the u.s. national security. this will have deep implications

for the internal politics of neighboring countries, ethnic conflicts in the middle east, and strategic issues. terrorist groups will attempt to take advantage of political instability and violence could spill over the borders as groups settle old scores or defend brethren from attacks. in the midst of this, syria has substantial stockpiles of chemical and conventional weapons. they could directly threaten peace and stability throughout the area. our government should be focusing intelligence and counter proliferation assets of containing this threat. the development of a -- and opposition that speaks for most syrians improves chances that the damage to the syrian people can be contained. some constructive opposition voices are attempting to emerge.

the syrian opposition likes cohesion. as a practical matter, it lacks the physical space and technical means to mature, to overcome its internal differences and develop a plan for a democratic transition. deep sectarian divisions outside influences from iran and elsewhere and the lack of democratic culture weighs heavily against the short-term emergence of unified opposition in which the base -- in which to base a teller a democracy. this presents the u.s. with limited options. we must oppose the assad regime. we must support international humanitarian efforts. we should also work with willing states to limit any spillover effect generated by the violence in syria. we should not overestimate our influence to shape the events in the country.

for their attempts by the u.s. or the west to manage the opposition could backfire in an environment where the government blames outside influences for syria's troubles. we're not taking any options off the table, but we should be extremely skeptical about actions that could commit the u.s. to a military intervention in syria. under the constitution, as a party to are conflict rests with the conflict -- the congress. as you and others consider a way forward, together, with our international partners, i encourage you to work closely with congress as plans evolves, particularly as the situation becomes more complex. i look forward to your testimony very much and we are honored that you are with us today. thank you, mr. chairman. >> thank you. >> thank you.