republican primary on tuesday and looks ahead to the general election. later, uri dadush talks about the history, funding, leadership of the world bank. "washington journal" is next. host: one of three official people who have engaged in retaliation at the u.s. dover air force base has resigned. there's gross mishandling of remains of those who died in war. an estimated 1,300 workers at the chevy volt manufacturing plant in michigan will be laid off for five weeks after it was announced that g.m. was halting production temporarily of the battery-powered car. representative norm dix plans to retire at the end of his 18th term in congress.

welcome to the "washington journal" for march 3, 2012, a three-hour program for you today. we'll begin from an event actually for the first 45 minutes, and our question is based off an event we took in recently. this happened on friday, actually. it was the education now event, which also talked about cities at the forefront of education reform. it was held by american university. it featured several mayors and officials looking at the topic of education. from that, the folks here who run our facebook page posted this question, and here's how they phrased it. they said, when it comes to the local level of education, what's working or failing in your school district? and we like the phrasing so much of that question, we wanted to take it and use it for our own in our first 45 minutes. so, here's what we can do. we'll show clips of what happened at this event. it featured several high-level people talking about the topic of education. but from you, the folks viewing

us today, monitoring us on the internet, what we want to get from you is a sense of, if you take a look at your district, where you live, your education system, what works, what doesn't? feel free to tell us one or the other. feel free to tell us both. you can comment on twitter and facebook as well. but here's how it will start. for democrats, 202-737-001. for republicans, 202-737-00 . -- for republicans, 202-737-0002. for independents, 202-628-0205. again, your school district, what's working and what's failing? send us an email, that's fine. that email address is journal@c-span.org. you can reach out to us on twitter, @cspanwj off of twitter.com. or perhaps you want to post something on facebook as well. about 26, 30 people or so have done so this morning. such as chad lincoln, and this

is one of the responses we've had when it comes to juror school district, what's working and what's failing, he's saying, what's working? not every budget cut promise happens. what's failing? the state of illinois is not paying what is due each local school district outside of chicago public schools. parents are made to freak out and vent about teachers being cut, special needs programming being threatened, and sports or necessary courses being cut or lessened. tommy qualls follows up with a comment of his own, adds this this morning, on our facebook page, what's failing is that the federal government is involved. again, two perspectives. many more out there, but it will be good to hear from you specifics as far as what you're looking at when you take a look at the school, if you still send children to school, what examples, stories, illustrations, whatever. again, the numbers will be on the screen. you can also reach us on email,

twitter, and off facebook. the education now, cities at the forefront of reform event, this was held yesterday at american university. a lot of high-leveling ranking officials, including the education secretary, arne duncan, is talking about the program the administration has put into place, known as race to the top. >> all of us are facing these huge achievement gaps. if we're serious about closing them, we have children entering kindergarten reading fluently. we have other children who don't know the front of the book to the back of the book. early childhood is arguably the best investment we can make. we have to keep driving k-12 reform, and this link to college and career is important as well. >> isn't prekindergarten the privilege of the middle class and upper middle class? >> no, i mean, all these cities have hundreds of thousands of children, not enough, but we have to get poor children and

those into high-quality schools where socialization skills are intact. host: again, that's the u.s. education secretary, arne duncan, giving his perspective from the event. we're asking you, when it comes to your school district, what is working and failing, 202-737-0001 for democrats. 202-737-0002 for republicans. and 202-628-0205 for independents. arkansas on our independent line, we say good morning to dorothy. go ahead. caller: good morning. the first thing you have to have is a workable school board that can put in place the kind of administration that can deal with the programs that are needed in the school district. when you're trying -- i'm a retired teacher. when you're trying to meet the needs of children you've got to put in place who can meet the

programs in the district that are needed by the schools. and what do you do when you have an incompetent incident school board? host: what brings to you that conclusion? caller: when you read the daily newspaper and you see that school board members are fighting the superintendent, then that makes for poor leadership. host: were they fighting over money issues, administration issues, problems at school? caller: well, the superintendent has the leadership schools to run the district, and then you have these laypeople, some of them who are incompetent who don't know how to run the school district, and they're on the school board. host: how many people are on the school board? caller: there's supposed to be seven, and they will be voted on by the different areas of the city. but sometimes you have people who are competent who don't sign up to be on the school board, so you put all these

incompetent folk on the school board, then you make for a poor -- even if you have a dynamic superintendent, that leadership on the board makes it poor. host: you said you're retired. was it because of school board issues? caller: listen, i am retired from cincinnati public schools, and i moved back to arkansas. so, as a retired teacher, i've been in the schools here substituting, and what i see is -- what i have seen is there are good people in the schools working hard, and they have poor leadership. host: thank you, dorothy. brooklyn, new york, good morning, democrats line. caller: hey, yeah, we have the new york state regents exam here in new york. it was a great education. it was a test statewide that you had to pass. and they eliminated it because the teachers couldn't make that standard over the past 25 years. they didn't want a state standard. i don't know how you're going to get rid of it. the unions have such a strong

stranglehold on the system that everybody's suffering, not only kids, but the whole society. until it collapses completely, complete an arkism, there's not going to be a change. it's as simple as that. host: how is your governor handling the situation? caller: well, he's really fighting, but he can't. it's overwhelming. the forces are so strong. it's not just the teachers union, but it's -- it's not yes or no, black or white, it's all the variables in between. it's not being addressed. host: we go to new york city for our next call. alan, democrats line. caller: good morning. i have three comments. a, the new york city school system is the slave ships of the 21st century. how do you come that? you have an early childhood program for all students, meaning head start. number two, you have an after-school program so that these students who go home, especially in the inner city without a parent till about

7:00, because these parents have two and three jobs, usually just the mother at home, have the opportunity to learn and study under supervision with some recreation, with an instrument class, music, with students. and principals have to supervise, especial novice teachers for the first five years, in order to keep those teachers in the schools rather than intimidate and harass a certain percentage of teachers. we had a rubber room in new york city, and the majority of those teachers that were put in rubber rooms by intimidating and harassing principals instead of observing teachers five times, six times a semester, mentoring them with another teacher, so that these teachers learn the art and craft of teaching. these principals are not doing their job. and if they would, 95% of these teachers would become very high-level teachers within five years, and all these so-called complaints about tenure and teachers not being able to

handle the responsibilities would not be even a conversation. principals need to do their job as master teachers, not intimidate, and they have to be an after-school program. host: you listed a lot of those things previously. was there anything within the new york city school system which you would say is working? >> i will only say you have chancellors that are so antagonistic toward teachers. yes, you have a certain percentage of schools in the better districts and the magnet high schools that function -- or charter schools, because you have smaller classes under the best of circumstances. but 90% of these high schools in new york city are snake pits. the great majority of junior high schools, quite frankly, are also snake pits. you have 15% of the schools that function. the elementary schools can function on a significantly higher level because the students are much more manageable. however, if you compare the

class size to long island or west chester, where there are 22 students in a classroom and you're dealing with 40 kids until the class is equalized, it's absurd. if you really realize the extreme difficulty of a teacher in a classroom dealing with these principals, you would realize why tenure is absolutely appropriate and principals would really supervise their teachers. host: we'll it leave. marty this morning adds this perspective -- kids in affluent schools drive b.m.w.'s and mercedes, while kids in disadvantaged areas come to school in order to have access to food. we're welcoming your opinions for the fix 40 minutes or so. you can do so by phone, email, twitter if you want, post it on our facebook page. a couple of stories, while we're waiting for the next couple of calls, this is in reaction to this private settlement that between british petroleum and the private

industry when it comes to the oil spill and the gulf coast, two perspectives. this is from the "times-picayune" from louisiana saying that b.p. and the private plaintiffs from the gulf oil spill litigation have reached a $7.8 billion settlement, they announced on friday. anen caupped settlement, it was written -- host: another perspective on this, it also on the front page of the "houston chronicle" this morning, gulf oil spill deal made, and this is how it plays out.

host: again, we're taking our question from this event that we took in yesterday on c-span, education now, cities at the forefront of reform. if you don't watch it, we invite you to go to our website, go to our library, and watch the whole event there. one of the people participating yesterday was the former chief of staff at the obama white house, president obama's chief of staff, and current mayor of chicago, rheaume emanuel, talking about the need to motivate principals, parents, and teachers. >> in the end of the day, a principal that is truly accountable to what happens and the results that come out of that building, because that you can get your hand around. i want a teacher who is motivated and excited about being there and a parent who doesn't think the system is too powerful for them, but they

actually can be involved in their own school, in their own child's education. because all the information to date has been keeping them at a distance, and yet they're the most important thing. the most important door a child walks through for their education is the front door of that house. >> host: matthew, republican line. caller: good morning. i just have been listening to the conversation this morning. i think one of the areas that the obama administration and even beforehand, even the bush administration, really missed an education reform, is the link to career and technical education, which really should start in the elementary years with career awareness and advance on into the middle school years with career exploration and on into high school with actual career preparation at that point. you know, whether your child is going to be going directly to college or medical school, they

need to have that valuable exposure to career-or yetted classes -- to career-oriented classes. most of the classes that i've seen offered in high schools and middle schools are very high-tech, advanced classes that have rigorous academics involved with the career and technical programs. they've tiptoed around it. i know the obama administration has talked a lot about college and career-ready, but i think when they say that, they tend to mean more college-ready than they really get that career side. we've got to embrace that as well in these education reforms or else we're going to miss the mark. host: one of the lead stories in the "atlanta journal constitution" this morning, it deals with the cheating scandal that took place in atlanta schools. it says the school superintendent there took the first steps late friday to fire 11 educators expected of some of the most egregious of the school system's widespread test

cheating. he sent certified letters to the 1, is all of whom were given the chance to resign last week, but refused. anything you want to add, from your perspective, as far as the school system when it comes to this test cheating scandal? >> well, errol davis is doing a wonderful job, and knowing he's trying to fix those problems, and hopefully he will accomplish his ultimate goal to get the atlanta schools back, back on track, because there are a lot of talented people that are working for the atlanta city schools, and it's unfortunate what has happened. we've all been very embarrassed by that and hoping that we can get the school system back in better regards in the education community. doip indiana, francis on our democrats line, good morning. caller: good morning. host: hi. caller: i've got to tell you, leave no child behind was to destroy the union. it was to take money away from public schools and give to private schools and parochial

schools, which is a violation of our constitution and state. but the way they got around that loophole was they gave the money to the parents. i got to tell you about something i read in my morning paper in fort wayne, indiana. a new deduction on indiana state tax forms is going to take a lot of people by surprise. the general assembly last year approved a tax break for families who home school or send their children to private or parochial schools. $1,000 per child deduction is not available to parents who send their kids to public schools. it's another diversion of money. host: was there a reason? caller: a republican of goshen, along with a senator of auburn, who actually is my aunt's nephew, who's 105, told a south

bend tv station last year that the deduction was a matter of fairness who are parents who pay for private school tuition and couldn't apply for voucher entitlements, new voucher entitlements. the tax break is estimated to cost our state almost $4 million. guess who's going to make up that $4 million. they'll probably raise the sales tax another penny. but public schools are losing money to private schools, which is a violation of constitution. and they do it through loopholes. they started with bush. but a kindergarten teach irshould have no more than 15 kids in her class. it destroys the union. you know what mr. daniels said? he said they make too much money.

can you believe that? host: would you say there's anything working within the school districts that you know about? caller: if it wasn't for these wonderful teachers we have dealing with so much less money, i don't know what they would do. they would have to fall on their face, because these teachers are the ones that's holding us all together. host: you weren't in the area affected by tornados? caller: oh, no, we're north of fort wayne. the american electric power system just cut down a 60 some year old tree because it interfered with the power lines, so we're losing trees other ways. but oh, i raised five kids, and i have 19 grandchildren. i have six great. and i can't believe what they've done to the public school system by diverting all this money away. host: i apologize. we have to move on to other schools, but that's frances from indiana. we're asking about the school district, what's working, what's failing. detroit, michigan, republican

line. charlie. caller: how you doing, sir? i think arne duncan's message was completely missed. what he was saying is when kids arrive at school, you know, when they're maybe in the preschool or kindergarten, they don't know the difference between the front of the book and back of the book. i think what he's saying is the parents aren't spending enough time with their kids. we have three sons. we spend an awful lot of time with them when they were growing up reading books, sitting down with them. that's like, where does the responsibility begin with the parents? instead of pointing the fingers at the superintendents and the school boards and teachers aren't doing their job, what are the parents doing? where's their responsibility? host: is that a fail in your mind when it comes to parental responsibility? caller: absolutely. i think that they look to teachers many times to help raise their kids when they should be doing it at home, one-on-one time with them. take them away from the tv. take them away from the computer. take them away from their little hand devices. spend time with them reading

books. that's what makes for a better student. that's what arne duncan was saying. they come to school unprepared when they're first beginning, because they don't know. they've never been read to or they haven't been forced to read. it's more of a social issue, and they say, well, what are we doing to prepare these kids as a government? host: is anything working there in detroit? caller: yeah, i think this new emergency financial manager is fantastic for the state of michigan. the way the government looks at it, if you knew governor snyder, he's a c.p.a., he's an attorney with an m.b.a., so he kind of looks at it from a business perspective and says, you know, what's working and what isn't working, and what can we do in these failing cities to make sure that their school board works, that they're financially sound, so that we can kind of restructure them so they can be successful in the future. host: this is mike freeman off of twitter, who adds this, it may have been worth it to get him out of teacher's hair, too

much management, he adds, justifies existence by inventing task. arlington, virginia, good morning to dale, independent line. caller: how you doing? host: fine, thank you. caller: i have three observations. my wife is a teacher, and she's retired now, and one year she mentioned that they won excellent teach air wards or whatever coming up this spring at the end of the year, and she said, of course, all the sports coaches were involved, would always get their rewards, and whatever is left over would go to the rest of the teachers. i was surprised. and i started thinking back to my childhood, and my assistant principal and principal were former teachers, and the administration into high school , for the school system was also coaches, ex-coaches. i was surprised. i started thinking back. i actually read somewhere that, in other countries, germany for

one, sports are not involved in the schools at all. i don't know if that's the total answer or not, but thank you. host: that's one of the many perspectives we're hearing this morning, and you are welcome to add yours as well. a story from "the washington post," this looking at how those -- remains from those who died in the war were being handled at dover air force base. the headline says the air force base's mortuary supervisor resigned. he's formerly the dover mortuary division director. he cleaned out his desk monday after he tendered his resignation, according to officials familiar with the case. an air force spokesman confirmed that keel was no longer employed by the air force and declined to comment. there were incidences of

missing body parts and the sloppy handling of remains. investigators from an independent agency found that keel had tried to fire two of the whistle blowers. host: democrats line, texas. how are you? caller: thank you for c-span. as a retired teacher who worked from sixth grade to junior college, if i had to say something to arne duncan, in schools that are not doing well, i will put a social worker in those schools, and the main purpose of that social worker would be able to target the parents of children who are

not doing well and try to get them together and try to form small groups that the social workers could monitor and help the parents to help their children in reading and math, and parents who can't aford child. they need to be able to help their children to do their homework and just help them to establish best practices going to help those children to be more successful. from sixth grade to high school, i would put in a lab person, because science and math teachers, even though they do have equipment, they have math labs and science labs, that is an awful lot to ask one math teacher or science teacher to do. so we had a lab person in the schools who would set up and take down the labs that the students are going to be doing that week. they could get some practical

experiences along with what they're learning, and that's what i would like to see the schools do, because i don't care how bad teachers think parents are. i have never found a parent who did not love their child and who did not want that child to succeed. they just didn't know how to help. host: you may have said this, but were you involved with education or currently involved? caller: well, yes, i taught for 41 years. i'm a retired science teacher. i a master's degree in biology and chemistry. i taught on -- from sixth grade to junior college. in three states. host: with the idea that you told to me, have you tried to express those to a school board or somebody? difficult to do that, but i caller: well, it's very would be very happy to work with and talk to anyone who wanted to talk to me about the situation. because i truly believe it would make a large difference in the education of our children.

host: you said it's difficult. does that mean you tried and were shut down, or is it difficult to even get the idea expressed? caller: as a teacher, a lot of times administrators don't really want to listen. but if you can talk to someone who really want to make a difference and who really want to spend the time -- and even though i'm retired, i would be happy to work with anybody anywhere who wanted to work on a pilot program like this. i am sure it would make a huge difference in the lives of our children. host: lela from garland, texas, on our democrats line, thank you. houston, texas, you are next. linda, republican line. caller: hello. good morning. host: good morning. caller: yes, i agree with linda . what i'm seeing here in houston, texas, is you have teachers who are very hard working and very competent, but teachers are not given a voice. they are closest to the children, and they no say.

the teachers know what can work and won't work in the schools, and you have people that can come, superintendent and the people from the school board, some of them who have never been in an inner city school, and they don't try to reach the parents. they come to school, but when we get them at school, we can teach them, but there are no books at the school. there's no place for them to do homework. they don't make it comfortable for them at school. so it's like everything is blamed, it's the teachers' fault, but the teachers are not given the materials or given the support to work with the kids. host: so, if you had to take everything you've said and boil it down to a single failure in your school district, what would that be? caller: incompetent leadership. host: would you say there's anything working there? houston?

caller: some things are working, but i think they are in danger to show they are doing something. but they have this incentive program where the superintendent and the principal, the last time the superintendent got over $75,000 and they try to monitor the date to see if they're really improving, but it's not. host: that's linda from houston, texas. another perspective from the event which took place yesterday here from the american university, mayor bloomberg of new york talking about the need for people of all levels of education and their role in the school system. >> 20 years ago across the country, we closed what i would call vocational schools. everybody said, what do you mean? my kid's not going to go to harvard, yale, or princeton. well, lady, your kid is not going there, and number two, harvard, yale, or princeton isn't for everybody, and that's not the way you make the most

money. we need people at all different levels, community colleges, vocational schools, college graduates. when we say college graduates, yes, that's a very desirable thing, but being a plumber, you have pricing power. being a plumber is something that society needs. being a plumber is something that's a profession that people will pay for and you can really be in charge of your own destiny and start your own company. host: keep calling in and we'll take a look at other topics as well. the front page of the "wall street journal" talks about temporary suspension of the chevy volt manufacturing. this was announced yesterday. g.m. said around 1,300 workers at the michigan factory where the volt is built will be out of work between march 19 and april 23. a spokesman said a plant had just resumed production on february 6 after a prolonged holiday shutdown.

host: if you go inside the pages of the "wall street journal," there's a story about another car manufacturer, and a title you may not have heard of, datsun, or maybe most you haven't in a while. a story says that nissan might revive the datsun brand, saying the japanese carmaker is considering reviving the brand for a line of low-cost cars that it could make and sell in emerging markets where its nissan vehicles are too expensive for consumers shopping for their first brand-new car, a person familiar with the matter said.

host: bradford, connecticut, good morning. mike, democrats line. caller: hi. i just wanted to say a few things first. i'm a school administrator. when you ask a question like what's wrong with education and throw it out there, you're going to get a wide array of responses. people are going to base their responses on their own individual experiences. and it's a very complicated question. but in my own experience, i've seen that kids who come from really good homes, stable homes, and who are really motivated, they're going to succeed no matter what you do. so, you're really trying to reach the kids that either don't really see a purpose in ed or are kind of lost or don't have the guidance at home,

whatever the problems may be. and one thing that i've seen -- of course, there's no magic bullet to solving the education issue, but one thing i have seen is that there's a problem with basing everything on a credit system. because what you get is some students, and i'm not talking about the students who tend to do well, but some students will shoot for the d instead of shooting for the a because all you need to get the credit and to graduate and move on is the d. so basing just on broad credits is an issue, because it does not promote high achievement. it doesn't promote high standards. it just pretty much reduces the whole exercise to seat time. i think that's a problem. host: so, a lot of people who called in this morning expressed at least the perspective of trying to get ideas, whether it to be improve the system or thoughts and things to administrative levels, and some people even expressing that those thoughts necessarily weren't heard.

any perspective on that? caller: well, a lot depends on local issues. the education is really a local business, and i think that in some districts, you get the administration and school boards that are very responsive to people's ideas and are very willing to try new things. in other areas, you may be working with a board that's under very strict budget pressures, and there's very much a limit in what they can do. but if you focus on things that you can do rather than focusing on things that cost a whole bunch of a lot of money in terms of structural reforms, which, you know, don't really cost that much, you may see higher yields in terms of results than just waiting for money to show up. host: michigan, joe, independent line, hello. caller: hello. how are you doing? host: fine, thanks. caller: i'm an administrator and taught for 11 years. the district i live in, i got

three kids in high school, and i wrote an article about packets. that's kind of what the younger teachers we have, they -- i don't think they're invested in the content or invested in what they're teaching. a lot of packets, really no higher thinking. when i wrote an article, actual al lot of backlash. a lot of parents got mad and defend this had type of teaching, probably because that's how they were taught. host: did you say packets? caller: yeah, packets, they get them from the textbook companies. i actually call it pactology. it's something i made up, because it's really disturbing to me. there's no rig oregon relevance, it doesn't establish relationship with the kids. it's very one-dimensional, even to the point where i met with the superintendent in my district because my kids were getting the answers to the test prior to taking the test, and then were able to use study guides on the test. the district, the superintendent, the school board, even a school board, they're outdated.

most of those people really don't have the depth to where education is now. i think school boards served a purpose 50 years ago, smaller communities. host: so, if you didn't have a school board, what would replace it? caller: that would be interesting, a big change. i don't know, maybe more sight-based, maybe more representatives dependent on the size of your district, the people on the ground, because when you go to a school board meeting, you present an argument, you get a lot of blank stares, and then they look right to the administration, curriculum directors and superintendents to provide the answers to the school board. so, indirectly, those couple of people are steering the whole discussion. you know, it's a strange -- superintendents don't want to upset school boards. host: looking at everything you laid out, would you say there's one thing that's working there in the grand ledge, michigan, area? caller: they have a good

system, but that only serves the top 5%. my kids have done well and performed. they passed a.p. classes, getting some college secrets. but like i said, that's only 5% of the kids. what about the other kids? what about the skills these kids need? they're not teaching our kids to be thinkers. they need to be creative, creative servers, and with packets and one-dimensional teaching. i mean, my son in a social class watched five movies in a row. no accountability, never had to turn in a work sheet, never had to do anything, met with the principal, and he said he was happy with that type of teaching. it's scary. i'm an administrator. that's unacceptable to the building i work in. it's unacceptable. i work in a difficult different, and we're working very hard to correct that when we have teachers like that. with the new tenure laws, michigan teachers really don't have any tenure anymore. with the new evaluation process, i mean, it's going to take time.

host: sioux city, iowa, we want to thank joe for his perspective this morning. sioux city, iowa, is next. john, republican line. caller: i'm basically in the state, we have a very strong teachers union. if you look at moving schools forward to one-on-one with computer systems, it's very tough to get that going when -- when you attend school board meetings, and the school board and administrators are there typically, until it comes time

for negotiations, then you get 10, 12 teachers showing up. they're only interested in their own pocket. teachers union and the raises that they always are -- they're expected to get, it's almost entitlement right now with the teachers union in iowa. host: we'll leave it there. that's john from sioux city. there's a picture this morning in the "baltimore sun" from jim young of reuters, showing president barack obama and the israeli prime minister, benjamin netanyahu. this is back in 2010. both of these gentlemen scheduled to meet on monday. one of the topics, as reflected in the headline currently that you've been reading about, is israel and iran. this stems from an interview that the president did for the atlantic magazine. the headline says obama on iran, i don't bluff.

the host: the president will be on tomorrow at 11:00 live on c-span. you may also to want tune in to our "newsmaker" program tomorrow, our guest is from the house armed services committee. and he talked about a variety of things. one is the subject he did address was about the administration's plan for dealing with iran and what he thinks about it. >> we tightened sanctions in our bill last year, and i think those are bearing fruit. i wish it had been done a few

years ago. we wouldn't be quite in the situation where we are right now, where they're getting very close to having the capability, the ability to have a weapon. my concern is that we're resolute enough to make sure that when we say we aren't going to allow them to have a weapon that we're not, it's kind of like -- i hope this isn't some wink and a nod thing, because this is very important. >> you're not questioning the administration's resolve on that. >> i said i hope that we're not -- that this is really -- we're really serious about it. host: watch more of that tomorrow at 10:00 in the morning on our "newsmakers" program. find out more about it at c-span.org. one more international story,

the "financial times" talks about the russian elections set to take place, the counting of votes. it says that the local -- here's the headline, i should show you that first, russians go to polls despite fear of widespread vote rigging. host: a couple more calls on whether your school district is working or failing. los angeles, california, sheila on our democrats line, hello.

caller: hello. i'm calling because i believe that this problem in the school district is that the teachers now that are becoming teachers are not becoming teachers because they care or they want to see the children do better. they're coming because it's the easiest job to get out of college when you're not sure what you want to do. if the teachers lived in the communities in which they teach, that they would care more about the students. i don't understand how you can have a classroom, students where the majority of students are not passing the class, and the teacher is getting paid. there's two kind of employees. there's an employee and there's a teacher. in our school district, i believe we have too many employees and not teachers. a teacher always wants a child to do better and she goes towards that goal. and with all the new things that they want teachers to do, it takes away from the class,

you have taken the parents out of the class and help the teachers and be part of the school. once you get in high school, it's almost -- it's almost like you're not allowed in the school to help you. parents would get more involved if the school would open the doors. the teachers just don't care. they leave school faster than the kids leave school. when i was in school and work at a school for nine years -- host: did you go to school there in los angeles? caller: i went to school in los angeles, and i worked for the school district for nine years, and i will say this -- when you are a part of the -- when you live in the community where you teach, you care more about the students, you put more into your students. but when you do not live in a community where you teach, you don't care about the students. that's the biggest problem here. i feel we have too many teach there's don't care about their students. if you want the parents to get involved, then you should have

more p.t.a. to be back into the high school and junior high school level. host: would you say there's anything of success within the school system there? caller: i say the only success, if you see any, it's that they're starting new charter schools. to me, that's where they think it's a success. but to me, it's taking away from the lower kids, the kids that don't have the grades to get into the charter schools and the richer kids go to private schools. the lower kids, where you really need to teach, they just get locked up. host: houston, texas, is next. pat, democrats line. caller: good morning. thank you for taking my call. i am a 33-year kindergarten teacher, and i have been fussing and fussing and fussing for years about the need for the lawmakers to mandate

kindergarten. if they're serious about education, they would mandate kindergarten, because it's my belief that when you build something, you build from the bottom up. kinder garden should be mandated, because if these children enter grade school, which is first through sixth, without having mastered letters and sounds, which are the basics in listening, they're going to be labeled at risk. most children need more time to grow. children do not all grow at the same right. if they had another year to grow, if they do not master the letters and sounds and listening skills, they would have more time to master the skills the following year. kindergarten should be mandated because a lot of these children are not prepared and a lot of them come from dysfunctional families. they need to grow.

they need to master the basics, which are letters and sounds and listening skills. when we get our data back from the tests that we perform with the children, that the children perform, most of the skills that they have not mastered would be listening, which is a very big skill. letters, sounds, they can't go to first grade if they cannot -- if they do not know the basic sounds. host: we're out of time. we have to leave it there, but thanks for the call. for those of you who participated this morning. later on in our program, we will take a look at super tuesday and the state of ohio. a reporter there will join us to give his perspective. coming up, we'll take a look at the economy, ben bernanke bernanke on the hill this week

testifying, one of the people following it, a reporter from "the wall street journal," who tweets his appearance for us this morning, adding i'll be live at 7:45 -- sorry, it's a little past, taking viewer calls about the economy. but he will join us first in just a couple of minutes. i do want to tell you that if did you to american history tv, which says on c-span3 and book tv on c-span2, you can he learn about shreveport, louisiana. they go and find interesting people and subject toss talk about so you can get a perspective of this locale. you can learn about shreveport this weekend. to give you an example of what you might learn, this bit of an interview from the author of -- it's author gary joyner. he wrote a book called "one damn blunder from beginning to end." it's about the red river campaign of 1864, and it is the only campaign the union lost during that pivotal year.

>> lincoln wanted to and believed upon receiving a lot of intelligence information that he could repatriate to bring back into the union louisiana and maybe even texas without a lot of problems. they had great success at new orleans. they had great success at baton rouge, very minimal effort, loss of life, was very small, and they thought that perhaps shreveport would be the same way. didn't work out that way. >> even a person who's a senator, even a person now who's president of the united states faces a predicament when we talk about race. they face all sorts of predicaments. they face the fact that there are some, an appreciable number of americans who are racially prejudiced. they face the fact that a much larger portion of the american populace wants to deny the

realities of race, even now. >> sunday, harvard law professor and former law clerk to justice thurgood marshall, rand daal kennedy. the rhodes scholar is the author of five books, and he'll take your calls, emails and tweets for three hours, live on "in depth" on book tv on c-span. >> 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 1/2 years, everybody would have said you were crazy. >> brookings institution fellow robert kagan is not only an advisor to the romney campaign, but also serves on secretary of state clinton's foreign policy advisory board. >> what i've been writing for years actually is that there's a lot of continuity in american foreign policy, more than we expect, a lot of consent, a lot of broad consensus. i think what you're seeing here is the kind of consensus that exists in the foreign policy

community and probably there is a lot of overlap between the two parties. >> more with robert kagan on foreign policy and his latest, "the world america made," sunday night at 8:00 eastern on c-span's "q&a." >> "washington journal" continues. host: sudeep reddy joins us. there have been reports about ben bernanke's appearance on the hill, and it highlights the mood that he communicated to those he was testifying in front of. was there a difference in mood this time around as far as the economy is concerned? guest: it's interesting to look at his mood, because a lot of people are trying to gauge how chairman bernanke feels about the economy. what we saw this week is he's probably not as exuberant as a lot of people are who are responsible for economic policymaking in this town. he is quite concerned, and he was showing that, that the economy, while improving, is not improving quickly enough. g.d.p. growth is better than it was before, but it's not fast

enough. job growth is certainly better than it was before, but it's not nearly fast enough to deal with the overhang we have. and in all these other metrics. economy that he cited, the housing market, credit, these are all areas where you're starting to see some slow improvement, but not at the pace and the scale that we need to see a true recovery. that's why some people described his mood as downbeat. i don't think his mood has actually changed that much in terms of his public posture about the economy, because he's remaining so cautious about where we are right now. host: here's an example of what he said about his times of testifying this week. this is mr. bernanke talking about indicators in the economy. >> the recovery continues, but the makes of expansion has been modest by historical standards. after minimal gains in the first half of last year, real g.d.p. increased at a 2.25% annual rate in the second half. the limited information available for 2012 is

consistent with growth proceeding in coming quarters, at a pace close to or somewhat above the pace that was registered during the second half of last year. we have seen some positive developments in the labor market. private payroll employment has increased by 165,000 jobs per month on average since the middle of last year, and nearly 260,000 new private sector jobs were added in january. the job gains in recent months have been relatively widespread across industries. in the public sector, by contrast, layoffs by state and local governments have continued. the unemployment rate hovered around 9% for much of last year, but has moved down appreciably since september, reaching 8.3% in january. new claims for unemployment insurance benefits have also moderated. host: to take off some of the things he said and just add what you want to it, he talked about real gross domestic product g.d.p. guest: and he said real g.d.p. growth around 3% is certainly better than it had been in the

first half of the year and that's some sign of an expansion. but at 3%, that's really over a normal period, just enough to keep the economy, to keep the labor market steady rather than to have it grow substantially. he's really looking for something closer to 4% or 5% or 6% economic growth to really believe that you've got a sustainable and strong expansion and we're not there yet. host: when we say gross domestic product g.d.p., that means what workers are making and manufacturing and things like that? guest: gross domestic product is the broadest measure of goods and services produced in the economy. the u.s. economy overall produces about $15 trillion worth of g.d.p., the largest in the world. it declined at such a severe pace at one period in the late 2008, during the financial crisis, as much as 8% or 9% decline in gross domestic product. so, the fact that we're seeing

a 3% increase is good. it's not quite the strongest we've had so far in the recovery, but it's better than some of the figures we were seeing of between 1% and 2% before. host: what did he have to say? guest: the labor market overall, he explained that it's improving, which is a good sign, it's just not clear yet whether it is sustainable and it's not clear whether it's going to continue to improve at a much faster pace. 257,000 jobs was the figure for the latest numbers in january in terms of job growth. that's better than we've had before, but it's still relatively modest, given that we still have an 8.3% unemployment rate, and after a severe recession that took eight million jobs out of the labor market, we've still got a very, very long way to go. one of the important things he brought up was the fact that almost half of the people who are unemployed have been unemployed for six months or month. that's the long-term unemployment figure, 5.5

million people. that is a severe problem. when you have long-term unemployment that is so high, it usually means that people are going to stay out of the labor market for longer. it means that they're going to have difficulty finding a job for a longer period because they've been out of a job. that is going to weigh on the recovery as things improve, because it will be harder to get them back in. host: and then he talks about, while there was growth in the private industry, it's the public sector that took hits as far as employers or jobs are concerned. guest: what we're seeing across the government, particularly in local and state governments, are severe declines in employment. they're cutting budget. if you just look at where the tax base is for local and state governments, if they're reliant on sales taxes, they're certainly not booming at this point, they're relying on real estate taxes. we've just gone through a historic housing decline with real estate values lower, real

estate tax revenue is going to be lower as well. cities are adjusting for that, and that means people are losing jobs, schools, police and fire forces. you're still seeing layoffs across the country as these budget pressures continue. host: got a question about the condition of the economy. now is your chance to ask sudeep reddy. here are the numbers. 202-626-0001 for democrats. 202-737-0002 for republicans. the email is journal@c-span.org. and twitter is @cspanwj. just like this indicator of what the gallup survey has about economics, he just adds, americans spending flat in february. is that true? guest: overall, once you adjust for inflation, spending has not been increasing at any meaningful pace.

that's actually one of the issues we've been seeing, even though we're starting to see some improvement overall in consumer sentiment, consumer attitudes are going out and making more purchases than they do before. once you account for inflation, particularly these much higher gasoline prices, that is a severe problem that we're facing right now. gasoline, the regular unleaded average is around $3.75 a gallon in the u.s., and that's just about 10% off of its all-time high from the summer of 2008 of $4.11 a gallon. that's the nationwide average. and so as gas prices go up, and the fact that we're seeing it in the early months of the year when gasoline prices tend to be lower rather than in the summer, it's a cause for concern, because it means that as we move into the spring and summer season, it tends to have higher gasoline prices, it means we might see these prices sustain at this level, which can be a problem for the economy. host: so, if the consumers are holding on to dollars and their wallets, what about businesses

who look and spend? are they loosens a bit or the same kind of sentiment? guest: you're seeing differences. businesses have been making investments, actually quite reasonable investments over the course of the recovery, since the recession ended. you've seen businesses pour more money into equipment and software. they're actually spending first on products rather than spending first on people. that's been one of the problems with this recovery since the middle of 2009 when the recession ended, is that businesses have been holding back on hiring of people, and that prevents the cycle from taking hold. host: let's go to call. pennsylvania, mark, independent line. go ahead, please. caller: good morning. i'd like to know about the housing market and the focus for that and whether the economy can pick up if housing doesn't always pick up. guest: that's a great question. historically throughout the

u.s. economy, we've seen that the housing market tends to lead recoveries. that's for a variety of reasons. during a recession, you see the federal reserve lower interest rates, and it becomes cheaper to go out and get a mortgage. of course, home prices send to be softer, and it can draw in people home purchases. and in both those cases we're seeing difficulties, so even though we've seen a lot of the air come out of the housing bubble in the last five or six years, we have not seen enough interest from consumers in purchasing houses. one reason is the housing bubble is so large that we've got this huge overhang. and that's starting to be removed, so it's possible that we'll see problems there in terms of home sales.

but the real problem there is credit. for most, credit is still tight and if you are looking for a home and you don't have good credit, it's very hard to get a house. >> somebody on twitter asks this question, will the problems facing the euro impact the recovery? >> one of the reasons to be cautious about the recovery in 2012 is because we saw the same conditions in early 2011 and 2010 where the u.s. economy started to get the -- started to grow. in early 2011 we had the euro zone crisis and japanese

earthquake and tsunami that affected supply chains. both those factors have been important. we're seeing concern about the euro zone. the euro zone economy collectively is about as big as the u.s. economy. and they have been going through problems with debt within many of their 17 countries. all they have really done, despite all the summits we've seen including the latest one you mentioned, all they have really done is deal with the problem temporarily. and they are hoping they have bought some time to deal with the core problems in italy and spain. the problem is they are facing severe economic problems.

in some of these countries, they have 20% unemployment. it will probably take the better part of the decade before we see meaningful improvement. >> how does that happen? >> it happened, because -- the biggest fear in the euro zone had been that there would be a disorderly default, like greece wouldn't be able to face its debt and spain and others would also require a bailout. so far we've seen the euro zone step up for greece. we will find out in the next two weeks whether greece has done enough to get all the bailout money it needs.

that's actually bought them some time to do other reforms they have been trying to do. overhaul their labor markets. so when euro zone leaders talk about pointing to a recovery, it means for the time being, they have removed this notion that the entire european economy will face a financial collapse the way the u.s. did in 2008. by putting that off, it's at least created some hope. but as we have seen time and time again, euro zone officials tend to be opt misk about these type of things. how much dallas, texas, you're next. democratic line. caller: i have a question about the republican candidate mitt romney in the g.o.p. he worked for obtain capital, and your newspaper gave an expowzay on the bankruptcy law

on january 16 and 17 in the weekend edition of the "wall street journal," and for true disclosure reasons, i happened to work for a company that went bankrupt and everything is business-as-usual for them. in the "wall street journal" they explained how 21 c.e.o.'s received over $53 million because of loopholes in the bankruptcy system, and one of those mentioned in the article was obtain capital. so what i would like to know is is this the trend mitt romney intends to bring to the electorate when he runs? thank you. >> i was not the author of that article. guest: of course i did read it. its basic point was to challenge one of the arguments that mitt romney has that he's

a turnaround guy he can go in and turn around companies. he certainly can point to a track record of doing that in some cases. of course if he is the nominee for republicans, you will see throughout summer and fall, democrats challenging that, the way he turneded around companies. certainly the appropriate way and the way you would want for a leader of the u.s. economy. that's a judgment that people will have to make. but he certainly does have a track record of going in and making companies better. but there are clear cases, as you noted, where he's gone in and companies have struggled coming out of the process that's entailed with his particular firm and firms of that kind, because in many cases they are taking companies that have positions that allow you go in and restructure quite substantially.

>> ben bernanke at some point holding up a silver coin? >> ron paul is a strong believer in supporting the u.s. economy and currency through gold and silver. he wants them to be legal tender in everyday transactions. this is one reason he's gotten so much support. there are a lot of people who don't believe in the long run value of what they call fiat currency when you have a government that can print all the money they want. and he's been challenging ben bernanke since 2006 and chairman greenspan before that and chairman volcker before that. so this is ron paul's strong view. and it's come up at my point during history. and there was another who didn't like the central bank of the united states and got it

abolished. and there were many who built movements because of their concerns of the u.s. economy and centralization of nour a single central bank that they have been able to defeat it and lead to a new system, and ron paul isn't quite there yet in terms of a massive overhaul of our fundamentals of our monetary system. but he's building a movement, and a lot of people believe in it. >> host: explain the production in the workforce. guest: that's a huge problem. weave seen particularly in the deepest moments of the recession in 2008 and 2009, we saw people getting so troubled by what was happening that they just dropped out of the workforce. that could be people that decided it just wasn't worth them working anymore or older work irs who decided to retire early or older people who

decided to stay home with families and go from a two-income household to a one-income household. but we have had so many people get discouraged for various reasons and drop out, and there are a lot ofor reasons as well. if you were to look at the measures of unemployment, there are ways to look at this. you might see unemployment closer to 16%. the measure has been higher than 17% at some points, so that's one way to measure the impact. once you factor all these in, it adds to the picture that even though weave steen unemployment rate decline in months and come down to the level it is now, that's not a good figure to be at. normally you want to see -- it

may be the case that we never get below 6% because of the long-term problems. that's one of chairman bernanke's points on wednesday and thursday when he was testifying is even though we've seen rapid improvement already, it's probably not going continue at such a rapid pace because of these problems. these problems, like discouraged workers. >> yes. when's the american people going to wake up and get rid of the ones such as boehner and reid and pelosi and get rid of this president and get somebody in there that knows something like the one in missouri that struggled and knows the economy and knows

host: what would you like them to address? caller: get these people back to work. they can do it in five months time. host: job creation. guest: this is a common view that both parties are faying the people right now, and neither party can towards fundamental problems. we've seen over the course of the last decade, that you have had fully democratic control of congress in the white house and fully republican control of congress in the house. we probably had both. the nature of our government and some of the systems that we have set up fight need an overhaul, not necessarily just the people but the system we have in place, because it's pretty clear right now that congress is designed to not function when political parties want to exploit that vulnerability, so we're probably going to see for the rest of this year very little

substance or event where it's a kind of natural disaster or some other outside force. that's what gets congress to move. and one of the reasons we've seen so much difficulty over the course of this economy is it's a slow-moving crisis. it takes years to build up. it was almost two years of a recession. and we saw these forces build up, and these usually require extreme political forces. particularly if you look at -- it requires government action, in many cases, government money that you pull hard to see a declining market. host: this business construction, is it anecdotal or a sign of business

construction? guest: business construction is starting to build up. even in residential construction, picking up in multifamily housing construction, which is a god sign, because we've seen rental unit prices start to go up. so this is one way we can see an ability to fill this hole for people who need rental units. so far, i don't think we're going to see what we're seeing now, a huge boom in the residential side. but companies have been silting on a lot of cash and holding on to cash, and some of them are starting to invest that and build new buildings, corporate infrastructure if you will, and we're starting to see that across the economy. it's just not happening at a very fast pace. >> sam says what happens when the dollar isn't the reserve

currency of the world. here's a question, how many have dumped the dollar? guest: the dollar is seen around the world as the most important currency, and for a variety of reasons, one is the strength, the size and strength of the u.s. economy, the largest in the world, and we also have the deepest financial markets in the world, so it's easy to trade in and out of the and we haven't really seen competitors that are viable. that's an issue. over the course of the next 15-20 years, we'll see five or six currencies emerge. there was a dozen years ago when the european union created the euro that the euro would become a serious competitor to the dollar. in some respects it is. collectively it is the size of the u.s. economy, but as we've

seen over the last two years, europeans don't exactly have the confidence of the world, and there have been a lot of doubts as to whether that currency will last. so as long as you're going to see those debts, the there's a sense pretty clearly that china has so closely and carefully managed its currency and prevented it from being propagated around the world that they are not quite there yet in terms of becoming a reserve currency. >> from middlebury, massachusetts, good morning. caller: i like ron paul. he makes sense. when alan greenspan retired, he said, i only gave congress what they wanted. wrong.

it was a fiasco. you can't do it. thank you. host: the message of mr. bernanke for congress was? if the testimony was there a message? guest: in general, we need to be careful and cautious about this recovery, because of the number of issues hanging over it. the caller referenced chairman greenspan. and he felt as he left, and there was obviously a feeling when he left that the economy was in good shape in 2006 when the change of power came and chairman bernanke took over, and chairman bernanke is now seeing the severe credit decline we've experienced over the past six or seven years. and that is going to be hanging over us for a while. he pointed to two factors. one, the boom and bust in the housing market, and the other, the credit cycle as two factors

that have been holding back this recovery, which means it's not like the recovery of the 1980's or early 1970's. and probably means that we're going to continue to see a relatively slow recovery. host: so here's the question. this is donna, who made the observation, rental prices going up is a good sign? but talk about rentals in the housing market. >> one have been people aren't buying homest the pate they did before. once you start to see prices going up, that's supply and demand. because it can lead to multifamily construction like apartment buildings. the problem we're seeing is it's so damaged across the

country in so many players places that you're going to see pockets of improvement and for the rest of this decade very little improvement in florida, nevada, california, arizona, the places that had the biggest housing boom, and you will probably see more meaningful stpwhroment places like texas, the midwest, places that didn't see as much of a housing runup, but who have also been seeing a stronger recovery due to energy prices. lindh, independent line, hi caller: i would like to see a change in leadership. because i think it would help us. when you see snn like leader shu, to force us into

alternative, and we have a president who made the sthamente after losing hundreds of millions of dollars to silendra, made the statement that he didn't regret it. well, of course not. it wasn't his money, but i got to tell you, the people on social security could have used a raise, but didn't get one for two years. now see, i'm 77. both my parents were registered democrats. but the advice they gave me which i have stuck with, don't vote to party. vote the individual. >> and we'll leave it there. back to secretary chu. gas prices and where the administration plays in the leave yation of gas prices.

>> on an economic question it's much easier to understand, politically speaking you never want to support higher energy prices because gas prices are probably the most visible price s in our economy given that we see them more visibleably and it will be a political issue in every election going forward. economically we're facing a problem that we have been dealing with this exact same issue that we're dealing with an economy that is beholden to moves in oil prices that we cannot control. oil prices that because -- there's no way we can produce enough at home and we have to import and and because we have an international oil market and with what's happening in iran

and syria and the problems we were dealing with two generations before, we're still dealing with now. what will instability in places around the world do to affect us? that's why we're stable in some parts of the world and notos. so it's clear that we need to reduce our dependence on oil. that could mean you improve efficiency by creating new cars. and one thing administration did was mandate higher fuel efficiency standards, and you see every now and then, usually people don't flast political office longer when people's say

-- that's one of the reasons we saw hybrid vehicles pick up, because people demand them more. and until we see this shift toward more fuel efficient vehicles, you're going to see this problem continue. economists have looked at this issue. you can force gasoline prices up, and use that noun benefit people. some economists have actually proposed putting a tax on fuel that is so thigh it discourages some of the least fuel efficient but rebate the noun those drivers and people of lower income so you're not directly affecting them and i'm

not necessarily endorsing any of those, but there are a lot of economic ways to look at this than the political way we look at it now. host: and they say this is a tax that's cruel to average american families and destroys the power of their pay checks, but where are we when it comes to inflation? guest: one is the overall measure of inflation, and we've seen over the past few years that as the economy has been so weak, people aren't seeing any meaningful increase in their incomes, product prices haven't been going up. we're starting to see now this divergens between underlying and core -- prices for food and energy. and food and energy prices are picking up in part because they are influenced by global

factors. and there are important problems that come up as a result of that, from a policy perspective, there's not so much you can do -- that's why the fed while concerned about this tries not to focus specifically on what's happening with that. you can -- we saw clearly energy prices -- if the fed were raising interest rates that the point, it probably would have led to a more severe crisis than we had in the overall economy. because the economy was so weak, the fed kept interest rates low and oil prices actually dropped down to less than $40 a barrel and gasoline prices dropped to a level we hadn't seen and that's what

happens with supply and demand. host: got about five more minutes with our guest. republican line, go ahead. caller: good morning. i just saw some improvements, some unemployment improvements in the economy. is there a specific policy that produceed that improvement, or is the economy just improving because it's just resilient in spite of administration policies? guest: that's a great question. you can look at it in two wayses. one is if the government had done enough, once you lay off ooh enough workers and cut enough jobs and get rid of enough assets in the economy, tough investors cop in and see -- you could argue that there have been a lot of policies

that may have helped the economy in terms of stimulus preventing the economy from going down. there's no arguing that by providing money, for instance, for local and state governments that they were able to avoid cutting as many jobs as they would have otherwise, so that kept employment from going higher than it would have been otherwise. we really don't know what would have happened if the government had done nothing or if it hadn't done $800 billion worth of stimulus over two years, if the government hvent stepped in with unemployment benefits, would we have dropped even deeper over a short period and then bounced back like we did in the recession of the early 1980's? or would we continue dropping like we did in the 1930's to the point where we ended up with a decade-long of decline

instead of three or four years. host: democrats line. dallas, texas. caller: i have been following politics. what i've seen is this was a total plan for all of this to happen. and i'm so sorry to have to say that, but i watched it. i listened to newt gingrich when he said, we are going to starve the beast. then all the programs they set up by increasing things and then taking them away. it was a plan to bring the country to its knees, and i'm sorry to say that. guest: there's the underlying view that there actually is a plan from certain people in the g.o.p.

they do want to starve the government. they don't want the government to be as large as it is now and have such an important no, sir our economy and lives as it is now, but that's simple a policy view that some people favor strong lip and some people strongly dislike. so i actually don't think that's that much of a surprise to people out there. it's a very clear philosophical idea on how much we want our government in our economy. host: we're running out of time, but a few more observations. one says those investors sitting on $2 trillion. what's the holdup? >> the holdup is whether they will see a rapid recovery or more of the same, and if you're holding cash, and you've built up your position of safety, do

you want to go waste it right now if we have another leg down or several years of trouble? and no investor wants to make a decision, no company wants to make a decision they are going to regret six months down the line. in some ways we have people waiting on other people to make sure they have made their move first. host: on our independent line, we have about a minute. go ahead. caller: thank you. good morning. thank you for answering my call. honestly, i feel that the only way our economy can get back on track is i thought maybe we need to pull the plug on the things we spend it upon like the war in iraq, which is now over. the war in affingaffling. i hope that will be next. there are ear marked pork barrel spending.

host: i'm sorry about the time. but tell me a little bit about war costs and eventually their role in how we handle the condition of our finances. >> good question. because it captures a popular sentiment out there that it's the war driving our problems. the wars have been from a perspective, a trillion worth of debt as a result, but we have been creating debt for other reasons, fundamentally because the economy has been so slow and we have a government that's doing more than we're taking in taxes to cover. so when you have this mismatch, you're going to have high deficits and high debt and until you deal with these fundamental problems, you're not going to be able to deal with the problem. and it's easy to focus, even though the defense budge set a very large part of our budget,

overall health care spending in our economy, until you can control that and bring it down, you won't actually get a true fundamental belief that we're dealing with a longer run by our problems, because that's a share of our increase, 10-20 years down the line. the most important indicator will come this friday which are the monthly employment numbers and payroll numbers which economists believe will be above the -- the unemployment numbers which were -- right now it seems numbers have been improving with figures like

jobless claims. and there's so many -- host: thank you for your perspective. in our last segment we are going to learn more -- jim of the ohio news network will join us. we'll be right back. >> in shh reeve port, bose your, it's -- you're listening to news and weather station

news radio 710. >> this weekend, book tv and american history tv explore literary culture of louisiana. today starting on book tv on c-span 2. from one damn blunder from beginning to end, the red river campaign of 1854. then a look at over 2,000 books housed at the l.s.u. archives. then a walking tour of shreveport, louisiana. then a look at barksdale air force base and their role on 9/11, plus the b 52 bomber, and then visit the museum and from the pioneer heritage center, medical treatment and medicine during civil war.

shreveport, louisiana on espn2, book tv. >> who have we vetted? >> romney, and -- >> obama just changed the entire dynamic. >> look inside the hbo movie and book that gave the inside story on just what happened during 2008. >> i love those hockey moms, they say the difference between a hockey mom and pit bull? lipstick. >> their expectation coming out of that speech was that she was an -- asset for the campaign and for a week or 10 days after that, she was. on the democratic side there was a lot of concern as the mccain-palin ticket came out. people on the democratic side were sort of freaking out. >> we'll talk about game change

. >> "washington journal" continues. host: we're taking a lookt in this next 45 minutes. jim of the ohio news network. he serves as the moderator. welcome. >> good morning. host: the reason we asked you come on today was your exchange with romney. give us a brief setup of what happened. >> guest: sure. i had a chance to go one-on-one with the governor wednesday. it's the third time i've sat down and interviewed governor romney. i find him to be straightforward. it was a good conversation, about halfaway through i asked him about a controversial issue that happened in washington this week involving the blunt rube i don't know amendment, and his direct response, and i

can explain the interpretation i had of his response and the after gnat a few moments, but i thought it was direct and concise, and we moved on and had little idea of the fair to storm it was about to create. host: so we'll stop it there and show you what happened. >> rube i don't know is being debated later this week that deals with allowing customers to ban providing female contraception. he said he was forthat. have you taken a position on that? >> i'm not for the bill, but the idea of presidential candidates getting into conversations of contraception between a man and woman, i'm not going there. host: so specifically after he said i'm not for the bill, explain what happened after that? >> well this question came

halfway through the interview. we talked about jobs, health care, the economy, smig michigan a win and ohio? so that question came about halfway through. he was very definitive in his response. but here we are in ohio. no republican candidate in the history of our nation has ever won the candidacy without winning ohio. in the back of my mind i thought he had done a pivot and was maybe moving to the center knowing the republicans the female republicans were having a pivot. so i thought we had governor romney looking aneed november rather than the primary, trying to distance himself from this issue. that's how i interpreted it. then the governor said he said he must understand me, didn't

understand the question and of course he supported the blunt amendment. so the fair to storm went from there. did he understand the question? didn't he understand the question? at the end of the day, i think the question was clear. but the governor said he mis understood it and hutly the voters of ohio will have to make aw decision on what they thought about this exchange. host: what happens on super tuesday, here's your chance to ask question. our phone lines are on the screen. for ohio residents we've set aside a special line. 202-628-0184. mr. heath, as it stands, which

candidate is strongest heading into super tuesday? >> well rick santorum shows him still up five, but you do get a sense there is momentum on the romney side. ohio is a big state. it's a media margaret-driven state. romney's super pack has been spending heavily in all those media markets. rick santorum's campaign is also spending money, but not by that margin. as these polls have narrowed, all you have to do is turn on the tv in ohio and you see a romneyed a. so i think -- you see a romney ad. this is perceived, i think in the state that this is do or die tore -- for rick santorum.

the win would be significant if mitt romney wins ohio, you can safely say he's the national frontrunner. at this point we'll be able to conclude that. host: your attorney general weighing in on this issue. tell our voters what happened. >> yes. he endorsed initially mitt romney. i think he had endorsed a candidate prior to romney. i can't remember which was it was but that candidate dropped out and jumped on the romney bandwagon and skefrl weeks ago in a surprise press announcement near columbus, he changed his mind and kind of retracted his endorsement of mitt romney and decided to endorse rick santorum. mike dewine and rick santorum both lost their races in 2006. mike dewine here in ohio serve

sed together. and for -- ohio served together. and for -- we do have an attorney general and a former senator that is strongly supporting campaigning with rick santorum across the estate state. but one of the popular top vote getters in last year's election, portman has endorsed mitt mid so, he's been traveling the state as sur bat and with mitt romney for the past several days. host: gloria is on our independent line. go ahead. caller: hi. i'm a first-time caller. and i was wondering, the question you asked i do believe it was a little, you know, the

way you ask it. and also when these people running for office, every day they are out on the trail, and i just wondered how much time they really do have to get into knowing about all these different amendments and things. i just wish you would clarify why you didn't new york yankees. host: we'll leave it there and let you answer that. guest: that's a fair question. again, the context of any of these interviews, and i've interviewed barack obama and hillary clinton and you usually have a very limited amount of time. if you watch the entirety of the 10 minutes, you will see that you develop a kind of flow where you are covering a lot of ground in a short period of time.

but the vote on the blunt amendment was happening and contraception was the issue in this campaign. the follow-up questionthey had too governor romney after on the november ballot, so we had hit the halfway point of the interview. we were talking about social shaunsd specifically rick santorum, frand there we moved on the other topics, so in its entirety there was kind of a flow. and blunt rube i don't know i thought under normal circumstances, i think bells would have gone off, and for whatever reason mitt romney missed it and then to answer it from saying i don't support it. as for being tired from the campaign trail, i've been doing this for a dozen years. there's nobody that respects the men and women who get in

the political arena more than me for democrats and republicans. i think they are appreciated and i always respect them and never play gotcha journalism. host: go ahead. caller: yes, sir. i listen to all these guys like romney and santorum and all of them. they are just not honest people. they -- we talk about separation of religion and government, but we're constantly dependent on these tax breaks, and my tax dollars go to these mega churches that gets all of these tax breaks. republicans say we're not going to raise money on the top 2% of people who make all this money, but then again they make a big issue out of something like contraception? that's just ridiculous. it's just not a big issue. our money pays of all these tax

breaks all the time, so if you don't want to take the contraception, don't. but they are part of america. and if it's a policy the president has put out, then they should abide by it. host: so mr. heath, when it comes to social issues, how much does that -- what does that say? guest: well, the candidate they think can beat president obama is the first candidate on their list. i think that's first, secondly it's the economy and jobs. third, it's social issues. remember, in a primary, any given primary, a turnout is key. who can turn out the vote? that's why some of these wedge issues become important. you can get a majority of the vote -- i think that's been the santorum strategy to try to find an area where they can narb button and turn out the vote.

but i think overall the number one concern is who they think can beat barack obama and why you see the polls -- and why they view him as the better candidate, so to chance question, social conservative issues are important and they always are at a republican primary, but i hate to use the words bribment -- more traditional republicans are more indeclined look beyond march in november and size up who can we put in that debate in that campaign in october against president obama. host: mr. gingrich at -- the university of cincinnati, which was released tuesday had mr. santorum at 37%, mr. gingrich at 16%. thank you for holding on. jason, republican line. go ahead.

>> yes. i would like to ask mr. heath that why is that it seems to me the elite media, i think this was all started by george steff nop louse, the this whole thing about contra creptives, that just seems to be not really vent today, and the smoke screen that they have put out there to detract us from the real issues of the economy. nobody is talking about droon creptives. this is a perfect smoke screen for you guys to get us off point of the economy and how bad it is. host: mr. heath, so is the economy still a big message when it comes to those campaigning in ohio or have the social issues undercut that? >> well, we're in a primary process and a lot of them are evangelical and a lot of them are born-again and there are

those dee those in a primary that's important. 7 and i just point out in my interview with governor romney in which you have a limited amount of time, the first question i asked him about was jobs. o'talked about obama care versus romney care. we talked about his michigan win tuesday night and the importance of ohio and the issues of social conservative, both the blunt amendment and -- came up. so there's no mother ship in the sky we're all getting orders from. i think individuals right now in the republican primary largely fueled by rick santorum and his exents and these social conservative issues are part of the conversation. i personally don't believe it will be much of the conversation, because we have been through enough of these -- how determining the factor of

the state of ohio is, it will cop down to the president's economic record whether it's president bush or reagan or clip on the or obama, i think he will be judged on his record. host: where does unemployment stand in ohio? >> guest: we have a republican governor who has been trying to keep companies today? ohio and attract companies to come back to ohio or relocate here as this job picture improves, governor kasich is taking credit for it. it runs parallel to democrats and president obama taking credit for this. it points out the fact that we know through the years just based on political history that

as an economy improves, the incumbent really gets the credit. so here governor kasich takes credit for improving the economy and the president this fall could also get credit for it. green bay, wisconsin, good morning. >> what i want to talk about as far as birlt control, santorum, senator santorum is talking about his private views, not anything he's going put into law, and that's the first mistake. and the media has taken off on this, you, too, i understand, and that's biggest fallacy that's going on in these primaries and the second thing is tax cuts for the richest people in this country, and

talk about the richest 5%, that neighbor get tax cuts is being invested in developing markets. they are not going to invest that money in the united states. and that's the biggest fallacy there is. if romney gets in there, if he's the nominee, ip won't be voting for him, i will be voting for president obama. if rick santorum is the nominee, i'll be voting for rick santorum. >> i think it shows that it's tricky. they are sort of a litmus test of candidates. if those buttons are pushed, they become part of the conversation in the primary process. again, my personal view is that this will gravitate back toward economy and back toward jobs, and overtall president's economic record as we get

closer to the fall. you mentioned the quinnipiac poll. i think that's a real interesting noub look at. we have a prominent chairman of the franklin -- heston gingrich slight so, the fact that newt gingrich is -- the stronger newt gingrich gets, and he has 30-minute infomercials running across the state. for every vote that newt gingrich gets tuesday night ohio that's likely to hurt the chances of rick santorum actually carrying the state. and he faces more problems than that. rick santorum is anywhere from nine delegates to 18 delegates

off. because he did not qualify for -- so in the delegate hunt, think we can probably forecast the victory at least in delegates the overall is still up for gabs, but santorum is facing an uphill battle here. >> how did that affect, if it does, what happens on super irtuesday, and where does the governor stand on -- >> he came in right before the last election and was hesitate tent to -- there was a referendum in ohio. people had -- right before the

election, mitt romney came to the state. i think republicans are pretty united in the fact that they want to battle the unions and take on organized labor. there was some talk that there might be a referendum go to ohio to have a right to work state. probably, the last i heard they probably will not make this year's ballot but they will make next year's ballot. in a state you know that's about as purple as a state can get. they went republican then the next election they went for president obama. so they are a swing state.

host: you're on with jim heath of the ohio news in the case. caller: good morning. to the lady who questioned why you did not explain to mitt romney the essence of the blunt -- to my awareness mr. blunt is an advisor and so i think he would understand that. host: detroit, michigan. unless you had a response? guest: no. ped, i was just going to add, again, what's fascinating about this whole exchange, and i remind everybody in the focus of 10 minutes that you have with these candidates, this question came halfaway through, and when he was so definitively

clear with his answer, i was going to ask whether senator rube i don't know was on his short list for vice president, but after the answer, i didn't ask the question. caller: good morning. i really appreciate c-span. and i watch it consistently. i've got a couple comments, and i'll try make them real fast. first of all, the lady. the lady that called before made a good point. she was very articulate. i vote independent. but this year i will vote for ron paul. and if he don't get nomination,

and it's pretty doubtful, then i'll probably vote for the president. but i'm thinking maybe your guest could put some light on it and help me out. i never hear the truth about the social security and medicare. they call them, what's the word? help me out. guest: entitlement programs? >> yes. caller: yes. they call them entitlements. but that's the only entitlements they seem to remember. but unless i'm wrong, webster's dictionary describes that as anything that's a government benefit. that would include government pay. host: caller, thank you. we'll leave it there.

independents in ohio, how do they factor in? >> they are huge. guest: not as much in the primary. obviously they will be huge in the november election. i always look at ohio as sort of a 20% bath battle. the battle each and every election cycle is for the very fluid 20% in between. and the millions and millions and millions of dollars we spend in the weeks before the election will be geared to those 2%-3% undecided. so independents are independents are critical and key, and a lot of them within that small percentage are women. they are women wloff -- you

will see the book begin to meet in the middle of some of these issues. they are very important. i don't know where they are falling in this primary on super tuesday. my guess would be a lot of undecided americans will go first and foremost to the candidate they think can beat the president in the election. host: quincy, democrats line. caller: thank you. there are a few things i want to safe. number one, there was a thing on contraception as a left wing media thing. the republicans are the ones who started to have hearings on that. democrats were just sitting back there. this has all been republican

propaganda in which they are really good. they have a script, and they follow it. host: do you have eany anything else about ohio? caller: yes. i went to high school in ohio and worked there in steel mills. politics there is, i find out a lot of people there -- they work a lot and they really don't get grasp of everything that's going on. host: and mr. heath, you had said the unemployment rate had dropped. the caller mentioned how ohio was at least on his part was more industrialized or at least he guest: first and foremost primarily manufacturing. the auto industry is doing extremely well in the state of ohio, and that will be a big issue as we head into the fall

of who was for that and who was against it and whether it has worked or not. but there is no question as governor john casic, the republican, points out on a weekly basis, the auto industry is making a huge comeback. bioand beyond that, there is a huge potential for jobs in the state. we're talking up to 200,000 of them with fracking. there's a huge shale deposit on the northeast side of the state and now companies are looking at trying to develop more natural gas out of the state and this fracking process. it remains controversial. but if that gets up and running that industry could employ relatively quickly up to 200,000 people. so there seems to be progress being made in this state at least. it leads the midwest now. it's the number one job developer in the region. so good things are happening. who gets credit for that ultimately will be the discussion i think that we have. again when we get into

september and october. host: talking presidential politics, 9:30 in the morning you can call and e-mail your questions to newt gingrich. he will be joining us starting at 9:30. dave, republican line. caller: as far as the fracking comment, that's true. the bottom line is that the policies of our republican governor, it could be factually stated that in spite of the policies on the federal level, that the state is bucking the system and the trend is now about who is taking credit it's about the fact that it's factually stated that the state is performing in spite of policy. wish the press would report thinging instead of saying we don't know. that goes to the whole point of we don't know when someone earlier called and said the whole issue about social issues was couched in social issues the fact is that when it comes to the pivot point that the

administration took after the fact tull approach of whether it is constitutional or not whether to mandate contraceptives coming out of a mandate that they switched to insurance companies which was a nice pivot to then call it a woman's issue and then to portray someone from a law school to talk about the right of a person to have contraceptives in order to be attending college, it's not poor me i'm in college and i have a $3,000 bill just for my contraceptive use. and then the press doesn't report it as this is totally off the wall. there's no reason we should be talking contraceptives. it's always available. that's a fact. host: put a lot out there. go ahead mr. heath. guest: i would just say, he brought it up again. i think it is an issue. the president i think you could say opened up this issue initially then there was response to it. the question i asked governor

romney per tained to rick santorum, his positions and the blunt amendment which was just 24 hours away from being voted on so it was very timely. the u.s. senate was voting on that. the press didn't create that, the u.s. senate did. it's one of those, a lot of these issues are always we don't want to talk about it and then they come up, particularly in the primary process where republicans are struggling trying to figure out which way to go, who to nominate and who to put against president obama this fall. host: independent line, joseph, good morning. caller: good morning. i just wanted to ask a very general question. you've been speaking a lot about very specific detailed research-based kinds of information, which i found very educational. i wanted to ask you a general question philosophically which may be outside of your talking points, but i always look for it. i'm an independent voter.

i'm in the middle and i'm the kind of person who sort of decides the election. if you were to explain based on all of your tremendous insight knowledge, what would you say in short is the difference between the manifesto of the conservative parties or party as opposed to the more liberal party? >> mr. heath. guest: you know, i would say that i would answer it generally this way just based on experience of covering a lot of these presidential elections and being around politics most of my life. not much. the ship of state governs in this country a little bit left sometimes and a little bit right sometimes. but it takes a big event, if you will, to have it alter offcourse too much. we haven't seen a great big veer to the left under

president obama, we didn't see a great big veer to the right under president bush. and there's a check and balance in the country that kind of prohibits that particularly when you have congress controlled by a different party. but i would say that a lot of these issues are sort of on the edges and it takes a great deal of effort and usually a trying time, if you will, a bad economy is an example or maybe a war, to have this ship of state veer too far to the left or too far to the right. it just generally doesn't happen. host: florida, sherry, democrat's line. caller: yes. i just want to say that american people how soon we forget. i think that anybody that will actually vote for republican to put them back in office after bush stayed there for 8 years and actually dragged the economy down totally and then obama gets in there and he

tries to bring the economy back and everything that he has done as far as a leader of the free world has been actually brought down, criticized, and you're talking about taking credit? republicans want to take credit for everything that this man has ever done that actually tried to heal this economy. and you're talking about the contraceptives. just like the economy, the republicans that are trying to get in as far as in the white house, i think all of them really think that they're titled because this is a certain place for a certain kind of person. a couple things, looking back at the last election from the breakdown of those who voted for the president and those who voted for mr. mccain, how did that go in ohio? guest: it was very, very close. and ohio determined the reelection of president bush in

2004, it went for president obama with 52% of the vote in 2008. i think senator mccain conceded defeat out there in scottsdale about ten minutes after ohio was called for barack obama. when you look at the map, it's very difficult up to now it's been impossible for a republican nominee to get to 270 without carrying ohio. no republican hasr done it. so obviously this is a key state. the president if he goes on offense here and believes he can carry ohio probably believes he will win this election and reelection will help solidify that and republicans know they need to hang on. to the point of the previous caller, let me just add a statistical note because sometimes you get hit from both the left and the right. i just try to point out presidential history as we go along here. the first president bush had a high approval rating i think somewhere near 90% right after the gulf war and then economic issues took over. and as we headed into the fall

of 1929 he was extremely vulnerable in that issue and he went from a 91% approval rating to lose that election. the flip of that is ronald reagan had a 35% approval rating, the republicans got hosed in the 1982 congressional elections there was talk that president reagan wasn't even going to run for reelection and then the economy turned around and he ended up winning. so i think the economy is going to be key here. it is in ohio. i think that will be nationally. this president will be judged on the commission conditions of the country -- economic conditions of the country. if they're a improving, that, or if there's a sense that the economy is drifting. that's generally how it's been in president f presidential elections. host: on our republican line, sue. caller: people don't trust this government. now that obama is going to

backtrack on what he said this week, next week, they don't trust the media because most of them are liberal. here yesterday morning, we read the politico and all these liberal tweets and when someone called, she said that's the only tweets i'm getting. and this big democrat was outed. host: what do you have about ohio politics that you would like to ask? caller: well, we don't trust the media. i don't know why any republican would talk to stench op luss. -- steph nopliss. we have a president who wants to stomp on the beliefs of the christians. but when muslims start killing christians he does nothing. host: made your point. memphis, michigan, you're next. caller: ok. i wanted to say the man who

wants to be the leader of the free world, he cannot be critical of rush. clear channel is owned by bing, where romney made all of his millions. in 19 -- i can go on to the archives of your c-span, and show you a picture of rush limbaugh, surrounded by all the republicans sitting there like a queen de. this man should be cast gated. host: so we're talking about ohio this morning. what's your question of that? caller: my question is about romney and what is watching all this tv and all the people that win after the now -- went after the now governor of ohio who is a romney man, i'm sure the ohio teachers and they're going to turn this election over. they're laughing at the

republicans. republicans are laughing at themselves and you know that. host: we'll leave it there and let mr. heath respond as he wishes. guest: let me just clarify mr. john casic has not endorsed. he endorsed several previous candidates for president but he has not endorsed the current crop. so he has remained neutral in this campaign and there's been some question about why he didn't endorse newt gingrich who he served with when gingrich was speaker in congress in the late 1990s and casic was the budget committee director. but nonetheless, governor casic has remained neutral with this current crop of candidates. host: mr. heath, about the dealer and other papers talks about mr. santorum in the sixth district where the senator spoke there didn't get on the ballot. are these six districts important in size and density of people?

guest: they really are. they missed it. that's just the bottom line. and things happen in the campaign and when things happened to qualify, rick santorum was driving around in a van in iowa and very few people knew who he was and there was very few who felt that he would lead the pack. so yes he is wounded, there are several congressional districts where his name should -- should clarify. his name will be on every ballot across the state. when you look at the popular night tuesday night who wins ohio, that will be a fair count but there's a second category for district delegates and several of those districts his name is not on the ballot. so i think it's fair to say on saturday morning looking ahead to tuesday, it is very unlikely that rick santorum will win a majority of delegates out of ohio. he has if6 of them. he is down at least nine, as

many of 18, but i think it's safe to say that santorum is at a severe disadvantage on the delegate take. but of course the headlines wednesday morning will be more related to who gets the overall majority vote. host: tampa, florida, independent line. caller: first, i'm an mba, i work with small and medium business moving forward i'm a veteran also and also as far as ohio politics goes, you have to give your republican governor the credit for bringing it around. i mean, it's not obama. because as a consultant to business he has been nothing but a heartache for business, period. another thing too you're always talking about we have to get someone in there to beat obama. i think my dog could beat obama. this guy has not been good for the country. you talk about romney when you interviewed him he flopped. what about obama? 57 states. my grandson knows better than

that. but anyway, you remember 2010 everyone said we passed the health bill. they'll forget about it by the election. we're not going to forget and we are not forgetting this year either. host: wrapping up, aside from everything we talked about what should people who are not from ohio look at as far as what happens in your state and what are some stories that are at least some signs, insights that you could tell about what happens in ohio that maybe would be i want resting for people to watch? guest: well again on a historical note no republican has ever won in nober without ohio. it's a purple state. it swings very quickly. in 2006 democrats won every statewide office minus one in this state. in 2010 republicans won every statewide office. it went for president bush in one election, president obama in the last election. so as rick santorum, he called it a weather vain. i think that's probably accurate. it's a good ipped kator of

where the country is at. i would look to the strength of mitt romney in this state. if he prevails we'll see by what margin and then we'll have a good indication of where he stands in the midwest which i think is going to be critical when you look at republicans and president obama will need, where do they stand in the midwest, pennsylvania, michigan, and the state of ohio? because i think that will be critical. so we'll learn a lot tuesday night, particularly where mitt romney stands. the one likely to hit 144 delegates we'll see where he stands in a pivotal stated that he will need if he wants to be president. host: thank you. guest: see you. host: in our last segment we are going to take a look at the current search for a new leader of the world bank and using it to talk a little bit about what goes on inside the world bank. we'll pick up that discussion when we return. [captioning performed by

national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2012]

host: a discussion about the world bank for our next 45 minutes.

you were formerly inside the world bank. guest: yes. i worked at the world bank for 17 years and left at about 3 years ago to join carnegie. host: if you had to boil it down, what does the word bank do? guest: it promotes development and it promotes development with a particular focus on reducing poverty. so it has a very strong social focus as well as a growth focus. host: so when you talk about promoting development what kind of projects does it involve itself with? guest: it used to involve itself primarily in projects you would easily recognize, bridges and roads and power stations. but increasingly in over the last 20 years or longer, its

projects have much more to do with education, health, the building of social safety nets, also environmental projects. increasingly also the bank has moved from projects as such, so the building of a road, to programs which are the reforms of a transportation system which takes into account all government policies that affect transportation. >> so developing countries go to the bank. do they ask for dollars? do they ask for loans? how much are they granted? and what's the process of granting these mons for the projects? guest: ok. so the primary vehicle is loans. it's loans to government. and there are different types of loans for poor countries

which are very concessional and for middle income countries like china, brazil, where something akin to market trades apply. and the process for approval is through the board of executive directors which actually sits all the time at the world bank. this is very different than a corporation. and these executive directors represent 180 plus countries. there are 25 of them now. and they group countries. some of them have just represent one country. many of them will represent several countries. and it is through the executive directors who operate by consense sull very, very well,

voting actually necessary, these loans are reviewed and approved. host: so our time together will be learning about more of the inner workings of the world bank. if you have questions about the type of loans it provides, the types of countries it helps, the world as far as financing the bank. here's your chance to learn more. if you want to give us a call. you can send us e-mail or send your thoughts or questions on twitter as well. much of this discussion that we were having this morning fostered by the fact that the current leader is announced that he is stepping down from the position. who is he and what has he done at the bank? guest: well, he is one of the most recognized figures of

american and global diplomacy. he used to be the u.s. trade representative, also deputy secretary of state. he spent some time in the private sector. i think one of his achievements at the world bank was to stabilize the institution following the resignation of the former president, paul wolf wits, in very difficult circumstances. and his other contributions include the fact that the voice of developing countries is more heard at the bank. there's been some rebalancing although it's a relatively small one of the ownership of the bank favering developing countries. the world bank has also been i think quite successful during the financial crisis to very significantly scale up its laws. in fact, it's lent more money

to developing countries in the course of the -- over the course of the financial crisis, 2008-2010, than the international monetary fund did. host: does he have to leave or was this totally his choice? guest: i'm not privy to that. but he is a republican appointee after all and we have a democratic administration, and so it's not unusual at the end of the term. and i think it has been a perfectly distinguished term. , a perfectly effective term. he is stepping down. host: so one of our twitter folks when you gave your explanation of the world bank weighed in. 6 guest: the world bank is about long-term development.

it's about everything from infrastructure to building schools and building hospitals and reforming policies that cut across very important sectors of activity such as energy for example the international monetary fund is very, very focused on macro economic stablization and including i think as a lender of last resort in the event of balance of payments difficulties. so the imf's strong focus is on exchange rates, inflation, fiscal deficits, balance of payments deficits, how to manage those, et cetera, where as the bank is much more about the long-term process of

developing an economy. host: now the world bank is located here in washington, d.c. why is that? guest: because it rose from the ashes of world war ii when the united states emerged as absolutely the dominant economic and military power of the age. and so the united states was able -- was, after all, the biggest financor, continues to be, of both the world bank and the international monetary fund, and was able to get the part ners its allies during world war ii that it helped to agree to have these two absolutely critical institutions based here in washington. host: first call for you is from detroit, michigan. john, republican line.

go ahead. you're on with our guest. caller: good morning. guest: you can call me -- host: that's fine. i have a question generally about the african -- the continent of africa and i'm wondering, it seems to me that africa, if it were to take -- make benefit of all of its assets, it would probably be the wealthiest continent on the face of the earth if they could stop fighting, at least some of the countries there. do you approach them or do they always seek loans and help with what they have inherited in that sort of thing? a general question about africa. and also, is there a map of the attention you paid to different countries available on line where you could see how you are spreading benefit to various

countries and that sort of question just in general. thank you very much. guest: ok. again, just bear in mind i no longer work at the world bank. i am with the carnegie endowment for international peace. i used to work at the world bank but i can answer some of your questions. i agree that africa has tremendous potential. the good news is that in the course of the last ten years you have seen a big improvement in african growth. and some of this is related to what you mentioned, to speak -- the caller mentioned, which is the natural resources which has and with the rise of the emerging markets the demand for those resources has gone up a lot. and africa certainly has been benefiting from that but also

has adopted a lot of policies that i think are improving the business environment, the mack row environment instability, the openness of the continent. the relationship between the bank and africa is probably the most intense and continues than with any other developing region. a large part of the effort of the bank is donated to africa and a large number of country offices based in africa that have very active ongoing dialogue with the government where the bank is proposing or the government is demanding but it's kind of an ongoing partnership. host: off of twitter. guest: yes, it does. the bank has essentially three

main ops. it has a private sector arm which lends and takes equity stakes directly in companies. in sectors that are beting development especially. it also has a soft loan arm which is called the ida where essentially it is interest free. they pay a tiny little interest rate. and the terms of the loans are repayment over 30 or 40 years. so these are really have an enormous grant element. if you compare that to taking a market loan. very often you reach a conclusion that something like 8 o 0% of that loan is actually -- 80% is actually a grant. for all intents and purposes.

then it has its hard money branch, the ibid, international bank for reconstruction and development, where interest rates are much closer to market , much closer to market levels although they tend to be somewhat lower than market levels. host: vermont, independent line, matt. caller: i would like to get your comment on maybe the world bank being used for some nevada fares purposes maybe in -- any fares purposes in developing countries. i would like your comment on that. >> host: what's your specific question? guest: in that book he tee scribes intelligence agencies using the world bank and other international banking funds to perhaps not for the interest of

the developing countries but more of a globalist perspective. guest: any time you have an infusion of substantial amounts of money into an economy that money can be used in different ways. economists like to say that money is if you thinkible. even if it is not dedicated to a particularly nevada fair yuss goal as you have described it, it can nevertheless create the budget room to do whatever the government wants to do in that, in other areas. that is just part of the game. however, i have very little doubt that what you are describing is very much the exception rather than the rule.

one of the amazing facts about the world bank is that it is probably the most controlled, reviewed, evaluated, and transparent lending processes in the world because so many safe gaufereds have been built in over the years to control against everything from corruption to environmental damage to damage to indiginous people that by and large the banks protection against those types of activity is very strong relative to just about any other type of lending or capital implode that goes on. host: you were asked this morning off of twitter. guest: ok, there is a process

now that has been agreed by the executive board of directors where some committee of the executive board of directors will nominate three candidates. and these will then be submitted to the full board for approval by consensus. that is the process. the reality is that the united states has a very heavy influence on this process as you know the head of the world bank has always been an american and the obama administration and indeed several members of congress have already made clear that their intention is to nominate a strong american candidate and that they will be pushing hard to retain that position. so that you can pretty much assume that one of the nominees

that come out of this process will be an american candidate. and that the power and influence of the united states will be brought to bear to push for that candidate. and it is in my view quite likely that they will prevail again. as far as i know, hillary clinton has ruled out any interest in the job and has done so repeatedly. host: other names that are on the list of considering names familiar with our audience. one of the people actively campaigning is a gentleman named jeffery sacks. recent op ed in the "washington post," who is he?

guest: he is one of the most prominent and imminent development economists today. he is an outstanding economist. and he has managed two very prestigious development centers over many years, one at harvard and now the earth institute at columbia. so there is absolutely no question that jeff has grasped the issues probably unequalled among american economists. host: you are being asked off of twitter, i don't know if you know the exact figure.

guest: i'm going to guess it's about 100 countries. the world bank is divided into part one countries, the advanced countries, the rich countries that are not contributors to the world bank in various ways and part two countries that are the borrowers and roughly speaking it's got to be maybe a little more than 100. host: as far as the lending and voting power, the u.s. holding about 16% of that figure followed by japan, germany, france, the u.k. and others. montana, hello, go ahead. caller: my question is actually i wanted to make the question a comment. the currency the world bank uses, what's the major currency it uses. and the second thing, if it is using the united states mon,

money. the federal reserve is ran by a private company, it's not even a part of the united states. host: the currency of the world bank. guest: the currency of operation of the world bank and the currency of reference of course is the u.s. dollar. and most of its loans are in u.s. dollars. but the bank has enormous flexibility and capacity to lend also in different currencies which -- and also to borrow in the international markets in different curns sis. so they have the capacity and often do of lending in a mixed denominated loans in a mix of curns sis. host: from los angeles, california. caller: good morning, i want to

ask if he knows world bank's policies about the requirements to offer a loan to a country, to the country's government to conduct austerity program, to cut down wages and pensions or not? guest: in general, that is not a requirement. it depends on the country's circumstances. the world bank is acting and lending today to china, to brazil, russia, india. these countries are under no aust territory program indeed by and large they are growing their economy and developing

and growing their government all the time. however, when the world bank makes a loan for structural reasons as it is supposed to do, or social reasons or environmental reasons, it very often checks with the international monetary fupped about the macro -- fund about the ability of the country to repay the loan and to remain conform nt with good macro economic management principles. so there are instances where because a country is under balance of payment pressures or because it has a large fiscal deficit that the loan is in effect conditioned, even though it might not be the bank that

imposes the condition, is in effect conditioned by the international monetary fund to undertake certain austerity steps. but right now this is, this issue is much less prevalent in emerging markets than it is in advanced counted rizz and the bank doesn't lend to advanced countries. host: from e-mail. guest: as i mentioned, it is very active in those countries. obviously the relationship that the world bank is going to have with world power like brazil or china is going to be very different than with a small country in africa that very badly needs financing for its

ongoing budget. so the relationships of the bank with these global powers, global emerging powers, tends to be more one where money is less important and advice and the relationship is much more important and most recently you see this in the landmark report that the world bank produced together with the chinese government that outlines some very important reforms areas in china. this was very much a collaborative process between the chinese government and the world bank. host: two statements. you can answer them as you wish.

guest: i think the world bank is less controversial than it used to be and it's inevitable that it brings about some controversy because it plays such an important role not so much any more in terms of its money because money is really a very small part now of what developing countries get from private markets really a tiny part. but because of the influence it has on economic policy, economic thinking both at the level of international coordination and at the level of individual countries. but i would say that it has become less controversial in recent years in part because it has opened up, become more transparent beginning on the jim's president who ran the bank for a long time for about

ten years prior to mr. wolf wits. there was a concerted effort to reach out to nonfwovet organizations, reach out to various stake holders and make the bank more responsive but also better understood. and i think that the success, tremendous success of emerging markets in the course of the last ten years has also made people a little less sensitive to the problems and the issues that might arise. and i don't think the world bank should take a lot of cret for that success but it certainly deserves some credit. host: our guest currentlyly at the carnegie endowment, formerly served at the world

bank. also the author of juggernaut. tell us a little bit about the book. guest: the book really is about the -- how the rise of emerging markets is transforming the world economy. and how it is doing that across each of the four main channels of demrobalization, trade, finance, migration, and also the impact on the global comments. and the main message of the book is actually very perntnent to the work of the world bank because the main message is there are huge opportunities associated with the rise of these countries but there are also enormous tensions that are being created. and these tensions, whether in the area of climate change or do hah negotiations or global imbalance needs to be carefully

balanced and the role of international institutions is very important in this regard. host: ken on our independent line. caller: i kind of feel like you pulled a little bit of a slight of hand where you pushed off the structural adjustment programs that affect infrastructure, reducing waste structure decimating social services. and my question for you is can you talk about an example, let's say in bolivia for example, where the world bank and imf came together and tried to sell off the water system to beck teleand also can you talk about one instance where the world bank actually benefiteded the common people and not international corporations? guest: well, there's no doubt that particularly in the initial stages of what was called structural adjustment mistakes were made.

that inadequate attention was paid to the social effects of the structural adjustment programs. and in the case of privatization, that you mentioned, i think initially not enough attention was paid to making sure that when you move from public ownership to private ownship you don't exchange a public monopoly for a private monopoly which then becomes extorsionry. and i think mistakes were made in that direction but i think these were recognized and were reflected in two shifts. one much greater attention being paid to the competitive conditions of markets as privatization ofe occurred. and in some instances, resisting and the banks saying the time is not right for this. so the environment is not right. i think that many examples of

world bank success in terms of helping the poorest. it's almost a cliche to remind people that the green revolution which hugely increased yields in agriculture particularly rice production and some other cereals are -- was in fact incubated in a process that began in the world bank and this was a huge contributor to the reduction of hunger in the world and the capacity of people who are before growing food being able to leave the land because of the existence of surplus food and go to factories and improve their well being.

world bank projects have also been associated with the elimination of some very bad diseases. blindness i recall, et cetera. so world bank is today very active in the working with international partners on hiv aids, has been for many years. it is also very active in the fight against climate change. these are very, very long-term projects which -- whose payoff i think will come in the future. but are essential for the livelihood of a lot of common people and poor people. host: woodbridge, virginia. we go to kevin on our republican line.

caller: good morning. i have a question i'm going to get right to the point. you stated that it is very important that we end hunger in africa. and isn't there enough money in the world to end hunger in africa? and why do we loan money to african countries when we know they can't afford to pay it back and how do you feel about eugenics? guest: remind me what eugenics is. host: go to the first part. guest: so is there enough money in the world to end hunger in africa? absolutely. you actually don't need a large amount of money to end hunger in africa and end hunger around the world. because we're talking about very poor people who are unable to buy very simple and relatively inexpensive

commodities from the standpoint of the average world consumer. however, the point is that that money is not available. it only becomes available if institutions like the world bank and u.s. aide et cetera are able to modernize a sufficient amount of resources both from government budgets and also from in the case of the world bank borrowing on private markets so that they can address those issues. and i think a lot of progress has been made, but i take the view that not enough attention is being paid to these issues and that there should be more resources devoted to those issues. now, as far as lending money that africans cannot repay, well, africans have increasingly able to repay the

loans. these loans, the vast majority of african countries, are given an extraordinarily concessional terms, essentially a 0 interest rate with a 30-40 year repayment period. and a number of countries are growing rapidly. i think it should be recognized that the world bank took the initiative under former president wolfenson to forgive a very large amount of the debt in africa once it was indeed it was for low income countries across the world, once it was recognized that these debts could not be repaid. host: michigan, go ahead. james, independent line.

caller: good morning. i was wondering with the federal reserve printing all this money that becomes worth less every day and we're bailing out greece and all these other countries, and now that i see that other countries are starting to trade oil and different curns sis than the u.s., if the u.s. was not to be the world currency, what would happen? guest: again, the world bank is not lending money to greece. the world bank does not lend money to high income countries. now, as far as the oil being denominated in different curnssizz, that is indeed a trend. it is not necessarily a bad trend for the united states. having the u.s. dollar as a

reserve currency has some advantages for americans but it also has significant disadvantages. one of the advanity tadges is people want to hold u.s. dollars so there are gigantic amounts of today foreign currency reserves that are held in u.s. dollars that pushes up the value of the u.s. dollar. it benefits american consumers. but it makes it more difficult for american companies to remain competitive. also, when you have a reserve currency, people tend to go in and out of it depending on how market sentiment is shifting because so much of the demand for the currency is for investment and portfolio reasons and that tends to make the currency more volatile. and it's one of the reasons that, for example, germany who resisted for a long time the deutsche mark becoming a

reserve currency. so the reserve currency status is not all roses by any means. host: boston, massachusetts on our independent line. susan, next. caller: thank you very much for taking my call. i want to circle back on the e-mail that the college student had sent asking why the world bank is perceived so controversial. in my opinion it's just the internal workings of the bank. it's just a seat of extravegans and extreme employee benefits. they operate like the court of louie 14 just benefits that are just so luxurious and it just seems to be a very bloated institution and just so outwardly extravegansgant that i could see how i feel like the world bank needs to tighten its own belt just to put itself more in alignment with its

purported mission to foster development. you know, it's very i hear benefits like the world bank buys employees their homes when they're based in the u.s., they pay for private education both secondary school and college. when they travel they stay in rolls royce accommodations and they're basically fat cats and maybe i'm -- you know, i'm misinformed but that's been the legend or that's sort of the reputation of the world bank in my eye. thank you. host: what about those perks? guest: well, there's no doubt that the world bank has paid historically very competitive compensation packages for its employees. it was never true that they bought house force employees when they moved to washington. that's a gigantic exaggeration. host: college education?

guest: yes, college education. good health benefits. good pensions came. et cetera. now, two things here. the first is to bear in mind that the world bank's work is let's call it very demanding in terms of the importance of the issues that people are addressing. so you really do want good people in those positions and to -- you have to compete for those good people. also, because it is an international institution, it will only be legitimate and accepted if it employs a large number of international people coming from different countries. it cannot be all american employees basesed in

washington. and so to attack those good people from different parts of the world and to get them to leave their environment, their families, you have to pay a little bit more. two other points. one is actually these benefits have been reduced quite a lot in the course of the last 10, 15 years. perhaps in response to some of the concerns that the caller has expressed. i actually believe it cuts both ways because i don't think that the bank is today attracting the kind of people that it used to attract and it may need given the complexity of the task. but be that as it may. as far as the world staff is huge, its full-time staff is huge, its full-time staff is only about