discuss efforts in congress. u.s. aid today reporter will talk about the nonprofit american legislative exchange council organization and its influence in congress. . the gsa spending scandal, day two of four hearings on capitol hill. we will have your thoughts on taxes and do you pay your fair share?

remember, also, you can send your comments via e-mail, twitter, and facebook. the addresses are on your screen. a question for you all this morning -- do you pay your fair share in taxes? let me show you a gallup poll updated at 4:00 this morning. it shows, is what you pay too high or too low? right.d it's about what are your thoughts on this? the senate yesterday rejected the buffett rule. the house later this week is taking up a small business tax credit. will vote on that on thursday. a lot of talk about taxes on this tax day. want to hear from you. do you pay your fair share? and here's the l.a. times on the

buffett rule -- our first phone call, a democrat in ohio. carole, what do you think?

caller: we had a gas least this year over 100,000 and we paid 20% on this. we had a gas lease that we paid 20%. a multimillionaire like romney pays 13.8%. obama paid 14%. i don't think this is fair. host: how much overall in taxes, do you think you pay your fair share? caller: we pay more than our fair share. host: seaside, oregon, an independent, ruth. caller: do i pay my fair share? yes. 25%, because my tax

preparer told me. it's not so much the amount, it's what it's being spent on that disgusts me. host: do you mind paying some percentage of taxes? caller: i don't mind. we have to pay for our roadsndet all, but it is part of being a citizen. host: you feel like you get something out of it by paying? caller: i think everybody does. host: if everybody's taxes were to go up to adjust the deficit, would you be willing to pay more? caller: i would be willing to pay more to bring down the deficit, because i think it is really important for our children's future to get that deficit down. what i have a problem with is the fact of the democrats cannot

stop spending more and more. they are using our tax dollars to promote themselves by giving things away. free health care, free birth control, freed this and that. and if you vote for the republicans, they are going to take these things away, they say. get people hooked on this stuff and then claim that if the other party gets elected, we will take your stuff away. host: here's the "washington times" front page -- and then inside there's a quotation from joseph lieberman --

the buffett rule failed several times. and then inside the new york times, it breaks down last night's vote on the buffett rule. it says --

here's the president opposes statement after the vote in the senate yesterday. he said senate republicans voted to block the buffett rule, choosing once again to protect tax breaks for the wealthiest americans at the expense of the middle class. and i will continue to push congress to take steps not only to restore economic security for the middle class and those trying to reach the middle class of but also to create an economy that is built to last." now democratic caller from greensboro, north carolina. kevin, do you pay your fair share? caller: i do. i pay 25% in taxes. but i also think that republicans, when they denied

the buffett rule, i also think a hedge funds and big oil subsidies, i think they should not pay less than their secretaries. host: all right. no dakota, paul is a republican there. good morning. in north dakota. caller: good morning. i pay my fair share in taxes, more than my fair share. millionaires pay 18% and the rest of us pay 28%. i have an idea to make it fair. leave there is at 18% and lower it for the rest of us to 14%. host: so keep the wealthiest at 18%? caller: yes, i have no problem with millionairess paying what. they are what host: how do we address the deficit?

caller: that's easy. just make the cuts. host: less spending? caller: that's right. host: here's the "washington times." hawks former massachusetts governor

mitt romney and the likely nominee for the republicans, also, weighed in on the buffett rule yesterday. he was at an event in philadelphia. here's the philadelphia inquirer with a headline of him being up there at the tea party event -- here's what he had to say about the buffett rule. [audio clip] is big idea now is the buffett rule. someone calculated that the

taxes he would raise the buffett rule would pay for 11 hours of the government. this is not exactly a grand idea. this man is out of ideas. he is out of excuses. in 2012 we will make sure he gets pushed out of office. host: we are talking about taxes on this tax day, april 17, 2012. dale is an independent in springfield, missouri. what do you think about your tax bill every year? caller: it's ridiculous. it's not so much what we pay in taxes, is what they do. with do my big concern today is my son lives in green bay. he got a $10,000 bonus where he works. he did not take home half of it to his wife and daughter. that is like the mafia. that's like a bully at school taking your lunch money. the gsa fat cat got a $9,000

bonus for blowing all this money. did he lose? half of lose how about all the other fat cats and their million-dollar bonuses? host: did you watch yesterday opposing hearing on the gsa? caller: i did. host: what did you think? caller: it is the corrupt sticking up for the corrupt. host: so, the politicians? caller: every agency in the government. what does nancy pelosi mean by clean the swamp? host: all right. congress is conducting four hearings looking into the gs-8

issue. we learned yesterday from the inspector general in that hearing that there are ongoing investigations, all sorts of improprieties surrounding the 2010 event, including bribes, and possible kickbacks. and so, this has been referred to the justice department. there could be more to come on this issue. that is a washington post" this morning. and today is the second day of hearings on capitol hill. before the house infrastructure subcommittee. they will be looking into and talking about this gsa spending scandal as well. look for our coverage at 8:30 a.m. eastern time this morning. and on your screen right now is yesterday's hearing before the house oversight committee, if you are interested in going back and watching. this is how the new york post

played it this morning on their front page -- we will show you that moment a little later. first, back to our question. darrell is a republican in cleveland, ohio. do you think about the taxes you pay every year? caller: good morning. i think everyone pays their fair share at this moment. i don't think nobody should pay a nickel more in taxes. we have a $16 trillion debt. how much money do these people in washington needed? host: so you disagree with the buffett rule? caller: the buffett rule is a big joke. a sham. it is the difference between an earned income tax and capital gains tax. warren buffett's secretary pays

the earned income tax. warren buffett pays most of his money on investments, capital gains tax. at the end of the day, obama and the democrats are acting like warren buffett's secretary is not getting much, she's making good money right now. host: what do you think about the house proposal? there is a juxtaposition, the senate voting on the buffett rule and the house on thursday will vote for a small business tax credit for companies that have 500 employees or less. that could add to the deficit as much as the buffett rule would bring in revenue? should we be giving tax credits? caller: yes,. i'd think we, i would not mind seeing across- the-board tax cuts. the problem with tax cuts, under bush, he cut taxes but did

nothing to control spending. if he would have cut taxes and controlled government and cut government spending, we would be in a much better situation. if we cut taxes now, like romney said, cut taxes across the board, and then do what romney said when he talked about cutting government spending, the problem is not taxes six. been dollars trillion in debt and counting. american people, could be at least get a receipt until we find out what these government politicians are spending on? host: where the money is going? caller: yes. people haveouple mentioned that. posted todayiece --

we have heard a lot of people saying this morning they don't think it's fair. walter is on the democratic line in vicksbupittsburg. caller: i don't think the taxes

are fair. i pay my fair share. the problem with the taxes is those who complain the most about the taxes are the ones who pay the least. there are only complaining and hoping the people that really don't understand their taxes if and really don't understand how the whole thing works, but they will latch on to their complaints and join them and vote for them. but those are the guys that are cheating the government and cheating the people. corporations should pay a flat tax or whatever it is decided to be and it should be based on a mathematical calculation and not politics. for people, they should have a flat tax. whenever you complicate something, whether it's medicine or law, when you complicate it, that means you are hiding something. if you do the math on 2011, were supposed to be a $5 trillion surplus under what went through during the clinton

administration. bush was able to turn that around in his eight years and make us maybe $10 trillion in the deficit. if you count the five that we lost and the tent that we gained, that's $15 trillion. if the free-for-all, obama could not stop this. there's no air brakes on the economy. could not stop everything on the dime. that's impossible. even romney would not able to stop it on the dime. host: here are some facebook comments --

remember, you can send us your comments,'s mog our facebook page. or twitter. send us an e-mail. tom is in youngstown, ohio, independent caller. caller: i think i pay my fair share of taxes as far as taxes are concerned. i don't know what the big complaint is. let's take us in the future and make sure we have money for projects such as infrastructure. the infrastructure is only 9% of our budget. during the eisenhower administration. eisenhower spent 12% of the budget towards infrastructure and infrastructure is falling apart. everybody knows that. going on the bridges, you are taking a crapshoot whether you

will make it to the other side. maybe they should challenge the supreme court to see if this is fair, being that we are a country that is equal, our constitution says that we are all created equal. maybe we should all be paying taxes equally. and if these people that are filthy rich but don't want to theyheir taxes, maybe should turn them. in other words, if i'm the owner of a company, i'd take care of my people, i am hiring more people, i'm doing my fair share, not promising, but in other words i earned it, just like if i was a truck driver. have a certain amount of write- offs and at the end of the year i get my tax breaks. not a leg and a promise. not a lick and a promise. just like a truck driver, he

would have to earn his lay over. they want everything handed to them on a silver platter without turning it. sounds like the republicans have their candidate is going to give them everything on a silver platter. host: in washington, earlier today, the space shuttle discovery mounted on an aircraft took off from the kennedy space center on its way to its new home at the national aerospace museum in washington, d.c. went covered alive today starting at 10:00 a.m. on c- span.org. the caller mention the supreme court. here's the headline in the baltimore sun this morning --

we're going to talk about that later on when bobby scott, a democrat from virginia who led the effort if to put in place the fair sentencing act in the house a couple years ago, we will talk about today's case and what it means and the intent behind the legislation. many of you have heard about the secret service and the alleged misconduct by 11 of those personnel. the washington post this morning as this headline --

by the way, the defense secretary leon panetta as well as the joint chiefs of staff martin dempsey weighed in on this yesterday. held a press conference. here's what the general had to say -- >> we've distracted that several of our members distracted the issue from what was a very important regional engagement for our president. so we let the cost down. nobody's talking about what went on in columbia other than this incident. to that extent, we let him down. the investigation is ongoing. it will start a path for us and

we will hold those accountable if it turns out that they violated orders or policies or laws. >> that was general dempsey weighing in on this secret service issue. also, speaking of leon panetta, here's the washington post this morning with this headline -- we're asking all of you this morning to weigh in on your tax bill and do you pay your fair share? rock hill, south carolina. brad is a republican, good morning. caller: how are you? you must have a lot of high income earners calling this morning. we are in the 25% bracket.

when you quoted obama's in, at 14%, that is different from your highest tax bracket, because we are a progressive tax code. obama's income. when you take an average married couple making $80,000 a year and other taxable income is only $50,000 and they paid $10,000 in taxes on average, that is not a 25% marginal rate. people are really ignorant. we are not informed about this. it is frustrating watching this conversation,. i don't know why mr. obama's marginal rate is so low, because he does not have a lot of capital gains. host: i think the "washington times" or maybe the new york times said it was because of tax credits or deductions that brought down his overall level. caller: i challenge anyone who

called to say they are paying 25% in taxes, look at the end of the last page of their tax return. most professional returners do this. see what the marginal rate was. i guarantee them it is a lot lower than they think. host: what was yours? caller: i've seen a lot of people's tax returns and i will give you an example of someone making $100,000 a year. their marginal rate is usually about 17%. somebody mentioned $60,000 a year, there's -- somebody making $60,000 a year, there is is probably about 9%. their notion that they are paying more than romney or obama, that's wrong. warren buffett knows this and he is not helping the dialogue. he is misinforming people probably just to get payback or whatever you getting for this politically, because he knows this.

he has to know this. if you take away all deductions and start taxing capital gains and taxing tax-free bonds, you are going to make more problems. as somebody who has worked all their life and amassed $1 million and invested, they paid taxes on that million dollars to get their. if you have tax-free bonds -- i cannot explain this, but it is a shame. host:? are you a? caller: i used to be and i still interface with them. it is a shame that warren buffett knows this. there's so much misinformation in this argument today. people really need to start learning a little bit more about taxes before they get on tv and say i pay 25% marginal rate. that's wrong. you would have to be making $400,000 a year to be paying that to get even near that. host: explain for those that don't know, somebody who has an income of $50,000 pays 9% in

taxes. what are they deducting to get to that level? caller: deducting their 401k contribution, standard exemption. if they itemize, their interest on their house. medical expenses. all kind of things. they get $4,000 per child. you get money back from the government. only 50% of the people in this country are paying federal taxes. the other 50 peopl% don't. it is laughable what the caller -- callers are saying. for the president to not correct this misinformation is wrong. host: now a a couple of moments from yesterday opposes senate debate over the buffett rule. we begin with the democratic senator from maryland, barbara mikulski.

>> mr. president, i support the buffett rule, because i do believe in fundamental fairness. if you live in the united states of america, you benefit from the united states of america. its national security and its public institutions and the public progress, the costa published education, land grants, that you need to pay your fair share. this is what america is. all is fairness. -- this is what america is all about -- fairness. host: the republicans responded. here is one comment from senator john kyl, a republican of arizona. >> how about the 50% of households that pay no taxes and yet received the same or greater benefits than those who ?

is that fair? the joint committee on taxation estimates to 81% of all households, which includes filers and non-filers, has either zero or negative income tax liability in 2009. people who do not share the sacrifice of paying taxes have little direct incentive to care whether the government is spending and taxing too much. maybe that's why the president has no problem with even more americans getting a free ride. host: our question for you this morning -- do you pay your fair share? pecjim kim is the incoming president for the world bank, this has ended a better selection process. he is a public health expert and

former president of dartmouth college and becomes the first world bank leader with a background in development. previous presidents have been bankers or washington officials. david, an independent in new york. what do you think? caller: good morning. i think i pay my fair share of taxes. something worthy of getting a look at is the history of the u.s. debt. if we look at world war ii. there was about 100% -- 120% of gdp, we paid down that debt in 37 years. it went almost straight down. we got it under $1 trillion. it was a hundred $89 billion in 1980 -- $189 billion. then we decided to go with trickle-down economics.

at the end of the reagan administration it was turned into trillions. the first bush, another trillion on that. it went up 4.6 trillion under george herbert walker after going down during clinton. if we borrow money in good times and tried to repay it in bad times, i think we are seeing the consequence. we need to make a fair vertex closed across the board -- fai rer tax code. host: here is the from page of the new york times -- two french economists have been researching the wall across all

countries, but have been looking specifically at the united states. more than anything, their work shows the top earners in the u.s. have taken a bigger and better share of overall income in the last decades with inequality nearly as acute as it was before the great depression. and grover norquist weighs in on the tax debate this morning in the opinion pages of the wall street journal.

so that is kroger norquist in the wall street journal this morning. tampa, florida, bart, an independent.

caller: i think i pay too much in taxes. nobody has touched on this, the reason is the self employment tax. the small, independent person that may be working by himself or working as an independent has to pay self employment taxes on top of independence regular taxation that he would normally receive. also, i think a flat fair share type of tax system would alleviate all the forms. reducing the size of government substantially, paying people -- paying people less is a good way to bring down the taxes. a federal employee makes a lot more money than a person sitting there and passed to figure out how he's gotten to work every day. caller:host: zachary, a democran

harrisburg, pennsylvania. caller: i pay my fair share. i see what happens when the fair share at the top does not get paid. the first thing that comes to the table to get cut is education. when we talk about how we got here, try to stop this on a dime, alike with the other gentleman said. when you have two wars and not being paid for and organizations like black water who took money with contracts, and the price of gas going up, which raises the price of everything else. let's talk about the corporate taxes and inflation. they're not accountable. host: all right. it is tax day. the taxes are due at midnight

tonight "usa today. -- "usa today" has this story -- if you have some last minute questions, you might be put on hold for quite a while as the staff has decreased since 1995. in other news this morning, let me flip over to the "usa today." winners of the 2012 pulitzer prizes are listed in the paper. investigative reporting, the associated press for a series of stories on the new york police department surveillance program that monitors law-abiding muslims.

those are the 2012 pulitzer prize winners.

in 2012 politics, baltimore sun, the democrats want to know what mitt romney is doing. the washington post this morning as this, the latest polls show republicans are rallying around the likely nominee mitt romney. there are the numbers. 63 percent unfavorable. 33% unfavorable. the search for vice presidential candidate is on for romney. here is the woman in charge of that search. mitt romney yesterday named his longtime adviser to head his vice-presidential selection

committee as attention swirled around who be almost certain nominee might choose as his running mate. then on fund-raising, obama and the dnc gain traction. $53 million raised in march. westbrook, colorado, jan, a republican. caller: good morning. we get tax capital gains at 15%. you can sit on your couch and make a million dollars and not have to lift a finger. you can take that money and put it into offshore accounts, invested in paper, and do nothing for this country with its people. make regular wages, they have already been taxed. they are taxed at 25%. the fellow from south carolina is right about some things and not about others. but it costs people to earn a wage.

they have to pay for gas and time, day care, keep your car on the road, all that, but they don't get the same tax breaks as the wealthy. i have seen a lot of really obnoxious things. the wealthy have tax breaks most people don't even know about. at any rate, why are we making these cuts for the oil subsidies and farm subsidies? romney really ought to tell us what is going on, what he plans to do. host: the president is delivering a statement this morning around 11:00 a.m. eastern on plans to increase oversight in a crackdown on manipulation in the oil markets. 10 this around 11:0 morning. go to c-span.org for more details. for political junkies that followed the ted stevens prosecution case, here's a headline in the washington post

-- and, also, senate 2012 races on the massachusetts senate race between scott brown and elizabeth warren, is tied according to two recent polls. the two of them squaring off in a dead heat for the seat formerly held by the late senator ted kennedy. also, the new york terror trial opens today. this is the wall street journal -- winter haven, california, patti, an independent. you are the last. are the last caller this morning. caller: i would say that i don't

pay my fair share of taxes. i'm on disability and not the kind that is a charity-based. i worked as a professional and put myself through college and paid off my and student loans and just got started in the professional field and ended up being on disability. i am always grateful that i can get by, but there are programs out there. a lot of things that have happened to me have been because i have been the whistle blower type or the type that is honest and stand by ground. it is like that saying, there's no good deed goes unpunished. i like that one guy who said that most people don't know and say that they and they're paying 25%. that's true in so many things.

people ramble on about things they don't know about. i want to say on the taxes, i really don't know that much, but when it comes down to how i live my life, i look around and there's a lot of people who have a lot less than me. and so, what i'd do with my income, if i have enough, i want something to go to somebody else. host: thanks for your call. up next, dennis ross, a republican of florida. later on we will talk with bobby scott, a democrat of virginia. yesterday we showed you this headline from the pittsburgh tribune review a little earlier. the gsa gets a thrashing. about the general services administration. there was a back and forth between the committee chairman and the gsa employee jeffrey neely. >> you have not provided us any written testimony before the committee.

do you wish to make an opening statements? >> i don't, mr. chairman. >> its my understanding from your counsel that you may want to assert your constitutional privileges and remain silent. >> yes, that's correct, mr. chairman. >> the topic of today's hearing is the gs-8's culture of waste and spending. you were uniquely positioned to provide testimony that will help the committee better understand the gsa's spending of more than $850,000 in the conference in las vegas in 2010. to that end, i must ask you once again to consider answering the questions. if you'll bear with me, what is your title at gsa? >> mr. chairman, on the advice of counsel, i respectfully decline to answer, based upon my fifth amendment constitutional privilege. >> did you attend the 2010

western regional conference in las vegas? >> mr. chairman, on a price of counsel, i respectfully decline to answer based on my fifth amendment constitutional privilege. >> did you approved the funding for the 2010 western regional conference? >> mr. chairman, on the advice of counsel, i respectfully decline to answer based upon my fifth amendment constitutional privilege. >> just a few more. was the original -- what was the original budget for that conference? >> mr. chairman, on the advice of my counsel, i respectfully decline to answer based upon my fifth amendment constitutional privilege. >> are you currently employed by the gsa as a federal employee? >> mr. chairman, on the advice of my counsel, i respectfully decline to answer based upon my sixth amendment constitutional privilege. >> last, are you prepared to answer any questions here today about your participation in the 2010 western regional conference?

>> mr. chairman, i respectfully decline to answer any questions today based on my fifth amendment constitutional privilege. >> mr. cummings, any questions? >> in the lights of the fact that mr. neely has asserted his fifth amendment right, i have no questions. >> thank you. given the witness has indicated he does not intend to answer any questions and out of respect for its constitutional rights, i do now ask the committee to excuse the witness from the table for the -- to have him remained for the remainder of the hearing. without objection, ? >> i have no objections. >> so ordered. we will now take a three-minute recess. i would ask mr. neely and his attorney to join us through that door. >> washington journal continues. dennis ross, a florida

republican 6 on the oversight government reform committee and is chaired a subcommittee on the federal workforce. the gsa hearing yesterday the first of zero you are this week. another one today and two senate committees will take it on wednesday and thursday. did we learn anything new yesterday? guest: not so much we learned anything new, but i think that we are raising the awareness of what is going on in government by now. it is indicative of what congress has a 9% approval rating. these agencies who spend taxpayer dollars are doing so in such a fashion that we are discovering has a sense of recklessness. yesterday's hearings confirmed that. martha johnson, the agency director who stepped down, she was very conciliatory. i appreciate that, but the fact remains there has been waste going on in this federal government for so long. yesterday was the tip of the iceberg of what is indicative of a boeing on in these agencies. host: what did you make of mr. newly pleading the fifth? guest: i think it was probably wise for him on the advice of

his council. as my colleague said, he would like to see an indictment out of this report. i think that may be forthcoming. pleading the fifth is not done so just out of a fancy. in this case i think it was probably necessary for him to do that. do what he did in this regard with the western regional conference event was absolutely ridiculous and appalling. to have a budget of 250 dozen dollars and spent $820,000 of taxpayer dollars on trinkets -- anybody who looks at this, a matter how deep you go, this was wrong. host: necessary because of legal reasons? in other criminal activity? guest: it depends. i don't know for sure. but i think the only reasons you plead the fifth if there was some suggestion that there might be criminal penalties for coming or at least alleged.

host: here's what the inspector general found in his investigation. the conference calls a hundred $23,000. -- the conference cost $823,000. we learned yesterday from the inspector general that there could be possible kickbacks happening. this has been recommended to the justice department. what happens next? guest: we will have to wait and see what the justice department does. now congress will take its toll with the next three hearings and there will probably be legislation forthcoming that would limit the expenditures that would require more oversight and more accountability of agency heads

start with the responsibility of making these statements. also, why is a government agency going out there and doing that with the private sector would do in having these conferences? we don't operate on profit. these are taxpayers' dollars. we need to make sure we are the stewards of these dollars and that we spend them responsibly. host: as chairman of the work force subcommittee, do you plan to introduce legislation? legislation guest: yes, my staff and i have talked about this. put a limit on what can be spent without congressional oversight. these agencies to me and delegated authority to it from congress, if they cannot responsibly do this, then we as congress should reach back and have this oversight authority over them. this is absolutely appalling. we're going into our fourth year of over a $1 trillion deficit. the american public has had enough. we have to show some proactive and not reactive position in

trying to make sure this does not happen again. host: four hearings, one of them yesterday and another today before the transportation subcommittee in the house. we will be covering that. then the senate will take it up, two senate committees. r four hearing is necessary? guest: this is very sensational. we are seeing a very bad situation being brought to light. i think a lot of those that are in positions of authority to investigate this want to make sure if they have their say in what needs to be done. it is not so much the coverage that it gets in terms of hearings. what matters is the outcome of these hearings. will something be done? are we just doing this for the sake of addressing the american public but there's a problem? are we actually going to do something that critics this from happening again? host: explain what the gsa does and are you in favor of privatizing it?

guest: the tsa is the government oppose the quartermaster. they go out and secure contracts. they maintain the leases and the real property and equipment for the federal government. do we need to privatize? maybe we ought to look into that. if they are in a non-government then maybe we need to delegate that to the private- sector. we need to investigate what they have been doing during the past several years no matter what in administration they have been under. regionals western conference in 2010, what was done was wrong. we need to dig deep to make sure this is not the only. agency doing only host: here is thean's web site that shows tsa'sg on management. go on c-span.org to find out

when this will air and who is testifying and other details on our website. what happens next with gsa, specifically they need a new administrator now, what happens? guest: you will see legislation comes forward from probably various members pro. it will all be substantiated by the testimony that we gain from the forthcoming hearings. why was this mr. neely given a $9,000 raise in december of 2011 when he knew well over a year that what he did was ron? ms. johnson, the agency director, when she was notified in may of 2011 by inspector general that this report was going to be forthcoming but there were improprieties, why did she not take corrective action? it was not until the report was released on april 2 that she decided to resign and an action was taken with other employees. i think you are going to see some fallout based on this

testimony. i think there are some people like mr. foley yesterday who testified that want to make sure they preserve themselves. they will probably be more open to discuss when happens. i think you will see serious personnel changes. host: have you heard from republican leadership in the house that they want some legislation on the floor? guest: yes. host: let's take a look at gsa by the numbers. so it is not a taxpayer dollars, most of it.

their budget comes off whatever they make off policing? guest: that's correct. however, there are taxpayer dollars. that does not absolve them of responsibility for being good stewards of what they do. they would not exist but for the federal government. they are stored of the federal government. they need to keep that in mind and be prudent of how they spend their dollars. it is clear that what has happened, even by their own admission, what happened was wrong and appalling and ridiculous and out of order if, contrary to gsa regulations. it does not matter whether it was 98% of self-generated dollars or 2% of taxpayer dollars. the fact remains they are an agency of the federal government and the need to be held accountable of what they do. host: i think i may have misspoken. jim is in new york, in buffalo, an independent. caller: i have listened to mr. neely's responses to the

questions. as a taxpayer, i respectfully decline to pay his salary, his health benefits, and his retirement. if we are going to continue to have these criminals in our government, we need to shut them off from their salary, health benefits, and retirement. the only thing i have to say to you, mr. ross, and your colleagues, is to fix this. this is why taxpayers are so disgusted by. we see this going on and nothing ever happens to rectify it. guest: i agree. yesterday when ms. johnson testified and she was asked about why mr. nelly received a $9,000 raise, she said there's two reasons you can receive a raise. one of them is by performance and the other is icon group. she tried to distinguish between the two and said that she had to because his performance was good even though his conduct was bad. if your conduct is bad, that should be cause enough not only to terminate your employment but also to be the basis upon which you should not receive your retirement benefits.

these are issues that have now been brought to light for us. we need to hold people accountable, the same way we should be held accountable in congress. host: can you take away someone's's pension, his retirement benefits? you take mr. 's bonus away? guest: the only way this could happen is if his conduct in his duties resulted in the commission of a felony upon which he was convicted, might able to do that. but to do tips of facto, no. host: now, a republican in oregon. .

the president flying around raising money for his campaign and the expenses that should rightfully be charged to the dnc. guest: a good point. it doesn't matter what administration, those that spend the money need to be accountable and transparent grid we need to make sure these expenses are posted and made public to the american people. we can show by this gsa report was misappropriated. yesterday was indicative of the tip of the iceberg of what may be going on in other agencies

and other departments and the federal government. host: 8 tweet -- guest: i agree we have to make some reductions in the department of defense. we have to do that in every agency. the gao reported that 20% of the government programs we have are duplicative. this is the tip of the iceberg. we have grown government to a degree we have never seen before. we cannot sustain this over the next several years if we don't do something about it. let this be a warning sign that it is not the gsa. it is every agency out there. we have to look at them in order to turn our budget. the american people demanded that. host: as chairman of the subcommittee over federal work force, will you look into the secret service issue, the

alleged misconduct by a dozen of those employees? does that fall under you? guest: yes, it may go to the full committee just because there will be more participation from more people. we would love to have the hearing on that. i don't know if i'm fortunate to get that. most likely it will be the full committee. host: had youth -- have you heard the leader of your committee gets? guest: not yet caller: caller: [inaudible] i think all you guys should be audited all the time. along -- a lot of congressmen

and women are spending our money the way they want to spend it and they don't get audited. it is not good accountability. they spend taxpayers' money on golfing and lavish dinners and all kinds of things. guest: i don't know about the golfing and the lavish dinners because i don't participate in any of that but i will tell you we have very stringent transparency roles like our financial statements to disclose every year but our members account that we use to fund our offices in d.c. including our payroll for all our employees which is public record and it should be. it should be open to scrutiny. whether we are audited or not, there is the gao that will do that but all this is open for public inspection and should be inspected by the public and scrutinized. host: alexandria, va., independent caller --

caller: i watch the investigation yesterday and one of the things they were talking about or try to find out about was just out of this could happen. the ig told them how it could happen. he said was a lack of accountability. that was because congress had failed to appoint the program administrators to oversee mr.. neely. he apparently was wearing two hats and he could approve any amount of money he wanted to because congress had failed to appoint the program administrators. the previous director was waiting for appointment also. they just drifted over that periot. guest: i would link -- i would like to think those people have some sense of reason to dictate

their behavior. it should never have required an agency director to tell mr. neely what he was doing was wrong. he should know that from the beginning. we had acting agency directors in place at the time. he cannot stand by and said i did this because we did not have an agency director. what he did was wrong and he knew what was wrong. , logic and reason dictate it was wrong so we should never have been done. i don't put much credibility in the issue that happen is because congress failed to appoint a full-time agency director. we had an interim director at the time, all of which were charged with the accountability for that office and none could be exonerated because they did not exercise that accountability. host: martha johnson talked about that she used to head up the gsa under clinton. talk about tha and what she did

under her leadership. >> by the time i was sworn in, four administrators had overseen the agency but i did not know there was another problem. the western region conference and economic training event in the late 1990's had evolved into a raucous, extravagant, self congratulatory event that ultimately be little federal workers. leaders apparently competed in entertainment rather than building performance capability. the expense apply for that conference was well under way when i entered gsa and i was unaware of the scope. as for my part, i said about reconstituting the gsa executive team. over 3/4 of the executives are now in different roles and when i arrived. she estate -- gsa that is now different. the labor partnership is

fruitful and gsa has email in the cloud and the headquarters held 2500 people and that will be home to 4500 people next yeargsa to relinquish leases and save millions. host: your reaction? guest: the western regional conference took place in may of 2010. i would argue that there was a culture that she could not change. she was appointed in 2012, eight months before this event took place. as a leader, she should have stopped it. i don't think she can stand there and say there was some as a disarray that she could not stop what was obviously an event that should never have taken place contrary to the regulations of the gsa. she has a wonderful resume and i give her a lot of credit stepping down when he did but this culture of hypocrisy, this

culture of average behavior that took place under both administrations needs to be corrected. it requires congressional involvement at this point. i don't know what will be done but ms. johnson, as the head of the agency who was there eight months before the event, could have stopped it. host: a republican from maryland -- caller: thank you for cspan. i'm calling about this top half program where in the purchase of consumer electronics, it is my understanding those purchases were done with purchase card rebates. under the gsa purchase card program. the resources for. to phalf pipettes came from these rebates. my question to you is -- does

the government pay to get these rebates? in other words, when the procurement goes out to the banks and the banks bet on the work to furnish the government with this purchase cards, it is my belief that these rebates are not free to the government. the government pays a latent cost for these rebates. therefore, i urge you in your legislative study of this, in an expert german, eliminate these darn rebates. get rid of these programs. "workers make plenty of money and they don't need this kind of incentive. it will save the taxpayers' money. what say you? guest: i concur with you. i believe there are five event planners for the gsa. event planners for the government services administration and yet tthat is a fact that is hard to believe. in respect of the 05, the gsa

went out and hired their own event planner who was paid a $12,000 finder's fee for setting up this event at the spa resort in las vegas. that is absurd. that is absolutely untenable. i agree with you -- these rebates need to be eliminated. host: this tweet follows up on the gsa scandal congress goes on brakes and are you doing enough oversight? guest: i would hope so. i think we have the most active committee in congress. most people would say that as a relative term.

i would challenge somebody to follow was at home. are very busy at home but doing oversight as well. if we had been given a heads up in may of 2011 by then director theha johnson of about inspector general's report, we might have been able to take a little quicker action and do hearings as early as last summer instead of now doing it when it is released in april of 2012. host: cheryl is joining us, a democratic caller -- caller: i don't see much difference between the gsa wasting money and republican congress who are getting their salaries and benefits for three years and all they have been doing is saying no to the president. the republicans have accomplished nothing in the last three years. guest: well, i've been married

for going on 29 consecutive years this august and my wife and i don't always belong but we understand that in order to understand, we have to agree on some things pretty same thing in congress. they have to agree with the senate. there is no one party that can be held liable in this allegation you make. i think there are two parties and they have to come to terms. what you are seeing is evidence of a gridlock that came about as a result of the election of 2010 when the american people spoke up and said we don't want to go down the same path. the house has been working to change the course and we will see what happens this year. host: we are talking with representative dennis ross who chairs the subcommittee on federal work force and he is serving on his first term. an independent in virginia -- caller: good morning.

is the gsa the only agency that gets in a large bonus for doing their job? we pay them a good salary and then we pay their insurance and their retirement and per diem cards to travel around. how much do we have to pay these people? guest: they are not the only agency that gives bonuses as. . there is the government's schedule by which people are paid their according salary in most cases with regard to federal employment but that is an area that i would like to address. i introduced a bill that would have required that members of congress reduce their pensions, increase the amount of vesting and put it in parity with the federal work force so we can be in line with what is being done in other governments and in the private sector. i was able to get it passed out of committee and it would save $42 billion but it will not go

anywhere. that is because it affects those who are up here and that is unfortunate. i believe there should be performance incentives for people to do good work, no question about that. if you are just paid because you are there, you'll not get the quality of work that one could and should perform. i believe pay for performance is something we need to explore in order to get the best employment out of our federal employees. host: republican caller from ohio -- caller: a pox on both their houses. they won't do anything about this. until the next situation arises. mr. ross is probably trying but he is -- he will be ineffective. we will be stuck with the bill and they will do nothing and they will rake in their $179 -- 100 -- 107 $9,000 per year and the public will be robbed blind. guest: i believe he expressed

the sentiment of the majority of americans out there and that is unfortunate. these are times that i have not seen in my lifetime as far as the controversy, the partisanship that is going on now. you raised some very good points. the american public are demanding that we act and yet we still seem to just wander along without any resolution of these issues. i can only hope that we do act appropriately and we put a stop to this. that is what we are charged with and i understand your frustration and your ang er and it is probably misplaced. host: when with the congress like to put this out there? guest: hall fully by the end of april. government-wide. host: it would be the whole

government? guest: agency-wide to end congressional appropriation should have better oversight. host: democratic caller from maryland -- caller: this has happened under republicans and democrats. i have worked as a contractor for the government for 37 years and seen this happen so many times. everybody wants to always say is the democrats that waste and spend. i found out that republicans waste and spent more than anybody. when they get elected and come into a seat, they have to have new curtains, a new carpet, and throw stuff about that was just brought in. guest: i would not take issue about either republicans or democrats being wasteful. i was not here when the republicans were in charge so i

am not here to apologize or make excuses. i am here to tell you that regardless of the party, what has been done is wrong and needs to be corrected. host: independent from wisconsin -- are you with us? caller: two quick comments. there is an assertion of this meeting to be privatized, the gsa. i have worked in the private sector in management for a very long time and have seen a ton of graft and corruption on the private side. i don't think that will clear this up. i think the government needs to be held to a higher standard. i heard somebody accused the president of his travels and i am disappointed in the representative that he did not address that and say there is no evidence of that, it has been disproven and it seems like we are so hyper-partisan that he could not say there is no evidence of that. other presidents have traveled

on their campaign trails and those are my two comments, thank you very much guest: i don't think i ignored that at all. i said you have seen that under other administrations. these troubles are open to public scrutiny and that is what we absolutely need. host: a republican from louisiana -- caller: wire was spending so much money, really? it has not stopped. i agree we need to spend money or we spend money to far and long. are you worry about china and the dollar? come on. guest:amen, i agree with you. we have had four successive years of over $1 trillion

deficit. our spending to gdp is that 24%. the amount of revenues we bring in is at 14.5%. when you spend 9% more than what you are taking in, nobody can operate a household or a business like that. you are absolutely correct. we are going bankrupt. we have to make the spending decisions and we need to make them send because we cannot sustain our government this way. will be a painful process but the american people deserve to be told the truth. the american people need to know that we will do what is necessary to reduce our spending so we can become again that economic world power we have always been. host: democratic caller, indiana -- caller: as far as your oversight goes, has anybody checked into combining some of your federal law enforcement agencies like atf and the dea.

the drugs and guns go hand in hand and i would imagine they bump heads 95% of the time. is there any consideration of combining the different law enforcement agencies? guest: yes, there is that there has been for quite some time. other the department of justice, they're not always cooperating. the lack of communication on force in led to the death of some people. i think consolidation is important and a duplication of efforts is shown by the gao report and that is something we need to take to heart. we could save 20% of our expenditures by getting rid of the duplication. host: independent caller, fla. -- caller: i know you are just an individual representative that i will speak to you as representing the entire government. i just want to say that i am

totally disgusted with the government. i don't really understand why government employees need conventions and retreats and why do they act as if they are a private company handling private funds that they have gained through their work text guest: as an employee of the federal government, as an elected official, as an appointed official, if you're involved in public service, you have an obligation, a fiduciary responsibility to the american taxpayer to be good stewards of those dollars. unfortunately, that culture of being a good store does not permit as well as it should to all levels of government. you had done something very true. why is the federal government doing that which the private sector does? they should not have a profit. that is a question me to answer and something we need to address.

i believe in performance pay for exceptional work, i do not believe that the government services administration or any other agency needs to be doing what they did in the western regional government he event that is the subject of this debate. we need to put a stop to that host: here is another tweet -- guest: we have taken an 11% reduction on our budget. since i was elected. we are operating on fewer employees than my predecessor and returning dollars back to the speaker of the house that we did not spend. i filed a bill of the beginning of my term called zero-based budgeting which would require other agencies to start off at 0 and 7 the previous year baseline. i think we need to justify every expense we make. if we're going to be the true

stores of the american taxpayer dollars that we were elected to do, we have to justify the expenditure as we make. our budgets are not set by us but because we're given a budget, does not mean we have to spend all and i believe we are doing our job to be responsible to make sure those dollars are spent appropriately in spite of the fact we have had to reduce .ur budgets by 11% hos host: where talking about the spending trip to las vegas and an investigation was held yesterday on capitol hill and we covered that and you can watch the whole thing on c-span.org. the hearings continue today, wednesday, and thursday and a house transportation subcommittee takes up the issue momentarily at 8:30 a.m. eastern. you can go to c-span.org for more details. republican, lincoln, neb. -- caller: why do we have so many

departments of the government? we need to cut their salaries. everybody that works for the government, i don't care who you are, cut it down by 5%. you would be surprised how many trillions of dollars you would save. this is ridiculous. this government is completely out of control. if anybody thinks it's funny, i'm sorry for you because this is not funny. we are losing our government. we are losing our democracy. .uest: i couldn't agree more i co-sponsored legislation that would reduce the federal work force by 20%. for every three federal employees that retire or resign,

we should only replace them with a one. we have well over 2 million employees. many of them provide a valuable service and work hard and perform well. we have to take a look at what we are doing when the rest of our country does not seem to be able to find a job, we have to make sure that does have a job or doing it well and appropriately and efficiently and economically and our government has grown way too much. even the president with the simpson balls commission suggested reducing our work force by 10%. host: if you cut the federal work force by 5% or 10%, have you looked at the impact that would have on taxpayers? guest: it would be negligible. we can take away the services that are non-governmental and start cutting their pretty essential government services are why we have the federal government, to provide those services. we'll need to be in the business

of business. gsa is a good example. we can reduce our work force and do it by way of attrition so we're not laying people off. it is something we have to take very seriously, that we have to address because the size of government is becoming greater than the size of the private sector if we are not careful. host: democratic caller in l.a. -- caller: i don't think the representative realizes that for four years, president clinton gave george bush a surplus and we had two wars that we did not pay for so instead of just remembering four years of obama, why don't you remember all eight years that bush was in office? obama cannot just erase the deficit or the debt? . guest: this president has increased our deficit by 1/3.

i'm not here to apologize what happened for the bush administration it was also wrong but i'm not looking to point the blame at somebody. we should find a solution in a bipartisan fashion. this is an american issue. we all know the logic and reason dictates that expenditures have to be brought down well within our revenue. that is what we have to address. as a bipartisan congress. host: 1 last phone call, an independent in niagara falls, new york -- caller: god bless cspan. i would like to ask the congressman if you are talking about performance-based pay, then over 70% of the people in america did not want the oil subsidies to go through. on surprise that -- why should you get paid at all when you are

not doing the will of the people? you were talking about agency that pays for itself all but 2%. the will of the people is not being done whatsoever. guest: again, i understand your frustration and i would not suggest you should not have those frustrations. we need to correct those. as far as what we are paid, i did better in the private sector. i did not do this for the money and i will not do it for a career. i will tell you that we need to be better stewards of the taxpayers' dollars and that will be our charge that the american people will demand from us and hopefully, as a result of this investigation, we will do something substantive to affect the way we spend money in d.c. and may be more transparent to the american people. host: thank you for talking to our viewers. coming up next, we'll talk with bobby scott about the headline

in "the baltimore sun" this morning with the supreme court taking up the issue of crack cocaine sentencing and later, we will talk about special interests and the impact these groups have on state legislation. here is a news update first. >> the time is 8:30 a.m. eastern time. congressman peter king was speaking earlier on the nbc "today" show and was defending the secret service in their scandal. he says that mark sullivan acted immediately and says he thinks it is wrong to be prejudging him. he also says it looks like we really lucked out on this because it appears that the party happened before president obama a ride in colombia. he want to say that you don't allow a potential enemy into your security zone. in afghanistan, president hamid

karzai says part of a long-term relationship with the united states involves money. he says the partnership agreement being negotiated with the u.s. should specify exactly how much money the u.s. will give to afghan forces in the coming years. the demand could add a new hurdle to the deal. the australian prime minister in remarks earlier today says her country will be pulling troops from afghanistan nearly one year earlier than planned, saying that australian soldiers have nearly completed their mission to transfer security responsibilities to afghan forces. in the mideast, the israeli defense faster says his country has never promised the united states it would hold off from attacking iran while nuclear talks were taking place. he says the talks represent lost time. those are some of the latest headlines on cspan radio. >> jury selection began this

week on the retrial of a former major league pitcher roger clemens charged by federal prosecutors would knowingly lie to congress in february, 2008 on performance enhancing drug use in baseball. >> let me read what his wife said in her affidavit. i depots and states that in 1999 or 2000, andy told me he had a conversation with roger clemens in which he admitted using human growth hormones. mr. clemens, i remind you you are under oath. you have said your conversation with mr. pettite never happened. if that was true, why would laura pettite remember him telling her about the conversation. >> i think he misremembers. our relationship was close enough to know that if i would have known that he had done hgh,

if he was knowingly knowing that i had taken hgh, we would talk about the subject. >> watch the 2008 testimony on line at the cspan video library with only -- with over 25 years of american politics and public affairs on your computer. >> "washington journal" continues -- host: congressman bobby scott sets and the judiciary committee and was one of several house democrats nearly two years ago that pushed for fair sentencing when it came to crack cocaine purses powder cocaine. the supreme court takes up this issue today. what are they deciding? guest: they are deciding whether the change should be applied to those who committed their crimes before the bill was enacted or being sentenced after the bill was signed.

lyall lot is a little day. we certainly hope it is applied retroactively. but congress decided was that the old law was unfair. there was no form ecological there is between crack and powder -- there is no pharmacological difference between crack and powder. we noticed that there was a huge racial disparity, 80% of the crack was used by african- americans and 30% was powder. you have a huge racial disparity with no purpose. the reason is that crack is punished much more severely under the sentencing laws that particular with the mandatory minimum. we changed a lot to make it more fair, not totally fair. you need 100 times more power to get the same mandatory minimum with crack from 18 to 1 which

moves the crack from some find somebody could be doing over a weekend to where they [unintelligible] it is better than it was. it would be bizarre to require judges to continue to impose on fares sentencing. host: why did it get to this point that the court is deciding this issue when the logs into effect? guest: because it was not absolutely clear when they passed the law. host: was that guest: a mistake we were trying to get the bill passed and you don't want to discuss issues. i concluded that it would be applied retroactively. once you have decided it is unfair, it would be absurd to have the judges required to

oppose unfair sentences. the statute of limitations is five years so you could have the next five years where people are arrested for crimes that had been committed before law was enacted. you could have the trial and by the time the sentencing comes, years later, impose a sentence that everyone has concluded is unfair, racially discriminatory, and does nothing but provoke disrespect for law host: the supreme court is looking at two different cases, consolidating them into one for review. istreionndants' lawyers will ll arguing to make is retroactive. it is a position they did not have before. did you talk to the administration personally? guest: the administration has concluded that what a majority of congressmen concluded is that the law is unfair and no

criminal justice -- it was just unfair per 85-year mandatory sentence -- the five-year mandatory sentence for drugs at was ridiculous particularly when you can get probation. crack is the same drug is just prepare differently. to have that kind of difference is absolutely bizarre. to ask a judge to impose a sentence that everybody knows is unfair just breeds disrespect forelock. host: you went to harvard and boston college law school. some say that the justices will have to look at in 1871 law on this issue about whether or not the fair sentencing act can be retroactive. what is belowdecks guest: i

don't even know what it is. the question before the court is whether it can be done retroactively. it can be if they include that was the intent of congress. it is often spelled out specifically. we did not do that so they have something before then. if they don't apply retroactively, congress will have an opportunity to change that. host: let's take a look at the legislation. it was signed into law august of 2010, a five-year minimum sentence for crack and powder and a 10-year sentence for less quantity. guest: the old law was 5 grams of crack which is around 10 or more doses, somebody could do that in a weekend. it had a mandatory minimum for position only for crack and that was the only drug that provided for a mandatory minimum.

host: they got rid of that? guest: they got rid of all the for possession only. for dealing, it went up to 28 grams. you are probably -- it is not the best but it is a lot better than what people could easily have over a weekend. host: and a justice's you will be particularly interested in hearing from today? guest: it will be interesting to share with all say. the clear evidence is that the penalty is unfair and breeds disrespect for law because of a huge racial disparity without any justification. calls,et's get to phone maryland, good morning. caller: i want to make a little statement. i don't think anybody should be locked up for taking any kind of drugs. i think there should be legislation that would make them

have rehabilitation. once you give someone a record, they cannot get a job and they have to go on welfare because it had to eat. we're just making a vicious cycle instead of getting these people help, mandatory help. most people on drugs will not go voluntarily because they are sick. they have a habit like cigarettes. they may want to stop that they cannot. you all really should push for mandatory rehabilitation said that -- just like seat belts. it worked because -- you could do something for keeping people

out of jail that is taking something that is hurting themselves. guest: the purpose of the drug law is to reduce the use of drugs, rehabilitation does more to reduce drugs than the criminal justice system. the amount that you have to apply to get somebody to make a deliberate decision on drugs can be viewed in this situation. pater coat the powder cocaine - 5 grams of crack, you get five years mandatory minimum. with that draconian difference, you will still have people saying i will not mess with crack, let me just use cocaine. you don't have dealers saying i will only dealing cocaine. they will deal with whatever their customers want.

there is a huge disparity. the criminal-justice system did not change people's behavior. changes people's behavior is rehabilitation for those who are on drugs but also the idea of alternatives, prevention and early intervention. thethe chief sponsor of youth pharmacy acts. it keeps the ball on the right track. it gets them out of what the children's defense calls the cradle to present pipeline and construct a cradle to college or cradle to work force pipeline were you give early childhood education, after-school programs and make sure they have a decent education and can read by the third grade and they can go to college. with the incarceration rate we have today in the united states, we could easily afford another strategy. let's rely on a waiting for young people to drop out of school and join a gang and a

seven get caught and then argue about whether all a will be a mandatory sentence and use that money so they don't get in trouble to begin with. all the studies have shown in the pew research center that the united states' incarceration center is getting to the crime rate, not detracting. they calculated anything over 354 150,000, you're getting diminishing returns. it is counterproductive and we are 700 per 100,000. in most of the world, is 50 to 200 and the united states averaged 700. instead of using money for counterproductive in car restoration, maybe we should invest in drug rehabilitation -- using money for that is

counterproductive in rehabilitation, maybe we should invest in drug rehabilitation. i'm not sure people really make that decision. drug counselors say people using drugs don't even consider the criminal justice system. in terms of allocation of resources, we put more resources into getting people on a track that does not include drugs and those that are using drugs to make sure rehabilitation is available when most cable show up in drug rehabilitation, they can never get it. we need to make sure that we use those resources so the rehabilitation is there. drug court is another example where instead of locking people up, there should be intensive life changes where people going to a drug course get rehabilitation, job training and on a path to becoming a law- abiding citizen rather than getting locked up and coming right back out to the same situation and end up in the same

situation. host: democratic caller from arkansas -- caller: rev. sharpton said jim crow is now james crowe jr. esquire. the disproportionate number of innocent black man sentenced to prison by races prosecutors and judges is higher. racist legislation pushed through congress and other legislative bodies like the stand your ground law which is supported by raises corporations because this thing seems so pervasive throughout our system. it seems like it has to be a plan. that standard ground law has the prospect of tearing this country apart had not been discovered through what happened to trayvon martin. host: let me ask you this --

when this debate was taking place over stricter sentencing for crack cocaine verses power cocaine, those in law enforcement arena said there is more violence is as it would crack cocaine verses powder cocaine. one organization said the enhanced penalties for crack cocaine have proven useful and a better course of action would have been to raise the penalties for powdered cocaine crime. guest: first of all, when they say that crack is more highly correlated with violence, the way it is delton smaller amounts rather than cocaine which is generally used somewhere else,

there may be a correlation or there may not. if you are going to sentence people, you should sentence them for what they did, not the fact that crack is more prevalent in the african-american community and power is more prevalent in the white community. if you want to enhance the penalty, you should enhance the the way they did. if the use violence in distributing the drug whether it is powder or crack, violence was used. if you add on the enhancements or what was actually done not just because it is cracker power, there may be a higher penalty ultimately for crack. in each case, if somebody is using violence for powder and not using violence for crack, the powder should get a higher penalty. he should have the enhancements based on what was actually done. host: the caller brought up the trayvon martin standard ground

law -- guest: the problem with that is that in any case like this where you are trying to figure out what to do with someone who has been shot, the problem you have is that you have one witness with one side of the story and the other side of the story was killed. it is very difficult to have any kind of case ought. when you add to the standard ground law, the person only has to say i stood my ground and shot him. it is just very difficult to have anything other than the wild west. the neat thing about the trayvon martin case is there is actually more evidence. you have three almost concurrent phone calls going on. trayvon martin made one ensures a man-made one and the witness was making a phone call as things were going on. you had a witness looking at things and the phone calls going on and an autopsy. you have a lot of different evidence.

the disturbing thing about this case is that the local police apparently did no investigation. it appears that george is armond came in and said i stood my ground so i am ok. -- george zimmerman kim hammond i said i stood by grass and i am okay and they did not arrest them. they announced the case was over. when you start off with the background of crack/powder cocaine and studies are racially discriminatory without any purpose, it was not defined that would that's how it ended up and that you have a question of whether or not this is a racial disparity in the trayvon martin case, it just adds to the credibility of those who want to make it a racial case. thankfully, the state and federal go -- government came in and the investigation. i think you have the criminal-

justice system malfunctioning. we have to let the process work. it seems absolutely bizarre that there were no arrests and no investigation. the defendant is entitled to a presumption of innocence. as in all cases. the criminal justice system is functioning now and we should sit back and let it happen. host: racial profiling will be the subject of a senate committee starting at 10:00 a.m. on cspan 3. they will hold the first congressional hearing on racial profiling since the september 11 terrorist attacks and a hearing will include witnesses from law enforcement but the overall issue of racial profiling will be before the senate judiciary committee. a republican in long beach island, new jersey -- caller: good morning, are

crack cocaine and powder cocaine exactly alike? guest: as i understand it, they are not exactly alike is the same drug. they are just prepare differently. i'm not an expert on how they are prepared. pharmacologically, they are the same but prepare different and distributor devin because crack is generally in small packages than powder. all the studies have shown that there is no meaningful difference between the two and certainly no difference sufficient to justify 80% of people getting caught up in cracked. . the mandatory minimums generally cause problems because the judge is required whether it makes any sense are not and the matrix in

which he is sentencing is based on the total weight of the drug operation. if you have somebody just as a minor role and you have girlfriends get caught up in this, they are sentenced as if they were the kingpin. once the amount of drugs is determined, everybody in the conspiracy gets stuck with that. they get along mandatory minimum. host: from twitter -- this goes back to the debate of our crack vs patter in the 1980's. everybody thought crack cocaine would be worse. guest:when len bias died that's when everybody erupted in the bill went through congress. the draconian minimum of fences of crash l. en bias was using cocaine, not cracks all hullabaloo is misplaced.

they are essentially the same drug, not a sufficient difference to justify a draconian difference where in the old law, 99 grams of powder you could get probation and five low grams of crack, you're looking at five years mandatory and no discretion on the part of the judge. host: back to phone calls, maryland, go ahead the -- caller: good morning, i have a former drug in crack cocaine. look at tobacco. tobacco kills and his habit forming like nicotine. it gives people multiple diseases. how come there is not something

to go after people like that? is it because they pay taxes? guest: tobacco is used as a legal drug. that has been the tradition. we make choices. alcohol is banned at one. one point and prohibition was banned. the list of drugs that are illegal will change from time to time and some are prescriptive drugs and some are illegal and some are legal and controlled . host: from twitter or -- r -- ron, a democrat from louisiana -- caller: does mr. scott truly think that prohibition against any sort of drug will work? it seems that for every 10 busts

the police may, attend escape guest:. in terms of the impact of the criminal-justice system on drug think the criminal- justice system has an impact on distribution. people take risks involved in criminal justice saxons if they are dealing drugs but on using, the evidence is somewhat before in terms of the impact that the criminal-justice system has a person's decision to use drugs. if you talk to a drug counselor asked what impact the criminal system has on a person's decision to use drugs, you often get one word after a and that isnone. the point that is being made is accurate. it may have some impact. in terms of resources, we need to put more resources into rehabilitation for those using drugs and to get young people

off on the right track and make sure they have other activities and other options. that is why i have introduced the youth promise act where young people have a lot of options and as they make their choices, they decide that drug abuse is inconsistent with their goals. if you are going to diet 21 and are not going to college, you are a must more likely to use drugs. what difference does it make? if you expect to go to college but also a professional school where a criminal record may adversely affect your ability to delegate law license or medical license, you are much less likely to use drugs. getting people into a situation where they are on track to going to college rather than on track to going to prison i think would be extremely helpful. that is our most of our focus ought to be host:. here is american hero on

twitter -- guest: various constitutional authority to regulate drug abuse. if he is the commerce clause, you get the generable whole -- general welfare statement. we focus our attention on the criminal-justice system and that is misplaced. a substantial portion should be on rehabilitation and getting young people on the right track and keeping them on the right track. the thing about investment in youth, we pay significantly for the present situation where people are kind of drifting off and dropping out of school and going to present. we spent a lot more than any other country. we lock up a higher proportion of our population and it is not

free. onre wasting money counterproductive incarceration. we could put that into prevention and early prevention problems that will, in fact, reduce drug abuse. , crime, teen pregnancies, and expenses in most of these programs. that is where we should be putting more focus. these are budget decisions and priorities. host: republican, williamsburg, virginia, go ahead to caller:: good morning, i am a mobile fitness trailer that moves around the hampton roads areas for the last eight years. i'm working in your schools and neighborhoods all this sounds wonderful about the prevention but i find very little support from mayor mckinley price are mrs.chilgore.

i have been knocking on the door at "the new york new," after having a body of work that says i'm not an expert and have the ability to change the health of your communities. i showed up on a corner of 17th and jarvis and with my mobile health facilities and entertaining hundreds of children throughout the day -- host: we got your point. guest: the idea that your focus on prevention and early intervention is admirable and that's where the focus should be. in terms of the mayor of newport news, he has been aggressive in trying to a getgang reduction initiative focused on prevention and early and trenchant. -- focus on prevention and early intervention. the mayor has been very

aggressive trying to get activities, prevention and early intervention focused in the town of newport news against gangs and drugs. the sheriff in newport news and chief of police are doing the law enforcement part. they are rounding people up but particularly the sheriff has been very active in working in the jails to make sure people get an education so they don't come back after they leave. i am not sure the situation with your particular program but the mayor has been very aggressive in prevention and early intervention and the superintendent of schools has had a very aggressive dropout prevention initiative, trying to deal with young people and trying to increase the graduation rate.

host: our topic is the supreme court taking up this issue of fair sentencing for crack cocaine vs powder cocaine. i also want to get you to weigh in on this year you touched in on racial profiling and the trayvon martin case. here is newsweek asking is obama making it worse? regarding the racial divide. guest: you have to look at what initiatives are. i don't think there's any question that he is trying, but a lot of his initiatives face

resistance when you get to congress. you look at the jobs initiatives, one of the best things that can happen is people get jobs. in los angeles there's a t-shirt that says nothing stops a bullet like a job. if you can get people jobs, that is the most important thing that can happen. host: brandon is an independent in. dover, in. caller: how are you? i want to make a comment about the crack cocaine sentencing. i think it was just a take what you can get right now because the law is still very much racial. when you see big busts on tv, you typically see powder cocaine with the big busts. with the little petty busts that people get all those years for, it is the crack cocaine. the drug sentencing is a joke in

the state's. is a waste of money, the drug glasses, they're on marijuana, so they're not even trying to think about stopping smoking marijuana. it's very few big drug dealers in jail. it is your $20 hustlers on the corner that are in jail. guest: when you have low-level people getting arrested, you are doing very little to stop the drug problem. the low-level people going to jail will have their territory immediately filled. somebody else will come in and filled that territory. you are just running a revolving door doing that. the gentleman indicated that the law still is not perfect and he's right. it still has mandatory minimums in their. mandatory minimums have been studied and have been shown not to be effective in reducing

crime. judges ought to have the discretion in imposing a sentence that makes sense. if you have a mandatory minimum, it has to be imposed whether it makes sense or not. that's where we should have gone, not only eliminated the mandatory minimums but gone to a 1-1 18-1 -- and not 18-1. some people have suggested we should not have agreed to the compromise. i think the compromise was not perfect, but the choice was not whether we would have 1-1. the question was whether we would stay at 100-1. there's no commitment to stop at 18. so the people that would like to ultimately eliminate the mandatory minimum can get to 1- 1. we are committed to continuing the fight. when we had the opportunity to

make significant progress, the legislative choice was to take that and then continue to work. host: the front page of the washington post this morning -- guest: well, that article outlined potential scandals, that people were convicted on bogus evidence. hair samples, where the technology back then was not as good as it is now banned dna follow-ups have shown that what was a match based on whatever science they were using back down was not in fact a match. many people have been found to be potentially excluded as a

possible culprit rather than convicted because of that evidence. the article suggests that many new this after the fact, but did not say anything, and a lot of people languished in jail, not withstanding the fact somebody? new this evidence but convicted them was inaccurate. they mentioned hundreds of cases that could be involved. no one should be in jail on a crime they did not commit. host: so what happens on this issue? guest: the justice department, i think, is following through on it. i think they are taking the appropriate -- now that they know there's this problem, i think the dust is the problem is handling it the best they can. years after the can host: officials started reviewing the cases in the 1990's after

reports of sloppy work by examiners was producing unreliable evidence. guest: there's a suggestion that the information went to prosecutors and nothing happened. all of that is within the justice department. i would assume the justice department will be taking action and i assume congress will be having some hearings, if . i would expect something like this would be the subject of. a of host: this is part of a series that the washington post is doing in print and online, reports this week on the history of u.s. parents errors and the government's response. it is an in-depth piece in the washington post. a full-page article on several of the newspaper pages this morning. sounds like it will continue this week. anthony, democratic caller in memphis, tennessee. caller: good morning. my question was about this conspiracy charge.

i have seen a case where three young men were busted for a certain amount of drugs, but they were given a plea bargain if they were to testify that this young lady that directed them or had something to do with connecting them with a large drug dealer, and so when they went to trial, they were found guilty. the prosecutor said that if they were to testify in court, that this lady was kind of like the in between person, that they would get a reduced sentence. but the person that they testified to say that she was their connection, she never even had a speeding ticket, but she got life in prison. i think they ended up with 10 or

20 years. guest: i cannot comment on the case. i don't know anything about the -- you have to look at the details of that specific case. one of the problems generally is when you have these draconian penalties that people can be subjected to, it puts them in a situation where they muy the guilty on a lesser charge -- may plead guilty. when people are testifying against somebody else in order to get a reduction in their sentence, it adds credibility questions about whether there were telling the truth. if they don't have any evidence against anybody, then they have to serve the full time. if they can make something up against somebody, then maybe they will get a reduction. they have an incentive to fabricate. when people are offering huge

discounts in their sentences if they testify, it really undermines the credibility of what is going on. host: on our republican line from indiana, red. caller: how are you? have you guys ever had an experience before with drugs? host: what are you trying to get at? caller: i was wondering, because certain states have different punishments. the criminal punishment for doing drugs. have you guys ever had an experience doing drugs before? host: well we will take the state by state issue. guest: there are different penalties. particularly with marijuana, some have much more liberal sanctions. others more draconian. it is a state-by-state issue. host: tyler, independent in macon, georgia. caller: good morning. my question is about profiling. a lot of the times the young

black men get profiled. a lot of people blame racism. if you see a person with a ragged clothing outside a market, you will profile him to be homeless. if you see a bunch of young african-american men with bandannas, you can profile them as gangsters at. i don't see this as a racial issue. i see this as a common-sense issue. to the question of trayvon martin, i am not defending george zimmerman's actions, but i believe if mr. martin was wearing a suit, i don't think he would've been profiled as being a gangster or thug. host: we will have to leave it there because we are running out of time. guest: racial profiling means you are using race, not clothing or maybe it other things. what all the police officers and experts in law enforcement say

that it does not work. and happens is you have cast too wide a net and you miss a lot of people. you have to look at behavior and whether someone would be committing a crime, not just looking at someone's race. i just want to focus on the fact that one of the things that can significantly reduce drug use is prevention and early intervention. i serve not only on the judiciary committee but also on education and work force committee. they are very much related, because the young people stay in school and get a good education and job training and get a job, higher education or whatever, they're much less likely to be involved in crime. so we need to put more focus on the work that i do and educational work force, we're we've been hearing in the jobs training bill. we put a lot more focus on that, we will have let's work to do on

the crime subcommittee. host: our last phone call is from millington, michigan, wanda, democratic caller. caller: i want to know why the government thinks that the war on drugs is not just a war on ourselves. the money that they spend going after people, every day normal people doing a little drugs, cost a lot of money. that money could be better spent on educating our kids, giving more money to kids to go to school. the drug situation is not going to change in this country. the more they criminalize it, the bigger it becomes. the more you tell people this is what they cannot do, this is what they want to do. you need to take the criminal aspect out of it and let people make their own choices. guest: if you look at some of the money we spend on trucks as of several months ago there was a roundup in my district where

the ringleaders, one of them got 50 years and the other guy 35 years. if you multiplied that out by $30,000 a year. that's over $1 million for one of them. $2.5 million dealing with the drug problem when their territory will probably be taken up shortly thereafter by someone else. that to $0.5 million, maybe we should spend a half million dollars of locking them up and $2 million funding after-school programs, boys and girls clubs, things like that, if so young people can get on the right track and stay on the right track? . we have a disproportionate amount of our funding dealing with the drug problem going toward incarceration and not enough intervention and early intervention. host: what is happening next on this? guest: one of the things i'm trying to do is the you promised act, which would fund comprehensive programs to get him people on the right track and keep them on the right track and save money in the process. we insist the money saved would

go into continuing the programs that they have benefited from. host: congressman bobby scott, thanks for giving your views this morning. coming up, we turn our attention to a house special interest groups impact state laws. we will be right back. studenthis year's competition, we asked students to create a video explaining what part of the constitution was important to them and why. today we are going hoboken, new jersey to meet with and a elysian charterlet school. your video was on capital punishment and the eighth amendment. >> we dealt with this towards the beginning of the year. we had to look through the amendments and choose which one we like to focus on. we read through the amendment and were trying to see which

ones stuck out to us. we read the eighth amendment, which is the death penalty, so we chose to do this because we both disagreed with it, so we thought it would be a good issue to discuss. >> you opened your video with a clip from a republican presidential primary debate. why did you choose to open with this clip? >> we mainly chose to open with that video to start off showing how cool people can be about the death penalty and execution and so how much a man with a power that does agree with it can influence people in places amount. so we thought it would be good to show how people felt about it and we wanted to show how people reacted to the video. >> you debated three questions on the. death the why did you focus on these three questions? >> we mainly focused on these three questions because as we were doing the research for the death penalty, these were the

three issues that mainly concerned the death penalty. we thought these would be the three best to discuss in the video. >> you interviewed an expert from the innocence project. how did she affect your understanding on the issue? >> she made it the way i saw the execution stronger and she made me notice how more than not the innocent people have been killed and are being killed in different states where execution is allowed. she made my view on execution stronger and maybe see a better. >> you also interviewed several people on their personal opinion dealing with the death penalty. how did that help you understand the difference? sides of? >> being able to do talk to people that i see on a daily basis and i know them operas no basis, i was able to connect with them and understand how they felt about it and see how they would feel if they were in a certain predicament of where

somebody close to them was being executed. >> what was your favorite part in creating this documentary? >> my favorite part of treating this documentary has to be being able to speak face-to-face with people and being able to interact and connect with them and get to know their story and how they felt about advancing their reaction towards it. >> what would you like others to learn as they watch your documentary? >> i would like them to learn that execution is not the right thing to do. it is not humane. it is just a cruel. it is not what we should be doing it. there are other ways of justice. it's not a good way to serve justice. >> matthew, thanks for talking with us. here's a portion of his documentary, "the great debate." >> a question about texas, your state has texas234 death row inmates, more than any other

governor in modern times. [applause] >> did you hear the people cheering? >> your state has executed 234 death row inmates, more than any other governor in modern times. [applause] >> by name is matthew. it makes me wonder what the world is coming to when people find enjoyment out of execution. >> if you commit the most heinous crimes, you deserve the ultimate punishment? . >> we will debate the questions regarding the death penalty. >> is it moral? >> is the death penalty racist? >> does the death penalty makes us safer? >> watched the entire video along with all winning documentary's at student.cam.org.

and continue the conversation at our facebook and twitter pages. >> washington journal continues. host: fredreka schouten is a reporter for usa today." we are taking a look specifically at the american legislative exchange council, because they have been depressed lately. what is alec? guest: it is a washington-based policy to do that is unique because it brings together state lawmakers and representatives from the private sector, business interests, to gather to hash out ideas, exchange ideas, and then to write model legislation which goes into an on-line library. lawmakers around the country can use this as a template for bills in their states. host:? the aftermath of the: guest: yes, and there are about 2000 members, mostly state lawmakers. but there are a lot of well- known american companies that

are members can serve on the private enterprise board. host: they say they focus on a free-market limited government and constitutional divisions of power between. federal and state between what are we talking about a group that's been around nearly four years? guest: their ideas have gained more currency and have been the subject of controversy recently. let's talk a little about the controversy. a number of democratic and liberal groups have been very have beenalec's influence -- have been very concerned about alec's influence. alex has been deeply involved in some of the biggest issues of the day, including the health care overhaul that. -- overhaul that congress passed.

there is a title of their book, "a guide on how to appeal obamacare." they have also been involved in advocating some of the new voter identification laws in recent years. and then it has gained even more resonance now with the support of the stand your ground law, which has been the focus of intense scrutiny as a result of the trayvon martin case in florida. host: the fallout from that has been several high-profile corporations that were members have -- guest: they have cut their ties to the group. let me give you a little history. there's an on-line advocacy group that's been around since 2005 called color of change. color of a change last december began contacting folks who were members of alec, big companies, and saying we are concerned alec is behind some laws that would restrict the ability of african-

americans and minorities. minorities. i will explain more about that in the second. we know that you are members and are concerned about it. you have a lot of african- americans who consumer products and we like you to reconsider your ties to alec. then there was the trayvon martin case and a lot of scrutiny of alec and the standard brown laws. we started to see at the beginning of this year and it has picked up speed in recent weeks. companies like kraft foods, mcdonald's, wendy's, pepsi, coca-cola all have decided not to go that route anymore. host: the headline of your story recently -- how does this relate? guest: this is broadly about the perils of corporations getting involved in politics. alec and companies cutting their ties is one aspect of it.

we have seen dozens of shareholder proposals in recent weeks for activist shareholders saying we want companies to disclose more about their political activity. we see people planning demonstrations at shareholder meetings. it is part of this whole debate going on about how much corporate activity there should be in politics. it sparked in part by a couple of recent rulings, including the supreme court ruling into citizens united that said corporations have the right to participate in candidate elections, they have the right to call for the election or defeat of candidates. and that has raised some concerns that you may see money from corporate treasuries and union treasuries directly involved in some of these heated congressional and presidential race. host: how has alec responded to

the media scrutiny and the scrutiny by left-leaning groups like the color change and other groups? guest: they have been very forceful. they have said they view it as intimidation by left-leaning groups that don't support their agenda and they have issued very, very strong statements. but there are now nine companies that have said they no longer want to participate. some companies, some of them have not spoken to me on the record about this, they said we are absolutely not giving up our membership, that it's very important for us to have a seat at the table when state lawmakers are considering issues that affect our business and we participate with local groups and conservative groups and middle-of-the-road groups and we are not budging. host: are these lobbyists? guest: they are not lobbyists. alec is a tax-exempt organization. they say that they are an

educational organization, their mission is basically the exchange of ideas. they're not necessarily lobbying anyone to pass bills. lawmakers who are members are sitting down and writing bills that other members can use around the country, but they d do not engage in lobbying activity. host: how much money do they get from their membership which includes corporations and state legislators and what do they do? with that do guest: it's about $7 million a year is their annual budget. most of the money comes from corporations and not from state lawmakers. they pay a much smaller membership fee. corporations can pay anywhere from $7,000 to $25,000 a year to be members. they pay a few thousand dollars more to participate in the task forces that work on legislative issues. they hold it meetings several times a year, corporations can sponsor scholarships through them, they help underwrite the

meetings. there is another task force meeting next month in north carolina. host: we're showing our viewers right now, between 2007 and 2007-- and then, also, from the national institute on money and politics, the american legislative exchange council in 2010 introduced a hundred 26 bills, 115 of those were enacted with a 40% success rate. 18% for other years. is there a group like this on the left? guest: not really. there are a couple of organizations that are influential on the left. you have the center for american progress, which is in washington. it is a pink tank. they certainly have advocated issues such as the health care overhaul way before the president was elected.

we saw that passed into law. then in a debate -- they are more of a traditional pink tank where you incubate ideas and get them out there. and quite as influential at the state level -- nothing quite as influential at the state level. there's the progress of state organization founded in 2005, but it has far less funding. host: are they doing anything illegal? guest: absolutely not. they say it is an exchange of ideas. host: let's get our viewers to weigh in on this. john is an independent in lancaster, pennsylvania. caller: it's about time that somebody covered alec. it was in the new york times recently. it has been in the news for the year. 60 minutes did a piece on alec. this is one of the biggest

corrupt outfits in the united states. they write the laws. the congress people verbatim put those laws in. host: can i jump in for a second? we just heard that they are not legally doing anything wrong. why do you call it corrupt? caller: because the people that run it --and they are primarily funded by the coen brothers -- they get the congress people to write the laws that they try to pass in congress -- the koch brothers. it is kind of like grover norquist. if you vote to raise taxes and he gets people to run against you, they primary those people, so it's bribery. guest: you are right. it has been around a long time and there have been people who have raised a raised alec all long time because they have been involved in pretty controversial

issues over the years. they have very close ties to corporate america. they have been involved in bills over the years, for instance, to have states withdraw from regional compacts on cap-and- trade legislation. they have also been involved in efforts to get in effortsto not advertise on the internet if there is a government service that would compete with a business. so they have been in the cross hairs of liberal groups for a long time. they are not new by any means. host: is it because they are successful? guest: i think they have been successful and more successful recently. we now. 26 legislatures controlled by republicans. and so, up from 14 in 2010. so the ideas are gaining more attraction in congress. host: now this on twitter --

guest: they are an organization that rights legislation with a right leaning tilt. some democrats and liberal groups have a problem with it. host: what other corporations or entities belong to this group? guest: their private enterprise board privatekoch industry -- their private enterprise board shows koch industries is involved, a number of pharmaceutical companies, including the trade association for pharmaceutical groups. host: glenn is a democratic caller in wisconsin. caller: good morning. thank you both. i have tried so hard. i have called in and try to get something going on alec.

this is a wonderful thing that you are doing. i would like to suggest for all the viewers and listeners out there, if they have access to the internet, they can go to alecwatch or alecexposed. i spoke to my local state assembly man in wisconsin. after he was elected and all the craziness happened in wisconsin, i asked my representative when did you find a find alec? ofs been a representative for your years and the city just found out about it in january when all this stuff came through. the gentleman from oklahoma and all his comments, i second that, that there are so many about alec.al

host: if there was a left-wing group to the equivalent, would you be just as upset? caller: i think that there are ways that people can communicate, but like so many people say, follow the money. part of the things you have already covered, is like privatization of schools and privatization of penal institutions. all these people that are promoting these -- i don't want to say on american -- unarmican, but the stand your ground -- unamerican. the voter id laws, they pointed

out that some of the people who have looked into it, it is an enormous amount of voter problems, but yet they put so much emphasis on it in some of the discussions to say eliminate young people, to eliminate people of color. these are the people who tend to vote democratic. so let's find a way to get rid of them, they say. guest: it is interesting, the voter id laws have been fascinating. something like 33 states last year considered a voter id laws. it passed in eight states and they are far stricter and there's considerable debate about them. there are some people on the democratic side who say this is an opportunity to get some friends -- to disenfranchise people who normally vote

democratic, which are students or african-americans. on the other also side people will say we need to protect the integrity of in person voting. --t: here's this tweet does alex has model legislation on the federal level or is it just the state's? guest: it focuses more on the state level. when they started back in 1973 they were thinking how can we sort of have a greater exchange of ideas and more control about issues that are more properly handled at the state level? host: who started it? , a lateenry high congressman from illinois. yrick, a w

conservative activist, who also helped found the heritage foundation. at first in chicago in the 1970's. host: here's how it works. legislators control the model legislation process, ideas for the legislation are presented in a task forcee, the task tasks debate that -- a task force is debate on whether they should adopt the legislation -- , a republican in winston-salem, north carolina. caller: good morning. i could talk for a half-hour. earlier she mentioned that the supreme court ruling that allowed corporations to give and unions, unions could give before that, so it was a one-sided deal for liberals. it does not surprise me. the same thing with this voter id. you just id. you claim that it does not work and he was trying to say that

there were just a few cases where happens. if you lose an election by 2 votes and 2 of those were fraudulent, would it not be nice it's a close election, i would think you would not want no fraud. they can manage to go to college and get registered for college, these students, but they cannot handle getting a voter id? it is just a speech to try to keep -- the fraud benefits democrats and they have no problem with fraud. that's the real reason behind it. guest: it's interesting, there's a lot of passion on both sides of the debate on voter identification. the experts i've spoken to say that it's hard to tell what the effect will be. the experts say that there are not lots of examples of fraud that have been proven, but on the other side some of them say

that the potential for disenfranchisement. is disenfranchisement host: back to the issue of alec in a tweet -- we showed those numbers before. 21.6000021 0.6 million. guest: certainly at the state level. very influential at the state level. certainly in the center for american progress in washington as a budget of about $38 million a year. i'm not saying they're writing model legislation, but they are influencing folks on the liberal side, too. host: what is that organization posted current connection with the white house? guest: john podesta was one of the founders and oversaw the president's transition.

and the current head of it also has ties to the administration. no one makes any secret of that. and again there's nothing illegal or nefarious or anything like that to have the tanks operating. the heritage foundation is not very far from here and they've done a very effective job over the years of advocating conservative principals. host: what about alec's contributions to state legislatures and members of congress here? guest: it has more to do with member companies and the fact that some of those companies also have donated to members of congress and state legislators. yes, these are companies that are active in politics at the federal and state level. think about it. if you are a soft drink manufacturer, you are very interested in regulation. you are very interested in knowing if there's going to be paid a tax on sugary drinks.

that is the bigger connection people have examined. host: it is the fact that the support alecmbers corporateal . let's go to jason, and independent caller. caller: good morning. i wish to get this statement out because it is key to america. i guess mitt romney was right or maybe not. corporations are people, too. name half the poor people that can even get legislation written. if you look at it, like the man said about the unions, the unions have not had a raise in years. look at the american people. wages have not gone up in years or decades.

the scariest part for me is i have been watching this stand your ground law and you have have drug dealers and using it now. all it takes is two stupid people of different colors to start something really if that does not have -- that has a huge repercussions. that is the scary part. host: a c-span democrat on twitter says this -- let's go to an democratic caller in virginia. caller: i will take this discussion a little bit different direction. one of the changes we are seeing a in the relationship between local governments and state government is special- interest has discovered that basically local government is not recognized by the federal

constitution and is totally an entity of the state, which means a local government passes a regulation, they don't bother dealing with local government, they go straight to the state legislature to get special regulation -- special legislation passed. it's much easier to lobby state government. example i like to use its advertising regulations that were past 10 years ago in myrtle beach, south carolina, that the advertisers did not like and they went straight to columbia, legislation passed which circumvented all local government regulation. it seems that this mechanism is what makes the organization you are talking about work. they don't have to deal with local government. host: steve, how do you know it is easier to lobby the state government? versus government? caller: because you only have one state government which will cover all state. much easier to make

contributions. much easier than having to go to each local government and each one has different laws. guest: that is interesting. it would be easier to have a state law passed or for that matter a federal law passed if you were interested in seeing some change in regulation. i think we are going to see more and more attention paid to what is happening at the state level. i'm in washington and i tend to write about lobbying campaign finance at the federal level. an enormous amount of regulation comes through the state level. host: on twitter -- jeff is a republican in charlotte, north carolina. the previous caller, ed, it is a little arrogant to assume that alec can control our elective

presented as viewpoints with a $70 million budget. they are individuals that think for themselves and most of them do not automatically not alec legislation and put it through. that is an arrogant perspective. as far as the left goes, you've got billions of dollars being spent by george soros and other organizations, perhaps not the state level. but it is arrogance to assume that alec can control state legislation just by the flick of a wrist. host: let me show our viewers what we showed earlier, the success rate of alec. caller: 14% is not very high. i don't know what state that is it. host: i think it's overall. of 100%.hat's 14% out

that is minuscule. that is insignificant. that is insignificant in my opinion. as far as the voter id laws, it's not that hard to go and get an identification card if you are a legal citizen with the right to vote. if you are here illegally, you cannot get an id card. host: on the issue of the success rate -- about 20%c says it's on average. that comes from one year. that is careless successful, but by no means of that imply that -- most laws they write don't become state laws. most model legislation. host: it's not easy to get any law enacted. guest: exactly. perhaps it also makes it easier for state lawmakers to do it over multiple states. someone in arizona might pick up a bill. someone in alabama might pick up

a similar bill. and you're not starting from scratch. by no means does alec have a direct pipeline into the statutes. host: our caller mentioned george soros. are there corporations that give democrats leaning groups similar to alec ? guest: at&t has supported the naacp and other groups across the spectrum, for example. something i should mention with his open society foundation, which is an umbrella group, is one of the supporters of color change, the group that has been highlighting alec ties to corporate america. host: an independent in mexico, go ahead. caller: good morning. i would like to elaborate on the

relationship between alec and the trayvon martin case. this is an analysis that was provided by john nichols. two members of alec, the national rifle association and walmart. walmart is one of the major gun sellers in the united states. one thing that has happened by the stand your ground legislation is that it limits the liability of gun sellers. so now what we have is gun sellers with less liability and therefore they cannot be taken to court for selling guns to people. so here we have a situation in florida where we are dealing with mr. zimmerman and a young man who was killed, when we should really be dealing with the national rifle association and the limiting of liability of major corporations to be charged a. a second point i would like to make is mentioned 14%.

what you should really consider is the percentage of the independent legislatures, 826 pieces of legislation across the united states. where would that 14% pass? was it largely in republican legislation? if so, does that tell you more than just the number of pieces submitted? thank you very much. guest: i don't know where they were all passed. i don't have the breakdown on that. but i do think that this whole question of stand your ground has really resonated with the public, because of the trayvon martin case. these laws say that you have the right to use deadly force and not retreat. it is something that alec has advocated that. it is something the nra has advocated. i think that is part of the reason we are now sitting here and talking about this organization, while it's been around for a long time, it's not

very well known. host: we have about 10 minutes left with the issue of special interest groups impacting state laws. we want to take a break can tell you about a program note real fast. the space shuttle discovery is flying over washington as we speak. we have live coverage that you can see on our web site, c- span.org. it is flying 148 miles and its resting spots will be washington, d.c., where it will be at the smithsonian. individuals in the washington area will have the opportunity to see discovery before it lands at dulles international airport. there is on our web site. democratic caller in jonesboro, arkansas, hope. caller: good morning. thanks so much for taking my call. i would like to would likeif al -- i would like to find out if alec is playing a role in the prevention of the ratification of the equal rights amendment in

the state's? guest: i have no idea. i'm sorry. host: now a republican in virginia, don. caller: thanks for taking my call. i think the problem that i have seen is the supreme court has been making all this mess because they are the ones who do whatever they want to do, because this is a business. the average person and corp. involved in politics, so you open a big doors to this. i think what they are doing is just for business reasons. they don't care about who is going to get hurt. it's about the money and it who pays me first. it's very sad that today, just like the previous caller who said that money does not involve politics. in every state, you look at people who run, however gets

more money gets elected. in this great nation we are going to end up that whoever pays more money will get elected and we will lose our democracy. thanks for taking my call. guest: one thing we should be clear on is the activity of corporations with state lawmakers and drafting template bills existed long before the citizens united states and in many ways is not affected by the citizens united states. i want to talk about that for a second, because there has been a great deal of concern that corporate treasury money would also appear in super pacs, these new groups that have been spending a lot of money, supposedly independently, for candidates to advance campaigns and encouraging people to vote for or against particular candidates.

we took a look at this. it is still mostly individuals who are providing the big checks to super pacs. there are some corporations. a lot of them tend to be private, closely held out loc's associated with wealth individuals. you're not seeing a bunch of publicly traded corporations that have consumer brands to protect participating in super pacs. we may see more corporations involved and other outside groups that don't have to expose their donors. host: now an independent in lafayette,. , caller: yes, i have been watching this conversation and other things have been revealed over the past several years. it seems that no matter what comes out about what goes on behind the scenes, the connection between big business, about the prom and the republican party, these people that have been influenced by fox

news for all these years, which i call the rich man's party, it does not matter if if these people came out with horns, and fox news would say there's nothing wrong with all little devil in anybody. i don't see how we are going together to these people. i wonder what you think about that. guest: again, all these things depend on your perspective. people involved in this say that we have a first amendment right to speech, it's very important for us to participate in legislation, we have a different point of view than some liberal groups and that's why we are being targeted. on the other hand there are people who say that they are deeply concerned that this is a back door for corporate america to influence legislation behind closed doors. host: a democratic caller in sheboygan, wisconsin. caller: thanks for taking my call.

i am not an independent or democrat or republican. i like my guns, i like owning them. with the nra being involved in politics and i am a member. they should not involved with any special interest group at the state or federal level. it's ridiculous to think that a group can infiltrate with money to get their ways past. 14% is a lot. we are talking about 1% of voters not being able to vote or getting their votes cast, a 14% of those statutes that they help or created, so to speak, pass. and usually they are for the companies to get what they want out of it, not the people working. host: you spoke about this a little. what have corporations said in response to the scrutiny over alec? guest: a combination.

some people have cut their time. in conversations and in statements they don't necessarily say they are doing it because of the pressure from color change. again, there's potential risk if people decide that -- let me be clear, color change is not call for a boycott. people feel there's a risk to their brand if all the sudden it is associated with controversy. host: now a call from tennessee. caller: what we hear from democrats is they want to shut down everybody's opinion but there's. they have every channel to voice their opinion. then we have one williams -- juan williams and yet they want to shut down fox. an organization that supports conservatives like the tea party, they want to shut them

up. just like the last so-called independent caller, he called on the wrong line. he is not an independent. host: is there any talk of legislation on capitol hill, hearings? guest: not that i have heard of. i think that we will continue to see scrutiny. i think that color change has indicated that they are going to be contacting more companies and promoting online editions of those companies. and i don't think it will go way right now. on a related issue, there are lots of folks, public pension fund managers, and other activists, who are determined to bring these issues before shareholders in meetings this spring. host: they want to know where the want-- where the corporate spending is going? guest: >> yes, they want corporations to expose political

spending, if they are using any corporate money for politics. the idea is if you are an investor, you want to know doingy are anything that could affect the value of your investments. some people are open and they say if we require more disclosure, the corporations would not get involved in political spending. and non-profit groups that might be running ads in the presidential elections moving forward. host: are democrats during up to creator on alec-like organization? guest: there are a couple of groups. there's the american legislative issue campaign exchange out of wisconsin. it was started several years ago to offer a model laws or state legislatures. it's not as big or as well known as alec. host: we have a few minutes left before the house of representatives comes in for

their morning business. larry is an independent in arizona. caller: i guess my point of view is that it seems to me alec -- and i voted for ronald reagan, but i have also voted for democrats, alec may be a suitable form of federal government. it is trying to replace the role the federal government has. -- alec is a pseudo form of federal government. guest: there are some issues that states have purview over, such as voting requirements. i think that the folks at alec would say we are just trying to help make it easier for states to come up with legislation that makes sense for them. it does not have to be uniform. host: matthew, an independent in

california. caller: hello. i just wanted to make a point that all the non-profit groups right now are really being abused, because it's not really what they are. they're being funded by entities, people, organizations with agendas. right now i don't think any of the groups really have a place in making our laws, because they're not representing people at all. host: how many groups or think tanks are there? guest: dozens and dozens and dozens just in washington alone. and you have a lot of groups that are organized as nonprofits under the tax code that will be involved in politics. you have everyone from trade associations like the u.s. chamber of commerce, which will be advertising heavily, to groups with fairly obscure names that also will be playing a big role in politics. and there's a push about amounts and there's a push about amounts of