look at fertility rates with the cdc.

and more than 2000 people had been turned away because there was not enough time or staff to deal with them. again, this is from "the new york times" from yesterday. under the program, our government will grant a two year prieve from deportation for illegal immigrants under age 31, have been in this country since they were children and meet our requirements. president obama initiated the program on june 15th, using his executive authority. he did say after legislation, known as the dream act which he supported and which would have given legal stattous young immigrants stalled in congress, he made broad use of presidential powers with

1.7 million immigrants estimated to be eligible for deferrals. again, 202 is the area code for our numbers. if you have a comment about this deferred deportation program for young illegal immigrants, we've got the numbers on the screen. >> if you're an downdocumented -- undocumented worker or illem immigrant, we want to hear from you, too. we're going to begin with a republican in raleigh, north carolina. jim you're on the "washington journal". >> this is -- caller: this is just another instance of abuse of power by barack obama and another instance of the destruction of rule of law in this

country. it's obvious pandering. why didn't he try to get this through when he had control of not only the executive branch but democrats took control of the legislative branch as well? it's clear political pandering and it's a shame because these poor folks are coming at it at good faith, even though they are breaking the law by being here, but i'm just curious, do you have the phone number -- i mean, where i is kind up -- can sign up? because mr. obama has bought everybody else's vote when it comes to unions and gay and lesbians, the list goes on and on. i'm just curious where can i sign up, because if he's buying votes maybe he'll cut me a check. i mean, that's the way he's taking america, just totally destroying it. that's just my opinion. guest: let's leave it there. anthony is an independent in washington, d.c. by anthony. caller: how you doing today? guest: good. caller: for one thing, these people came here, it was --

like the last caller talking about pandering. how do you pander to people who cannot vote? that's sinister. -- sinister. obviously he's not going after the vote. he's doing the right thing. these are young people who have been here not by choice. the parents brought them here, and if they do the right thing, go to school, serve in the service, these are the people who qualify. that's not a problem with -- there's not a problem with that. you can't keep this many people in the shadows in this country. it don't work that way. this is america. these are the same people who he keeps talking about, what the president is doing. that's okay. it was ronald reagan who gave immigrants amnesty, and opened up the flood gates. all he's trying to do is control the problem and the situation. that's all i can say. thank you, appreciate it. caller: if -- guest: if you can't get through on the phone lines, you can contact us electronically, send an e-mail, tweet or make the

comment on our facebook page, c-span wj is twitter, facebook.com/cspan and e-mail is journal at c-span.org and one shrine set aside for illegal and undocumented immigrants if you would like to make a comment about it, 202-628-o184 is the number for you to call. back to the new york times article. the agency managing the program, citizenship and immigration services, had only 60 days to prepare for the deluge of paperwork. the application form was first published on the internet on tuesday afternoon, officials at the agency said on wednesday that no major problems had been reported. immigrants must mail in the applications, which include a request for the deportation deferral and separate forms for a work permit. agency officials and immigrant advocates have warned young people there will be no appeals of applications that are denied so they should have all their

documents in order. as a result, few applications were submitted on wednesday. most immigrants who turned out were seeking guidance about whether they would be eligible and what documents they needed to prove they met the requirements. at the session, at the navy pier in chicago, organizers that the illinois coalition for immigrant and refugee rights set up rows of tables in a ballroom where dozens of lawyers and volunteers offered free individual counseling. prominent illinois democrats, all long time supporters of the dream act gathered at navy pier to mingle with the young immigrants and reap some of the political benefits of mr. obama's in addition twitch. one of them, senator richard durbin of illinois, wrote the original dream act 11 years ago, the second ranking democrat, and he was elated to see the huge crowd, quote, you can't stop this force, mr. durbin said to applause from the immigrants. this is a force of people who have grown up in this country and want to be part of this

future they're -- future they're crating. jake, go ahead. caller: yeah, i haven't been able to get through for six months so i hope you give me a couple of minutes about this issue. i'm a working guy, in roofing and siding for many years, long before there was a mexican for hundreds of miles hey, i wonder, the democrats mingle with hispanic hispanics, where they live. if you look at the migratory and meeting patterns of white liberals they did not live near the people they love to claim so much, blacks or hispanics. it's the working class whites that have to live with their compassion. in 1916, wao*pbd row wilson sent 5000 soldiers into blackjack pershing, seventh calvary, remained on the southern border, secured every square inch. that's the history. 1953, eisenhower acted,

american people demanded tens of thousands of legals be deported, joint military law enforcement operation removed tens of thousands of illegal immigrants. that's the history of our country. we had a golden door open from time to time but our back door was secured. why there no german vote? i'm of german descent, there are 60 million germans -- >> guest: we're going to move on, because we're off topic, want to think what you think about the deferred deportation program. nico, in north carolina, are you with us? last chance, we're going to move to john in -- >> caller: well -- >> guest: nico? please answer, turn down your tv and make your comments. caller: yeah, i mean, i feel like it's only -- i feel like obama is doing a real good job and stuff. i mean, i feel like people

are not paying -- not giving him -- like the most -- they're not giving him the -- they're not giving him the full -- you know what i -- >> guest: i apologize, but you want to try to get back in, that's fine, just a reminder, turn down your tv, you hear the delay and it gets a little confusing. don is an independent in lancaster, pennsylvania. how you doing john. caller: how you doing. the folks that they were born here, they don't know anything else. and the fact that their parents can -- were illegal, i just don't understand republicans or oppositions' feelings on not having this act go through. i'm in favor of what obama is doing. and the fellow that's talking about pandering to voters, republicans pander to

willfully ignorant white people and it's really a shame. they don't get the facts. they listen to fox news or watch fox news. it's really a shame. guest: that was john in lancaster, pennsylvania. this is from politico this morning, governor jan brewer defies white house on immigration, arizona governor jan brower -- brewer signed an executive order to deny benefits to young illegal immigrants who qualify under the white house's new deferred action policy. republican governor issued the order in response to the obama administration's decision to allow eligible illegal immigrants under 30 the chance to apply for a work permit in the u.s. brewer's state has one of the strictest antiimmigration laws in the country, directed that those illegal immigrants will not be able to receive public benefits in arizona. the new deferred action program does not confer upon them any unlawful or unauthorized status and does

not entitle them to any additional public benefits. brewer wrote in her order and the front page of the arizona republic this morning, this headline, migrant lawyers -- floyd, you're on the washington, what's your opinion of this deferred deportation program? >> caller: thank you for taking my call this morning. i think about it like i got grandkids that need jobs, okay? if my grandkids break the law, they put them in jail. okay? these people has broke the law, they come over here, brought their kids illegally, broke the law and now they made them legal and they're getting the jobs. i think the president has done the american people dirty by taking these people, letting them get jobs and stuff illegally and my grandkids need jobs, they can't pay for their homes, they can't pay for their

food, for nothing, because the illegals are coming in and taking them. this is absolutely wrong. we need a fence, we need to stop them and that's my opinion. guest: that was floyd in jonesville, virginia. this is frank on our twitter page. with unemployment this high, why would you not deport these people? the law is the law. get ready to pay for their kids is his view. fred says illegals should be kicked out of the country since the president can't do the job. he needs to go. other countries get this country. and here is t.j., the key word is illegal, a word that obama doesn't seem to comprehend, and finally, steve says have we forgotten this, give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses, yearning to breathe free. donna in nottingham, maryland, is a democrat. hi donna. caller: hi. all i have to say is i think this will affect the unemployment rates, which are already pretty bad.

and the big argument used to be, well, they took all the jobs that no one else wanted. do you know what i'm saying? >> guest: we're listening. caller: they would take the jobs that no one else wanted in the country, and so it didn't really affect the normal unemployment rates, because they weren't really jobs that were, you know, counted in that respect. and the unemployment rates are already being, you know, brought up by newt, in the election, and won't that affect the election negatively for president obama, whom i love? guest: that was donna in nottingham, maryland, this is from "the new york times" this morning. few voters are truly up for grabs, research shows, about one third of americans describe themselves as independent voters, creating a widespread impression that a large group of americans

will provide the decisive swing votes in this year's election but that impression is misleading, polling experts and political scientists say. many self-described independents, close to half according to surveys, rely iably vote for own party or the other and many true swing voters think in swing states like texas or california where no analyst doubts the outcome in november. despite the cliches between walmart moms those up for grabs is probably between 3 percent and 5 percent in this election, polling experts say. the obama and romney campaigns are expected to spend on the order of $2 billion, in part to try to sway this tiny share of the electorate, quote, there's a very small slice of people who are genuinely undecided but it's enough to win the presidency, said rich thesen, political director for mr. romney's campaign, the share of swing voters may have even declined in recent

years as many voters have become more reliably partisan a part by the pew research group found that self-identified liberal democrats are more liberal than the past and self-identified republicans are more conservative. that's just a little bit from "the new york times". this article is also from that paper. brian says herd in seeking stimulus money, represent paul ryan said thursday that it was a mistake to have requested funds in 2009 from the federal stimulus bill after voting against it. mr. romney earlier denied asking for prone from the $787 billion bill on behalf of companies in his wisconsin district, contradicting a report by the boston globe on tuesday that he wrote to the federal energy department requesting financing for two companies to develop so-called green jobs, quote, no, i never asked for stimulus. mr. brian said in an interview broadcast on

thursday, mr. ryan, along with hith romney have denounced the stimulus pweupl as an example of president obama's failure to restore the economy. that's from "the new york times". next call comes from hendersonville, north carolina, millie is on our independent line. hi millie, you are on c-span. millie? caller: i'd like to say that the illegal immigrants, i don't care what age you were when you came here, should not be given any preferred status, even children born to illegal aliens in this country should not be given automatic citizenship. these people are a drain on our economy. they get ebt, they get wic, they get all sorts of assistance that our government cannot afford to be paying. so illegal is illegal from any standpoint and should not be given my preferred status. thank you. guest: from the financial times newspaper this morning,

worldwide businesses back obama. business executives from around the world think it would be better for the global economy if barack obama remained u.s. president than if mitt romney unseated him in november, according to a financial times economist global business barometer survey. twice as many of the 1700 executives polled said a victory for mr. obama would be better for the global economy than said the same for mr. romney. the remaining 37 percent thought it would make no difference who won the election. opinion was more balanced among respondents in the u.s., with 37 percent said mr. obama would be better, compared with 33 percent for mr. romney. by the way, we read a couple of articles dealing with politics this morning. well, you know what's coming up, and those are the conventions. tampa and charlotte. the republicans kick off in tampa on august 27th. that runs through

august 30th. the democrats start up september 4th through the sixth and as you well know, if you're a regular c-span viewer, gavel to gavel coverage of both conventions. we will have all sorts of personnel down in both locations, doing side stories, et cetera, but gavel to gavel coverage of both conventions, as well. u.s.a. today this morning, kennedy, jackson in deep depression, representative jesse jackson, jr. is in a deep depression and has a lot of work ahead of him on the road to recovery, former rhode island congressman patrick kennedy said thursday after visiting the hospitalize -- hospitalized chicago democrat. jackson has been on medical leave since june 10 when he collapsed at home in washington, he is currently being treated for bipolar ii disorder at the mayo clinic in rochester, minnesota. next call from kirin in orlando on our republican

line. kirin, you are on the washington journal. what do you think about this deferred deportation program? caller: i think it's a great idea. it goes to the principle that children, the innocent party here, should not be penalized. this is not an amnesty. these children are brought, they had no decisions whatsoever. i don't remember when i got a job, i had any say in where i was going to live. my parents made that decision. secondly on jobs, illegal aren't taking jobs or margicly taking jobs, it's our country men, fellow americans that are firing other americans and hiring them. this is an american people problem. it is not a government problem. it's our own citizens that are hiring these people. and lastly, on jan brewer, i think she's a disgrace to america. she is prejudice and it shows. just two days ago, she released a woman that murdered a 15 month-year-old child. she released them, but then

she doesn't want to give them benefits, to children of people that brought their kids over here? i mean, that's so heartless. i think she's the most heartless person. that senate bill 1070, there are so many kids kidnapped, molested and raped in law. where is the law for those people that commit those crimes? guest: we're going to leave it there kirin. by the way if you're an illegal immigrant or undocumented immigrant and would like to call in and talk about this deferred deportation program, 202-628-o184 is the number for you to call. better move on to cleveland, maria is a democrat in cleveland, hi maria. caller: hi. i agree with the last caller. these young people did not have anything to do with how they got here, okay? most of them that were

brought here are school age, okay? we are a nation of immigrants. nobody came over here rightfully, okay? if you look at all the european people that came here, they came here and took this land from the indians, okay? >> and african-americans, they built this country on the backs of their ancestors. all of us is in this pot together, and a lot of people don't want to accept that. but we are a nation of laws. and then even if they do wind up with citizenship, they'll probably be facing the same thing the african-americans in this country is facing, in 2012, voter suppression. thank you. guest: a few more tweets have come in regarding this issue, joseph ramirez tweets in a decent thing to do, america does not punish innocent kids, well done mr. president dwayne jackson says illegal immigrants need to be deported, we cannot afford to take care of our citizens and obama knows this.

it is political for him. and finally, monty says immigrants have and still are the pillar of our nation. they come with one mouth, two hard working hands, and they earn every penny. and from our facebook page, there are also comments being made, richard says this is open -- this has opened the door for so much fraud. i'm sure all these young people had no idea what citizenship was. now we must deal with these immigrants but we must stop this invasion or make this one big corrupt mexico country just north of the border. in facebook.com/cspan, in case you'd like to continue that conversation. our next call from rebecca in richmond, virginia, republican line. hi rebecca. caller: hi, good morning. i just wanted to agree with the last two people. i have illegal family here, and i think it's a good idea. because they came here when they were young, they've

worked really hard for everything, and they have two working hands, like the other person says, so they can go out and find a job, go to school. if they want to go to school and they have no criminal records, why not? that is -- it's good for them, it's good for everybody. i mean, there's always problems finding jobs. it depends on how you look for them. >> guest: your family members, did they apply for this deferred deportation program, did they look into it? caller: yes they have. defendant. guest: what's you hear about it? caller: they just sent the paper out yesterday, and they turned in everything. my other brother, he just graduated from college, got a degree. and -- guest: >> is he illegal or undocumented? caller: yes. and it's hard, because they have to live in the shadows

all the time. and it's good for them to come out. it's really hard, you know. you don't know how hard it is guest: how long have you been in this country, rebecca? caller: like -- i'm 25, i've been here 20 years. guest: did you come over the same way, as a young child? caller: yes. guest: have you gone through school, have you applied for the deferred deportation program? caller: no, i haven't, because i didn't finish my schooling. guest: okay. caller: but my brothers do, and if they can get an opportunity, why not. guest: all right. well, thank you for calling in and sharing your experience, rebecca. and next we'll go to camelo in columbus, nebraska on our republican line. all right camelo, that volume. you know the rules.

move on to chase city, virginia. marcus, democrat. hi marcus. marcus are you with us? you know what, while we get the phone situation settled, let's look at more articles in the paper. this is from the hill newspaper, report, congress broke social media rules in rush to discuss ryan as vice president. several congress members may have broken the rules, regulating official use of social media last weekend when responding to mitt romney's announcement of his g.o.p. running mate, according to the sunlight soundation on thursday. republicans and democrats like many regular citizens rushed to twitter and facebook on saturday to express their opinion of romney's choice of representative paul ryan. the various offices later deleted many of the tweets sent to official twitter accounts but the protranspairnessy sunlight foundation archives deleted tweets by individual members

of congress at its politiw politiwoops website, it's illegal to comment on these matters. it's also bad practice because it confuses constituents on which is political and which is official. the news of a v.p. pick has nothing to do with your elected official duties. that's in the hill newspaper. and in politico, maggie haberman's column, this is by emily schultise, it shows since the pick of paul ryan for v.p. nomination, the 49 percent are supporting president barack obama, and 45 percent are supporting mitt romney. this is also in politico this morning, chris van hal and is chosen as ryan stand-in for biden debate prep, he will

play paul ryan in debate prep when it comes to debating joe biden this fall in the vice presidential debate which will be held in kentucky and of course will be on c-span. charlotte, florida, rick on the independent line, rick, please go ahead with your question or with your comment regarding deferred deportation for illegal immigrants. caller: i'd like to make the comment that we are a country of laws, a nation of laws. but i was just wondering about the unemployment rate, now that we've got all these new illegal immigrants that are going to be now shown as unemployed, does that deem us that unemployment is going to go up, and president obama is going to have even more problem with the unemployment rate? i don't quite understand what

-- of him currying the favor of the illegal immigrants. that's my comment. thank you very much. you do a good job. guest: our next call from james on our illegal immigrant line. james, good morning to you. caller: good morning. yeah, i don't really understand why these -- >> [inaudible] >> i think the united states is a nation of immigrants. no one in this country can tell me the reasons -- you know the europeans met the indians here and through them off their land. i want to clear that up that no one has the right to be in this country if you're an illegal immigrant. >> inaudible]

>> reagan was the first republican president to have amnesty for everybody and i think it's a good thing to do. the republican that called in, i mean, we all need to come out of the shadows. guest: james, did you look into the deferred deportation program for yourself? caller: i'm thinking about it now. guest: what's your story, where are you from originally ? caller: i'm from this area. guest: how did you get into the area, can a student visa? caller: yes, a student visa. guest: you talked about living in the shadows. can you give us an example of what that's like? caller: it's really hard. it's very hard. because you have to have

documentation to work, you have to do hard jobs, you cannot go to school because of your status and all of that. it's really difficult to get away from that, and it's very hard. guest: james, thank you for calling in. lawrence is a democrat in thorny, texas. caller: good morning. guest: hi. caller: my take on this is that like some of the previous callers, we all came to america, mostly illegal, outside of the indians. and also, what i'd like to say is that these are young kids, holding down jobs without social security numbers, and with them being

on social security rolls, this will also help. we got to think about those things. and that's my comment today. guest: all right. a couple more. facebook comments here, this is shawn's comment, i am not a supporter of pandering to illegal immigrants unless they serve in our military. in simple terms, that is the law and they should be deported. and jeannie says america and americans are exceptional. our country is big enough and strong enough to absorb these young people. roy, republican, ashville, north carolina, roy, what's your thoughts on the deferred deportation program? caller: i think they ought to be deported. i mean, in my honest opinion, i support the governor of arizona. i don't think they ought to be getting benefits and all this, because people around here, if you break the law, you're locked up. i agree with the guy earlier. and if they think it's such a good idea to have them come

in, they need to come visit north carolina and come see what they've done to it. thank you. guest: mitt romney's campaign has just sent out a quick e-mail memo, and they write, tomorrow marks a week since mitt romney announced his choice of congressman paul ryan to join him on america's comeback teal and it's clear his choice has reshaped the race in a positive way. since the announcement last saturday, here's some of the facts from the romney campaign. online fundraising, donations, 124,000 plus donations, the amount, over $10 million, average donation, 81. new donors, of those 124,000, 68 percent were new donors, and on facebook, another 510,000 likes or views.

now up to 4,360,000. and twitter gained 54,000 new followers, now up to 861. paul ryan on his facebook page, another 860,000 people following him, and another 118,000 followed him on twitter, 45,000 volunteers signed up to volunteer. that's from the romney campaign. delicia is in richmond, virginia on our independent line. good morning. caller: whoops, sorry about that. i need to push the button. please go ahead. caller: okay. good morning, i just wanted to say that i think that the age appropriation is right. because the united states did not want these people over here, they would have stopped it at the very beginning when they started coming in groves. they allowed these children to grow up here, to get an

education, and now they want to just, you know, kick them out. now, if they didn't want it, then they should have stopped it like they said in the beginning. so i think the age appropriation is right. i don't agree that illegal immigrants should have just come over. but since the americans eventually allowed them to do it, then yeah, it's right. if you're 31 and -- then you should be allowed to stay here, because this is all that you know. you may not know anything about mexico or whatever country you came from. guest: all right. thank you for calling in this morning. a couple more tweets. this is from l trucks, think how you would respond to being taken from your life and suddenly being plopped down in a different country. and t.j. says if you're a noncitizen and break the laws, you get rewarded, if you're a citizen and break the laws, you go to jail. next call from upper valley, california, bridget on our

democrats' line, bridget you're on the washington journal, we're talking about the deferred deportation program of the obama administration. please go ahead. col i really feel like for the kids, they have to experience the things that they have experienced and that they've done, and play by all the rules. however, i live in an area that's heavily populated with nonenglish speaking hispanics, and trying to get jobs and employment in local medical facilities, that seems to be an issue. they want you to be bilingual i think this is going to affect the unemployed united states citizens because now they will be available with all the people that have submitted these applications to work, to use them instead of using us because of the language barrier that a lot of the people have. and i know that some doctors'

offices that i have either gone to or worked for, they want everybody to speak spanish, and it doesn't take six people to interpret spanish. so it is quite a challenge for people, every day people, who are just trying to make a living, to take care of themselves. so i feel for the people, the young people, however, i think this is going to be a big problem. guest: all right. thank you for calling in this morning. political energy is the name of the lead editorial this morning in the "washington post". and "the washington post" takes on both president obama and governor romney. says here, there's no surprise that mr. obama's three-day bus tour of iowa this week, he munched pork, downed beer and de cried congress' failure to pass a new five-year farm bill, according to mr. obama, the record draught ravaging corn crops in iowa and elsewhere

strengthens the case for the farm bill. now the best way to help the states is for congress to act, they need to pass a farm bill that not only helps farmers and ranchers respond to natural disasters but also makes necessary reforms and gives them long term certainty. actually, almost nothing in the farm bill, "the washington post" writes, would affect drought-stricken farms one way or the other. about 80 percent of the bill is nearly $1 trillion price tag over ten years reflects the cost of food stamps andsention , an essential part of the safety net. the rest is largely a grab bag for subsidies for producers with the biggest benefits for the largest farm. the editorial goes on to talk about mitt romney, republican challenger mitt romney deserves credit for opposing an extension to the wind subsidy, a position that could hurt him in iowa and in colorado and other windy -- another windy swing state. too bad the tkpw-fpl op candidate engaged in pandering himself, encouraging coal miners in

ohio were going to, quote, save your jobs. what if replacing coal plants with gins expensive natural gas would cut greenhouse gas emissions? ohio is a swing -- ohio is a swing state. back to your calls on the deportation -- deferred deportation program. by the way, here are the rules as set up by the obama administration. it's for folks 31 or younger, as of june 15th, and if they entered the u.s. before their 16th birthday, have lived in the u.s. continuously since '07 and living in the u.s. on june 15th, when applying for the deferred deportation program. martin is a republican in cincinnati. martin, you're on the "washington journal", go ahead. caller: good morning, thank you for taking my call. i appreciate your program. guest: you're welcome. caller: well, i am actually a little embarrassed by my

republican counterparts on their take on this. even though i do believe that it's a little too late for obama to be put in -- putting these programs on there, i personally think he's trying to play on our hispanics' intelligence, i think this is for a vote getter, while at the same time, i do think it's a good program. he is finally dealing with the issue. for three years, nobody has dealt with the issue. that's the problem, that they're illegal, what do we do with them. you either deport them or give them an opportunity for citizenship. then the program makes it clear that they have to be here before their 16th birthday. these were children. these were children. we should be honored to give them an opportunity to do something with their lives,

no matter where they came from, however they got here, they're here now, and being a black american, we should be looking out for the man at the bottom of the totem poll. -- totem pole. it's hard enough to get a job. it's twice as hard for them to get a job. we've got to think this through, and i expressed this to my republican counterparts. we have to soften up on the disadvantaged. we have no right to be so hard on people coming here from hardship. i could go on and on about it. and i -- . guest: we'll let your comments stand there. a couple more of our facebook comments, quite a lively conversation going on on facebook, and this is a chance for you to continue the conversation if you're interested. this will be posted all day long, facebook.com/cspan.

steve says this is the case for 1.7 million imtkpwrapblts to be given preferential treatment for college placement and jobs versus legal u.s. citizens, why are these young people exawlt dollars and -- exalted and considered superior to u.s. citizens, olympia says not all are from mexican, we need more exceptional young people working in this country and sherman writes in maybe people who complain about illegal immigrants should register business people who hire them. can't have supply without demand. mark in lakeland, florida, please go ahead with your comments about the preferred deportation program. caller: first comment is about the comprehensive reform thing act, dream act, we're going to make them pay back taxes, make them disclose who they work for

and all these things, so where is that in the plan? why aren't they going to have to expose their backtaxes and pay all this? and secondly, the guidelines that they set, which you showed on your screen, are not totally correct. they don't have to be in high school. they can be middle school dropouts and it's not like -- you know, obama stood there and say we're going to take the best and brightest, these are the young, intelligent, best, brightest and they have been honor students. that's not true. i remember the amnesty -- the '86 amnesty. and i work at a company that hired illegals and at that time, and once they got their amnesty, they moved on to easier, better jobs. so you can't sit there and quantify this by saying they're just taking the hardest jobs that americans won't do, because they're

just taking those jobs because they're allowed to take those jobs. guest: we'll leave it there, move on to vallerie, a democrat in atlanta. hi vallerie. caller: hi. i believe that this is the most compassionate way to handle the undocumented youth i believe that it's like the president said, these children were not -- they didn't have a choice. they came with their parents. and i just believe that if it were my children and if i was in that situation, if i was undocumented, at least i would want my children to benefit from my actions. i certainly wouldn't want them to be punished, and so that's basically my thought. i just think it's a good idea and i'm grateful that the president took a step on it. guest: many of the papers we get here at the "washington journal" in the morning have the same lead story. here is the story. romney says he paid at least 13 percent in income taxes. that's the lead story in the "new york times". and in the "washington post", as well.

this is from the financial times. the u.k. refuses to let assange leave for ecuador. he is at the embassy in london. the equadorian embassy, u.s.a. today this morning, army suicides hit high in july. and next, last call on this topic from lancaster, pennsylvania, charlene on the republican line. you're the last word for this topic this morning. caller: yes, good morning, thank you very much for taking my call, thank you c-span and the viewers this morning. number one, i would like to just get a little history straightened out quickly. number one, everybody, african-americans are hoot -- we were brought here. we did not come here. let everybody understand that. in lieu of that, i think that obama must stay out of the politics of this immigration, and we need to do what the

callers previously said, tax the people who keep hiring folks. because truly enough, when mexicans or africans or whomever these people are, that they're talking about, when they get to a certain level, a certain educational level and certain monetary level, they will move on to better jobs, and then there will be somebody else at the lower end of the tad pole. of the spectrum. so i just wanted to clear that up for everybody who says that we all calm here as immigrants. we did not come here as immigrants. some people were brought here as slaves. okay? reparations are still on the table. when african europeans and americans should pay back what they need to pay back to african-americans. then we can talk. guest: charlene, thank you for calling in. thank you to everybody for calling in. finally want to show you this article quickly, time and cnn reinstate fareed zakaria, his program will resume on

august 26th. well, we have three guests coming up and david walker, former head of the government accountability office will be here in about 45 minutes to talk about u.s. debt and his solutions for that. coming up next is mike grunwald. here's the cover of his new book, it's called "the new new deal, the hidden story of change in the obama era". we'll be right back. >> in marie curry and her daughter's the private lives of first family, the relationship between the sizist and her two daughters, the first official white house vid ogographer

chronicles his experiences capturing president obama's first term in first cameraman, documenting the obama presidency in real time. in the freedom manifesto, why free markets are moral and big government isn't, steve forbes, ceo of forbes incorporated and elizabeth ames, former member of the texas house of representatives, argue that a free market is the only way to a fair, moral and free society. peter davidson, editor of george orwell's complete work presents orwel l's 11 surviving diaries which provide insight into the author's personal life. in the war on student radicals and reagan's rise to power, seth rosenfeld chronicles the fbi involvement in the 1960s and why it mattered to ronald reagan. rich miniter examines the most important decisions of president obama's first term

in leading from behind, the reluctant president and the advisers who decide for him. look for these titles in bookstores this coming week. and watch for the authors in the near future on book tv and on book tv.org. >> if you want to come to america illegally, don't waste your time going across the border and through the desert. it's dangerous. just get in an airplane, fly here and overstay your visa. we have absolutely no ability to check who you are and get you back. and the total number of undocumented in this country has been going down for a long time. have we solved the problem? we solved the problem by having our economy crater. people don't come here to put their feet up and collect welfare. they come here to work. if there's no jobs, they don't come here. if they're here and can't find a job, they go home. because america is not a good place to sit around and think the state is going to support you. in the case of your son, somebody has got to create the business that he's going to go to work for. and all of the numbers show,

immigrants, and i think it's because it's a self-selecting thing, it can't be easy to leave australia, come to the other side of the world, literally, give up all your friends and family and everything, everything -- everything you know, and start out from scratch. and that's what people are willing to do. so of course immigrants are going to be more aggressive, of course they're going to be more risk takers. that's why they come here. >> mayor bloomberg is joined at this event by news corporation rupert murdoch. you can watch their entire discussion at 8:00 eastern on c-span. "washington journal" continues. >> i don't want to pretend that today marks the end of our economic problems. nor does it general citytute all of what we're going to have to do to turn our economy around. but today does mark the beginning of the end. >> guest: and that was president obama in february 2009,

talking about the recovery act, and now on your screen is mike grunwald, author of " -- of this new book "the new new deal, the hidden story of change in the obama era". mike grunwald, do you agree with the president that the recovery act, the stimulus bill, was the beginning of the end of our economic problems? guest: certainly the beginning of the end of our economic disaster. people forget in the fourth quarter of 2008, g.d.p. dropped at a 9 percent annual rate. that's a depression. at that rate we would have lost an entire canadian economy, in 2009. in january 2009, we lost 800,000 jobs and that turned out to be the worst month. in february we passed the recovery act, that spring we had the greatest improvement in jobs numbers in 30 years. of course it improved from absolutely cataclasmic to just kind of bad. so in that sense, it was the end of the utter catastrophe,

but of course, you know, 2 percent growth that we're having today is not fantastic. it's just a lot better than negative 9 percent growth. host: overall in your view, in your research, was the recovery act successful? did it achieve what it was supposed to? guest: it was. it's an imperfect piece of legislation, put together by imperfect human beings through an extremely imperfect legislative process but it's called the american recovery and reinvestment act and it did really sort of jump start the recovery. not really a great recovery but it created maybe 2-3 million job which didn't fill an 8 million job hole but was certainly better than it would have been without it. what i read about a lot in the book, where you get the title "the new new deal" is the reinvestment part, this was also the purist distillation of what obama meant by change we can believe in that he's talked about during the campaign. they were going to have to spend $800 million, clearly,

has an historic downturn that was going to last for a while and was going to need stimulus not just for six months but a few years, he kind of figured this is the time to do the things he said he was going to do, things like energy, where they put in $90 billion for clean energy, when we were just spending a few billion dollars a year, education where you have race to the top, the landmark education reform bill of the last few decades, health information technology, where you pour $27 billion into essentially taking this pen and paper medical system we have, where your doctors can kill you with this chicken scratch handwriting, and in a few years, pretty much every american will have an electronic medical record. those kind of changes, in addition to the sort of standard middle class tax cuts, you know, aid to victims of the great recession, aid to states so they don't have to lay off teachers and cops and it pretty much did what it was supposed to do. host: the phrase

"shovel-ready" -- guest: obama said shovel ready wasn't as shovel ready as we thought. in a way that's a little misleading. it kind of was actually as shovel ready as they thought. things like cutting checks to states or sending all seniors $250 or getting out food stamps or unemployment benefits, that went out very quickly. that got money into the economy. that's one of the reasons you saw that immediate end of the free fall. and then some of the other projects, you know, those were the sort of -- the construction projects, the highways, the subways, the world's largest solar farm, the world's largest wind farm, you know, a half dozen of america's first battery fact weres for electric vehicles, the health i.t. stuff. some of that took longer but it was also kind of by design. so the fact that the obama administration did hit every one of its spending targets on time. host: in your book, "the new

new deal" you write obama thought a lot about the new deal while assembling the recovery act, but in some ways it's an apples to bicycle comparison. while president f.d.r. forged the new deal through a barrage of sometimes contradictory initiatives and adjusted over several years, the stimulus was a single piece of legislation cobbled together and squeezed through congress before most of obama's appointees were even nominated. the new deal was a journey, an era, an aura, the recovery act was just a bill on capitol hill. but it was an astonishingly big bill in constant dollars. it was more than 50 percent bigger than the entire new deal. guest: it was a big deal. i first stumbled upon this -- i live in south beach, the public policy paradise, and so i was in part of this washington group thing. i lived here for many years.

but if i was here i doubt i would have thought to write a book like this. because in washington this thing was seen as an $800 billion joke. it was just, you couldn't even talk about it without sort of rolling your eyes and snickering. it was just considered incredibly uncool. even the president joked off his annual thanksgiving pardon he saved or created four turkeys. this is the reason he doesn't use the word stimulus anymore. but particularly when i write about energy, and when i saw there was $90 billion for clean energy, that unprecedented investments in wind, solar and other renewables and energy efficiency and clean coal and the smart grid and electric vehicles and advanced biofuels, in everything, i mean, this was clearly a kind of game changing thing and it made me think, huh, there's all this for energy, what else is there. and it really did turn out that all these campaign promises that obama had made, that people didn't pay that much attention to partly because they were interested in his race and his ads about

him and paris hilton, and partly because his agenda was the standard democratic agenda of reversing the bush era and investing in the future, so nobody really focused on what he actually wanted to do policy wise. but it turned out he kind of -- sort of before his age knew where the bathrooms were in the west wing, he went ahead and did it. >> host: mike grunwald, living in florida you've probably seen this ad. this is mitt romney's ad on the recovery act. >> where did all the obama stimulus money go, friends, donors, supporters, special interest groups, where did the obama stimulus go in solyndra, $500 million tax pair dollars, bankrupt. where did the obama stimulus money go? windmills from china, electric cars from finland. >> 79 percent of the $2.1 billion in stimulus grants awarded through went overseas companies. >> i'm mitt romney and i approve this message.

host: mike grunwald. guest: i don't come at this as a cheerleader for anybody. i'm a reporter. i've an mainstream reporter for 20 years. that ad makes my head want to explode. my favorite -- and we can talk about solyndra, which is sort of a nonscandal, an unfortunate $500 million problem, which, you know -- but only 1 percent of the clean energy portfolio. but the wind turbines from china, that's the one that makes me crazy. actually, because of the recovery act, the domestic content of u.s. wind turbines has doubled and it may have tripled, and this was an insourcing bill rather than an outsourcing bill, so it's a classic example of you see schumer there demagoguing because some of this money went to foreign companies. but it doesn't matter whose corporate name is on the polo shirt. the jobs were created in america. it's just a really ludicrous

argument. but i understand the politics, that it sounds like all this money going out, cronyism. there's not -- the republicans subpoenaed 300,000 pages of documents. i've spoken to the people who made this solyndra decision. there was not an iota of political pressure to actually make that loan. the reason solyndra failed is because solar got really cheap and because of the recovery act, solar installations have increased 600 percent since 2008. it's an unfortunate story but the idea that this somehow discredits the rest of the recovery act, you know, before the stimulus, independent experts predicted that 5-7 percent of it would be lost to fraud. they put the toughest investigator in washington, earl devaney in charge of this, he's the guy that busted jack abramoff, and so far, they've found about $10 million in fraud,

.11 percent. he says he's tphra*or gasted. whether you're a democrat, republican, communist, he likes to say, you've got to be excited about this has not been the big criminal boondoggle, full of cronyism that people expected. >> host: and back to your book before we go to calls, critics often argue that while the new deal left behind iconic monuments, the hoover dam, skyline drive, fort knox, the stimulus bill will leave a mond ain -- mundane legacy, sewage plants, state employees who have been laid off without it. even the recovery act's architects fears that like winston churchill's pudding it lacked a theme. in reality, it's creating its own icon, zero energy border stations, state of the art battery factories, eco friendly coast guard headquarters on a washington hillside, one of a kind advance sycroton life force in a new york lab. it's restoring old icons, the

brooklyn bridge, bay bridge and the imperilled everglades. >> what i go on to say, its main legacy like the new deal will be changed. that obama had talked about sort of not just getting the economy out of the gutter, but essentially, the new economy where you have a better educated work force, where you have lower health care costs, where you would be less dependent on fossil fuels and less -- using energy in ways that don't boil the planet. .

on energy, governor numberry said he wants to get -- romney said he wants to get rid of the tax credit for wind energy, doesn't believe in it. he said these sources of energy are, according to congressman ryan, is a fad.

if he comes here he will know that thousands depend on this energy. this is not a fad. it's the future. every time you go to the pump, let's start investing in clean energy that will create jobs and secure our future. that's the difference in this election. guest: you know, i'll bore you with some numbers. the -- in 2009 when obama took office, this is right after the financial collapse, and a lot of these wind and solar companies, they really do rely on these tax credits. and at the time, because nobody -- no investors had any tax liability because they didn't have any profits, the industries had really just shut down. wind turbines were literally rusting in the fields because projects were not getting finished. at the time the federal government's energy forecast said we had 25 gigawatts at the

time, they said by 2030 we'd have 40 gigawatts. well, it's 2012 and we have 50. in three years we have done more than they said would take 20. it really has and it's because the recovery act essentially turned those tax credits into grants. there should be a great debate in this country about the extent of government intervention and the economy, the sort of green industrial policy where they have worked on trying to insource this stuff. but instead we had this debate over this bizarreo world stimulus, where we are talking about mob museums and all the stuff that wasn't in the stimulus. i felt when i was covering this it was this bizarreo world thing where, you know, i was write being in bill that was on time and underbudget and, you know, pretty well managed and

kind of making the change that was pretty much supposed to do. and i was the only one. actually vice president biden even made fun of me. told me, oh, i take all your articles to bed. i sleep with them. i love them so much. i didn't get into journalism to kind of write the kind of articles that joe biden would want to cuddle with. i do like debunking myths. i do like following facts. this just felt like a gigantic story that was just hidden in plain view. hubie: michael grunwald is a longtime "washington post" correspondent and the author, this is his second book, "the new new deal: the hidden story of change in the obama era." now it's your turn to talk with him. we're going to begin with leonardo, a democrat in newark, new jersey. hi, leonardo. how are you doing? caller: how are you doing? host: good. caller: my question is, $787

billion, that's a lot of money. you mentioned waste, fraud and abuse. i just like to know, like, is there any -- is there none, is there 5%, is there -- i mean, there has to be in $787 billion -- guest: exactly. caller: no run can trust anyone with $787 billion and be honest with the american people. guest: i tell you what the guy who is overseeing this, and he was former secret service. he's a hard ass cop. what he said is that this is the most scrutinized money in the history of the federal government. there have never been so many eyes on it. like you can imponline to recovery.gov and see what's being spent and spent in your neighborhood and that's created a lot of problems for the administration, right? remember the money being spent in phantom congressional

districts which turned out to be typos. like vice president biden said to me, like, every wart you see. but that's really -- there's a reason that people thought that 5% of this would be lost to fraud and so far it's only been .001%. if you were a crook you would be an idiot to steal this money. host: west virginia, eric on our republican line. good morning. caller: yes. what i'm trying to figure out, i always wanted to ask this question -- where does the federal government have the right to redistribution of wealth to invest in the private market? and if it was a good investment, why didn't they allow private industry to invest in it? of course they wouldn't have because there would be no return. it's always been said even back in -- during calvin coolidge during the roaring 20's things

did so well because of the cuts, if you allow the market to fail, then people like myself, i could go out and buy these homes and the market would turn around and start right back. as long as the federal government sticks its nose in the place where it absolutely does not belong, then people like me, we don't have a chance to invest in these places. the market will rise and the narkt will fall, but it takes my money and redistribute it into general motors and all these different things, i believe it's totally wrong. i would like to know what gives them the constitutional power to redistribute america's money. host: all right. we'll leave it there, eric. caller: it's an important idea. and that philosophy, which i have to say, that was president hoover's treasury secretary,

his famous line of liquidate real estate. essentially let's purge the rot out of the system. there are a lot of people who hold those beliefs and in my book they're sort of represented by the former governor of south carolina who is an extremely principled conservative and told me essentially he thinks we should have had a depression. we needed more pain. if that's what we needed to get through to sort of fix the system we should have done that. the problem, i hope i'm allowed to say this on c-span, as one of the president's economic aides and a student of the depression told me, depressions really, really suck. they create unbelievable human suffering and they also create unbelievable deficits because when people don't have jobs, they don't pay taxes. when corporations don't make profits they don't have taxes.

they have this incredible vicious cycle and you end up with hoovervilles. there was a decision that they had to act. governor sanford was the only governor in america who tried to turn down the stimulus money and he had to fight the republicans in his legislature and ultimately he failed. i would like to answer one of your own questions which, you know, how come the private sector wasn't allowed to invest in it? and i think if you read the book you'll find that you kind of got it backwards. in fact, one of the ways there were money given to thousands of companies, but one of the ways they sort of vetted these companies aside from doing due diligence and bringing in experts to the energy department, had 4,100 peer reviewers looking at these applications. but they allowed these companies to put their own skin in the game. the matching funds were like 50/50. clean energy where you spent $90 billion, you also raised $100 billion in private capital you got off the sidelines. and that's really the idea of the stimulus bill which until,

you know, january 20, 2009, republicans and democrats agreed that when the private sector has gone dark and is really in hiding that the public sector needs to essentially jump-start it by putting in money that will start circulating the economy. in fact in 2008 every republican and democratic presidential candidate had a stimulus plan, and mitt romney was actually the largest of all those candidates. the republicans voted for a $715 billion stimulus with tax cuts and spending very similar to obama's which was $780 billion. it's not quite clear how $715 billion was good public policy and $780 billion was freedom. politics. host: here is the cover and this article from "the new york times." ryan says he erred in seeking stimulus money. what was paul ryan's role?

and you write about this in your book. what was his role in developing or opposing the era recovery act? guest: he's taking a lot of grief right now because he's one of the democrats that have been calling him the cash and trash republicans. they trash the stimulus bill, they voted against it but then he had went running around trying to get cash and going to the ribbon cuttings and claiming credit for the projects in their district. there is a certain hypocrisy for that and ryan shouldn't have denied that he tried to get that money but i don't think it's necessarily awful to vote against something and call it bad but then try to get the benefits for your own district. what i do think is interesting is there was a fight going on in the republican party while this thing was being put together. the republican leadership plm all of it has decided, as i document in this book, even before president obama took office they realized that their path back to four was no. they had to pretty much oppose just about everything the

president stood for. no matter what it was. even if was a bill with tax cuss and unemployment benefits -- tax cuts and unemployment benefits and health information technology and everything that had been bipartisan. they realized that, hey, in a couple of years if the economy is bad, and we've said no, that could be our ticket back to power. they are were very clever that way. -- they were very clever that way. that's what was happening. it was interesting. mike pence was sort of arguing at the time, hey, we're republicans. we shouldn't be trying to do a new new deal. let's just do tax cuts. and eric cantor, who's just as conservative but said, hey, we have republicans who had' like to vote for some highways and they'd like to vote for the -- they like concrete or they're moderates. they don't want to be seen as, you know, being against everything. so let's have this $715 billion stimulus and what paul ryan ended up doing was he voted for both. so he voted for the ideological

version. he voted for the political version and then he went and trashed obama's version. i do think it's, again, it's politics. host: richard is an independent in north carolina and you're on "washington journal" with mike grunwald. caller: yes, good morning. mr. grunwald, you signed more like a democratic talking head or strategist than you do a reporter. i've been sitting here listening to you for 10 minutes. you haven't said one thing positive about the republicans or -- and you haven't said one thing negative about obama and his stimulus package which has been a total failure. i mean, the unemployment has increased. the money that went -- that was supposed to go to these shovel-ready jobs, later obama admitted they were not shovel ready.

as far as solyndra, there was several solar power companies that went under that obama pumped money in. also g.m. is still in trouble. i mean, the volt automobile was an automobile that was overpriced and ineffective sand self-destructs, it catches on fire. i mean, president obama's economy and in fact he's poison to the economy. i don't really think he cares that much about issues. he's an agenda-driven president. it's basically trying to restructure the government under a global system. host: all right, richard, let's get a response from our guest. guest: well, you know, i am a reporter and i'm sort of interested in facts. it kind of sounds like the caller would not have known a fact if it clubbed him over the

head. but, look, it's true that there's not a lot of nice things to say in this book about republicans. i have to kind of plead guilty to that. except that they were extremely politically shrewd. their strategy, and i have really good republican sources, and they shared it with me how they were able to distort this bill from the beginning and had this relentless message that they were going to make this a big government boondoggle mess. i think you're wrong that i don't have anything negative to say about obama. in fact, i break some stories in this book that the white house are not going to be happy about. but -- for example, i mentioned how there was absolutely no political pressure on the solyndra case where -- i don't want to start correcting your facts on that one -- but in fact it turns out there was a loan where there was an appropriate political pressure. it was for a company called usec that president obama had made a promise in ohio during

his 2008 campaign that he was going to help these guys. and the department of energy rejected their application for a loan just like solyndra's and the guy who rejected it was called into the white house situation room to talk to valerie jarrett. she said, you know the president made a campaign promise on this and he said, yeah, yeah, i know. and she said, well, you know, what's going on? he sort of explained why they were rejecting the loan. it turned out even physical they gave them the loan they wouldn't have enough money to build the factory. she said, if you're sure, you better be sure, and the guy was actually sure. to their credit they let him reject the loan and the white house has gone out of their way to help usec in other ways. a long winded way of saying, i hold no grief for the president. i came out as a reporter. it's just that the facts don't add up. i don't try to judge, you know, overall like whether, you know, whether the economy ought to be

better than it is or whether it, you know, whether it should be at 6% or 5%. i think everybody would agree that, you know, they'd like a better economy right now. what i did was sort of look at the facts of this recovery act and how it's been reported and how it's been described and i think even if you read the book you might learn some things about what's actually in it. host: and mike grunwald brights in "the new new deal" -- the white house went to amazing lengths to stage his visit to solyndra. can you --

host: let's just a little bit from the subchapter "not glossy." this tweet. host: barbara is a democrat in detroit. barbara, please go ahead with your question. caller: i believe that obama has done an excellent job. for all the bills that he has put through, republicans have stopped anything to further getting us out of a desperate situation. if he had not bailed out -- obama bailed out the big three,

we would have been devastated here in detroit. totally devastated. but because he bailed them out, we're picking up jobs and we're starting to pick ourselves up and we stick together and we work very hard. i do believe that he should be taxing the private sector. i think the private sector is not going to develop jobs. it's just going to be a horde and hide. and i do believe that romney should disclose more tax papers that he has. host: all right. barbara. her stimulus comments. guest: it's funny, when obama ran in 2008 he had this sort of large political theory which was essentially that washington was so broken, that it was so nasty and partisan and so silly, so obsessed with any

unusuala and trivia -- minutia and trivia that until you fundamentally fixed washington you couldn't fundamentally change america. and then he won the election. the economy fell off a cliff. he had sort of, are you going to change the capitol or are you going to get things through the old way? and what happened was he proved himself wrong. it turned out that you could make a lot of change even while washington was still fundamentally broken and nasty and ridiculous. and the recovery act is really the proof. you know, like it or not, it really did some big things on energy, education, health care and the way the economy is structured, these big intractable problems we have been talking about for years without really making a lot of progress. you know, some people won't like what obama has done, but the idea that, you know, he certainly hasn't been sitting around twiddling his thumbs.

things like the recovery act, which really set the stage and it wasn't pretty. it was kind of an ugly process. there was deals cut he had to do. he had three republicans whose votes he needed and then a half dozen centrist democrats that you couldn't offend. you had president arlen specter of pennsylvania. you know, it was a kind of dicey deal that you have, ok, we'll give you that, we'll give you this and it doesn't look good but bottom line is things happen. the story of the stimulus is really kind of a microcosm for the story of the obama era. the president, his policies, his enemies, you know, his achievements, his difficulty marketing those achievements. i always say if you paid really close attention to what happened in the stimulus, nothing else that happened during the obama presidency should come as a big surprise. host: chris jones tweets in, only real problem with stimulus was that it was too small.

did anyone propose a bigger one? guest: that's interesting. you know, there were a few -- there were a few liberal economists who were talking at the time that it needed to be bigger. very few. in fact, a lot -- 387 sort of left-wing economists including some of them who now regularly complain that the stimulus was too small and obama is a whip, they wrote a letter in november, 2008, demanding that obama and congress pass a $300 billion to $400 billion stimulus. of course obama got twice that. $50 billion stimulus had failed to get through the senate just like six months before. so $800 billion was a pretty big lift. it's absolutely true that, you know, more tax cuts, more would have put more money in people's pockets. more state aid would have protected more teacher and police officer jobs. you know, more public works would have put more unemployed construction workers on the job. but as i said, there was not

political appetite for one penny more than obama could have gotten. i interviewed everybody who was in those meetings, including some people who thought that the stimulus should have been bigger and they were like, no. you had these three republicans and you also had half dozen democrats where, you know, blanche lincoln was not going to go for more than $800 billion and mary landrieu was not going to go for $800 billion, plus the three republicans, i mean, how are you going to get this through the congress? remember, the economy was collapsing. they needed to do something. this was an emergency. it really didn't seem at the time to quibble over a few, you know, a few billion dollars here or there. and afterwards over the next two years, obama did get back and go back and quietly get another $700 billion worth of stimulus. so, you know, it would have been -- it would have been helpful if it would have been bigger. you would have lost fewer public sector jobs. a lot of people don't realize

that over the obama era the u.s. has lost public sector jobs while gaining a lot of private sector jobs. but, you know, you have to deal with the democracy you're given, and given that i think you got just about as much stimulus as he could. host: sam is a republican in princeton, illinois. you're on with mike grunwald. sam, go ahead. caller: hi. good morning. i have the analogy of windmills. i live in central illinois and for the past two years we've been dotted with these windmills that are everywhere. and number one, these are -- you're a bad reporter or you don't know your facts. the company is from spain. guest: i said that. but the factories are located in the u.s. caller: the company here is from spain. guest: right. but the stuff is built in the u.s. caller: the most fertile land in the world. this is the most fertile land in the world. these things make people sick. they kill birds. they only produce during this

last heat wave 5%, they estimated, for anything. it's a big ponzi scheme. and these companies from spain, you know why they're not fixing the ones in spain no more? because they can't afford both systems. they're letting their windmills rust out and quit because you always have to have a backup. so this is just a ponzi scheme that has moved over to us because we're fools and we think this wind's going to do something for us. guest: well, i guess wind -- i'm sure the wind industry has its critics. what i will say for the spanish company in 2008 shut down most of its u.s. projects. a couple in illinois that i know of. i believe there were a couple in texas. the day the stimulus passed the chairman of that company turned around and invested $6 billion in united states projects. so that was -- that money was being spent in the u.s. regardless of whose name was on

the corporate polo shirt. so, again, if you don't like foreign companies doing business in the united states, i guess that's a legitimate position to have. it would be a pretty lonely economy. i think we welcome foreign investment and we want foreign companies to come here and create jobs in this country. it would certainly be the argument. host: gary tweets in, the phony green jobs is one of the biggest scams to hit taxpayers in a long time. next call for mr. grunwald comes from minnesota. jennifer, independent line. caller: hi. i have been listening to everything that's going on and i didn't like the fact that you had demeaned one of the callers who spoke his view. but the thing of it is, the government has no right to take my taxpayer money or our taxpayer dollars and pick and

choose what energy company or what industry is going to survive and what's not. that is for the private sector. and the fact that, you know, you're talking about the stimulus dollar which for one thing it was supposed to go to help people, to create jobs, to help the homeowners who were underwater. and it mostly went to stupid things like a, what, one thing i saw was a visitor center that was opened in a forest service place, i forget. or a window that was built in someplace that was closed or a botanical garden in hawaii. another thing, too, and it's very obvious and very clear that this administration only cares about the public sector. teachers, you never hear them talk about anybody other than teachers, firefighters and police officers. sometimes construction workers.

but you never hear them talk about anyone else that they're fighting to get their jobs. it's only those people. and i can tell you, as an independent, and i am also -- sit on a township board out here in minnesota, and i have talked to a lot of people. we do not like hearing this divisive -- this administration just picking who they want to help. it's really getting under our -- host: we got the point. thank you. mike grunwald. guest: she raised two really interesting points. one of them is the idea that the stimulus just invested in the public sector. and in fact it's interesting. the -- you know, while the original new deal created these vast armies of public sector workers that the c.c.c. and the w.p.a. and the t.v.a., the obama stimulus did not do that. in fact, it -- you know, it put

the money into the private sector. it did not grow the government. in fact, over the obama years, government has shrunk by about half a million workers. but that leads that least your first point. when you put money in the private sector, this is picking winners and losers, which i think is a legitimate debate we ought to be having in this country. it's unfortunate we have been debating this imaginary stimulus or the money goes to cronies and somehow obama has a thing for the solar industry or something like that. he did not really pick winners and losers. he just picked the game. that game was clean energy. he felt that the u.s. was too dependent on foreign oil. we are too dependent on fossil

fuels that pollute the environment and boiling the planet. we are too dependent on this volatile energy source that, when the price of oil goes up, suddenly our economy goes into the tank. these clean energy industries, which people agree are the wave of the future come gives opportunity. he did not just invest in solyndra and solar opportunities. he invested in solar, wind, geothermal. he also invested in making internal combustion engines more efficient. that is investing in gasoline and he also invested in biofuels, electric vehicles. not just one of battery co. but all kinds of approaches. the idea is, yes, innovation

always involves the government. that's how we got the internet, biotech. has always been some seed money from the government. you let them all compete against each other and the market decides to wins and loses. some of them will lose. there will be solyndras. if 100% was succeeding, that would mean something was going wrong after the initial investment in the government is propping them up. you get your money. you prove your reservist -- you deserve it as opposed to checking the box is that you did this study, qualify, comply with regulations. this is different. you have to show that your project is worthy, that you have a solid business plan. they will bring in independent investigators and then they will actually make choices.

some of those choices will go back and people will yell at them. that's fair game. as opposed to the usual way where they give everybody money, they comply with the roles, so it's not our fault. one guy in the white house told me that some people get pell grants and other tuition assistance will end up drunk on the street. the company's second tax breaks will end up going under. and as always happen that way. these are really high-profile cases. host: we have scratched the surface of the new new deal with mike grunwald. two more guests coming up. up next, david walker, former gao office director. he has a new initiative called the comeback america initiative. will be joining us next followed

by our weekly series, america by the numbers. we will be looking at the u.s. fertility rates and their effect on public policy. we will continue after this. >> this weekend on american history tv, 75 years since a million earhart's failed attempt to circumnavigate the globe. air crash investigator sharing his thoughts. more from "the contenders," our series looking at key political figures who ran for president and lost. >> i tossed the got one before the feet of tyranny and i say segregation now, segregation tomorrow, and segregation forever. >> this sunday, former alabama gov. george wallace.

american history tv this weekend on c-span3. >> if you want to come to america illegally, do not waste your time going across the border. just get in an airplane and overstay your visa. we have no way to check to you are and get you back. the number of undocumented in this country has been going down. resolve the problem by having our economy crater. people did not come here to put their feet up and collect welfare. if there's no jobs, they don't come here. then they go back, because america is not a very good place to sit around and think the state is going to support you. in the case of your son, someone has to create the business he's going to work for. the fall the numbers show immigrants -- it's a self predicting thing. it cannot be easy to come from australia, give up everything

and start out from scratch. of course immigrants are going to be risk takers. that's why they came here. >> mayor bloomberg joined by ceo rupert murdoch. you can watch the entire discussion at 8:00 p.m. eastern on c-span. "washington journal" continues. host: joining us from stamford, conn., david walker, former comptroller general for many years in the government accountability office and now he is the founder of the comeback america initiative. what is this new initiative your sponsoring? guest: i found it in october 2010. it is about the facts, the

truth, and the tough choices about what we need to do to put our federal, state, and local government finances in order. we are nonpartisan, non-video logical and we're focusing on solutions -- non-ideological. host: what is your burden barometer? guest: it is a new innovation we have come up with. people are familiar with the national debt clock brought out in the late 1980's. it had $2.70 trillion and now it is approaching $16 trillion. while that is a shocking number, and understates the problem. when you look at the financial statements of the u.s. government, the total liabilities and dumbfounded policies are about $70 trillion. it is going up $10 million a minute.

the federal financial sinkhole is getting deeper $10 million per minute. that is the name of the tour we will embark on. it will be nationwide fiscal responsibility bus tour from september 7th to october 9th. host: when you say unfunded liability, what exactly do you mean? guest: the government makes promises for things like civilian and government worker pensions. the government has made commitments. the government has made promises with regards to medicare part a, hospital insurance program, as well as part b and c, the outpatient position than prescription drugs. when you add up all of the unfunded obligations that, by the way, are not in the debt

number or in the balance sheet, its $70 trillion. host: that includes future social security and medicare payments for people currently in the workforce? guest: existing numbers from the official social security report, and as you recall, i watched them from 1990-1995 and it takes the difference between what revenues are expected to come in over the next 75 years, and what the average life expectancy, and how much is expected to be paid out over that same period of time and recalculate the difference and you come up with how much money would have to have today investing at treasury rates to be able to live on that promise. that is more the number comes from. host: who were some of the known figures that will be joining you on your tour or who are supportive of your efforts. host: you'll find out about the

tour and about the many bit different people who have endorsed it. for example, two former heads of the democratic party, the republican party, the two living former chairman of the federal reserve. a number of ceo's, a number of former senators and members of congress. we went to former individuals, not sitting members. it will vary by city who joins us. former gov. lendl from pennsylvania is set to join us in addition to former senator grahm, ross perot, a senior, who ran for president 20 years ago. we have different people in different locations. former senator judd gregg. he will not be in new hampshire, but he is a supporter. host: reduce stand on the

simpson-bowles budget? guest: simpson-bowles has a lot more write about it down wrong. i would agree with about 85% of it. it's as we have a serious problem and need to solve sooner rather than later and we need to differentiate between our structural challenges and our long-term challenges. we need to renegotiate contracts and reduced defense and other spending. we need to recapture control of the budget. we need to engage in a comprehensive tax reform and we need to do these things sooner rather than later. there are lot of good things about it. i do not think there is any one plan that is the right plan. i do not endorse particular plans. what we will be doing on this tour is taking good ideas from domenici-rivlin, simpson-bowles

and expose the public to a range of sensible and non-partisans solutions that ought to be able to get non-partisan support. that's the key. they need to be sensible, non- partisan, but ultimately you have to get partisan support to make them a reality. host: do you agree with paul ryan in his approach to reforming medicare? guest: there is a lot of spending and mudslinging going on in medicare and it's embarrassing for both sides. they're not focusing on substance and solutions. let me give you some facts. they both understand we have to significantly reduce projected spending in medicare because if we do not it will bankrupt the country. they both understand that we have over promised with regards to medicare. if you look over time, the amount of cost savings they're predicting to achieve is roughly the same over time.

there are fundamental differences as to how they want to go about getting these changes. he would rather have a government controlled more of the policy with regards to positions, product, and services. governor romney would rather have more choice and competition and more private- sector involvement. i think it's important we get beyond the rhetoric and the mudslinging. we understand where they'd agree and the key areas of disagreement and why so that the american people can make a conscious choice about which way they think is better. guest: -- host: in your restoring fiscal sanity report said it was largely an expansion rather than a comprehensive health-care reform bill. there are some positive costs related provisions and it did not do nearly enough to address the drivers of health-care costs that have served to threaten our fiscal future.

you also had this chart in your report showing the average per year cost of health care for different groups. the united states is in red here. uk, sweden, germany, etc. guest: the truth is that the affordable care act was part of the expansion bill. it did something to try to control costs, but not nearly enough. there's no way we're going to be able to deliver all the promises they have made. the one thing that could bankrupt the government is out of control health-care costs. we have to be honest with the american people. yes, we need some level of the universal health care costs. based on broad based societal needs, things like preventative, wellness, and catastrophic protection. we also need to recognize the government will also always do

more for the poor, the disabled, and the veterans. your government wants to promise a lot to everybody and create a system that ultimately is going to fall down. we were told the affordable care act was going to save money, but according to the chief actuary of medicare, it will cost $12 trillion more than they claim. quite frankly, i trust the professionals more than i trust the politicians. we need to recognize that the one area we need to make the most dramatic changes in is health care. that is the biggest weakness of simpson-bowles. the specific proposals it has about how to achieve the cuts are really not going to accomplish that objective. host: we have had these

bipartisan budget agreement is over and over again. why is this one important? why this year? guest: united states financial condition is much worse than the politicians claim. if you use honest and compare by accounting techniques and you compare total government debt, federal, state and local to other major industrialized nations, there are only two countries in worse shape than we are, japan and greece. quite frankly, we do not want to follow either one of them. we are a temporary safe harbor because of the uncertainties in new york and because we're the largest economy on earth, because we issue debt in our own currency. therefore, we can do things that others cannot do. we have more time than others have. we look at the facts, the federal reserve is purchasing

two thirds or more of our new debt. they need to put their money some place. interest rates are at an all- time low. we're adding that at record rates. we have huge interest rate risks. we must -- and i underline this -- doing grand bargain in 2013. in order to do that, the race has to be about the economy, jobs, and fiscal responsibility. the american people can make a choice about who is best that whoever wins will be able to claim they have a mandate. that's what we need. host: it is now your turn to talk with david walker. caller: hello, c-span. thank you for accepting my call.

i appreciate you very much. host: we're listening. caller: in your estimation, where did the stimulus package go? guest: first, i think we did need some kind of stimulus and the size of the stimulus was adequate. here's the problem with the stimulus. it was over-sold, under delivered, was not properly designed, was not correctly implemented. as a result, it did not have near the impact we were told was going to which tainted the water in being able to do more actions in the future. let me give you one example. in europe, they do a lot more planning with things like critical infrastructures so that when they want to end up spending a lot more money, they have projects to help grow the economy, and hence the

environmental situation, and in many cases they have already been preapproved with requirements. we do not do that. the united states is very porat planning at the national level and does no planning between the vermeil of government. therefore, when they decide they want to do spending they does push money out the door. we are just repaving roads. that does not do much to help improve economic growth. we have to recognize that, while the stimulus was needed because was poorly designed, it is not properly implemented. it did not have near the impact it could or should have. host: off of twitter. guest: there is no question that

we are waiting on congress, we might as well move. they are a dysfunctional body. we currently have their republic that is not representative of the or responsive to the public. we need political reforms in addition to operational reforms. we need to change the house of representatives to maximize competitive districts rather than minimize them to entrench incumbents. we need to get rid of democratic and republican primaries and go to open primaries were the top two vote-getters runoff for the general election. thirdly, we need to deal with campaign finance. we have the worst of all worlds. people can give unlimited amount of money with limited to no transparency and no candidate accountability. fourthly, we need to have term limits. our founders never intended for us to have career politicians. people who, may or may not have

had a real job, they want to keep it for life. it's not conducive to telling the truth, making tough choices and to have a crisis. it's also not conducive to innovation. we need for all those things to be pursued. host: in your restoring fiscal sanity report, this is the u.s. defense spending, $698 billion. here are the next 14 nations combined, $646 billion. tweeting in -- guest: i do not think it needs to be slashed by 75%. there is no question that the pentagon is a bloated bureaucracy. we are doing a lot of things based on the past rather than current and future threats. we have way too many bases.

our contract and practices need to be revised. compensation and benefits need to be rationalized. there are a number of things that need to happen. we can significantly reduce rid -- defense spending without compromising national security and that needs to be one of the elements to putting our finances in order. let me know to going to the one chart you mentioned before about us spending double per person in health care, we also do that in k-12 education and in both areas readable lower than average results. spending dull person -- spending double per person, the answer is not to throw more money at it. we need to look at the mechanisms to transform it. the base system is getting that kind of results, it's called insanity. host:desoto, texas. you are on. caller: good morning.

i just want to make a comment. texas got the largest in the stimulus. i have three grandchildren in college. their dad lost his job. he was a teacher. now he drives trucks. they're still on his insurance because they are under 26. my son has a construction company. he cannot hire illegals. the jobs are there. growing up, i saw my mom do whatever she had to do. cooking in restaurants, maid work, whatever. she did it. paine finance. -- campaign finance. have a niece in afghanistan.

her mother works there as a contract worker. nobody talks about the amount of people from america that are in afghanistan. she was drafted from shreveport to afghanistan. that's where she's working. that's my comment. if people quit whining, there are jobs out there. create some jobs. the stimulus in texas, $25 million. host: david walker, anything you would like to respond to? guest: we do need to recognize the have two challenges. we need to improve economic growth in the short term, try to get unemployment and underemployment down, but at the same time if we do not start dealing with the large structural deficits that lay ahead, we will never have these sustained over time. there are opportunities out there and many americans do not

want to pursue those certain opportunities. we have a cultural challenge. we have moved from an opportunity society to an entitlement society. personal responsibility and accountability was core. now, we have too many people trying to blame other people for their problems. look. this is a great country. we need to have more things to try to create more opportunity for people. we need to have a solvent, sustainable, secure social safety net. but that we are on now is unsustainable and we better change it sooner rather than later if we want this to work. host: independent in idaho falls, idaho, you are on with david walker talking about comeback america initiative. caller: thank you. i'm like to talk about one of the major entitlement programs which comes directly out of the general fund, ssi.

i'm on it right now and i'm looking forward to going back to work within the next year or two. there are perverse incentives in the program where you can try to go back to work and you end up poorer than if you just stay on ssi. that needs to be fixed. host: david walker. guest: i agree. we need to take a hard look at a number of our federal programs. we have perverse incentives. it is not just with regards to ssi. there are certain aspects with regards to medicare and medicaid where there are services like in home, that are more conducive to their lifestyle and more cost- effective for the federal government, but the program will not allow you to pursue those

for various reasons. let me bring this up a level. the united states government does not have three things that it takes in order to ensure success. we have been in business for 223 years as a republic. one, we have no plan. two, we have no budget. three, we do not have performance metrics to understand what is working, what's not working, where are we getting better, how we compare to our comparable groups? at the person just mentioned, we all stop and look at our programs to make sure we have the proper incentives, adequate transparency, and proper accountability mechanisms. if you have those three things, you have successfully unsustainable programs. if you don't, it's only a matter of time for people fail. host: newport, n.c., richard on

the republican line. you are on c-span. caller: thank you. you keep mentioning social security as an entitlement. yes, we are entitled to that. we paid in to that. the entitlements are medicare, medicaid, welfare, food stamps. you keep dumping money and food stands. -- into food stamps. you put money into breakfast for kids, but they are too lazy to get up and fix their kids breakfast or you just give them free lunches. that's more money and you do not take off their food stamp card. i go to the store and buy seee people buying chips and soda with the food stamp cards. this is what they need to get in on. never mind social security. leave that along. we paid into it.

the government robbed us of blind and they are not paying. social security and not an entitlement. host: david walker, just follow up on that caller, there are a few tweaks i want to include in your response. -- a few tweets. guest: i do not even like to use the word "entitlements." we are opportunity society, not an entitlement society. people think they are entitled to things merely because they are a citizen or because they are a legal resident. in some cases, even illegal residents think they are entitled to certain things.