"washington journal" is next. ♪ host: good morning, secretary of state john kerry has to china to discuss u.s. plans to bolster defense and the chinese rule in north korea. several human rights organizations have sent a letter to president obama about drone killing. also, the obama tax return, they made over $600,000 and paid $100,000 in taxes. that was released yesterday and you can find those on line. for our first 45 minutes, president obama called for a

universal prepaid program and called for funding it by almost doubling the amount of federal tax on cigarettes. what do you think of the use of a cigarette tax to use for pre- k. you can call on these lines you can also reach out to us on our social media outlets. the 2014 budget is available on the white house web site and we pulled a portion of that talks about the universal pre-k program . it says the budget includes preschool for all of initiative and is a partnership with states

for a moderate and low-income students. it is the cigarette tax that is being called -- call for for

universal pre-k. these are your numbers. to give you a sense of what the president spoke about, he spoke about it for a few minutes and talked about the tobacco increases. [video clip] towe will work with states make high-quality preschool available to every child in america and we will pay for it by raising taxes on tobacco products that harm our young people. it is the right thing to do. host: that is what he had to say and we want to get your thoughts. it will almost double the cigarette tax. will be on the screen if you want to give us a

call. we are hearing from georgia to first a republican line. caller: i love cspan. i am against any additional taxes. we have a spending problem. i'm thinking about changing my name. we need to collect more people -- we need to elect more people who can vote against texas. we need to cut taxes and cut spending so that american people have incentives to invest. aboutwould be -- what specifically the taxes on cigarettes? caller: i am against any more taxes on the american people. we need to cut them so i suppose cigarettes or any taxes. we need to cut spending and taxes. host: garry is up next from

minneapolis, minn., democrats line. there was a 5% increase in cigarette taxes and we thought it would help. the last caller is wrong because when i was young, the taxes and the wealthy in this country was 70% and 90% and i paid much let's tax is being a working person. he is wrong. you said it was an increase in taxes that help to quit smoking? caller: yes, i smoked four or cigarettes?

per day. i have excessive behavior. my problem a cigarette. i was able to quit smoking and that gave me incentive to quit. host: as far as this proposal to fund universal pre- cigaretteskt that aspect? caller: it helps them in the early education. host: what about funding this on the back of smokers? caller: that is good because that helps her pay for things like care for cancer in later life and helps stop young kids from beginning to smell. the tax burden has been shifted on working people. that is wrong. when jesse james robbing the banks, he did not rob the little people. host: that was from minnesota, that call. boston, mass., independent line, hello. caller: yes, i am a preschool teacher. i'm also a smoker. i fully support president

obama's proposal to initiate universal preschool. i think it is absolutely essential that we give our children the best care we can as early as possible. host: so for smokers like you, it is more money pe pack. caller: i have tried to as smart -- to stop smoking. i am continuing to try to stop smoking and i don't like taxes but if you're going to tax something, you might as well text something that is destroying the help of the american people. host: was the price for a pack of cigarettes ever part of your reasoning for trying to stop? caller: actually, cigarettes are expensive in massachusetts and contributed to my cutting down on smoking. i think that is a good thing. host: a much you pay? caller: almost $10 for a pack of

cigarettes. host: that includes the taxes and everything else? calle right. >> host: as a teacher, what do you think of this and what does it add? >> caller: you are right of the bottom of a child's education experience, right at the beginning. 5 is where you have the best chance of getting through to children and giving them the best chance to begin their education. not getl teachers do the credit they deserve. from boston, larry massachusetts. he is a teacher and a smoker. the universal pre k is planning on being funded by additional taxes on cigarettes. this is from twitter --

branson, missouri is next on our republican line. asler: i am all for this long as obama will first at a 10% tax on junk food and gets that done, i suppose the cigarette tax would be fine. inave been involved headstart programs at one time. veryout 90%, it was a handy babysitting service. i'm not putting down the teachers and i am not putting down the students. that is just the way it was. host: you say you should add a junk food.

are you a smoker? caller: yes, sir. host: as far as an increase of this goes through, you'll see more taxes on cigarettes, would that change your smoking habits? caller: probably not. it might slow it down, i will say that. that is true of many devices. twinkies would be a vice that there is a lot of them out there. host: this is known as a sin tax, what do you think about that? >> caller: we get so many proposals for sin taxes in the state of missouri. it seems like it is an annual flight down here. it's not cigarettes, it is booze. put junkad the guts to food on their first, they might get a lot more done. host: there some analysis pieces

this week that were released in conjunction with the proposal. this is from "the washington post. " this is the topic for our first 45 -- 35 minutes or so this is from kansas, democrats line, good morning. caller: i would say the pre care program is the most important money you can spend an education. the first five years are the most important and the first three are really important.

you can spend all that money there. i think it is a progressive way of funding it. it would keep under people from starting. the people that are already smoking, it is a progressive tax. host: talk about your perspective, are you a smoker? caller: i use snuff. host: this would affect just cigarette purchases. i figured iter: would go after all tobacco products. host: from twitter -- there are a variety of ways you can respond this morning. the phone numbers are on your screen and you can send us

something on facebook. let's hear from donald from new york, independent line. against: i am totally this program. i am tired of creating new government programs. who is going to pay for this when there is not enough smokers to fund it? i'm also a single person. i am tired of raising other people's kids from cradle to adulthood. essentially, it is another way of parents not being responsible for their kids. i'm all for education. i pay my school taxes, no problem. aboutwhat do you think targeting cigarette users? what about the idea of using a cigarette tax on this?

caller: i think it is a good idea. i am an ex-smoker and i wish more people would stop smoking. i don't think we're going to be able to support the program in future years. where will the money come from? it will come from the taxpayers. i don't believe we need another government program that takes care of kids and parents should be taking care of them. it is a way of dropping the kids off at preschool. we feed them and we transport them from door-to-door with transportation and we educate them which is important. i think it is losing their responsibility of parents taking care of their kids. host: this is from facebook -- somerset, mass., thank you for holding on to the republican line. caller: i am against this

proposal. -- society as a whole has decided to punish a particular group of its own. that tax is a punishment. it is forcing them to spend their money to pay for something that is universal for everyone. if it's going to be universal, it should be for everybody paying into it. the other aspect i am against is the idea of this study done by harvard years ago where they found that the best age for a child to be a leader, to start school, was at seven years old. now to have 4-year-old put in preschool? where is our heads as a nation? they should be home, being raised by their families. that's the way this nation is going. i totally disagree with this.

about theasking cigarette tax. you can comment on that if you like. yesterday, john kerry was there and he will discuss the u.s. nuclear program. but "the wall street journal"-

michelle is up next from lexington, south carolina, democrats line and we're talking about the president's idea to fund a universal prepaid program with a tiger -- cigarette tax, good morning. noter: good morning, i do agree with another tax to fund that program is not adequately taken advantage of by parents. there are other things besides cigarettes that could be taxed, as well like alcohol. there are other things we could tax but just to fund the paprika a program, they need to put it

into other things all over school. possibly later education for children rather than focusing on one area. taxes on cigarettes will deter more people from smoking and what will they go to next? they need tohere concentrate right now. host: a similar thought from twitter -- is from memphis, tenn., independent line. caller: this has been tracked for years and it has been proven useless. any advantage they get stopped by grades five or six of this is not about good education for the children. this is about hitler youth - propagandizing liberals. and thewant that at all taxes should not be used to control her behavior. keep out of our lives.

we can make our own decisions and take our own consequences. i am an ex-smoker and i did not stop because of the cost for health reasons. host: i was going to ask about your thoughts on cigarette taxes but you expressed that. forer: we are going to pay our sins but not from obama or any government. we will pay for our sins to the person we commit them against. host: that is eleanor from memphis, tennessee. the president and vice president had their tax forms a released yesterday.

republican line caller:, good: i want to begin with the tax we had some years ago.

i can't remember what it was called but cigarette taxes were raised to pay for children's medical care. do you remember? host: i don't but go ahead with your thoughts. caller: that was all it was for was to pay for a children's medical program. there were not enough smokers. there are not enough smokers that did not pay for it and they put it in with everything else. smoking did not pay for it at all. host: you are saying a cigarette tax won't work? caller: yes, and something else -- i have been a social worker most of my life. with children. for the state of arkansas. i have found with families that i served that this headstart

program was used for a babysitter and people were just -- they had nothing good to say. they did not keep the children all day. host: a recent magazine had a post on their website on this proposal. this is a libertarian point of view.

this is pennsylvania, democrats line caller:, good: thanks for having me. i don't really agree with this. i am a democrat and this is getting kind of crazy. to do it withyr soda. host: mayor bloomberg you name? caller: know, the mayor of philadelphia. he tried to do the same thing and it was shot down. i think it is ridiculous. the obama is made $600,000 for

the year? of that and taxes? host: go back to the idea of this cigarette tax and your thoughts on that. caller: what i am saying, is he is not taxing the right people. he is giving subsidies to oil companies. i heard facebook is getting a federal return of over $400,000 because of a loophole. it to close these loopholes and make the people who are supposed to pay their fair share of the taxes, we would not have to go after who is smoking. you have your lower class people who smoke and that's who it is going to hit. it is a know where tax. it will just not work. host: we have about 20 minutes on this topic. a couple of other stores from the paper -- from "the new york

times" - a letter that was sent by several human rights organization about drone killing

lancaster, texas, independent line. have experienced after teaching in four different states. i have comments on that but in response to the tax -- i am definitely against this because i think it is another attempt by the government to overtake and control not one industry but two industries. first of all, it is an attack on the entire tobacco industry. it is also going to have a very negative effect on private day care in this country. and private preschool as well and i'm also a preschool teacher. i'm a very firm believer in the

positive affect of preschool throughout a child's life. however, i have worked in the public and private sector and when the public dictates what has to go into preschool, all of volos and rules -- all of the laws and rules that have to abide by, are always in public programs. the private school has to have 15 students per teacher and a public school that operates under head start, those rules are different. buildingsx laws on and teacher qualifications and one reason headstart does not work is because it is as much of a teacher training program as it is an education program. the people that actually work face-to-face with the children are not certified teachers. they are being trained to work with the teachers as that are being paid to teach these

children. host: what did you think about basing this program on the public, especially public have it when it comes to smoking? caller: i think it as another attempt to change people's personal choice of behavior and it is another attempt to brainwash an entire population by forcing them to do something that other people think they need to do in their private lives. and forcing it through suffering financially -- think what people do in their private life should not be controlled by a government entity. it should be controlled by peoples internal morals which is what we should be teaching at the preschool level. i have to agree with your previous caller that i do think by doing this universally, it is another attempt to grab children so that all preschool children in the country get one curriculum as opposed to giving

parents a choice to choose what preschool that want their children to attend and what morals and values they want their children to be taught at the earliest level. host: we will leave it there. this is record from twitter -- macon, ga.next from on our republican line. caller: i totally disagree with this cigarette tax. the propaganda is to deter smoking. essence, how are they going to fund this program in the end, you won't have any cigarette smokers to fund this program. host: do you think the increase of taxes on cigarettes will reduce smoking that drastically? caller: in some states, people pay $10 per pack but i pay $5.

it mainly it's the middle class and poor people. it is not going to deter smoking. i was going to quit smoking when it hit $4 and i am still smoking. host: how many packs a day? caller: 1 pac per day. is to eliminate americans from smoking. that is his main agenda. ifessence, in the future, the accomplice to that agenda, how will the fund this program? that is on the taxpayers. host: if you are just joining us, you may remember it was the white house releasing its budget for this year, a program that was intended to start universal 3 k and was part of the president's agenda.

in order to fund this, that would set up $750 million in discretionary preschool grants. to pay for that, we wanted to get your thoughts on that for our remaining 50 minutes or so. john from butler, missouri, democrats line. caller: good morning, i really think they should put the tax on alcohol and cigarettes. i am an ex-smoker. people will not be deterred. they will still buy cigarettes.

raise the taxes for the preschool and, for some reason, it will not go through, people where does thet, money go? do the republicans are democratic congressman take it? they will look at all this tax money for this program and it did not work but they will use it for their own purposes. nobody has said where it is going to go. that is all i have to say other than i love you, judy. host: several people this morning mentioned in the head start program. the president reference to this as well in the rose garden this week and he talked about the sequester, the impact upon children and head start-type programs. [video clip] >> of course, the people i feel for are the people who are directly feeling the pain of these cuts. these are the people who can least afford it. the hurting military communities

that have sacrificed enough, the hurting middle-class families, there are children who have entered a lottery to determine which of them gets to stay in their headstart program with their friends, there are sinners who depend on programs like meals on wheels, that they can live independently but their services are being cut. that is what this so-called sequester means. if you want to find out more, go to c-span.org and you can see the comments made about the release of the budget this week. another related economic story in "the washington post" looking at mortgages -- revenue from its mortgage division fell 31%.

9, fromcould more- tennessee, on our independent line. go ahead. caller: i basically have two comments. if i were to run this as a business and might ceo came up with this idea, i would fire him because when everybody quit smoking, this program is not funded. where does the money come from?

--second comment sin tax - grams from you are going to get the same problem. you'll get the same thing. to fundjust say we need school taxes? we need to fund the schooling. we need to pay for it or do without it. joy from twitter -- the couple programming note for you for our american history tv and book-tv which is on c-span to rate --

-3 you can join in on the conversation and that is at 9:30 this morning on american history tv on c-span 3. on c-span 2 which turns into book-tv on the weekends, you can see live coverage of the 11th annual indianapolis book festival in annapolis, maryland. the first panel is scheduled for 9:00 this morning. plannede other events at the book festival. memphis, tennessee, republican line, i think this is just

another idiotic liberal social program that will not work. i think you should look at the problem is trying predict that it is trying to address. it is trying to address the difficulties facing children that have come out of the high illegitimate birthrate because they are not raised properly. if you want the optimal in -- outcome for children, you have to realize that raising children in the first years of their life, that is a job and mother and father who get married and raise that child should do and they have the children after they get married and they are responsible. , it will happen is that would expect it to paradoxically force them to raise the legitimacy. when you look at the different colludes like black communities being destroyed by this because of the illegitimacy rate being high among all groups, about 70%

or so -- physician so a talk about the cigarette side of it? caller: it does not matter because the program will not work. it is one thing to tax cigarettes but what will you do with that money? what will probably happen is the government will take part of it. it will be too compelling not to take those taxes and use it for something else. host: akron, ohio, democrats line, good morning. caller: i am against a tax on cigarettes. i think they should put it on alcohol that kills more people. i am not for all these programs that they have. they need to cut out the waste in the white house. they spent billions and billions every year at the cut out the waste and tried to enforce the programs they've got, my husband smoke from when he was 8 years old until he was 72 when he died.

need any morethey tax and i am more for alcohol tax. maineup next from camden, - the infantng us on -- independent line. caller: good morning, not only the poor are affected by the tax on cigarettes but especially the mentally ill. psychiatrists a and he addressed that concern. thank you very much. host: you may have seen this story late yesterday about tweets being sent to cyndi lauper -

keith, from indiana, republican line. caller: i don't think it's right. every time something comes up, they create some kind of diversion to overshadow their

misguided programs with some type of tax that is not going to work. they have been doing this as long as i can remember. it is another diversion just like they did at the end of the vietnam war. around,me you turn there is some kind of game like re-tool or america for jobs. we would have more jobs in america but we didn't. towent to the metric system repair the imported jump that came into this country. how naive our people? host: ollie, north carolina? caller: i was calling about this proposed cigarette tax. it is only hurting the middle class and the poor. host: keep going with your

thoughts. sometimes it seems like the rich have paid to these lobbies and get these groups to avoid them paying taxes. in the end, you could fund a program if you would get big business to pay their fair share. it is obvious that the only reason there is no money in the country is because they ship the jobs that. tois cheaper to get them answer phones in india than america. look at the backgrounds of companies -- people have their shoes made across the east because it is cheaper to have child labor do they get out of paying taxes but they're supposed to create jobs. host: you say have business pay for this instead of a cigarette tax? caller: exactly, it will hurt lower and middle-class people and does not do anybody any

good. most people don't have any more money anyway. they are living in poverty. host: oklahoma city, oklahoma. caller: thanks to cspan. i am for the tax. i used to be a smoker. i am hearing that many people who smoke, they don't want you to say anything about smoking. they say is it right to smoke issue. cannotbout people who smoke -- stop smoking who really need to quit. of and the pre keg cigarette tax sounds wonderful to me. is this going to be on the tax side for the smoker or from the company? how will that work? host: if i understand it correctly, the tax is directly applied to the tax on cigarette purchases.

caller: ok, the price of the cigarettes is just going to go up a little bit. host: it will go up to $1.95 or so. caller: it is what it is. the burden you have to bear. whether or not it will make people quit smoking or whatever, they won't stop smoking. when i was buying cigarettes at 50 cents per pack and i went up to $1.50 and now they are $5 or $6, it does not stop anybody from smoking. have a good day. host: you may have heard about the organization organizing for america. they raised about $4.9 million. "the baltimore sun."

another story is looking at center marco rubio and the immigration bill said to be unveiled tuesday. according to "the washington post" - he will be on all five news shows this sunday. if you listen on cspan radio on

the weekend especially on sunday, we hear all the sunday news shows. we give you an opportunity to hear these shows edited and you can hear senator rubio and other -- on other topics. you can go to our cspan web site and look up cspan radio. coming up, we will talk with a radio talk show host to discuss the gop efforts to reach out to minorities. we will have that discussion next. you could see an increase in interest rate in student loans by this summer. we will talk to you about our "newsmakers"program . he will talk about the defense budget and a performance by defense secretary chuck hagel. he talked about the assessment

because he initially opposed former senator hegel going to the defense department. >> are pretty critical of him along with other people in your party. how would you rate the job he has been doing? i would probably give him an a. >> why? >> very good about him at this point. it has only been a month on the job. >> he called mate when he was nominated. i did not know him. i did not have a vote and he asked me what my concerns were and i told him and we discussed them. to be not found him saying one thing and doing a different thing. oppose him when i watched the hearings. i did not think he did well in

the hearings. my concerns were not alleviated. i opposed him but it did not mean anything. he called me. i was going to call him to congratulate him but he called me first. he said we will be working together and he wanted to reach out. around here, that's not a normal thing. swearing in. i listened to what he said. i like his demeanor. i liked what he says and i like the way he is acting. he changed his schedule to meet with me in afghanistan. he came over to my office. i think we had about half an hour and i had to leave but we were still talking. everything i asked him about, he was knowledgeable about. i get the feeling he is very comfortable with himself.

to shine me on. i've just been very impressed. when he reversed the decision on the missile defense -- >> in alaska? >> felt good about that. >> [video clip] " continues -- host: we are joined by armstrong williams who is a degree of talk-show host and columnist. gop,nted to talk about the particularly when its outreach efforts to minorities. what do you think about that as a proposal and what you think about how it is doing so far? we are a country of choices. don't work the same or

eat the same or like the same sports. what makes america great is to have alternatives. if minorities only feel that their places in the democratic party, that is not democracy. that party will take them for granted and, obviously, you have no mechanism to hold them accountable. it is not just for the good of minorities but the country as a whole. it is important that the gop makes not just a rhetorical effort and a symbolic effort but a very substantive effort to reach out to a base in this country that if you listen closely, basically supports them and many of the issues they embrace and their party platform. the issue becomes -- why is it you don't become -- you don't see before the 1970's that end -- minorities don't embrace the republican party? there is this perception and i

cannot say it is manufactured by the media or manufactured by the left, that makes many blacks believe that the republican party, while they share their values, when it comes to the issue of race and poverty and the quality, that are not representing. when you think about segregation and slavery and civil rights, what all americans fought for to get where we are today, they will not risk and a remote chance of going back to the days of bigoted racism and laws that denied opportunities based on the color of their skin. it was wonderful to see rand paul at howard university recently. it is the fact that he showed up. it well known that his intentions are to seek the presidency of the united states as a gop candidate. normally, howard university as

an historical black college is not on their agenda. the fact that rand paul went to their first. he does not have a great understanding of the history of race and segregation but that is ok because he was able to take something from those young people who are very bright and well-researched. i had an opportunity to talk to some of the people who were there and got to chat afterwards. young people are different. they are open and realize there is something amiss. they are frightened about their job opportunities and prospects for business on a ship and whether they have a real future. they are more open and willing to listen to both parties. they actually listen to rand paul. [video clip] >> republican questions or disputes civil rights. i have never wavered in my support for civil rights or the civil rights act.

the dispute, if there is one, has always been about how much of the remedy should come under federal or state or private per view. what get lost as the republican party has always been the party of civil rights and voting rights because republicans believe the federal government is limited and its function is limited by the constitution. some have concluded that republicans are somehow inherently insensitive to minority rights. nothing could be further from the truth. republicans do indeed still believe many rights remain with the people and the states, respectively. when some people here that, they tune us out because they think it is code words. they want the state rights to segregate and abuse but that is not true. important islly that the students showed up. they were there and came to listen. you don't get caught up in the

criticism. you get caught up in the fact that this shows project -- progress from the gop. host: is from "the new york times" - guest: the media cannot dictate the dictates of mr. rand paul or the gop. the media will always take these issues but instead of finding the good that he showed up, they chose to malign him. host: there is no truth to what they said? guest: he decided the issues in the time slot he had available that he was going to discuss. what he thought was important. handlers andot of that's of these speeches, bowed. he spoke and he took questions. he gave the kids an opportunity, these are young, intelligent,

bright -- he gave them a chance for an exchange. there are members of congress that will not come on your show because it will not take phone calls. he showed up and knew where he was. it is progress when someone like the party chair goes to new york. he might have a meeting. they committed $10 million. that is not chumnp change that they are willing to spend. i know others and the party will hold him accountable to this. no longer will we buy into this rhetoric. we will help guide them through this process because we believe there's a tremendous opportunity for not just blacks but all who felt the republican party was not a voice for them and they would come back and look at the party again. at least give us another chance.

another look. host: armstrong williams is joining us to talk about race relations and the gop of rage. you can ask him questions on one of our phone lines. you can reach out to was on email or send us a tweet you initially talked about the gop meeting to make substantial inroads to the minority community. what does that look like? leadership,ieve the along with the commitment of going to these different places in outrage, the gop has it too -- as to get together and find a major -- and fight a major piece of legislation that is very important to the american black community. they need to take a firm stand and say this is where we stand.

it might be on border rights or the issues before the supreme but thereoting rights has to be some issue that they have to come to grips on that they take a stand on that will send a clear message and not just in terms of dollars or rhetoric but clear legislation that we are going to put our teeth in this and supported whatever that legislation is. if there were to do that, it would be a major step in the right direction. rubiowhat about senator supporting immigration? guest: not just supporting a but in a very thoughtful way. it could be the guest workers program for a consideration that you must have border security 24 hours per day. taken into consideration that there are many young people who came to this country illegally. to show compassion for those

less fortunate. there should be a pathway to citizenship but the pathway must be sensitive and reasonable and it is not to punish. you want to respect the rule 0 block. it is a fine example. centaur rubio has taken a stand and has been unwilling to compromise, the gop has to step toward on a piece of legislation that black people care about in this country and show the same enthusiasm, the same tenacity that we are going to push for because we believe this is the right and moral thing to do. host: do you think it will change minds? guest: it already has. peeper are already talking not just about the gop -- people are already talking not just about the gop but they are saying this is different. the american people are very open and forgiving. many people in this country -- the present does not work.

the voting they have done, they put democrats in power for the last 20 or 30 years grid are their lives better? i'm not saying black people are poor but generally for most people, if you were poor and in the lower class, nine times out of 10, you will be for a democrat when a republican leaves office. president obama said recently in chicago that in the american black community, they must be more accountable. they must take more responsibility for their lives. he was saying that you can have all the government programs in the world designed to help those less fortunate but unless you learn a work ethic, discipline, thrift, sacrifice and realized the best and worst does happen to you is based on you, the government cannot help you. eventually that will run and you will find yourself in a worse

situation. even the president is coming around to understand that as much as the government can do, it is on your shoulders. you are responsible for your life when it is said and done, not the government. it should not play the overriding role of providing for you and your family. host: here is our first caller -- caller: where were you during the republican convention when they had paraded all the black republicans thrup to say nasty things about president obama? and you're sitting up there saying about black people. black community is aware of what you are trying to do. you've already tried to suppress our vote, you tried to keep us from getting jobs. if you think you are going to go out and sell this to the black community? and when you send people out there to top to the black

community you know you cannot be doing the things that you're doing. you are lying. you are making things up. guest: i really appreciate this caller because what the caller is expressing is that there's a mentality that no matter what he g.o.p. says and does they won't trust us. it only reminds us of the hurdle that we must overcome. and while her perception is that black republicans are trotted out at these conventions just to criticize president obama, it's not necessarily the case. in fact in my opinion it is not the case at all flt these are people who have a different value system and different belief system and way of looking at the world and how the world should run for everybody. some people see that as anti-president obama. and therefore, there's a certain culture in this country

that has such an attachment to the first black president that they feel a sense of ownership so they see it as a family thing. you don't criticize the family member. but in any of our lives to have improvement to progress we need this. president obama is better through this constructive criticism. people can say whatever they want to say about dr. ben carson. he was very respectful to president obama but he was trying to say to the president some things are not working in the areas of health care, in the areas of fair taxes. let us look at it in a different way. we respect and admire you. we want you to succeed but we cannot succeed if we're just saying everything that person wants to hear. in order for people to be better constructive criticism is necessary so i respect the caller but i want to say the god has to earn your trust. -- g.o.p. should earn your trust. if you are wise and open you

will begin to see the change that you thought was almost impossible and unbelievable as you just expressd in your sentence. host: republican line. hi. caller: i just want to say that i am african american female republican, 45 years old. and i am so happy to see the outreach, the visibility of republicans reaching out sincerely to those of us african american republicans. i felt during this last presidential election so marginalized. when they would show the numbers of african americans that were republicans and not supporting the democratic ticket it was such a small percentage and i felt like i didn't see myself. and now i'm glad to see myself there. but i also wanted to say in response to the comment of the last caller that we african americans do not think with one

mind. and what i find really hurtful is when african americans who are democrats ma line those of us that are republicans as though we don't have the right to have our views and if you do not support president obama's policies not him as a person as armstrong was just taunging about. but if you don't support his views that somehow you're less than african american. i think that we really need to stop and think about how we're hurting each other when we do that. and when you talk about people like allen west and dr. carson and armstrong williams, you know, saying somehow that they're some different kind of less than african americans because they have a different viewpoint, we should be supporting the fact that we ve a right to think with our

minds. guest: freedom. freedom. we are free to speak what you believe despite the mall inement. we really love not just really love but we love this country. we see that this country is losing its greatness. it has lost much of its potential. people are frightened, people are afraid. it takes all kinds of ideas in this mix to make it work. and this is what sadens me. if you are a white american in this country. you can say anything you want to say. whatever you want to say. if you criticize the white president they don't say you're anti-white. but the problem is they do try to put black people in a box that because of the hue of my skin you're going to dictate ow i'm to vote, to think, to ration lies politics. to me that is not only slavery but that is racism because tonl reason you're telling me i can't do it is because i am black. so check yourself.

when you hold me to a standard that you're not willing to hold everybody else to because of the color of my skin. host: good morning. she is from virginia on our independent line. caller: good morning. i am an african american woman and i have typically voted democrat although i find i'm on both sides of the fence. i could in every way vote republican but i'll tell you every time i -- although i support the views and every time i see a republican candidate i am routinely turned off. i have been appalled at some of the behavior that some of the republicans have put out there. and that is something that i am not going to stand behind. i will go ahead and support the president because i believe that he has an scombreanda that can work. and even if there's a republican counterpart that has a similar agenda that evans better but i can't take the sarcasm or rhett yirk.

you take this whole issue on the nra. we are a gun own anywhere my home but i can't stand the lunesy when you don't want to stand behind basic policy. so i'm always on the fence about whether i want to vote republican or stay or follow the republicans and every time there's a republican out there whether it's on the congress level or locally that says something does something behaves in a crazy manner where i say in no way could i be associated with this party. that is the reason i don't stand behind republican parties. i just don't. host: she brought it strictly to the gun control issue. guest: but she support it is republicans on guns. she made it clear that she is a gun owner. what she is saying is i was about to pull that lever for the republicans and then i heard this republican say wet

back. oh my god. what hole did you just crawl out of? it's 2013. that's what she's talking about. and she's absolutely right. there's no place for that kind of rhetoric and feeling about people in the republican party. but what this caller also shows us that she's ofmente she wants to. but it's the little thing that is they do. they need that, better voices, that you can understand that you can criticize the president but it doesn't have to be personal. the question of whether the president was a citizen. why waste your time on that? deal with real issues like affordable care. deal with immigration. deal with the gun laws, deal with iran, with what's going on with north korea now. people can respect that but when you become petty it turns people off. host: this is armstrong williams joining us to talk about the republican outreach

to minorities. republican line. caller: good morning. mr. armstrong, i'm a republican our e're more aligned with conservative views with the republican party. we're more aligned with the republican party on gun ownership to protect our community. we've always been with republicans. it became the fdr the new deal that ushered in the food stamps and that, now unfortunately that is what the democratic party has used as our crutch. food stamps and welfare and the promise of a job that you're never going to get or section 8 and public housing. this is the welfare party. that's all the democratic party. my mom was a democrat. i'm republican. and i can assure you looking at

the racist element of the publican party because i'm rom florida. we have to be careful and end the rhetoric, we have to be careful and when you come in and do away with early voting, with registration or civil rights. we have to stop putting our foot in our mouth more than anything. and we have to do an outreach and just deal with the issues. we can't talk about race issues. we have to stick to our guns, stick to the issues, and stick to the principles of helping people with boot straps and lift themselves out of poverty and not give them the food stamps not offer them which they want which is to stay in a place of poverty.

i want to be the best. i have three sons. host: orks caller thanks. guest: you know, i love learning and life is a laboratory. i just had this epiphany and that is the other thing that is -- minorities find so offensive, and they should. the government had a very noble they ll-meaning idea when instituted affirmative action, welfare, aid for dependent families. they actually thought they were helping. and the people that go on welfare and take assistance from the government, these are good people, these are decent people. these are the people that don't want to be dependent on the government. they don't want to be welfare resitchynts. but people go through very difficult challenges. sometimes the best and worst things in life you cannot plan. so what this has done the

government in its own way of trying to be helpful is created this permanent underclass and people become so dependent that they've lost their initiative to do for themselves. they become dependent. so when we talk about welfare we try to make welfare synonymous with black people, poverty synonymous with black people. by no means i'm trying to stereo type black people. host: you even use it had term welfare party. guest: yes. and they're not. so the bottom line is there's so many people in this country, the 47% that romney spoke about that people found was the turning point in the election. you have to understand, people need help. most people want their dignity. most people want to get up in the morning and set an example for their children that they work. most people want to earn a living. many people would like to create jobs and have employees. many people have pride. and so we should not try to make black people synonymous with welfare and everything that's wrong with this country.

the bottom line is that we've created this. we have to find a way to undo what we've done and do it in a way where these people can regain the ability to take care of themselves. and if every now and then -- even you and i, we may have a slip, we may fall. we're not going to stay down but sometimes we need help. it may not be the government but none of us get to where we are today unless somebody believes in us, invests in us and gives us an opportunity. and all many people want is an opportunity to make their lives better and i don't think black people are better than anybody else. they just want an opportunity. obviously if you look at it along with babies out of wedlock something has to change. if you look at the gun violence, the number of blacks in the penal system there's something wrong. there's something wrong with the church, with the community. and also think about coming back to entrepreneurship. when you go into inner city creians, u look

chinese, all of these own these businesses in these communities. black businesses in these communities is a dying phenomenon. and when you look at these families, these families are strong families, they usually have two parents, they work, they earn, they save they go to church. if you go to the church today you don't even hear ministers talk about the black community creating young preernships. that was a time in our society before the 60s when we were thrived. we weren't dependent on the government we were dependent on ourselves but there's something about the government that became like a drug and crippled that community. it removed fathers, it said if you have fathers in the household you're not going to get a check. what kind of nonsense? to take care of that family to work and set an example for his sons and his daughters? so we have to understand we have to encourage entrepreneurship. you've got to tell these young people and these inner cities

that it's not enough to go out and look for a job to work for corporate america to think that the government is going to give you something. you have to create something. and we're not creating like we once did in urban and inner city america. guest: host: armstrong williams, has a website. where can people find your show? guest: i'm on sirius 128, 6:00 live monday through friday. host: and television? guest: television show airs on the weekend. it's a national show on network tv. check your local listings. host: cj, democrat's line. good morning. caller: good morning. i am a young philadelphia african american. i'm not able to vote yet. i listen to c-span regularly and i say i comment on what the young gentleman just said about

encouraging young people. i encourage that but i encourage african american americans to get their education. because like you said we will always be looked down at. we will always be thought of in a different way than others will be thought. so i say get your education. it's not enough to just go look for a job. create your own business, do stuff, get your education, go to college so that you can change the way that people feel and think about african americans. host: we'll go to andy from south carolina. independent line. caller: i listen to your show in the evenings and i kind it comecal but interesting. the question i have for you and g.o.p. republicans first off i'm an african immigrant and obviously black and but i don't seem to understand why you guys

don't do certain things when g.o.p. folks say bad things. a few callers earlier a lady asked you about voter suppression. you didn't say anything about it. i didn't hear any of the prominent blacks come besides colin powell and talk about the reason for the voter suppression. and if you notice, 71% of asians voted for president obama. now, i'm an engineer i work with a lot of asians. trust me, we all wanted to vote for romney. even though we had some trepidations about big capital and shipping jobs abroad and the g.o.p. not wanting to talk about trade agreements and how there's fewer jobs to go abroad, corporate welfare, the worst kind of welfare, has cost the u.s. more than any public welfare will ever cost america. g.o.p. never talks about that. loopholes for corporations. and romney decided not to show

his tax returns. now, remember if you grew up in africa or asia we're used to dictators hiding money. so once we looked at romney we're like look we're about to elect a dictator. what's he hiding money for? host: with all that what's the question? guest: the question is why do our black g.o.p. members more proactive when stuff is happening to our communities? caller: but they are. mean, i've heard people like herman cain and i've heard jc wattings talk about voter suppression. everybody should have the right to vote. no one should be denied an opportunity to vote. that is a right that so many people die for. but you don't see the periodcals where these people are standing up for these issues. and that's why i have so much respect for colin powell.

epersonly when it comes to african americans. and people do perceive sometimes that we don't care. certainly in my own broadcast. i am less and less interested in the g.o.p. or the democratic party. i just think that both parties should work for we the people and i think when it takes you almost four years to pass a budget and there's constant gridlock in congress and then yet they vote themselves pay raises and yet they don't hold themselves to the same law that is they pass for us, i think what we need to do is awaken a sleeping giant and get away from these party labels. what we need to do is hold these elected officials accountable and make them do their jobs and if they don't do their jobs you vote them out of office. host: william, republican line. go ahead. we should elieve actually move towards an ause trailion or canadian system right now. i mean, it's really dumb.

host: i don't understand what you're saying. caller: we've created the great human devalue only because businesses work cheaper. i don't believe that is the way we should live because we live in pretty much like a system that works for a businessman. ost: how about this tweet from -- uest: most young people have never benefited and have no idea what affirmative action is. when you think about the michigan case and other cases where it's being debated right now there are so many young african americans that work so hard from grade school elementary school high school to make the sacrifices, their parents make the sacrifices for them to go to the library to

read books to travel and to take the ap courses and get the best grades. they knock these tests out of the ballpark and they go to college. they can get into any college and university that they want. why should they be marge liesed because of the hue of their skin for somebody to believe that the only reason they have a seat in that law school and that medical or in that school in that is the because of the hue of the skin? i believe if you're social socio economically disadvantaged and there are pools of scholarships available for people and their academics are excellent that you will get the advantage. but i don't think the advantage should be based on race. i don't. i just think that we live in a society today where merit oksy should be our foundation. i think we need to earn your way. i think you need to study hard. i think there are enough programs that dake care of all these issues that we speak

about today. no. i don't see a reason for me personally why anyone, especially in education, why anyone should benefit from affirmative action. you should benefit from your oove firmtive efforts. caller.xt caller: in regard to the g.o.p. outreach, i'm kind of skeptical. in my experience, i've been able to spend some time out in the rural areas of our country and what i find there is that racism and bigotry are alive and well. the people that i've had contact with are overwhelmingly republican. when obama was elected the jokes were flying. i went to a gathering not that long ago. someone came out out in black

face and impersonated the president and then went on to talk about birth certificates. so perhaps in the big cities, people are coming around. but if the republicans want to do an outreach i think maybe they need to reach out to some of their rural constituents and maybe bring them into the 21st century. guest: ignorance, bigotry, racism, you can't legitimate it. and -- legislate it. and the republican party may have its minority members who are what the caller just described. but democrats are not immune to it. they have the same. all of us have our extreme elements. but i would like to believe --

and i know some people are going to disagree with this. i like to believe that at least 90% of this country has moved beyond racism and bigotry and making judgments about people based on the hue of their skin or their gender their sexual orientation. i would like to believe that most people understand that this does not good for the country in the long run. you will always have your pockets of racism. but for the most part you can't blame the democratic party or the republican party for its extremist element. in fact, they sometimes join these parties because they assume it represents them and many times it does not. but we have an obligation when we hear the n word whether it's from a racist, whether it's from blacks to mean the harm that they're saying we have an obligation to direct and challenge that person to make them better because the government the republican party and the democratic party can't always be there when you hear this so it is my obligation and

your obligation to say that's wrong. there's no place for that kind of rhetoric. host: one of the things rand paul was asked about on his stance on the civil rights act. he responds to it but iment to get your take on how that plays in today. guest: who in their right mind would be against the civil rights act? it was very important. it's still just as relevant today. of course he's for the civil rights act. and i don't think anybody is for turning back the clock to slow down the progress that blacks have made in this country. but i think the real issue is that people need to feel that they can trust because when you trust someone you believe. remember emotional capitalism of all business transactions is trust. the emotional capital your onships whether it's

party, friendships it's trust. when people trust you they will believe you. but you cannot earn trust through rhetoric. you have to see it through policy and commitment. host: what we read before is part of that trust dealing with history still? iveraget how can you ignore history? you deal with history by the kinds of policies that you put in place today. you assure that history stays in place and you strengthen that history. but i think the caller called it earlier when he was talking about the grass roots. i think it's very important that the republican party builds itself from the grassroots level. the one thing about the democratic part wri where they do a brilliant jobs you see blacks all through the apparatus of the democratic party. and whether they say that democrats and black people that the democratic party cares. it is a sad day when you see a republican gathering and

everybody is white. to me it -- are you saying you don't know black people? you don't know people in policy and communication and finance? when people see that it's just amazing. george bush did an incredible job with his cabinet. he had one of the most diverse cabinets in history. president obama doesn't have to worry about this. if president obama were george bush in terms of the cabinet that he's appointed he would be villified. there's a different standard. but my point is the republican party knows enough people there are enough people in this party that have been a part of this party for ages that can bring the kind of people that can help them change the perception. a lot of this is perception. when they see the g.o.p. all they see is people that don't look like them and that is a problem. so from the grass roots to the national level they need to make a concerted effort. because if a black person is on the regional or local level, if black people see that there's a

certain trust they feel they have in common. you've got to do it. so while they go on this tour of redefining themselves they must start the heavy load, the heavy work of building from the grassroots up. host: let's look at the treatment that herman cain got, ben carson got. guest: what treatment? host: criticism about some of the proposals he had, especially from the black community. guest: it's ok to criticize his proposals. they were not criticizing him because he was black. dr. carson was being criticized about what he said about affordable care. that's legitimate. but when i go out overwhelmingly black people say to me i agree with dr. carson. i agree with him. he's right. when they talk about herman cain -- herman cain and dr. carson -- and he's not a republican. he's an independent. he just believes in ideas and advancing ideas because he

feels that something is wrong. thrazz breakdown and he feels he has a voice that has a platform and so he has become an advocate. but when people see a dr. carson or herman cain they embrace them just like colin powell they feel they can trust them. why? because dr. carson has a long history in the black community. they understand his story. they know who he is. they learned about him. they read his books. so he brings credibility. people like ar bernard. they trust him. he's been there helping the poor. host: criticism though. guest: criticism is good. but it's a different kind of criticism. they're not being called names, they're not saying we don't trust you. they're not saying you're unintelligent. it's good to have friction in a community. friction is good. that's when you grow. host: charles next from ohio independent line. caller: i'm african american and i grew up in the south and

i dropped out of school when i was a young man. and seeing my parents struggle and there was discrimination living in the south. today i was able to go back and get my high school diploma, go to college, and because i moved to ohio in a job. but many people fail to see that not just in the south, but all across america the hatred we have for one another, and how we treat one another and disrespect one another. and find a way for solutions. we always talk. are we trying to find solutions? always like learning from the history of slavery and where we came from because sometimes we

want to forget where we came from or are ashamed. i used to be ashamed growing up real poor in the south and didn't want to talk about it but now i'm able to share with people what my parents came through and what i came through and today it seems like all people are losing hope in america. they're giving up. nobody wants to go out and try and make an effort whether you're poor black white or green or whatever. host: thanks, caller. guest: well, what a heart warming call. it is divisive. black people many of them should allow for different voices. different ideas. they should be happy that there are those of us that are in the republican party i'm a third generation republican. i don't belong to the republican party. the republican party belongs to

me. i'm not going anywhere. you cannot have influence inside a party if you're outside criticizing it. you have to make change within. you have no idea the g pact that mr. conservatives have impacted this party. look at michael steel. people will never know his true legacy and the impact that he made in expanding that base for minorities. it's good that we're at the table. and sometimes we own the table. and we're not there because we're some prop for somebody. these are real achievers. people who have accomplished things or done things. people like herman cain who built incredible businesses. he decided to get into policy because he cares. dr. carson who is retired decided because he loves this country to add his voice. and yes he gets maligned and criticized but that's what leadership is. no different than what our fathers were able to do. when they were tied to the british they said we could have

a better life. this is not the kind of life i want to have for my future grandchildren and so they sacrificed their wealth and well being and sacrificed their life so that we can have this america that we have today. we need men like carson and herman cain. and even people in the democratic party to make this country better. host: you can find the work of armstrong williams at his website. mr. williams thanks for your time. guest: my pleasure. host: coming up we're going to take a look at student loans the interest rate on some of those student loans might double by july. you can find out which ones are nvolved in that. [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2012]

>> we get the negative opinion from all the news media but the fact is that every day working together justice kagen is able to put aside her differences and go hunting with justice scleia. >> i feel like president obama

summed it up yesterday. he was saying that our country has always been in turmoil throughout its history but we as people have always found a way to get through it. and i'm not saying i'm not worried about the future and we're not having problems that we have to fix but when i look around this room and see 103 minds who want to make a difference for this country and want to do good, i'm sure there's plenty other people that want to make a difference and want to do good. so i believe that we will be able to solve the problems that we face today. >> each year high school students meet in washington as part of the senate youth program. this year they met with leaders from all three branches of government including president obama. hear their insights from the week. sunday night at 8:00. > orphaned at age 11 she lived

with her favorite uncle. because he's unmarried she serves as white house host ezz. he is the first to be called first lady on the regular basis and is so popular she sets trend in clothing and children and ships are named after her. we'll look at her life and that of her pred sethor along with your questions and comments. first ladies monday night live at 9:00 eastern. also on c-span radio and c-span.org. >> "washington journal" continues. host: from new york karen, reporter, thanks for your time this morning. guest: happy to be here. host: we understand that a certain type of student loan when it comes to its interest rate is set to double this july. guest: that's the subsidized stafford loan which is the main loan for low or moderate income

families. so basically this loan is currently at 3.4 interest rate and it has a cap of about $23,000 over the course of one borrower's educational career. but in july it's set to double to 6.8%. and this is a loan that's used by about 7 million borrowers a year. so it's a prevalent loan. host: so with that doubling of the rate means a steep increase in what those who have the loan are going to pay every month. guest: it depends on how much you take out. so it could be a significant portion. if you're doubling in interest rate on a loan that's not a joke depending on how much i've seen estimates anywhere from $10 a month up to $40 a month which particularly for a young undergrad adds up. host: how did we come to have it at 3.4%? guest: this dates back to 2006

and congress wanted to increase lending to needy borrowers and so they created this subsidized stafford loan which takes the regular loan available to all families and for low and moderate income students they allow them to not pay any interest while they're in school. so essentially the federal government subsidizes the interest during the school period. but when congress passed the bill in 2006 they didn't want it to kick in immediately they had it gradually kick in over time. so starting in 2008 the rate went down to 3.4%. and if you recall this was supposed to expire and it was during a presidential election and it was pretty untenable to have interest rates double in the middle of presidential elections. so both president obama and romney advocated for maintaining the rate at 3.4% for another year. so basically that bought kgs another year and that year is almost up. host: and there's no indication that congress is going to extend this any further than

the deadline that's in july. guest: there's a lot less pressure this year than there was last year because there's not an election. what has happened though which is an interesting change is that in president obama's proposed budget for this year he is proposing changing how those federal government charges interest rates so currently they are at these fixed rates set by congress for subsidized loans and then 6.8% for most stafford loans. and what president obama is supposed so to make that rate pegged to the market rate for borrowing. because we're in this really low interest rate environment. and student loans haven't changed because of it. so what he is proposing is that student loans would essentially be pegged to the treasury's 10-year borrowing cost, the government's note and then add an additional couple percentage points because of the risk associated with borrowing. so that would currently lower

the rates for most borrowers but as rates go up that would increase the rates for borrowers because there's no cap on what the president is proposing. host: if the loan goes up to 6.8% how does that compare to current market price ons this type of loan? guest: that is still below what a market rate loan would be. in general. the private market is very tight right now. almost all private market borrowers have a parental co signers. so if you have really excellent credit and you're going into a very promising career as a grad student in the medical field let's say then you can probably get a loan for less than that but otherwise a private market loan would sfwill higher. host: karen, talking about this rate increase set to take place this july. if you want to ask questions you can give us a call. the numbers are on the bottom f your screen.

you can also send us a tweet. karen, we showed a graphic looking at this information and one of the subpoints said that when it comes to this type of loan that the government makes a little money off of every dollar that's loaned. 36 cents or so. guest: this is one of those funny things. but yes because the government borrowers for such low cost and they loan it to students at a higher rate students pay it back, most students pay it back and they make money over the life of the loan. so according to the cb omp i elieve it was around $33 billion, and that now is something that there's a big debate about what do you do with that amount of money? do you put it to paying down the deficit? do you change the loan rate or put it to other type of education funding?

i should have one caveat on that number. the cbo did predict that number but they did it because through a certain -- it's very technical they use a certain type of accounting method that they have to use based on congress. but cbo said they would prefer to use a different accounting ethod that more accurately cal clates the risk and makes them less profitable. so it's still profitable though not as profitable. talking about student loans. keith is up, arkansas, independent line. caller: good morning. every time the government more money is made available to students, the tuition and the fees increase tremendously at school. therefore increasing the students' obligations or their parents obligation and the debt. once you take out this loan you will be treated like a criminal

the rest of your life. you can -- it's almost no way to get out of this debt unless you die and if you die and your parents cosigned they will come after your parents to get everything they can to get the money back. these loans are absolutely -- well, they take advantage of these students, they promise them the world and basically become slaves to the federal government for the rest of their lives until that money is paid back. so -- guest: so one of the issues you raise which is true is that federal student loans, student loans in general, it's very, very hard to expung them in bankruptcy unlike other types of consumer debt. this goes back to all sorts of political wrangling as i'm sure you can imagine but student loans kind of like a credit card loan they're not secured. so if you take a loan out on a car and you default on that, the lender can take your car

back. the same thing as we've seen a lot with mortgages and houses but with student loans there's nothing that they can take back to so to speak so that was part of the reason the protection was put in against bankruptcy. and other types of discharges. there has been a growing focus on trying to create better repayment option force borrowers. including most recently income-based ry payment and a pay as you earn plan. what that does is it caps what percentage of your income you will have to pay to student loans. and it caps it at 10% of your monthly income and that over time if you pay that 10% the balance will be forgiven after 20 years or if you're in a public interest field like working for a nonprofit or government it will be forgiven after ten years. those are pretty new programs. they're a little complicated and there's a lot of them. but those i think have generally received praise in terms of focusing on affordability on the back end. host: do you know if what the

default rate is on these type of loans? guest: according to the federal reserve, of loans in repayment arks lot of borrowers are in repayment because in school you're not required to pay the loans and o other periods like that. but in general, about a third of loans are more than 90 days behind. so that is not -- that is a lot of borrowers who are struggling to pay on their loans so that's why there's been a greater focus on what can you do to help borowers because college costs have gone up. thrazz lot of reasons behind that. there's been huge budget cuts across states all over this country. i'm from california. the system tuition has doubled very quickly in that system and other state systems as well. you have greater spending at colleges, you have the rise of for-profit colleges. there's a lot of reasons why college costs are going up. one other thing i will add is that the pell grant program is, which is a direct grants to low

income students, has been expanded in the past several years and so the it will be interesting to see how much of that is maintained or if it's expanded even further. host: the numbers will be on your screens if you want to talk about student loans. the current rate is 6.8%. that's for the unsubsidized stafford student loans in july. 7.9 for a grad plus loan. and 7.9 also for a parent plus loan. i'm assume that's for graduate students and parents who take out these type loans? guest: these are relatively newer programs. and has come under quite a bit of scrutiny because grad school cost as lots of money, professional schools cost a lot of money. and that really enables quite a

lot of borrowing. so when you hear the stories in the news often of borrowers with 150,000 worth of debt, that is almost exclusively grad students. and so i suspect over time there will be more focus on whether or not there should be ways to limit or adjust the grad portion of that in particular. and also, the parent portion as well. parents used to pay for college with home equity lines of credit which are very hard to get in this economy. college wasn't expensive. parents make more money. the economy's been hard on incomes. that's why you've seen parent loans become very problematic. i spoke to a father in the chicago area who had $200,000 worth of loans putting his four sons through college and he was very grateful for people to let his sons graduate debt free but he was almost 60 and he said i'm not going to retire when i'm paying $2,000 a month for student loans. host: next call, ben from ohio.

caller: i have a question about the ability to refinance students loans. it seems to me that it would be a very safe loan even though there isn't any collateral involved. as you mentioned, that can't be extinguished in bankruptcy. i wonder if they would raise why you couldn't later refinance a student loan down to 3% or 2%. guest: it's a very good question on something that policy makers are looking more and more at. the consumer financial protection bureau for example has kind of issued a call for ideas about how to spur refinance market. usually borrowers who are going to default often do so in the first couple years after they get a loan. so if you can get over that first hurdle chances are you're not going to default at all. so it seems like the sort of thing that would be ideal but there's not a market for that

right now. currently in the private loan market there are a couple of consolidation loans but the private loan market is very constrained because of the credit market right now. and the public loans you can consolidate as well but it doesn't ultimately have the effect of reducing your income. all that happens is there's a weighted average of your current loan so this is something that policy make verse been looking to figure out to do. and there's been some interesting proposals that the government should create kind of slush fund is the wrong word but a specific fund to allow that to happy. because borrowers are looking at interest rates now but and saying they're very low why can't i refinance and take advantage of that. the one last thing i'll add is that some people are getting around this where they can that if they have a mortgage they'll refinance their mortgage and capitalize the cost of their

student loans or take they'll ask a parent to help with that. so people are doing it but not the systemic type of response we need given the scope of the number of borrowers we have in this country. host: democrat's line. california. caller: i just wanted to know. i'm 65 years old and i went back to school late in life. i am not as well as i used to be. i can barely walk and i'm wondering, can they have forgiven me each year for a couple of years and said i don't have to pay the $500 a month that they're requesting. so i've been sending them a much smaller amount. now my question is now that i know how to research and do better elled have never gone to this private school had it been -- had i known i would have gone to a public school and done the same thing and probably got a better education. what should i do? should i continue paying the

$25 a month? i will probably be dead before it's paid off. what should doy? guest: it's a big challenge and i apologize i don't have a magic wand. in general, these are not expungible in bankruptcy. they are -- it's very, very hard to get a disability deferment. you have to have a very stringent proof of being completely i believe the phrase is inexasstate or something along those lines. so to get a waiver is virtually impossible. so i think the biggest trick that people say is to talk as much as closely with your lender and servicer who is issuing your loan or who is managing your loans as possible to come out with a plan. if you have a federal program, a federal loan which it sounds like you probably don't. if you do there are a lot more options in terms of the types of adjustments they can do to

help with repayment plans. so if you have a federal loan, look into those, the ones that cap it as a certain part of your income. although if you have a private loan again that's just one off working with the lender. and the lenders are kind of constrained in what they can do as well because their bank regulators want them to be cautious about how they account for loans. and so if -- they don't have as much wriggle room as federal loans do basically. so the biggest advice is to talk with lenders early and often. there are credit counselors out there to work to help negotiate on behalf of borrowers. i know in the mortgage realm h.u.d. works with mortgage but also student debt as well. you may have to describe what forebearance means

guest: forebearance gives you a brief period where you don't have to repay a loan at all. and then it you still owe the amount but it doesn't force you to pay at that moment. so you can get forebearance in certain kind of circumstances related to if you have a sudden large health expense if you are laid off i believe in certain situations you can although not for a long period of time and there are limits overall in terms of how long you can get forebearance for any given point and then accumulate latively how much and how frequently you can get it. host: next call from judy. independent line. caller: i am concerned about both the overall cost of college and the very concept of going into debt to go to college. hen i went to ucla in 1967 i managed to pay my tuition and

books just by key punching paper tape in the electrical engineering lab for the people who were studying to become computer programmers. and working your way through school is no longer feasible because college is so very, very expensive and it's causing our young people to put off marriage and family and buying a house. and i just see this as a bad policy overall to borrow to go to school and then spend ten years paying it off. host: caller, thanks. guest: college costs have certainly risen. your example of going to ucla was a great one. ucla, great education, wonderful school and it was very relatively inexpensive. you could work and pretty much

pay it off. and now the uc system -- fees in the uc system have doubled i believe since 2008 if not very similarly short period. funding -- public funding for education has gone down for higher ed has gone down quite a bit and so schools are increasing their costs so they're also trying to keep up with -- public schools are trying to keep up with private schools who build new campuses and want to recruit students based on kind of the look of a place and that's sexith competitive and expensive as well. so there certainly are a lot of growing costs associated with going to school now. host: these types of loans. what's the likelihood that someone who applies for one will get one? guest: you are guaranteed as a taxpayer to get loans to get stafford loans. if you get a -- to get a subsidized stafford loans which

is currently at 3.4%, that is based on income. and that's for low and moderate income families and i don't know the exact cutoff on that. but anyone if you are in a school can get a stafford loan and any parent can get a loan. these are not underwritten which is a big difference . host: here's larry from indiana. republican line. caller: recently i went through divorce and i went back to school later in life and got a degree in h.r. i got the degree. shortly after got the degree the economy went to crap and lost my job. so they sent me deferments. but i had never handled that aspect of the loan. my ex wife always did that. so i failed to get it in on time even though i failed to get it deferred several times. now the situation is this.

i'm back to work now and my loan since it went into default was sold to a company and they took the loan and they're charging me 25% interest. so i said i contacted an attorney i'm going to try to get some kind of relief. the attorney says you can't because it's still a student loan. since it's still a student loan and i can't get relief how is it that they can charge me 25% interest on a loan that i had originally for less than 4? that's my question. i mean, i'm not above paying the loan back but i'm in a situation now where they're garnishing my wages 75 a week which is -- i can't make it on what i'm bringing home and i have no out. guest: it sounds like you probably have a private student loan from what you're describing not a federal student loan and the rules are a little different. the federal student loans have built-in workout plans on the back end and most private

student loans don't. some do but the older ones don't. so i think the best advice i could have would be to try to find a nonprofit credit counselor and see if they can help you negotiate in terms of what they can do and raising the rate that's specific to individual loans and if it was an adjustable rate loan which most were, they have different triggers built into it. so i would suggest finding a nonprofit credit counselor. again, h.u.d. has a list on their wen website that could help. but the trick is to try to work as closely with the loan servicer as possible to try to figure out a way to bring it down and create a manageable payment plan but it is not easy. host: your story you say that senator dick durbin and others have been talking with the private industry to come together with some type of consensus. what's the interest of the private industry to do so? guest: several things. one is defaults -- a loan that

never gets paid back is not good for anybody pretty much. because for a borrower you get in a situation of garnished wages because there are certain protection force the lenders. for a lender they would much rather have someone get on the track of repayment and to have some flexibility in terms of modifying a loan. we've seen that in the mortgage world a lot where because of the huge foreclosure crisis in our country we've started modifying more mortgages and trying to see and have succeeded in getting loans go from unperforming to being performing so borroweres paying again. so private lenders want that. they know that one of the biggest advantages federal student loans have right now is these various repayment plans that congress has created. and so they want to be competitive and they want to say look come to us not just government and one of the main reasons to go to a federal loan right now is availability and also these repayment plans. so the lenders are looking for

ways to have more flexibility essentially and that goes to both in types of the new loans that they designed but also working with existing loans and they need to work with their big bank regulators. what the bank regulators don't want is for a loan that's never going to pay out, they don't want a lender on their books every month to show it delayed but we're going to get it eventually. if it's not going to be paid out they want lenders to write it off. sometimes you can delay it but that is what senator durbin and others are trying to do is create more conversations about where flexibility is around the edges. , we have karen weise somebody on twitter asking about the consumer financial protection bureau. do they have a role in this geck?

guest: they do. they oversee private lenders. that is about 16% of the market. they also oversees student loans servicers. these are the companies that on behalf of the lender, be at the federal government or a private lender, they are the ones who send you your bill every month, collect your payment, hopefully work with you if you are in trouble. so they are collecting complaints about these different entities and ideas. they have an ombudsman who is very active in looking at how to create more options for our worse. but on the actual lending side, they are focused on private loans. tweet,ne more tweak -- the folks who complain about their loans to not read the contracts they signed. guest: as this problem has loans, the problem about

borrower education. when i took my federal student loans out, you actually get the education after you signed the promissory note. it is a backward situation. i don't know if that has changed since when i did it. they are complicated things. in many cases, you have 18-year- olds filling them out. or families trying to do what they can, they're in the boom of the for-profit colleges. there was a lot of rusher about getting those loans closed. there are a lot of things that go into that. the greater focus is going into students can be smaller -- smarter about how they borrow, how much they take out. the most important thing is where they choose to attend school. that ethics -- that affect their outcome. if you take out a lot of loans, but get a good education that will give you a good job, you are fine. you will probably be fine. is focusing on the front end note of helping people of your great --

evaluate should i go to the community college or a for- profit school, start with two years and see how that goes? is this the degree i should be getting given where i am and where the workforces heading? karenweise, -- host: yale, you into ucla and correct? guest: yes. i am extremely grateful to my parents for that. i did have to take out federal loans for grad school. i repaid them a little bit. i'm one of those people who did a workaround and when a family member refinanced their mortgage, i've refinanced through them. i am paying a mortgage interest right now as about 2.5% on my loans and have an auto detection on my account. host: when you expect that day to come? are we talking years? guest: yes, i have seven more

years. host: our guest is karen weise, she joins us from new york from bloomberg businessweek. we're talking about federal loans. a caller from washington, d.c., on the democrats line. hello. it is lavonne. my question is, can a student, can stafford decrease the loan in terms of the amount of interest that has accrued throughout the years -- it has kind of doubled my loan. i think my mom was $7,500. $7,500.an was it is now $10,000. i'm able to pay the $7,500 today. is there some way that a student can just pay that amount and not have to deal with the extra

interest? i know you were talking about forbearance and the repayment -- one thing that they do not tell us is that with the forbearance, you are still getting interest on the loan, repayment plans, you are thinking you are getting a break in the beginning, but then at the end, all of this money has still accrued. so no matter how much you are repaying, they are adding in the end, and you are never getting anywhere. guest: it is true on forbearance and on the repayment clans, you do still accrued that interest. due at the end. on the newer loans that are eligible for these income-based repayment. that is why at the end they are forgiven at 10 or 20 years. currently, those are only available to existing -- two new

loans or loans made in the past year or so. president obama's budget is proposing making the pay as you earn plan available to all federal borrowers. that would be something that could affect someone as yourself if you have a federal loan currently because it would provide a way to have a balanced or a portion forgiven because the amount grows because of insurance -- it is interest. i would suggest if you have a federal loan is the federal student loan government website lists the programs. you can take a look and see if you are eligible for one of those. that is prescribed by congress. so if there is not a program that fits your specific needs, chances are you cannot get that help directly from your servicer. they do not have a ton of

leeway. on the private loan side, talk to the servicer and see if you can work something out. and if you can start paying it down. if you have a high rate, the more you can pay down earlier in a muddy lesson that stimulates. on theustin, texas next independent line. robin, hello. graduate rates are predatory lehigh are -- higher. is there any reason why grad students should be discriminated against? it is making the grad students indebted to the government. andtaxes are also owed earned. , he is notaduate

allowed access to intellectual property because it is stolen by the institution. guest: grad student loans are relatively newer in terms of the grad plus loans, which allow unlimited borrowing. they are those type of loans where you see the largest loan balances. hughes -- they generally are below what a private lender would charge. not exclusively, depending on your credit score and how much you take out any profession that you are in because private lenders often underwrite the loan space on credit schools and what -- credit rates. medical school has very low default rates. if you have stellar credit and are going into certain types grad professions, you can get rates lower than the federal government. but if you don't, then the federal government is the cheapest way to borrow. the reason that it is more

expensive than an undergrad loan is that the government has a policy decision says that graduate schools are more of a choice. has a right to a certain amount of federal loans, federal stafford loans him a that is capped. if you want to take additional loans, you can take these grad plus loans. as a policy level, the government abuse undergrad as really something that they want to provide as much access to and grad loans are seen as more of an individual choice, individual investment. with the graduate loans, does your major depend on whether you get a loan or not? federal loan.m a it is to that. it is not depend on anything, really. i'd your income, on your credit school -- on your income, on your credit score.

any private loan market, it does. for certain majors you cannot get loans. for certain wagers you can get decent interest rates that are pretty imperative -- ready competitive. host: would you have examples of both of those? the type of majors. easiest to get federal grad student loans for the medical profession, not just doctors but certain types of nursing and things like that. , for lawinary medicine school, for business school, they are the type of professional careers that ultimately gets very high incomes after graduating. so those are where you can get the lowest rates. host: a few more minutes with our guest. this is rich from ohio on our republican line. caller: it is really a big problem, trying to get people out of permanent debt.

.he jobs are just killing us education is not worth too much if there is not a job on the other end. this all started with two legal students going through school and after they got their degrees they declared banker of cna screwed it up for all of these other students. i feel sorry that we cannot get a better handle on this. repercussions in the housing for the seniors who are losing housing. good luck. guest: there is a growing concern about the impact student loans have on the economy at large. the federal reserve for the first time in their meeting notes said that they were concerned about student loans, the limiting factor of growth in the economy. we have seen smaller numbers of first-time home buyers, lower types of other consumer lending. there is no doubt that there is a growing awareness. student loans have a total volume -- they have doubled

since 2007 or 2008. that is a lot of growth. coupled with a time that the job market and the economy is still very difficult. that is part of what you were saying so much attention on it. on capitol hill, from thing takes -- think tanks and from borrowers. host: do you consider the student loans a bubble? guest: that is a good question. peoplely, on net, ultimately pay back the loans. because they are through the federal government, it is a little different than the housing situation that we just were in. on that will be the jobs on the backend of things. aen if you have a real -- relatively high rate, if you

can get a good job, that is a good investment. the biggest problem is for folks who start school, take out debt, and don't finish school. because then you have all the debt without the benefit of the degree. to stay inet people school, to complete -- you have to be smart about going into programs that will produce jobs at the end and employment at the create thecan appropriate mechanism for when people have moments of difficulty, then it is not a bad thing. education is the single most important thing you can do to increase your earning potential over your lifetime. it is no doubt starting to affect the economy at large. host: she lies on the democrats line from north carolina. caller: i have a question in reference to a previous color -- -- who hadadventures

mentioned the interest rates -- being low and colleges increasing their tuition. what is congress doing to regulate that, the never ending cycle of tuition being raised over and over. my second concern is do people in congress really even understand if you cannot send your child to school, how do you understand the everyday questions that may be subject to them? guest: this is a good question. congress has to pay a lot of ,ttention to private colleges private, for-profit colleges in particular. that industry has changed dramatically in the past several years. where you saw a lot of high- and lowrowing graduation rates, which is the one-two punch that you want to avoid. , and i'm i have seen

not aware of major efforts from congress to make changes to state institutions or community colleges, that is very much in a state court generally. there is not too much that commerce is doing to look at that as far as i'm aware of. you are on. hi, i thought i just asked the question. i was is asking is congress doing anything -- i just want to understand our congress. does our congress understand that the working class has to take out loans a lot of time to put their children through school in order to to have the so-called american dream? how much is congress understand that if they are not in situations where they have to do that for their student because their salaries are larger than the average american worker. host: since we are happy, and

you made an additional, let's go to peter on the independent line. caller: karen, i would like you to check into the acrid college program for experienced learners. i have an undergraduate degree in a post graduate from university state. college program for experienced learners in my opinion has been rather lax in terms of collecting some loan programs from over .4 students. students. a lot of these have lower gpas, european students. i was tutoring one of these students from europe. the reason i want you to check into this program is one of the students suggested to the student that she could utilize , which iso buy a car in my opinion, a legal. and -- illegal.

this particular female student had a $10,000 loan outstanding with a $2000 local scholarship. that may be something you may want to check into in terms of the various schools. but i will hang up at this point and see if you would like to comment further about colleges that are either not looking into loans closely and obviously letting students get away with loans that they can write off and then suck more money out of the stafford loan program. host: thank you, color. -- caller,. pretty much all private student loans are disbursed through the school in a way that did not happen before and are tied to the actual cost of attendance in a way that was not necessarily happening before. those are changes that have happened in the past couple of ands in terms of the volume

the school's -- the schools administer the loans now. they disperse them. that is one change trying to do -- trying to prevent what you discussing. there have been huge reforms to the for-profit school market in the past several years. no longer can a school get more than 90% of its income from federal loans, which was happening previously. private, for-profit colleges are kind of undergoing a big shift right now as they adjust to different types of of thestems after all problems that became obvious in the economy. it was obvious that people were not getting jobs and were in some cases led into loans that they should not have had. from bloombergse businessweek has been our guest. , thank you for your

time. guest: thank you. host: in our final segment this warning, we are going to look at new numbers from the centers for disease control showing 11% of school age children have been diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. dr. partitioned quinn from the national center for girls with adhd will talk to us about that and the role adhd plays in children when we continue. ♪ >> today on american history tv, a chance to weigh in live on emancipation and civil rights and the role of corporations and american life. both panels from the organization for a american historians annual meeting from san francisco. it starts at nine: a.m. eastern with a look at black freedom movement. followed by your questions live at 11:00. at noon, a debate on the role of corporations in american life.

that is also followed by your questions live at 1:30. -- today starting at 9:30 a.m. eastern on c-span3 's american history tv. >> today, booktv is live from the annapolis book festival with panels throughout the day. at 10:00 a.m. eastern, maryland in 1812 -- war, slavery, and opportunity. 11:00 -- the changing landscape of suburbs and cities. and at 12:00 -- america's ongoing involvement in afghanistan. at 1:00 -- the ever evolving roles of women in society. 2:00 -- mickey edwards on politics in america. the annapolis book festival, live, today, part of booktv this weekend on c-span two. age 11, sheat lived with her favorite uncle, james buchanan. years later, he becomes president and because he is

unmarried, she serves as white house hostess. she is the first to be called first lady on a regular basis. she is so popular that she has friends in clothing and his and ships are named after her. meet harriet lane. we will look at her life and that of her predecessor, jane pierce. along with your questions and comments by phone, facebook, and twitter. first ladies, monday nights at 9:00 eastern on c-span and c- span three. also on c-span radio and c- span.org. >> "washington journal" continues. host: joining us now is dr. patrician quinn from the national center for girls with adhd and serves as their director. thank you for serving us. what is adhd? guest: a chemical disorder that usually starts in childhood that may persist into adulthood and is comprised of a set of says -- symptoms. it usually involves trouble paying attention,

distractibility. they may also include hyperactivity impulsivity, but it is not and everyone with the disorder. it is usually also genetically and heritage, so we see other family members with similar problems. we also see that there are other conditions, usually the result of insult during pregnancy or later on neck and also mimic or look like the same symptoms in adhd. host: the cdc came out with new numbers this week, 11% of school-age kids with it. what do you make of the numbers , especially from your perspective? thet: this is a survey that cdc has been doing since 1999 of american households with students. it is a health and wellness survey. they asked the parents -- has this child, anyone ever told you, a physician or healthcare

professional, that this child has adhd? it is not a formal diagnosis. just as the egg arrant a question and then -- asking the parent a question and then letting you know whether that child had ever had that diagnosis given to them. that is how the survey is conducted. the incidence prevalence of adhd has been increasing over time, about 3% a year in general. that is kind of what we saw that has not been analyzed by the cdc yet. these results were just the raw data of that. they usually come out with a report in about two years. what was reported was that overall about 11% of children, the parents reported that someone had ever said that they have adhd. that is different than a diagnosis of adhd. so it may be an overestimate. it does not increase from the last survey, which we saw in the, where 9.5% of

children. it has gone from 9.5% to 11%. in 2003, and have gone from 7.8% to the 11%. this is probably an overestimate. in 2007,, the cdc numbers reported 6.2% of children in that state had the disorder. when you had kaiser permanente have the physicians do a study where they looked at their patients who that a formal diagnosis using the formal criteria, they only had 3.1%. so the cdc numbers from the parent survey said 6.2%, and the physicians actually diagnosing it only found 3.1%, we can see that this may be an overrepresentation of what is going on. host: our topic for our last segment -- dealing with adhd. here's how you can call.

we have divided the lines regionally. if you live in the eastern and central time zones, (202) 585- 3883, mounts pacific, (202) 585- adhd patientare in or parent of an adhd patient, (202) 585-3882 is the number to call. how was it treated? guest: it is treated in several ways. stones is --uched touchstones his medication because this is a neurological disorder. not all patients take medication. we find that combining medication with other there if he is really the best treatment for the disorder. though we do behavior management therapy, parent education, coaching sometimes organizers, tutors to help the children. social skills group if the child is having difficulty with friendship. so we do use a variety, including medication.

that was one of the things that the survey pointed out. it has been pretty consistent. only about half of the children diagnosed with the disorder are being treated with medication. only have half receiving medication. host: some of the research said there were concerns about over medication, arrant having trouble with children, they notice a couple of things, they get it diagnosed as adhd, get medicine. guest: if you look at the numbers actually reporting diagnosis, only half of those is being treated, we cannot say that that is happening in that group. there was one finding in the survey that we should probably talk about. know thei do not results because the cdc has not, what their analysis yet, but in 2007, the same survey asked the parents to rate their child's adhd as mild, moderate or severe.

we are talking about maybe a lot of children who have very mild symptoms who are being taken for diagnosis. i do not know whether they have adhd or not. there are a lot of causes for problems of attention. that is where we get down to the diagnostic criteria. what does the survey tell us? it is saying that more children , or just diagnosing and finding children who have it? we were not finding them before. over the last decade, we have been doing a better job at diagnosing them. we can answer that question. what we have are criteria. the american academy of pediatrics has come out with a set of diagnostic and treatment criteria. so has the american academy of child and adolescent psychiatry. and the american psychiatric

association in their diagnostic manual do have diagnostic are serious. one of those criteria is that the symptoms that a child is exhibiting must affect their functioning in two or more settings. it is very important. that is one of the issues we need to look at. are these diagnostic criteria being followed when a diagnosis is being made? or if the parent is bringing in a child complaining that there are problems at home or saying that they are not doing well in school, and having somebody not using these criteria that we have and simply saying oh, they have adhd, they are having trouble with attention, and then treating them for adhd? parent would have reported positively in that survey and maybe that child is not meet all of the diagnostic criteria we have. that is one of the things we need to look at when we discussed this. we have criteria. are they being applied when a

diagnosis is made? we have a host: viewers lined up to talk about you. let's hear from don in michigan. , when i was quinn a young man, i was going through emotional things at 10 years old. my doctor was a pediatrician, he -- my mother was talking about putting me on an antidepressant. i was 10 years old. he said no. he said he did not want to do it because my brain was still developing. he said he could damage it. weon't understand they way are about putting kids on antidepressants. [indiscernible] , theyre we going to do have terrible twos, put them on pills? do you work for the pharmaceutical company? be truthful about it? guest: your question is about

the medication, not adhd -- your question is about the antidepressants, not adhd. this is what i was referring to when i was talking about the diagnosis being made. if a child is having emotional problems, if there are family problems going on, there is a definite family come a children who are depressed have trouble paying attention to mother they have trouble paying attention because of their depression, not because they have adhd. i think we need to look at that. also, anxiety can cause problems with tension. we know that there are a lot of behavioral programs that help these children. we are not recommending medication for all children. we are not recommending medication for all children with depression. i think it is very important that you have a relationship with your physician, as your mother did, when you discuss it with your doctor, he said he did not feel you should go on

antidepressants. i think that it's very important. host: trent from plywood, kentucky. good morning. trent, go ahead. you are on with dr. patrician quinn. you said you have adhd or are a parent of sunday with adhd? one more time for trent, good morning. caller: yes, i'm sorry. i'm here. i do have adhd. i dealt with at all my life. to the previous color, i am curious about the criteria you are speaking about, ma'am. how is it being applied? i know specifically when i grew up, adhd was not being recognized. we had to file a lawsuit in order to have it implemented in the individual -- what is it called?

the plan with the school. guest: your individual education plan, your iep. caller: yes ma'am, thank you. it is not every teacher is saying that a rambunctious child is hyperactive, has add, and they're just being pushed onto these pills like ritalin. and even antidepressants. it seems like it is the move just to put people on pills and get them to the point where they feel as if they can never be right without the medicine. i just find that that is legalized drug dealing. so my question, ultimately, is how stringent is the right. that and even now, i know of kids that are being pushed towards medicine --

thank you.aller, guest: what he said was that people did not know about it a long time ago and people were not getting diagnosed. that's why the rise we see in the numbers is a result of really recognizing be disorder in children who had it before who were not diagnosed. 3% to 5% of our prevalence rate for many years. it really was not until the last decade that we started doing these surveys. they started in 1999. so i think that we did not diagnose before. we do have criteria. the criteria are based on symptoms. there is no test for adhd. the criteria are really based on symptoms. i think that when you look at the set of criteria as we have them, you have to have a

certain number of symptoms in the various categories. you have to have had the symptoms for at least six months. they have two up the gun and -- they had to have begun in childhood. you don't just suddenly get a adult onset adhd and you have it. you usually have from a very young age. and after affect your functioning in two out of three areas. we have a lot of criteria that you have to meet. i think you have also hit on an important port -- point, we really need education out there of both the physicians who are diagnosing this and the teachers who are making the referrals. when we did a survey looking at girls with adhd, we found that 40% of teachers said they did not know how to recognize the disorder in girls. when he think about the educational system that we have for our teachers, they take maybe one course in disabilities and only a part of that is on adhd.

so we don't have a lot of education both for physicians, the pediatrician out there, general practitioner, seeing these children, but we don't have a lot of specialists around who can do this. we need to do a better job of educating these physicians who are seeing these children everyday. we also need to do a better job at helping, educating the teacher, but also giving the teachers support in the classroom. we need school psychologists who can set up behavioral programs in the classroom for the teachers. usedf the first -- there to be a psychologist in every school,then every state and a lot of communities are lucky to have one school psychologist. that is another area. the school psychologist is there to help these teachers with these children and handle the problems in the classroom. we raise a lot of issues here that are very important, both for the and the treatment. as i said, medication alone is

not the answer for these children. host: anne in california the next. caller: good morning. i have a question about adhd. is it considered a mental illness? yes.: and the american psychiatric association's manual, it was considered a disruptive behavior disorder. that is not the case. we know there are a lot of people with adhd who do not have disruptive behavior at all that are sitting there very quietly in the classroom, looking at the teacher might have no idea what is going on around them. they have gone somewhere else in their head because they are distracted, they are not paying attention, but they learn to sit quietly for my not get noticed, and not have any problems. those children are having as much or more problems then the child who is disruptive and out of their seats. those are the children who get recognized and referred. i think it is one of the reasons why we have seen an

increase in this disorder uruguay looked at girls, we found that they did not have a lot hyperactivity. they have mostly inattentiveness. and they are not behavioral problems. so these girls were getting messed all along. even in this survey, of the numbers that are reported, about half are girls. and we sell double the incidence of the disorder in girls than girls -- in boys than girls. the squeaky wheel gets the oil. if you are causing problems in the classroom, yes, someone is going to send you for on an evaluation. but if you are sitting quietly and not paying attention and don't know what is going on, you still may have attention deficit disorder and not get recognized. host: even the latest numbers from the cdc when it comes to the breakdown of boys versus girls, boys have it more. guest: absolutely. we're missing missing a lot of these girls for this reason. they are not disruptive, many of the girls become depressed

because of their symptoms. because they cannot live up to exit patient, they're not doing well, and they become depressed. people then see the depression and treat the depression and still look for the underlying inattention. i talked to many teenage girls who will say, i have always had a problem paying attention, it was not until i became depressed by that someone became -- began paying attention. we have a lot of these children -- we have changed how we look at the disorder. it's not just the disorder of disruptive behavior anymore. it is a disorder of attention and also executive functioning. i think that is why we see these increasing numbers, because we have included more people, not just the disruptive behaviors and visit -- in this disorder. florida.arent from laura, good morning. caller: this site knows this

has affected my entire life because both of my boys were diagnosed early on. we realized it was probably a misdiagnosis for my oldest who was diagnosed with asp burgers. i would like you to speak to that issue. and also the connection between a diagnosed -- between undiagnosed and misdiagnosed and substance abuse. drugs, alcohol, to help the symptoms associated with childhood depression, society, and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. i was hoping you would speak to those. guest: absolutely and thank you for calling because this is a very important issue. let me address the last issue because people are focused on that. the association. we do know that this is an association between substance abuse and untreated adhd. once the disorder is treated,

the medications are not a way drugs to increase substance abuse. many studies have now shown that there is a decreased substance abuse as a result of having adhd treated. you are actually correct that a lot of people go on to use out call, marijuana, or other drugs because of the problems they are happy -- they are having. i always talk to parents as adhd andour child has you want to avoid them smoking marijuana or using census is later on, is very important that you address their adhd. we find that when you treat the adhd with medication, there is actually a decrease in substance abuse. the other issue about as burgers syndrome,- aspe which is high functioning in

this spectrum, we found that they were mutually exclusive, that you cannot have adhd and autism spectrum disorder. we now know that that is not true. you can have both disorders. problems with attention. do they all meet all the criteria of adhd? a lot do. it is not an either or diagnosis. it is not i have asperger's or adhd. you may have a child with both. but it is important to also diagnose the asperger's because they will do other things for that child in his environment, not just keep him as an adhd child, get him other social support and other skill support. so it is very important to accurately diagnose. that -- adhd really travels alone. we usually find adhd associated with other disorders, whether it is depression, anxiety, asper

ger's, learning disabilities, ofessive -- upsets compulsive disorders. it is a neurologic disorder. we see a lot of these other neurological conditions in addition to adhd. that is important because once adhd is diagnosed, they will have other conditions that we need to address or just the opposite -- you might see this other condition and say oh, they have this, they don't have adhd. asperave down syndrome, ger's, autism, they don't have adhd. that is not necessarily correct. i think both of those are important. this gets back to diagnostic of humans and how good you are at diagnosing the condition. about thetion

treatment because you were asked if there are alternatives to drug therapies with other students? guest: there are. behaviorly structural programs that are very intensive work for a well with these young children with adhd. -- atried a study preschool adhd treatment study -- which actually looked at preschoolers with adhd. withdid parent training parenting class thing and behavioral programs. they use medication after that behavioral training was done. they really found in many instances, and i find this over the years and working with my ,atients, these children tutors, special education programs for these children, but they can still not pay attention, so they cannot participate. and they fail very often in any

behavioral program we might set up because they are not able to pay attention. failure int promote these programs. it is very important that we make sure that medication will also help. multi- what this treatment study found long-term. that a combination of medication and other treatments probably works best for the majority of cases. host: greg in oregon. good morning. caller: good morning. if she is going down the complete wrong path here. our child is 28. when she was young, she was just not ready for school. they diagnosed her as bad attention and wanted to put her on ritalin. now we see all the side effects of berlin. children are letting us know -- side effect of a ritalin.

children are letting us know that we are not paying enough attention to them. most teachers don't want to be there. that is how they and up there. and innovate and to the children. -- that is how they ended up there and they don't pay attention to the children. we want to drug them -- how about this -- how about maybe the children are telling us the truth? we need to make them a priority, listen to them, care about them, let them play. my child died in trouble because she was whining. -- my child got in trouble because she was whining. i had to lose his cool because they were in trouble for running at recess. we're going down the wrong path. drug these kids because they don't want to pay attention. how about we let them be kids. host: greg, thank you. guest: greg, i am on the same

path you are. i think that we really do need help and support for our educate. we need to them, what is adhd, what isn't, how to deal with these problems in the classroom, what is developmentally inappropriate for children, what they should and should not be doing. let's say they do find a child who is running in the classroom and they get referred. that is where the appropriate aagnosis comes in and when physician sees that child, they will say he is not having problem at home, he did not have a problems with attention that affected his testing, he is doing very well. we look at all of this and say it definitely be a problem right now where he is in the wrong school program or the placement is not meeting of note that his needs. we see gifted children who are bored and dashboard in classrooms.

ored in the classrooms. we need to diagnose more accurately, educate the children, teachers and physicians. host: here is a parent from patterson, california. joey, good morning. were put inhildren foster care. they ended up in a place in san jose, california. back ine photographed the 1980's for a bunch of diagnosis is, adhd was one of them. they show this to college students to look for these types of symptoms. ,hen my kids came back to me there was nothing wrong with them. they had them on adderall, all

kinds of different drugs and every new psychiatrist that they have seen always gave a different diagnosis. i want to know -- does that happen a lot? guest: i think your question is an important one to look at. there are lots of reasons why children have problems with their behavior and problems with attention. not all adhd. also, as we have heard from a few callers, adhd is genetically inherited and a lot of cases. often we see one or the other of the parent also having adhd. that is something we really need to look at in the families and help people deal with because it is harder for parents with adhd to parent. it is hard for them to be part of these parenting programs. it may actually be having difficulties and things going on at home. i don't know what your specific

situation and what your children were diagnosed with, but i think it's the same issue of looking at the circumstances. if you have a family and a child is having trouble in the classroom and they have moved three times in the last three years, and this is the third classroom and a third teacher, and the child's father has just died and a lot is going on -- i would not jump to making an adhd diagnosis to that child right away. we need to look at the circumstances, what is going on, and make an appropriate diagnosis for them. adhdr as grown adhd, cannot be cured. just like allergy medications reduce your symptoms, use of allergies. if you do not take your medicine, you are suffering from the symptoms. with adhd, the medications reduce your symptoms -- they do not cure adhd. over time, and in certain circumstances, people may develop coping skills, they may

do better, make life decisions, who to marry, etc., what job to take him a that allows them to function well despite their symptoms of adhd. that is what we hope. that people will make adhd friendly decisions and lead an adhd family -- adhd friendly lifestyle. then they do not need to be on medication at that point in time. host: the viewer asked about the medication side of it, this person says, medications may cause long-term brain damage in children. should parents run, not walk, from this diagnosis? i cannot specifically speak to the study that that person is talking about. there have been lots of studies that have not shown that in children who have taken medication and looked at brain scans over the years. in populations where they have taken medications. i do not know what study she is talking about that has shown in rain damage as a result of taking medication.

we have actually seen the opposite in some instances where there is better rain functioning in patients over time -- brain functioning in patients over time. we can look more at these areas that are changing with medications, which i think is fantastic. anhink that is on -- important point here we should never shy away from a diagnosis because we're afraid of what the treatments might be. it is important to have as much information as we can get very -- get. it is important to make decisions. giving that information, and getting as much information as we can about adhd, and getting as much evidence-based education about the medications that we can get. putting yourself on medication for any disorder is a very ethical decision. -- a very difficult decision.

they can only make it after him doing a lot of research, doing a lot of talking to other parents of other children on medication, and making sure all of the questions are answered. that is a really important point for parents. they need to ask questions, they need to feel like they have gotten the answers, and then make the ultimate decision. i would not shy away from a diagnosis, and i would make an informed decision. host: kerry from cincinnati with adhd. , dr. quinn,k you for all that you have done in this area of research. who was diagnosed through a battery of tests, i am determined to be adhd later in life, and someone who is also said to be highly functional, perhaps because of coping mechanisms, as you mentioned.

i would like to add, and a caller earlier was asking for sources for behavioral therapy as opposed to medication. i would like to get more information on that. i think it is especially important for girls, when they are in childbearing ages, because we can study the impacts on individuals who are on medication, but we don't know what is is going do to future generations. this is a serious issue for women. guest: absolutely. we don't have any studies right now i'm a perspective studies looking at the effects of these medications during pregnancy. we just have information from animal studies. we do recommend because of that that medication be avoided during pregnancies. he raised another point, which i think is very important, that we really do need to do a better

job at looking at these medications, continuing to follow individuals over time on these medications. we are starting to do that now. also that we now have different formulations of the medications, which we did not have before. which have fewer side effects in many instances. i think it is important that we be cautious but also understand that for many people, medications are the cornerstone of their treatments. it is a neurological disorder, and these medications do change and to help with what is going on. host: kerry is from cincinnati, ohio. oh, sorry, next caller is marcia from wisconsin. go ahead. caller: i have a 22-year-old daughter. she has been on add medicament

-- medicine since grade school. now we are trying feedback. do you have any information on narrow feedback? done: there has the study recently on narrow feedback that shows changes. there are also studies looking at both short and some, not long-term yet, but getting change some of the brain waves and memory. one of the issues involved in adhd is our short-term memory. we cannot remember what we were supposed to do. always forgetting pencil and papers, as you said. able with adhd. everybody forgets something once in a while. people with adhd forgets things all the time. affects their functioning in their lives. they are always losing everything.

what we see is we can make some changes in memory with some of these newer techniques. ,hey are not long-term changes but for what we do have, it looks like there is some promise in some of these other alternative treatments. host: what is the future as far as the federal role in this situation -- situation? guest: we need to look at education of physicians as far as who is diagnosing the disorder and seeing if we can look at that. there hasn't been a lot of continuing medical education now done, because it was previously , and with thema newer regulations, that has been decreasing. we have not had a lot of medical education with physicians. that is to be recommended. i think definitely within our school systems, we are putting a lot of emphasis on education.

we have talked a lot about teachers today and the educational system. i think it is very important that we get the teachers more support. we do better education of teachers. we give them support in the classroom to deal with these behavior problems. we talked about preschools and starting a preschool program for everyone. i think every school -- we should have counselors in the schools who can help with these issues and help with the interactions, social interactions of these children. we need school psychologist who can go into the classroom, set up these behavior programs in the classroom, who can deal with these issues in the schools. we are cutting those positions in most school systems rather than increasing funding for them. that is very important. host: dr. patrician quinn, national center for girls with ad/hd national center for girls with ad/hd, thank you for your time. jeffomorrow's program, mason from reuters will join us.

gun violenceabout and immigration issues. also susan ferrechio. the immigration bill is supposed to come out on tuesday. witharantino also joins us the iraq and afghanistan veterans of america. we'll talk about the backlog at the veterans' affairs. we will also take a look at the developments of north korea with scott snyder of the council of foreign relations. starts atn journal" 7:00 a.m. tomorrow. we will see you then. [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2013] ♪

>> today on c-span, the premiere of canada talks about energy production. and also the keystone eye blind. supporters of the path to citizenship hold a rally in washington, d.c. now, allison redford, the premiere of canada. she talks about the keystone pipeline. this is just over an >> good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. we thank you all very much for coming today. we're delighted to have the premier of alberta, alison redford here as our guest this day. and we're also delighted ambassador doer and the other distinguished members of the canadian government and the alberta government who are able to join us and other