♪ host: good morning. it is saturday, may 4, 2013. resident obama is wrapping up a trade trip to mexico and read that today. here at home, a few of the big names -- costa rica today. here at home, a few big names for 2016 ship a few -- shook a few hands in south carolina last night. we will wrap up those here today. we want your take on the early candidate field for 2016. would you like to see win the white house in three and a half years from now, and why? the numbers are --

if you are outside the united --tes you can also get in touch with us on twitter or facebook or just e-mail us at journal.cspan.org. i want to take you to the front pages of a few south carolina newspapers. thes is the open quote -- " greenville news" i want to show you "the herald journal" --

i want to read from you the front page of "the index journal" out of south carolina -- that is "the index journal" for you this morning. i want to wrap up those appearances. first, i want to start with vice president joe biden. your is a bit of his speech. [video clip] >> jim, thank you for the

invitation to be here. jim called and asked if i would be willing to do this. i said, jim, i love going to south carolina, but as soon as i show up, there will be washington press saying, ivan is getting ready. that ito make it clear will go anywhere jim asks me to go. >host: that was vice president joe biden speaking with joe jim clyburn out of south carolina. we want your thoughts on the early 2016 field. we do you like and why do you like them? -- who do you like and why do you like them? larry in mississippi, who do you like? caller: i would like to make a statement before. whateverlicans said the president is for, we are against, even if it is our own ideas crude this is why we are

having such a bad time. the middle-class is hurting so bad. the voters are too stupid to see what is going on. i believe hillary is going to be the president in 2016, no matter what the republicans are doing. they are already trying to destroy biden i putting out lies -- her by putting out lies in benghazi. it has already started. you do not have to wait until 2000 -- 2016. host: you think she's the favorite no matter who runs? no doubt about it. i think it is time for a woman president. i think it is going to happen in my lifetime. host: thanks for the call. we also talked about ted cruz. we want your thoughts on the republican field as well. here is the headline from "the washington post those quote --

"the washington post those quot" we want to play you a bit of his speech now. [video clip] >> we should stand for the constitution and every part of the constitution. [applause] we should stand for the first amendment, and yet all of us are shocked and horrified to read newspaper headlines this weekend that this administration is threatening to court-martial members of the military if they share their faith to others. you know, there comes a point where you cannot make this stuff

up. the first amendment protects our free exercise of religion. let me be very clear -- united states government has no no authority to tell any american in the military or not that he or she cannot share his faith with somebody else. [applause] the second amendment -- many of us have seen that president obama has been pushing an agenda aggressively to come after our constitutional right to keep and bear arms. host: that was texas senator ted cruz at an event last night in south carolina. we are getting your thoughts on the very early 2016 field this morning on "washington journal."

a few comments on our facebook page, which already has the road to 201662016 -- road early thoughts this morning on the field. let's go to our independent line. from hinesville, georgia, we have curtis. thank you for calling. caller: thank you for taking my call. right now, as you are looking at it on the democratic and republican side, i've got a feeling it is going to be hillary clinton. once the clinton machine gets rolling, i do not think there is anybody out there that can stop her. i was a democrat for a long time. i'm so tired of the two-party system because neither one of them can get anything done. right now, i do not know who the

independent candidate will be. i will definitely be supporting the independent candidate could as far as the republican side, i have been following politics for a long time. it amazes me that republicans cannot run a moderate grade when they do run a moderate, they do not support him. host: you bring up the democratic side. you say hillary clinton is a far and away favorite. why don't you think the vice president has a chance in that race? caller: i'm not saying he doesn't have a chance. i'm just saying if you look personally believe if jill could run again, he would probably get reelected. it's just that they have such an organization. i have to say, with the democrats, they put on a hell of a ground game last year with the president. i just do not think -- like the first caller said, woman president is going to be an attractive candidate.

once she gets going and she puts out there that she is going to run, which i think she will, it is going to be almost impossible for anyone to beat her. i have such a great ground game. host: curtis from georgia, thanks for the call. on the issue of the potential democratic primary. ears the front page of yesterday's "washington post" --

that is from yesterday's "washington post." let's go to eugene on our democratic line from jackson, mississippi. ask for calling this morning. -- thanks for calling this morning. caller: i'm reasonably sure that hillary clinton will be our next president. ted cruz is a one term senator. he is of cuban descent. at theican people look cubans as being favored over them. he will not get any hispanic votes other than the few cubans

in south florida, the same with marco rubio. jeb bush will never be the nominee. he is married to a mexican woman, but in mexico, -- host: stick to the democratic party for a second. you said you think clinton will be far and away the favorite. is that you want? -- who you want? caller: obama has done a good job. i think hillary would have done a better job. i would be awful disappointed if she is the next president. next president. she's got a lot of experience. she is smarter than most of the people in washington. i think she is smart enough that she can get a lot of things done. host: eugene, thanks for the call. all of our lines are open, independent, democrat, and republican. we want to hear from you this morning, but we also want to

play a little bit more from the speeches last night. here is more of joe biden last night. [video clip] >> all of a sudden, since the last election, here are our republican friends talking about how much they value the middle class. you hear it now. bet it is going on at that silver elephant thing. and that they are talking about the middle class. they are talking about the middle class. [laughter] anyway, i do not want to make any news tonight. joe, what are you going to do today? good tonight.e fritz numa data. my dad has a picture which i now have -- fritz knew my dad. my dad has a picture which i now have. i still have it. it is hanging in my library.

he knew my dad. my dad was a gentle, good man. i dad had an expression -- he said, don't tell me -- when my dady said joe -- would go, don't tell me what you value. show me your budget, and i will tell you what you value. show me your budget, and i will tell you what to value. don't tell me how you care about the elderly. show me your budget. i think it is fair -- let's take a look at the other teams budget.- team's jim will tell you they passed the budget again in the house of representatives, the ryan budget, the republican budget. the budget they passed is absolutely no different than the one they passed last year that we debated in the election, the one they passed the year before and the year before that. you've got to give them credit for consistency. comments coming in on

facebook and twitter about both fields crude this from christopher -- fields. this from christopher -- above that, alfred writes in a tweet that came in the from @cspanwjon our thoughts,ting your your choices on the early 2016 field. kentuckyto rusty from on our independent line. good morning. caller: good morning to you. i do not think that america will period, president

because they do not want to write one. the media does the taking -- the right one. the media does the picking for the country. host: who would you pick for the country? talk about why. caller: too many of them in congress, they do their own thing. it is all about corporations and what they want and it is about profits, no longer about the people. ted cruz, i know everybody laughs jon stewart and whatnot, but he said he was from canada. he was born in canada. they talk about obama being from kenya. he's from canada. he cap the president. -- cannot be president. elizabeth warren seems like she israel honest -- real honest.

bernie sanders, for instance -- you've got a few in washington that really care about the people, in my opinion. pick the ones, in my opinion, that will push the corporate agenda. the people will be left out in the cold what we have been for the past years. it is all about profits in this country. it is no longer about the people. host: rusty from kentucky putting his pitch in for elizabeth warren and bernie sanders as well. del fromo down to pennsylvania on our democratic line. caller: good morning. i watched senator cruz's speech last night. it was a little confusing. he said his father came to this country in 1957 after being tortured in cuba. guess what? 1957, our allies were running cuba. a man named bautista.

right away, you got to be suspicious of the sky. host: talk about your pick for the democratic field. caller: i do not have a pick at this point. it is too soon to know. teh cruz thing, here's another thing he did -- he voted against the back rent checks. even in texas, 75% of the people favor back rent checks. -- background checks. that is about all i have to say. fan of senator ted cruz. this from yesterday's "washington times." he brings up ted cruz's background.

that was from yesterday's "washington times." we are taking your thoughts on the early 2016 field and showing you a few of the speeches from last night by ted cruz and vice president joe biden. or as little bit more from ted cruz at the dinner event aspect. [video clip] >> change happens quickly.

a lot of republicans are demoralized about november 2012. i want to remind you of 2005. in 2005, george w. bush had just been reelected president. republicans had control of both the house and the senate and a large majority of the governorships. democrats were going on television, democrat consultants publicly talking about an "permanent republican majority." that was 2005. 2006, we lost congress. 2008, barack obama got elected passes., obama cacare here we are today. things can change quickly. he cause of the legacy of jim demint, because the leaders in the senate and house that are fighting, i believe change income quickly.

in particular, -- will come quickly. in particular, i'm convinced with your help on the we will take back the u.s. senate in 2014. last that was ted cruz night in south carolina. a few other thoughts on twitter at the 2016 presidential field -- one other tweet from james -- we will take your thoughts and tweets and posts on our facebook page as well as your calls. tom is from port charlotte, florida on our independent line. the morning. -- good morning. caller: yes sir, hello. i would like to talk about the republican party and their problems, which my father and grandfather were republicans,

and i was a republican until recently -- i believe that the key party -- tea party is a disease on the republican party. it has flipped their mindset so drastically that publicans will never win anything until they change their attitude and understand the working man who does not have a job these days because of eight failed years of george and a few other republicans. i just do not understand why they are not getting it. they are just not getting it. host: the tea party factor playing out in the 2016 primary? caller: i believe that will be their downfall. people like rubio and his their thinking is

they will do anything the corporations want, all the way to selling their own mothers, to get reelected. and thethe ignorance basic problem of the republican party. that is why i am now an independent. until they change their attitude and go back to when the republican party formed and they fought slavery, not to mention the naacp that they helped start and fund, until that mindset comes back to the republican party and these so- called young guns, ignorant people leading us down this horrid path -- they are not getting it. host: tom from florida, not a lot of faith in the republican party right now. here is an article from politico --

that in politico, 2016ers pledge to nra to stand firm.

linda is waiting from marx, mississippi. good morning. go ahead. hillary clinton will win as democratic candidate in 2016. the republicans in 2014, they will pay a price for how they disrupted and blocked and ducked and dodged. they will pay for it. 2016 is out of the range. couldn't do it in 2016, but i want him to get in and try. host: that is linda on our democratic line this morning. talking about hillary clinton hoss challenges in a potential primary. here is a poll that just came out from quinnipiac university

showing hillary clinton holing at 65%, and joe biden at just 13%. 4%rew cuomo down in the range. that poll was released on may the second. also the part of the poll, there was a 1% split vote between senators mark warner of virginia, the dinner deval patrick of massachusetts, and governor martin o'malley, democrat from maryland. i want to take you to another poll that came out. this is a farley dickinson poll on the republican field showing marco rubio at 18%, jeb bush 16%, chris christie at 14%, and in the other category, about 21%. that poll was released april 30. back to the phones. we want to get your take as the speculation heats up this week.

just over 100 days into president obama second term good we want to go to our independent line in north carolina, the morning, adam. caller: i was just going to comment on a few of the things that were said first. i do believe, first and hasmost, at the tea party been clearly paid for by americans for cross -- for prosperity, which is funded by the coke brothers -- koch brothers. in any case, i feel at this point getting back to the premise of what we are discussing, an independent andidate would really shine, new pervasive individual who is out there showing some directionality. host: is there anybody you have in mind?

caller: i really like angus king. i thought his speech in the senate the other day was one of the best i have ever heard. i'm perplexed by how much of an american patriot he has been. he attacked both sides. lies on either side. i have been recently reading a novel called "atlas shrugged." that is a controversial novel. it points out good points. it is extremely right in many instances, but it also puts the balance of perspective between those of the very top, the wealthy, and control, and it also puts the blame at the bottom for those taking from the system. are in conflict with where we need to be in this country. host: adam from north carolina. let's go to our republican line.

shane is waiting from virginia this morning. the queue for calling in late. -- calling in. caller: chris christie. he is really straightforward. i do believe hillary clinton will be the one. when she is in there, i think he will be able to talk about and ozzie and be more straightforward about that in the debate. i think that would give him the edge. host: shane on our republican line. last night was not the last time that you will be able to catch some of these attentional candidates for a while. -- potential candidates for a while. senator rand paul is speaking in iowa, a key presidential primary state, on may 10. then in new hampshire on may 20, wisconsin governor scott walker. and ted cruz will be addressing the new york republican party on may 29.

that is courtesy of chuck todd's blog on nbc news -- nbcnews.com. we will go not to camp on our democratic line from columbus, ohio. good morning. caller: hello, how are you/ -- how are you? 2016 is definitely going to be for clinton. beody can touch hillary -- hillary clinton. nobody can touch hillary. as far as the blacks, we feel like we owe the clintons. when we see that barack will be we did forr -- what barack, for hillary, we will go out of the way. they are more like our first black family. turned ond that we hillary. we know we are the clintons. we will be out there for them. you already know hillary is going to take it. it doesn't matter -- christie

cannot stand up to hillary clinton. of hillarye subject clinton, an article this week from politico --

that from politico. nancy is up next from new york on our independent line. the morning. -- good morning. caller: hello. i was always a democrat. i voted for barack twice. i am now going to become an independent. my reason being is because of these drone strikes. i believe bernie sanders, although i have not heard him say that, might be against the drone strikes. the last figure that i got was 167 children killed in drone strikes.

does not a brown skinned baby breathe -- bleed any less red than a white baby? host: drone strikes will be your number one issue in the 2016 race? caller: caller: absolutely some of because there is collateral damage. also the right wing, the tea party, we cannot do it here. i do not want them to do it here. host: nancy from new york this morning talking about what she will be looking for in a 2016 candidate. this for the next 15 minutes, i also want to point out some other news going on election-wise. this from the "sioux city journal"

that is the lead story in today's "sioux city journal." on the subject of senate elections this year, here is a headline on the "new york times" this morning -- the chart here notes that the retirements on the democratic side include six senators and on the republican side, two senators.

no republicans in kentucky have emerged to challenge mitch mcconnell. democrats also have no strong candidates yet in west virginia where john d rockefeller iv is retiring. the recruitment troubles for republicans are worse, in part because the gains in the senate are theirs to lose. 20 democratic held seats are -- 13 up in 2014, compared to held by republicans. many of those democratic seats are in states where president obama lost in 2012, including north carolina, antenna, arkansas, and alaska. that story in today's "new york times." if you want to read more on the senate recruitment front. we are discussing the presidential race in 2016 should your thoughts and who you would like to see. the phone lines are open. your numbers are there for you to see on the screen.

we will go to diane from california on our republican line. good morning. a quickhi, i just have question before i tell you who i am going to go for. i do not understand the democrats and how they can forain what obama has done the 12 million people out of work. his full cabinet, from geithner -- who was a wall street guy -- to everybody he's got in his office, comes from wall street or huge corporations. what are the democrats talking about? i do not know whether i will vote republican or not vote republican, but the reasons that the democrats -- they seem to walk in lockstep because they are democrats. they will go democratic no matter what anybody does for them. you think the jobs picture

will continue to be a big picture -- a big issue in 2016? caller: i think right now, democrats are pushing hard on the gun issue. we have laws right now. why don't we just enforce the laws we have, for goodness sakes? why doesn't the attorney general make sure that the laws are enforced that we have, that people that should not have guns should not have guns, and instead of only prosecuting 44 people out of 44,000 that were arrested, why don't they go after the people that are committing crimes? i just question -- it is scary to me. laguna woods,om california on the gun issue. the national rifle association is having its annual meeting of members with a keynote address from wayne lucky are -- lapierre.

that is between 11:00 and 1:00 today in houston. he will be covering that for you. for ourww.c-span.org scheduling. diane brings up the issue of jobs numbers. the jobs report them out yesterday, the april jobs report, making a lot of front- page news. two is the front page of the "wall street journal" we will go into details of that report for you in our next segment of the "washington journal" this morning. that is coming up at 7:45. we've got a few minutes left to focus on your choice for the white house in 2016. john from flint, michigan is up

next on our democratic line. caller: good morning. thank you for taking my call. becauselinton have always they been part of how we vote in my family. i do not think she should win hands down. i think she should come to the table with substance. , michiganhat flint has been completely devastated. if she comes in with the same kind of mentality, i do not see exactly what type of impact she is going to make. at inter competitor -- -- to: her competitor -- if colin powell ran -- she would get upset. i think joe biden has more substance. i think he will fight for the people.

i think clinton is more of the elite. she's kind of privileged. i do not think privileged people are what we need. us poor people, middle-class people, we need to vote people in who look like us. they need to represent our interests, as opposed to rich people representing other rich people. powell hands-down would separate the african-americans from mrs. clinton. he would win hands down. ,e are all americans, black white, and all, we trust him. host: we will go down to our republican line where steve from new york is waiting. good morning to you. caller: good morning. my choice for the next president is bernie sanders, really. he focuses on jobs, wars, and corporations, which are our three main problems in this country. host: what on the jobs issue?

caller: we need more jobs. we need an fdr approach. we need to put people to work. to redo our infrastructure and that kind of thing. you are on the republican line. do you think republicans will vote for bernie sanders? caller: i do not know who they would vote for. i'm just saying that he is the man who tells the truth. he is the most truthful person that i have heard on tv or anyplace else. we need somebody who tells the truth. host: steve from new york this morning, we appreciate the call. another headline out there, this, the front page of the "washington post" we will talk about that in our last segment of the "washington " this morning, lessons

learned from the boston bombing. you do have a few minutes left to talk about your choices for the white house in 2016. brian is from salt lake city, utah on our independent mind. good morning. caller: dr. benjamin carson. you do not need no more politicians. .hey are all corrupt dr. benjamin carson, he's a good man. host: who is dr. benjamin carson? caller: you do not know who he is? [laughter] he is a brain surgeon. he was at the white house correspondents back fist -- breakfast, and he sort of chewed out obama. host: no more politicians? .aller: we need americans the democrats are corrupt, and the republicans are corrupt. fast and furious, eric holder. right here, and ghazi --

benghazi. said, forinton americans dead, what did that matter? they were asking for help, and america did not give them none. host: brian calling for no more politicians in the 2016 race for the white house. a few more headlines from you -- for you. here is the "washington post" story on president obama's comments yesterday on u.s. troops on the ground in syria

that is the story from "the washington post." on the same subject, this from today's "new york times" -- that story in today's "new york times" if you want to read more on that. on the subject of the 2016 race and your choice for president in the 2016 contest, we will go to ted from jefferson, iowa. good morning. caller: good morning, c-span.

i just wanted to basically give a dutiful an iowan, caucus-goers. caucus-goer. i really like tammy baldwin of wisconsin and cory booker. i think those two are exemplary people. i think they would make outstanding candidates. i think they would serve as a very wise and deliberative chief executives if given the opportunity. host: how do you see them stacking up against hillary clinton, being talked about in papers as the far and away favorite? caller: if you recall in 2008, there was an air of inevitability regarding howard clinton. i personally have nothing against hillary clinton. i think she has done a number of fine things, especially in the last four years as secretary of state or i.

however, anything can happen in iowa. it often does. iowa does not really choose the next nominee of the party, but it windows the field. -- winnows the field. i think there is opportunity for second and third place spot. it is part of one of the reasons why i am calling -- i really want to lament the way in the direction of the republican party of today. it has gone a long way from its roots. -- fromhed in the 1850s the middle way of generalized power in the 1950s, it is a crying shame. i hope that it can return to its home in the future sometime. host: ted from iowa this morning. let's go to our republican line. let's hear a call from agile, west virginia. carl, your thoughts in the

segment on your choices or 2016. theer: i would like to see two doctors run together, dr. tom coburn oklahoma and dr. ben carson and i think that would be a fabulous ticket right there. iffar as hillary clinton, she runs, she is going to answer some questions about benghazi. was sleeping. nobody spoke to the president from 10:00 that evening -- he was at home in bed resting up for his campaign the next day -- no one spoke to the president. no one spoke to hillary clinton. do not provide security for the consulate over there in benghazi. somebody is going to have to answer. the truth will come out next week in this hearing. when it comes out, people will understand what went on better

the night that four american people were killed there in benghazi. host: carl from west virginia, the second person this morning pushing for a ben carson candidacy. we are done with the segment of the "washington journal." \ up next, "washington post" finance reporter ylan mui will join us. later, steve ellis will join us to talk about new revelations at the iris paid out billions of dollars in refunds -- that the irs paid out billions of dollars in refunds to people who were not code it. this weekend, we're featuring the history and literary culture of yuma, arizona. bookat noon on c-span2's tv. all of our programs will air in one block am including -- one

block, including a publicity stunt meant to get the local airbase reopened. -- there was a friend of our family name george murdoch, who i later married. he owned a convertible. he bought it for $2800. he and my brother started practicing with it, with the car and airplane to see how refueling might work. it turned out they took out some cream cans for my gary that were two and a half gallon capacity. onto it.d i handle the the off-duty pilot sitting on the right could reach down -- the car and airplane went down the runway, whatever direction they wanted to go, and it would be around 65 miles per hour. the crew from the car would hand up the gasoline, and the off- duty pilot would reach down and pick it up.

maybe for cans during a run. -- four cans during a run. to refuel at 6:00 in the morning. then one at 6:00 in the evening. the engine was getting kind of tired, and they do not want to much weight in the airplane. they changed that. then they would make a pass around, a circle around for a second run. the off-duty pilot would pour the gasoline on the -- from the can into a reserve tank that was installed and hand the empties and and take up food bathing equipment and a little bit of a change of clothing. i could go whatever direction they wanted to, according to the wind, because as my brother said, it was 500 acres of asphalt abandoned. >> "washington journal" continues. host: the u.s. economy created

165,000 jobs in april and pushed the unemployment rate to its lowest -- to its lowest level since late 2008. here to discuss the numbers is financial reporter for "the washington post" ylan mui. tell me about the reaction we saw from wall street and washington. guest: they were significantly better than people were expecting. what we saw was that economic data over the past month has come in the a little weaker than people wanted to see. the march jobs number 88,000lly was set at jobs created in the month of march. that is nowhere near the level we need in order to see the recovery take off. host: that number cause a lot of concern. guest: exactly. the numbers we saw yesterday really were assigned that the thevery -- were a sign that

recovery is chugging along. even though it is not at the level we would like to see it at yet. thousand jobs165 created in april, but the department also revised its figures for the previous two months. that was just as important. february jobs were now over 330,000 jobs created. in the month of march, the number that so may people were worried about is now looking at 130,000 jobs. significantly higher. host: i want to dig into these numbers, but also looking at the reaction. here is a blog post from alan krueger, the chairman of the white house council of economic advisers

give us -- he encourages us to look at the longer-term picture -- give us how this hashes with everything else we have seen over the past couple of years. guest: a couple of things -- one, the labor department releases an estimate. they get revised several times, not just once or twice. there is always a caveat. that said, the number that comes out every month is still a hugely important number both politically and for the economy. major decisions are made on what the number looks like it is going to be. there are two sides of that coin. when you look at the long-term picture for where jobs are going, right now, we are in a spot where things are actually

looking a little bit better. since the beginning of the year, we have seen job growth of month.00,000 per that 200,000 barrier is really important because that is the number that needs to be created in order to seek the connecticut reductions in the unemployment rate, and also to make sure will one dayvery be self-sustaining. the 200,000 a month figure is really important trip major decisions are being made on what the average is. host: here is a chart that krueger provided along with the blog post showing private sector payroll employment starting from 2008 through today, the big change here going from jobs lost two jobs gained, coming in the spring of 2010. talk about the idea of the spring slump. that is something we have heard a little bit about after the march numbers. what is a spring slump, and what have we seen in past years? guest: it refers to this idea

that there is a lot of momentum that develops in the economy over the winter that dissipate by the time spring arrives. this is a pattern we have seen in the jobs data over the past two years. you see a lot of activity, construction going strong, but somehow something happens when you get to march, april, may where those numbers start to decline again. we thought we were in the same pattern again this year, that when we saw the march numbers come out, people said, this could be indicative of the fact that the economy is slowing down once again. in addition to the march data, you also had the sequester looming ahead. are we back in the same pattern? yesterday's data seems to dispel that notion and seems to show that the private sector can actually shake off any headwinds that are coming from washington. host: we want to get your sense on the jobs situation where you

are around the country. we've separated our phone lines a bit differently and this segment. if you are employed, give us a call -- those numbers are up on the screen and the phone lines are open. we want to hear about what you are seeing around the country where you are. there's the front page of the "wall street journal." talk about the market reaction and reaction on wall street. guest: markets were buoyant yesterday. you saw significant rises in both the dow and s&p, very shortly after the markets opened. the dow actually went above a psychological barrier of 15,000

for the first time. the dow has closed at a record high 15 times so far this year. we are certainly seeing investors cheering this news. again, markets trade on expectations. even though the number is 165,000, because it was better than expected, because the revisions were so significant, that is why you saw a stock market rally yesterday -- yesterday. the s&p reached a record high, about 1600 for the first time. host: each job sector has its own story to tell. pull out a few of the sectors. we will show you the numbers on the screen one place that remained unchanged was manufacturing. perhaps you can start in the

manufacturing manufacturing sector and tell us what is going on there. see manufacturing being one of the bright spots of the recovery earlier on. the recovery has now been five years -- it has gone through many stages -- manufacturing is one sector that helped us early on. now you are starting to see that switch over to construction being one of the areas that is providing a lot of job growth. april was an anomaly. you saw manufacturing flat when. you suck construction actually shed about 6000 jobs. actuallynstruction shed about 6000 jobs. what are the types of jobs that are coming back? we see professional services come back in a big way. those tend to be white color, higher paid jobs. highere-collar, paid jobs. the question is, what happens to jobs in the middle/ -- middle?

using construction jobs return for the first time in a very seentime -- you have construction jobs return for the first time in a very long time. host: we are taking your thoughts. we want to see what is going on in your part of the country. we will start with our guest in indianapolis, indiana on our unemployed line. thanks for joining us. i have been employed for many years. i am in the middle sector. i have customer service, managerial experience. it has basically been like a dead field. , was trying in different areas trying to go through different labor department's. there are the technology jobs. there are really not any jobs for the middle, like she was saying. it used to be that i could get a doingr $10 or $11

customer service. those jobs are obsolete. they are either seven dollars or $25. there is no in between in indiana at the moment. host: can you talk little bit about that situation, ylan mui? guest: she got to the idea of job polarization. job growth happening at the high-end, high paid, high skills, and the low end of the spectrum -- not so much in the middle. economist have been debating what that means, whether or not our economy has fundamentally changed, such that a lot of the jobs we lost are in a recession may or may not ever come back. if the economy has changed in a structural way, the response to how we help workers, our response to that will be very different than if the problem is something -- simply one of demand. goinghe economy gets again, more workers will be able

to find jobs. is the problem cyclical come up a problem with demand, or a problem with skills mismatch? from let's go to rate pennsylvania -- ray from pennsylvania. caller: its mediocre at best. there is the gas drilling that is going on in this state providing numerous jobs. said ministers against that but i want to ask about the unemployment rate at 7.5%. those people who have quit looking for work, they will drop off that number. the people who are on disability now, that number has doubled, almost 9 million people on disability -- those are unemployed. those are not included in the 7.5. all the new coins on welfare are

not included in the 7.5. if you add those numbers up and i don't care how this administration plays with the numbers, between 15-18% unemployment. they are unemployed and not contributing to the tax base of this country. they are parasitic in throwing off a bit while regular americans -- you are part of it. thosent to raise taxes on who are still working. host: she is a reporter with "the washington post." you could explain how these numbers are quantified and how they come up with these numbers. guest: i do not support cannot support the administration. he is right when he talks about the real number of the unemployed. the way the labor department measures the number of people out of work is very technical. in order to be considered

technically unemployed, you have to be out of a job and have to have not looked for jobs within the past four weeks. that is a fuzzy measurement. some folks may be unemployed but did look for work in the past four weeks but will look for work in the next four weeks. they're different categories of books marginally attached to the labour force who are discouraged workers who want a job but have given up looking because they feel there is nothing out there for them that add to a larger rank of the unemployed work force. issue witheen a real the number of people who are discouraged workers or who are marginally attached to the labour force or are long-term unemployed and when you add up those that is, the picture of unemployment becomes that much more grand. those workers who are on the edges of the labor force, those people will have the hardest

time finding a job. one of the concerns that economists have is that blogger time you spend outside the labour force, the longer it takes to find a job, the more difficult it will be ander networks begin to deteriorate and it becomes harder to bring you back in to make sure you have productive work you want to find. host: let me talk about employment targets and where the administration would like to be of this point. bernstein rights today in "the new york times."

how the obama maladministration want to get this employment rate to. >> their responsibility for achieving full employment rests with the administration. they want to create jobs. but it also rests with the federal reserve and that is where you really have seen unemployment targeting take place.

i don't think there's anyone in the world who would say we don't want to see full employment. we don't want people who want a job not to have a job. the question is, what is full employment and that is hotly debated. it is not clear exactly what that number would be. it is not zero. there will always be people in transition or not in the labour force. is it 5%? that is extraordinarily low. is it 5.5%? is it 6%? there is a big debate about that. the federal reserve has said its unemployment target is 6.5%. that is the number where it will say they will keep interest rates low until the economy had at least 6.5% unemployment. they may keep rights longer for lower than that but they will keep rates low until they had that number. until they get that level, you might start to see some sort of self sustaining virtuous cycle

of recovery host: here is eight tweet -- phones inack to the st. petersburg, fla., on our unemployed line. caller: good morning, how are you? host: tell us about your situation. caller: first of all, let me say that what the last caller said about people being terrified. i resent that. i get medicaid. it is not enough. i am an american citizen. i grew up in st. petersburg all my life. back to what i really want to or is everybody who votes wants to vote knows all but

government has to do is lower their own salaries. take cuts in their own salary and then the poor and homeless and hungry will not suffer from not having enough. do you know what i mean? host: you think that will help you find a job in your situation? caller: i would love to be able to have a job but i have health issues that make it hard. i have a thyroid problem. it is a very slow thyroid. i have chronic fatigue. the doctors that we have here in florida that except medicaid or the bottom of the barrel. host: are you on long-term unemployed? caller: yes, but it is not as good as medicare. that's the problem. host: i want to talk about the long-term unemployment number. in april, that number declined 4 million.-

the share of unemployment declined 2.2 percentage points to 37.4%. interpret those numbers for us. guest: that is a good thing that there are more people coming out of the long-term unemployed. the hope is that those people are no longer long-term unemployed because they are actually finding jobs as opposed to dropping out of the labor force entirely. as the recovery picks up speed -- it will start to bring in these other people from the labour force, people who have been waiting in line belonged to find a job. that is an encouraging number. the number of discouraged workers, people who have given up looking for work, also fell. that is an encouraging sign. however, you get mixed signals

and this economy and mixed results and we saw the number of people who are working part-time for economic reasons. -- they could only find part- time job and that number rose by 250,000 in the month of april. people may be finding jobs but it is not the job they actually want. host: let's go to arthur from bath, indiana, on our retired line. caller: good morning, sir. behink the discussion would upgraded if we define what a job is. is awe are talking about lot of fractional jobs. a job is not a job until it pays the bills. it must modestly pay the bills and every free trade deal we have made has undermined industry and labour in this country. we've goto fix this,

to fix this free-trade thing to we get a freere shaken don't get the short end of the stick every time we make a free-trade deal. this is the crux of the matter. get better pay, you got to have skills and manufacture them. through free trade, we farmed out everything we have, apparently. it just does not work. what is the government going to -- that this is a future of a futile idea and get back to standing up for the citizens. every country in the world has gone down the tubes.

the work force in every country is hurting because of this. the rich people just soar. host: the issue of jobs overseas -- from twitter -- we will go to gabriel from lehigh acres in florida are employed line. caller: good morning. rate would have been 6.5% if our damn congressmen would work with the president. if we go back through history, that's how we moved out of the depression. laws are coming out of washington. has wanted to work

on the problems and the lack of wealth of our politicians in congress is what has delayed the numbers. we are moving in the right direction, we are moving forward. host: can you talk a little bit about what is going on on capitol hill to continue to push the job gains further? guest: the issue is that washington is not pushing job gains further. they are reducing the number of jobs. the caller has a good point that we have not talked about, about the tug of war between the public sector and the private sector. what you found is even and the public sector has been creating cuts in thegton job public sector have been a drag on growth. saw the number of employees in the public sector fell by 11,000.

the seventh consecutive month of public-sector job declines we have seen. even as you see growth on one side, the other side is taking away that growth. meantime, you are facing sequester and what that impact will be. they may come in the form of increased numbers of layoffs. it may come in the form of furloughs that decrease the number of hours that employees work. congressou slice it, looks at this affecting growth by about zero 0.5%. that is something that is significant. it is a drag on the economy. it is something that could delay that recovery until 2014. host: have expectations been made about how much loss we will see in the government sector because of sequester? guest: it is a very gray area of uncertainty. toterms of growth, cuts

government spending had resulted in about zero 0.5% growth. gdp in the fourth quarter was brought down last year. we have seen the impact of government cuts on the economy. what is not clear is how significant and how large a bay will be going forward. it depends on exactly how the sequestered plays out host: let's go to sharyl from fort atkinson, wisconsin who has stopped looking for work. tell us about your situation. caller: good morning, i became sick a few years ago. i cannot work. i am not collecting social security because they keep saying no so i am in that process. my husband is working. he is a chef and recently went them making $14 per hour to

employer saying we have to cut wages. now he makes $10.50 per hours. the price of everything keeps going up. then the federal reserve keeps monkeying around and printing more money which makes the cost of everything go even higher. all the policies they come up with, they are not helping us. they are helping the wealthy. their income is up but i think we are looking at a reset of how much people in america make. especially in the middle of the country, not in washington or new york. i have no answer. lord knows, they will not listen to me. reporter butderful do you ever actually leave the

washington/new york area and come out here in the middle of the country? wages are not keeping up with the actual cost of living. we have had to start using the credit card and god knows, i don't want to. host: you talk about the wage issue. guest: i was just in kansas city early this month so i do get outside of washington and i did talk to people. i will say that the issue of the long-term unemployed, the issue of wages is one that cannot be overstated for the country. the issue of wages in particular is one that is frustrating because what people are seeing is even if you find a job, is that the job you want, is the number of hours you want, is that the wage you want? wage raises have been virtually nonexistent for many different sectors. that is an issue because consumer spending drives 2/3 of

the economy. if you find that folks are not seeing their wages grow and not seeing incomes increase, they will not spend as much money in order to support the economy and support the demand. she also mentioned that the role of the federal reserve. we already mentioned the federal reserve targeted the unemployment rate of 6.5% to keep interest rates low. it is also doing quantitative easing and that means it is buying bonds, $85 billion of bonds each month, to try to bring long-term interest rates down as well. that will helpt increase demand for things like mortgages and it will help increase business investment demand. those things will support the economy but the fed has been criticized because the people who of houses and people getting mortgages are the people who

tend to be better off so where does that leave the folks like the previous caller who are the ones at the bottom rung, trying to make ends meet. host: let's go to madison, indiana, on our unemployed line, mike, go ahead. caller: thanks for taking my call, your show is great. i wish it was on later saw more people could hear it. the previous caller i agree with about obama trying to ease unemployment. one of his stance as when he was running for office was to bring jobs back from overseas. until those jobs come back, they're not going to be any jobs. i am unemployed right now. i am drawing unemployment, thank god, it is not a lot but it helps. i'm struggling to keep but i've got. getl the politicians together -- it seems these guys

could not legislate their way out of a paper bag right now. alece need to read up on which would give them a light on the republican agenda. the caller earlier called andle drawing unemployment drawing disability as parasites and the politicians, calling them entitlements, i have been paying into this since i was a young man and i and 58. for these people to say they are entitlements, it is like things are backfiring on these politicians and it is time to pay up. gete guys have got to together on the legislation. guest: i think it is interesting that we have had a number of older callers saying that they are looking for a job or they would like more hours. one thing you see in this

recession and recovery is that the number of people who are older workers have been increasing the people are working longer partly because they might be in better health, medicine has allowed us to work longer than we used to be able to work. that is a good thing that people are also working longer because they are worried about their retirement and worry about having enough money to last them through the final days. you are finding more folks who might be older or still looking for jobs, trying to fill in the labour force but finding a challenging because they are at that point in their careers. the: another number from bureau of labor statistics is the average work week for employees and what this shows us.

explain what we are measuring here and why we do that? that guest: the length of the work week and it is helpful because sometimes, some folks work longer than 40 or less than 40. a smaller work week is not what we are looking for. it is not the direction we want to see things going. there could be a number of reasons behind this like the interest in part-time work. the other reason could be as employers look at their staff and look at the labor force, they say we might not see the demand. instead of actually reducing the number of employees, we will handle this by simply cutting

hours of the employees. people still have jobs but they're not working in the number of hours they want or in the type of jobs they want. this might be another area where you could see the sequester have an impact. if people are furloughed as opposed to being laid off, you may see that manifest itself in that average work week number. there is several different places with details of the jobs report that you need to look at in order to get a fuller picture of where the labor market is headed. host:ylan mui is a reporter with "the washington post." the unemployment rate dropped to 7.5%. we are getting your thoughts and your take on your employment situation in the areas where you are. let's go back to ohio, tom is on our employed line. look atgood morning, bangladesh.

we've got our corporations, probably donald trump saying that the people in bangladesh need jobs. they will charge that man with murder. who on that building. we need to start charging our investors, our ceo's for san in our jobs overseas. -- for sending our jobs overseas. host: what are you seeing in ohio? get a job making $10 per hour but that is not money to live on. -u cannot put 5% in your 401 it is impossible. it talks about raising the minimum wage to $9. $10 per hour? 30 years ago -- people out here are making what they made 30 years ago. 35 cents, a gallon

of milk was 40 cents -- -- are absolutely congress, are senate, even the president are all run by money. host: talk about what the caller brings up. guest: one thing that he mentioned that is interesting is the issue of flat wages. some of the calls have also talked about raises. we have seen some factors of prices be very volatile like gasoline. it seems they are up and down. gasoline prices have been volatile. over all, inflation has actually remained fairly tame over the past few years. right now is trending at about 1.1% which is one of the record lows. not increasel have

that significantly. the reason why that is important is because that allows the federal reserve to continue its policy. it has said it will continue to buy bonds, pump money into the economy, keep interest rates lower unless inflation gets out of control. out of control inflation is like to 0.5%. if they see inflation rise above that level, they may put on the brakes. has seemed reserve inappropriate to continue his policy and some members have argued for an increase in stimulus in order to break up inflation. we don't want to be in a deflationary environment. host: alan is from st. joseph, missouri, and has stopped looking. tell us your situation. caller: thank you for taking my call.

the number that they use for the unemployment is incorrect. the natural attrition rate is 150,000. in order to create one job, the number has to be one of the 50,000 +/. illegal immigration is another problem. i am all in local 8 in kansas city and we have adopted a discrimination policy of workers 50 and older in order to bring in a undocumented workers into unions. for cheaper labor. that is an issue. around the gray economy and that is work that is done by people that are not on the books whether it be work that is done by people who are here illegally or work done on the side, somebody mowing the lawn and making a few extra dollars. it is hard to quantify the

amount of activity that goes on in this great economy. it is very important to people. an area where you may see more people turning to as they find it more difficult to have a formal job. what is a job? a job is something that -- is a just something that has benefits or work that is cobbled together that allows you to make a living? host: will turn to the front page of the business section of " the new york times."

i want to go back to the funds, rubin is waiting from kansas city, missouri on our unemployed line. caller: good morning. if they call themselves patriots, i don't understand have taken the patriots when they ship jobs out of their country to other countries. i want to know this -- who is the overseers of fair employment? community,-american the job rate is a tree in high. -- is extremely high. spanish-speaking people employed out there on job

sites, construction jobs, street jobs, but i very seldom see african-americans working. we're the last people hired and the first people fired and it seems that way now. -- who is number on working and how fair is the employment status? host: here are some numbers from the bureau of labor statistics reports that the matter yesterday. it breaks it down by working groups. seeing ist you're

that the recovery is uneven. when you mention the unemployment rate for african- americans and whites, the rate for african-americans is more than double. we go into the guts of the report and look at the details as to who is working and how long and how much. you will find there is on even this and in these numbers. those numbers are real people and real jobs. one issue for the african- american community is not only are they grappling with higher unemployment but they are also experiencing a greater loss of wealth during the recession that than other racial groups did. you are finding that because so much of their wealth was driven by the housing market, wrapped into their homes, when home prices plunged, it had a disproportionate impact on african americans. that is another thing they're struggling with at the same time they see unemployment rates be disproportionately high. host: this is james from new

york, on our employed line. caller: good morning, right is putting aleahy bill into immigration law that they say there is a lack of labor and dairy farms. was 220,000 dairy farms in the united states. in 2008, there was less than 35,000. at the same time, dairy slightly, increased right there there is a job loss. according to the census, it is about three employees per farm. host: can you talk a little about farm jobs? guest: that is not my area of expertise but what the caller speaks to is the polarization

issue. you are seeing job growth cluster at the top end skilled said of the spectrum. some of these jobs in the middle are becoming harder to come by. has: lake wales, fla. stopped looking for work, good morning. i live inod morning, rural county in central florida. old, i grew up with an agriculture based economy in florida. we are hit hard here. a master's degrees, in business administration, i have not been able to find a job in this area for the last six- seven years. there is $8 per hour jobs but that will not pay for the gas. toemocracy will continue exist until the time the voters

discover they can vote themselves a generous gift from the probe -- public treasury. a majority vote always votes for the candidate that promises the most. to me, it seems that we have showed so much complacency and it does not seem to be any substantial policy that will take us anywhere. it is just a bunch of theoretical discussion. i believe we have to have more firm policies and be willing to look at our democracy in a new way. as the economy continues to change. host: let's talk to joe from omaha, neb., on our unemployed line. caller: banks for accepting my call. accepting my call. i want to talk about efficiencies and the gang mentality. i am recently employed. i was unemployed not too long ago.

getting assistance myself. when you speak to these people, it is telemarketers where there used to be workers. i tried to get an address to the dentist's office because i knew it would be covered under the health care plan and they gave me the wrong address. i had to go to another one and get my eyes checked. they sent me to a place that would check my eyes but would not give the glasses. there are efficiency issues with the social programs that as part of the problem. i amr as gang mentality, really disgusted with the gang mentality in washington. it does not seem like republican or democrats have the best interest of our country at heart. they forgot that is the primary goal to look at the country. a democrat that might think something is good that falls outside the parameters of democratic policy is afraid to say it because he does not want to upset his people. last we want to give the

comment on this segment of "the washington journal" talk about the outlook for jobs in the coming months. guest: it is better than we thought it would be and the economy has more momentum headed into the sequester that we thought it would. that is good news. the bad news is that there is isll a drag and that weighing on the job market and the economy and it is pushing back this idea of a faster recovery. it pushes that idea back to 2014. host:ylan mui, thank you for coming on. up next, we'll take a look at a new government report showing that the irs paid billions of dollars in improper refunds. steve ellis john as for that discussion and later, michael greene berger, the health and homeland security director at

the university of maryland will talk about the ballston bombing. "newsmakers," chairman jeff a veterans affairs committee chairman will be here. we will be right back. tary shinsecki to write -- what about nine of the thousand clowns and mature every plan is less than 125 days and have a 95% accuracy rate. i think he is way over estimating the ability of the department. it is unfortunate that we find ourselves and the veterans find themselves in this particular situation. there are regional offices across the united states that are doing a relatively good job but then there are some that are falling woefully behind like baltimore and los angeles and

oakland. have had to shut down those regional offices so they could re-train the employees there. unfortunately, we are now listening to the secretary saying they will still hit that 2050 mark but i am not early convinced that it is just the software program they are putting into place. bbs says it will solve everything but there is a culture within the va that needs to be broken. we have employees that are not doing their job that continue to keep their jobs. they get moved around within the system. they're not doing what needs to be done. with the unemployment what it is in the country especially within the veterans community, there are people that would gladly step up and take the opportunity to work for veterans and get the job done. i still have very little

confidence in undersecretary hickey to do her job. it is the secretary's response ability to manage his personnel but it does not stop me from exercising my opinion and the opinions of my colleagues. there is a failure in the system that is not serving the veterans well. >> "washington journal" continues. host: a recent investigation by the treasury department found that the internal revenue service may between 11.6 - $13.6 billion worth of improper refunds for low income tax credits. here to break down that report is steve ellis. the report found that about one in every for payments made through the earned income tax credit program was improper? either one to every

five or one for every four. host: talk about what the earned income tax credit is and what it does. guest: it is a tax credit targeted at low to moderate income americans. it is something that was started in 1975 and expanded in 1986 and expanded in 1991 and 1993 and 2009. the idea is that we don't want to penalize people for working. when you have lower income taxpayers, if they start getting in,, we will give them a credit for the size of their family and level of income so it encourages people to work rather than be on welfare. it is something that is championed by conservatives and liberals and it is notable that it has been expanded when we

did tax hikes and expanded and we did tax cuts. it is something bad has been relatively popular. unfortunately, it has been difficult to administer host: the concern of this program goes back several years? guest: yes, there has been a problem with the program -- if you look at the inspector general's report -- for a decade. this was not as bad as the year before, as far as the percentage of overpayments. part of the problem with the program is the fact that the population changes significantly each year because people either flow in or out of the party line. not ande dependents are it increases if you have more dependents. it can have a variety of aspects to it. host: here is part of that inspector general's report talking about the improper

payments going back about a decade. talk about improper payments. how does that work and who gets them? have had legislation saying that agencies like the irs are supposed to be charging improper payments either through medicare and medicaid or it could be through farm payments, in this case, it could be earned income tax credit. it is something concerning to the government.

we're talking about $13 billion. when you've got a $1 trillion deficit, every penny counts. we don't want to be giving money away that we should not. there has been legislation charging agencies with targeting this. if the target is to be less than 10% in overpayments and an agency, one of the things the inspector general's report raises is the fact that the irs has repeatedly failed to set a target. they say we know we are a 20% this year and next year we will be 18%. they have basically thrown their hands up in the air and said we don't know how to do this. they said they will keep assets and try to refine our auditing techniques but we will not set a target and to me that is a failure of government.

host: we're talking about the earned income tax credit in particular. we want to hear your thoughts on both subjects. have you ever received an overpayment from the irs? i want to hear your story and the phone lines are open. taxpayers for common sense's recommend addition for fixing these overpayments? guest: it will be hard work by the irs. essentially, one thing is they will have to -- they should be setting goals and targets. the idea that we don't know how to do so well a have a goal not get you anywhere. you can at least set the target and try to figure out ways to meet it.

the other thing will be sharing data. what the challenges the irs has is noted in the report, the fact that, by law, the irs has to pay out any claims within 45 days. time frankl limited for them to calculate this. for most americans like myself, all my income is reported to the irs. they know how much i made they are getting separate reporting through my company to do this. host: the irs says they don't have time to insure that people applying for these credits get them? guest: there is the challenge of underpayment as well. they have put some things in place. if you have been found to improperly claimed the earned income tax credit in previous years, automatically, you are red flag. it goes through a longer process

and you are denied for a couple of years. this.are ways to do the irs has tried to go after the tax preparers to get more information from them. they have been challenged in the courts and those issues. about hard it is all work and getting the data. if they can do that, they will be able to move this. tax creditportant that rewards work. the other thing that is important is that it is a refundable tax credit. on like if you put it in an energy efficient tax credit in your house like an air conditioner, you might not get to claim all of that. this is more like cash. this is going with $10 worth of coupons to the grocery store and

you only buy a dollar's worth of stuff and they give you $2 back. generous taxmore credit. host: we are talking about the earned income tax credit and the irs overpayment and getting your thoughts. let's start from lowery, on our democrats line from alabama caller: good morning, cspan and to the host and to your guest. i have a quick question and comment. ouruld like to also thank acting commissioner, steve miller, for doing a great job. ms. carolyn washington is doing johnsonjob and brittany is doing a great job at the

executive corresponds department. host: you are a big fan of the irs? are you concerned about the $13 billion worth of overpayments in this program? caller: yes, sir, and one reason a is i believe not only the workers are not doing with the executives are telling them to do but it is also the computer, the database that they are having problems with. you have a lot of people out here who are selling their children for money. here whopeople out have children who can't earned income credit but they are not working and they will tell the other people out here that if you give me a couple of thousand dollars, i will let you file on my child. host: let's give mr. ellis chance to comment guest: i am not aware of this is an example.

anything where there is cash involved, there's an issue of concern about fraud. to get the tax credit, you have to have been come. as part of the deal. are roles that are trying to limit and make sure that you have actually the dependents, the children, and the dependents are not eligible for the tax credit themselves. some of those rules will be about enforcement and this approach should -- supposed to be tagged by the social security number. it is interesting the gentle man is making this comment. it is something the irs should follow up on. the caller also mentioned the steve miller, the acting irs commissioner. this is a club about the house ways and means committee. [video clip] like 55 is something

million credit claimed in 2012, something like that. creditple claiming the go in and out around the edges of whether they qualify. as 1/3eve may be as many are out of the credit in one ear and out of the credit and that creates a problem. secondly, it is a difficult credit to administer because it is filled with definitions of qualified child that are different than other places. there's a residency requirement. it is typical for us to determine whether that is met or not and relationship requirements that are death ago for us to determine. there are very specific things in determining the eligibility for and the level of the credit that are difficult for the taxpayer and difficult for the service. as a talk about improper

payments, i want to make it clear that it is not all fraud. it is a difficult credit and people make mistakes. it is both. millerhat was steve before the house ways and means committee which was the subject of an inspector general's report. what haseliss, congressional reaction been since this report came out last week? >> there has been pretty strong reaction from the chairman of the appropriations committee. they said had sneezed a role at the irs over this. -- base said heads need to roll at the irs over this. the scale of the problem is not greater than it has been in recent years. it's just not as -- it just has not gotten better. as the acting irs commissioner detailed, this does not mean we should not make sure or try as best and hard as we can to get it right.

i like that congress is increasing scrutiny on this. when you look at $16.50 trillion debt and 850 ball -- $800 billion deficit, every billion dollars is important. the $13 billion that is being handed out improperly is a concern. it is also a concern because part of the tax code that makes it work is the trust between the american people and the government. ableople think somebody is to cheat the government whether it is through the earned income tax credit or it is through tax havens and dodges and stuffing your money in the cayman islands, it increases criticism about our program and that is a challenge. host: if you want to talk to steve ellis about this as earned income tax credit which was the subject of an inspector

general's report, give us a call. let's go to charles from salisbury, maryland, on a republican line. caller: good morning. good morning, young man. i have been listening to a lot of people talk about taxes. i am little older and i say let's go with a flat tax. we will get rid of the irs and will not have these overpaid problems. and we can reduce our federal budget by getting rid of the federal employees that do not do their job. common sense is the name of your company. let's push back to get rid of these people that keep the system. host: the flat tax is an issue that has been brought up on tweitter -

talk about the other proposals. guest: the flat tax is something where you look at a national sales tax -- i take that back -- it is to tax everybody had a certain level like 10% or 15% across the board. that their taxes more complicated, because it is a consumption tax. fair is an acronym for something i cannot remember. it is a consumption tax that you would pay like a sales tax to try to say that if you are a wealthy american, you will spend more on jets and jewels and lessries and -- than a well off american and it will be more -- it will be scalable in that respect and not be regressive. as always the issue with any of these flat or fair taxes. it is the issue of being

regressive. we have a progressive tax code for the more money you make, the more taxes you peg. pay. it is less progressive than has been at times. when president kennedy took different than now. we are for common sense and part of our common sense is we need to balance the books. we need the revenue to come in to pay for the government that we want. may be as it seems, their credit card culture, hard pressed to recognize either we have to reduce government spending and government services or we've got to make sure we have to have the revenue to pay for the services we want. those two have not matched up. host: talk about what taxpayers for common sense of is. n-est: we are a national no

partisan budget watchdog. we work with liberals or conservatives. we are trying to achieve the government that operates within its means. we want to have a government that works. we are trying to eliminate wasteful spending and constrain those type of activities but at the same time, we are putting forward options. for instance, there is talk about sequestration. we did our report sliding past sequestration which is on our website. it details $2 trillion worth of deficit reductions. of things are revenue raisers or spending cuts that would eliminate the sequester and go further. we try to come up with constructive solutions and work with republicans and democrats to accomplish that. host: are talking to the vice president of taxpayers for common sense. you worked at the american --

american rivers and coastal alliance and mississippi rivers and you were an officer in the coast guard for six years. carol is up next from new jersey. ♪ caller: good morning. to sort of cast this conversation and a more realistic light. the origin of all these difficulties whether it is the irs or the earned income allowances or anything of this sort emanates from our deficit. i understand that. our deficit is being created currently by the federal who spends $86 billion per month on an indefinite basis. he wasnanke claimed going to cast his lot.

they are taking that $86 billion -- you have to keep in mind that $86 billion is the american taxpayer in debt. that is dead to the american taxpayer. they are buying mortgage securities with that money. they are buying treasury bonds. where is this going to end? it is bringing in a whole nother area of the government into talking about the federal reserve. she is talking about quantitative easing. this is where it gets really is it? far as ? is it money washing government's hands? there have been concerns raised about how the fed operates and

we have supported legislation to audit the fed who we think we should be more transparent. we would certainly favor an independent central bank with more oversight. thes a legitimate question one that does not have a good answer. host: bringing it back to the earned income tax credit, from twitter -- guest: one of the things that you want to see -- i don't want to be audited -- you want to have a more robust audit an oversight function of the irs. everybody has to have confidence that everybody else is paying their fair share. increases the tax avoidance or the idea of trying to avoid

taxes. there was a poll done recently that found that about 80% of americans think it is completely appropriate any legal means to reduce your tax burden is perfectly fine. i don't disagree. legal is key that it is and want to make sure that everybody is paying their fair share part of the way you do that is to make sure we have enough auditors and we are targeting the most likely and fruitful august. one of the challenges they have - the irs knows how much money i make. independentave small businesses, may be other sources of income whether it's through cash or whatever, it is harder to track that and that is

where some of the fraud may occur. there have been efforts in recent years by the irs targeting places like switzerland. and got a after ubs lot of files and data about americans or stashing cash overseas illegally. cash overseas, illegally. these sorts of things they need to be aggressive about. working at the irs, i have sympathy, it is a tough job. you go to a cocktail party and suddenly after you say you work at the irs everyone looks down. no one knows what to say. you are not exactly the most popular agency in government. >> we are again talking about an inspector general's report that $11.6 billion and $12.6 billion in improperly earned income tax credit.

democratic line, good morning. caller: i would like to speak your guest. i would like for him to say a bit more about who qualifies for the tax credit and the purpose of the tax credit. it is basically for children 19 years of age and younger, and or a student today. children offor the low-income parents. you have a caller that called earlier who mentioned some kind of tax fraud. i think it is basically a misunderstanding of what that tax credit is all about to low- income people. think that they could make a public announcement about who qualifies. that would be very helpful. >> thank you. -- guest: thank you.

yes, it is largely targeted at families with children. you can be single and get the credit. fors not nearly as generous a single filer as it is for someone who has won, too, three or more children. that is how it scales up words. it also benefits those who are married. but a lot of it is trying to encourage work. i believe in -- 2012 you could be earning up to about $25,000 and still be eligible for the credit. this is something that is trying to help children, help families with children, help them out of poverty, encourage work. the caller is correct as well, the caller has to be under 19

in school oror be college and they cannot claim it themselves. >> the point that the acting irs commissioner was claiming was that the pool of people eligible for this is sort of ever- changing and that is why it is hard to educate people? correct? >> it is one of the challenges and something that the irs acting commissioner has pointed out. essentially from one year to the next may be 30% of people are new to the credit. where he is not entirely correct is that in some cases those people come back. for whatever reason they are right on the margins. one year they might not be eligible, the next year they may be eligible. so, that is one of the issues with the credit, the fact that they have a lot of repeat

customers, maybe not in sequential years. as they pointed out in baltimore, one of the issues is educating the public. there is a lot of material on the website for the irs. they put out information and have offices where people can come in and do this. a lot of people who get the earned income tax credit have preparers. that is also a place of education and should be some transparency. >> tom, westport, conn., republican line. >> good morning. the $13 billion that she mentioned, you mentioned it had not gone up or down. that is something that happens every year. we hear about that on occasion. remember what happened when jpmorgan lost $6 billion of once? media coverage all over the place. the questions that we have, they

do not care about it. there is no political hay to makeover these losses. guest: well, i think you are right in the fact that basically there has been this inoculation to this issue that has been going on. >> in perspective, according to the defense to, to 2003 and 2012 was somewhere between $108 billion in overpayments and $132.6 billion in overpayments. >> you are talking about a sequester level of 10 years. real challenge, that is real money. especially when we are running the deficits we are running. every dollar is important. thatso, this is something congress should be looking at

and dealing with even if there are not a lot of challenges. there are other things that reduce some of the enthusiasm. there are not really good solutions about tackling this. it is a politically popular credit, something the republicans and democrats -- >> no one talking about eliminating it. >> exactly. ronaldng that was reagan's crowning achievement in 1986. i said before, when the data tax bill to cut taxes, a tax bill to expand taxes, the all increased the amount of the earned income tax credit. >> -- host: william, good morning. caller: i wanted to comment -- it looks like you guys were acknowledging 55 million people earnedn and out of the

income tax credit and there is only $13.60 billion in 2012 overpaid. about $4 per person. seems to me that that is a lot of effort to be chasing this money around for the more marginal people in the united totes when the credits go someone making hundreds of thousands of dollars are so much more higher. there is a lot of money out there from big corporations. from a lot of very wealthy people. the people who are actually in the marginal levels of our society. >> are there bigger fish to fry out there?

guest: william is right in the context that we have always subscribe to the willie sutton theory of budgets. the bank robber who asked why he robbed banks, he said that is where the money is. certainly you want to go where you will have the biggest returns. income tax credit, this is something that the inspector general does every single year. , actuallygh-risk area the only one within the irs for overpayment. it is legislatively mandated that they do it. think it is important to look at it. the caller is right, we're talking about $2 trillion in tax revenue every year. this is not a huge amount of lost revenue, or in this case spending going on. but everything is important.

we have to look at everything. >> johnny, good morning. -- host: johnny, good morning. caller: i am not blaming the irs, but the statistics of recognizing this fraud ought to be clear. parents that earn this unearned income tax credit have their kids and they are on welfare. they are not even working. fail their kids as dependents. a lot of times the people that get the credit, they will be in different towns. host: this is the set -- the second time we have heard about this idea of selling kids. guest: i am not saying it does not exist.

host: for filing purposes, is what they seemed to be saying. guest: exactly, it is an earned income tax credit. you have to have been come, some sort of salary coming in. you cannot be on welfare and get this credit. what the callers are suggesting are saying is that basically people on welfare are giving their kids -- selling their kids to someone else so that they can file and claim them. provisions for foster children, but there are also regulations on that. in texas she was indicating that in some cases the kids are not in the same city as the parents. i mean, there are things and a lot of it comes down to the irs needing to have models, computer programs that are looking for

some of these things that do not match up and are red flag to challenge. but then that gets to william's the question, which is again -- how much in the way of resources are we going to target at this? certainly at think the 20% over payment, the $13 billion in money going out the door that should not be is a problem that we also have to look at in the context of -- are we targeting people who are using offshore? using tax havens or abusive tax shelters? going after those as well. host: richard, broken arrow, okla.. richard, you are on with stephen ellis. caller: i want to communicate my thoughts clearly. a few years ago i did taxes for one of the major firms. you know, one of the major tax firms.

one of the things i noticed was i was in an area that was heavily into the icy people. people. i expected that some people were not really dependent of the person coming in, but they had the social security card and everything they needed by according to what i was doing, this thing, for my $8.33 per hour, whenever i was making, that was quite enough for me. unfortunately, i could never prove that there was fraud there. sometimes i suspected it, sometimes i could not prove it, it is kind of the way it is. pretty darned difficult. the big thing about it is, giving you an example, the gal making $27,000 per year with an

earned income credit, the child tax credit, the additional child tax credit -- she had two kids. i gave her and $8,000 refund. ,his is just kind of an example johnny in florida had a good point. i think that there is a lot of fraud out there, but i think it is difficult to prove and you do not want to go after the little tax preparer. host: how does the inspector general's office at the treasury department know that these payments are improper? the caller is talking about how it is difficult to prove from his end. the nationals uses research program, whole system of interviews with tax filers. this is not just about the earned income tax credit across the board.

metrics through a program system to figure out non-uch fraud, how much payment, noncompliance is there. every year they estimate the tax gap, the amount owed to the federal government compared to what is paid is anywhere from recent years between $300,000,000,000.400024414062 dollars. some of that is legitimate mistakes by filers, not trying to bilk the government but did not read the rules correctly, some of it is people try to avoid it. they take the national research program estimates and overlay that with the earned income tax credit data that they have to come up with this estimate. if it lags by several years, even the fiscal year 2012 estimates are based on 2009 data. but it is the way they do this

calculation. the inspector general said that this is a valid way of doing the estimate. so, we do not actually know that taxpayer a, b, and c are fraudulent. and that that is how we have a 20% or more over payment rate. actually all sort of estimates based off these models. host: we will go now to amy, from oklahoma city, okla., on the independent line. amy, you are the last call with stephen ellis. caller: why can there not be a system put in place between welfare and the irs? so many times you see people drawing welfare with kids the whole time and it did not work at all. or they are lying to the welfare system saying no, we did not

work, drawing money the whole time. are working both systems. i just cannot understand why there is not some system in place that allows them to coincide with each other. is a challenge across government we have seen and would like to see a better -- government to better, sharing data. sharing data between agencies. so, you have something like welfare, largely administered now at the state level. you have food stamps. have pharma payments, whatever. it is hard to get data from the irs and other agencies. last night i was preparing for this program. great friday evening

activity, reading about taxes. i was reading about the national research program the model used for doing this, a huge sections of the report are redacted. .aragraph redacted, lots of x's what you have is not a lot of information being transferred between agencies. so, for instance, when you are looking at the farm payments, for instance, where basically there are some gross income level limits, the usda, the farm agencies do not actually get the data from the irs to make sure the people are not lying to the department of agriculture. so, you have these kinds of challenges, where if you were working, the irs has all the data of whether i was a taxpayer or in the coast guard, they had all the information right there. they know how much money i am

making and it makes it very smart for me to lie. it is really about government sharing information with other government agencies, and that needs to improve. host: you can check out stephen ellis at taxpayer.net. appreciate you coming on this morning. guest: glad to be here. host: up next we will have , the healthnberger and homeland security center director at the inner-city of maryland about what went right and what went wrong in the aftermath of the boston bombing. we will be right back. ♪ [video clip] >> we believe that we're bringing people closer together

by opening up our memories. a humang what a person, being, an individual can do. i think of those who have saved lives. all descriptions who saved lives while lifting their own. every one of them is a hero. i on the 20th anniversary, asked you to recommit to replace the direct memories of those who are still with us, thank god, with the records of this museum so that no one can ever forget these stories and these lessons. howked you to think about the historic slaughter and suffering of the holocaust reflected a human disease that took different forms. differencest our are more important than our common humanity.

this weekend on c- span, the 20th anniversary of the holocaust museum in washington, d.c.. today at 1:30 p.m. eastern. that at 8:30, the national meeting of the national rifle association. weekend, herehis questions for melanie phillips. london, war and culture, as we start a 12 week series with british offers. racespan 3, the birmingham riots, part of american history television. tonight at 8:00. >> "washington journal" continues. host: nearly three weeks after two bombs are detonated at the

boston marathon, we are taking a look at lessons learned for homeland security, first responders, and innocent bystanders. to do that we are joined by michael greenberger. in this real-world test, how would you grade the response of the state and federal emergency response? guest: the response i would grade at a very high level. that is to say, after the bombs were detonated i think that the federal, state, city police worked very cooperatively and efficiently, and patiently to bring this investigation to some sort of conclusion in a rapid fashion. host: it has already been said that as bad as this was, 250 wounded, it could not have been much worse. what were the factors that kept

this from being much worse? guest: first of all, one of the factors was the medical response. fortunately multiple units with world-class hospitals, you have a lot of very effective shock trauma units that were able to in to medicalred care very rapidly. so, the injuries were mitigated. it could have also have been worse if it had gone off at a time when more people were located at the finish line. and there are other factors that could have made it worse. host: talking about the hospitals nearby, folks are saying that in some ways boston is lucky in that it occurred less than 2 miles within six level one trauma centers near the site of the blast. those six centers are in blue

dots around there. talk about the preparation that went into the response that we saw after the blast where they set the standards for the preparation. to when boston turned they prepare for an incident like this? guest: in terms of law enforcers bonds, across the country there are so-called fusion centers that are a collaboration of city, state, federal law- enforcement officers assigned to the jurisdiction. that work at these centers, law enforcement tips were shared, with an understanding of how the response would be coordinated. in this case because it was pretty soon designated as a terror attack it was clear that the fbi would be in charge. they worked together almost on a daily basis sharing intelligence.

they do exercises. real field exercises, for example, that are blocked mass masslty events -- mock casualty events that organize responses in an effective fashion. that is one thing that came out of this, how well law enforcement, state police, and various city police departments work together. that is not usually the case. usually there is a lot of tension and turf battling at those levels. but a lot of work has been done on this issue on a nationwide basis and i think that all the hard work came through in this real-life event. host: we're taking your comments in this segment for michael greenberger. phone number is are on the screen. for democrats, 202-585-3880. for republicans, 202-585-3881. for independents, 202-585-3882.

you bring up the idea of infusion centers. where did these come from? is that a post-9/11 issue? who was in charge of figuring out where they are supposed to be? was developed before 9/11, but it certainly came to fruition after words as counter- terrorism response. it was recognized that all levels of law enforcement have a role to play. for example, city police are often in closer touch to activities happening within a certain jurisdiction. the federal law enforcement side has expertise, equipment, and laboratories that are very helpful to local police and have developed specific training for responding to a terrorist event. this is something that has been

developed, exercise, and trained on across the country. host: we should note that there is going to be a congressional hearing next week on capitol hill. here is the story -- host: that hearing is going to be before the house homeland security committee. it will look at the immediate aftermath of the attack, which killed three people, and whether he signs were missed by federal, state, law enforcement gathering officials. it will look at how law enforcement addressed the area after the attack and how state and local officials communicated with their counterparts at other agencies regarding the suspects and the challenges associated with securing our country since

9/11. talk about the intelligence sharing side and how it has evolved. guest: in many instances you have intelligence from federal surveillance, like the national security agency, and other domestic agencies that have a responsibility for gathering food intelligence. while there was an association with chechnya and various i thinkjurisdictions, that the conventional wisdom is that this is a homegrown terrorists attack. these hearings are important, not all of the information has been yet collected and it is hard to make a conclusion about this, but this was mostly a

sample of things that we are seeing on a more frequent basis where the perpetrators are people who are ingrained in american society and hard to distinguish from other college students, for example, making detection all that much more difficult. there is what i would call second-guessing, because one of the older brothers was on a federal watch list. his name happens to be misspelled. he had already been interviewed by the fbi, the russians had alerted the fbi to his association with what they believed to be chechnya and terrorists. n terrorists. i think that the conclusion will be that the federal agencies performed rather remarkably in this case. i do think that a lot of looking at needs to be done on the

federal watch list. there are several of them. concern that some of the names may not be accurate, that they include people that should not be on them, that they do not have everyone who should be on them on them. then you have the faa no-fly list. the state department has its own list. people have reasonable suspicions to be involved in terrorism, they have to be looked at. it may be that that entire scenario means to be tightened. i will say that they use this well, but that that is one avenue that needs further exploration. host: the investigation continues. here is the front page of "the washington post." host: that is the widow of

tamerlan tsarnaev, who died in the shootout with police a few days after that attack. we are taking your calls, getting your thoughts and comments on lessons learned from the boston bombing. first we will go to mike, from new orleans, indiana. caller: yes, good morning. you mentioned diffusions centers -- you mentioned the fusions centers and drills that often golan. i wanted to point out that there were drills going on at the point of the boston bombings. there were loudspeakers going off telling the people to be calm, that this was only a drill. hundreds of pictures have appeared on the internet of military looking guys with black

backpacks all around the bomb site. indication of being a false flag event. host: let's stay away from conspiracy theories right now, but talk a bit about the prep work that went on that day. guest: there was substantial prep work, but a lesson was learned. i would note that the commissioner, ray kelly, of new york city police, has already talked about the way the new york marathon will be handled in terms of improvements in making secure the critical areas. there was a philosophy prior to the marathon that it is very hard to provide security over 26.2 miles. for example we are used to going into a major league baseball park, people carrying items, backpacks, what have you,

those things are looked through. there was no such security checkpoint at critical points at the boston marathon. for example, the finish line, the stop line, and key areas along the way. if you see the backpacks the perpetrators were carrying, they were big, there were huge, they looked heavy and begged for surveillance. we have worked at presidential inaugurations. my staff has been imbedded to admit millions of people on to the national mall, but before they get to the national mall, they have to pass through certain areas before they can get more identification to be presented. the other day law-enforcement said that they were with the planning for a july 4th pops concert in boston. which attracts thousands of

people, but they decided to go earlier because their equipment was ready. you know, you have things like the inauguration of the u.s. president, the new year's eve celebration in times square -- host: the kentucky derby is happening today. guest: people are filtered. let me emphasize, that can be done -- people talk about police state -- that can be done in a very routine kind of manner as it is done whenever we enter major football or baseball stadiums. to get into critically sensitive areas, you had to have your back taxes, you might have to show identification. i think it this is going to be a lesson learned, that you have to be more vigilant and cannot aaim utility, because it is

long route, but new york city police have often said they will have temporary closed circuit television along the routes in the new york marathon. i think that there are going to be a lot more preventive measures taken into account. that was one of the big lessons learned from this event. host: we are talking to michael greenberger, the director of the horsey of maryland health and homeland security center and he also served on the maryland emergency a advisory council. we're taking your calls. the bronx, new york, democratic line. caller: good morning. how're you? host: good. caller: by question is, prior to 9/11 the city of new york had established an emergency office prepared this center at world trade center. on the day of 9/11 at the end of the day, the building collapsed,

making it totally useless. what lessons can we learn from that event? out a you certainly point pre-9/11 fall and lessons learned. usually these centers are located in hardened facilities. for example, the maryland center is located in the armory out of the metropolitan area that is very secure. that is one lesson learned. but you know, when we go through these events, lessons are always learned that make us stronger. for example, supers from sandy, hospitals were putting their generators in the basement. the backup for their electrical supplies. those generators got flooded out. a big lesson learned, you cannot put your generators at a level where they are likely to be

flooded. there was a lesson learned there with 9/11, there will be lessons learned with other respects. as i said earlier, for example, marathon security will change, will hardin. we will continue to go on to join these world-class events without either cancelling them or turning ourselves into a police state. host: another criticism since the bombing is the idea of lockdown and if it was effective. on twitter -- host: can you talk about the lock down? twot: they had these dangerous fellows a running around the city, armed to the hilt. i think it is a difficult situation and law enforcement of the had a chance of catching them but did not want anyone else exposed to the danger.

the lockdown was that people were to stay in their houses for a set period of time. i know of no one who was arrested. host: folks have pointed out that the younger brother was not caught until after the lockdown was lifted and someone went outside and noticed something was amiss. guest: that is exactly right, and individual went into his backyard, apparently a neighbor had told them, if i remember, that it looked like there was someone in the boat. he went to the boat and saw that there was someone hiding suspiciously. it turned out to be the second, no. brother perpetrator. it is very hard to make these judgments. on the one hand you do not want people walking the streets where there is this high degree of danger, but on the other hand after they learned, having people walking around it was useful in making determinations.

again, these are lessons learned as you go along. the people responding to the attack are under a lot of pressure themselves. i think that in the and this worked out for the best. host: republican line, meghan, north carolina. caller: good morning, gentlemen. i think that what we also need to realize, a lot of people i know were talking, this was a massive failure of many levels. livest a lot of people's and limbs. everyone is talking about the lessons to be learned. the lesson learned is that a bureaucratic federal government cannot protect the american people. andbody in the fbi, cia, department of homeland security did not do their jobs. when someone from another

country calls and says to keep an eye on this guy, you keep an eye on him. that did not happen. you locked down the entire city and the only person who had never been accommodative or given the key to the city is the man who found the person in a house that had been recently searched and cleared. -- these guys were in here, they were given welfare, given every opportunity in this country, and they hated it. they still wound up doing a terrible thing. now the police want more money? realize whato exactly happened and to stop having each other on the backs and to realize what a massive failure this was. host: an agreement with that comment on twitter --

mr. green burger? ?- michael greenberger guest: this was the first terror of and with widespread consequences since 9/11. i know for a fact that there were several publicized instances of having headed off terror attacks, the most famous being the times square bomber that was stopped and caught before he left the country. routinely there was the city, state, and federal law enforcement that stop these attacks. this one after a 11 years, 12 years, they got through. to say that this was lax on the part of these officers misjudge is the historical perspective. yes, there were lessons learned,

but from my perspective the most effective local law enforcement agency, the new york city police department, considered to be as good as the federal government, will make these kinds of judgments in the future. that is to say they will make more highly secure these marathon routes. but no football stadium or baseball stadium is blown up. i can tell you that the stadium in baltimore for the ravens play, they have done drill after drill with all levels of government. finally, is not just drills with law enforcement. the ability to respond medically to these events is also something trilled constantly. we went through an exercise in prince george's county, right outside the district of columbia, where 11 hospitals on a yearly basis had mocked drills to make sure that they can adequately respond to audit

their a mass natural event or terror of then, so it was no accident -- it is true that they were very fortunate. capable ofave highly medical personnel, but it is true throughout the country that hospitals are training for these events. i can tell you this. at -- in the early days, lots of money was wasted. if we turn to a different our city,now, where fire, police, emergency medical technicians are underfunded -- do not forget, it is not a different set of firefighters who go to hurricane sandy, who go to west texas, who go to the boston marathon, who respond to wildfires in texas. it is the same group of people called upon to continue as the

respond to these events and they are underbudgeted and underpaid. the police are working overtime. everyone relies on when these take place. we expect the firefighters to come with boats to rescue us. a thing it is unfair to label this as a chronic failure. it is not a chronic failure. we have been very successful. i think that with lessons learned, we will correct it in the future. jack rights this -- host: we are going out to john,

massachusets. caller: good morning, how are you, gentlemen? host: good, come ahead. -- go ahead. caller: the quality of the calls coming in today has been astounding. building, the hardened site, all of that. i live about 42 miles south of boston. call from my school system. i have a child in high school. the people wanted to make sure that the children were not upset about the bombing and things of that nature.

what was striking the disturbing i lived in a very with big, big promotions in the department, and i am really upset about the militarization of the police department's. instance, the young man in the boat, the police department opened fire on both, shooting with bullets, like they should in germany. i am absolutely, absolutely appalled that the militarization response in boston.

guest: it is unfortunate that we live in a society where local police are dealing with very sophisticated, very dangerous people threatening the security of the citizens. it is unfortunate that in order to do the job correctly the word militarize was used. i think that the proper word is making sure that the police are fully equipped to deal with the crisis. i do not know how many bullets were used when they opened fire on the boat. i will say that in that regard i am fully supportive of what this point to happen, this response getting picked apart on all levels of government. that is a proper thing to do. but i tell you in the heat of a battle when you're facing this kind of crisis, it is very hard to second-guess police, city,

state and federal, try to bring to an end the siege of boston and the surrounding areas. firstms to me that at glance, we need to look at how those bombs got to where they got. this was a very effective response. on the other hand it needs to be examined from the perspective of why these two were not on lists that should have called them out. as far as paying more attention to the older brother, there is substantial disagreement in the united states. people that want more freedom in russia. whoever is on their last, there was this tension between , thisya and the russians

stance about chechnya, i can say the that source of information brings with it a need to look at it very carefully, but again this has got to be looked over carefully after the fact and it will be. host: we are speaking to michael greenberger, director of the health and homeland security center in maryland. if you up questions about the lessons learned, give us a call. joe, rhode island. guest: -- caller: the aftermath, we had a watch list, with perpetrators. up ite did not match them caused havoc in the city of boston.

was a major box. please comment. guest: conventional wisdom in law enforcement is that that was something that was very helpful. they were worried that the perpetrators would flee the city. if they started to take movement in the city, that would flush them out. and that is what happened. once those pictures went up, the perpetrators were in trouble. it is very unfortunate -- is very unfortunate that that mit officer lost his life, but the fact of the matter is that if they had not put those up and , catching those

perpetrators would have been much more difficult. it the majornd watch list have a misspelling of the older brother's name. they are not as effective at getting pictures of the perpetrators of the scene of the asme, with capturing them they appear at the time. in the cityy people to who they were. twitterre is stand on -- guest: federal law enforcement was in charge of this investigation. if they had needed warrants that probably would have gone to federal court to get them. but when you are in hot pursuit

of dangerous people, running around, ducking in here, ducking in their, there is a concept that public safety predominates. you have to have reasonable suspicion to conduct those pursuits, but that to get a warrant is likely to lose the suspects or lose evidence that what you needave in trying to search. i can tell those of you who are concerned about the fourth amendment, it is well worth studying what has happened, because there is no doubt -- i tell my glasses -- i tell my class on this subject that the fourth amendment has been eaten away by what are called special needs exceptions. that policy is worthy of its own debate. host: let's go to evelyn, from

nelson phil, ohio. felt it was necessary for me to call in and ask this question. there was a camera put on the the under oneowed with a backpack. he had laid down. fromowed a picture of him the camera on a roof. why were there not men up there? how come there was police on that roof? guest: a good question, but i will say this, it has become common and necessary practice -- there were apparently 600 cameras in that area. they were not all city cameras. so the were retailers. others were people using them

on their cell phone. but law enforcement, i would use for example the city of london, they have closed circuit televisions spread throughout the city. dare are not enough people to be on the top of a roof on everywhere in the city. cc tv, which has been resisted in these states as being an is anon of privacy invaluable tool. i do not think of privacy is invaded because the cameras are focused on public areas. when you walk into a public area, you have no expectation of privacy. is worthy of discussion why there were not people on route. there is also a use of closed-

circuit television and checkpoints to, for example, you talk about those backpacks, they were obviously very large, very heavy. they cried out for being looked at. host: we are talking to michael greenberger, previously of the u.s. the part of justice's principal deputy associate attorney general. also currently serving on the maryland governor's emergency and management advisory council. glenn is out next from lancaster, california. caller code morning, you were talking about the drills and stuff like that, why not having you do your jobs?

some of these people live beyond your watch list. instead of doing drills, why not go pick these people up, check them out. how many millions of these people are out there? guest: i can tell you that mechanism, you cannot just wake up in the morning and walk outside and do it the more than you can go wake up in the morning and without practice go play a professional kickball game. you must develop habits, practical strategies that are used in non-threatening situations to make sure that you respond effectively. i can assure you that most people believe the coordinated response of city police and state police was, by all intents and purposes, extremely smooth and effective.

there is a point, however, that one of these three people that was picked up for allegedly aiding and abetting the two perpetrators after the fact on obstruction of justice charges, or one of those people was in the country with an expired student visa. instructions have gone out to the border and customs that they must check student visas when people enter the country to be students as foreign citizens. i must say i was surprised the that kind of check is not done on a more regular basis. the problem is being caught, and havingo my mind, without investigated myself, it seems to be a flaw in the system. host: republican line, chris, your on.

think that the process has become too politicized. there is too much grabbing the microphone by a lot of political officials. being in the prince george's county area, i remember the sniper incident. that was totally botched. it was by accident that they totally -- that they finally caught those guys. in boston that finally caught last one by accident. issue withuld take the fact that there was over aggressiveness by the city or state federal government in public relations. i happen to think that if the patients and refusal to get out in front of the evidence -- it was quite noteworthy here. the prior fbi investigation made

mistakes by trying to pin the wrongdoing of people who had nothing to do with it. the most famous example is the olympic bombing in atlanta, 1996, where richard jewell was identified as a perpetrator and the fbi was wrong. there are other examples of that. law enforcement people resisted the pressure of the media to get out in front of the evidence and they frequently used the word patience. i think that was very good. if there was a problem it was the media trying to get in front of law enforcement by using inaccurate weeks to find out what was going on. i think that everyone needs to be patient in these examples. the scene was brought to closure within a few days and if there were any get ahead of the evidence. our last minute this

morning, i wanted to ask you this question from twitter -- guest: it could definitely happen again and for anyone to say otherwise would be foolhardy. the country is, much better prepared, as we sit here today, then we were in 2001. the chances of that happening are much less. i think that when we have been living in a violent world -- like iraq, where these devices are used on a daily basis, and we have years and years upper calm, i think -- years and years of calm, the efforts being made are productive, but we can never be 100% prepared, so we all must be vigilant and watch what is around us. as they say, if you see

something, say something. host: michael greenberger, thank you so much for coming on. guest: your welcome. host: that is our show for the day. make sure that you tune in tomorrow morning at 7:00, where we will have linda feldman and peter baker to discuss and analyze the second term of president. jeffrey white will be joining us to talk about the latest developments in syria. peter c. gault will join us to talk about his new month-long series