realize that. we are critical, but we do not touch -- question the loyalty or gor of ouror vi people. they're doing a difficult job in a difficult place the world. host: reconstruction. sigar is the acronym. information, also on twitter, you can follow them. thank you. [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2014] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2014]

[captioning performed by national captioning institute] ♪ >> looking at our live coverage on c-span, at 1:00 p.m. eastern, the energy secretary ernest moniz is expected to announce the approval of federal loans for new nuclear power plants. he is speaking at the national press club. we will have that life. at 2:00 p.m., the director of the national institutes of standards and technology outlines the security guidelines infrastructures posted by brookings institution. at the creation museum we are not only willing to make --

discuss our elites. i believe we are teaching people to think critically and in the right terms about science. i think it is the creationists that should be educating kids out there because we are teaching them the right way to think. we admit the it origin -- admit the origin is about the bible. >> i encourage you to explain to us why she -- why we should explain -- except your word for it that natural law changed 4000 years ago completely, and there is no record of it? there are pyramids older than that. there are human populations far older than that with traditions that go back further than that and it is not reasonable that everything changed 4000 years ago, and by everything i mean

species, the surface of the sky, ande stars in the the relationship of all of the other living things on earth to humans. it is just not reasonable to me. creationism.versus the science guy bill my and tonightd ken ham debate at 8:00 p.m. eastern on c-span. >> president obama this morning on his way to mexico where he meetings with in the mexican president and the canadian prime minister, and they are expected to talk about security, and the transcontinental keystone oil pipeline. they will hold a press conference this evening. president obama is scheduled to return to the white house late in the evening. according to a tweet from cnn's

jake tapper, john kerry is expected to announce the possibility of sanctions against the ukraine. this morning, french president francois hollande says those who caused the deadly violence will be sanctions -- those that have caused the deadly violence will be sanctioned. congress isington, off all of this week with members in their home district for the presidents' day recess. the house returns tuesday to debate a bill that would delay flood insurance rate increases. on the senate agenda, back monday at 2:00 p.m. eastern, at which point senator angus king will be recognized to read president george washington's farewell address and then vote on a district court nomination.

the house is live here on c-span and the senate on c-span2. over the past few months, c-span has set down with a handful of senators. over the next hour we will show you a couple of those beginning with republican senator bob corker of tennessee, and then democratic senator amy klobuchar of minnesota. >> senator bob corker when did you think about moving from business to politics? >> you know i was leading an effort in our community to try and make sure that everyone had an opportunity for a decent fit -- for decent, fit, and affordable housing. i was doing that as a civic endeavor and i was asked at the state level and i ended up going on a real board at the state level.

it just sort of migrated. it was not about politics. it was more -- all about public policy. i ended up one day, i had sold my first company at the age of 37 and a few years later decided it was something i wanted to pursue. >> your first company was construction? >> i had started working like most folks, when i was 13 doing all kinds of odds and ends and migrated to being a construction laborer and a rough carpenter when i graduated from college. i ended up being a construction superintendent so after four years i had built some regional models around the country and learned how to build projects and i saved $8,000 so when i was 25 i went in business. i started doing a lot of repeat work, small projects where i could be paid quickly and the company grew at about 80% a year the whole time, ended up living shopping centers around the

country, retail projects in 18 states so it was energizing, it was a great place to be. the energy when you come into the front door would almost knock you down. i sold that when i was 37 to he a man who had worked with me for many years. and of course have done several things cents. i ended up acquiring a good deal of real estate through the years through portfolios and other companies. i love being in business. i loved everything i have ever done. >> let me ask you about malls and plazas and developments like that. how do you have a vision to say we're going to put this here? >> yeah. in the beginning up until i was 37, mostly what i did was build projects for other people and then began owning the projects myself.

around shopping center, you basically know that a particular tenant wants to be in a location so you try to find a place that you think will work and overtime you option property and end up negotiating the lease and then build the project and of course, you figure out, you end up having architects and others involved with you that cause it to evolve in the right way but i will tell you that being a developer, being a builder really helped me in my first public office, elected office being mayor of a city and that is to be able to create a vision, a bold vision and to put the pieces in place to make it happen. i really do think that that helped me tremendously in being the mayor of chattanooga. even though this is a legislative job i think it has helped me here in trying to put the pieces together to make things happen. >> a lot of midsized cities are really struggling.

downtown areas. what is different in chattanooga? >> you know, chattanooga is the greatest community. i love it and i represent the whole state of tennessee, the whole state is different. i could not be more proud of it. i gave a talk in marietta, georgia, the other day about how chattanooga became the way it was. i became so emotional about my hometown. what is unique is our city has been able to keep the civic, business, and cultural center downtown. so many cities across our country have not. we have a lot of entrepreneurialism there and some great manufacturing especially recently brought in a great company. it is filled with people who are so unique. people who give of themselves to make other people's lives

better. it is a very unique place in that regard. if you look at the outdoor amenities, i just yesterday rode my bike with my wife elizabeth along the riverfront which again, as a community, we created, it is an outstanding place to live. i do not know about community that has a better quality of life in america than chattanooga. the interesting thing is, it keeps getting better. we have been able to build on the successes of people who have come before us and i could not be more proud of the people of my community and i could not love living there more than i do. >> so based on that, what advice as you look at other communities, larger cities like detroit certainly suffering a series of problems separate than what you faced in chattanooga. how do you turn around a downtown area?

>> i met a man in my 30's who gave me some advice. he built the city of columbia from scratch in maryland. went out and bought 15,000 acres or whatever and bought -- build the city from scratch. at a time when i was getting involved as a civic leader. i know i would be successful with my first company. i went on a mission trip to haiti and it affected me in a huge way and i wanted to be part of helping make my city a better place. i met jim rouse in that process. what he told me his true. always create a bold vision. not a small vision. even if you just get 80% of the way done, you still accomplished so much more than if you have a small vision and you achieve it. the other thing i would say to people who are mayors of cities

is, do not do a plan and let it sit on a shelf. plan on making it happen. i think that is what has made chattanooga so unique. when i was mayor and so many people have done things of equal significance in our community, we created a vision to do a 21st-century waterfront plan and built it, came up with the idea, the funding, developed it and built it in 35 months and when citizens see that you're going to carry something out, that you're not going to just create a study or a vision and let it sit on the shelf, you carry it out and make it real, what that does is it energizes the city and they want more. again, create a vision, get your community involved, and when you

lay out that you are going to do something, do it. again we have been so fortunate to have that happen over and over again in our community. >> you ran for the senate once and lost in a primary. what did you learn from defeat? >> i did run in a primary back in 1994. there were six of us in the republican primary. bill frisk won the race. and he should have, he was the better candidate. if you run the right way and we did, bill frisk and i became great friends and he recruited me to run for his seat when he left 12 years later. i think what i learned is, if you run the right way you never lose. meaning that the experience itself enriches you as a person. just the experience of going around the state with 95 counties and meeting citizens and seeing where they are in life and understanding what

motivates people, you cannot run an elective race like that and run the right way and lose. that was what i learned. candidly, i did not ever think i would run for united states senate again. i ended up being in an appointed position after that. that kind of validates what i am saying. a newly elected governor asked me to serve and his cabinet as a result of the wave the race was one. i loved it and told the gentleman i was going to leave the day i started and ended up going back into business and people in my community am a our community asked me to run for mayor and i did. i did not expect to do anything electorally after that. i really did not and then bill came down and talked about the fact he was retiring. i think people who offer themselves for public office and go about it in the right way, and semi-people do, i think it is hard to not take away something from an effort like that that makes you a better person. >> based on that, who are your role models?

>> you know, i do not know. i, you know, i have taken a little bit from a lot of folks. i do not know if there is anybody that is in particular a role model. i love serving with lamarr alexander. my colleague. i loved getting to know howard baker through the years. there are so many people who have -- i take a little bit from everyone. i do not know that i could say there was anybody who was my perfect role model. >> if you look at howard baker and lamarr alexander and your brand of politics, is it different from other states or legislators? >> i do not think so. when you say different, what do you mean by that?

>> you are not aligned with the tea party, you are often viewed as the bridge between democrats and republicans. >> yeah. i look at myself as a true fiscal conservative. i really do. i think that, i mean, we have laid out those stuff things that need to happen to save our nation. i am not talking about just laying them out rhetorically. we have written bills that have the tough medicine in them that lay out what needs to happen to make sure that the entitlement programs that so many people depend upon are solvent over the next 75 years. that our country is saved in the process. i think one of the things that would make me unique possibly in our state is the fact that i was a real business person. so many people say they were in

business but, i mean, i was really in business and build a company that operated around our nation and understand what it takes to go through that. i look at myself as a significant and serious this will -- fiscal conservative. at the same time, i understand that the goal is to make the -- gains. to make our country stronger along the way. i do not know what brand, to use your word, politics that would be. i really do consider it a tremendous privilege to be here and i wake up every day trying to make our country stronger. one of the things i hope you will never interview me about is taking cheap political shots or trying to make it about me. i really do wake up every day knowing again, our citizens across tennessee have given me a responsibility to wake up and to use every ounce of political i have to advance our nation to a

better place, so i do not know what rent of politics that would be. >> do this cheap shots occur in the senate? >> gosh, yes. i think yeah, there is no question, obviously. i will leave it at that. i think that if you look at the role that outside groups have begun to play and the effect that it can have on people that are otherwise sensible, thoughtful people, and how people can end up being pushed in positions that you are -- you know that our not advancing our country's interest, things -- that certainly has an effect. everybody here is human, nobody here is without having made some mistakes, but i do try to

resist, if you will, with every ounce of energy i have. i try to resist forces that wish you in a direction that certainly are not about making our country stronger. >> if you could fix the senate as an institution, what would you change? >> i think the senate does not really need fixing. i think the way the senate has been set up by our forefathers should work. i think that people coming here really attempting to be great united states senators versus potentially using the united states senate as an operation to do something else, that has nothing to do with the great united states senator. that is taking the problems and issues we have and taking them

head-on and to try to stretch, i find so many and it happens at the white house, too. i find folks being afraid of trying to stretch their base and trying to get to a place where you actually solve a problem. and to me, having political support is all about trying to explain how, if we could stretch some, we can get to a place that makes our country stronger and still live within the principles that respect -- respect of folks ran on. there seems to be more recently, it has not it about that, i will put it that way. let me say this. there are a lot of really great people here. i will say this.

i came up here with a healthy disrespect of the united states senate. no doubt there are frustrations of serving in the united states senate. i know it is sometimes difficult for the american people to see this, but there are some outstanding people here who wake up every day really trying to advance our country and move it ahead. sometimes i wish the american people could see more of that versus some of the public efforts that have in some cases nothing to do with that. >> is the republican party, is the base more narrow than it should be at the moment? >> i have always said republican party is a big tent party. to me, i have always looked and i do not want to be offensive to my friends on the other side of the aisle but i have always thought the republican party was the party that should try to be the adult when it comes to making tough decisions.

especially when it comes to fiscal issues and those kind of things that make our country stronger from generation to generation. i will get quibbling from the other side. i have always felt like what it came down to making the tough decision, that is what the republican party was about. this is about ensuring that people have opportunities to better themselves. i do not think we talk near enough about the second part. to me in many ways we have not done enough yet about the first part. i do think people back home sometimes forget republicans only have one third of government right now and sometimes it is difficult. when you think about the fact that over the last two years we have real reductions in actual

spending that have taken place and tax policy has been fixed for individuals, something that did not happen when george bush was here and had both the house and senate, we were not able to do that and that was done for 99% of the people of the country -- in the country. strides have been taken. i do not think we focus near enough on ensuring that we are the party of opportunity, too. sometimes we can forget our goal here is to try to make sure that every day where doing things that improve people's quality of life and they have the opportunity if they are willing to put out the effort to enhance their families -- family's opportunity and situation in life. that is what brought me into this. again, that is what brought me into the public arena was

working on an issue that i really thought was going to affect people in a real way. 10,000 families in my home town of chattanooga. this was a civic endeavor. i was able to see that and i felt the same way as the commissioner of finance. i think that again, you can have things -- i never did a business deal with anybody and feel like i did some pretty significant ones for guy who started with $8,000 in savings. i never did one where the person on the other side of the table said we will do it exactly the the way you just said. there was a negotiation that took place and obviously, for me to have entered into that transaction, i must have felt

there was something that was good for me that was coming out of that. i assume that the person on the other side of the table must have felt there was something good for them that was coming out of it. i think sometimes that part is forgotten about here, too. >> let me ask about your own family. growing up where in tennessee, how many mothers and sisters and described your parents. >> chattanooga, tennessee. we lived in south carolina when i was a younger person. my dad was transferred over and he was an engineer at dupont. he was transferred when i was 10 or 11. my sister is to got -- two years younger. i have a wonderful wife named elizabeth who grew up on a farm. we have two daughters, julie and emily that are roughly, depending on when this airs, 25 and 24. the 25-year-old is married to someone she met here on han -- on our staff. my younger daughter is living in

new york. she is product development manager with the program -- with a company that makes these shabby stylish handbags and the proceeds go to feed people in africa. that is the most important thing in life is that they are productive and doing well and happy with who they are. as individuals. elizabeth is happier than she has ever been. i am gone four days a week now and i see that in jest. i am fortunate to be married to someone who would allow me to do what i am doing and to be such a strong-willed, good person. i feel very fortunate with having the family that i have. that is the kind of thing you care about on a daily basis. >> how did you meet your wife?

>> i met her on a blind date. she was doing interior decorating which is what she still does some of. one of my best friends kept saying, you have got to take this person out and somehow or another we ended up on a blind date. and kept dating from that point on. >> did you grew up in a political family, did your parents talk politics? >> no. when i first began making of running for public office, i literally went out to my parents' home and apologize to them. i am kind of embarrassed but i am thinking about running for the united states senate. my dad ended up over time, he ended up serving as the mayor of a small town, it was nothing like a political job, i assure

you. he ran an ad for $25 and the local people and got more votes than anybody else and served as mayor for four years. i think that was after i had decided to run for the united states senate. so no. that is not what we talked about. my dad was a little league baseball coach and worked at dupont. we went to sunday school and did all those things that people in middle class families do. certainly in politics -- politics was not something we talked about. i love business, i really did and i still get excited when i hear one of my friends or someone else for some big deal they are getting to work on -- getting ready to work on. i have cemex -- some success and it has allowed me to serve in a way that i think is very unique. as much as i love this this and i did not come from a political family and all, i really do

cherish the fact that i am able to weigh in on issues that are very important to people across our state and country. >> one of those issues is a member of the senate foreign relations committee. you have been to how many countries? >> i have not counted recently. i would say i've been to 56, 57, 58 countries. many of them multiple times. i have been to pakistan four times, iraq four times, afghanistan, four times. repeat visits, turkey, syrian border multiple times. over time you certainly absorb a lot and as you are alluding to i think, here i was a mayor and a business guy who built shopping centers around our country and i am now the ranking member on foreign relations and it has taken a lot of quiet work and a lot of travel in the last six and a half years to feel like i had the ability, if you will in a small way to be helpful in

that effort. >> when you went to haiti as a citizen, not as a senator, what did you see western mark -- what did you say? >> i had been in business 24 years and i knew i would be successful. i went with a church group, they needed someone who knew something about construction. what i saw was just people in such need who were so grateful for any kind of assistance that people were willing to give. i not only saw grateful people who had the biggest smiles and lived in such dire poverty, but also saw that the people who were really helped were the people who went on the trip to help others. no doubt we were able in a small way to help these families in need. i think everyone of us left

impacted in a way that affected the entire rest of our lives. we all know of the parables and sometimes reverse of what you think may happen happens and certainly in that case, i was the one who was helped, not the people i was there to help. >> how do you think the world views america today? >> i still think we talk pretty negatively about our country and let's face it, we have let ourselves down and let the world down. i think we are viewed with tremendous strengths. we are still the greatest economy in the world. if you look at leaders around the world they want their kids to go to college. we are still respected country. coming into work today i bumped into a lady who was getting

ready to do a publication for a chinese audience. i do think that our inability to deal with fiscal issues has really affected us in ways beyond just our own economy. it really has. i was just recently in china, japan, and south korea. the chinese look at us as being not as competent as we otherwise might be. our allies are worried about whether we will be able to live up to the obligations that we have agreed to. i think we are at a point where all of us who have some effect on where our country is headed should take notice and realize we are not living up to the standards that we lived up to and most cases in the past. we need to get our act together and we need to solve these problems, we need to again to move away from governing by crisis and act far more responsibly in what we are doing.

we need to realize the rest of the world is watching and as the greatest nation on earth, continue to flounder in these ways i think it makes the world itself a less safe place. >> how do we get there? >> i think we are going through a low point right now in dealing with our country's issues. i think countries, companies, individuals go through cycles. i think that we obviously have been at a low point in that regard. i feel a critical mass of people building at least here who want to rise to the occasion and again, so much of it, the american people have more to do with that than they think. we look out across our country and people on one hand say, look how divided congress is.

look how divided our country is, too, and whether people want to admit it, back home, elected representatives and up reflecting the more fully than they think. our nation -- i think the financial crisis that happened in 2008 was a blow. shattered some people's feelings about free enterprise, certainly not mine. we are going to have to build back from that. our best days are in front of us. i believe our best days are in front of us but we have got to again again as elected officials remembering that the reason our country is so great today is the -- those people who came before us ensured that and they were willing to make sacrifices to ensure that people who came after them had a better life, and certainly the generation that is leading right now is doing a much better job of that. >> let me conclude on the snow.

what is next for bob corker? any interest on -- in national office, being on a ticket? what else do you want to do? >> i have always lived by this sort of life standard that you do the best job you can at the job you're in and everything else will take care of itself. i really wake up every day wanting to be the most impactful united states senator i can be towards making our country stronger and not to make it about myself but to make the things we focus on those things that cause our country to be stronger and i do not have anything on my mind right now other than that. and continuing to be a good parent, a good husband, and hopefully, a good citizen. >> any advice from your wife on this? >> my wife is very apolitical, i

assure you and very unique for a public official's spouse. so fresh, so strong in so many ways. she would say that i think she likes the way that i serve and she likes the independents with which we both are able to live at present. we both know what a privilege that is and i think she would just cheer me on and ask me to please continue to take on the toughest issues we have. >> senator bob corker, thank you very much. >> thank you, sir. "> our "american profile interviews continue next with amy klobuchar of the desoto, the vice chairman of the economic committee. this is our discussion from a couple of weeks ago.

klobuchar,amy democrat of minnesota, when did you first think about running for elected office? >> my first office was in high school when i was on the student council. back then, the girls would -- did not run for class president, sadly. i was the secretary-treasurer of the high school class and my claim to fame was that i coordinated the lifesaver lollipop drive to raise money for the high school prom. it may not have been a major ideological battle but we really did not have enough money for the prom and i was able to raise enough. by the time it got to be a senior the juniors failed at their job and we had to have it in a shopping mall and we danced around the fountain and my date went in the fountain with someone else so that was locally not the end of my political career, but it was the first time that i ran for office. i got involved in politics, ran campaigns, worked with walter mondale.

it was a defining moment to run for major office. in my case it was county attorney. when our daughter was born and she was very sick and she could not swallow. it was at a time when they had the insurance role in place that you could only stay in the hospital for 24 hours, a mother could. she was sick, she was in intensive care and they did not know what was wrong. i got kicked out after being up all night with her. and so she was in the hospital for quite a while in her first year. one of the things i did as a citizen was i went to the legislature and worked for some of the legislatures -- legislators and testified in it was one of the first bills that guaranteed new mothers and babies of 48 hour hospital stay. after that i was pretty hoped that you could get something done and i took on the companies who were tried to slow down, i brought six pregnant women to the conference committee because they were trying to have it take place later knowing that they

were against it and the outnumbered the lobbyists two to one. i decided to run for office. >> your daughter is how old now? >> our daughter is 18. >> how is she doing? >> she is doing great. she has a really rough first few years and she was fed for a stomach tube through the first year and got better and better and it is -- she was an incredible girl and did well in school. we're pretty proud of her. >> you became county attorney and one of the things you worked on was to make sure that drunk driving was a felony. my question is, why was that even an issue? >> minnesota was one of the few states that it was not a felony. some of it was in the spirit of our states and some of it was a fluke but we did not have a strong drunk driving law. there was a notorious story of one of our legislators taking to

the house floor when they were trying to pass .08, and said if we pass this, how will my constituents get home in the morning? i had a best case to use when i testified. the guy had been arrested 16 or 18 times for drunk driving and when the cops stopped him in minnesota for this one, they said why did you move here and he said in colorado it would been a felony, i would have been in jail. we were able to use that case and i worked with republican and democratic legislators it took two years and we passed that bill that made it clear that if you had more than three ew eyes -- dwi's that it would be a

felony. >> where did you grow up? >> we -- it was in plymouth. we had a nice family. we went on our family trips to the black hills and the tetons. i never went anywhere that did not involve a tent or a camper. i went to public high schools my entire life. my mom taught second grade until she was 70. >> she recently passed away. >> she did. one of the things i loved about going and public service is my mom and dad in their own ways performed public service. my dad took on public causes -- people's causes and my mom was a teacher. i was reminded of that when there was a visitation when she died and people i did not know came. there was one family who is disabled and they recalled how my mom's favorite unit was about monarch butterflies and she would dress up as a monarch butterfly and she would carry a sign that said "to mexico or bust" because that is where butterflies fly. she would go grocery shopping.

what she never told me until i found this out from the family is that she went to this particular store because this kid that she had in second grade was now 22 years old and he worked bagging groceries at that store. he loved that monarch butterfly unit because she would go to that store and give him this big hug when she went through the line with her groceries. that family and that kid came to her visitation to tell me that story so it is an example of what teachers do all the time and how she loved her job and what she did. >> you have been candid about your dad's alcoholism. what was that like growing up and what did you learn from all of that? >> my dad had a struggle with this. he grew up with a hardscrabble life at the iron range in minnesota. there was a lot of drinking in the culture up there. then he was a newspaper man, a lot of drinking in that culture. at some point he started

drinking too much and it was when i was young. i would remember we would be waiting for him on christmas morning. my sister sitting over the couch looking out the window for hours and he would finally get there and it was things like that that made it hard, and i remember fights taking the keys away from them when i was older when we would drive up north to see my grandma. over time he got three dwi's and he did not mean much then. my husband and i got married in 1993. he got his third dwi and it really meant something. he got good treatment. he had some actual time hanging over his head. he changed his life around and he is happy, married for the third time, and doing quite well at age 85. >> he has described you this way. there is a lot of joy in his daughter and she is -- has a

an eye or the absurdities of life. does that describe you? >> i think to survive in washington you have to have some eye for the absurdities of life. what he meant by that was it is important to be able to take your work seriously and not necessarily take yourself seriously. you have to be able to stand back a little and realize this is just life and people will do some crazy things but you try to find the common ground and get things done. certainly he and i on our travels, bicycling all around the world, we bicycled in russia, through red square and bicycled in slovenia looking for our relatives. he felt that he had found his relatives when the man said there was one -- someone with his mother's name in the town. they were minstrels and they were always drinking and play the guitar and the man would get drunk and play the guitar and he

would offer to sell his house for a dollar and someone took him up on it and he went to america. having those experiences with my dad who has this amazing way of saying the humorous things and writing about it and also seeing the joy and -- in ordinary lives and the extraordinary stories of ordinary people really taught me a lot growing up. >> he has been described as a legendary sports columnist. >> he started out in sports and did that when i was growing up. at some point at 1965 he got a full-time column, anything he wanted to write about. he would write about politics, consumer stories, always pushing and helping someone who had called in. he did crazy things, he went for the abominable snowman, the

paper sent him there in california. they said him to sweden because minnesota is scandinavian. when they changed sides of the road that they were driving on in the entire country, his story was supposed to be all the problems and the swedes had deputized a neighbor for every street corner. there was not one problem except for a norwegian truck driver on the wrong side. he literally went from this mining life where he worked 1000 feet underground in the summers, going to everyone interview everyone from mike did the -- ditka to ronald reagan. >> how did you meet your husband? >> we met at a pool hall to some friends. then we went to see "wayne's world" with someone else, that was our first day. he grew up close to me, an hour and a half away. he grew up in a trailer home until he was in sixth grade.

he has five brothers. his mom really wanted girls and got pregnant again and had identical twin boys. they had six kids in a trailer home. they eventually move to a small house and they are an incredible family. his parents are a lot of fun. we do a lot of things with their family as well. he is a lawyer and cares a lot about the world around him and teaches law school. he has been great. i do not think we could have done this and had me have this job if he had not shared in a lot of the work load and done things together and been incredibly supportive. >> your daughter abigail, how would you describe her? >> she is humorous, she just sent me an e-mail yesterday telling me that she had found out that this book of that she had never cared about that i wrote when i was in college about the politics behind the building of the dome stadium in minnesota, i never have been

able to get her to read it. she found out they were using it at brown university still. i get $.68 a book. she sent me an e-mail saying they were using it at ground and i said how did you find out and she said she found out from some guy named david something. i got the typical freshman e-mail back. he was my middle school prom date, duh. she has always attempted to keep me real. i was going to take her to target to buy a swimsuit for a pool party for eighth grade. they had a vote in the senate so my husband had to take her. she called me and i picked up the cell phone as i am walking into the senate and she is in tears and said, they said we cannot wear a bikini at the pool

party but you can wear tankinis. she said dad does not understand the difference between a bikini and a tankini. i said, get him on the phone right now and i walked into lindsey graham and i almost knocked him over. i am not doing this balance right now. if you are trying to balance the family in the work, you never do it perfectly and anyone who says they do is wrong. for me, having my husband there has been a great blessing and a help. >> i want to come back to that. in your official biography, that lists the essay that you referred to. what is it about? >> on the dome stadium? it is called "uncovering the dome," and i based it on a same analysis of how you look at

things first on the macro level and that would be the world of pro sports and pro sports teams and the second part is how you get a bill done with the various special interest groups and everyone is fighting with each other and the weird alliances that take place in the case of the stadium to get it done. the third was implementation. i talked to all the people on the stadium commission who were charged with deciding where i would be located at the time, whether in minneapolis or bloomington, minnesota, and they chose minneapolis and it was about how the stadium way back in the early 1980's on time and under budget. let's forget about the fact that it collapsed a few times. i was saying with the demise of

the stadium when it was deflated for the last time, this time a planned deflation that we would stop hearing the jokes about how you should not wear a pointed hat in the top row and various other things. it has been a great stadium for our state. it is where we won two world series and some incredibly precious moments for minnesota sports. >> the story goes you come to washington and you are in the u.s. senate and you walk into the men's room during the first week. >> that is a correct story. now it is all of our 20 women. we have had a traffic jam in the women's bathroom. here i was brand-new and i did not know my way around. i had not had much connection here at all. i had been a prosecutor elected three years and i did not know my way around and i did walk right in to the men's bathroom and i believe john kerry was coming out at the same time. luckily i did not catch him in the bathroom. we had the official lunch in the lbj room and there we are with

the major portrait of lyndon johnson looming above us and i went and got a salad and a cup of soup and i am ready to dive in and patty murray is at my table, 10 senators and she gets up and runs are on the table and grabs my arm and says you just took the entire bowl of thousand island dressing and you are about to eat it. i looked at her and said that is what we do in minnesota, we the thousand island dressing. it was an example of the women coming to each other's rescue. it was a hard adjustment for me and for my family. we came out in our saturn with the shower curtain from college. i got to make some very good friends here. i love my work and being on the commerce committee, i did a lot of consumer work which felt somewhat like the prosecutor work i had done before, not just i got to manage an office of 400 people which was very fulfilling. i had worked on legislation in that area.

i did that and i did agriculture which i was interested in. and later joined the judiciary committee. >> why did you decide to run for the senate in 2006? >> we had an open seat, mark dayton had decided at the last minute not to run, he is now our governor. i had loved my job as a prosecutor. i had made some good changes with the office and gotten positive results. i had seen what you can do where you can make a difference in government by holding people accountable in this case, putting out goals, publishing what happened when you got the goals done. i wanted to take that kind of philosophy in a system where i know people still believe everything has been broken. my optimistic belief that you can still get things done. that drove me from a professional standpoint. and then from a substantive standpoint, it was all about standing up for people and doing things for the good of the state and the good of the country. little did i know when i got to the senate that a year later,

that bridge would collapse in the middle of the summer day. basically any line highway -- an eight lane highway. bridges should not fall down in the middle of america. we decided we would rebuild that bridge. we worked together and we were able to get that money in a record amount of time and it was rebuilt in a year. tragically, a dozen people lost their lives and many more were injured. it was a reminder of what your job is when you represent an area or the little girl who died in the swimming pool, she sat on a drain that was -- and was dismembered. her dad believed in democracy and believe that a freshman senator was going to be able to get a bill done that was sitting

around congress for five years and at that moment when we were able to attach it to the energy bill and make pool safer -- pools safer going forward and there have been much less depth from this kind of bad and faulty equipment. when i got to call him from the cloak room and tell him we passed that bill was probably still the proudest moment i had. >> congress and its approval ratings are pretty low. as you know. someone said it is broken. how do you view the senate, how do you view congress, and can you have working relationships across the aisle? >> i hold hubert humphrey's seat. i asked for his desk and they mistakenly gave me gordon humphrey's desk. i had the desk for two years. i told jeanne shaheen the story.

i opened up the lid, and i did not know they had corrected the error. i have hubert humphrey's desk. he was optimistic and believe you could get things done and believed in the idea of emma chrissie -- democracy and that is what guides me. i have found the best of my colleagues. i headed up the national prayer breakfast at one point. i am president of that group. half the senate comes once a year and tells their life story. i have tried to find that common ground whether it is passing a bill with senator blunt or senator in health -- inhofe. whether it is introducing a bill

on immigration in terms of bringing in some of our high skilled workers which i did with senator hatch. the two of us were voted the two senators least likely to get into a scandal by "the washingtonian" magazine. i find common ground and an understanding of the issue and go from there. it has helped me get things done for my state but to feel good about the work we do every day it gives you some hope which we have now seen, i would argue, in fits and starts, borne out in the last year, whether it is that incredible moment when the senate passed that bipartisan migration bill with marco rubio and john mccain working with senator mccain and senator durbin and senator menendez and senator hatch and i contributed to that bill or whether it was patty murray and barbara

mikulski to get that budget done or the work on the farm bill that senator stabinow has done recently. and the people still find it within themselves, this courage to stand next to someone they do not always agree with for the betterment of this country, and that is what keeps me inspired and keeps me going. >> there is a picture of senator humphrey and muriel humphrey who had this seat. she served for about a year. did you meet them? >> yes, when i was very young. my dad covered hubert humphrey. i was able to meet him and i met muriel later. their family and their son skip and others i have gotten to know. people did not realize about

hubert humphrey. there is a movie out on him, we chose how much he did -- he did work across the aisle. he transcended party lines and in that way he is a big role model for me. >> do you enjoy being in the senate? >> i do. i really do. i think that it is a place that needs improvement. i think some of the new rule changes, while they are tough to deal with, are the right thing to do. we should not be wasting our time on hours of debate not on an amendment but a person and we should have up or down votes more often and we should move things along and that would make people feel a lot better about themselves and the institution, and certainly we would be serving democracy better. when the president talked in the state of the union about the soldier and how it is not easy, the soldier was in a coma after sustaining a roadside bomb attack and getting to the point where he could be sitting there

next to the first lady at the state of the union was a message to everyone. america has never been easy. our democracy has never been easy. there was a message to congress that we just have to keep shouldering on. >> in 2014, why is equal pay for equal work and issue? >> i think we still have situations when you look back in the past when women just are not treated the same way. look at lilly ledbetter. she was told, you do not get a raise because you did not find out what people are making. this idea that women should be paid the same for work that a man does was something i think most republicans stood up for when the president talked about not living in a "mad men" discriminatory situation. that was one of the most surprising moments in that state of the union speech this year.

i think just the crowd in that women -- of the senate is changing things. it is the jobs that we have. we have need major chairs from the budget committee to appropriations to intelligence. to transportation. i am the senate chair on the joint economic committee. you get to hold hearings on whether or not it is income inequality or the immigration bill or women in manufacturing. it changes things and because of it, i get to go to the chairman's lunch and i get to see firsthand the numbers when you look at who is in charge of those committees is higher than the percentage of women in the senate overall because the women have tended to get reelected and stay in the senate so they chair committees.

i think that is what is the best thing for changing the way things work around here. susan collins led that effort to end the shutdown and we had a group of 12, 14 of us, have for women. he basically said here is how we think we should end this and we went to our leaders and we will do a press conference. you can work it out if you want to but this is what we are going to do and i do not think -- the point is half the people were women. >> how do you describe your ideology? >> i would say i am someone who stands up for the people in my state. i am someone that believes you need more stability in washington. if i had to pick one word it is optimistic for the future and optimistic for what we can get done. >> this comes in the category, what is next? some would say -- have said that you would be perfect for the u.s. supreme court. >> i love the job that i do now. that was a surprising question. i love the job that i do now. we are in minnesota -- our voters like to see change.

you have to go back to humphrey and mondale. that means a lot to me for our state. i have a lot of work that i want to do here. >> what about the presidency? >> i love the job that i have now. hillary clinton may be running on our side and that is exciting. >> when "the new york times" says that you are among a dozen or so people that potentially would be president someday, what is your reaction? >> that is an honor to have people think of you in that way. i think one of the things i've learned is to keep your eye on what you are doing and enjoy what you are doing and be humble about it. when i first considered running for office in minnesota, a lot of people told me i should run for secretary of state which is a very important job especially for a state known for the men

are strong and the women are good-looking and the recounts are above average. people urged me to run for that. they said, you run statewide and won't have as much controversy. i said, no, i think i want to do the job that i want to do for now that i see as challenging and that is what i did. i did that job. managed 400 people for eight years and another opportunity came up. i think it is important that you do your job, you like what you're doing and you keep focusing on it. if other opportunities come up, great. people spend their entire time looking for the next step, they find out that the grass is not always greener and they don't enjoy or do well at what they are doing. >> if down the road the opportunity arises for higher office, would you be interested?

>> i want to focus on what i am doing now but i appreciate the question. i appreciate that you are wearing viking purple. we have faith the vikings will emerge again. >> they have never won the super bowl. >> my dad wrote a book about it and said the he wrote it in the 1980's and that is still relevant today. >> yale and the university of chicago, why those two schools? >> i really had no connection to the east coast and i applied to a bunch of schools. i got into a lot of schools and i remember my dad really wanted me to stay in minnesota. some editor at the newspaper -- we were on an elevator, i said i was going to the library. he asked me where i was going to college and i said i didn't know yet. i got into yale and my dad said i was not going there because it was too expensive.

we were able to scrape together $10,000 at the time but i most remember that i brought my pink polyester prom dress. i'd never been to the east coast except for one trip. i brought my pink polyester prom dress and matching shoes in case i needed it. i would often take the greyhound bus back and forth from college to minnesota to save money. it wasn't exactly a glamorous life but i met so many good friends and it really opened up a new world for me. i always wanted to come back to minnesota. >> is your daughter interested in politics? >> i don't know. my husband always jokes when people ask that question. he said what would you be interested in if your mom's job had an approval rating of 10%? i think she really has a keen

eye for politics and understands that in government -- she is volunteering in college in helping immigrants learn to read. she is doing the newspaper, writing for the newspaper with a focus on politics. she likes that. i really want her to do whatever she wants to do in life and not direct her in any which way and it seems like it is going fine right now. our one comment to me recently was that she felt walt whitman's poems were too repetitive. she clearly is a girl who things on her own. >> you served for two years with barack obama before he became president. what was your relationship like with him personally? >> we get along well. he is someone who has taken on some major difficult issues. you think about when he got into office how challenging that was when we were losing more jobs at

one month and there were people in the state of vermont. you think about his calmness. there are so many international crises. his wanting to bring the troops home from iraq and afghanistan. he has been steady and strong and sticking to what he wanted to do. it has been frustrating not to be able to get anything done for him. he certainly got a lot done. i think if he can get this immigration bill done then you will be able to look back at some major changes that he has made in the country. some major social changes, whether it be the "don't ask, don't tell" repeal or his position on gay marriage. the emergence of so many strong women in his cabinet including hillary clinton. whether it is just been devotion to doing something about keeping the economy going again and a lot of attacks that he gets every day.

i will continue to work with him on every issue that comes along. we like when he comes to visit our state and hopes he comes again soon. >> you get back home how often? >> i get home about three out of every four weekends. especially with the weather being so lovely in minnesota right now, you don't want to miss it. there was a day when we were colder than mars. that day has passed. we have now moved on to warmer pastures. >> if you have a rare day off with nothing to do, what do you enjoy doing? >> i love going bicycling in the summer. i biked with my dad across the country from minneapolis to wyoming, 1100 miles in 10 days. i like going to movies with my husband. we have a lot of fun doing that. i like taking walks. i like to check in with my daughter if she answers the

phone. it is nice to take that time where you can be outside, even in the winter. >> who has a bigger sense of humor, you or your colleague? >> the president declared that i was the second funniest senator. that was incredibly humorous. he has worked very hard at his job and so you don't always see that humor. he clearly has a very big sense of humor. >> you don't always take yourself too seriously? >> no, but it is rather amazing to go one-on-one with al franken. we do have to do this. we have to both do humor and my favorite moment was when he called me after one of them and said he liked my jokes and that i liked his jokes.

i worked really hard on that. he just had to put that together. the difference was that you are a professional and i was a prosecutor. he is a lot of fun to work with and i do think having some people with a little sense of humor in this town can go a long way. >> senator amy klobuchar, thank you very much. >> thank you. [captioning performed by the national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2014] >> thursday night we will talk with two senators. tells useidi hike cap how his name went for mary catherine to heidi. small catholic a community. when i was growing up, the two classes, whether first and second or third and fourth, were

all in the same classroom during there was a really small group of girls. there were a lot of mary's. .ary jo then there was a mary catherine. my parents never called me catherine. she decided in the third grade she would rename me. she was a voracious reader and have already read hundreds of books by the time she was in the third grade, and "heidi" was one of her favorite books. she gave me the name and it stuck. >> later we will talk with senator john soon on how his grandfather changed the family name. >> my grandfather, great uncle came over from norway in 1906. when they get to ellis island they did not know english with the exception of the words apple pie and coffee.

they thought the name would be too difficult to spell and pronounce for people in this country. they got to ellis island and they had a sponsor inside and they came out to work on the railroads. >> american profile interviews with heidi hike cap and john soon. >> congress is off this week. members are home in their districts for the presidents' day recess. the house returning on tuesday. on their agenda next week, flood insurance rate increases. the senate back on monday, 2:00 p.m. eastern.

angus king will be recognized to liver the annual -- deliver the annual rating of the president pass farewell address. follow the house on c-span and the senate on c-span2. we are checking what members are saying. thank the farm credit midsouth of the conference room. shetor fisher saying enjoyed visiting with hard-working nebraskans. you will find more at twitter.com/cspan. a look at our live coverage coming up at 1:00 p.m.. energy secretary ernest moniz

will talk about domestic energy production. the national press club at 1:00 p.m. eastern. the director of the national institute of standards and technology will outline president obama's voluntary cyber security framework which lays out the security guidelines of the nation's 16 critical infrastructure structures at 2 p.m. eastern. , wet the creation museum teach people the difference between beliefs and what one can actually observe an experiment with. i believe we are teaching people to think critically and in right terms about science. teaching kids the right way to think. our origin of historic science is based on the bible, but i'm challenging evolution.

>> i encourage you to explain to us why we should accept your word for it that natural law just 4000 years ago completely, and there's no record of it. there are pyramid's that are older than that. there are human populations that are far older than that, with traditions that go back further than that. it is not reasonable to me that everything changed for thousand years ago. theverything i mean species, the surface of the sky, ande stars in the the relationship of all the other living things on earth to humans. it's not reasonable to me that everything changed like that. . >> evolution versus creationism. ken hamm, -- nye and debate tonight at 8:00 eastern

on c-span. sincehas been five years the passage of president obama's economic stimulus package, a discussion about that from this morning's "washington journal.". hirsh here to talk about the stimulus bill five years later. the white house released a report over the weekend. looking at the impact of it, what did they say the impact of the stimulus has been? were extremely positive, both in terms of how many jobs were created or saved. they say about 1.6 million jobs throughrom the start mid-2011. percent to three percent growth to gdp. they claim it did not add much

to the long-term debt because of added growth to the economy. it was quite a rosy picture for what has been from the start and what became particularly the 2012 campaign a real lightning rod of controversy. host: what did they promise when the stimulus was signed into law, and what are they promising? guest: they are in line with most estimates. there was a survey by the boothsity of chicago school of business in 2012, i believe it was -- it came out showing that 80% of economists surveyed said there were clearly growth benefits and job benefits to the stimulus package. for several years now, since the stimulus, there has been a distinct minority mainly aligned

with the conservative wing of the republican party who have denied that there have been any benefits. the real issue is just how much impact it really has. congressional budget office which is considered nonpartisan in 2012 came out with a study showing a wide range of growth benefits. they concluded there were growth benefits. doug elmendorf said in testimony that there were clear benefits. the ranges are extremely between 200,000-one million jobs. it's not clear, there is no direct cause and effect necessarily. you have a slew of different kind of programs that were put into place as the economy again -- began to descend rapidly in 2008. we were looking at eight percent contraction of the economy and a financial disaster unlike any

since the great depression. that was the original reason for the stimulus. in addition to that, you had other fiscal programs. you had revolutionary programs put in place by the federal reserve chairman ben bernanke that had never been done before. it is difficult to unscramble that omelette. host: here is what the house speaker had to say about the stimulus bill -- guest: well, saying the worst is yet to come, i don't necessarily think that is justified. most of what john boehner says is correct.

we are even with decline in unemployment which is been fairly rapid in recent quarters. you are still at 6.7% which some economists are suggesting could be a grim new normal when we used to be at 4.5% unemployment. that is an unsettling bit of news. the u.s. is currently the best performing economy in the world if one excludes china whose own growth has slowed down considerably. there is some element of self congratulation going on here by the obama administration. we saw it recently when ben bernanke left as federal reserve chairman. there was a lot of back patting going on. he had saved the country from the depression and i think must economists would agree that he -- we averted what could very

easily have been another great depression. what's interesting to me about all this criticism is among many economists, the real issue is not so much did the stimulus work but was it enough? many economists argue that it just was not nearly enough given the level of the catastrophe. one reason you did not have more of a good effect on job growth was as large as it was, it need -- needed to be much larger. host: vice president joe biden is expected to make that argument today after traveling to illinois to call for more infrastructure spending and marked the five-year anniversary of the stimulus bill. guest: i have had a former administration officials -- i spoke with jared bernstein and asked him what they did wrong in the stimulus. one thing he said was they did not sell it quite right.

given the depth of the disaster the economy was in, rather than being sold as a one off cure, it should have been sold as the first step in what probably needed to be a series of stimulus programs. instead, after the passage of the stimulus, particularly in the first year or so, there was a lot of too optimistic talk about new green shoots growing in the economy. for a variety of reasons like the problems in europe, we did not see those greenchutes for a long time as unemployment continued to climb. that gave a lot of impetus to the republican narrative that the stimulus was not working. host: littleton, colorado, republican caller -- we are talking about the stimulus, what do you think? caller: you are a journalist.

do you feel the american media has failed the public by deliberately looking the other way from the scientific evidence proving that building seven was brought down -- host: that is not our topic today and we have taken those questions from groups like yours. i will move on. henry in oak ridge, tennessee, democratic caller. caller: mr. john boehner was very wrong about what he was saying. i remember 2010, he asked where are the jobs? once they got in office, we did not see it. the economy is doing better.

we were up to 10% a couple of years ago. guest: that is the main democratic counterpoint in this debate. unfortunately, they say the stimulus was limited and when spending slowed down and the funding ran out, we began talking about austerity and programs like the sequester, that really slowed the recovery. we would be in better shape if those had been longer-lasting. host: president obama is expected to call for more infrastructure spending in his budget when that is released. senator ted cruz tweeted this -- if the president called for more infrastructure spending, as we mark the five-year anniversary

of the stimulus bill, politically, how is that achievable? guest: sadly, it is not that achievable. the ted cruz tweet reflects a purely political and ideological play to the republican base. it is not really about the economics of the situation. you talk to a number of republican governors around the country, they all readily agree that there is a huge need for infrastructure investment. this is a traditionally republican idea going back to at least eisenhower and the national interstate highway system. it goes as far back to the 19th century. right now, and this polarized government today, you cannot

talk about government spending on the republican side. it was something that infected the original debate over the stimulus. it ended up being a compromise where the administration had to create more tax cuts as part of this $800 billion stimulus package. it really wanted to do more infrastructure type spending. host: the white house report that was issued on monday shows the breakdown of how the funds were allocated. $296 billion for entitlement and other programs, 279 billion dollars for contracts and grants and $212 billion for tax cuts. marco rubio tweeted this -- c-span democrat tweets this.

wayne in new jersey, independent caller. what do you think? caller: why are we in a position, right out-of-the-box, when president obama took office, to give stimulus to states that were in a shovel ready position? host: let's talk about that. guest: economically, there were some criticisms of the way this was designed. one was the issue of tax cuts. demand was down in an and economy -- in an economy. an economy that was deeply in recession. the other was the number of shovel ready projects.

one of the problems the administrative -- administration created for itself was they melded the president upon campaign promises about investment in green energy and green technology, to grasp that onto what was supposed to be a stimulus package. you did not get as much job growth as you might have if you had funneled it out to projects that were closer to ready to being go -- that were closer to ready to go. because it was such an odd looking political compromise the , stimulus may not have been ideally designed to get the economy out of the trench that it was in. host: one caller mentioned the unemployment rate. february 2009 when the recovery act was signed, it was 8.3%. the current unemployment rate, 6.6%. are those two things related?

the economy continued to be in recession through summer of 2009. the unemployment rate climbed over 10% before it started. if you measure the decline from just over 10% to 6.7% today. you have signs of recovery in 10 consecutive quarters of consecutive quarters of recovery. that is what the white house is pointing to. the question is, how much of that is related to the stimulus versus other programs? some of the programs were dwarfed by the things the federal reserve did. they exploded its balance sheet. economists for decades to come are going to be hashing over these measures and to some degree, rewriting economics. you will see a lot of phd's born

and bred over studies of what happened during this period. we are in the early stages of a rough draft of history. host: much like ben bernanke's phd on the great depression. unemployment went down because of the workforce declining, not because of new jobs. guest: that has been a factor. long-term unemployment, although it is slightly lower as a

percentage of the unemployment rate, has been a huge problem in this economy. a lot of people, it is not just any particular ethnic group, but a lot of people drop out of the workforce. after six months, that is when you are determined to be long-term unemployed. a lot of people simply start look -- stop looking. host: can you imagine how well off we would be if obama had not doubled down on obamacare and spent on infrastructure? bad choices. charlie, new york, republican caller, your next. caller: mr. hersh is the perfect guest. the mecca of the low information voter. there are 92 million americans not working. that makes the real unemployment rate 37.2%. not 6.6%. 37.2. six percent of the stimulus money went to shovel ready jobs. the rest went to a slush fund for the unions and obama's campaign bundlers. your industry is committing suicide.

you are ignoring obama's corruption, his scandals, his ineptitude. you think people don't see it? you people are killing yourself. host: do you go to nationaljournal.com? caller: c-span is the only liberal media iwatch. host: how can you make that claim about national journal if you don't read it? caller: i am making it about the mainstream media. host: we will have him respond. guest: that is the official figure that the bureau of labor statistics puts out. there are many disputes over

what the actual unemployment rate is. i have not heard 37%, that is a little high. some have argued it should be as high as 16 or 18%. it depends on who you count. how many people do you count? a various serious -- a very serious long-term problem is the people dropping out of the workforce. the debt is somewhat stabilized compared to the last few years when it seemed to be shooting up at an alarming rate. it is about 70% of gdp and that there has been a debate over how high the debt can get before it starts to be a drag on economic growth. get before it starts to be a drag on economic growth.

there was a paper that came out in 2010 that suggested very high debt was a drag on growth, but there was a lot of controversy over that. very high debt was a drag on growth, but there was a lot of controversy over that. out, yours they put have to get pretty far over 90% of debt to gdp for starts to be a drag on economic growth. where we are with the debt right downwhich has been slowed by congress, you're not at that dangerous level where the debt level restricts growth. he was the national economics correspondent and senior editor at newsweek. he wrote a weekly column for newsweek. we will go to michael, houston, texas, democratic

caller. we are looking at five years of the stimulus package, but to get an overall picture, we have to look back to the first -- this is the second stimulus package. one targeted banks, financial institutions with no mechanism of paying that money back. we had the first stimulus package under president bush. it targeted the banks and financial institutions. they had no mechanism of paying that money back. we lost millions of jobs from president bush first came into office. when president obama came in with a second stimulus package, we were still losing jobs, but that was targeted to other

institutions and other financial networks. also, you have to look at, with the shovel ready jobs, texas did not want -- because they had to be accountable for the money. you have to look at the states .ndividually when you look at the shovel ready jobs, these are companies that were put on the back burner because of economics. in the states got the money, these same people came in as they did before. that is why you have some the states that do not want the money. you have to be accountable. host: okay. michael, houston, texas. it was a way of rescuing

wall street from complete collapse. there was some stimulus by the bush administration towards the and, before obama came into office. it gets back to parsing after the fact, what could have been done more optimally with this giant $800 billion plus jim projects the number of that were ready for investment and ready to create jobs. that they wereay not always that easy to find. -- did the states did in risk in that investment. host: give the money to the poor. they have the highest density to spend. jeff, independent caller. caller: good morning.

scholars talked about -- the federal reserve act of 1913 on jekyll island. three senators sealed our fate. people in this country don't know that offshore families on the federal reserve. the repeal of the glass-steagall act, that is the second thing. if people in this country are actually waking up, i hope and pray that we can try to save this great nation. you know that i am right. a lot of people don't know that the federal reserve is owned by offshore families. host: what is the evidence of that? why did three senators at 2:00 the morning seal our fate? -- from jekyll island.

conspiracy here rising. there was a book that was about the supposedly dark and shady origins of the federal reserve. not owned by offshore families. it is a government institution that has been in place since 1913. are a substantial the population that sees it as enough arias. i think the federal reserve under bernanke in the past eight , since the crisis, has done an amazing job of preventing what could have been another depression. on the other points, i declined to comment at this point. host: i have heard claim the stimulus increase increased gdp

to plus 2%. is that true? 2008, whenhe fall of obama was taking office, just after the election, the economy was contracting during that quarter by about eight percent. time, a few years before a got up to the growth we're seeing now. historically, we have reversed that decline. 8% drop was during a very short time when the recession was at its most severe. jack, missouri, republican caller. i would suggest the stimulus was no stimulus. you cannot borrow your way to

prosperity. stimulus would be if your grandpa gave you a bunch of money to start a business and it helps you get going. you cannot borrow money to stimulate yourself. guest: underlying this debate has been going on for the past is anver the stimulus ideological divide. it goes back to questions about economics. there was a time when private investment wasn't there, the government needs to invest. that is still the basic idea. a whole countervailing

point of view which culminated in ronald reagan. milton freeman was one of the leading champions of this view that stimulus bending never works. you cannot spend and accumulate debt. what is lying underneath this. when you hear people like ted cruz saying it was a complete failure, they are reflecting that huge debate that has been going on for decades. host: stephanie, california. caller: i cannot believe we are still looking at the stimulus. that were tax cuts not paid for, wars that were not paid for. the pharmaceutical bill that wasn't paid for. we're looking at the stimulus bill. i cannot believe it. we remember and know that the house of representatives holds the purse strings.

can't nothing get through unless the house passes it. i cannot believe that. for all those people who are beating obama over the head, i cannot believe they don't remember that our economy was over when -- love. if you voted for bush, you cannot complain about obama. it is true that obama inherited a disastrous economy from george w. bush. if you speak to many on the far right tea party movement, many of them will say, the movement began under george w. bush. spending, as she referred to the pharmaceutical plan, you had warsrugs,

and tax cuts. there was a lot of anger. among the conservative base because there was a sense of the bus administration was betraying this idea of small government. obama did not fully realize that he had a train heading his way in terms of this rising movement . withhe did the stimulus obamacare, he took most of the blame. it is fair to look back over the whole past decade and say this was an accumulation of large government programs. host: the problem is spending. it does not help anything. reduction helps the economy. james, harrisburg, pennsylvania. you touched on almost

everything i had questions about, but you might want to delineate what the stimulus is actually used for. economy and one bunch of government bailouts and money spending that has been in the trillions. the real problem still seems to be the banks and the bailout portion of this. not the stimulus. guest: it is a legitimate debate the whole same time debate over bank and financial reform began. the dodd frank bell, that was ultimately signed in 2010. there are progressive economists and anchors that think wall street was not performed.

they precipitated this whole crisis by creating this securitization mania over subprime mortgages. they encouraged reckless lending so that wall street could securitize and sell the loans to the world. that was the heart of the crisis. there is some question about whether the same banks that were responsible for that has been adequately reform. yes, that is a legitimate concern. a separate debate from the economic impact of the stimulus, but it is very much out there. another part of this is the federal reserve. one of our viewers wants to know if yellen has what it takes to situation. of our guest: she is seen as one prominent economist.

she was described as perhaps the best prepared federal reserve chairperson in history in that she has spent almost a decade at the federal reserve and in the system as a governor or as president of the san francisco federal reserve. she is a highly regarded around the world. violent occasions, because she served alongside bernanke for a while it is vice chairwoman, and based on the testimony she has given, she will continue his policies, ratcheting back the quantitative easing program. the main concern is unemployment versus inflation. host: k, new york, republican caller. caller: i love your program. i want to tell everyone why

there's no jobs. 320,000 dairy farmers in 20 years. teachers,paying the keep paying them with big wages, the unions throw the money right to them. the dairy farmers, they are kicked out. milkingfarms today 30,000 tells. -- 30,000 cal's. -- cows. they need to take the big farmers -- 600 count.

df you can make a god damne living on 600 cows, you shouldn't be firemen. the dairym not up on farming issue. i will look into it. i would like to make a comment on the stimulus. it would have worked better had accepted more stimulus money, particularly for badly needed transportation here in florida. secondly, i would like to ask, real unemployment figures, historically, has that figure been used over time in the past or is this some new invention? host: before you go --

guest: which figure are you referring to? caller: the number for real unemployment? is that something new or has it been used in the past? guest: that is the regular measure used by the bureau of labor statistics for at least a few decades. a spring we will go onto to joe, winchester, california. caller: good morning. i have three subjects here. stimulus ands the the second is tarp. that called in about tarp said there was no mechanism for that to be paid back. those were loans to the banks. the banks paid them back and they paid them back with interest. yes bank that is true.

the tarp money was paid back and that was a fairly successful program. other issues with the way the bailout money was paid out. it was paid back. host: what other issue about -- what ist happening with long-term unemployment benefits? is it likely to come back up when they return? guest: i would hope so. the program was allowed to expire. arehave a lot of people who really hard up. waspoint of that article that contrary to some of the rhetoric you hear on the clinical stomp, long-term unemployed or not any particular ethnic group, it is not the urban poor, and is not the

welfare queen that sometimes republican rhetoric says. it cuts across all parts of the tontry from african-american white, hispanic, older, younger workers. a lot of people caught in the middle of this job contraction. if you're a politician, you right off the long-term unemployed at your apparel. david, republican caller. caller: since barack obama was elected president, we have been running deficits in the range of a trillion dollars a year. that means the government has been spending a trillion dollars a year more than i have been taking in and taxes. that is a lot of stimulus. the economy has not improved that significantly.

we need to take a lesson from what is happening in north dakota. the economy is booming. orbody who can drive a truck turn arranges making six-figure salaries i have heard. it spreads to the rest of the economy. what is different about north dakota from the rest of the country? the resources available to be , thatped on private land puts them out of reach of the government regulators in washington. in california, we have an enormous amount of natural gas that could be developed, but we have a democratic legislature and a democratic governor. there's no chance of world that they're going to be developed area -- developed. guest: one of the most interesting dimensions of the u.s. economy over this historic faced ar period when we

national depression is that you have pockets of growth in different areas. a lot of them are metropolitan areas. minneapolis, st. paul, for example, is an interesting contrast to its neighbor, detroit. we have been writing about the disaster of destroyed. minneapolis, st. paul, they have had something like a five percent unemployment rate as a metro area. it has been continual growth through this whole period. you see the pockets and it is a reflection of local, state, and metropolitan area growth policies, regulatory policies that are different. dois an interesting thing to , look at a country that while overall, the unemployment rate is high, it has had some successful regions that should be models for the future.

i want to emphasize one thing. at the top of the comments, he referred to this idea of these enormous deficits during this period. one of the areas where the obama administration failed, was to impress upon the public just how dramatic a crash this was. tohink there was a tendency the crisishow severe was and how unique the stimulus was. this was not the start of the obama administration's program on green technology. this was a shot of adrenaline to restart the heart of an economy that was going down. that was how dramatic it was. we tend to forget that there was

no private investment. the man had collapsed. in that environment, almost every economist across-the-board would agree that you have to stimulate the economy somehow. the private sector is not doing it, the government is. we tend to forget how bad it was five years ago. i want to bring that into the discussion. host: that will be our final point. >> in violent protests yesterday and today, 26 are dead in the ukraine with hundreds wounded. the european union has called an extraordinary meeting of its 20 member countries to address the situation. the french foreign minister told foreign ministers that he and his counterpart in poland would join -- would go to ukraine today to meet with the opposition before the meeting. secretary of state john kerry

said he was disturbed by the level of abuse, and says that we are talking about the possibility of sanctions or other steps order to create the atmosphere for compromise. he also tweeted out earlier that nobody wants to the ukraine to devolve into chaos. more on that tonight with president obama. the news conference from mexico where he is expected to a dress the situation in the ukraine. coverage of that news conference on c-span.org. about one hour from now, energy monizary ernest moneys -- will talk about the six point $5 billion in new power plants. the director of the national institute of standards and technology outlines president obama's national security

framework live here, on c-span. >> at the creation museum we are to would it -- too willing to admit our beliefs and also teach the difference between beliefs and what someone can actually observe and experiment with in the present. people who think critically and in the right terms about science, i believe it is the creationists that should be educating the kids out there, we are teaching them the right way to think. upon the bible but i am challenging evolution to admit that the believe asked that of evolution and be up front about the difference. >> i encourage you to explain to us why we should accept your word for it, that natural law changed 4000 years ago, completely, and there is no record of it. there are pyramid's older than that. there are human populations that are far older than that.

traditions that go back farther than that. that not reasonable to me everything changed for thousand years ago, by everything i mean the species, the surface of the earth and the stars in the sky, and the relationship of all the other living things on earth to humans. it is just not reasonable to me that everything changed like that. >> evolution versus creationism. debate tonight at 8:00 eastern on c-span. >> congressional budget office director greg elmendorf this morning defended his agency's minimum wage report, calling it balanced and consistent with many other economists thinking. he was part of a discussion this morning posted by christian science monitor and moderated by their washington bureau chief, david cook. it is an hour