personal staffer for congressman john kasich. then as a staffer for the budget committee, the house budget committee when he was chairman. i was the analyst for national security affairs. in 2005, i moved on to the senate and work at the budget committee there in the same capacity. >> what do you think of that statement? up close it is truly ugly. >> it generally is. i would want to temper that. it has been a long-time habit of everyone to criticize congress because they think that resonates with the public. it truly has become to some degree a horror show because of the increased partisanship and polarization.

however, it is an institution that is as tab list by the first article in the constitution. if we don't nurture it, if good people do not go there, if good staffers do not go there, what we will have is the reichstag or one of those chamber of the utes situations in the french third republic. i don't want that. i won young people instead of going to wall street to go to congress or to go to the executive branch. >> we invited you to come talk about a column that you wrote about the bob gates book. we will get to that in a second. i want to go back to another quote.

>> i know you have read this book. what do you think of that characterization? >> occasionally that is true. i wish he had cited more instances of that. sometimes, executive branch officials are very carefully trained and vetted and screened and go through murder boards at their executive agencies of how not to tell things to congress. do seem to be answering the question and not really answering the question. i certainly do not believe in the technique of witness badgering or the sort of joe mccarthy technique that the current senator from texas, if you would remind me -- ted cruz,

would use on chuck hagel when he was a nominee, leaving the inference and the insinuation that he was somehow in the pay of iran or north korea. that is certainly something we don't need. on the other hand, i would say in general, the problem is the other way. if it is an armed services hearing, rather than asking pointed questions about the strategy, how long we are going to be there, is it working, if so prove it. if there is a general in the witness chair, they tend to fawn over him. i noticed that with petraeus. i noticed it with gates in his hearings when he was nominated as secretary of defense by george w. bush.

they were so thrilled he wasn't rumsfeld, they didn't ask the really hard questions and a lot of those pertained to his past activities. he was involved in iran-contra. he was a very prominent figure in the cia at the time. they required intelligence that iran was somehow moderating, and that intelligence was conveniently forthcoming. >> the gates book has moved to number one on the bestseller list. i'm going to read back to you a quote from tom ricks you probably know of. he wrote a review in the new york times and he says, the gates book is probably one of the best washington memoirs ever. what is your take? i have read your piece. would you say the same thing?

>> i would not concur. i know of tom riggs of it and i do not understand where he comes from on that judgment. i am not attacking gates in an ad hominem way or saying that he is the devil with horns, however i think his representation of congress, of the administration and so forth, represents his own ax grinding. we all grind our axes occasionally but it should be seen as that. his criticism of obama and biden got a great deal of prominence, but he in fact persuaded them to do what he wanted. to add troops in afghanistan, to escalate the war that obama

wanted to wind down. now he is criticizing them for having the bad grace to have doubts when he persuaded them to do something against their better judgment. >> you wrote a book a couple years ago, the paperback version came out recently. it is called "the party is over: how republicans went crazy, democrats became useless and the middle class got shafted." what is the evolution of this for you? are you still a republican? >> i am independent. even when i was working on the hill, i regarded myself, or try to regard myself as a professional before i was a republican or any member of a partisan organization. in general, i think that served me well.

i fortunately served under people who said, the budget figures are what they are and there is only so many ways you can spin them. just give us the honest figures. >> you wrote in your introduction -- >> is the public well informed? >> i do not think they are very well informed at all. there is a kind of pseudo-information one gets from watching fox news or msnbc which concentrate primarily on personality, on trivial

scandals, on polarization and on revving up the respective bases. that is not true information that people need. what is the federal budget? what are its components? how big is it? how big is it compared to our gross the mystic product? these are things people really ought to know. how does medicare work? who pays for it? these are the things that you find out when you are working down at the molecular level on the budget committee. evil really need to know those, because budgets are essentially a statement of priorities. they are a statement of policy. >> somebody would say, are you kidding me?

this stuff is boring. >> it is not boring. it comes out of our taxes. it shouldn't bore anyone. it does things that are very important. sometimes it does things that in my judgment are very foolish. if people had knowledge of that, they could that their leaders much better before they pull the lever in the voting booth. >> most national publications about the government is this book on bob gates. if somebody reads it, from your perspective, what are they reading and what are they missing? >> as i said, he is grinding his own ax. he is looking at it from the perspective of somebody who was brought in to solve a problem and congress isn't participating. i think the dirty little secret

that people don't want to recognize, regarding the wars in afghanistan and iraq, is they went on so long, probably three times longer than the total period we were involved in world war ii. it is not that they hated the war. unlike vietnam, there weren't riots because there was no draft. people simply tuned it out. they were no longer interested. when people are no longer interested, you have to ask, what is the point? >> we covered a lot of the gates book and so did everybody else. here is bob gates in philadelphia being interviewed by a philadelphia inquirer reporter. let's watch this and just to you to react to this.

[video clip] >> the first bush administration opposed the invasion in iraq. do you ever really address that issue as far as you were concerned in this book? would you have supported the iraq war? >> i say get in the last chapter, sort of summing up in reflections, that i don't know. it is hard for me to say what i would have advocated in 2003. i, like a lot of people in congress and most other countries in the world, initially accepted the argument that saddam had weapons of mass distraction. that is how the resolution got past. intelligence services in even russia and china thought he had these weapons. >> your reaction?

>> hindsight is 20/20. i think that was rather an invasion of responsibility. at the time, around 2002, as the heavily caveated, footnoted and hedged intelligence reports were available to any member of congress and any cleared government employee in the capital, you could see that it was not a slamdunk. it was very ambiguous. certain news organizations were simply in the tank. they accepted ipso-facto that saddam hussein had weapons of mass destruction because we say he has.

there have been indications for years before that, for instance from the u.n. american investigator, arms inspector in iraq, that that was not the case. certain news organizations like mcclatchy did give very good coverage of the whole issue. when you read some of their pieces, it was much more ambiguous. >> where were you when the whole iraq thing started, starting with in 1991, were you working on the hill? >> i was working on the hill as military legislative assistant to congressman kasich who was on the armed services committee. that gave me a pretty busy

portfolio. >> and now he is republican governor of ohio. when we saw that we didn't raise the money for the war, how did that track on capitol hill? he was the chairman of the budget committee. was there ever demand that we raise the money before we spend it? >> are you talking about 1991? >> the last 20 years of all this expenditure. >> at the time, he was not chairman. one little wrinkle that bypassed that, it was less controversial, at least in my view, the whole 1991 war insofar as saddam hussein had demonstrably invaded another country. that made it different. the other thing that makes it different from a fiscal point of

view is the roughly $60 billion in then-year dollars that it cost, was mostly raised by jim baker who was the secretary of state. he went around the world and collected checks from the saudi's, from the japanese, from other countries that would benefit from getting saddam hussein off the oil artery of the world. from that point of view, financing wasn't a problem. by the time the second iraq war, kasich was out of congress, i still had to deal with that issue on the house and in the senate budget committees. there was some grumbling from members that, for one thing, the initial cost was lowballed.

when bush's council of economic advisers said it might cost -- i think the amount was $60 billion to $80 billion, he was gone. they didn't want people quoting high figures. it has turned out to the $1 trillion. >> how do you spend $1 trillion through all 535 members of congress, without raising the money? >> it certainly was off budget money. it comes by increasing the deficit by the proportionate amount. they grumbled about it, but they certainly weren't going to not supply the troops with the wherewithal.

the pentagon knows that. the administration, whichever stripe it is, whichever party, knows that. they use it as a kind of moral blackmail. >> let's look at some video. joe biden, you talk about joe biden in your column about the gates book, and the way he treated scott ritter. before we show this, we did see a little bit of scott ritter. what was your point -- bob gates talks about in his book how much he differed with joe biden. put them in context with what you saw. >> mr. gates was criticizing joe biden. biden, when he was a senator, seemed to buy in as early as 1998, to the notion that saddam hussein did have weapons of mass

destruction and that some sort of forcible regime change -- in other words, the united states going in militarily and overthrowing him -- was an acceptable outcome. when scott ritter testified before him that, maybe the facts aren't so cut and dry, biden was very condescending towards him and called him scotty boy. i would have to say, gates's criticism is somewhat off the mark. a blind hog eventually finds an acorn. people eventually learn, after several years of the iraq war which he voted for, he started to rethink things. mr. biden, when he became vice

president, he was not gung ho in favor of escalating in afghanistan. he wanted other solutions than that. for that resistance, bob gates says that joe biden has been long on every single foreign policy issue. as we saw in that clip, if mr. gates is saying he didn't know how he would have advocated on iraq, i think all the necessary information is in. if he is still being ambiguous on that, he is wrong. >> here is the video clip. it is a hearing, back with scott ritter in the chair, and joe

biden being the chairman of the foreign relations committee. [video clip] >> i recommend the president have at it and let the chips fall where they may. a reasonable position for the secretary of defense to take. i respectfully suggest that responsibility is slightly above your pay grade. to decide whether or not to take the nation to war alone, or to take the nation to war heart way, or to take the nation to war halfway. that is a real tough decision. that is why they get paid the big bucks. that is why they get the limos and you don't. i mean this sincerely. >> your reaction? >> i rest my case on the condescension. a good public official who is relying on staff will listen to

them, because they sometimes have that granular information that they pick up on the ground, that no public official would have been in a position to learn the things that scott ritter learned. in order to make those earth shattering decisions that joe biden was talking about, they really ought to listen. >> on your column, that was somewhat critical of bob gates' book, where did you get the idea -- at what point in the process and what did you think of the media coverage? >> i thought it was mostly fawning or concentrating on subsidiary issues such as, why did he wait until now to say this when the real issue is, why did he give the president and

the vice president this advice and then criticize them for taking it? >> why do you think the media was somewhat fawning? >> they were sucked into this kind of hollywood stereotype of mr. smith, the truth teller from kansas coming into washington, which he can't stand, and how much he disdains washington and its slimy politicians who only want to get reelected. he has been a part of the public policy process off and on in washington since about 1970. >> where did you write your comment and where can people see it today? >> it is truthout.org.

>> what is truthout? >> it is a not-for-profit website that carries political articles, presumably stuff that is too hot to handle in the mainstream media. >> so you just go on truthout.org and it is there somewhere? >> you could do a search on the site. >> you said -- i am going to read back what you wrote -- >> what moved you to write that? >> i think there is a good deal

of hypocrisy regarding who it is that makes the sacrifices and who doesn't. i think the united states and the public in the united states have been conditioned to almost have a knee-jerk reflex of, we support the troops, which is fine, but who are we actually supporting? who benefits? who loses? who gets the big bucks afterwards and who has to contest a veterans disability rating? who has higher unemployment for their age and demographic than the rest of the population at a time of very high unemployment? >> in your book, you quote a bloomberg news account.

this is the book, "the party is over." - >> what is wrong with that? >> it is something that more than 50 years ago, general eisenhower warns about. it is the merger of corporations with the government, the revolving door. it is a terrible problem in that they are taking people from the service, who still have service ties and service pensions, and they kind of use them as frontmen to sell weapons.

this does have an effect on serving officers. there is no explicit quid pro quo, but once you hit the general officer or flag officer rank, you in almost all cases know where you are going after you retire. >> don't they have the right to work anywhere they want to? >> they have the right, but let's put it this way. in years past, omar bradley didn't do it. most of the generals in world war ii didn't do it. they sat on their porch in a rocking chair or they did something else. it is a little too incestuous.

most of these companies, the vast majority of their revenues come from government contracts. it becomes almost impossible to distinguish where the government ends and where the corporations begin. case in point is booz allen hamilton. the top officials at national intelligence and nsa all cycle back and forth between booz allen hamilton and their government jobs. booz allen hamilton is about 99% on government contracts of those. as of them are intelligence contracts. >> are you retired from congress now? >> i am totally retired.

i again nothing from this. i am not employed in any fashion. i represent no party, no interest, no faction other than my own opinion. >> could you have written any of this when you were a member of the staff in congress? >> there is no way i would have tried. >> why not? >> it would be indiscreet. certainly unprofessional, as you are working and taking the king's shilling. >> one of the things i don't think was asked about is, he is a part of an outfit called rice hadley gates llc. it is an international strategic consulting firm based in silicon valley and washington dc. it offers advice based on experience in the international area and works with senior executives of major companies to develop and implement strategic plans. this is condoleezza rice and steve hadley and bob gates.

what is the difference between that and going to work for a major defense contractor? shouldn't they be allowed to do that? >> relatively little. it is difficult to prohibit people, but they all want to stay in the game and make money off their government service. that is fine but it is fine for me to call out and say that there are conflicts of interest involved. contractors are now taking over the government. they constitute a larger and larger percentage of the actual workforce, as the government itself tries to downsize and outsource personnel. when you have thousands of contractors in the building, does the dog wag the tail or

does the tail wag the dog? >> let's go back to the conversation that bob gates had about -- do you know what that is? mrap. >> it is one of those enormous armored vehicles with a v-shaped bottom to deflect roadside bomb blasts. >> it costs $500,000 apiece. let's watch what he had to say. [video clip] >> it was a newspaper series in the washington post that put me on to the problem with wounded warriors. it was a newspaper story where i first read about these mrap's, these heavily armored vehicles. i read that they've marines had about 300 of these vehicles and in over 1000 attacks, not one single marine had been killed who was riding in one of these

vehicles. i got some briefings on it. i wanted to buy these things in large numbers. there was no one in the department of defense at a senior level, either civilian or in uniform, who supported that decision. i basically said, we are going to do it. >> in the book, he talks about spending $27 billion on a huge number of mrap's which they are now trying to dispose of. i don't want to be critical of the fact that he was trying to save the lives of people -- >> i am not critical at all. when he is right on the point, he is right on the point. >> why would the military brass inside the pentagon fight the idea of spending money on that? >> it didn't fit their plan. they would rather have the next generation, the tank, then a

relatively passive non-fighting vehicle that simply transports troops around, albeit in greater safety. it didn't fit into their weapons procurement plans. gates was right. my rant is not about gates per se, although he does demonstrate intermittently, traits that i am very critical of. on that point, he is right. however, his problem with the military still persists after he is gone. they want to dispose of most of them because somehow, some genius in the pentagon is getting the idea -- no future enemy is going to use roadside bombs against us anymore.

the single most effective weapon in both iraq and afghanistan. they want to get rid of them. probably half of them are going to be left over there. the other half, shipped back, reconditioned and either sold to other parties, other countries by foreign military sales, or god help us, will the excessed to police departments in the united states. we have seen this gradual militarization of domestic police forces to the point where they are no longer peace officers who treat people as citizens. increasingly, they are swat teams dealing with targets they have to take down.

this is simply a contribution to that. >> how has your attitude about all this of all over the years? when did you first come to this town? >> i first came in 1983, freshly married, freshly back from europe. burning shoe leather in the halls of congress, looking for a job. >> why? >> it fascinated me, the political process. i wanted to be a part of it. >> where did you come from originally? >> originally, i was born in akron, ohio. by the late 70's, i certainly wanted to get out of there. there weren't going to be, sort of jobs that were necessary. that created my philosophy about

outsourcing, sending jobs overseas, the deindustrialization of america, and how horrible this is to the country. how the politicians and wall street colluding together manage not to notice this, and say that a rising tide will lift all boats. if you look at detroit, it resembles dresden after the fire bombing in 1945. >> what has caused this? >> i think all the factors we mentioned. wage cutting, downsizing, deindustrialization, basically a blueprint written on the hill in

terms of tax policy that allows this sort of thing. it incentivizes capital to be exported, things to the outsourced, not made in america. a proper tax policy could assist us. germany is certainly a traditional industrial country. it is not faded by adam smith or milton friedman that rich countries should lose their industry. they certainly didn't lose theirs. >> in your book, you have a quote from hugh e pierce long, a speech from 1932. the quote is, they have got a set of republican waiters on one side and senate democratic waiters on the other side, but

no matter which set of waiters brings you the dish, the legislative grub is all prepared in the wall street kitchen. >> that is correct. you have to consider, we went through a horrendous financial meltdown. who is responsible depends on which party you are in. democrats will blame bush, the tax cuts, the fact that chris cox and the securities and exchange commission were asleep at the switch. alan greenspan was asleep at the switch and was somehow surprised that all this happened. yes, bush was responsible. but when you parse the historical records, was he any more responsible than bill clinton, who signed the act that

repealed the glass-steagall act of 1934, that kept investment and commercial banking separate? he signed that, he signed the commodity futures modernization act in 2000 that took all the wraps off of derivatives trading. there was no regulation. that is how we got credit default swaps, synthetic cdo's and a nominal value of trillions that collapsed. they are both responsible for this. >> i would like to ask you about labels. you said you're not a republican or democrat. i want to go back to this interview with bob gates. in the book, he said that he is a republican and in the interview here, he says he is not a republican. i am trying to figure out, what

do the labels mean anymore? [video clip] >> we were talking about something else and all of a sudden, he said, i was largely responsible for talking president obama into running for president. i heard that from a lot of people on the hill. he said, but there is no candidate for vice president. how long have you been a registered republican? i said, i am not a registered republican. he said, where do you stand on abortion? i said, i don't have a stand on abortion. that has never come into the national security arena. >> it seems like people say they are republican and then they are not when it is convenient for them. you say in your column that he was a genuine, george herbert walker bush, george bush consigliere for a lot of years.

>> i think when you look at his curriculum vitae, the facts would tend to indicate that he was involved in intelligence production in the 80's, that served the purposes of a republican administration. he came back a second time in 2006 when george w. bush was facing only two more years of his second term and wanted to sort of salvage iraq for his reputation and to get out in a kind of way that didn't look disastrous. he had to deal with congress. it had flipped and become democratic. bob gates was just the man, as rumsfeld was certainly not the

man. >> what is a republican today in your opinion? what is a democrat? >> i think, gates, he is an ideological operative of the permanent regime that exists whether you are a democrat or a republican in the oval office. these people pose as experts on national security or for that matter, like larry summers and some others, they pose as nonpartisan experts on economics and fiscal policy. in reality, they are all deeply ideological. they believe in military force abroad. they believe in the washington consensus or neoliberalism or free-market style crony

capitalism at home. the whole business about abortion is somewhat enlightening that he should raise that. these are the types of people who don't really bother about those sorts of issues. they understand that these are simply divergence to read up the base, to polarize things, whether it is gay marriage, abortion and some of the other social issues. the real issue for the permanent state is, who gets what? how is the pie going to be cut up? >> was there a point where you flipped on the republican party? >> it was a gradual journey.

i think the first three years of newt gingrich's speakership had a lot of people scratching their heads. he was a very mercurial leader. whoever talked to him last had his total support. it was a sort of chaotic time of a lot of movement and not necessarily progress. he pretty much did his best to destroy the old committee system and the expertise that lies in committees. he tried to centralize everything in speakers offices. when you dumb down congress as he did by abolishing the office of technology assessment, at the

time it was called the general accounting office. now, the government accountability office. these are support arms of congress that give intelligence in both the factual and the cognitive sense. >> in 1994, here is tom brokaw reporting on newt gingrich becoming speaker. [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [video clip] >> just when you thought it couldn't get any uglier, it does. newt gingrich, the house republican who hopes to become speaker has already declared war on president clinton. his latest attack has the white house aroused. [video clip] >> declaring all-out war, the republican whip attacked the president at a secret meeting with lobbyists. newt gingrich told business lobbyists that clinton democrats are the enemy of normal

americans. as first reported today, and rich promised the lobbyists that if republicans win control of the house and senate, they will use their newfound subpoena power to spend the next two years investigating corruption in the clinton administration. >> i do not know of any administration in modern times with as many different potential scandals. i did not refer to the president or his wife for any individual. i said the total behavior of the administration is a threat to the american people. >> that is 20 years ago. what has happened since then? >> that sort of mentality has infected the political process. now it has become standard operating procedure. sort of ironic and counterintuitive, where you are weak, that is where you attack your opponent. people who are ethically weak attacking others on ethics.

>> where do you come down on, money is speech? >> money is speech let's all the corporations in for jury duty and make them subject to draft registration if they are people. i think it is a totally phony thing. the supreme court was totally in the tank on that one. >> after you left working for john kasich on capitol hill, who did you work for after that? >> jim nussle of iowa on the house budget committee. after a few years, i moved to the senate and work for senator judd gregg. >> what happens -- jim nussle moved onto the house -- head of the budget. we are now $17 trillion in debt. does anybody ever say, stop? do they ever say stop when you were there?

>> they weren't too concerned with the bush tax cuts. they weren't too concerned with an unpaid for trillion dollar war. i guess the answer is no. >> what is going to be the answer in the future? >> basically, it will be short termism, ad hocism, and people will somehow figure out how to get around it. >> do you get the sense that somewhere back in one of these offices, there is somebody sitting there saying, none of this matters? >> i think there are. fiscal policy, by default, is almost being made in the unelected federal reserve board.

so many of our economic policies, simply because congress can do anything, obama cannot drive his agenda through. it was the faulting the ben bernanke and then janet yellen. i know many people have severe doubts about the fed and quantitative easing and so forth. some even go off on conspiracy theories about the fed. i certainly do not. they are doing the best job they can with the hand they were given. we had a terrible financial meltdown. it is unclear as yet whether that was the right medicine and whether it will be good for the future. >> in the gates book, as he is talking about going to work for

him, they had a secret meeting as you know, but one of the things -- i haven't seen this printed anywhere, in the middle of his conversation, obama answered a question of his saying, yes, i am no peacenik. did we think that he was going to be a peacenik? >> i certainly didn't. if you listen to his speeches, he was saying, we are going to wrap up iraq. as a matter of fact, the status of forces agreement that was already in place under the bush administration provided that troops would be out december 31, 2011. so that was not his doing. he simply said, under my presence, we will be out of

iraq. he characterized afghanistan as the good war in contrast, that we should have been there even if we shouldn't have been in iraq. people tended to hear what they wanted to hear. on civil liberties as well, he talked a very good game, but in the month before the 2008 convention at denver, he voted on the fisa amendments bill that would have indemnified contractors, the telecoms, for their participation in spying, in surveillance that wasn't legal. he sort of retroactively

rubberstamped to that. when he made that vote, i knew the fix was in. >> go back to the original reason we asked you to come talk about the book. did you get much reaction out of the column? >> i got a fair amount of reaction. virtually all of it was positive in that as we have discussed, there are certain gaps in recollection were things he says in one place that don't square with things he says somewhere else. again, it is not so much about gates, other than he was a very important person in this drama called iraq, afghanistan, the war on terror and associated issues that have had a profound affect on the american psyche.

people don't want to realize that there is a less attractive id underneath our bravado about how good we are. we practice things like torture and assassination and try to sweep them under the carpet. >> the book was leaked out to the washington post and the new york times and the wall street journal and then it started interviews on television. it raised the view of it to the point where it became a number one bestseller. what do you think of the idea of writing that kind of book at all? you wrote a book after you got out. is there a difference between your book and this book?

>> well he is certainly entitled to write any book he wants and espouse any view he wants. just as i or any other member of the general public is entitled to do google searches on robert gates, iran-contra, robert gates, soviet intelligence and other topics and find out if his recollections square with generally accepted public records. >> let me read a quote from bob gates' book. when he was talking to the president -

>> the hard thing for people on this book is, a lot of the press on it said that he was critical of president obama. you get in here and he's has a lot of very positive things about president obama. did you read the whole book? >> it was kind of disjointed in that fashion. he may be could have used a better editor to smooth it out. then, we all have ambivalent viewpoints about issues and other people. at some point, you try to reconcile. i don't think he ever reconciled. at least in a way that was clear

to the reader. >> when you came to town, were you a republican? >> yes, i was. >> you changed your views over time. now, where are you going to go? >> it was probably my trepidations over newt's leadership style or trepidations over his leadership. where it became a matter of principle was in the run-up to the invasion of iraq. i read the same stuff everybody else read on the hill or was cleared to read. it didn't convince me. i told a handful of republican members who politely listens to me, that this thing is going to possibly turn out to be the west

bank on steroids and you may end up being surprised, whether there is all those weapons of mass destruction that they are claiming. they listened. they asked questions, but it didn't change their vote. >> what made you suspicious? >> george w. bush and dick cheney seemed a little too eager. everybody in the administration seemed a little too eager, did not address relevant issues that would have made it more ambivalent or ambiguous. the media were in the tank mostly. members of congress did not want

to be seen voting against it. i think the george w. bush administration was very clever, putting the vote just before the midterm election, to get these guys on record. even though he would not invade for another five months. that is kind of unprecedented for the equivalent of the declaration of war. >> where do you think you will end up in the future? >> i think i will remain independent, because ideologies limit thought. you become to the extent you are ideological or partisan, you become an automaton who is mouthing propaganda.

your brain is not engaged. >> your book is called "the party is over: how republicans went crazy, democrats became useless, and the middle class got shafted." if folks want to read your critique of the book i robert gates, they can go onto truthout.org. mike lofgren, thank you very much for joining us. >> i enjoy being here. >> for free transcripts or to give us your comments about this program, visit us at q-and-a.org. programs are also available as c-span podcasts. [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2014] [captioning performed by national captioning institute]

>> here as a look at some of the programs we have coming up. next is "washington journal." a.m., we two at 8:30 will talk about the health care 840s implementation and at 5 a.m. on c-span three, the national association for business economics host its .aylong forum coming up next on "washington journal kong the latest on the ukraine. we will talk about the number of americans who failed to pay the hired care premiums on time after enrolling in the online exchanges.

then we will discuss ongoing funding for military tanks and vehicles that the army says are no longer necessary. "washington journal" is next. ♪ host: good morning, it is monday, february 24. of lawmakers are heading back to washington today. and defense secretary chuck hagel is set to propose touctions -- shrinking it its smallest size since before world war ii. the pentagon budget request will request cuts to benefits. that is part of the defense department's efforts to cut spending as the united states exits more than a decade of war in iraq and afghanistan.