>> thank you. >> republican alan nunnelee died earlier today at 56. he was not only first elected in 2010 and was a member of the appropriation committees. he underwent rain surgery last june and had been in and out of hospitals and rehabilitation centers the last year. congressman nunnelee was elected to a third term, but was too ill to travel to washington in january. he was sworn in a week later at a medical center in tupelo. there are now two vacant house seats. >> the political landscape has changed with the 114th congress. not only are there new republicans and democrats in the

house and in the senate, there is also 108 women in congress, including the first african-american republican in the house. keep track of members of congress using congressional chronicle at www.c-span.org. there is a lot of information there, including statistics about each session of congress. >> earlier today the cato institute held a discussion on the 114th congress and libertarian policy priorities. scholars analyzed pending trade agreements. this is an hour. >> good afternoon, everyone. thank you all for coming today to hear cato's third annual

state of the union. president obama laid out his plans for his final two years of office. we have heard plenty of that over the last few years and so where does that leave us? what does that mean for liberty and how will that affect economic growth? what can policymakers do towe have address ths issues? address the state of the union with respect to financial regulation, tax policy international trait and intelligence surveillance, i have four cato policy experts. to my left is the director of financial studies at cato. before joining cato in 2009 he was six years at the

professional staff of the u.s. senate staff on banking staff and he worked on housing mortgage finance for ranking member richard shelby of alabama. he has built a career on regulatory proposals on financial and real estate markets. he holds a doctorate from george mason. chris edwards is from downsizinggovernment.org. before joining cato he was a senior economist on the joint economic committee and with pricewaterhousecooper and has testified to the senate many times and his articles have appeared on "the washington

post" and "the wall street journal" and others. he is the author of global tax revolution. edwards was a member of the fiscal communication division of the national kaed of sciences. julian sanchez studies issues at the intersection of technology and private and civil liberties with focus on national security intelligence. sanchez served as the washington editor for the news site rs technica where he served telecom. and he's worked for the democracy in america blog and he is a contributing editor. he was written for the "national review" to "the nation" and from the policy blog just security. he studied political science at new york university. and peter isakson conducted research on international trade and investment policy. he's authored dozens of papers

on the subject, focusing his research on u.s.-china trade relations, trade agreements and institutions, globalization, u.s. manufacturing, and co-authored a book on the anti-dumping regime and authoring anti-dumping exposed and unfair trade law and testified before a variety of congressional meetings and a guest on numerous television news programs and published in journal," "wall street journal," and nation review. he holds an mba from george washington university. they'll speak for five to ten minutes and then we'll open it

up for q&a. let's open up with mike calabria. >> it is an honor to be with the audience today. i know it must be tempting to be here rather than what is playing outside in the 17 degrees after the wind-chill factor, so it is nice to be in here. so the state of the union has to deal with where we are here today as a country, but i want to start with where we are today in the economy. and the economy directly impacts all of us, whether it is weak or strong, it impacts our own job prospects, impacts the prospects of our friends and neighbors. don't need to remind you that we are entering the sixth year of recovery since the economy bottomed out in 2009.

there are bright spots, but i took us 7 years to took us back to where we were and that doesn't account for population growth so i think the bottom line is the labor market has

fallen far short of where we were and where previous recession terms have seen in terms of recoveries. and this morning's job report was a positive in terms of headlines. one thing that concerns me is the 2.7% increase in teen unemployment since december, and given that a number of states increased the minimum wage starting in january, there is potential this is a factor we'll see in the market. too early to tell but something we need to see watched. and then there is the weakness in housing construction. we did break a million starts last year and an important threshold. i'll say by way of comparison at the peak of the housing market we were twice as many at 2,000,000 starts. and that impacted employment and construction-related industries. to summarize before i move on to policy, i think we're slowly headed in the right direction.

there are lots of weaknesses that remain. i don't think we're near the time where anybody should be taking a victory lap on the economy. there is also an extent to which i think it is easy to say that perhaps job market weakness is because of a lack of demand. there can always be more demand as a definitional sense, but to me more of the economic sense is a disconnect between the labor market between the spending and jobs. gdp and consumer spending for years continued to increase even if slowly when the labor market was essentially flat. this has only changed in recent years. my own view and this topic is debated is that expansion of means testing programs especially mortgage forbearance creating disenfranchise for jobs

and that is one of the major forces behind the labor market starting to recover. because of this rebound in housing markets, mortgage numbers are starting to decline. they haven't hit numbers since the 1990's. and our homeowner rate isn't far from 1960's. and when i work in home finance and since we've gotten back to home ownership rates that we haven't seen in decades would recall for a rethinking of our u.s. financing rates. in recent weeks the president announced a lowering of premiums the 1990's. in a program with the goal to bring in more borrowers into the market. and fanny mae and freddie mac has said it is time for take on more current condition and they are lack of any capital.

the taxpayers on the hook for any risks they might take. to expand home ownerships and in tears i fear this effort will fail as well. and while the induction for the fda loans, i think the fha marginal borrowers are younger and lower credit will suggest that instead what we'll see is a reduction in credit quality among fha. that is quite a feat given that that 2/3 of fha are already sub-prime borrowers. so i think this will cost the taxpayer in reduced premium income and have them make the numbers work, and it is their problem and not minor the president's problem, and we'll have more losses and bringing in lower quality borrowers. fha's a particular case of this, but it is not the only program on our budget where the costs are pushed out in further years and have estimated credit

subsidies. the estimates for the last 20 years for the fha have underestimated the cost of the program by over $70 billion. so these are costs not in the premium program and the programs don't pay for themselves and this is an amount that has to be made up by the taxpayer. we've seen similar costs in the student loan programs, so be weary of government loan programs that promise lots of profits because more often than not those profits are illusionary. so let me talk about what i would call shadow budget obligations. my colleague chris edwards, our budget expert, will talk more about what is on budget. i want to talk about what is not on budget, but ultimately eventually comes on to the budget. and that is the sometimes explicit and implicit subsidies in our financial system. in terms of direct loans and guarantees, the shadow liabilities are over $3 trillion.

the largest amount is housing at $2 trillion and again this is stuff directly part of the budget but the costs not reflected like fha, v.a., and rural housing. student loans are another trillion. again, these programs end up costing significantly more than they are promised and while those are on budget, they are not accurately reflected. worse of concern is those implied guarantees that aren't even on the budget. so for instance, the taxpayer is correctly perceived to be standing behind the $6 trillion debt of fannie and freddie. and it is also worse, about $2 trillion in private pension funds at risk to the taxpayer they may be asked to pick up as well. so it is important to keep in mind, lots of figures, lots of contingent liabilities. and equal concern is of actions of the widespread bailouts and the dod frank act leaves the taxpayer standing behind

trillons in bank liabilities. the taxpayer stands behind the $7 trillion in the bank deposits. the question is whether the other $6 trillion in other bank liabilities is whether the taxpayer is on the hook as well. and that says nothing when you guarantee risk, it is econ 101 the same is true about the risk in our financial system, whether it is student loan guarantees or banking guarantees, encourage excessive risk-taking in the marketplace. and that is something we need to be concerned about even if the financial crisis starts to fade into the memory. to give you a sense of the unfunded liabilities, first i'll start with one of my former colleagues at cato has estimated that the unfunded liabilities in net present value are about $70 trillion of what promised we've made we can't keep. by way of comparison the bank of

richmond has estimated that the shadow liabilities in our financial system are as much as $25 trillion. so one quickly gets close to $100 trillion in potential liabilities. that is seven or eight times gdp. we don't have the ability to pay that and we won't. so i certainly would say by difference, however, some of the financial liabilities do have collateral behind them. certainly, fannie and freddy all have mortgages where there is physical property. so summarize the state of our financial fiscal union, it is at best shaky. i think our housing markets have been driven by an immense flood of finance liquidity. that has gotten stuck in the banking system and not made it to the greater economy. it has been good for banks but not necessarily the economy. when the fed starts to raise the rates i think housing prices will flatten or decline in the coming years. when i was on the helm and everybody chanting housing

prices never go down. and they do decline and when they do nasty things happen. you need to keep that in mind. and those along the coast like san francisco, my end view is that a housing price decline is probably a good thing. incomes there are far short of what one would need to afford a house, but it will be a painful adjustment. and things have be driven by free money from the fed. to the extent this assistance has helped build bank balance sheets, but we'll wait to see. but over the fundament flaws in our financial system, i very much worry another financial crisis may be well in the works. so the bottom line is to ensure the sustainability of our recovery. i think deep reform is needed, particularly but not exclusively in the area of mortgage finance.

and while we are six years past the financial crisis, my opinion is that the fundamental drivers of the crisis remain to be addressed. so maybe with that very happy note, i'll turn it over to my colleague chris edwards who i know will be even more cheerful. [applause] thank you very much, mark. i'm chris edwards, director of tax policy studies at the cato institute and editor of downsizinggovernment.org our website that tells you how to cut the federal budget. president obama has introduced his 2016 budget, and i'll be talking about the taxing and spending in the budget. the language of the budget is rather triumphant, as if the administration has solved all of our economic and debt problems. and his budget policies are

rather aggressive. in particular, his tax policies are a bit of poke in the eye to american businesses and to republicans who just happen to win a landslide election last fall. so this was not a compromise budget on taxing and spending policy. so to look at spending policy first, under president obama spending and debt has soared federal debt as a share of gdp has doubled since 2008. federal debt is the highest in the peace time history and the president's budget seems untroubled by that and will keep debt at high levels. the president proposed budget deficits of around half a trillion dollars a year for the next decade and again the administration sort of seems untroubled by that. but that is $500 trillion every year passed on to new americans. the administration in its budget

proposed no plan to ward off of fiscal doom of social security medicare and medicaid which will be growing as a share of economy. the trust fund for social security disability runs dry next year, and the administration just papers over that problem. the congressional budget office projects that federal spending will grow to around 30% of the economy by 2035. so future americans will be increasingly less free as the government gobbles a greater share of everything produced in the nation. but that sort of scary forecast by the cbo and omb has similar long-term projections. they are optimistic for several reasons. first, president obama in his budget shows discretionary spending, meaning defense and nondefense spending, drop

remarkably over the next decade. would you be in favor of that but the problem is the president has no plan to make that happen, no major cuts and terminations. so his showing falling discretionary spending is smoke and mirrors to cover up the size of the deficit problem. the second issue is that the united states may face unforeseen wars in the future. iraq and afghanistan cost us $2 trillion, an enormous amount of money, so hopefully we will avoid major wars, but if we do get in major wars, we're starting with major debt. president bush started his wars when we had a low level of debt. so they could be catastrophic fiscally as we go higher and higher into debt. a third issue is in these long-term projections of cfo and omb, they do not include recessions, which will blow huge holes in our deficit or forward

-- federal budget. so now that the economy is growing it would be prudent to start paying down debt, but unfortunately president obama's budget does the opposite. so in sum, the official projections are artificially rosie, and i think the upshot is that policy makers should be scouring for programs to cut and terminate, now that the economy is growing, now would be a great that policy makers should be time to cut federal spedding. and downsizingthebudget.org is a great place to look for programs to cut. one area they should cut is subsidies to states like education and housing and foundation. these cost over $600 billion a year and they are ripe for cutting. a good opportunity i think comes in may when the federal highway trust fund runs out of money.

the fund has a large gap between spending and gas tax revenues. congress should cut spending down to the level of gas tax revenues to solve this problem and allow the state governments to fill the gap however they want. the president's budget goes in the opposite direction, it raises taxes to increase highway and transit spending. that is the wrong way to go. there is no advantage in increasing federal intervention in the nation's highway system. state governments can raise their own money to spend on their own highways any time they want. they don't have to wait for the federal government. so switching over to president obama's tax proposals, there are two problems with them. they would increase tax complexity and they are very much anti-growth. it is a curious thing that obama's budget says repeatedly that his tax proposals would simplify the tax code. president obama repeatedly in speeches and in his state of the union says he wants to simplify the tax code. but if you look at the details

of his proposals, they would complicate the code. they would tax capital gains at death, impose a new bank tax and new so-called war on buffet tax on high earners and proposes new complicated tax credits. there is a tax credit for two-earner tax credits and giveaway tax credits such as a new manufacturing communities tax credit. there is a tax credit for these would all complex the tax code which is the wrong way to go. they are also anti-growth. obama would increase the federal capital gains tax rate from 24% to 28%. our capital gains tax rate would be 32%. it is remarkable. if you look around the world at our trade partners, the average capital gains tax rate is 18%.

so we would be up at 32% and the average ocd country is 18%. why do other countries have low capital gains tax rates? because they know the low capital gains tax rates are good for entrepreneurship and start-up companies. the president's tax rates increase unfortunately is very much anti-silicon valley. he would impose capital gains at death. the problem is we already have a 40% estate tax that hits wealth at death. if you look around the world countries generally either have a state or inheritance tax or they tax capital gains at death

and generally don't do both. the president wants to do both and the problem is that will hurt high earners and hurts the economy and hurts all of us. he would increase corporate taxes. we have the most competitive corporate tax in the world. we have the highest rate with state taxes on top, the u.s. tax rate is 40% and the average global tax rate is just 24%. a second problem with our tax system is we tax corporations on a worldwide basis. the united states sort of claims the right to tax u.s. companies on their operations throughout the entire planet, which, when you think about, is a bizarre way to set up a tax code. every other ocd country has what is called a territoryial tax company, means they don't tax generally. so the problem with the expansion of multi national foreign operations is it would

multi national corporation. -- foreign operations is it would make the united states a worse place to headquarter a multinational corporation. we've seen this development of in versions in recent years. that is caused because the united states is a bad place to headquarters multi national foreign operations is it corporations. obama wants to put a new 19% tax on the foreign subsidiaries of foreign companies most other countries put a tax rate of zero on their foreign tax countries. obama seems to view foreign companies as an enemy to be punished, but foreign subsidiaries are complementary to u.s. companies. the better the foreign companies do, the better it is for u.s. production and workers. so when general electric is successful in foreign subsidiaries, it is good for ge workers here in the united states.

so obama's budget goes in the opposite of real tax reform. tax reform to this administration seems to mean penalizing high earners and businesses and so we'll have to wait until the next president for a tax code that is simplifies the code and is good for the economy. thank you. >> thank you all for being here. in that other state of the union speech, i was heartened to hear president obama saying that while others had moved beyond the debate about our intelligence agency surveillance programs, he had not. my enthusiasm waned when he said he would issue a report about things they had done internally to issue safeguards on those program and the report that was issued this week underscores how

far short they've fallen in reform efforts, not just from what several independent panels have recommended, but from what the president himself committed to just over a year ago. i think what we see in that report is by far not enough, both from a civil liberties perspective, because we have constructed a truly unprecedented and sprawling architecture of data collection on the premise that effective intelligence requires extraordinarily broad and indiscriminate collection of data about the guilty and the innocent alike, an architecture that because of its breadth could, in a time of crisis, or at the behest of people with poor motives, be that with a flip of a switch turn from legitimate to illegitimate purposes in the way we have seen

in our history repeatedly over decades under intelligence services with inadequate oversight, although they lacked the capabilities of the modern nsa and fbi. but we see distrust in global markets of american technology companies, seen projections that the american cloud computing sector alone stands to lose something on the order of $180 billion over a period of three or four years because of that declining trust, especially in the enterprise sector. we've seen precipitous declines in global orders for cisco's routers, following reports of in stalling malware on those not but for particular individuals but at the corporate level so both to restore confidence in our civil liberties but global marketedness, we need to do quite a bit more. so of course at the end of the

last session, we saw the main surveillance reform vehicle, the usa freedom act, stall in the senate. the most prominent component of that was reform to the patriot act as well as some related authorities to get telecommunications metadata, which is most famously the basis for the bulk of the telephone data by edward snowden and the president voted to stop that and the metadata was recently renewed again, and several independent bodies, the civil liberties oversight board as well as the president's hand-picked surveillance review group have both said this is a program of extremely limited effectiveness that could safely be ended and should be ended.

the private civil liberties board went into some detail examining claims about the efficacy of this program supposed success stories, terror plots that had been foiled and went through one at a time in demonstrating 11 out of 12, they had provided no intelligence of use to f.b.i. or n.s.a. and in the 12 cases providing monetary support to al shabab had been, in fact, causely the first way they found some useful information but it was not necessary. the targeting methods would have sufficed. we have had the agreement of the intelligence community with the approach that was outlined in that legislation, they can duplicate the functionality of that program, although again, it

seems to be of limited effectiveness, we've seen the general counsel lob lit at a conference at cato and then again at the brookings institute saying the intelligence committee was comfortable with this reform and they wished it had passed and yet we hear frankly somewhat confusing invocations like the attacks on "charlie hebdo" and the rise of isis invoked as reasons that again, despite what the intelligence community says, we need to preserve a domestic call records program. there is such a thing as being more catholic than the pope. if the intelligence community and every expert body says these are reforms we can take to improve privacy and civil right protections without hampering the intelligence mission, then there could not be the resistance we see. similarly, we've not seen any

significant reforms to collection under section 702 of the fieza amendment act, an authority allowing general warrants that permit n.s.a. analysts to select foreign-based targets and of course also aligning their communications with americans and we know that at least in the last count there were over 90,000 such targets under one order, one quasiwarrant task. and again many, many american communications are swept up in the process. this is concerning given we know the f.b.i. is authorized to search these data bases for the identifiers of americans. so people could not be legal to collect on directly because they -- their citizens are in the united states without a particularized judicial warrant can be pulled out of this enormous pool of global

communications they've collected from an enormous number of targets that hayden just stressed are not necessarily bad guys, because n.s.a. doesn't just look at bad guys but people that are saying things that are interesting. and the fbi can search this data base for american communications even when they are conducting mere assessments, meaning not a full predicated investigation based on some evidence of wrongdoing but just to satisfy themselves that there is not wrongdoing being committed. it is also concerning because of a practice we learned about so-called about collection, that is to say a target is selected and accounts or phone numbers are selected, which is typically most concerning for e-mail address or online account, is tasked for collection but the collection does not just encompass communications to or from that address, rather all international internet communications are scanned and the contents of those

communications scanned and communications neither to nor from the target and perhaps to or from americans are collected if they contain a reference to a target identifier. again, this recent report has proposed a number of additional internal approvals for the use of some of these techniques but as justice scalia said in a recent supreme court upon opinion, our founders did not fight and die for strict internal protocols. by the foreign intelligence surveillance court own standard, in fact, these techniques would appear to be unconstitutional. the foreign intelligence court has articulated an exception from the traditional warrant for electronic searches suggest that when a search is conducted both for a foreign intelligence purpose and when it targets someone believed that the probable cause level of center

-- of a certain type,of agent to a foreign power there is a special needs exception from the warrant to get a particularized judicial warrant and that is not a requirement of this type of collection. it requires that collection target foreign persons but does not have that additional requirement so you have communications of u.s. persons who are protected by the fourth amendment collected under conditions that don't satisfy their own criteria for a foreign intelligence exception. that should be a problem, i think. we've also heard calls increasingly, even as we are hearing dire warnings about the state of american cyber security to restrict encryption policies, -- technology, both in terms of communication services platforms used by people that provide encryption and device encryption on things like smartphones.

these are extraordinarily problematic because very little evidence has been presented that in fact this is proving a -- an obstacle to any concrete investigation into the enormous universe of data that we have swim in can't be obtained in alternative ways, but is problematic as a matter of april because -- principle, because the government can require you to store your own information in a format designed to facilitate their access though you have been committed of no crime it is as though you had to write your diary in english to make it easier in case the government wanted to read it. it is problematic for security experts. as it is just wickedly difficult to create any kind of communications technology or system that is secure against unauthorized assault but will work against its own user against only those entities which you wish to provide access to and in

it's problematic in the global marketplace because trying to sell devices and technologies to have a deliberate architecture for security breach built into them is a difficult proposition and slightly more subtly it is problematic because it entails nonobvious design constraints. that is to say, when a communications provider retains communications you bake into that mandate design constraints that again may not be obvious to the nontechnical. for instance you push people from distributing pure communications architecture, which are hard to intercept, even if there are good technical reasons not to want to implement that architecture. finally, i think the unifying problem that brings all of these things together is the extraordinary lack of transparency.

a lot of the surveillance programs i've talked about were implemented subject to secret rulings of court and secret interpretations of statutes by government lawyers often wildly differing from what any ordinary member of the public would have understand the law to be authorizing and what many prominent legislators understood themselves to have authorized, any reform to be credible, i think with the public in any of these areas is going to need to be bundled with reform requiring some minimal level of transparences and major decisions from the fisa court. and in a democracy we believe there is no such thing as secret law, let alone a body of secret common law. we may not ever know as much about the state of our union as the f.b.i. and the n.s.a. do but we should at the very least know what the state of the law is.

thank you. [applause] >> hi, everybody. thanks for sticking around. i'm going to speak to you about something that is a little less scary than what julian just described but important nonetheless. the state of u.s. trade policy is probably closer to the libertarian model or ideal than any other policy, not because the government is not encroaching in trade policy or that because it is particularly libertarian. it's that government encroaches more in these other spheres of our public lives. so we're still a long way from the libertarian ideal in trade policy and that ideal would be free trade. the free flow of goods and services across borders without tariffs, without quantitative restrictions or discriminatory restrictions, the free flow of investment across borders in and out of the country, into any industry and

any and all industries, the free flow of labor in and out of the country. so the moral case for free trade is pretty compelling and people are entitled to the fruits of their labor and to dispose of their property as they wish. the government interfering in those decisions and trying to tilt that balance so their products are cheaper or taxing foreign producers so their products are cheaper and where products are more expensive. that is where the unfairness is and it messes up incentives. it causes people to make political decisions instead of economic ones instead of in vesting in r&d and making a mouse trap. companies are more inclined to invest in politics and k street -- on k. street. even companies that don't want anything to do with washington end up having to spend money in washington because their

competitors are here asking for things and demanding things and so it creates this problem and it distorts markets because the producers don't know what to to produce to satisfy consumer demands. so i'll get off that high horse. i'll talk more about the mission of the trade center at cato. our goal is to -- is to educate the public and policymakers about the benefits of free trade and the cost of protection. our goal is not to receive free trade. if it were i would have lost my job a long time ago. so where do we stand about illuminating people about free trade? well, is the public more aware about the benefits of free trait than last year or five years ago or 20 years ago? i think the polls are mixed. you see an american public

begrudgingly, the acceptance that the united states needs to be engaged in the global economy but you also see reticence, reluctance, skepticism about the reluctance of trade on jobs in particular. let's look at the political dialogue. well that the -- is still fairly partisan. republicans tend to favor freer trade, representing business interested. not necessarily free trade but pro-trade, pro-expert. democrats tend to be guided by their labor and environmental and anti-corporate interests are opposed to trade. but interestingly, i would say more so than any of the time in my 14 years at cato, prospect -- prospects are greater at any time in that span and that is ironic considering the president who is presiding over this state of affairs has never really made a case for trade liberalization.

and he didn't even make a state, even at the state of the union he said we have to engage in these because if not we'll be left behind and china will make the rules so it is something that we have to do rather than beneficial that we should do and to me that is not the way we should pitch trade. and let me digress and give you 150 years of trade policy history in that one minute. democrats weren't all the party of protectionism, it was the other way around. from the civil war until 1934, republicans were the party of protection. you know, the tariff is the mother of the trust. big business didn't want big business because they wanted the trade and until nafta, trade was pushed on a bipartisan basis. there was a bipartisan consensus that trade was a good thing. after nafta, democrats started really peeling off and opposing trade.

and when g.w. bush was president, it was at the beginning at least, it seemed unlikely the trade agenda was going go anywhere. there was a lot of internal combustion going on here in the united states, but after 9/11, there was a new impetuous for globalization so show solidarity and was a majority -- the republicans controlled congress and the senate and the house and in seeking trade promotion president bush didn't want to incorporate -- the republicans in congress didn't want to incorporate the demands which were for liberal trade agreements. so trade promotion authority passed on a liberal basis and all of the trade agreements were fairly partisan. when obama -- when democrats took control of congress in 2007 there were three pending

bilateral agreements negotiated in the bush administration with come bat and panama and taken off track by nancy pelosi and so that climate prevailed. so when obama took office, he capitulated and didn't push these trade agreements at all and so for several years these agreements lay fallow and in 2010 when the republicans took back the house, in 2011, the president said i'll help get these agreements through and he did work with congress to get these agreements done and announced we're ramping up efforts in the trans-pacific partnership and sulingt sent his usftr off to set up the deal, but again, he never made the case of why we

should do this and then the 2012 election was rhetoric on trade and anti--trade. and last was introduced on a bipartisan basis but harry reid said don't think about bringing this to the floor and we won't vote on it and they didn't. so right now we are at the stage where we are trying to negotiate and get trade promotion authority for the president. there is language being written now in senate finance and house ways and means and likely by the end of the month something will come out. i generally think trade promotion authority is a great idea. under the constitution, the congress has the authority to regulate foreign commerce and the president can enter into treaties and it is a skpeedy ant and congress is saying you must do x, y and z and can't do a, b and c. if you bring back an agreement that meets these objects we will vote yea or nay with no filibusters. it is described by opponents as sort of an executive power grab. congress is just capitulating and giving away its

responsibility to the president and that's really not the case. i think it would be good for the president to have good trade promotion authority because otherwise you can't get an agreement. foreign negotiators are not going to put their best offers on table unless they know the deal they negotiate is going to be able to withstand congressional scrutiny. in other words, won't be picked apart by congress. so there is a lot of opposition to the trade agenda itself meaning the transpacific partnership negotiation. and then there is also the transatlantic negotiation that is going on, the t-tip. i'm not sure that i'm going to support the tpp or the t-tip. i think i'm inclined to do that because i think it makes us more economically free. but these trade agreements have a lot of protectionism baked into them. trade agreements are not free trade. they have some industries that are entirely carved out from liberalization. some tariffs are phased out over long periods. for example, the auto industry

wants -- there's a 2.5% import tariff on automobiles. the auto industry wants to phase that out over 25 years. so like .1% over year. there are also provisions for rigid intellectual property provisions. intellectual property is a monopoly. do we need some? maybe. do we need more than we have under u.s. law? probably not. but some of the agreements are pushing for that, or pushing for investors, investor rights, for foreign investors to be able to go outside of the u.s. judicial system if there has been expropriation or treated unfairly and asset values have declined. u.s. companies would have access to the third party tribunal system as well. i don't think it is necessary. i will evaluate the agreements by whether or not they're liberalizing. and i think those who want to nip trade in the bud by denying fast track or trailed promotion

authority have it wrong. get trade promotional authority and congress can still vote no if they don't like it. the other issue that i want to bring to your attention is the export/import bank. that was supposed to lapse last year in september. it was reauthorized temporarily through june 30th, the export import bank is an export credit agency which allegedly finances export sales that private sector banks would be unwilling to touch. if that is the case, if that's what it does, they're putting taxpayer resources at risk. defenders of the banks say that they're making money for the treasury. there is no really no risk. that's like driving home drunk and then rationalizing the next day, i made it home safely last night, i can do it again tomorrow. there are -- taxpayer dollars are at risk. but also this has not been a

big part of the debate, i'm trying to get it into the debate, there are costs. americans love exports, right? exports are good, imports are bad, trade accounts the scoreboard, we're losing the trade, we have a deficit and everybody is cheating. we love exports, right? that's the wrong way, of course to think about trade. but because people think exporters are so good, xm bank thinks that, oh, we underwrite exports, we're good, reauthorize our charter. but there are costs. there are costs to other companies in the same industry that don't get x.m. subsidies. they're put at a disadvantage. the best example is delta. deltha has been raising the roof about subsidies to boeing. x.m.'s primary customer is boeing. but when boeing -- boeing's customers like air india or air ethiopia, get subsidies from u.s. taxpayers, u.s. taxpayers are subsidizing the

competition of u.s. carriers. and delta has made a big deal about it. but think about it, there is $50 billion of subsidies that went out over the past seven years in manufacturing. each of these manufacturing beneficiaries has a downstream customer. and these customers are put at a disadvantage the same way delta is. so i'm hoping that this -- the bank is not reauthorized. its life is through june 30. and that's something that we're standing for. we wrote about it in one of the papers out there, the cato suggestions for the 140th congress. i'll stop there. thank you. [applause] >> well, we do have time for some q&a. there's really only one rule and that is to express your question in the form of a question but otherwise we're ready to go. yes, ma'am? >> yes, my name is sharon, voice of the moderate. i have a question to follow up

on the import/export bank. i've talked to progressives and they believe that they want the bank then i talked to the hawks. and they want it reauthorized because of green because they think the republicans are going to change it so weapons can be included as one of their things they will ensure, and if that happens we'll be selling a lot more weapons and people at the dod tell me they don't want that because we have vets going over to afghanistan with one limb because they need people and we don't have enough money for the v.a. to take care of the people that we need to take care of. so my question is, your statement about the export/import just made me happy because finally somebody just says that other companies are hurting by doing this, so the issue that i have is how does it get explained to the general public so it's clear, because i don't think congress really gets it. >> thank you. excellent question. i wrote a paper about those

downstream costs a few months ago, and distributed up here but i've been told people having a hard time understanding. so i'm going to try to revise it a little bit and make it more accessible. what i find to be the most interesting twist in this whole exmpt m. debate is the support that x.m.'s reauthorization is getting from progressives. they have spilled tons of ink and shouted from the rooftops about corporate welfare and they're supporting it. and the only reason i can imagine they're supporting it is because the proponents of getting rid of the bank come from the right, the tea party. if the tea party stands for it, we must be against it. i think that motivates a lot of opposition or lots of support for xm's reauthorization among progressives. >> thank you. >> you, sir, in the back? >> i have a question about we are now out of recession. but do you think another crisis

is possible? can you identify any indicator that will show that maybe we are not totally out of recession? >> this for mark. >> sure. i'm reminded of an economic forecaster friend of mine who likes to say give a number, give a date, but never give both. so i try to -- in that mind frame i say i am absolutely 99.9% sure we'll have another financial crisis some day. boy, i wish i knew when that was going to be because maybe i could make some money. i don't know when it is going to be. so certainly there are several sectors of the economy i'm worried about. but i'll say as a general rule of thumb when you have long stretches of time when the real post-inflation rate of interest is negative, that is, you're essentially paying people to take money. i'm certain if you pay vast parts of the public to take money, somebody is going to do

something dumb with it. so we had six years where the fed has rahn negative real interest rate policy. that to me, has distorted property markets, distorted equity market, it is distorted the bond market, so when we see that unravel, again, it is a question of when. i thought the housing market was going to peak in 2004, so i was off by a year and a half. again, can't say when i think it is going to be, but i think within the next five years we're going to start to see property markets, equity markets level off, go down in some areas. there are still -- there are some positives. i do think the banks are under capitalized, but better capitalized than they were. i think the amount of risk in the mortgage market is big, but not as bad as it was. there are other areas. i don't think the sovereign debt crisis in europe is anywhere near being solved, so that's a very big overhang. but, again, i don't think we

have dealt with the fundamentals and i'll end that just by simply saying you rarely get a financial crisis without some sort of expansion and asset prices and expansion of credit. and we have seen both of that in this case. and again, whether the companies have made better decisions this time around remains to be seen. >> i would add to that, you know, recessions happen. conomists haven't figured them out, whether they're called business cycles or whatever you want to call them, they're complicated, and economists cannot foresee when they're going to happen. if you go back to january 2008 when the c.b.o. introduced its budget projections, it did not see the recession coming that had already started in december of 2007. in january of 2008, c.b.o. saw a rosie future of rising growth, 2%, 3%. economists have no idea how to project future economic growth

their forecast market is terrible because we don't totally understand how the economy works. so we will have another recession. i don't know where it is going -- how it is going to -- what it is going to be caused by, caused by a central bank screw-up or changes in energy markets or whatever, but to me the upshot is we ought to be prudent with the federal budget, we ought to get deficits and debt down now while we have a chance. the economy is growing now. now is a good time to start making some of these reforms we need to make because, again, what if we get into a deep recession, what if we have another major costly war, and it is going to put the country in a terrible situation, because we're going to be starting off from a very high level of debt. so we ought to be prudent, policymakers ought to be pursue dent. i don't see much of that on either side of the aisle in washington. >> yes, you, sir. >> this is directed at mark

calabria, but anybody else who has anything to add can more than welcome to add. i'm wondering your talk about all the contingent liabilities that the u.s. government has and that is increasing its deficit every year and doesn't seem to care. and for a lot of reasons the federal government seems to be -- have the markings of a subprime borrower. and the reason why -- the reason why the -- they can continue to do this is people keep on lending the money. this is all based on psychology. and because they think that because other people are going to -- the investor class thinks that because other people -- other investors are going to keep on lending the government money, that's fine, so they can lend money. it keeps going on but this strikes me as a weak psychology. know other competitive now, i currencies are in as bad shape as the dollar. he question is, do you envision any situation where the investor class will stop just -- just stop lending money to the u. government at such low interest rates? >> i do think a lot of the fundamentals are worrying about the point you raise about

psychology is very valid and the thing that concerns me about that, and i think we have learned this repeatedly is situation can change quite quickly. all of a sudden, great confidence and we all know that despite the fact that -- well, maybe they won't. and, again, that's only one example, we certainly are in a situation where because so much of our financial system and, again, we saw this play out in europe, so much is built on fannie, freddie debt, treasury debt, if there is any problem in that sector, the financial system is going to crater. there is a deep concern there. i don't think we have addressed it in any way. i will note i think some of the attraction of these off budget sheet liabilities are so much easier for politicians to spend money that way. it never shows up on the budget. you make promises that you don't have to pay for. of course, many of the rules for instance, the accounting rules, many of the programs i mentioned, you know, as i talked

about fha in my discussion, the premiums don't even cover the administrative costs. the salaries for 3,000 some employees aren't affected in the premiums they charge. so i guess i would end with saying the problem is that the government engages in a lot of what i would call enron-style accounting. it hides its liabilities off the balance sheet. and when they come back on the balance sheet, like it did for enron and with citibank, it is not pretty. >> we have time for one more quick question. >> i don't know how quick this is, but any hope for a freer flow of labor from this? i didn't hear anything on immigration from any of you guys and that's one i would hope to see some movement on over the next couple of years. >> dan, do you want to -- >> can you repeat that, i'm sorry? >> flow of labor. >> do i think the prospects are good? >> yeah. >> not really. you know, i refer you to the work of alex narostra at cato. he's written quite a lot about this.

the republicans are not all that willing to embrace the idea. but it's something that we need to continue to push for. >> maybe i'll end on a more optimistic note, and, again, i'll emphasize alex at cato, i direct people to his work, but i do think this is a turn where many republicans are starting to see that, you know, even from a pure political calculus that being anti-immigrant doesn't necessarily work. so, again, i'm not optimistic in the short run, but i am optimistic in the long run. and i think the fact that most of us recognize that our parents or grandparents are immigrants contributed to this country is a message that resonates with most people, so i'll end with saying as an economist, i do think that part of this reflects the labor market at any one time. since the labor market is getting better and people get more secure in their own jobs, they get less concerned about competition for their jobs. >> and there you have it. let's thank everyone.

[applause] before you go, on the table on your way out, there is our new 100 policy priorities for the 114th congress. there is essays in here from everyone on the panel, including alex. so i encourage you to take one on your way out. thank you, all, for coming. i appreciate it. [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2015] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] >> earlier today, jill stein announced the formation of a committee for her presidential election. here is more now. >> 2014's record low voter turnout reflected profound

disillusionment with both parties. so 2016 provides an incredible opportunity to fill that political vacuum and surge forward. the voices of resistance and transformation deserve to be heard loud and clear. that is why i am announcing today the formation of an exploratory committee for the 2016 presidential election. [applause] we will use this exploratory campaign to reach out to young people, workers, employed, underemployed, and discouraged to frontline communities, to immigrants, to communities of color. we will reach out to women and seniors, indigenous nations, the lgbt community, and all who have

been neglected, abandoned, or betrayed by democratic and republican parties. [applause] we will offer a campaign in service of the justice that they deserve. the green party can do this. we are the only national party that is not poisoned by corporate money. [applause] the only one. >> you can see her entire event tonight at 8:00 or online at www.c-span.org. tomorrow, kevin. baron discusses efforts to combat isis.

that a look at the rise of measles cases and how the movement for vaccinations is contributing to the resurgence of the disease. plus your phone calls, facebook comments, and tweets. live at 7:00 a.m. eastern on c-span. >> this sunday, david brooks on writing an article for "the times" and the awards he gives out at the end of the a. >> they are given out for the best essay, and they could be in a journal and it's your literary magazine. the idea is they always come around the christmas tree, and that is a good week to step back and not read instant stuff tweets, newspaper articles, but step back and have the time to read something deeper and

longer, and it is to celebrate those longer pieces. i believe magazines change history. "the new republic," until its recent destruction, was the most influential really did change history. it created a voice for moderate liberalism. conservatism barely existed before "the national review." >> sunday night at 8:00, eastern and pacific. >> the house and senate were out today, but both chambers return next week for legislative work. we spoke earlier today with a capitol hill reporter. host: it may have seemed like groundhog week in the senate. we are joined by lauren fox.

what is the holdup in the senate? >> the holdup is the fact that democrats are united against this piece of legislation, which rolls back the president's executive actions in 2014 and the president's doca action in 2012. republicans are not quite ready to budge. they want to continue to put democrats on the record for not being against the president's executive action. that is where the holdup is. what we're looking for is whether or not republicans are ready to start the negotiating process here and whether or not democrats will accept anything less than a clean department of homeland security funding bill which at this point it looks like they are not willing to do. >> ahead of next week's action the piece you helped write said here is the gop's actions to end the stalemate.

none of them are good. what is most likely at this point? >> republicans continue to bring this bill of the floor, make democrats vote on it. we do not expect the votes to change. the other option is republicans could accept a clean department of homeland security will, could pass it. that would upset a lot of the republicans' right flank republicans' right flank, in the house and senate, individuals who have said that they would like to make the president's actions the centerpiece of the dhs funding bill. another option that has been floated, senator collins introduced an amendment that would take out the controversial piece decrying the president's 2012 action rolling back doca. but still include language that would make senate republicans hold democrats accountable. democrats, even those who said in november when the president

made his immigration actions that they did not approve the way he did it, they do not appear like they are willing to vote with republicans. what we are hearing is if they cannot get on to the bill, senate republicans want house republicans to send them a new piece of legislation, and that puts house speaker john boehner back in a precarious situation where he has to fight off his right flank and pass something else that the senate can pass. none of the options look good. it is going to be between mitch mcconnell and house speaker john boehner to work out. >> let's look at the house, because they will take up a measure passed in the senate. the senate passed the keystone xl pipeline bill. they will take up that bill instead of going to conference. why that choice? >> it would reduce the amount of time. they want to get this on the president's desk as fast as possible. the president has said he is not

going to sign it. they want to have that confrontation asap. >> we are joined by lauren fox. you can read more on twitter. also read more online at nationaljournal.com. >> thank you. >> republican alan nunnelee died earlier today at 56. he was first elected in 2010 and was a member of the appropriation committees. he underwent brain surgery last june and had been in and out of hospitals and rehabilitation centers the past year. congressman nunnelee was elected to a third term, but was too ill to travel to washington in

january for the opening day of the 114th congress. he was sworn in a week later at a medical center in tupelo. there are now two vacant house seats. >> next, a discussion on the newly formed freedom caucus which was designed to challenge the republican study group. from "washington journal," this is 45 minutes. host: representative john fleming, republican of louisiana, a member of the armed services committee, and also a medical doctor. we will start with a couple of caucuses that you formed or are a member of. first of all, there is the republican study group. what is that? guest: the republican study committee is a group that began a decade or so ago, more conservative members of the house. back in the newt gingrich days they kind of began to form their own caucus and began to pull the needle back towards

conservatism. many good things came out of it. there was welfare reform, a balanced budget, and the committee has grown. it is more than half. it is a majority of the majority of the house. but also with that, i think it became a bit less nimble than what it was in the earlier days. so, as you know, we have now formed the house freedom caucus. many of us who are in the rsc have moved over to kind of replicate the success that the rsc had in its early days. host: so what is the difference between the rsc and the freedom caucus? do you look at the same issues? do you have different positions? guest: the rsc, because it has grown so large and many people have joined it because it is under the banner of

under the banner of conservatism -- i mean, being a conservative is a very positive brand in washington and throughout america. people want to be known as conservatives, particularly if they are in the republican party. but oftentimes we have members who, in terms of their voting records, are not as conservative as perhaps many of us think they should be. so the house freedom caucus is a group of the more conservative by record and vote who have decided to go our own way. some have actually left the rsc, and some of us remaine members of that. but we feel we could be more nimble, or functional, and were persuasive to anchor the house republicans in a much more conservative manner. host: have you left the rsc? guest: i have not left the rsc

. host: how is speaker boehner doing in your view of? guest: we have disagreements. we have had a bit of a rough start here in the congress. there are house bills in congress that have not come up for debate. i do not blame him for that. a bill faltered. we need to resolve any kind of differences that occur because it is important to protect our babies still in the womb who may be dismembered through abortion, a very painful process, because we know through science now because we actually do surgery on fetuses that they do feel pain and they have to be anesthetized. therefore, if you commit an abortion on a six-month gestation child, that is going to be a very gruesome process and very painful. we really need to end that practice in america today. very few countries allow that. host: what do you think of your overall leadership team?

kevin mccarthy, steve scalise? guest: i think they are a fine group and they do a very good job. again, i think they tend to find the middle of our conference. and i tend to be on the conservative side of that. i would like to see more conservative ideas, concepts and tactics, but i understand they have a tough job. we are always trying to find that 218, 218 votes so that we can get things passed. it is a very difficult job. members of the house freedom caucus met with kevin mccarthy just a couple of nights ago, and we talked about some of these things. i do think the leadership will work with us. that is a good sign. host: congressman fleming, we just had donna edwards, a democrat from maryland, and the

last call for heard came from kermit in richmond, virginia who told his story -- the fact that he got health care via the affordable care act for the first time in his life and was scared that republicans will take that away from him. what is the alternative? guest: we have a number of alternatives. despite what ms. edwards said, we have actually put them in bill form. i would be happy to supply that to her. i was part of a working group last year, part of the republican study committee that created the american health care reform act, which would be a replacement for obamacare. democrats and republicans alike, i think every american really has the same laudable goals when it comes to health care, and that is to get coverage for people who have pre-existing illnesses, to be sure that there

is more access of health care. but i think the approach is completely different between republicans and democrats. for democrats under obamacare, the approach has been -- and i would point you to steven brill, who is a real expert in this -- we take a very unworkable health care system that is very expensive today and layer on top of it a huge government bureaucracy, which only makes it more expensive. what we would much rather do is begin to reform the insurance system to make it a competitive system, to tear down those walls from state to state, reform medical malpractice, get the cost down and make premiums less expensive, and then we can help those who need help financially through tax credits or providing cash into their health savings accounts, and let them manage the own lives, organize their own health care. so our idea is to lower the cost

of health care, and therefore it becomes more attractive, more accessible, and it is patient centered health care, not a government-run system. so we would not take health care away from anybody. republicans have never had -- in fact, when i ran for congress in 2008, it was to reform health care. but again, using good market solutions that work in every other industry. why in the world would we ignore what works and do something that does not work? fact, when i ran for congress in and so, while there are a few people who benefit from obamacare, there are many, many americans who are seeing their premiums go up 300%, their deductibles 360%, and many americans are being hurt by this law. 18 new taxes, premiums skyrocketing, and what we are worried about is while some may be getting more health care, many others may be losing their health care. remember that most of the newly covered people are covered under

medicaid, which is a third-rate health care system. fewer doctors than ever are accepting it for payment. so where do these people go? they take their medicaid cards and go to the emergency room the very last place and the most expensive place they should be going to get care. host: steven brill, you mentioned -- the founder of court tv? guest: i am not sure if he is connected to that, but he wrote a book recently and has given a number of interviews. he is very correct in his discussion about the fact that there is nothing in obamacare that lowers cost. in fact, big pharma, the big insurance companies, came together with the architects and wrote the bill. the exchange was that if you let government run your business, in exchange we will give you a bigger business. this was capital cronyism at its worst. host: and in fact, steven brill's book will be on c-span's

"booktv" this weekend. you are on the armed services committee, and i want to ask you about this issue -- "obama to seek congress's approval to fight militants." "kicking off a political fight that can see the administration clash with members of both parties over how much authority to give the president." at this point, would you vote to give the president the authority? guest: i would have to see it. it depends. i have been very dissatisfied with the president's approach on this. for instance, he came up with what i think is an insane idea to fund the so-called free syrian army, who we do not even know if there is such a thing. he characterized them as pharmacists and doctors,

and it may take years of training to go up against what -- battle hardened 40,000 isis? you do not even hear anybody talking about that anymore. i do think the president should request a umf authorization to go to battle, because the old ones are old. we did not even have isis the last time we passed one here. so the question is, is it the right kind of plan? so if it is one that i think is commonsense, it makes sense, it provides for america, taking the leadership role, or at least a strong supportive role of other nations who are in a coaltion and have agreed to go up against isis, yes, i will support it. but if it is the same kind of

nonsense, i cannot support it. host: do you still have your private medical practice? guest: i do. we have another physician there and three nurse practitioners. my plan all along has been that i would periodically go back and see patients. i did for a while, but i have not lately. it has been very difficult, as busy as we are in washington. even when i am in louisiana, i am traveling throughout my district. they tell us that we cannot have a part-time job. i do not know how i would have the time for a part-time job it has been very difficult, as busy as we are in washington. even when i am in louisiana, i am traveling throughout my as a member of congress. host: john, democrats line. good morning. caller: good morning. a couple of questions. we will start with health care. we have saved a lot of people on health care, and mr. obama -- president obama has made sure that it has been paid for. the wars were not paid for and we lost over 4000 men in iraq.

and president bush signed an agreement to leave iraq, not president obama. the second one is, with the budget -- my budget that i have at home does not include a war budget or a homeland security budget. my lawn care goes up, my electric bill goes up. nd when those things go up, i have to take and get money from someplace else. so raising taxes is the only way that i see to take and pay for our bills. and ii do not know why in god's name we do not raise taxes on the rich or at least raise the social security cap to make sure that everybody takes and pays their fair share. host: let's leave it there.

congressman? guest: with respect to obamacare being paid for -- even though it was intended to be paid for and that was the original cbo estimate, it was based on a lot of fakery and cooked-up ideas. for instance, the first 10 years, you have income over 10 years, but expenses over seven years. many of the pieces of it that were supposed to finance it have fallen away. so we are going to get into more debt, and the cbo has told us that. with respect to raising taxes, the caller doesn't know we have raised taxes twice under president obama, first, under obama, we have raised taxes under obamacare. where are we today? we have the smallest workforce participation since jimmy

carter. the economy is not doing well. gallup just came out this week to tell us that our real unemployment level is still above 11%. the 5.6% number that has been published is really manufactured by your government. everybody knows they feel it. in fact, when you do a polling of americans, 60% say that we are still in a recession or at least it feels like a recession. there's not jobs. there's not economic growth. as a result of that, if we add taxes and increase taxes -- and remember we have the highest corporate tax rate of any developed nation in the world -- all we're going to do is run our economy down. you just cannot continue to spend and tax your nation and expect good results. in fact, there is no nation in the world that has ever spent and taxed itself into prosperity.

we got to reduce regulations reform taxation, and get growth rates up above 3%, hopefully to 5% or 6%. host: the new numbers just came out for january. 5.7% is the current official unemployment rate. 257,000 jobs added in the month of january. tony, north providence, rhode island, independent line. you are on with congressman john fleming. caller: good morning, congress -- congressman. i am a korean vet. i have a question. why is the senior citizens, the payments we have been getting since over obama has been president -- the first three years we get nothing, and so far we get peanuts and they keep blaming social security? with everything congress has to pay for, why are they taking it out of the elderly? i am getting a lousy $20 this

year? that is a shame. that is a shame. number two, the biggest problem i am having, i have 5 1/2 years, i have a claim in with the v.a. i got mold from when i was in fort jackson. i have been trying and trying and it is a big joke. the more they start of me, the more they and up getting bonuses. -- end up getting bonuses. this is supposed to be run. it is a shame. and the veterans are really getting mad about this. we have to stop this baloney that is going on here. i hate to pick on you, but you are the only when i have gotten through to in the last six or seven months. guest: he said someone is getting benefits and he was unhappy about that, but i did not catch who he was referring to.

let me just maybe give a more generalized answer, because i did not quite get all of that. you know, our veterans, to me, are the single group of americans who have done the most for our nation. as a navy veteran myself, i have seen some of the sacrifices, but myself have never undergone nearly the sacrifices that our war veterans have undergone. i think we should do everything possible to provide health care, to provide assistance in any way possible. as you know, we passed a big reform bill that would throw billions of dollars into the pot for the v.a. hospital system and yet still we have problems. so i certainly pledge to continue working on that as a member of the armed services committee and a veteran myself. and we want to align our benefits to go to people, first of all, who have sacrificed for

their nation. host: karen tweets in to you -- "aca is not government health care, but the v.a., medicaid and medicare are. do you support those programs?" guest: well, the aca is unfortunately a government program. as steven brill so aptly describes, that it is taking the private health care system and laying over it a huge government bureaucracy. the bill that we passed, i voted against. it was over 3000 pages. i think the regulations number someplace in the 20,000-page range. decisions for hhs number above 1000 in terms of running and managing the system. all of these things, even the

irs, will double the workload of the irs. you know. the seener citizens were very happy with medicare advantage, which was really a privatized form of private insurance form of medicare and paul ryan and his budget all along has said that's a direction we need to go for future seniors is a medicare advantage type healthcare system where you get more benefits because you have private systems competing against each other to higher quality care at lower costs and the net savings goes to the individual. medicaid is a government run system and unfortunately it pays physicians the least of all systems and therefore you have the least of participation. most people end up going to big charity hospitals or to emergency rooms for care.

i think the government has a rul rule. the government has a rule of oversight to be sure everyone is treated fairly and has a role that be sure that those in financial need get proper supplementation of their premiums. but at the end of the day we'll have much better time competing against one another just like other economic stems. that's the way we get the best results. >> next one is from marty in western michigan. republican line. >> thank you for allowing me to be on the air and thank you, congressman flemming. first on the healthcare bit it would be nice to hear my party and have a written in writing plan to take care of the healthcare deal. it's a little ridiculous. look at something works.

st. jude's foundation. it's a hospital that takes in 1 million patiences a year and facilitates them and pays their bills. that might be the way to run a healthcare system correctly. we pay the bills and you guys spend the money and the other one i want to hit on is income inequality. it's funny to hear most of the democrats about this mantra out there that the reason of income equality is caused purely by two things democrat and republican parties. you pwr row $0.54 on the dollar. inflation goes and goes stkaoeu sky rocketing. at the same time the cost of living is going up. this is government inflicted programs. the dollar has been annihilated by the two parties for borrowing and borrowing and fighting between the two parties got to stop because more on the sent are of things. take care of stuff and do your

job. but income and equality is poorly caused by the government sir. >> we got the point. congressman? >> he makes two points. first of all, again, i have to insist there are several republican alternatives and we're working on more. again, i have created the american healthcare reform act and go to my website flemming.house.gov or go to the committee website. and you can see all the elements. it covers everything from malpractice reform to how we would reform private insurance to get those solutions. in terms of income equality, you know, this president, that's been one of his priorities is close the gap of income and equality. what he's done is add regulations. he's driven our debt now from 11.9 -- $10.9 trillion to over

$18 trillion and raised taxes twice and income gap is actually worse than it was when he took office. the average household income is lower today than when president obama took office and the workforce participation is the lowest it's been before jimmy carter and before he took office. and impact gap is worse today than when he took office and the unemployment rate among minorities is worse today than ever. so, you know, when you try to shift income from the rich to the poor you have to be careful. but you're also killing jobs in the process of doing that and a report just came out the other day showing that the top income earners which are basically business owners pay somewhere in the range of 40% of entire tax

bill. people you have to decide what is fair. but we have a progressive tax system and the more you make the higher percentage you pay in taxes. we can continue to get worse results. >> skwraeur pwheu on our democrats line. you're on the "washington journal". skwrao good morning congressman. appreciate that you're there. you're diverse background, naval service, doctor and congress. i think that's very good for -- that's what we need more of. that >> thank you. skwrao as a third generation naval officer if you have time to talk to me a little bit about what you did in the navy. my comment is i think the government some be reigned in a little bit and do the things that we need government to do

and not have -- i'm saying this as a federal employee -- not have the government do what the private sector can do. along those lines, i would ask republicans select -- pick your battles. give up on benghazi. give up on pulling the rug out under obamacare and work towards reducing taxes so that smart people, smart enough to make good money, they're smart enough to do what to do with it. they don't throw it in mattresses and invest in the things that create jobs and create wealth for others in the country. that's my comment.

>> i was in a working class family. my father died before going to college. i had to go to emergency loans to just to get my college career started and then when i got to med school i ran oust money. but the navy opened up a new program in which there are scholarships for medical students who in which change will give service to their nation in uniform. i thought, wow, that is a win-win. i get to wear the uniform of the u.s. navy and to serve my country and the u.s. navy will pay my way through med school. so i entered the navy in 1976 active duty. spent six years and stationed at camp pendleton three years. again as a family practitioner and began a family at that point and had a child there in guam. delivered hundreds of babies while i was there and spent my

last year in charleston naval hospital and then eventually of course started my private practice in 1982 and then in louisiana. so you know, i can tell you there's no higher privilege to me as an american than wearing the uniform of the u.s. military. as far as the inefficiency, the bureaucracy, the government, you're quite right. the private sector can do so many things, much better and much cheaper than we can through our federal bureaucracy. and so i'm always encouraged for us to have the private sector do things but we have to have good oversight. there's a place again for government to be sure that the taxpayer money is certainly well looked after and that we're good stewards with that money. >> jersey girl in p. a. tweets, are you willing to cut the military budget to reduce the

deficit? >> you know, as a member of congress i took an oath to protect the constitution and united states of america. the most important role i have as a member of congress is to provide for common defense. that's in the constitution itself. i believe that the nation's defense should be based on the threats around the world, not on budgetary considerations although we should be very responsible with. that i voted against the budget control act in 20 letch that led to what we have today which is the sequester. and i voted for the budget that provided money back in for readiness and for training that came ba later. i do not believe our military budget should be cut. i look at the threats around us. isis. we have growing threats from other nations such as china and

russia and all we do is we invite violence whenever we stand down because we represent what is great when it comes to peace and we of course live by peace through strength. going back to the ronald reagan days. so by being peaceful but very strong military, i think we make this a much more peaceful world. if you look at the actual budget it's not growth and defense that is causing our budgetary problems. as a percents of g.d.p. our defense has shrunk since vietnam. the growth in our mandatory spending programs. medicaid social security and food stamps. all of that is displacing our government. if we're going to control our deficits we'll have to reform those programs. part of that is getting our nation back to work.

and that means reducing regulations and encouraging the private sector to create jobs. realize that then president obama's presidency we've actually had less business formation than we have business closer -- close yours. it's important that we begin to reform reform your safety net system and make sure we're providing for people who are truly needy. but those who can work we should be sure they're trained and have jobs and working productive citizens and paying taxes into the system. >> n a zo in long beach, california. independent line. you're on the air with congressman john flemming. caller: yes, good morning. congressman. how are you? >> just fine. caller: good. question for you. and one for the moderator. what's your position on

president bush's -- i'm sorry president obama's recent executive action and for the moderator, sir i've watched c-span for over a decade and i would say roughly seven out of ten callers are adamant against either legalization for undocumented immigrants in this country. yet politician after politician comes here and makes statements to the contrary such as the american people want -- and i'd like to see you stand them up a little bit when they make those type of statements. and maybe have them address questions more directly. we had a call ear while back in your last segment that asked poignant questions to the

congress person from d.c. that relates to the earned income credit and the billions of dollars that will cost american taxpayers for children of illegal aliens and she went on and talked about her father's time in the military. i mean and basically didn't answer the questions directly. like i said, great show. we need more smart guys like the congressman here and also coburn. those guys tend to be doctors, but we need smart people to represent us in washington. i'll take my response off air. thank you. >> thank you, caller, for those kind comments. with respect to executive amnesty, i think you were asking about, it is my opinion and the opinion i think of most americans that the president's memo that with one swath simply made 5 million or more people

here illegally suddenly here legally, that is unconstitutional and unlawful. yes, the president does have a discretionary ability to -- discretionary prosecution, but the problem with that is that's a case by case situation having to do with individuals that may have special circumstances. but this is an entire class. and the president does not have the authority to do that. he's taking it upon himself and he himself 22 times has said publicly he didn't have the power or the authority to do that and yet he did it anyway. so, what are the american people think about that? well, the polls are overwhelmingly against the president having done that and the claim it's going to make america stronger or that it's going to add revenue to the treasury is simply not true. remember these people will immediately be able to get driver's licenses.

they'll be immediately able to get benefits under social security and medicare, earned income tax credits. we found last week that the irs has declared if they pay taxes as illegals, that they are now able to get tax refunds. so this is going to be an immediate burden upon the taxpayers, and if you look at the work done by the heritage foundation robert recktore there will be many more people on the safety net system and entightment programs than you'll find as necessarily productive workers. having said all that, i'm a strong supporter of a guest worker program. we find when we talk to those who come across the border to work that most of them, in fact the vast majority of them are interested in coming to america

for good jobs, jobs that are not taken by americans and then they want to return to their country. but the problem is this administration is created huge barriers for people to come back and forth legally. what i would like to see and it doesn't require any type of laws to be passed but the administration to simply make it easy for farmers and factory owners and so forth to bring these people over and let them work and let them send money back to their families and return. when the seen comes back again to return. so i believe that -- i believe in imtkpwaeugss the core of america's greatness but it's got to be a systematic, one in which we know who is coming. we have the capability by met kali to know when people are here illegally and when they leave leave leave. we should utilize that. we're a nation of laws. to simply say that, well, you came here illegally and broke our laws but we're simply going

to forget that makes no sense and inconsistent with the democratic nation as we are. so we need to fix the system. but first we need to abide by the laws we have and not have a president who is perfectly willing to really to do things that no president has ever done just simply because he's unhappy that congress is not done what he wants. and i think the next question is for you. >> i'm going to thank the caller for that comment about the "washington journal" and move on to this call from cindy in oak wood illinois. republican line. >> hello? >> hi, cindy. please go ahead with your comment. caller: it's comment and question. number one i saw several months ago that 92% of the downs people are aborted.

and i think we take better care of our puppies than the downs people. i'm a special ed people and i find that atrocious. i find abortion atrocious except when the mother's life is in dangered. the second thing i need to know is presently is the federal government funding planned parenthood in any way? i just want his feelings on the abortion issue and the other question is, could this be taken to court because these are special needs children? and number two, are we funding planned parenthood through the federal government. >> thank you ma'am. >> no question about it, government funds go everywhere to planned parenthood. planned parenthood aborts over 300,000 babies a year just in the last three years. that's over a million babies who have died at the hands of abortionists at planned

parenthood. and it's really worse than that. it's not just that we are providing dollars to planned parenthood but now we have the secretary of health and human services who ignores the amendment and allowing states such as california to require to mandate that there's abortion coverage in all of of their insurance policies. so, if the government is paying any part of those insurance policies if you are buying insurance in california and this could happen in other states, dollars are going directly to subsidized abortions. we're a nation that is slightly in favor of pro life. we're about 51, 52% pro life. that's grown quite a bit over the years. but it's not even close when it comes to taxpayer funding of abortions. overwhelmingly americans feel

that is wrong and i would vote today to stop all funding of planned parent food and planned parenthood will make the case that those dollars are not used for abortion directly. but you know money is fun knowledgeable. if it goes into one count the overhead and things are taken care of by government funding so there is more money to be made through abortions. the abortion industry is very profitable and that's reason why some people are willing to do it despite the fact that they often cannot live in the same community because there is such outrage against people who would kill humans in the womb. but even worse than that is going back to provide abortion in late term, six months or later in gestation is abhor epbt

because not only are we taking a life of a human in most cases today could survive outside of the womb with some help but you're putting a baby through all sorts of torture that's much worse than water boring. is this really what we're about? is this within our ethos, a free nation, that we're willing to put humans through this? thank the caller for the questions and hope i was able to answer her questions. >> the last call for congressman flemming comes from sam from arkansas. democrats line. good morning sam. >> how you doing? morning? i'm originally from shreveport, louisiana and i got to ask the congressman something. in the republican party they say they care about all americans. why in the top committees there is no minorities there and why

solis still there in one of them top positions? >> i think that's a great question. we do not have oh,he or have not had traditionally that many african-americans or women in party or office. we have made great strides among women ask now we're making tremendous strides among african-americans n order to have more african-americans in the house of representativeses or in the state house or anything as republicans we need african-americans to step up and run for office. i've encouraged a lot of young african-americans and other minorities to do that. but again if you do that, it's important that you embrace the principals and the values that republicans hold and that is number number one, to be pro life and freedom for all and responsible when it comes to this nation's finances, to want

economic freedom and to encourage small businesses to flourish because that's really where the jobs are, the vast majority of jobs are there in the small businesses. so, we celebrate more african-americans and we elected to this pastime and we're very happy with them. one of course is well-known mia love who is originally from honduras, great family story. she was mayor of a city in utah. her dad came here with i think $5 in his pocket and became self made. she's doing a wonderful job extremely beautiful and articulate. we could use a lot more mia loves and folks like her. so, we encourage more minority involvement and i'm more than happy to help those in louisiana and across the states to do that. >> two final questions.

here's cover story this morning. "bobbiend "bobbiendl general call's trouble at home." do you want bobbiendl to run for president? >> the more the better who run. >> he's a very intelligent man. he's certainly a strong koercore con seven active and i like that about him. you're right. there are reforms in louisiana that we needed in terms of our spending and we not accomplished that. louisiana like many states have had a lot of the problems when you begin to try to reduce costs. it can be very difficult, because people want to hold on to institutions and government funded things that they've had for many years. so it's been a very tough pull for governor jindal. i think we have a deep bench we're running for 2016 and i say, hey, the more the merier.

>> paul reyes, board of contributors. g.o.p. snub of univision missed opportunity. the fact that the r.n.c. won't be sponsoring a debate in 2016 on aoupb i version for spanish-speaking americans. >> of course i'm not directly affiliated with the r.n.c. and i have no decision making on that and i think we should certainly be inclusive, but i think one of the problems that we had last time was we had so many debates that we wore ourselves out. we had one candidate beating up on the other canned beating up on the next candidate. then the democrats only had one and that was barack obama. i think we'll change things a little bit so we don't injure and disable our candidates. i don't know that that's a snub

as much as it may be, hey, we're just reducing the number and somewhere we've got to make cuts. >> i lied. one more. this is a tweet from a viewer. here's tweet -- >> well, we do work -- our workweek is either from monday evening through thursday or tuesday evening through friday. the reason why we don't necessarily work a full so-called 5 day a week we have to travel back home and participate in all sorts of activities back home. also when we're not going home we're oftentimes going on congressional delegations to various countries or to places around the country. i serve on armed services. soon i'll be going to look at

the f-35 strike fighter. if we're in session we can't do that. part of our job is to gather information. we have field hearings when we're out. that's why earlier in our discussion i told you i don't have any extra time to work in my practice. when we're not here voting we're out doing many things. >> john flemming. republican of louisiana. thanks for being with us. >> thank you so much. >> tomorrow on "washington journal" defense one executive editor discusses global efforts to combat isis and national foundation for in effect should yous diseases looks at the rise in measles cases and how it's contributing to the resurgence of the disease. plus your phone calls and facebook comments and tweets. "washington journal" is live saturday at 7:00 a.m. eastern on c-span. here's some of our featured programs for our weekend on the

c-span networks. on book tv saturday night at 10:00 washington bureau chief on the british efforts to stop the taliban advance while awaiting u.s. marines reinforcement. and sunday at 10:00 senior editor on the u.s. senate's torture report and why his company decided to pb hreurb it it and on american history tv all this month, interviews with former korean war p.o.w.'s. this sunday at 10:00 a.m. eastern charles ross an army sergeant held as a p.o.w. from 1950 to 1953 and just after 9:00 a look back at selma 50 years later with congresswoman and cbs news white house correspondent bill plant. you can find our complete schedule at c-span.org and let us know what you think.

call us at 202-626-3400. or comments @ c-span.org. leak us on facebook and follow us on twitter. >> next national security advisors susan rice talks about national security and foreign policy. then remarks by the united nations high commissioner for human rights. after that a discussion on the international effort to combat isis. now national security advisor susan rice discusses president obama's new national security strategy at a forum hosted by the brookeings institution. ambassador rice outlines his foreign policy priorities and agenda. this is about an hour and ten minutes. >> good afternoon