you know, as bob dole used to say, the congress proposed -- the president proposes, the congress disposes. we didn't have a bill to dispose. there were five different bill -- bills that came up through three committees in the south -- house and two in the senate and , 7,000 pages of contradicty information. i voted with the republicans 18 times trying to rein in some of the different portions of the bill. at the same time, when it came for a final vote i believe we did need to move forward. the benefits in the bill were better than voting it down so that there would be nothing out of a year's work. things like pre-existing conditions and areas like that. but there's a lot of room to make this a better bill. and with respect to having been in a family that had military

service, i grew up in a family that had military service. my father was a career military person and i grew up under a system that i guess some people could call socialized medicine. i've benefited from military medicine all of my life. i think it's a great system that a lot of people like to criticize in some ways because it wasn't a private system that we had before. but it's a very effective system for people. host: i want to draw attention to your website. if you want to get more information on the issues, jameswebb.com. tom in new york, democrats line. good morning. caller: god bless you, senator. thank you for your service. you wrote me a letter in 1988

after he resigned from that position. i was a navy officer. my question is, why did you vote for the $750 billion tarp program? senator shelby voted against it. guest: actually, it was $700 billion. but that was a very tough about. it was at a time when the economy was in danger of a cataclysmic freefall. i called around, people felt very strongly on this issue. on both sides. i called around to people who i trusted and who i considered to be experts in the area. the call that convinced me that i needed to vote in favor of the legislation was with an individual named barton dix one

of the smartest macroeconomists in the country. he used to do market economics in morgan stanley and was helpful to me. he actually made a lot of money as a a hedge fund guy in -- when he left morgan stanley, but he said to me three things that stuck with me. he said you have to vote for this. if you don't, the world economy is going to go in to cataclysmic freefall within the next couple of weeks but then he said, on the other hand, he said, you have to punish the people who did this, who abused our system. you have to find a way to punish them. and he said, you need to reregulate, congress needs to reregulate, get back to glass-steagall, which was voted away good -- during the clinton

administration and which had previously had the kinds of controls that were -- would have presented the situation. i voted in favor of it. then i did something else. in 2010, after a lot of research and actually having gotten the idea from an article by martin wolfe in the financial times, i put into a legislative proposal the idea of having a one-time windfall profits tax on executives from those companies that received $5 billion or more from the bailout. i think there were about 13 companies. and what we said was, you can get your full compensation. you can get $400,000 of your bonus and after that, you split the rest with the people who bailed you out, the nurses, the truck drivers, the soldiers who were out there paying the taxes. we voted in order to stabilize the economic system not to bail out the people who brought us in to this crisis.

and i couldn't get a vote on the senate floor. neither party -- i think the , democrats didn't want to vote for this windfall profits tax because they didn't want to have to take a stand between the moneyed people and the people who were going to get bailed out. we lost the ability to even have a vote on it. but that is the reason that i voted for it and what we need to do now, looking in the future, is looking at reregulating the process in a manner similar to the way it was when we had glass-steagall. host: good morning billy from mississippi. caller: good morning gentlemen. good morning, senator. thank you so much for your distinguished military service and career to our country and our naval secretary and as united states senator. i was wondering what, you know i keep reading. we all know about the income inequality and it's kind of

interesting that all of the -- all of a sudden, republicans have discovered income inequality and and that middle class people are suffering in america and they are now talking about those issues. i am glad they are because i think it's the one issue that needs to be most talked about right now in this election cycle, but i don't think that corporations are people regardless of what the supreme court said and i am wondering even after the t.a.r.p. and the bail-out and everything we have been through, do you think we still have big banks and big financial institutions that are still too big, too big, so-called, too big to fail that it needs to be looked at by our regulators and our congress and senators and administrations? should they be broken up? should they be divested and on another line, having served up there having served in the senate like you did, why do you think there was a reluctance on

the part of the obama and bush administration and the justice department to fine the folks like you said your friend from morgan stanley, fine the people actually responsible within these financial institutions and corporations and big banks and mete out some sort of pun -- punishment for what it is that they did to completely wreck our economy back in '08 and '09. host: billy, you put a lot on the table. thank you for your call. wet get a response. guest: thank you for the very thoughtful series of questions. first, i think it would be good for the country if we could get serious discussions on reinstituting something like

glass-steagall, which did have a form of regulation on the activities that the larger baking institutions could be involved in. two separate speculative investment from regular banking. in terms of the individuals, we have seen a pattern of finding the institutions rather than holding individuals accountable. i think probably the best way to have approached that was what we were recommending with the idea of a one-term windfall profits tax because that would have gone directly to the people who had been the most culpable and put -- in terms of conduct that put us in such a precarious situation. it was one time, meaning i don't believe we should have a so-called windfall profits tax every year because that becomes another tax but in that particular situation, since they were bailed out by the working

people of america, it would have been highly appropriate and the reason that you didn't see a vote on that -- and this goes to some of your other questions, i think it's just the power of the financial sector in the political process today. as i mentioned at the beginning, we have reasonably good laws in terms of campaign finance. if i am doing an explore tory -- an exploratory committee to see if we could put together a viable campaign, the maximum don't nation $2600. but after the citizens united case, people can go over across the street and create a super pac and there is no limit in the amount of money that can be put in that. you can write a $5 million check today and essentially cover the same items that would be covered in the $2,600 contribution in an

exploratory committee. and the power of the people who have made enormous wealth in the country to control the political process is obvious. it's obvious. and what happens to the average american who wants to vote for someone who will bring about change? by the time people even measure the health of a presidential can -- candidacy about the amount of money he has been able to raise, so you have a screen process -- a screening process with gatekeepers who can run -- right a $5 million check before people in america get to vote on people who will take positions on a lot of these issues. host: that is the playing field you are going to enter if you decide to enter for president. can you compete on that playing field? guest: that is the question we are looking at in this exploratory committee. is it possible to move forward with enough money to get into the debate process without

having to compromise deeply held beliefs? host: how much would be enough? guest: we are discussing that. host: chad in dayton, ohio. caller: thank you for having me on the show. thank you for your service to this country. i am a republican and you are one of the very few democrats i am willing to vote for because i believe that you are willing to work with both sides and you have proven that with your record working with dragon -- ronald reagan. my question is: how do you plan on dealing with isis since they are going to be more of an issue and just airstrikes isn't going to cut it? host: thank you, chad. guest: when it comes to that part of the world, we have to clearly define our national security interest and i have said for many years, we do not benefit from becoming an occupying power in that part of

the world. i am going to go back to the initial invasion of iraq, but i'm going to get to the question about isis. before the invasion of iraq, i wrote a question saying this -- an article for the washington post saying this would be a strategic blunder, it would empower iran and china long-term and you can see china is one of the major beneficiaries of all of these years of efforts in afghanistan. the greatest victory for the united states since world war ii, the greatest strategic victory has been the cold war where we were able over a period , of years to face down and expansionist soviet union with a strong military but not -- not allowing this to become a fighting war. we had ancillary wars, i for the -- fought in one and was wounded

in one in vietnam and korea. but basically we put together , the right sort of overall strategy so this thing didn't blow up. with respect to the middle east, in the situation with isis, the first question we have to resolve -- and i think we have -- is whether or not any of these entities constitutes a threat to the united states rather than simply locally, and i think isis has crossed the line. i think we can fairly say that now. then, the question is, what sorts of activities will stop them? what sorts of activities will diminish their attractiveness as one of a number of sunni militia elements in that part of the world? our activities are one part of it, but encouraging and other countries in the region, it

-- who have a stake in this, to take action, would be equally important. we have seen this in lack -- last week or so with jordan and the uae stepping up. we cannot do this simply by ourselves. and the membership in these malitias, particularly over in syria, the numbers of people involved, vary depending upon who they think is sort of the top dog of the moment. you can see people moving from one militia group to another just depending upon which one they think is being more effective. so, it's an extremely complicated situation in terms of crafting a strategy for isis. we have people in isis, i guarantee you, who have been trained by the u.s. when they were in another opposition group

previously. i could see this as a journalist in beirut when i was there in 1983, when a marine turned around on one of the operations and said don't get involved in a five-sided argument. this is a situation that we are facing there. so we need to clearly articulate our national security objectives. i believe isis comes under that. we need to encourage the other countries in the region that have a stake in the stability, to step up, including military operations, and when they are approved react, -- appropriate we should have military operations. the best way to get a clear picture of this is for the congress to have the hearings that it should have had at least six months ago, maybe earlier than that and get a full readout of what the administration is doing and what it sees are the most effective things to do in the future. host: let me follow up with two points. money is a big factor. you have got your own alleys in

the race and senator sanders. and hillary clinton, can you get the nomination on the issues? can you win on the issues? guest: i believe that the issues that we are bringing to the table are the issues that are important to the country. that was the same decision point when i ran for the senate. i had no money and no staff. this is a national arena, but we pushed the issues that were, i believe, the country needed to go. national security, international security, economic fairness, social justice, being able to govern in this very complicated bureaucracy. and i believe americans want to see leadership. they want to see people who will take a risk, talk about things that otherwise aren't being talked about, bring people together and move forward. i think the record i have had

over a long period of time shows i can work with people from all different sides. that's the way we get things done in this country. host: how has president obama performed in bringing people together? guest: i think that we have entered a period of absolute paralysis that partly was the result of the timing of the healthcare debate. and i was warning about that at the time, where this has been an issue that was a big campaign issue and then right before the , election, we saw the economic crash, and i was saying the whole year, president obama came in with very high favorables. it wasn't from day one that this thing started to fall apart. but i don't think the nation -- the administration ever recovered from the divisive nature of the debate on health

care reform that we saw the tea party -- we saw the rise of the tea party that year. we saw the republicans saying the number one objective was going to be defeat president obama in '12 rather than working on legislation. in october, '11, when i got my criminal justice reform national commission up for a vote, this was a bi-partisan -- i had oren -- orrin hatch and lindsey graham as co-sponsors on this bill, people from all across the philosophical spectrum who worked on these issues every day in support of this. justice kennedy supported it. $18 million. that's it. one helicopter. excuse me $14 million. , one helicopter. we could have done this. we weret the best minds of america, show us how to fix this, the whole nature of this problem and particularly at reentry, and who goes to jail? how long? we got filibustered october of '11.

we got 57 votes and the national review, the conservative paper , editorialized it was insane to have filibustered something that was that logical but that's how far that things got divided. we can do better than that. host: final question. what is your timeline? guest: i will know it when i see it. we are out talking to people. we are talking more now going in to this year. if we see that it's, you know, if we see that this is viable, that it can be funded in a way that we can get into the debates, we will move forward. if not, we won't. host: do you personally want to run? guest: under the right circumstances, i would like to. host: jim webb, former senator from virginia, thank you for being with us. guest: thank you. host: when we come back, our

conversation with former house speaker newt gingrich. we want to talk about yesterday senator mitch mcconnell may have boxed himself in when he said he did not want to see another government shutdown and yet, your successor, john boehner is saying the house has done its job. the senate needs to do its job. what's going to happen? guest: i think the only effective strategy is too divide the bill into two parts. take everything which relates to security, border control, tsa, that sort of thing, send it to the president, bring it up by itself, no limits, and challenge the democrats to stop securing america. and then take the second part , which is all of the administrative components of home land security and attach them to the prohibition on what the president has done on immigration and say, look. if you are prepared to not have the administrative part funded for the rest of the year, and

you want to try to run the government that way, that is your prerogative. you get down to the fact, if you have the president who wants to do one thing and the newly elected congress who wants to do something else, you are going to have a fight. and to say, gee, they shouldn't be fighting, that means then the president gets to dictate everything? and i think that it would be very difficult for the democrats in the senate to stop a clean bill that paid for everything involving security knowing they would try to and they would say you have to bring in the rest. but at some point, they were looking pretty idiotic and they are the people blocking the people from protecting america. host: we have not talked use -- talk to you since the state of the union. what did you think of it? guest: not much. i think this president lives in a fantasy world. i think you see it particularly in foreign policy. but he has no idea how the real world works. he has no interest in working with the newly elected congress. i think that means two more years in which there is a real problem of decay in the country and the question will be whether or not people can get something

done despite that. host: you gave a speech that has been getting a lot of attention. we covered you in iowa at the freedom summit and you were not only critical of this president, but also saying hillary clinton would be an extension of the policies. guest: she was secretary of state. there is no indication so far that she has learned anything which would change what obama has been doing. you will see next week the so-called summit at the whitehouse on terrorism which is really, i think, could be called a summit of lies. they are not going to define who the terrorists are. they are not going to define what the threat is. they are not going to be serious about explaining what we were up against and instead, they are going to have a pr show and pretend they don't know. host: they are calling it extremities him, not terrorism. guest: you have to ask yourself what are they take talking about? what happened in copenhagen, shots fired at a conference on whether or not a cartoonist has free speech.

there is no confusion about it. the person who fired the shots probably went to a jewish synagogue and killed the guard at the synagogue. now, president said that's random acts of violence referring to the person who , killed four jews in a jewish grocery store and who, by the way, said to public television yes, i wanted to kill jews. i went out this morning to kill jews. if we can't have an honest conversation about what threatens our civilization, all of the rest of this is a share -- charade. host: what is the president not addressing this? guest: our elites in both parties were convinced you could not talk honestly aboutp without -- radical islam without offending everyone that is muslim. they made a decision not to tell the truth. we have been in a big lie campaign under bush and obama has been involved in this big lie campaign. the director of the fbi says 10

days ago, they have active investigations in 49 states but they can't tell you what connects all of the investigations. we know what it is. people engaged in a form of radical islam is him which is a threat to our survival. we have no techniques today, no strategy for dealing with this. host: we keep hearing that this is the most partisan time in washington. but your own party impeached bill clinton back in 1998. is it any more partisan today than it was in the 90's? guest: none of the three of us get to the point where what we did in the '90s was held up as working together. -- house up as an example of working together. the thing was, we could fight then we could compartmentalize it and we could -- the president and i worked on dealing with saddam hussein literally at the same time we were fighting over something. we could also say and we want to get a welfare reform bill done.

he had a different version than i did, but we both wanted to get something done. i get a sense this isn't so much more partisan as it is just president obama does not have many of the skills clinton did. bill clinton whether you liked him or disliked him was an extraordinarily effective person at dealing with human beings. he liked people. he liked engaging people he was very happy to negotiate and talk. the result was we spent 35 days together negotiating. people say that we couldn't balance the budget. we balanced it for four straight years. it was clearly a bipartisan solution that would not have been done without the republican house and the democratic president. host: tax reform. how do we get there? guest: the president says, i want to raise a trail -- trillion dollars of additional taxes. i think you could set up a series of principles and find a way to get

to a much simpler, much frankly less expensive tax code, particularly when you have an irs that is as dysfunctional and incompetent as our current one is. last year, they sent out in $4 billion refunds to people who shouldn't have gotten them including my favorite, which is 353 checks for one house in shanghai, china. they didn't notice it. they sent to a house in 450 lithuania. the system is not only complicated. it doesn't work. the machinery doesn't work. you've got to almost the end -- thin it down and complexity. host: you were part of the debate in 2012. have you ruled out running? guest: there are no probable circumstances where we will end upper running. host: have you talked to mitt

romney? guest: i talked him it when he was first looking at it. it is very hard. anybody who has never done it has no idea how hard it is. there is a new generation coming along like scott walker who did well in iowa and showed up on the c-span coverage. you have jeb bush who is sort of between the two generations. and then you have a whole group of people, the john k six. the chris christies. this number is very competitive situation. mitt went out and talked honestly with a number of his friends. the net conclusion was that , while he could be a candidate and engaged in a race he wasn't , going to have the kind of financial addvantage he had last time. there were too many people who can raise their own money this time and therefore, going to be a very bruising, very competitive process. host: tom radford was at an event sponsored by bloomberg and he said if jeb bush wins the new

, hampshire primary and wins convincingly, it's probably going to be his nomination. however, if he loses, all bets are off. do you agree or disagree with that? guest: well, look. i understand the importance of the new hampshire imply, -- primary, especially if you are from new hampshire. the fact is this is going to be , a fairly lengthy nominating process and it's very unlikely, if you looks at iowa and new hampshire, nevada and south, -- south carolina, those are going to be the first test. it's unlikely one person wins all 4. if they do, i think that person probably will be the nominee. host: that's never happened? guest: if you look at, for example, reagan had to claw his way back and had a very challenging time and in the case of george w. bush, he won new hampshire against mccain or lost and had to claw his way back from south carolina. you just can't tell. host: former house speaker newt gingrich, 2012 presidential candidate. joining us from valley cottage good, good morning republican

line. caller: good morning, steve. good morning, newt. i have been following your career many years. pleasure to talk to you. newt, two things, one, why can't republicans come up with a contract with america the way you did back in the '90s and the specific agenda to get things done and get the president to move to the center like you guys did with bill clinton? the second thing, can you please explain to the american people how bill clinton's public -private partnership with the banks led to the financial crisis? and that's about it. pleasure talking to you. a million things i would love to talk to you about but unfortunately we don't have the time. guest: thank you very much. i can't discuss the second one. i am not quite sure i agree with your analysis there. i can tell you that i do think the republicans ought

to have an agenda in the summer of 2016, they should have able platform and i think they should mean it and say to the country if you give us the house, the senate and the presidency, these are the things we will get done. it was fascinating to me that larry hogan was able to run in a very tightly focused campaign in a state people thought was hopeless, maryland, won a surprisingly big victory on -- by staying focused on reducing taxes and creating jobs, and didn't get on other topics. it's also striking in the career of scott walker. my wife is from wisconsin, and so is my son-in-law. and so we have a lot of ties to wisconsin. we were with scott early in his campaigns and said if you elect me governor, this is what i will do. when he won he increased the republican margin in the house and the senate. a great shock to the left. he did what he campaigned on. they recalled him. he won the recall and he is able to to be a pretty good example that you can keep your word and people will actually give you credit for doing what you

promised you would do. so i would hope we would have a , platform that would be bold, very specific, and give people an understanding that if we win the 2017 will be dedicated to , very dramatic and very serious reform of a government which is frankly increasingly dysfunctional, not in a partisan way. the bureaucracies are incapable of working in the modern world. host: he did not finish college. we have not elected a president since harry truman. guest: that's stupid. host: that was my question. does it matter? guest: bill gates should not be allowed to form microsoft and you should not be able to use an apple computer. because steve jobs -- neither bill gates nor steve jobs finished college. let's be clear. scott walker is a guy who was the very effective executive from the largest local government, milwaukee county a very effective governor. even so a lot of things about , him, and people will say things but if you don't have a

piece of paper indicating you could sit long enough and smile at your professor long enough to get a grade. we just tried out a harbor -- a harvard law graduate who was a columbia graduate. if having certificates from the big schools mat referred, barack -- mattered barack obama would , be a heck of a lot better president. host: bando, independent line. caller: thank you. good morning. mr. gingrich, newt, i know you know that your name sake is also toxic. there is no doubt that you operate in the what you call the real world. let me point out a couple of examples. it was noted that you orchestrated this presentation that will be presented to congress and i want you to identify also, when the process happened, when isil became isis and what that acronym means? you are noted as being a

participant in paris at the time when that transformation took place. there are zionists who are radical, and israel state, and an islamic state may be possibly very attractive to them. guest: i am not quite sure what you mean. i use isis because that is what they call themselves. there are various complex reasons why the state department uses isil. i think it's irrelevant. my argument -- i do two news al -- newsletters, and the last newsletter said i would vote no on the president's request for an authorization for force because isis or isil, whichever you like better, is not the problem. there are 20,000 foreign fighters who have now gone to syria and iraq to join isis or isil. there are thousands of fighters

in boka haram in nigeria. last year, boko haram killed more people than ebola. 10,000 by boko haram rom, 8,000 by ebola. we had a worldwide threat. what we need is a declaration of war on the worldwide campaign of radical islamism. to focus narrowly on syria and iraq is to miss the points of what we are up against as a civilization. host: you wrote a piece in the "wall street journal" part saying congress needs to do more of its job. guest: we desperately need five committees in this -- senate and house to go to the core of who opposes us. how big are they? how are they spreading? how are they gaining ground? lieutenant general flynn of the intelligence agency testified this week at the armed services committee that we are now faced with an enemy who has gained ground in the last year, that the strategy of the administration are not working and he said he would not vote for an authorization for force

unless there was a strategy that was capable of working. so, i think if we need the judiciary committee needs to hold hearings on the domestic threat. homeland security needs to hold hearings on the border and the danger of catastrophic disasters. the intelligence committee needs to look at why 15 years after september 11, we still have not solved this or 14s years, we still have not solved these problems. the foreign affairs committee has to look at the collapse of the state department as an effective instrument and the armed services committee needs to look at the fact that we have been waging war now at least since 2001. and we haven't won. you have a baseline hearing that says what are we doing that's proceed foundly wrong. host: why we are losing is

available on wsj.com. from virginia, good morning. caller: good morning. we are just concluding wars where there have been so many civilians in the combat zone supported by the defense department. i am proud to say that i spent 10 years in iraq and afghanistan on telecommunications, data processing, ran the balloon project. i have trained afghan troops in computer operations, and now, i am having real difficulty locating a job here in america. what we need is to have some kind of a plan to reintegrate all of these civilian technicians and engineers and help us find work here in america, help us transfer our security clearance and support. two of my co-workers were killed. one of my close friends lost a

hand to an ied. and i consider, although i didn't personally wear a uniform, i consider myself every bit as much a veteran as any of the fine men and women i served with in iraq and afghanistan. host: thanks. guest: my dad spent 27 years in the infantry. that was a compelling story. it's not something i looked at. i will look at it now. i agree with you. people are willing to risk their lives to go into a variety of dangerous countries and this includes, frankly, our embassies in places like yemen and somalia. we ought to have a program to help them transfer into the civilian economy. that's a very good idea, one that i hope the two armed services committees will take up. host: do you miss the house? guest: i go often enough i am satiated afterwards. it was a remarkable 20 years.

i was very grateful to georgia for letting me represent them. i was grateful to my colleagues for making me the speaker. it's a big full-time job. if you do it right, you don't have time for much of anything else. calista and i are trying to make movies. she writes the elephant children books for american history and we are doing things online. a lot of things we are doing that are pretty fun. host: how is speaker boehner doing? guest: pretty well. he has more republicans than any speaker since 1928. he has clearly grown the majority. he has a pretty good general sense of where he wants to go. and now they are having to learn to work with the senate, a much harder place. by design. the founding fathers wanted the senate to be as john adams put it, the cooling saucer to the hot cup of coffee from the house. and on a good day, the senate is frustrating. and then there are the bad days. host: jerry in new york, democrats line with newt

gingrich. caller: good morning, steve. good morning, mr. gingrich. guest: good morning. caller: i have a comment regarding debating style i would like your opinion on. to me, it very much appears that most conservative politicians tend to speak with confidence as they espouse their views. i think it is very important to allow for a degree of unsureness in one's think can and internal -- thinking to allow internal and external debate. narrow partisan views that usually lead to policy. i think you would agree humility is important in onets character -- in one's character as well as one style. we have to remember, we are not omniscient. we are not god. being open to persuasion may seem weak on camera and radio, but it allows for a much needed conception of how we can sometimes cause more hollow --

harm than good. i think from this vantage point, it seems one be more liberal minded from that point, mr. gingrich, i would like your comment. guest: if you mean 19th century of being open to freedom, i agree with you. the 21st century version of being closed and politically correct, i disagree with that. there is a big difference between discussion style and debate style. debate style almost requires, as a matter of course, that you know what you think, you say it clearly and crisply and you are attempting to convince the audience of your point of view. that's what debate is like. a discussion, i couldn't agree with you more, my core model of leadership is listen, learn, help and lead. and i believe good leaders start every day by listening to people of all backgrounds, trying to in -- include information of all backgrounds and trying only to reach a judgment once you have looked at every possible angle. i think your description would fit a discussion perfectly and good leaders should spend most of their time in discussion, and only as little as necessary in debate.

host: let me pivot to another question. i don't think we have asked this on c-span how you spend your valentine's weekend but you tweeted it out so we are going to ask you. this is the tweet that came out on friday, calista is taking me it -- to spend the night at the american museum of natural history museum. great valentine gift. how was it? guest: guest: unbelievable, the coolest thing i have ever done. what they have done is created an adult sleepover, a night at the museum. calista got it for me for christmas. she also got me this time for valentine's day. she got both a valentines and christmas gift out of it. they checked us in anybody who has been there knows they have a 94 foot long blue whale hanging from the ceiling. 200 and some cops under the blue

whale, and you were going to sleep under the blue whale. kelly's to got me and herself, monogrammed sleeping bags. so we arrived looking like little kids with our sleeping bags. they had a terrific champagne reception, a very nice dinner and then they got this great presentation. you could go -- a huge museum that holds up to 30,000 people a day and you have 220 people drifting around doing what they want to, seeing the museum at their own pace, and they had three or four really good presentations that were absolutely fascinating and we got to sleep about 2:00 in the morning, and it was spectacular. i would recommend, to anybody who has interest in natural history, i would recommend it as just one of the -- first of all, if you go to new york, go to the american museum of natural history anyway but if you want to have an unusual immersion

experience, it is extraordinary. host: was it comfortable? guest: sure. the cots were fine. the sleeping bag was fine. i never thought about it before. think to yourself. who are the kind of people who are nutty enough they are going to spend a pretty good bit of money to go and sleep under the blue whale at the american museum? everybody was a geek, thinking this is exciting. i am glad i am here. and so everybody was very quiet. they were all really nice people to hang out with. [laughter] host: we are going to go to lynn in cedar hurst new york, new york. go ahead, lynn. caller: can you hear me? host: yes. caller: so i would like to make an an analogy of, you know, what you pay for is what you get. i think we pay five cents out of our cable bill to get rehashed wires like the one whose face i

am looking at. at the same time, we have this opportunity to take a guy like scott walker, wants to become president, or perhaps even work for the koch brothers, and he wants to cut education. brownback wants to cut education. so, i think if we continue to keep cutting our education budget the way the right-wing would like, and turn seeking the truth into trying to get a decent job in the united states, we may not even be able to pay the cable bill for this rehashed bull crap. guest: if you believe it's rehashed bull crap, i can't imagine why you are wasting your sunday morning. you must have a very unusual approach to life. i find c-span to be remarkable. former senator jim webb was on a few minutes ago, and you have access without editing to a wide range of people.

this speech has had 106,000 people view it. it would not have existed without c-span and they were not covering me because of a bias. they will cover hillary clinton and elizabeth warren. you will have a chance, and this is why ever since i came to , congress, which by the way was the year c-span was founded, i have always been a big supporter of c-span because it's the one place where without any editing, without any selection the entire , diversity of american political thought is available for you, both on the website where you can go appeared look -- go look at what is in the archives, and how many networks do you have? host: three networks, our budget is upwards of $50 million. you had a sparring with tip own meal, one of the most memorable moments in c-span history. on a personal level, what was your relationship with him like?

guest: good. this is again an example of what president obama doesn't quite get about the nature of the business here. he wasn't here long enough to learn it before he became president. o'neill was a consummate professional. he had been elected to the state legislature in 1936. he understood the business up and down. he knew we were on opposite sides. it was like being on a pro football team. he also knew we were all people. i went over when he announced his retirement and sat down with him on the democratic side and just said what a strong leader he had been. how big an impact he had had. and he said some day, i would ab -- know what it was like to be a strong leader. i thought that was a remarkable statement coming from a guy who had been fighting with me. he had a wonderful sense of life. the first thing people need to remember in this city is that everybody he negotiated with won their election. all of them won an election from the american people or they are

not allowed in the room. in the senate, 100 senators who won an election or they are not allowed in the room. in the white house you have a , president and vice president who won an election. you have to meet each other with a certain humility because the other guy one, too. it is a different approach. i found only all to be very tough. he was very tough in a very sort of irish neighborhood bar politician style, where he could be friendly to you when he is done beating you up, or he could be very friendly to you if you weren't fighting, but if you got into a fight, he came as you know, full force. host: that is in our video library. david in new york, good morning. caller: i wanted to make a quick comment and a question. my comment is that a lot of the prominent politicians today,

santorum, kasig, all of these guys, you were the one who brought these guys and gave them a chance. however, i believe, that -- and this is my comment. republicans need someone who has a fighting spirit and boehner simply doesn't have it. he is always on defense. you are always on offense. that's what we need. we need an articulate person who is on offense. obama has run rings around boehner. and i think, deep down in your soul you know this. , guest: first of all, any president has enormous advantages over a speaker of the house or senate majority leader because of the power of the , white house to attract attention from the media is so enormous. you are always at a certain disadvantage. i was at a did -- disadvantage dealing with clinton because he had the power of the white

house. i represent 43 people, half of whom are fighting each orient -- fighting each other. i hope they will focus, frankly not so much on hillary clinton or the democratic nominee but defining an extraordinary future for america through a series of bold steps that the american people can embrace. if they do that, i think we will win decisively in i think it 2016. will be somebody who understands they have to stay on offense doing things in a way that works , for the country, not just works politically. host: in addition to the three networks, we are heard on c-span radio which is heard nationwide, xm channel democrats line, in 120. general. good morning. caller: i am glad to speak to you this morning. there are many issues affecting the world today, and one of them is climate change and mass extinction of wildlife in our natural world. we are people who put a man on the moon. where are the big, big ideas

coming out of the world today , like for ocean acidification and pollution? guest: i think you have seen a dramatic level of improvement over the last 30 years. when you go back to the original clean air acts, i think in the early 1970s in california and you look at how far we have come, the next generation of automobiles will be air purification vehicles, literally, the air that they put out after they are done using it will be cleaner than the ambiant -- ambient air that comes in. we are seeing enormous changes in the direction towards less pollution, cleaner environment greater opportunities. you are also seeing dramatic improvement in efficiencies, which is why you have a glut of oil and gas in the world, and you saw the prices come down. i think technology continues to improve and will continue to move in the right direction. i think if you are worried about endangered species we need to

rethink part of our foreign aid program to enable us to work with poor third-world countries to have a dramatic expansion of national parks. when you talk about particularly mammals, there is a huge danger that being killed for meat is going to wipe out a lot of species, including chimpanzees and gorillas and hunting for rhinos and elephants. so on a large mammal basis, we have an immediate obligation to try to dramatically expand national parks around the world. host: we will go to ben joining us from san martin, california republican line. good morning. caller: good morning. in the way one gentleman stole my thunder saying i wanted to praise newt gingrich on the way you controlled or helped make things happen through, you know, compromise and things like that. and that's what we are going to miss. during the current administration.

i know a lot of people, a lot of groups -- excuse me -- i am a little nervous -- people are working behind the scenes to create new people to come up in these positions. i was wondering, with your groups and others can you guys , work together in the behind-the-scenes to get people in there that you think that can work together to make something happen for america? host: thank you, ben. guest: i think we see things that are coming together. van jones and i have joined together, van represents a very liberal viewpoint on criminal justice reform, something which senator jim webb talked about earlier. we are working with, for example, senator cory booker and congressman cummings on a bipartisan basis, and senator ron johnson in the senate. i think you will see a bi-partisan effort in that area. i encourage on a regular basis democrats and republicans to come together every time they can. they are not always going to be able to agree but there are a lot of issues they can agree on. ann wagner, for example has a

, bill on sexual slavery and on protecting young women in particular, and that's a very bi-partisan bill and the sort of thing we ought to be able to pass easily in the house and senate. so there is a chance to create this environment where people work together on a range of bills, and i think that's an important part of this. host: hot i asked you about the house. do you miss cnn and crossfire? guest: i was disappointed. i thought crossfire was working. we certainly got huge reviews here in washington from people who loved it. a number of senators and house members would say, i would be glad to come on. governs would say when i am cog -- coming through town, i would like to be on it. but zucker is in charge of cnn. he made a decision that that was not viable in the modern marketplace and that they had to go to a different model. he has actually done very well, when he took over they were , basically competitive with msnbc.

and they are somewhere above nbc. they are below fox but much more competitive. there are days had they actually beat fox. so while i don't particularly like the outcome, i respect zucker's obligation to the company to try to get it to be a very viable firm. he thought, you know, pursuing very intentionally breaking news and then developing a series of shows that include travelogues and other things was the only model that will would work the way the market plates has evolved. host: i want to go back to the c-span archives. on your 100 day mark after the first one 00 days back in 1995 that speaker boehner was serving in, let's take a look at the house republican congress. (video clip.] [applause.] host: tonight is the snl 40th

anniversary program. do you remember this moment? guest: yeah. it was a great moment. i don't know who did this, but somebody in the conference, it was a total shock to me. i had no idea farley was going to show up. of course, it was a very optimistic positive spirit. we had kept our word in the contract, voted on every single item we promised to, and the congress, you can tell the conference was in a buoyant mood host: did you like chris farley's impersonation of you? guest: it was very revealing. he had an exuberance. host: back to dhs. will congress reach an agreement to avoid a shutdown? guest: i don't know. i suspect there will be a temporary cr if necessary. i think the only way it will work is to split it into two bills. otherwise, the republicans will cave. the president will never cave.

the president is happy to blame the republicans and the republicans won't be able to sustain not paying for border security and things like that. if they split the two bills, i think the republicans can win. and then there will be a shut down on the administrative side. the president wouldn't give in. frankly nobody in the country , would care. host: newt gingrich, thank you for being with us. >> on the next washington journal, john ward looks at the president's legacy. the american legion leader talks about veterans transitioning to civilian employment. stephen old mocker discusses social security disability. how disability is defined by the social security administration. we will take our calls, and you can join the conversation on facebook and twitter. "washington journal," live on c-span.

>> this president's day on the c-span networks, on c-span, starting at 10:00 a.m. eastern. >> to provide that proven leadership is our challenge in 1992. that is why, today, i announce my candidacy for president of the united states of america. >> a special presentation on presidential campaign announcements. from ronald reagan in 1979, to barack obama in 2007. we will re-air these later in the evening at 9:00 p.m. on c-span2, finalists for the national book critics award. david brian davis on the history of slavery, focusing on emancipation. in -- elizabeth colbert argues we are currently going -- undergoing a mass extinction and will be the most devastating yet.

a french economist talks with you -- elizabeth warren about economic inequality. at 8:00 eastern on c-span3 presidential caricatures. some of the president's most memorable qualities. a 1960 interview with former president herbert hoover, discussing his life beyond the presidency. at 9:30, a conversation with a playwright and actress about the ford theater presentation of "the widow lincoln," to mark the anniversary of lincoln's assassination. follow our complete schedule on c-span.org. e-mail us at comments @c-span.org. like us on facebook, follow us

on twitter. join the conversation. >> this week in primetime, three nights of tack, featuring innovators driving internet companies. >> it should be a bentley for $40,000 per year. but it is a taxi. for that, for that privilege of leasing that car for $40,000 per year, he gets to be in poverty. >> insiders at facebook, paypal, and more. that is part of a special presentation. >> possibly the top country in the world for gdp growth, job creation, health care, education, movement. quick three nights of tech on c-span.

>> tonight q&a with alan harris. and, the british house of commons. later, london's mayor interviewed by mike allen. thomas allen harris -- announcer: this week on "q&a," our guest is thomas allen harris:, author of "through a lens darkly: black photographers and the emergence of a people," examining images of african-americans from the time of slavery through today. brian lamb: thomas allen harris "through a lens darkly" is what?