terview with martin luther king jr. find our complete television schedule on c-span.org and let us know about what you think. e-mail us, call us, or send us a tweet. join the c-span conversation, like us on facebook, follow us on twitter. on this monday morning the house is about to gavel in at noon eastern. we are expecting general speeches and then they are expected to return at 2:00 p.m. for legislative work criticizing boko barometer in order. the chair lays before the house a communication from the speaker. the clerk: the speaker's room washington, d.c., march 23, 2015. i hereby appoint the honorable steve womack to act as speaker pro tempore on this day. signed, john a. boehner,

speaker of the house of representatives. the speaker pro tempore: pursuant to the order of the house of january 6, 2015, the chair will now recognize members from lists submitted by the majority and minority leaders for morning hour debate. the chair will alternate recognition between the parties with each party limited to one hour and each member other than the majority and minority leaders and the minority whip limited to five minutes but in no event shall debate continue beyond 1:50 p.m. the chair recognizes the gentleman from oregon, mr. defazio, for five minutes. mr. defazio: well, last week in an unprecedented new transparency, the obama administration sent up special traded a bass dore froman and

lu about the trans-pacific partnership. if a member of congress wished to see that secret agreement they would have to go to a special secure room. we're not allowed to take notes and couldn't talk about it. at the same time it's shared in real time with 500 multinational corporations don't have to go to a secure room and are involved in the negotiations. but they came forward and they gave us some facts and figures and statistics. unfortunately, the statistics were not accurate. special trade representative froman said we are running a trade surplus with our free trade agreement countries. wrong. false. actually in 2013 we had $180 billion goods deficit and, yeah, we had a $75 billion services deficit. the aggregate means $105 billion deficit. now, they kind of turned a little trick here.

they pretend that something made entirely in china, shipped to los angeles and then shipped over to the border to mexico is a u.s. export. well, yeah it created one trucking job and maybe longshoreman job but the manufacturing jobs are all in china. this is a new trick and that -- but it still doesn't get them to balance but they like to pretend. then, we were treated to some half truths. i said isn't this substantially based on the korea free trade agreement? yes, it is. is that a success? oh, yes, it is. look, this is incredible. $1.05 billion of exports. oh, wait a minute. that's half the truth. here's the other half. actually, $14.7 billion in goods from korea to here. so we ran a massive and growing trade deficit since we entered into this agreement. i tried to get specific with

him. i said obvious ought oast? we were going to open up -- i said how about autos? we are going to go up autos. our auto export is up 140%. well, that sounds pretty darn good. and koreans are up 50%. that means we're winning. well, no, because u.s. auto exports went from 14,000 to 34000. korean auto exports went from 827,000 to 1.3 million. that means we ran a deficit of 461,402 more autos created in korea and exported here since we entered into this trade agreement. and yet that's what they're modeling this new agreement on. they're saying the tremendous success of nafta and korea is what we want to duplicate in this trans-pacific partnership which will include such honest actors such as south vietnam where they can use prison and child labor and a number of other countries, japan, who has

engaged in currency manipulation and extortion for years to advantage their goods against ours. and when asked about currency manipulation? they said, absolutely not. we cannot discuss it here because it would be to our disadvantage. no, it the disadvantage of multinational corporations who take advantage of currency manipulation like china and japan to make their goods chiper to put people out of work here. there is one big winner in currency manipulation who's worried about any res strixes on currency and capital flows. that will be wall street. the two big winners for the u.s. in these agreements are the pharmaceutical industry. oh, what a wonderful, you know good friend to america. how many people does that employ here except sales reps and wall street? that's the way all these frayed agreements have worked. a few very selective winners. the biggest losers are u.s. workers u.s. manufacturers and

the question i've been question since i opposed nafta, how can you make money if you don't make things anymore? i yield back the balance of my time. the speaker pro tempore: the chair recognizes the gentlelady from north carolina, ms. foxx, for five minutes. ms. foxx: thank you, mr. speaker. i rise today to talk about the united nations and what can only be described as its increasingly outrageous actions on the world stage. how else would you describe planning a conference on gender equality, feminism and sexual violence that -- invited only men to participate? or telling the catholic church that its pro-life stance equals psychological torture? well, last week the united nations really went off the deep end when the commission on status of women adopted a resolution that singles out and condemns israel for violating the right to women. that's right, the commission condemned a country that has guaranteed women equality and

work, education, health and social welfare for more than 60 years. it denounced a country where rape, including spousal rape, is a felony punishable by 16 years in prison whose ministry of social affairs operates battered women shelters and a hotline for reporting abuse and whose parliament passed nearly 50 initiatives to promote gender equality and empower women over the past four years. it accused the only country in the middle east that fully respects the rights of women with violating the rights of women. to say i wholeheartedly disagree with this fiction the u.n. has concocted would be an understatement. let's look at the facts. the website looked at grim statistics for the status of women around the world. they inform us that one in three women experienced physical or sexual violence and 120,000 girls have been forced

in intercourse or other sexual act in their lives and they tell us that 133 million women and girls have undergone female genital mutilation. when you consider those numbers it's mind-boggling that commission believes that israel is the only one of the 193 u.n. member states worthy of condemnation for its record on women's rights. how is that even possible? israel's entire population is less than 10 million. according to the world health organization nearly 40% of all murders of women worldwide are carried out by an intimate partner yet, dozens of countries around the world do not have specific laws against domestic violence. where is the commission's condemnation of russia and kenya of pakistan, of congo and nyjer? why didn't the commission cite sudan, where the legal age of marriage for girls is 10 years

old and 88% of women under 50 have undergone female genital mutilation? why didn't the commission condemn iran where a woman's testimony is only worth half of a man's in court and rape within marriage is not recognized as a criminal offense? where's the crensure of india where statistics shows a rape occurs over 22 minutes? why didn't the commission want to talk about the victims in that country who include a nun in her 70's who was gang raped by a group of bandits who was trying to stop a crime including one who didn't have a toilet in her home and was found raped, strangled hanging from a tree because they went outside to relieve themselves during the night? you might be surprised to learn they all sit on the commission on the status of women. that's right, some of the world's worst violators of women's rights sit on a commission that calls itself

quote, the principal global intergovernmental body for gender equality and the empowerment of women. it's clear that this single-minded attack is the latest savlvo in the u.n.'s never-ending anti-israeli agenda. it's time we stand up for our friend and ally. as a founder member of the u.n. and a permanent member of the u.n. scouble security council, the united states has a duty to insist on a higher standard. the status quo is simply unacceptable. i yield back. the speaker pro tempore: the chair recognizes the gentleman from oregon mr. blumenauer, for five minutes. mr. blumenauer: thank you, mr. speaker. gretchen miller kafori passed away two weeks ago in portland. she left us at age 72, far too soon only recently retired from her amazing career. it was my honor to have served

with gretchen in the oregon legislature in the 1970's. in the 1980's and the portland security council in the 1990's. she fulfilled responsibilities in each office with a passion, a dedication to the underprivileged, a hard-headed realism, plain spoken, down to earth, warm and generous in spirit personally and professionally. she started her career as a peace corps volunteer in iran. she loved that country and its people. throughout her life, that experience informed her views of the middle east her knowledge and warmth and support by the iranian people for americans. gretchen offered a voice in our community for a more thoughtful approach to that country including at least attempting diplomatic efforts. it's too bad she couldn't have talked to some people in congress who were either too afraid distracted to try

diplomacy. despite her well-earned reputation as a liberal firebrand, she was always supportive of thoughtful and diplomatic efforts of cooperation, negotiation and listening. she's extraordinarily effective in advancing the interests of her constituents. her legacy includes a facility for the homeless with her name on it, but countless projects and programs that she helped conceive and advance. she helped shape policies in human services, land use and the arts. her legacy also includes her daughters kathryn and deborah. part of that political legacy is a daughter, deborah, who served in the leadership of the oregon legislature following in her mother's footsteps and is currently chair of the monoma county commission on which gretchen so honorably served. she was an educator, having taught for more than 10 years, most recently at the portland

state university hatfield school of government. she was a pioneer in women's rights, having famously helped lead the efforts to integrate the previously all-male portland city club. in our community it was very significant in and of itself as a powerful signal of the acceptance of women, not just rhetorically. it was part of a cause for which she devoted her entire life. women, gay rights, minorities, gretchen was a tireless champion for people who needed a tireless champion. for all the joys of working with gretchen, i will remember her best as a friend. highlights include spending time with her at her lovely beach retreat on the oregon coast or a fabulous trip to new york with our then-spouses that

included running the new york marathon theater, good food and fabulous company. over four decades, gretchen kafori helped make our community more livable and more humane and we are grateful. the speaker pro tempore: the chair recognizes the gentleman from washington, mr. newhouse, for five minutes. mr. new house: mr. speaker, i -- mr. newhouse: mr. speaker, i rise to recognize the 100th anniversary of the port of kenoway. for 100 years, the port has been a driver of economic development, transportation improvement, job creation and opportunities for the mid columbia region. voters approved the creation of the port in 1915 after the construction of the dow canal which allowed boats to navigate from the pacific to the upper stretches of the columbia and snake rivers. looking back on its industrial

legacy, the port has entered an exciting new phase of redevelopment in recent years. the revitalized port, which is washington state's fifth oldest promises to create tourism and recreational opportunities in the tricities, drawing visitors to our area with projects that include the clover island marina, columbia drive and vista field. this month we celebrate 100 years of economic opportunity and look forward to continued progress at the port of kennewick. thank you, mr. speaker, and i yield back the balance of my time. the speaker pro tempore:

>> texas senator ted cruz became the first official candidate of the 2016 race for president. he made the announcement in a speech to students at liberty university in lynchburg virginia, this morning. this is about 30 minutes. [applause]

senator cruz: thank you so much, president falwell. god bless liberty university. i am thrilled to join you today at the largest christian university in the world. today i want to talk with you about the promise of america. imagine when they were children, imagine a little girl growing up in wilmington, delaware. during world war ii, the daughter of irish and italian catholic family working class

her uncle ran numbers in wilmington. she grew up with dozens of cousins because her mom was the second youngest of 17 kids. she had a difficult father. a man who drank far too much and frankly, didn't think that women should be educated. and yet this young girl pretty and shy, was driven. was bright, was inquisitive, and she became the first person in her family ever to go to college. in 1956, my mom, eleanor graduated from rice university with a degree in math. and became a pioneering computer programmer in the 1950's and 1960's.

[applause] senator cruz: imagine a teenage boy, not much younger than many of us here today growing up in cuba. jet black hair, skinny as a rail involved in student council and yet cuba was not at a peaceful time. the dictator, batista, was corrupt. he was oppressive, an this teenage boy joins a revolution. he joins a revolution against

batista, he begins fighting with other teenagers. to free cuba from the dictator. this boy at age 17 finds himself thrown in prison. find himself tortured, beaten, and then at age 18 he fleas cuba. he comes to -- flees cuba. he comes to america. imagine for a second the hope that was in his heart as he rode that ferryboat across to key west and got on a gray hound bus to head to austin, texas to begin working washing dishes making 50 cents an hour. coming to the one land on earth that has welcomed so many millions. when my dad came to america in

1957, he could not have imagined what lay in store for him. imagine a young married couple, living together in the 1970's, neither one of them has a personal relationship with jesus. they have a little boy and they are both drinking far too much. they are living a fast life. when i was 3 my father decided to leave my mother and me. we were living in calgary at the time. he got on a plane and flew back to texas. and he decided he didn't want to be married anymore and he didn't want to be a father to his 3-year-old son. and yet when he was in houston,

a friend, a colleague from the oil and gas business, invited him to a bible study. invited him to clay road baptist church. and there my father gave his life to jesus christ. [applause] senator cruz: and god transformed his heart and he drove to the airport, he bought a plane ticket, and he flew back to be with my mother and me. [applause] senator cruz: there are people who wonder if faith is real. i can tell you in my family there's not a second of doubt because were it not for the

transformative love of jesus christ i would have been saved and i would have been raised by a single mom without my father in the household. imagine another little girl living in africa, in kenya, nigeria -- it's a diverse crowd. playing with kids they spoke swahili, she spoke english. coming back to california where her parents who had been missionaries in africa raised her in the central coast. she starts a small business when she's in grade school.

baking bread. she calls it heidi's bakery. she and her brother compete baking bread. they bake thousands of loaves of bread and go to the local apple orchard where they sell the bread to people coming to pick apples. she goes on to a career in business, exceling and rising to the highest pinicles -- pinnacles, and then heidi became my wife and my very best friend in the world. [applause] senator cruz: heidi becomes an incredible mom to our two precious little girls, caroline and katherine, the joys and loves of our life.

[applause] senator cruz: imagine another teenage boy being raised in houston, hearing stories from his dad about prison and torture in cuba. hearing stories about how francle liberty is. -- fragile liberty is. beginning to study the united states constitution. learning about the incredible protections we have in this country that protect the god-given liberty of every american. experiencing challenges at home the mid 1980's, oil prices cater. and his parents' business go bankrupt.

heading off to school, over 1,000 miles away from home at place where he knew nobody, where he was alone and scared, and his parents going through bankruptcy meant there was no financial support at home so at the age of 17 he went to get two jobs to help pay his way through school. he took over $100,000 in school loans. loans, i suspect a lot of you-all can relate to. loans that i'll point out i just paid off a few years ago. [applause] senator cruz: these are all of our stories. these are who we are as americans.

and yet for so many americans the promise of america seems more and more distant. what is the promise of america? the idea that the revolutionary idea that this country was founded upon which is that our rights, they don't come from man. they come from god almighty. [applause] senator cruz: : and that the purpose of the constitution, as thomas jefferson put it, is to serve as chains to bind the mischief of government. the incredible opportunity of the american dream. what has enabled millions of people from all over the world

to come to america with nothing and to achieve anything. and then the american exceptionalism that has made this nation a clarion voice for freedom in the world a shining city on a hill. that's the promise of america. that is what makes this nation an indispensable nation, a unique nation in the history of the world. and yet so many fear that that promise is today unattainable. so many fear it is slipping away from our hands. i want to talk to you this morning about reigniting the promise of america. 240 years ago on this very day a

38-year-old lawyer named patrick henry stood up just 100 miles from here in richmond, virginia, and said, give me liberty or give me death. [applause] senator cruz: i want to ask each of you to imagine, imagine millions of courageous conservatives all across america rising up together to say in unison, we demand our liberty. today roughly half of born again christians aren't voting.

they are staying home. imagine instead millions of people of faith all across america coming out to the polls and voting our values. [applause] senator cruz: today millions of young people are scared, worried about the future, worried what the future will hold. imagine millions of young people coming together and standing together saying, we will stand for liberty. think just how different the world would be. imagine instead of economic stagnation, booming economic

growth. [applause] senator cruz: instead of small businesses going out of business in record numbers imagine small businesses growing and prospering. imagine young people coming out of school with four five, six job offers. [applause] senator cruz: imagine innovation thriving on the internet as government regulators and tax collectors are kept at bay and more and more opportunity is created. [applause] senator cruz: imagine america finally becoming energy self-sufficient as millions and millions of high-paying jobs are created.

five years ago today the president signed obamacare into law. within hours liberty university went to court filing a lawsuit to stop that failed law. [applause] senator cruz: instead of the joblessness, instead of the millions forced into part-time work, instead of the millions who have lost their health insurance, lost their doctors have faced skyrocketing health insurance premiums, imagine in 2017 a new president signing legislation repealing every word of obamacare. [applause]

senator cruz: imagine health care reform that keeps government out of the way between you and your doctor and that makes health insurance personal and portable and affordable. instead of a tax code that crushes innovation, that imposes burdens on families struggling to make ends meet imagine a simple flat tax. that lets every american fail out his or her taxes on a postcard.

imagine abolishing the i.r.s. [applause] senator cruz: instead of the lawlessness and the president's unconstitutional executive amnesty, imagine a president that finally finally, finally secures the borders. [applause] senator cruz: and imagine a legal immigration system that welcomes and celebrates those who come to achieve the american dream. [applause]

senator cruz: instead of a federal government that wages an assault on our religious liberty , that goes after hobby lobby, that goes after the little sisters of the poor, that goes after liberty university imagine a federal government that stands for the first amendment rights of every american. [applause] senator cruz: instead of a federal government that works to undermine our values imagine a federal government that works to defend the sanctity of human life. and to uphold the sacrament of marriage.

instead of a government that works to undermine our second amendment rights, that seeks to ban our ammunition imagine a federal government that protects the right to keep and bear arms of all law-abiding americans. [applause] it senator cruz: instead of a government that seizes your emails and your cell phones, imagine a federal government that protected the privacy rights of every american. [cheers and applause] senator cruz: instead of a federal government that seeks to

dictate school curriculum through common core, imagine repealing every word of common core. [cheers and applause] senator cruz: imagine embracing school choice as the civil rights issue of the next generation. that every single child, regardless of race regardless of ethnicity, regardless of wealth or zip code, every child in america has a right to a quality education. and that's true from all of the above whether it is a public schools, or charter schools, or private schools, or christian schools, or parochial schools

or home schools, every child. instead of a president who boycotts prime minister netanyahu, imagine a president who stands unapologetically with the nation of israel. [cheers and applause] senator cruz: instead of a president who seeks to go to the

united nations to end run congress and the american people, imagine a president who says i will honor the constitution and under no circumstances will iran be allowed to acquire a nuclear weapon. [cheers and applause] senator cruz: imagine a president who says we will stand up and defeat radical islamic terrorism. [cheers and applause] senator cruz: and we will call it by its name. we will defend the united states of america. now, all of these seem difficult

. indead, to sum they may seem unimaginable. yet if you look in the history of our country, imagine at 1775 and you and i were sitting there in richmond listening to patrick henry say, give me liberty or give me death, imagine it's 1776 and we were watching the 54 signers of the declaration of independence stand together and pledge their lives their fortunes, and their sacred honor to igniting the promise of america. imagine it was 1777 and we were watching general washington as he lost battle after battle after battle in the freezing cold as the soldiers with no shoes were dying fighting for freedom against the most

powerful army in the world. that, too, seemed unimaginable. imagine it's 1933 and we were listening to president franklin delano roosevelt tell america at a time of crushing depression, at a time of a gathering storm abroad that we have nothing to fear but fear itself. imagine it's 1979 and you and i were listening to ronald reagan and he was telling us that we would cut the top marginal tax rate from 70% all the way down to 28%. that we would go from crushing stagnation to booming economic growth, to millions being lifted

out of poverty and into prosperity and abundance. that the very day he was sworn in our hostages who were languishing in iran would be released. and that within a decade we would win the cold war and tear the berlin wall to the ground. that would have seemed unimaginable, and yet with the grace of god that's exactly what happened. [applause] senator cruz: from the dawn of this country at every stage america has enjoyed god's providential blessing. over and over again when we faced impossible odds the american people rose to the challenge.

compared to that repealing obamacare and abolishing the i.r.s. ain't all that tough. the power of the american people when we rise up and stand for liberty knows no bounds. [applause] if you're ready to join a grassroots army across this nation, coming together and standing for liberty, i'm going to ask you to break a rule here today and to take out your cell phones. and to text the word constitution to the number

33733. you can also text imagine. once again tax constitution to 33733. god's blessing has been on america from the very beginning of this nation and i believe god isn't done with america yet. [applause] i believe in you. i believe in the power of millions of courageous conservatives rising up to reignite the promise of america. and that is why today i am announcing that i'm running for president of the united states. [cheers and applause]

senator cruz: it is a time for truth. it is a time for liberty. it is a time to reclaim the constitution of the united states. i am honored to stand with each and every one of you courageous

conservatives as we come together to reclaim the promise of america, to reclaim the mandate, the hope, and opportunity for our children and our children's children we stand together for liberty. [applause] senator cruz: this is our fight. the answer will not come from washington. it will come only from the men and women across this country, from men and women, people of faith, from lovers of liberty, from people who respect the constitution, it will only come as it has come at every other time of challenge in this country, when the american people stand together and say we

will get back to the principles that have made this country great. we will get back and restore that shining city on a hill that is the united states of america. thank you, and god bless you. [cheers and applause] [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]

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>> ted cruz is the first presidential candidate to officially jump into the 2016 presidential race. and on social media we are getting your reaction today. join the conversation at facebook.com/c-span. on twitter with the #c-spanchat. a couple comments from facebook. annette says the democrats went too far to the complete left. i will never vote dem again. from karen cruz is just not qualified to be president of the united states. at the end of the day, this will be apparent to all. again, facebook.com/c-span. and tweet us at the hash tag c-spanchat.

>> tonight on the communicators we met up with tim moynihan at the consumer electronic show in las vegas who gave us the tour in the latest of tv sthrog. >> what does oled stand fomplet >> organic light emitting diode. it refers to the back light system. it uses l.e.d. back lights to liquid crystal display, and then this one is actually using the individual oled particles to -- as a source of light. they can be turned on and off independently. with an l.e.d. set you're always going to see some sort of light seeping through there. you can -- to my eyes this is pretty amazing right? this is four k and l.e.d. which are actual of the big buzz words at this year's show and have been and this is the holy great of tv's. >> tonight at 8:00 eastern on

the communicators on c-span2. >> the white house national economic council director and presidential advisor spoke last week at a breakfast with reporters where they outlined a president's economic agenda for the remainder of his time in office. from the "christian science monitor," this is almost an hour. >> thank for coming. i'm dave cook from the tore. our guests today with jeff sites, director of the national economic council and brian deeze senior advisor to president obama whose port yolegrow includes climate conservation.

he's a maryland native graduated with honors from duke university. he joined bane consulting and worked for david bradley at the corporate advisory board where he ultimately ran both organizations. our guest is the father of four and undertaken a series of challenging government roles including serving as u.s. chief performance officer, two tours as acting director of o.m.b., and heading the effort dubbed tech surge to fix health care.com. brian is a massachusetts native who graduate interested middlebury college and yale law school. after stints at the certainty for global development and the center for american progress, he worked on both the obama campaign and the obama-biden transition team. at the age of 31 his first assignment after joining the white house staff was to help restructure general motors. he went on to serve as deputy director of the national economic council and deputy director of the office of management and budget.

so much for biography. now on to the morning's mechanics. as always we are on the record here. please no live blogging or tweeting. in short no filing of any kind while the breakfast is under way to give us time to listen to what the guests say. there is no embargo when the session ends. to help you resist that selfy urge we'll email several pibtures of the session to alt reporters here as soon as the breakfast ends. as regular attendees know, if you like to ask question please do the traditional thing and send me a subtle nonthreatening signal and i'll happily call on one and all. we'll start off by offering our guests the opportunity to make opening comments and then we'll move to questions from around the table. with that, gentlemen, thanks again for doing this. the floor is yours. >> thank you very much. it's a pleasure to be here at this event. i'll be very brief at the top so we can spend most of the time here on questions. i just wanted to give you a little bit of a sense of how we

are thinking about the state of affairs and where we find ourselves today. as we think about our position economically we are in the -- we are in a moment where we are seeing durable momentum in the economic recovery. and so one of our key questions is how can we as an administration, executive branch, and the president position himself to be maximumally effective at encouraged increased economic growth, but also growth where the benefits are broadly shared. that's the core theory behind the idea of middle class economics that the president laid out in the state of the union. since the election the president has had a pretty explosive strategy around how to achieve that broad objective. and it has consisted of trying to stay on offense, trying to

push where he can to move the agenda through executive action. you have seen that in places like climate change, image -immigration cuban announcement, also in places like making mortgages more affordable through the f.h.a., taking on conflicts of interest that plague retirement accounts to try to help typical americans save more money for retirement. and you're going to keep seeing the president in that posture going forward. the other component of this strategy is to lay out a broad expansive and ambitious vision of what middle class economics means and how we as a country should move in that direction. that was the principle behind the state of the union and the president's budget. speaking both with concrete actions we can take but also with aspirational vision about

where we immediate to -- need to take the contry. the result of these two components is what you have seen over the past 10 weeks during this beginning -- this introductory period of the new republican congress is you have seen the president driving the agenda. you have seen the president defining the debate. and you have seen congress principally in a position where they are responding to things that the president is doing. we are looking for opportunities where we can work with congress to move the agenda. one of the things the president will do is continue to be very clear about what his vision is and where his priorities are. and it is a question about whether or not the republican leadership can actually effectively govern. and effectively move to places where they are working with democrats to try to get things done prag matically speaking.

that's where we find ourselves in the current moment. let me just turn it over to jeff and we'll take your questions. >> let me fill in a little more detail on the economic front with the frame that brian just offered. the president said in his state of the union that 2014 was a milestone year for the economy. and we are off to a good start in 2015. last month's jobs numbers almost 300,000 new jobs. importantly, that's 12 straight months of more than 200,000 jobs. that's the first time that that has happened in almost 40 years. if you step back and think about our position in the global economy, it's quite strong. we continue to be the world leader in innovation with our research universities, large percent of the world patents and r&d come out of the u.s. our work force is the most productive in the world. and we are a decade ago we would

have talked about the vulnerability in terms of our competitive position in energy, now that's a new source of comparative advantage as it accrues big benefit to manufacturers particular in the u.s. versus their global competitors. as brian said, there is certainly much more work to be done. consistent with middle class economics, big focus on wages. this is several decades old problem of stagnant wages. so you'll continue to see executive actions like the conflict of interest rule that brian talked about which is good for middle class savers. the president announced a tech hire initiative. we actually have five million job openings in the u.s. right now. 500,000 of those are tech jobs. tech jobs are important for innovation. and continued growth of our economy and our competitive position. they also pay well. so we are working with the private sector companies and mayors to take advantage of new

training models like coding boot camps that can get people into well paying tech jobs in 10, 12 weeks rather than several years. we'll continue to execute on the executive actions that we have already rolled out and do new exive actions. likely across the next couple of months there will be an update of the overtime rule, which hasn't been updated in quite some time. right now workers -- salaried workers have to earn less than $23,000 to qualify for automatic overtime. that's obviously too low in this economy. .

rated -- moderated somewhat and keeping inflation too low so of the things that keep you up at night in terms of the economy's health what's the main one? jeff: i think making sure that we are doing all we can on the middle class wage front is important. that's a decades old problem and there are several levers that we should pull, infrastructure is not only good for middle class jobs but is good for our middle class -- is good for our longer term competitiveness. we've seen positive movement at the state level on minimum wage. with 17 states moving forward and increasing their minimum wage. we should do that across the board and congress should pass a $10.10 minimum wage. we should continue to, as i talked about earlier invest in job training methods and programs that work, that

actually have well-paying jobs at the other end of the training. so we are reforming our federal programs in terms of job training at the same time working with the private sector in close partnership with local employers, local businesses, community colleges to ensure that we are taking advantage of new training methods and filling well-paying jobs on the other end. so we need to continue to address wages and make sure that we have good middle-class opportunities. david: in your opening remarks, you talked about the president staying on offense and we'd see more of that posture. you have fracking rules coming out today. other than that, what's left in terms of executive action on climate? is there more coming? brian: well, i think if you look at the agenda around reducing greenhouse gas

emissions, encouraging a clean energy economy this is a place where we have a very aggressive agenda and most of the actions that we are pushing forward are actions that we can move forward on through the executive space. so the short answer to your question is, yes. yesterday we announced a new goal in theand the president signed an executive order to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from the federal government by 40%. and there's a whole set of actions associated with that today, as you mentioned, releasing updated standards for fracking on federal lands. but if you look forward, core to our agenda is the clean power plan, which will reduce carbon pollution from the power sector. that rule has been proposed. we're going to finalize that rule and implement it with states. we also have a big opportunity this year in the international

space to leverage what we're doing domestically into a viable global agreement, and then beyond that if you look at things in the area of methane or in the area of energy efficiency we have a lot more to do through rulemaking to both tighten down on energy waste and carbon pollution but also provide long-term incentives to encourage investment in this space. so this is an area --.com burning the constitution, as -- david: burning the institution as your friend -- brian: this is an agenda that lands squarely within well-established legal preceps, not only in the clean air act but clean water act and other foundational environmental laws. if you look in particular at the clean power plant -- the clean power plan which is i hope you're referencing, this is a rule that at its core is based on providing flexibility to states, that the structure

of the law, the clean air act, and the structure of the rule is about setting targets but then giving states broad flexibility in terms of how they achieve that. and what you have seen outside of washington is broad interests in red states and blue states around how to be pragmatic about creating plants that will actually work for those states. so that's going to -- that is our focus. will remain our focus going forward. david: mr. rahm sitting back by the power outlets. >> there's a kid's table back there. tony from "politico." just a two-part question for you guys. first, there's been a lot of attention on capitol hill this week and into next week on nut neutrality arguing that the white house improperly interfered in the f.c.c.'s open internet rules. i wonder if you could comment.

to start, can you comment on some of those allegations that you guys interfered in the f.c.c.'s process? jeff: the president made his views known through the appropriate channels, including a video which was publicly released. so, again, f.c.c. independent and the president's views clearly known through the appropriate legal channels. >> sure. over the course of the past year, you know, congressman chaffetz, as enearthed 1,600 pages of email that you met with the chairman repeatedly, there was an ex parte filed at the beginning of november, i want to say, in which the white house exs wered his concerns. he said you guys for months pressured the f.c.c. jeff: well the ex parte is the president -- in terms of meeting with wheeler, the chairman of the f.c.c., i do it on a wide range of issues, net

neutrality being one of them. >> can you sketch out for us over the next couple months some of the work you guys might be doing on in tech? jeff: well, we'll continue to implement things like tech hire. we started off with 21 partnerships between local cities and rural areas with employers to, again, as i talked about before, fill the half million open tech jobs and take advantage of those new innovative models. so we will continue to execute on existing executive actions like public-private partnerships in hiring and roll out new executive actions. i'm not going to get ahead of those rollouts. david: mike from bloomberg. >> on the trade agenda, you said just now the president's very committed to the -- to

trade promotion authority fast track. and you talked about that. what -- can you give me some sense of specifically what the president's going to be doing and when he's going to be do it and what portion of his kind of time he's going to be spending on this, when that comes up, what kinds of commitments have you made to really have him do tangible things? how much of that is going to be making touring around the -- will he be touring around the country and making that the major focus of his public remarks for a period of time, making the case, or is this going to be something that he's going to leave more to cabinet members and lower ranking people and make the occasional remark like he's been doing in speeches focused on other things? is it more a washington focus versus public focus thing? and then just very briefly for brian. you were talking about you

expect a lot of room for rules on energy efficiency and methane. can you give me better sense of what that is, are you talking about pipeline rules or are you talking about more than that? brian: as i said before, the president's very committed to the trade agreements. you're right starting with passage of t.p.a. jeff: it is i think his top economic legislative priority. and you see that in the state of the union and a full-throated argument in favor of free trade agreements that are good for american workers in his state of the union. he actually did a weekly address the benefits of strong trade agreements a few weeks ago. he's spending a lot of time in small group meetings with members from both the house and senate. it is also, as you alluded to, a cabinet effort.

so secretary frisker, secretary vilsack, secretary lieu was in miami yesterday on trade. so the cabinet is spending time both on the hill and out in the country talking about the benefits of trade. most important here obviously is ambassador froman on the front line of the negotiations so this is a priority of the president's and therefore a priority of all of us who work with the president including his cabinet. there's an all-out effort here to make sure there's a full understanding of the benefits for the american worker of strong fair trade agreements. brian: and on your second question, so with respect to methane, we have announced a goal of reducing methane emissions by 40% to 45% against 2005 baseline. the way in which we're going to achieve that goal is through a combination of regulatory actions and voluntary actions.

so on the regulatory side, this includes measures like the e.p.a. proposing rules for new sources on methane which is something that we anticipate will come forward here in the next several months. on the voluntary side, this includes work through for example, usda who's working with the agricultural industry to actually get a viable long-term agreement to reduce emissions from the ag sector. within the efficiency context, part of what the president did in the climate action plan was set very bold overall goals for reducing energy waste increasing energy efficiency. the department of energy has a cadens of rule makings to increase standards in buildings, appliances and otherwise. i think you can expect that cadens to continue over the

next two years. but this is also a place where we're looking to partner with the private sector because the truth is by providing the right incentives, this is a place where there's huge opportunity. i was with the president in a sort of who's who of the fortune 100 yesterday when the president made his federal government greenhouse gas reduction announcement and you have everybody from g.e. to hewlett-packard, not only committing to help work as contractors to the federal government but actually setting their own greenhouse gas reduction goals for their own corporate entities and a lot of that is being driven by the fact that energy efficiency is low-hanging fruit from a corporate perspective very short payoffs -- short payoffs two, three, four-year returns. so this is a place where by being smart about how we partner with the private sector we can actually leverage our

impact pretty substantially. >> [inaudible] through executive actions i was hoping you could give us insight as to how those executive actions come into? like the green house gas emissions are big picture executive orders. a lot seem to be also some smaller board regulations, grants things from maybe multiple agencies packaged together by the white house to give it a little bit more impact. in the fourth quarter of the clinton administration, that was called project going in the agencies getting stuff from the agencies, what can we do? is there sort of a project zients or deese? jeff: there is a project zients but if i told you all i have i'd have to kill you all. brian: it's a good question and part of this comes from

leadership and direction at the top. and part of what the -- part of the tone that president set and i think many of you have heard this directly from him but coming off the election and over the last couple of months was, you know, we're in the fourth quarter. a lot of games get decided in the fourth quarter. that's always resonated with me as a patriots fan. the -- that we need to be -- being creative and staying at the effort to look for every reasonable and creative ways to leverage the assets that we have to help make progress on these broad middle-class economics theme. so in practice the way that that gets manifested is that you have the white house policy council, one of which jeff leads and the domestic policy council as well, and it's a collaborative effort working with agencies to try to identify, are there places where we haven't thought as creatively as we could?

some of that is in rulemaking and the regulatory space but some of it is in partnership, finding new ways to partnership and also new ways to use, you know, the terms bully pulpit is often thrown around but part of it is also thinking very concretely and being hard-headed about how to use the platforms that the president and also the first lady have to drive progress and so this is a wide-ranging effort and one that frankly the energy and enthusiasm around it is largely coming from the president himself. david: let me add a little something to that. i agree with everything that brian said. there's a clear message from the president to his whole team and his whole cabinet that in this fourth quarter we want to get as much done as we can. -- jeff: getting stuff done falls into two broad categories when

we think about executive action. one is what we have already announced and executing against those initiatives. so on monday and tuesday, we're holding sweat u.s.a. over at the national harbor. the president will be addressing a crowd of about 2,500, including 1,200 overseas investors. this is about having international companies pick the u.s. for their investments. and this effort started several years ago at commerce and has now grown to this scale and has real results in terms of helping to facilitate investment in the u.s. so constant execution against executive actions that have already been announced is as important, if not more important at this stage as new executive action. so we will continue to roll out new executive actions but the president is holding us to account on strong execution against the executive actions that we've already announced across the last several years.

david: kevin. >> [inaudible] couple questions for each of you. david: how about one or two because we have a lot? >> for jeff on the labor department overtime standard. there's been some grumbling that the number you're looking at is not as big a number as some of the labor advocates would like. talk about what you're weighing against. i know you can't want -- the tradeoffs you're looking at and dave's urging for brian -- i'll save the tougher one for brian. two-fold for brian. one on autos. you were deeply involved in that. a great front page story in "the wall street journal" this week about mexico, trade pacs, how it's winning a lot of these new plants. what can be done short of t.p.a.? what other practical steps could help to bring some of these auto plants that are going to mexico back to the

u.s.? then on energy a lot of attention on this export push. do you think exports would create artificial shortages and raise prices or do you think exports is -- oil exports are needed? jeff: on overtime i'm not going to get ahead of the specifics of the rule. as i said it will come out in the next few months. given that it's set at $23,000 for salary workers, we think there's an opportunity to make a significant change there that importantly will help many workers earn what they deserve. >> what are some of the tradeoffs? there's a tradeoff in everything you do. what are some of the things you're weighing? jeff: we want to make sure that workers are earning what they deserve and at the same time we continue to have a competitive economy and what is increasingly a global economy. so the rule is -- the level is so outdated at this point there's an opportunity to move

significantly. brian: so just briefly on your two. you know, i think reflecting on the american auto industry, it is -- it is really striking to me where the industry is today given where we were in the winter and spring of 2009. even the optimists at that time were not projecting either the pace at which job growth would return to the domestic auto industry or the pace at which the overall industry would recover. the second thing that people were not projecting, which probably goes to the competitive question you raised is that in the last couple of years we've seen something striking which is that detroit three have actually gained

market share against their foreign competitors in the united states. so the upswing is not simply that we're back selling, you know a little north of 16 million cars a year when we bottomed out at just over nine million. it's also that these companies are finding ways to actually outcompete and take market share from the -- from their foreign competitors which was something that was absolutely not conventional wisdom or prevailing wisdom and instead was sort of a slow march of losing market share for the american companies. i think the question going forward of how to main -- keep the united states a competitive location for domestic manufacturing investment is broader than the auto industry alone. and it's an issue that we spend a lot of time on. we are seeing trends, both in health care and energy and otherwise that have really helped change the game in terms

of the competitive posture for manufacturing domestically. i think that there's more that we can do. jeff mentioned select u.s.a. on monday. it's an incredible event, incredible initiative where we are bringing foreign investment to choose the united states. there's also more that we can do, and usgr has been aggressive in enforcing trade agreements which is an issue that's important in the auto space. i think continued vigilance on the enforcement side is important as well. and just very briefly on the energy side, we -- we have not changed our -- the long-standing policy with respect to crude oil exports. the changes we've seen in the industry over the past several years, increase in production, changes within the industry itself raised a number of questions about where the

industry is overall sand and we are looking at that and monitoring the industry constantly. but, you know, we don't have a change of policy with respect to that and don't have anything else on that front. jeff: just add a little data to the select u.s.a. and position on the global economy due to these strategic advantages we have in innovation, i mentioned, productivity of our work force, now energy. we are, again, the number one place to invest when you poll global c.e.o.'s and more than half of c.e.o.'s of manufacturing companies are looking to bring facilities or to locate facilities here in the u.s. so that's part of why you have such strong interest in select u.s.a. next week. david: jonathan wiseman, "new york times." >> i want to talk a little bit about the fiscal issues. it was clear this week from congress is that there are deep divisions in the republican

party and there is a lot of chafing between the budget control caps. on the defense side, but also on the domestic side. but when people talk about a ryan-murray-type deal, there is no patty murray anymore. it's the white house. the white house is the democratic side. what are you doing to try to drive the republicans to the table before there's a crisis at the end of the year? and what are the prospects of some kind of settlement that would get the president his higher caps and satisfy the republicanses on their deficit reduction? brian: there is still a patty murray. she still is a force to be reckoned with. so i think overall on the fiscal side and then to the specifics of the -- you know, of the discretionary issues that you're raising. we are -- our hope as we were moving into this budget season

was that the changes that we've seen in the economy and in our fiscal position would actually help move us beyond the fiscal -- the old fiscal debates of the last several years. part of what we were trying to do in our budget was acknowledge that our fiscal situation and our economic situation have changed in important ways both in the near term in terms of the rapid fiscal consolidation and deficit reduction we've seen but also in the medium term largely around the reduction in the rate of growth of health care costs continuing to step down baseline deficits estimates in the future. that's not to say that long-term fiscal challenges have been solved, but we are in a different position. unfortunately what we saw in the republican budget, we were hopeful we would see something new or a different approach. unfortunately what we saw was largely the same approach -- prioritizing deficit reduction

over shared growth starting principally with tax cuts aimed at wealthier americans and then forcing very deep cuts in order to pay for those and hit the fiscal objectives. one of the things interesting in this context is the debate that's occurred around discretionary levels in particular. i think that the thing that we can do to most help flee encourage the kind -- helpfully encourage the kind of deal that would be good for the economy and good for our national security is be very clear, both about where the president stands and about how you could get from here to there. and so one of the reasons why -- if you go back and look when the president announced his budget, he was very clear when he went out and he said two things. he said, i will not accept a budget that locks in sequester going forward. and i will not accept breaking the linkage that was enshrined

in the bipartisan burr murray-ryan agreement between our national security and our economic security. he laid that as predicate and then put forward a budget that shows very concretely both how you could raise those caps and how you could pay for them quite explicitly. it's all in there. we do not ascribe to the chuck grassley theory that right way to do budgets is to have as few words and as few details as possible. ours is all there for people to see. and i think that that's the thing we can do to be most constructive. as you say the republicans can have a choice. we have done this several times. they know where this play ends, and there is bipartisan support for coming together, recognizing that we can -- we can absolutely afford to invest in our economic security invest in our national security, pay for it over the long time and we would be better off both economically

and politically if we can get an agreement on that sooner rather than engage in a whole bunch of brinksmanship where we know where that ends up. so i think what we can do is be clear, be specific and have the president drawing those lines, not as a way of fomenting partisanship but as a way of trying to clearly indicate a path that just to be clear there is -- there are lots of republicans who support that path just as there are lots of democrats. jeff: let me say one word on the economy. if you look back across the last year or so where we had strong growth, it's been helped by the absence of brinksmanship, self-inflicted wounds, fiscal drama. in fact, if you plot consumer confidence or business confidence the dips have generally been around things like government shutdown. so we hope for the sake of the economy, american businesses, american workers that congress

has learned that lesson and that under no situation do we head toward another self-inflicted wound on the economy. >> real quickly, paul ryan -- who do you think your negotiating partners are and are you reaching out already to them? brian: so i think that republicans introduced their budget this week the committee process yesterday, they're going to go through next week and we got to see how that all plays itself out. there is still an open question, as you said, this debate within the republican party about whether they actually are going to fund defense at levels that are uniformed military service say, you know, would be devastating to our national security priorities. and so i think we need to see how that plays out over the course of the next week. we are and have been over the course of the last several

weeks engaged with members of congress republicans and democrats, largely in that context around our budget and our budget proposal but part of that was what i was talking about before, making sure people fully understand the approach that we're taking and how we think we could find areas of compromise. >> [inaudible] the bipartisan s.g.r. agreement that house leaders are about to release, a two-year extension of the medigap reform. is that something you can live with? i'm word wondering about the reallocation to the disability fund from the retirement fund, is that something you could support on any level and if not how do you believe this should be fixed when it dips into the red next year?

brian: so on the first as you say it's about to be released and we haven't -- we haven't seen the details so we're -- we'll be better positioned to make an assessment once we've had a chance to do that. i think that as some of you know but in our budget we laid out a proposal for a permanent s.g.r. fix and have a number of proposals in that space in our budget. that's something that president has been supportive of: -- of for several years, doing it in a fiscally responsible way, but in the respect of this agreement, i think we need to see what they are before we have a better sense of where we land. your second question -- jeff: social security. brian: social security. you know, the house -- the

house provision was unconstructive and at odds with how this issue has been addressed time and time again in a bipartisan manner. and we continue to believe that the right way to address this issue is consistent with what we proposed. and that we have always said, as many of you around this table know and have been reporting on for years, we have always said that we're open to having a conversation about social security reform more broadly. we have laid out a set of principles that would be important in the context of that conversation. but it is just not tan he believe -- tanible to walk away from a clear bipartisan approach to addressing the diosi issue. in terms of answering your

question concretely, that's how we think we would get it done. david: jim from the a.p. >> [inaudible] you needed patty murray because obviously the senate was controlled by democrats and that's not the issue now. it's an internal debate among republicans. do you actually respect to play a role in the crafting of a republican budget? it seems at the moment your fingerprints appear on it. it loses republican support. so i'm curious whether the strategy that you're employing in this aggressive way that president is talking about the economy and you're talking about your side of the budget is more designed to set the predicate for vetoes that will come if and when legislation that's crafted out of the republican budget comes your way. brian: so i think we're going to need to let this process play out a bit to know exactly

-- it's impossible to project forward on exactly how the mechanics will go. from our perspective our goal is absolutely to get to an agreement that reflects the principles we've laid out. we've laid out a menu of policies that would enable you to get there and there is bipartisan support to lift the defense caps lift the nondefense caps and pay for it over 10 years. that's a blueprint where there's bipartisan support. so our hope and our objective is for congress to come together around an agreement of that basic form and put it in place before we have to get into a situation where we are into brinksmanship, as jeff

noted. and, again, hard for me to say exactly how the -- you know how that process might unfold. we get to see where the republican budget resolutions actually land but i think that there's -- our posture is one of trying to encourage good faith conversations, good faith efforts to get there and that's part of dwr we're trying to be clear is to facilitate that sort of thing. the one thing i would add is that the murray-ryan structure, this basic structure of lifting the caps on both sides, paying for it over a decade is one that was both good economically, took off the table this constant set of brinksmanship but was also -- worked politically. and that there's a -- you know, a question out there that i think the republican leadership has to grabble with around, do -- grapple with around, do they

find areas -- there are areas of bipartisan agreement and move to those in the first instance rather than getting backed into them? on the d.h.s. funding side you saw the instance of them getting backed into an outcome where sort of knew where that story was also going to end. i think there's a question in the budget context of whether we can get to that outcome on the front end which would be i think better politically but also most importantly it would be better economically. >> [inaudible] if the domestic caps are lifted, do you still have a problem with using kind of boosting the overseas contingency operations funding to cover defense spending? brian: well, what i find interesting about the -- about the overseas contingency operations, the o.c.o. debate, it's traditionally republicans who've had a problem with this

and have i think rightly referred to the inappropriate use of it as a slush fund. and i think that one of the things that's important to understand with respect to funding for defense is that providing some certainty, forward certainty is vital to them being able to prepare to execute missions. so part of why when you hear the chairman of the joint chiefs or the secretary of defense describe why o.c.o. is not a viable solution is because it creates constant annual uncertainty around funding levels. so we don't think that that is an appropriate approach or that it solves the problem. frankly, i think there is, as you've seen from the war as lindsey graham called it,

between republicans, there is a lot of discomfort on the republican side around using o.c.o. as a mechanism as well. david: scott from n.p.r. >> brian, you used the phrase cadens rulemaking, was that referred to the overtime rules? it's been a year since the president called for those. every time i check with the labor department they push off the target date some months in the future. why is it taking so long and in the fourth quarter do you pick up the cadens a little bit? brian: you want to take that one? jeff: we're a few months away from getting that out the door and that will leave plenty of time to fully implement the rule. >> why is it taking so long? jeff: to do the appropriate analysis to set the level and once the proposed rule is ready it will be announced and that

will be within the next few months. >> [inaudible] the rulemaking on existing coal fire plants, can you describe what the practical implications might be from the administration's advantage point to his efforts to enlist the help of governors to do that, to tie things up legally? and can you also describe your political analysis of it? is it smart politics for republicans to take a stand? brian: i think this is another example of the president leading, the president setting clear objectives and pushing the policy agenda and republicans being in a responsive defensive posture. the truth of this rule is that, as i mentioned before, this rule is grounded in providing

states flexibility to craft their own plans. and the environmental protection agency is working in a bipartisan pragmatic way at the state level to help states understand the options and the opportunities. and this rule is not even a final rule. this rule is in the proposed stage, and they are working through that process. and you're seeing across the country very constructive and pragmatic efforts in states across the country. in fact, just yesterday the national governors association announced a convening of their authority, a convening of their tools to try to work with states and do workshops to help states understand how they can work within this rule, how they can comply with this rule. and if you look at the states that are leading that effort

again, they are red states and blue states, and part of this is because there's incredible economic opportunity that states understand in driving the clean energy economy in these states. i think that, you know, from the -- so what you have is you have the republican -- a republican leader in mitch mcconnell who is going way outside the bounds of his -- the position that he was elected to and, you know i think we all would be better served if he and others spent less time trying to lecture states about what they should be doing when they themselves are focused on looking at how they can operate in their own best interests and more time trying to actually get some

constructive things done in congress like, for example, we could confirm a highly qualified attorney general nominee who's been sitting out there for more than 130 days. so you know, we're going to keep -- we're going to keep working on this exactly as we have and i think that that's going to be the path forward on this one. >> and your political assessment is for the republican party, it is smart politics or not? brian: look, i think that addressing climate change and putting the united states on the forefront of a clean energy economy is good substance, first and foremost, because it's taking on the -- one of the most important issues of our generation and i think increasingly it is good politics as well because you know, states should be -- states should be given the flexibility to decide how they want to craft plans to have cleaner air and cleaner water for their kids and address the

fact that, you know, that climate change you know, affects how, you know, how exposed kids are to asthma and has other important effects. i think as the said last week when he was doing an interview, the -- eventually the republican party will have to change their opinion on this because the public upon is on it. the posture of climate denial is one that is increasingly not acceptable because it is so at odds with the science publicly and so, you know, i think most importantly this is a very important issue for our economy and for the health of our country and we're going to keep pushing forward of it because of that. david: we have only about 2 1/2 minutes left. there are seven people waiting. not everyone's going to get a question because i want to keep my deal with jen and end on

time. michael warren, last question. >> thank you. how do more restrictive rules on hydraulic fracturing help economic growth? brian: rebelieve that in order to have a durable industry in the future you need to strike an appropriate balance between protectings public health and safety and allowing for responsible production. i think if you look at the rules that we will -- that department of interior will put out later today, they appropriately strike that balance and they are focused on pragmatic but very important steps like disclosing the fluids that are being used in the fracking process. that is a step that is very

important from a transparency perspective, from a public safety perspective but a it also is important in terms of having a -- having a template that this industry can work from given the degree of public concern and localized concern about the potential health and safety impacts. the only -- the last thing i would say about this is that these are rules for fracking on public lands, about 11% of the fracking that goes on in this country happens on public lands. this is the portion of this issue that we, the federal government have an obligation to set rules of the road for but ultimately this is an issue that is going to be decided in state compols and in localities -- capitols and in localities as well as with industry.

we're comfortable what we're putting out today reflects a responsible approach to our obligation to balance those issues that i talked about at the top. but one of the things we're going to see going forward is a conversation that will play out across the country about where to strike that balance. david: i want to thank both of you for going this. i want to apologize my colleagues for not getting you in. 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] >> well, the u.s. house is set to take five bills today when they gavel in in about 15 minutes. one is a resolution from eliot engel who's the top democrat on the foreign affairs committee urging the president to provide military weaponry to ukraine as it fights russian-backed sprittists. another resolution condemns

the, quote cowardly attacks on innocent men, women and children in nigeria by the terror group boko haram. and later this week the house expected to take up the g.o.p. budget blueprint for fiscal year 2016. the house is back at 2:00 p.m. eastern. we'll have live coverage here on c-span. until then a conversation about the 2016 budget. can watch the video on c-span.org. now, turning to maya mcguiness -- maya mcguinemacguineas. this week, congress takes of the budget resolution. where they at the process? guest: it is time for them both to move forward in their chambers, and think about how to bring them together. and recent years, that has been an impossible task. you have one party in another

party, and they will never reconcile their budget. at big piece of this right now is with the house and senate both run by republicans, this is a test as to whether they can govern. can they come up with that budget. i think the fact that we have not had a budget in the past years is a sign that we can't govern. they are starting pretty close to each other so that is a good chance they can come to an agreement. host: prior to this coming to the floor, the president put out his marker. why has the president said as far as future spending, and what do you think of it? guest: it is interesting. the whole budget process starts when the president said his budget, but it wasn't really incorporated into the process. it is all but forgotten. the presidents priorities were

not really focusing on fiscal constraints. in the past, we are talked about how you want to at least make sure that debt is no longer going faster than the entire economy. that has changed. now that the president put his budget out, he didn't try to have that metric. he certainly didn't try to balance the budget or try to make it for the long-term that the economy is going faster than the budget. he focused on a number of new initiatives. he had some past -- health care savings, for instance. he didn't focus on the same physical things as the house and senate. what we are hearing from the president is that this problem of deficit has basically gone away for the time being. our budget deficit has come down significantly, which is true. but i will talk more about how you have to look at the big picture.

meanwhile, the house and senate are introducing a budget where they say we need to look at this over 10 years. they are on different paths. host: we will get to these details in just a second. i want to get the viewers and law. i will put that phone numbers on the screen for maya macguineas the president of the committee for a responsible federal budget. here are the numbers to call. democrats call (202) 748-8000. republicans, (202) 748-8001 independents, (202) 745-8002. we look forward to your tweets as well during this segment. republicans propose deep cuts. what are they proposing to cut? guest:'s budget gets balance

purely by cuts. it doesn't talk about revenues. my take on the situation that are deficit and debt is so large that if we are going to get a balanced, the budget must look at all aspects. you are looking at a pretty difficult goal as is with one hand tied behind the back. where the cuts are are primarily on health care. that makes sense. i think health care costs are growing clicker than the economy . they have a trillion plus in health care savings that they aren't specifying. when you go back to the purpose of the budget, the budget is really a place where people can show their priorities, and in many senses their political priorities. if we don't look specifically at the details it is not critical that the budget gets enacted. one thing they have been talking about is repealing the present

health care plan. that would all go, but there are a lot of health care savings and revenues that they would want to make up in other ways. repealing obamacare would ask the cost money. they talk about making up those costs, but they don't say how they will do it. they also talk about block granting medicaid, which is something we started hearing about a few years ago when paul ryan put it forth. that is something to have stuck with. they also focus on the sequester. the sequester is these large spending caps. that is about one third of the budget. what sequester doesn't do is it doesn't affect foreign entitlement programs, the greatest area of growth. the sequester spending caps, many think they are too onerous. the steep cuts are in the defense area. there is a question as to

whether they will list those cap somewhat so that they will be less pressure on those parts of the budget and offset them with other cuts, like we saw with the ryan murray deal. what the republicans want to do is have trade and more space to spend on defense, and less on domestic discretionary paid those. second, they want to use and over and see -- oversee contingency operation. they are trying to get more money to the defense fund. host: one more quick question before we get to calls. you mention house and senate republican plans are fairly similar. what are the biggest differences? guest: originally the senate had it used that gimmick. they haven't said let's put more

money in the war spending fun. we were kind of pleased. the house had used this gimmick a backdoor way to get money. senate haven't done that. then, they offered an amendment and went along as well. the senate gets a budget balanced one year later. and doesn't have a strong of cuts in health care areas. both of the budgets -- really interesting -- are both lose on how they want to get the revenue . there are a lot of tax breaks. another inconsistency relates to a lot of moments in the budget and decisions on how to fund things. these budgets don't choose to pay for them, and they say that somehow, magically, they would be paid for. there's a huge disconnect by

saying, we want to be fiscally responsible, but we won't give you specifics, and it when it comes to decisions, we will actually add to the debt. host: we will take a call from joe in new york. republican caller. good morning. caller: good morning. my question is basically how come we take money out of our budget to go against a foreign country leader, which should be illegal because we have no business interfering in someone else's politics in some other country. my second question is if we are worried about balance budget, why don't we take care of the concerns at home by putting people back to work the need to go to work. we could take a work program like they had back in the 20's and 30's, during the great

depression, and put people to work on roads and bridges that we actually need to build are our if the structure in the country. we need to spend money on that because when you get american people back to work, more taxes will come in. host: good point, joe. guest: to important questions. on the first one, that is more of a foreign policy question than a budget question that many questions around the country as to how interventionist we should be around the country. it really is a small portion of the budget overall that goes to international affairs and our involvement overseas. much more has gone towards the two wars that we have been involved in. prior to this, we did not have wars that we did not at least partially fine. this is the first time we have gone to war and we 100% debt finance the war.

finally, shouldn't we be paying for instead of adding it to the bill? your second question is critical. the whole question with physical -- fiscal responsibility is all about economic growth and keeping our economy strong. in addition to be highly indebted right now, with our debt at twice of historical averages, we continue to have real job problems in the country. not only do we have job problems, we have wage problems. even as jobs are slowly coming back, wages are growing as much as they need to. i agree that a huge part of an economic plan needs to involve a plan -- i would even say balancing the budget in the next 10 years, i don't even think we need to go that far but getting the debt under control. interest payments are the fastest-growing part of the budget, and looking at different ways to grow jobs.

your point about infrastructure is an important one, i think that is the part of the budget that has the most potential to create jobs. an area in which both so and republicans agree need to address. there is a big coalition that say infrastructure has been underinvested in for quite some time. also, jobs are coming back as quickly as they need to be. funding in this area would be a great way to help for job growth, and good jobs. hopefully, fingers crossed, this is an area where we will see some progress. host: let's hear from larry. caller: good morning. iva, to make. -- i have a comment to make. you are not telling the truth. the truth of unfunded liabilities.

members of congress, republicans and democrats, you can't get anything done with three days. it doesn't make sense. obamacare, it's destroying jobs and businesses. it has collapsed the system. you're not telling the truth. unemployment is higher. it's 23%, not 5%. there are lies by the media president, members of congress. we have to turn back to the old standard. the federal reserve won't work. we're heading into a financial collapse. guest: someone who is more pessimistic than im. you do bring up a point >> we will leave this discussion from this morning's "washington journal" for live coverage now of the u.s. house. general speeches for now. legislative business will get under way at 4:00 p.m. eastern with members taking up a measure criticizing attacks in

nigeria by the terror group boko haram. also a bill providing military aid to ukraine. votes after 6:30. this is expected to be the last week of work before a two-week congressional recess. and now live coverage of the u.s. house here on c-span. the speaker pro tempore: the house will be in order. the prayer will be offered by the guest chaplain, reverend cordetores. the chaplain: let us pray. loving god, source of all wisdom, you lead us in discovering what is true and good so that human society may come to reflect your loving order. bless the work of the people's house. inspire all those who labor