at 9:15 a.m. come our spotlight on magazines features sam baker of the national journal on his piece examining indiana's new religious the law. -- religious >> i think it would be helpful and i would like to see it on the desk -- on my desk by the end of the week. a law that makes it clear this does not give it the right to deny services to anyone. ♪ >> reportedly, legislators might as amended that law as early as tomorrow. this as legislators in arkansas passed out there own version at

walmart. good morning, it is april the first. for our first 30 five minutes your thoughts on this attempted to modify the law. the arkansas up stage of the law for these types of laws overall. if you want to wait in this morning 202-748-8001 hour lineup for republicans our line for democrats 202-748-8000, our line for independents 202-748-8002. you can also post on our social media site for our facebook page twitter or on our website. from the indianapolis star

stemming from the press conference, which you can see at c-span.org, pence calls for laws to be fixed. they are following this story. tony cook joins us now, a reporter for the application. good morning. guest: thank you for having me. host: where do we stand on the modification of the slot? guest: governor of its called me for adding language to the law for clarifying it is not intending to discriminate against people who may be seeking a services from various businesses. exact language, though we have not seen yet. so, there is a lot of suspense right now for folks on both sides of the issue. we have social conservatives who fear that the law is going to get watered down.

we also have folks on the other side who fear that it will not go far enough to stem the damage to the state's reputation and has incurred so far. host: in your publication this morning there is an op-ed from previous mayors weighing in on the issue, showing concerns especially from the business aspect. that is buying large in the decisions that have to be made. guest: absolutely. we are seeing businesses like salesforce.com canceling it training sessions here and emgs list, one of the bigger's employees here in town, has put -- emgs list, one of the bigger employees here in town, has put a stop.

host: also, the ncaa with the final four going on, they are weighing in on this as well. guest: one of the biggest events since the super bowl, the ncaa saying they are concerned about this law that it may have in impact on their decision to host events here in the future. that is a big deal. they are based here in indianapolis so it is a huge concern here. host: who are the legislators involved in coming up with the language? what do they say? guest: the legislative leaders primarily you have the house speaker and the senate president pro tem. at this point, this thing is

almost entirely in their hands. they are speaking with government and business leaders trying to hash out language that will satisfy all involved. so calm -- so, it is all about discussions they are having right now in taking these ideas back to their caucuses to see if they will fly there. it is a delicate balancing act for them. probably one of the biggest political challenges of their lives. host: in the new york times, it says some action might happen wednesday or thursday. are you hearing the same things? guest: i know the leaders were meeting throughout yesterday in today trying to crack his language. they are not in session today. today is that aside for committee action. we expect they will probably

hash out language sometime today and take some action on the new language tomorrow. governor prince has said he wants something on his desk by the end of the week since typically they do not mean on fridays that means they would have to have something by tomorrow. host: one of the things that came out of this was asking the governor about a specific law that would prevent discrimination against those with different sexual orientation, would this paved the way for that kind of action, do you think? guest: a lot of people are calling for those kinds of protections. if the religious freedom law is not appealed. the problem is it's -- pence has had a long-standing opposition to that kind of measure. he is concerned, and i think a lot of republicans at the

statehouse are concerned about alienating the conservative base that they have. you have to remember last year we had a huge fight over a constitutional game marriage ban here in indiana. the social conservatives lost that battle. and a lot of people see this law as, you know basically, a way to give something back to those folks at your last year's unsuccessful legislative battle over gay marriage. host: where a fast, what is the potential of a possible repeal of this law? guest: i do not think it is totally out of the question, but i think it seems unlikely. legislators, especially senate attempt david long has said this law is not going to be repealed. these are some pretty strong statements in that regard. at the same time, if legislative

leaders feel like the only way to restore the state's reputation and to restore the faith of the business community is to ease or add protection for gays and lesbians or repeal the law, you know, they may find among their caucus leadership, or among their caucus members that to repeal is the more viable option. i have not heard anything to that effect yet but i think it is at least a small possibility. host: that is tony cook of the indianapolis star joining us, mr. cook thank you for your time. guest: yes, thank you for having me. host: if you want to weigh in on action from indiana, even now as legislators from arkansas have passed out their version of freedom of religion bill, hand

you want to billion in on this topic this morning, the numbers will be on your screen. 202-748-8001 four republicans. for democrats, 202-748-8000. and for independents 202-748-8002. host: chris, go ahead please. caller: when i look at the paper listed behind the governor they have been going on this kind of talk for years. whenever he goes on tv, when he tells the people in indiana he did not know it was discriminating against several people, then i know he is lying to us. as the governor you should read the bill, you should study at,

you should know what you are representing. the people behind him do not give him a good name. i am disappointed in him and i would never work for him again. thank you for letting me talk. host: republican line, you're next. caller: yes, i was just wondering, i just wanted to say that, first of all, if one law is already an active like the first amendment, freedom of religion and then something comes along that contradicts it in a law, the other one is invalid. right? has, obviously, you cannot change the cover -- the color of your skin and it is more like a -- what it says in the bible, to turn away. our use of the stoop follow your own religion? they are too-faced.

they are hard to get along with. they are just out to plan in-your-face. the first amendment was there first. you still there? host: that was one. paul, indianapolis in deanna. independent line. caller: i think people are missing the point. they passed this law for the same reason bill clinton passed. it comes down to the same thing. there is, to a certain extent the supreme court struck down traditional protections of religious liberty and they needed to be reinforced. people need to consider the broader implications, and whether it was unintentional or not, the affordable care act forced its of the catholic church to buy things they hold

our completely against their faith. should we require a member of page to work at a most? should we require a jewish dirt to print flyers for a nazi get together? all of these things are examples of things that have not actually happened. host: paul, there are a lot of people weighing in on the economic implications, especially in indianapolis. you worried about intentional economic shortfalls? caller: i attend gencon every year. they have a contract. they have to come here every year until 2020. i have seen people dressed up like demons running up and down the aisles of catholic churches and a brighter them out.

i have seen groups of gamers dressed up like nazi storm troopers and beings -- and it being served at restaurants. i do not think, after a couple years, people are not going to realize people won't be turned away. it will be equivalent to the gamers trying to force the merchants to go to the center and participate in their games. people do not want to be forced to participate in something they find to be abhorrent. host: that was paul. we have set aside a line for those of you in indiana and arkansas. i mentioned president clinton signing the presidential statute . as a little bit of the speech he made as part of the signing. president clinton: the vice

president said this reverses the decision against smith and it reinforces a decision that protects all americans and all faiths in the exercise of their religion. it is far more consistent with the intent of the founders of this nation and the supreme court decision. more then 50 cases have been decided against individuals making religious claims since that decision was handed down. this act will help to stop -- to reverse that trend. by honoring that our laws should not impede or hinder but rather should check and preserve fundamental religious liberties. the free exercise of religion has been called the first freedom. that which originally sparked the development of the full range of the bill of rights. our founders cared a lot about religion. in a one of the reasons they worked so hard to get the first amendment into the bill of rights at the head of the class

was that they well understood what could happen to this country. how both religion and government could be perverted if there were not some space created and some protection provided. host: the new york times reading about that last thing the political context has changed widely since then. the law was developed to protect native americans -- both state laws allow for larger corporations if they are substantially owned by members with strong religious convictions to claim that a ruling or mandate violates their religious faith. the reverence is not only the indiana law but the arkansas law. you can give your thoughts on those or the larger discussion about this law on your screen. you we will hear next from mike who lives in michigan, independent line. caller: good morning.

i would like all listeners of this program to realize that the roots of this religious freedom law is a group called american family association. the american family association is giving money, is appearing is telling all these conservative state senators, congressmen around the country we will give you money. will give you support if you give us this. this is a reactionary group that was involved in the terri scale of oh fiasco intrusion over 10 the years ago -- terry schiavo --when the governor of florida was involved in a private manner. a private matter in a private

household. they are doing the same thing in indiana and arkansas. they are paying these publicans off. they are promising them boats if you give us something in the face of all these new pro-gay legislations going on around the country with the supreme court. these people feel marginalized. they feel left out. and this is the reaction we're going to get. thank you. host: tony, washington deep. see. . democrat. caller: first of all, he is a liar. he could not even stand up to george stephanopoulos and answer his questions. but, i want to say this is exactly what i was hoping would happen. i want the american people to see exactly what these republicans are all a belt.

it is not just this issue. it is global warming. it is every issue that wants to marginalize un-american. you know what it is? for all the americans that wanted these republicans on the state level, on the federal level. you know that? it you got them. you know what? god bless you. host: tony, let me ask you a question. what makes this difference from the other states? caller: they are going after the game he's on this issue. and you know what? this is not about religious freedom or anything else. if you look at the republicans over the years, they really -- they -- they get up on their horse over a bunch of moral issues like her in school.

flag burning. but you know what the thing is? when they lose those issues, you really do not hear about them anymore. they kind of just go away. now, this is another issue that they have been fighting. the republicans have been fighting this forever. you know what? they are losing the issue. this pence he is not stupid. he knows they are going after him. before the end of the day, you watch. before the end of the day they are going to rewrite it and they will take it off the books. same thing and arkansas. i would bet all of my money that , arkansas they will not even touch it after seeing what indiana went through. they will not even touch that issue. host: the supreme court hears this issue later this month. one of the lawyers chose the

pioneer that won the first case in 2003 to handle their main argument in court. she was 53, a civil rights project director. she was brought in to assist in the case several months ago. she will argue for michigan and kentucky couples seeking the right to marry in their home states. a former assistant solicitor will argue for other states. the same-sex marriage ban -- former michigan solicitor general will defend same-sex marriage bans in michigan and kentucky, tennessee associate solicitor will defend others. caller: my comment is this. it is not only about gays and lesbians.

it is how walgreens decides not to sell any more contraception. this is the beginning of discrimination for everything. we can maybe solve the problem with the gays. if they want to get married [indiscernible] this is the beginning of discrimination. in 44 years i have never seen in my life this kind of the experience. six years in this country. it is very sad to see and i am very disappointed. [indiscernible] host: that was armand.

then on twitter, another says laws it should not the discriminatory. it extends the freedom. we have to -- we have set aside independent lines. go ahead. caller: thank you for taking my call. as christians, we are supposed to be a kind, gentle, lovely people towards all of humanity. using coercion to win people over to christ has never worked is never going to work and jesus did not use it in to the apostles did not use coercion. they preached against such things. now, we as christians have never

created a movement to keep the mental torture, the physical torture, the murder of homosexuals or men who are perceived to be homosexuals in this -- and this in itself is a great sin from the pulpit for centuries. we have not taught to protect all of our -- [indiscernible] society is not going to stand for the mental torture in physical torture and murder of men, homosexuals, people perceived to be homosexual. now, with that said, we all need to slow down here because

everybody is getting very angry and intellectually committed to their causes but there are some very negative aspects that can come of this cultural socialism that is being pushed throughout this country. host: let's hear from bob and michigan. bob, go ahead. caller: well, i tell you what. a playwright from francis said the problem with modernization is that stupidity has decided to think. it has never been more apropos they and it is right now. this is ridiculous. i am sick of seeing people of faith being pushed around. this is wrong. we are turning 5000 years of tradition on its head and we're supposed to sit back and take

it. this is ridiculous. host: we have set aside a line for people from indiana and arkansas. this is ken. when you think of your state's decision? caller: good morning. i really enjoy your program, i watch it all the time. i want to explain what the arkansas bill is. it is a state law, ok? it deals with how the state of arkansas acts. the lgbt community has never been under arkansas law to protect. you hear about this proverbial baker having to bake a cake. there is nothing in arkansas law right now nor has there ever been that requires that baker to bake a cake. he can always say no. unless there is a federal law

or federal contract, that requires the baker to do that. the arkansas outlaw does not require him to do it. so, this thing does not really affect so much a private is this transaction. however, what it does do, is it opens the possibility of a public employee, likely the supreme court will legitimize nationwide marriage inequality. consider this. a local clerk who is by tax dollars to do his or her job has a job to issue a marriage license. this law if it is past and will not be, but if it is passed, it will allow a state or county employee to refuse to

issue a marriage license. and that is a problem. that is a big problem. host: what is your governor inclined to do as far as his log is? is he inclined to sign it? caller: i sure hope he does not. i have a nephew who actually works with the governor's office and i called my brother yesterday and i was beating my head against the wall and saying, please don't. please somebody sit him down. host: that is ken from arkansas. again, laws and indiana arkansas. up for discussion in the first 40 five minutes. in the washington post this morning, president obama commuted 22 drug offenders sentences. a washington post right up this morning saying that to 20 two

inmate sentences were commuted on tuesday. nonviolent offenders serving time for the possession and sale of methamphetamines, marijuana and cocaine. one was convicted of conspiracy to distribute cocaine and sentenced in july 2005 2 246 months in prison, a term that would've kept him behind bars until 2025. they are being urged to use this opportunity to rebuild their lives. caller: good morning. i'm going to run right up the middle. i am in deep that. i am gay and born again. i am a born again christian. this week we celebrate the resurrection of jesus christ on sunday. god is love. he does not care about body parts. it is not religion.

we have thousands of religions around the world. god despises religion. unless we start a religion on teaching love. re-read the bible. how we treat our enemies. we love our enemies. so, as a gay, born-again christian, make me drop enemies. if you are truly following christ, you are to love me. that is a false teacher that does not teach love. again, god is love. i will give you all the scripture you want. is god worried about body parts? or does he want us to love? i have a problem with those in the gay community that have been shut out of christianity because they feel they are not accepted because of being gay. that is another lie. that is the ministry to develop

for the gay community. christ loves you and the weight you are. i want to say this. romans for those that follow the spirit. it does not matter if you are black, white democrat, republican gay or straight. host: that is al from massachusetts. the white house tweeting a picture of a president obama giving the latest briefing between the p5 plus one nations. the negotiations have gone on even though a deadline has passed saying that they hope to get there during the day. however, the number of ministers who have left the top --

iran meetings resumed. from fishers, indiana. the independent line. caller: good morning. i want to say this country was built on separation of church and state. if religious groups want to dictate political policy, they should pay taxes. it is ironic that the groups that they want to have are paying their taxes. you want to flex your political muscle? pay taxes like everyone else. host: from tennessee. here is a stealth. democrats line. -- here is estelle democrats line. caller: first of all, i would

like to say i agree. i don't know how we got to a point where we base something on someone's sexual orientation? having said that, i don't agree to any one being harmed because of the perception. i don't. as a christian, we show love. i want to remind the gentlemen may be to cause ago that god destroyed saw michael moore for a reason. -- it bothers me that they have taken the sanctity of marriage and changed it into something else. i truly remember when the issue became the forefront and it was because people said they had a loved one and you know, my sexual orientation is this and that problem was insurance.

the primary focus was i what might partner to have this insurance. we don't want marriage. the next thing i know, these people are getting married. they have taken marriage and made it something else. i am not a republican, so i think we need to stop as americans and take a look at what has happened to the fabric of this country. for that reason, i support things like this because i don't want to see marriage done away. that is just my comment. host: let's hear from kay in nevada. independent line. caller: jya. -- jay. i think governor pence gave a good speech. the only problem i have with it is that it refers -- it offends the rest of the country as a

frying to the people in indiana as the best people on earth. is he running for governor again? host: that is jay from nevada 11 major companies weighing in on these laws and there was a listing of them, including companies such as angie's list based in indianapolis, cap levi's, walmart all of weighing in on this decision, particularly to arkansas. again, you can find more of that on the "huffington post" listing. companies have come not in opposition to these types of laws. dennis lives in west palm beach, florida, republican line. caller: this is an initiative that is important to me and i wish i had time to make all my points.

number one, the republicans don't really care about the issue. they thought they were playing to their base and as soon as the money pressure came on them, they fell apart like a cheap suit. they don't care about the gay issue, nothing whatsoever. we've got to remember that the government is making certain groups of people protected classes, and that is fine, whether it is wax or ethnicities or whatever it is. homosexuals are simply a group of people at the moment that want to behave in a certain way. science has never determined how someone acquires best sexual orientation, but we have made a special class -- protective class of people who want to behave a certain way. mike pence is horrible in the fact that he would not stand up like a man and really talk about the issues. he looked terrible. back in 2010 when martha coakley was running against scott brown

for the seat vacated by ted kennedy in massachusetts, she was asked about people in the medical profession who had moral objections into doing things and she gave a very interesting answer that will haunt us forever. she said anyone that has an moral problems should get out of the industry. that answer can apply to every single job in america. whether christians know it or not, they are going to get run out of every job in america if they follow this mentality. one other point, and my last one and i will go, it is somebody is a devout christian and is very much pro-life against abortion and he runs a little business, whether it is an electric company, carpet cleaning whatever it is, if he gets a call from an abortion clinic and says i need you to come over here and perform work for us and he says, no, i am opposed to abortion and i will not do anything involved in keeping your business going, now he is going to be sued and lose his license? we are going down the wrong road

and unfortunately, there is no political party in america that is willing to stand up and fight for christians in america because the republicans say they do, but all they really care about is the money and they demonstrated perfectly this week. thank you very much. host: dennis from florida. the house committee looking into benghazi and also looking for a private interview with a former secretary of state hillary clinton when it comes to activities involving her e-mail. saying it was --

let's hear from rose marie in greenville, texas, independent line. caller: yes, thank you for taking my call. as a christian, i have very strong convictions. i believe mary strongly in the lord jesus christ and how he gave his life for our sins. so that we may have eternal life through him. as a christian, i have to stand firm to the belief of a biblical standards and teachings. we, as christians, will stand and support one another in love. we should love all, but at the same time, our conviction are what helps us to be -- set good examples. and we should come out from among them and become separated

so i stand between hobby lobby and these businesses that refuse services to certain individuals , sexual's. the reason i say that is because our conviction. that is our right as an american. we live in america and we are protected by this freedom of religion. thank you again for taking my call. host: floyd is from jonesville, virginia. republican line. floyd, you are next. caller: good morning. i think this law is a good law because christians should not be forced to go against their leaf and bible. people are so -- you can ask people what god's name is and they don't know.

they don't know god has a name. they just called him god. yahweh is his name. ,that man called earlier and said it is ok to be a homosexual, he is wrong. people: and they take up for abortion. there have been 60 million babies including the democrats supporting this. that is blood on their hands. i hope people learn one thing about the bible and it is found in mark, chapter 13. the disciples ask jesus, what will be the sign of the end of the time? and he said the probally of bigotry and -- that the end would come during the generation

and end of people. we are coming to an end of the generation being full and it will be a wonderful time and when people who report to god and we are going to. thank god for that. i can't believe when people first come over here from england, they came to get away from religious persecution. he's -- it is the reason why that this nation is a powerful nation and it has been the greatest nation on earth because people worshiped god. not homosexuality. thank you for taking my call. host: that is a from joseph virginia. the tweet sent out from indiana talking about the bill that was passed in indiana. senator joe donnelly referencing the indianapolis star, and that

is between from senator jeff merkley, also weighing in. today, let's take an anti-lg bt law in indiana. tomorrow, let's pass federal lg bt civil rights laws so no american has to fear for the rights. chris murphy of connecticut referencing and "onion" piece. that is what is going on in light of what has been going on in light in indiana. we have set aside a line for you in indiana and those in arkansas. the arkansas legislature also considering this type of legislature. you will hear from indianapolis indiana, you are on. go ahead. caller: yes, sir. i just wanted to tell you that when these right-wing governors become new governors, they try to peel back the rights of other people whether it be in wisconsin with scott walker and now in indiana with governor

pence. however, governor pence is not articulate enough. scott walker took his and was able to do a lot of things that i guess is unacceptable to the majority of people in america, but it is necessary to put these people on the stage and see exactly where they are coming from. i used to listen to talk radio when mike pence was a talk show host, and he would be extremely conservative. when he started running for politicians, he lost his district race or being too extreme. now he is governor and he gets out with one of those positions and whenever he was going around the city, he would call the radio station and would not take cause. now you see the way that george stephanopoulos gave him a hardball interview. it is consistent with generally only is and he needs to be stopped. they need to repeal this bill and stop. host: that is derek from

indianapolis indiana. senator ted cruz of texas weighing in on the decision by governor pence saying, i am proud to stand with governor mike pence for religious liberty and i urge americans to do the same. from rick santorum, i stand with governor pence in defense of religious liberty and real tolerance. just adding their voices into the mix via twitter. you can do so on are social media channels. but here from jeff and mississippi. jeff is on our democrat's line. caller: thank you for c-span. i want to challenge the christians out there for everything they are saying. in my thinking, i am a homosexual male, i believe -- i may heterosexual male, i believe the bible is right.

let's take no's arc. that -- let's take noah's ark. you know the flood was coming and men sleep with men and women sleep with women. who closed the door to the ark? god did. if god closed the door to the ark, noah did not do nothing to no one. he put it in god's hands. it is like with what this governor is doing. what arkansas is doing. let's take the case in colorado. the bakery failed because it was something they did wrong. if god wanted them to do what they did, then it would not have failed. when i hear christians talk and say they are christian, they need to go back and think about that for a minute. because noah did not do it, man did not do nothing to the people.

it was in god's hands. thank you. host: that was jeff from mississippi. also the governor from new york off twitter banning nonessential state travel to indiana. it also includes a link to his statement off of twitter. our last call for this segment will be from charles in new york on the democrat line. caller: good morning. this is charles, listen, wwjd -- what would use what -- what would jesus do, jesus would forgive people. me as a black man walking into a grocery store and can be denied service because somebody would say well, you are black and therefore, my religion states that i cannot serve you? come on, people, wake up. host: that was charles in staten island, new york. last call on this topic.

coming up, we take on the issue of trade. the president once to see more trade and speedier process in making trade deals. unions, however, we have leo gerard of international steelworkers. the supreme court decides it subsidies are a constitutional and will republicans be ready to compensate? we will hear thoughts on that matter later in the program. first up, in case you missed it, irs commissioner was on -- john kosten and was talking about priorities of the irs, particularly when it comes to health care and the budget. he made remarks on tuesday which he spoke on c-span. here is a little bit from his presentation yesterday. john: for a while now, you have read a lot about those problems. overspending, ill advised videos , and of course, in appropriate scrutiny of applications from groups seeking social welfare status. the criticisms of these areas is

absolutely deserved. what gets lost is that these mistakes occurred several years ago and we have taken concrete steps to address them. in the tax exempt area we acted on all of the inspectors general's recommendations to fix the management problems are identified nearly two years ago. these problems should not have happened and we continue to work to make improvements to ensure they never happen again. as for conferences, spending has been reduced by 80% since 2010. when the conference took place that was the subject of a scrutiny. not only that, but we require all conferences about $20,000 to get private approval from the irs commissioner. -- get prior approval from the irs commissioner, or me. planners have to get my approval and approval of the treasury department. for videos, many of the ones we are making these days are aimed at helping taxpayers. the irs channels on youtube now

have more than 100 videos with nearly 9 million views today. make no mistake, we understand we will never compete with taylor swift, jimmy fallon or funny animal videos. but our videos to help on bed -- on very difficult tax projects. the subjects run the gamut from understanding how to claim there is tax credits to protecting yourself from identity theft and avoiding tax scams. what is more -- the much criticized videos from years ago could not be made today. any irs division seeking to make a video must seek prior approval from an executive review board that the agency created more than two years ago. not to miss anything, people may have listed justify cuts to our budget and we know longer pay performance awards to employees who have willfully paid their taxes. i will noted that the tax compliance rate of irs employees is over 99%. we are working to ensure as well

that no former employee with a serious performance problem is rehired. i would stress that, again while these problems were important and needed to be addressed and deserved our attention, the remedies we have applied, we think will keep them from happening again. host: we can't show you the whole thing, but you can watch it on her website at www.c-span.org. the remarks of the irs commissioner on the irs priorities in the budget. joining us from pittsburgh is leo gerard, international president of the united steelworkers. how are you? guest: five, thank you. host: can you talk to us about what trade deals i dented the steel industry? guest: let me elaborate because it we were just in the steel industry, it would be much smaller than what he is. we are north america's largest factory union. when you talk about steel, you talk about tire, rubber, paper.

in all three of those major basic industries, bad trade deals have been devastating. america's trade laws are acronyms take, and they don't work any longer. you file a trade case against the country or company that has been cheating under the so-called trade rules and it takes an extended. -- an extended period of time to get through the process and in order to win a remedy, you have to prove you have been substantially injured which means losing profitability market share, losing facilities and jobs. when we file a trade case, in order to win it, we have to prove we have been injured which ultimately goes into circumstances. in the steel industry, we merit -- literally filed dozens of cases over the last years and want most of them, probably 90% of them. even though we win them, we lose jobs. guest: host: with that in mind, as the

white house advocates for more trade deals, what is the message for them? guest: the message from as to them is that these trade deals don't work. if you look at everything since nafta the trade deal with south korea, every one of those trade deals has increased by a multitude of numbers and america's trade deficit. as an example, every $1 billion of trade deficit resulted in a loss of about 20,000 jobs. last year's trade deficit in so-called manufactured goods was over 470 billion dollars depending on what economists you accepted. if you look at this passage of nafta, the passage of the trade arrangement to let china into the wto, the wealth transfer from trade deficits is almost

$11 trillion. to get to $1 trillion, that is thousands of billions. to get to one billion, that is how zones of millions. inc. about what has happened. that is why we have downward pressure on wages and we have outsourcing at rates we cannot keep up with. to give you a number, more than 130 billion dollars of auto parts were imported into the american auto industry last year . the majority of that coming from china. now we are talking about an expanded trade deal that would give vietnam and malaysia access to our market which means there will be more transformation of jobs to places like vietnam because the average wage in vietnam is now above one third of the average wage in china. host: that is the trans-pacific

partnership you are referring to? guest: yes, sir. host: larry sommer wrote an op-ed taking a specific look at the partnership and he wrote this -- how would you respond to that line of thinking? guest: more b.s. from larry. we heard the same story starting with nafta and you can just said larry's rhetoric on one site and collect the facts on the other side and you find out he continues to be wrong. the fact is that we have increased exports into some of these countries, but on the other side as he have marginally

increased exports, we have had momentous increases in imports. and we have had unbelievable violations of trade laws. china as an example produces more steel than all the rest of the world combined. and china does not need that steel, but they produce it through state enterprises to keep their people working and they dumped the majority of that steel in america and now we see they are dumping it in europe and even in india. so the fact of the matter is that larry's theory may be an economic model that he looks at on a piece of paper, but it does not work that way in reality and he continues to be wrong. he has been singing that song since before nafta and the facts do not hold up. host: leo gerard our guest and united steelworkers president. you can ask him questions on three lines this morning. republicans, 202748 8001.

democrats 202748 8000 and four independent, 202748 8002. the first call for you comes from morgantown, north carolina. this is on a democrat line. paul, go ahead. caller: yes, if you look at a lot of these trade agreements and so forth, they talk about how it helps this country and the other countries. i did an article several years back on nafta, 10 years after where i researched it and nafta actually hurt mexico and central america terribly. with their macadamia farmers and all of that destroyed their markets. if you look at the people who are behind these trade organizations, fto, wto, all these groups, it is the same group of people in each one of these organizations and we don't even know who they are. they're are controlling the whole world's economy. if you look at the quality of the items coming into this

country, it is absolutely terrible. pure junk. before we had all these trade agreements, you have good quality stuff, a competitive market, and now all we have this walmart and the quality is extremely poor. we have lost all these other competitive is mrs. because they are not -- businesses because they are not linked to rings made in the country -- in this country where trade agreements are. all these trade agreements have done is made it to where they can profit more often low-quality goods and take advantage of low pay and no environmental laws. it has been a total loss not just for america, but for the world. there is only a handful of people in these trade organizations that is really and truly profiting and benefiting. host: paul, we will let our guest respond. guest: paul has raised a lot of issues and i don't know if i can do -- respond to all of them but let me deal with some of them. it comes to the damage to

mexican workers, there are a couple of facts that really speak to the truth. in fact, mexican wages in real terms are lower now than they were pre-nafta days. the other thing we did with nafta, is we killed the family farms in mexico. their main product was corn, and we have devastated the ability to grow corn by his dumping into their market. and then we drove people off their farms and into the mikula zones. this is where jobs went from initially after nafta from canada and the united states and went to the mikula zone in mexico which is really northern mexico on the u.s. order. those workers were not paid substantially enough and i would urge anybody to go to the zones where they see people living and cardboard shacks that they have made out of scrap wood and scrap

boxes. i have got several times to see it because it is unbelievable. you will see afford planned, ge plant, honeywell plant and they look like the most modern facilities and you see where the workers actually lived. that is part of the reality. the other thing that paul said is talking about the wto. i make this comment and i am not sure i have accurate but i make it anyway. the most valuable thing that america has is access to the american market. if the trade case makes it to the wto and there is an independent, so-called panel that will rule on it, those people on the panel today and we don't and would react, but we know they are not from america, and what did they want on behalf of the country was anything? they want access to the american market, so already when you go to the wto, who accept the panel and how they make decisions? it is counter to america's

long-term goals because they are going to want to find every which way they can to rule in favor of the other side so they can broadened access to the american market and our union has several cases that we have challenge that the wto and continue to do that because most of the time they overstepped their own authority. host: host: bill for our guest. caller: good morning, mr. gerard. guest: good morning. caller: they want to -- the unions, paper mill industry down here in florida -- i tell you they blame the trade policies and everything on the decline of the unions. i'm going to tell you, the unions are going to put themselves out of work because these grievances and everything that are filed are some of the most ridiculous i have ever seen in my life. people keep their jobs.

call out late. screw their bodies on shift and everything. and the union stands behind him. the decline of the union jobs in america will not be from any trade policy. it will be the workers mentality their privileged way of life. guest: i respect your right to be misinformed uninformed, and wrong. the fact of the matter is in every workplace where there is a union, there is a process for the workers to file their concern, whether it is a collective agreement violation they allege, which is a contract between workers and the employer, or if it is something where it is not a violation of the agreement but something they want to discuss with the employer. in most cases, the very most, that is a very, very small percentage of concerns in the workplace, although we have a lot of concerns in occupation

health and safety, and no one should criticize us for demanding safe workplaces and high standards in his workplaces so when people go to work, they come home with their limbs, they come home healthy, and they don't come home with bodies full of poison. when we are told to cross the bargaining table by a multinational company that they can't give us any improvements because that plant has to be competitive with the so-called china price or the so-called south korean price or the so-called mexican price -- when you look at those things and look at what we need as a consumer-based society, what we want to do is keep people employed, and when you look at it as a consumer-based society if you are not making enough money to buy the thing you are producing, like a car then you are not going to be able to keep your consumer-based society. we see the income inequality that is growing. let me make it real clear -- a huge part of that income inequality is bad trade deals

that make workers meet the china price and is also the fact that unions have been attacked on a systematic basis with right to work and things like that that have made the income inequality gap even bigger. there is a reason we have -- there is a reason we have the 40-hour workweek there was a reason we have health and safety, there is a reason have health care, there is a reason we have pensions. when we sat across from the table with our employers, we wanted to have a piece of the american pie. i am not going to make any apologies for workers wanting to have a good quality of life. i've been doing this for more than 40 years. i've never yet been in the workplace, never yet been workers who want to put their employer out of business. they want participation in the workplace, they want to make the best product and they want to be proud of what they do at work everyday. that caller was really just completely misinformed. host: here is james from newark new jersey, democrats line.

caller: hi, c-span. thanks for taking my call, number one. number two leo, how you doing? guest: good. caller: it is a privilege talking to you. i see you on msnbc a whole bunch. pittsburgh used to be steel city many years ago. and environmental pollution -- so pittsburgh is not a steel city anymore. mexican still has to be made for mexican products come i totally agree with you. at the same time, japanese steel, japanese cars, preferred by many americans.

not me. american steel made for milk and cause -- american cars, buying american cars is psychological thing to be done in america. american parts, american workers. host: ok, james, let's let our guest response. guest: well, i just -- there is an element i want to respond with regards to pittsburgh. i happen to live in pittsburgh and love pittsburgh camacho recently, just the last two months -- until recently, just the last few months pittsburgh was a vibrant steel city. thousands of workers employed in

the steel industry in allegheny county. but we been wracked pretty hard by the excess of chinese and south korean steel, at a time when the drilling industry has cut back. china is delving into our market. u.s. steel has over 500 people on layoff. other steel companies have people on layoff, while china continues to dump and flood into our market. while we file these trade cases, and we will succeed in these trade cases down the road, but during that time, the industry is going to take it on the chin. the industry is cutting back. they don't have the revenue source, will have to put money back into the mills. they have put billions of dollars in the last 10 years into modernizing their mills. they are the most efficient, their environmentally advance. the kyoto protocol we have heard

about over the years -- it has already -- if you match it to the steel industry, it has already been met. let me say something about tires. we filed substantial case against tyre -- against china on tires good kind of technical mumbo-jumbo, but we succeeded and got a substantial three-year remedy. china was in-your-face dumping those tires into the american market. they knew the exact day of the month that the remedy would expire. in the six month after that remedy, they put literally 50 million tires into the u.s. market. our tire industry is now under threat from china. just not too long ago, maybe within the month, we filed a trade case on paper. the coded sheet on paper and non-coded cases.

first time, we succeeded in proving they were treating, but we didn't succeed because we didn't have enough irreparable harm to the industry done yet. we filed the same case three years later. now we have lost 7000 jobs, and we win the case. all of these deals are a result of china's excess capacity that it is doing to keep its workers working, knowing that the trade laws are anachronistic and don't work and by the time they do work, the damage has been done. we should not have to wait until the jobs are lost and profitability is gone once we prove they are not playing by the rules. i appreciate the call, and we are fighting on every front. to be clear, the american public is ahead of politicians. it is clear that the same people who told us not to worry prior to the 2008 economic collapse of the same people promoting these trade deals.

they don't work for anybody but the financial industry. host: leo gerard of the united steelworkers joining us. what has to be built into future trade deals that would satisfy you? guest: we need to deal with the elements of cheating. we need to stop currency manipulation. i was with a number of folks from michigan recently, and congressman said to me that they had done research. a car being shipped to america from japan has any thousand dollar cost advantage because of -- has an $8,000 cost advantage because of japanese mutilation of their occurrence. we need trade balance. we don't need more trade deals that will create trade deficits which are continuously going on. why do we need a trade deal with indonesia? why do we need a trade deal with brunei? i don't want to appear to be racist, but brunei has got no

democracy. the sultan of brunei, one of the richest men in the world. they import temporary foreign workers to their work because they are living off their oil revenue. what are we going to do with brunei? what are we going to sell them? their workers don't make enough money to buy anything we make. we need to net job growth, and that is not going to happen as long as our trade laws don't allow us to prevent cheating. right now our trade laws encourage companies to cheat, encourage other companies to cheat -- other countries to cheat, because by the time we succeed, the damage has been done. host: larry is up next, republican line. caller: good morning, pedro, mr. gerard. guest: good morning. caller: can you inform the public about the historic 1992 ross perot, the giant sucking sound of jobs involving nafta versus bill clinton? what brought that about? guest: well, look, let's back up

a bit. the initial negotiation of nafta was done with george bush senior . bill clinton became president on the promise that he would fix nafta and in particular fix the labor chapter, which he did not do. and ross perot said there would be a giant sucking sound sucking jobs to the south in a debate that they had and showed come if i remember right, showed some charts, and over the long term he has proved to be right. it did not happen instantaneously, but it happened over 6, 7, 8, 10 years, where more and more about jobs have gone to mexico. we see the mexican auto industry is booming right now, making cars that we used to make in america. ask yourself the question, why is that happening? it is happening because it is cheaper for companies like volkswagen or companies like toyota companies like hyundai to

put their plant in mexico pay low mexican wages, and then they get complete free access to the american market. if you get an opportunity as a businessperson to pay people five dollars and six dollars an hour in mexico versus $17 $18 an hour in america, and it is only across the border, guess what they are going to do? the trade deal with nafta has created an entry point for imported auto parts to make cars in mexico that are duty-free and shipped across the border. mexico's auto industry is growing faster than the auto industry anywhere in the world and that is because of nafta and people left forgotten that. when i make the point that more than $130 billion of auto parts has been imported into america almost the same amount has been imported to mexico to make cars in mexico and shipped them to america. these trade deals don't work. they have been working in

reverse and costing us not just our jobs, but our economic well-being. they have helped to increase the income gap, the inequality that exists. host: here is bob in morgantown, west virginia, independent line. caller: good morning, gentlemen. full disclosure, i'm a proud ibw member. i just saw this morning where president obama vetoed a republican bill that would stop the streamlining from the nlrb to help organize unions. i was just wondering what your opinion on that is. guest: the agenda has been defined as many ways as possible to damage the labor movement, and whether they've been trying to promote my to work, the role

of the national labor board, national labor relations board the only thing the labor movement ever wanted from the national labor relations board is a fair hearing and good time. they cut the budget of the board, they squeezed them down they tried to make it harder. look, the workers want to have the ability to have a voice at their work. they want the ability to come together and improve their lot in life. it is really disheartening when you see the level of misinformation there is about the role of trade unions. trade unions are simply a group of workers from workplace coming together to say to their employer that we want a voice and work and an opportunity to negotiate.

if the ceo is allowed to have a contract, why aren't the workers allowed to have a contract? host: jerrold, reno, nevada, you are next on our democrats line. good morning. caller: good morning. thanks for taking my call. please don't cut me short. -waiting only for a while. -- i have been waiting online for a while. my phone is not made in the u.s. but my car is, my tires are, my work loads are does work clothes are -- work clothes are good the reason i can afford that luxury is because i'm a member of the international brotherhood and i can afford a living wage. the problem with a lot of democrats as they support a lot of free-trade agreements. the problem with republicans as they support low wages.

if your local supplier can't supply with something in the u.s. then take that extra effort into your part. union yes. guest: thank you very much. i appreciate your effort in buying domestically made products because i know how hard it is. we had a process we put together with a group of our members from across the country where we created a little checklist and we asked them to go into storage and see if they could find any of these ends that were made in america. in most of the cases it was extremely -- tools, brand name tires, it was very difficult. i want to complement this caller for his dedication to buy domestically made products.

if we don't buy the mystically made products, we're punishing not just ourselves, but the next generation that needs these jobs. host: ray in pennsylvania independent line. caller: good morning. mr. gerard i want to jog your memory a little bit. the other caller thought bill clinton in 1992 -- he ran on a platform of he was categorically against nafta. you blamed george bush for that. when he got in office -- guest: let me interrupt you, because i don't want you to mischaracterize what i was saying. the initial deal was negotiated by george bush, which you are right, bill clinton was opposed to come and when he got elected he said he would fix it, and when he got elected he didn't fix it could so they are both complicit. caller: you guys backed him in the second term. he also backed obama, who is going to put this ptt thin down

her throat. i filed -- i find it highly hypocritical that you back these democrats who are not democrats, they run these -- run estimate democrats, and they slit your throat. they turn around and do these deals. this is obama's baby. he wants it. you back him with money and votes. when your jobs are gone, to bad, because you are part of the problem. guest: you done? host: go ahead, sir? guest: the fact of the matter is, if you compare either one of the two presidents you prefer to to the opposition, imagine if you would have had sarah palin as the vice president of america. imagine john mccain, the warmongering john mccain, as the president of america,. when you compare -- when you

compare barack obama to the alternative, there is no comparison. by the way, we at least have the opportunity to have a debate with barack obama, and we are debating him. we are trying to impose the passage of fast-track authority come in opposition to fast-track authority. if we stop fast-track, we will stop tpp. we are not against trade, let me be clear. we are in favor of trade that is important, for we are in favor of balanced trade, trade that will eliminate the cheating that is going on. if you let american workers compete on a fair unlevel playing field, they can compete with anybody. but you can't ask an american worker at a shop in indiana to compete with the country of china, who has a state-owned enterprise that will subsidize their industry. you can't expect a worker in lorain ohio, who makes tight and to, to compare to a worker in south korea who has his industry subsidized by the government. the south korean-industry does not sell one pound of drill pipe

in south korea and yet they are flooding the american market with that. that is long before anything we would do with john mccain in that environment. just close your eyes for a minute and imagine mccain as the president and sarah palin as the vice president when barack obama first got elected. host: as far as this president then, how does he directly or someone from the white house directly address your concerns? guest: there is a huge debate between us and the president on the issue of fast track, on the issue of these trade deals. the fact of the matter is, we don't agree on everything. we agree on all's 90% of what we were on with this administration, but we don't agree on everything, and this is going to be a fight. the fact of the matter is, as i pointed out earlier i don't have access to what everybody does day to day. but i can tell you this -- the reality of a trade deal is the

reality of job loss. and who is pushing these trade deals behind the scenes is the multinational companies in the multinational financial industry. one of the difficulties is that the political system is marinated in money. the american public, no matter how you pose the question, by substantial majority are against these trade deals when they know the basic facts. when we have got to do is educate the administration -- what we have got to do is educate the administration, and i think we have a substantial majority of democrats and republicans who are ready to stop fast-track because they see what it has done and they see the facts are there. we are having this debate with the administration and the president, and that is democracy. host: our guest room a leo gerard of international steelworkers. our next call from richmond hill, new york, on the republican line. this is nat.

caller: good morning. tried to call to see if you will answer us a certain question for me. do you know who congresswoman nina lowry is? do you know what an open shop means? do you know what happens when we came to the part where we were supposed to have what we call close shop made in america and still were buying everything practically from overseas, even countries we are fighting with. i guarantee you, sir, i am a retired union executive did i will tell you, what happened to our industry, our industry was destroyed, too, because nafta, thanks to mr. clinton, allowed us to take trailers to the borderline and then mexico would

pick it up and take it in and sell the goods and bring back another trailer. you have a lot of imports -- your shoes, undergarments, when have you. let's talk about made in the usa and stop bickering about democrats, republicans independents what have you, and get serious. your afl-cio president is worth nothing because all he does is talk, he sits down with mr. obama, he has his coffee, blah blah blah, and is nothing more about it. i want to hear what you have to say. guest: thank you very much, and i do know congressman lowery, and she's a terrific fighter and she fights for the kind of issue you just raise. i want to agree with you about the lady garment workers. it was one of the great progressive unions in the history of america, and the

textile industry was one of the first industries to get decimated. unfortunately, we should have learned from that industry what would happen as a result of these trade deals. but it doesn't appear that we have. i couldn't agree more that what we should be doing is demanding that we grow the american manufacturing sector and not give the opportunity to the countries that don't play by the rules. that is a huge problem. like i said a while ago, i don't know any workers who are opposed to trade. we would love to trade our goods for some of the else's -- somebody else's goods, as long as it is in a fair and balanced way. as we close the door on the cheaters before the damage is done will. i agree with the caller, but i want to come back to richard trump are, president of the afl-cio, and defend him. richard is out there full board

trying to prevent fast-track from passage because every trade agreement that has been passed with fast-track has resulted in net job loss for america and resulted in downward wage pressure, has resulted in workers going to the bargaining table and being told i can't do this for you because i have to meet the china price and if i did that i would be noncompetitive. you can go through the glass industry, the paper industry aluminum industry, the steel industry, go through almost every major manufacturing sector -- the auto parts sector, which i've talked about several times on this call -- they have all been devastated by ryan traded deals. so i want to agree with that caller. host: washington, d.c. is next. caller: two quick points. i missed and germany allows union officials to sit in on board meetings of the corporations. second is that ronald reagan was asked to help modernize the steel industry back in his regime and he refused to do so and china geared up and that is where they have gained an edge.

thank you for any response. guest: i agree with you, and let me just say that it is a little bit more than they allow them to sit in on board meetings. in germany, the german labor structure, the german legislative structure gives workers rights to sit on the executive board. what we term the executive board, they call the supervisory board. they can have the workers viewing all the decisions they make. having said that, let me make some thing else really clear. germany has a balanced trade agenda with china. germany wages are almost 20% higher on average than american wages. it is not wages, it is political orientation. germany has a balanced trade agenda with china. don't tell me it couldn't be done. on that issue, be very clear about it.

i think i missed the second part of your question, i got so excited about telling you about germany's balanced trade agenda. host: i missed it as well so when we move onto the next call? new york, ross, independent line. good morning. caller: good morning y'all. mr. gerard, i appreciate all the work you have done to bring light to the situation. it is so obvious that there is been some type of movement to break down the middle class come a unions. i'm a retired prison guard, did the job 28 .5 years with the state, couple years with the colony. in my opinion, there is obviously craft in the game. if you follow the money, in your view, who is making out here? some of these deals seem to be treasonous. somebody is lining their pocket, somebody is securing the future for their great great great grandchildren and making ungodly amount of money.

to me this is treason. what is your response to this sir? guest: let me say, who is making out -- first of all multinational corporations. that is why you hear the debate about having multinational corporations having profit centers offshore and not repatriating those profits. they don't want to pay the proper taxation rates and take the proper deductions, so they will try to have a capital strike and pulled her money offshore until they get their way. the other group that is doing really well in this is the financial industry. they make money when they help you move your jobs offshore. they make money on all that. the global financial industry -- think about what happened in 2008, when they were all intertwined and they took the economy down for crash landing. that part is reality. i wanted to make another point that it is not impossible for us

to have a balanced trade agenda is that becomes the objective of our congress. the reason it is not is that those who control the money, as the caller said, make the support of a trade agenda, make the support of fast-track conditional upon the kind of economic support they are going to give to that candidate, and again, marinated in money. host: as it stands today, mr. gerard, what are your thoughts if tpp will be approved and if fast-track authority will be granted? guest: well, my gut tells me that fast-track's authority is in real trouble. when i say we, i don't mean just the steel workers or the labor movement. the people who understand what these trade deals have done -- progressives, environmentalists,

the women's movement, all of the so-called progressive movement are united in opposition to fast-track. once we succeed in fast-track and the transpacific partnership has to see the light of day and let the members of congress see it in detail, i think it will die, and it deserves to die. let me again confess, i worked with the administration to try and give them advice about what we think would be improvements in traded deals that would protect jobs and grow the economy and reduce trade deficits. we weren't successful in convincing them about that so we are not going to be supporting the tpp. we're going to try to stop fast-track as well. host: new gerard, united steelworkers, the president, talking about the role of unions in trade deals. mr. gerard, thank you. guest: my pleasure, thank you. host: our next guest tells us that republicans need to have some type of land in order to

the supreme court decide on subsidies and see that they are not constitutional. tevi troy from the american health policy institute will join us next. sam baker later on in the program. he is with "national journal," talking about his latest story looking at indiana's religious freedom restoration law. all that as "washington journal" continues. >> this weekend, the c-span cities tour has partnered with cox communications to learn about the history and life in also, a coma. >> woody guthrie is most famous

for "this land is your land," but he is much more than that. he was born in 1912 and where clad to have his work -- we are glad to have his work back in oklahoma, where we think it belongs. he was an advocate for people disenfranchised, migrant workers from oklahoma, kansas, and texas, and the dustbowl era let found themselves in california literally starving. and he told the vast difference between those who were the has and have not -- haves and have nots and became their spokesman through his music. woody recorded very few songs of his own. we have a listening station that features 46 of his songs in his voice. that is what makes the recordings he did make so significant and important. woody guthrie: ♪ this land is your land this land is my land from california to the new york islands ♪ >> saturday at noon eastern on

booktv and sunday at 2:00 on american history tv on c-span3. "washington journal" continues. host: our guest is the president of the american health policy institute. he has tevi troy. he served as former deputy secretary of health and human services from 2007 two 2009. good morning. if the supreme court decides against the idea of subsidies for obamacare, or republicans prepare for that? guest: first of all, it would be against subsidies in states that it increased their own exchanges, so there is a distinction between some states that created exchanges, small minority of states, and that 30 or so states where the subsidies would be ineligible if the supreme court ruled the way you are suggesting. our republicans prepare for it? i don't know because we have not faced the situation.

it seems that republicans are better prepared than the obama administration which claims it is not making any contingency plans. republicans are looking at a variety of plans. in the last couple of months they've had the all-star team of conservatives, health care intellectuals writing in "the wall street journal" about what the various options are. i would put them in three categories. category number one is some kind of temporary transition to keep the subsidies going for a year, two years, until we can figure some thing else out. a freshman senator from nebraska has a set something like that. he called it a cobra-type plan for the next two years. the next approach is some legislators have talked about an offramp, which means the replacement of the affordable care act. i think that is highly unrealistic while president obama is president, but it would be some kind of overall replacement. the third -- this is more the think tank immunity -- and i wrote one of these op-eds,

and you have a policy director for mitt romney, and yuval levin -- the third set of ideas is predicated on some kind of deal where the subsidies would continue in exchange for some kind of relief from the regulations of the a formal care act in those states where the subsidies are allowed to go on. it is sort of a tit-for-tat kind of deal. we don't to know what president obama would to do with it but it would present a choice if it reached his desk. let subsidies continue but you have to provide regular tory relief. host: such as? guest: reduce health benefits, certain level of regulations that insurance must reach. there is -- coverage of your 26 is one of the requirements. state-based regulations -- the state-based exchanges as they

were originally conceived were supposed to be a way people could go and get subsidies and get information about this. they have become in many ways more regulatory bodies enforcing certain levels of insurance. in doing so, you raise the cost of interest by putting more requirements. the fewer requirements you have, the more you need to have lower cost insurance. that is what republicans are looking at. host: what about guarantee coverage regardless of condition? guest: there is a variety of ways of looking at that. one is if you have continuous coverage, you can continue to guarantee coverage or the no lifetime limits. putting these ideas into categories, i wouldn't say there's anyone way in which they do regular tory relief -- regular tory relief to the ideas the same with the regulatory relief but the specific ways they change may change.

host: you talk about work being done by legislators produce their fast-track on any of them currently in terms of the supreme court decision? guest: we don't know what the supreme court would do. the obama administration has said we don't have any contingencies. the republicans are least coming up with a couple of different options. i don't know how you fast track something for a scenario that hasn't happened yet. the leadership in the house and senate have been talking about the possibility of maybe having some kind of generally improved or agreed-upon way of going forward. the way the congress works, and the president and the administration can say this is our policy and this is what we will do. it is not quite so easy with one guest. -- with congress. you are herding cats and have many different perspectives.

but they are looking at a variety of options. host: what is the american policy institute? guest: it is a think tank i helped create and it looks at one particular aspect of health care. 159 million americans get health care through their employers. that number is going to change in the years ahead, the way they get their health care is going to change the years ahead. we are curious to see how it is going to change and what are some of the impetuses for change, what are some of the regulations and costs being imposed on employer-sponsored care, and where employers are likely to go. it is going to be very interesting, as president obama said, in his pushing before all caps, said that if you like your health care, you could keep it could is the 116 million americans in employer-sponsored care get some kind of different care, is not necessarily keeping it. host: are you funded by employer plans at all? guest: we are not funded by

employer plans per se, but we have a board of governors and executives from large fortune 500 corporations want to figure out not only where things are going, but where their colleagues are going. host: tevi troy is joining us president of the american health policy institute, former gevity secretary of health and human services from 2007 to 2009, talking about republican health care alternatives in light of the supreme court decision looking at subsidies on exchanges. if you want to ask questions here is your chance to do so. host: we will start off with joe in oklahoma city, democrats line. go ahead. caller: hi, guys. good morning to you. first of all, i would like to have a guest comment about the

way that all of this health care change came into being. i think a lot of people don't realize that obamacare really in a sense is republicanre. republicans hatched that when the big insurance, big pharma companies were afraid that we would end up with a national health system under clinton. the heritage foundation came back -- leave the insurance companies in, we will make sure everybody gets insurance. just don't take us out of the big-money game where we make a lot of money and don't heal anybody. the heritage foundation came up with the individual mandate that is a fact. we need a national health system, not this republican sharing across state lines in all this stuff that will keep us paying three times more than anybody else in the world with a bunch of people with no insurance. it is just about the money. this guy on tv right now is just about the money. talk to you later. thanks. guest: i would love to address that question.

i don't know if it is just about the money -- certainly not with me. i'm interested in good health care policy. it's something i've been looking at for a long time. in terms of some of the republican strategy to bring about their football care act, that is belied by the fact that republicans are so unanimously opposed to it. i don't think they are saying this is the plan we wanted all along. if they for some reason do think it is the plan they wanted all along and hiding it willell -- the caller mentioned that sharing across state lines has led to costs being three times higher than anywhere else is a little odd. it does not exist right now. it is a consistent plank of republican health policies to allow this purchase -- to get around issue you were talking about earlier, high state mandate insurance.

it is one of the idea you will find in just about any republican plan. you cannot claim it has cost three times higher insurance because it does not currently exist. let's go back to the origins of the affordable care act. you have to look at the origins of the american health care system as it is. the system really dates back to the 1940's, when there were wage and price controls imposed during world war ii. the employers wanted to find ways to give more compensation to their employees, but they couldn't raise wages so they started to do it via health benefits and health insurance. that is how the idea study, and the irs ruled that it would be tax-prefer to treatment. that tax-preferred treatment has existed for seven years and is in many ways the backbone of the health care system. the advantages that people are employed in this country and 10 to have very good insurance and be happy with it. must also that the majority of americans get health care

through their employers and the majority are happy with the insurance. the problem is that there are a lot of people who weren't employed or didn't work for employers who provided insurance. in the mid-1960's we decided to say, ok, we have these people in employer-sponsored care, but we will take care of people who are old and poor. that is the origin of the medicare and medicaid systems. there is an interesting story behind that. there were competing plans, one called medicare for the old and one called medicare for the poor, and lyndon johnson decided to combine them. those systems obviously still in place and have worked for many years in terms of covering many people. the financing of them is shaky. we are worried about the long-term liability of people of those systems. medicare is something like 30 cluster in dollars unfunded liability -- 30-plus trillion

dollars of unfunded liabilities. it is the largest aggregate height of all state budgets. 25% of all state spending. that is a problem because it crowds out funding for roads or universities. that is why state tuition has gone up so much in many states, due in large part because medicaid funding is crowding out other dollars and there's no wiggle room, because the federal programs the states are obligated to provide a certain level of care. we made that deal in the 1960's that we would have employer-sponsored care, medicare and medicaid, and that would cover the bulk of people. however, as time went on, you had more people who were either not employed or self employed, and people who are self-employed are not covered under that tax preferred treatment we talked about. you had greater and greater gaps. bill clinton did start to talk about this issue in the 1990's. and in large part he won his election in 1992 by talking about health care. the plan that he proposed,

hillarycare or whatever, that obviously didn't work out, that failed. but almost 20 years later president obama went forward with his proposal, and he had a whole bunch of different ideas and there is an individual mandate in there.and heritage did talk about an individual mandate. and it was the idea of state-based exchanges. state-based exchanges as conceived in the affordable care act are much more revelatory bodies that original -- regulatory bodies than originally conceived. they were a place where people could go and find information about health care and it would be transparency and controls for people to know that they were getting legitimate health care. now they are much more regulatory bodies than anticipated. i would not at all say that the affordable care act is a republican plan. if you listen to people on capitol hill, certainly the republicans do not think it is a republican plan as well. host: minnesota, you are up next. caller: thanks for taking my

call. i think that obamacare has been a good example of why we need to go to single-payer system. if you look at enron, they were buying electricity and selling it and yet they didn't produce anything. they just collected the profits or it the insurance companies are doing that. i don't care how you slice it if you cut out the middleman and the middleman being the insurance company, and go to a single-payer system, it is going to be cheaper. we would have a healthier society, because we would get the kind of health care -- my son is a good example. he has to pay such a high deductible that he won't go to the doctor himself.

he lets his kids go. he should have a colonoscopy. he has had issues with his stomach before. he just -- he is just rolling the dice on this, and doubles down on his life insurance. this is the kind of deal we got when we have insurance companies, because it is like enron buying and selling electricity. they don't produce anything they just collect profits. thank you. guest: bob raise a number of interesting issues. on the single payer system first of all, i don't think politically that is at all viable. it was talked about a little bit in the run-up to the portable to act and rejected by the democrats in the diskette -- in the of run-up to the affordable care act and rejected by the democrats in the discussion. i don't think it would solve the problems above is talking about. when you have a scarce resource you have to ration some way.

we ration by price, which i will admit is not perfect, but we basically ration my costs. another way is to action by line. in england, people have to wait a long time for care. some of those wait times americans would just not put up with. they would have no patience for the kind of system you have in england. in terms of the colonoscopy, i feel bad for bob's son and i definitely think he should get a colonoscopy. it is important to get preventive care and if more folks got preventive care, it would solve a lot of issues. but he raises an important issue with this notion of deductible. what we're seeing in recent years is the rise of higher deductibles, higher co-pays. in some ways, it is a way to reduce this idea that there was a third party paying and i don't have to worry about health care because it is some third-party paying.

if you are in medicare or employer directed care, i don't have to worry about it and i will take most extensive -- expensive treatment, you will not be a smart consumer and not be and what is known as a value driven health care. at the same time, a lot of employers are looking in high deductibles to reduce the value of their health care offering because they are facing something called the excise tax. it is supposed to be imposed on high-value health plans. it is part of the aca the affordable care act, and is supposed to kick in in 2018. it tells employers that if you are giving health care over a certain amount, $10,000-plus for an individual, 27,000-plus for a family, you have to pay a 40% tax for any amount you go over those thresholds. more and more plans are hitting that threshold, and a place to want to be hit with that 40% tax. they are -- employers don't want to be hit with that 40% tax.

it is leading to what i think will be an affordability challenge in a player-sponsored care in the years ahead. host: tevi troy with the health policy institute joining us. michigan -- ed, go ahead. caller: i am kind of wondering about the penalties under the affordable care act for this year. we had a young couple at church with two children getting under the subsidy side of it so they chose not to pay the premium for the year. at the end of the year they were complaining about the costs they were anchoring on their taxes. can you tell me exactly how that works? i have a child that is going to be in that situation i think this year. i'm trying to figure out how upfront much it is going to cost. guest: i believe what ed is referring to is the individual

mandate, the requirement that everybody in this country must purchase insurance. this is really a groundbreaking step, something that had not existed before, and people say we have to have auto insurance. you get auto insurance only if you purchase to choose a car -- choose to purchase a car. for health insurance basically for the privilege of existence you have to purchase health care. you have this insurance mandate that is not existed before. an issue went to the supreme court in 2009 2010, and the decision that was decided in 2012 right before the election, and in that case the supreme court said it was ok to have the individual mandate, or it was not a constitutional violation although they called it a tax rather than a mandate. that is basically what it is -- you have to pay additional taxes if you do not purchase health insurance. in the first year it was a relatively small amount. but the amounts go up to 5% of

income over time. if you choose not to purchase health insurance -- health insurance can cost a lot of money -- that you would be faced with this penalty. if you are faced with of penalty, some people will say i don't have health insurance and i have to pay for the privilege of not having health insurance that is irksome. people look at the amount of money they have to pay in the mandate, smaller than it is to purchase health insurance on its own, and people say i would rather be covered. people with limited income face a real challenge in what position to make. it is a tough decision. host: let's go to dana. she lives in los angeles california. caller: yes. it seems with the republicans things are coming back. go. they always talk about the intimate -- coming back for circle. they'll talk about the intimate relationship they want you to have with your physician. yesterday was the anniversary of terri schiavo's death, where the

government, including the republicans all the way up to the president got involved with the health care decision of a person. they are pretty hypocritical with matters related to health care, because the entire government got involved in that situation. they haven't provided any solid health care format that they would actually approve that would actually take the place of obamacare. that is all i have to say. guest: there's really two parts to the question. one is is it hypocritical to take positions on life questions and also want the government less involved? i don't think so. it is an economic decision, economic framework. do you want the government more involved in the basic economics of life? for the people concerned about the terri schiavo case, this is a woman who was brain dead or near brain-dead in florida back in the mid-2000s.

there's the question of protection of basic human life and different people can be on different sides of this issue without being hypocritical about where they stand about the role of economic regulation in society. let's just leave it at that. host: we will head to ben. ben is watching us in phoenix, arizona. independent line. caller: first, i would like to thank you, c-span, for being instrumental in carrying on democracy. you guys are doing a great job. four years ago i was diagnosed with anti-trypsin deficiency. it is a condition where my lungs were deteriorating and my doctors were giving me between six to eight years to live. we got a lung transplant. jan brewer -- part of obamacare, basically -- added lung transplants as part of the payable procedures to be covered by medicaid. they're currently covering

$20,000 a month in medication, and will cover my lung transplant, assuming it is still there by the time i need it, which is going to be approximately 15-18 months. i would like to say, the single-payer, or the nonprofit group that is covering this is called the -- i am going to forget this now -- mercy care. i would like to give them nothing but -- they are one of the best insurance companies nonprofit. it is a model company. you should see how they operate. i have no deductibles. my coverage is entirely paid. if not for obamacare i would probably die of suffocation. that is all i've got to say. host: mr. troy? guest: let me say a couple

points. first of all, i strongly agree with him about c-span carrying on the traditions of democracy. it is great that people can get up here and with different perspectives talk about issues and you feel what is going on on capitol hill and broadcasted to americans and the world. i applaud you at c-span. as for been in his condition, i wish him a very speedy recovery and i hope things work out with the lung plan, and i applaud mercycare for providing the coverage for him. he said that republicans would rescind obamacare and leave no alternative, and dana also suggested this, so two callers addressed this issue. i hear this all the time in the media republicans have no plan for obamacare. they just want to get rid of it and want nothing else. i would say that is not true. what republicans have are many plans for replacing the affordable care act. what they don't have is a

standardbearer. they don't have a presidential candidate. they don't have any one time because we talk about the messiness of democracy and you have a whole bunch of different plans on capitol hill and in the opinion pages. kind of like what we were talking about with king v. burwell. republicans are looking at a variety of options. whatever republicans are talking about, they have a number of major categories that overlap. a van diagram, if you will come of republican plans that have significant overlap. first of all, we talked about the ability to purchase insurance across state lines. if you live in new york, new jersey, states with heavy mandates, you should be able to look elsewhere to purchase insurance in a different state that doesn't necessarily cover, let's say, some kind of cosmetic surgery, if that is something that is required under law.

you should have the option to look at other states where you get the product that works best for you. second thing they talk about his tour reform. -- is tort reform. the cbo has said that some kind of tort reform to rein in out-of-control medical lawsuits could save the country $50 billion. i actually think the number would be higher because it would not only reduce the lawsuits, it would reduce the cost of malpractice insurance, but it also might curtail the practice of defensive medicine, which is a practice where physicians who cover themselves would provide extra tests or require extra tests so that later on if they are ever brought to court in case it goes wrong, they could say i did this test and that test. even if the tests aren't medically necessary. those are two components. the third is some kind of health savings account. these are accounts that would allow tax-free medical expenses and if done right they would be able to be rolled over your

tears are you could accrue a nest egg for help expense. that is important especially as you get older. plus retirees have higher health care costs and you have this tax-free mistake to help yourself and after you die you can pass it onto your children so that is important. another thing in pretty much all republican plans is an association health plan, some way people can band together and get tax preferred insurance without getting it from their employer. you had a leo gerard on earlier. you can get it from your church group, some kind of civics association. and then the fifth is going to be in every republican plan, but it changes depending on who's playing it is, and this is what i call the tax goodie, some kind of tax preferred incentive to help people purchase insurance so that it is not as costly. this could be in the form

of a non-refundable tax credit some kind of tax exclusion deduction. there are many ways of going about this, but this goodie is essential to making sure you get enough people covered. this-- this is not just pie-in-the-sky stuff. they found that this plan would reduce the average cost of care premiums for families. i think that is really important, to know that this plan could reduce the cost of insurance premiums for families. the problem with the plan was that the goodie was kind of small and it didn't cover enough people. if you can design the tax preferred something in the right way, you can actually cover more people, while at the same time reducing the cost. we were having this big debate. whoever is the standardbearer will have plans that look something like that and will cover a lot of ground, cover more people, hopefully reduce the cost of insurance. then people like the color --

caller will be able to have -- host: what is this about? i used to work --guest: i used to work at the department of health and human services. what would happen if there was a flu outbreak? there was a flu in america in 1918 and 1919 that cost the lives of a staggering number of americans. this book looks at different disasters that we have faced in the past. it would include some health disasters like that one. also, terrorist attacks, potential for, let's say, a massive blackout in the case of a cyber attack. it looks at economic collapse natural disasters like katrina and how presidents have reacted to them, what lessons we can learn from how presidents have dealt with these disasters, and

what policies we should push going forward into the future. the book is coming out in september. host: carol from st. louis missouri. caller: thank you. i am so tired of all these complicated plans. we hear them over and over. this, that, and the other thing. i call it my keep it simple stupid plan. why can't we have, kind of like european countries, a national dedicated, federal sales tax that covers everyone that everybody contributes, everybody can use it, it would have a generous threshold, but you cannot go private? ok? no tax on medicines. get companies out of the insurance health care business. it is just too much. and i just don't like that you can't do something so simple. i'm a citizen, here is my social security number, and on.

what does he think of that? host: thanks for that -- guest : thanks for that. i agree with keeping it simple. the affordable care act bit off more than it could chew. some of the republican plans are more modest, in that they don't try and take on every thing at once. i think whatever happens, and there will be changes to the affordable care act in the nest -- next presidential administration, whether it is a republican or a democrat -- i think they should be more humble in the way they approach these things. what she is talking about is medicare for all funded with a sales tax, it sounds like to me. the problem is americans already feel they are heavily taxed and they are, so this would be an additional tax burden on people. but the other issue is that medicare for all has a problem in that medicare itself is run by politicians, basically, and

the politicians confer more and more generous benefits on people over time. that means that the cost of medical art -- medicare goes up and the unfunded liabilities go up. one of the concerns is the problem with this system would be that politicians would want -- not want to place cost controls, understandably because they are unpopular. they would provide more and more generous benefits over time, and we would have similar problems in medicare. except medicare is only a slice of the population. that is only a slice of the population. this would be for all 300 plus million people. it would get very expensive very fast. host: david, good morning. caller: good morning. it is interesting that giving a subsidy to people that are poor is a goodie, but tort reform is not a goodie.

you know, tort reform is a medical goodie for big pharma and doctors. i really have no problem with tort reform. i think people get -- they feel sorry for people that are in bad circumstances. they do overpay for tax lawsuits that they settle. heavy costs on doctors. and doctors do have a big cost problem with insurance, and there is no question about that. they do practice defensive medicine. ok, i will cut to the chase. i have hepatitis c.

i have hemochromatosis which is iron in my blood. i have to go to the doctor every two weeks, get blood draws. there are new drugs that have come online for hepatitis c. people have mentioned in passing that we pay three -- we pay cost for medicine three times more than other places in the world. that's why people in michigan go over to canada to get their medication. host: david, what would you like our guest to address? caller: i would like him to address why we can't have a nice keep it simple, stupid like the young lady before me

or a couple people before me s aid, and subsidize it with attacks -- a tax and not complicate it? cut the cost of defensive medicine. focus on the obamacare ideas of keeping the young people well. host: ok. we will put it out there. we will let our guest respond. guest: i definitely offer my sympathies to david. he is going through a tough time. i wish you the best of luck. i also want to thank him. it raises a good point that i didn't think of before, that the word goodie -- it is my own work. i have looked for a word to use to describe the tax benefit that republican plans would confer on americans. here i am, i am supporting some kind of benefit for americans and he is criticizing the word.

i won't use the word goodie to describe what i'm talking about in the future. the problem is that so many of the words are loaded in other ways. subsidies is something people don't like. people don't like giving vouchers. i'm not sure this would necessarily be a voucher. every word has political weight or significance loaded upon it. we are always looking for the right word. keith hennessey is a very smart guy. he would say, ok, let's call it something. let's call it a banana. there are ways to express these things better. i will pledge to do better on that in the future. but the point remains, and i think it is important, that there should be some kind of tax-preferred benefit in whatever health plan that comes forward and replace of the affordable care act or whatever republicans push forward in the future, there should be some kind of tax benefit. in terms of what he's talking about with the keep it simple, stupid the kiss plan, with the

affordable care act, they talked about many of these things let's solve everything let's do this through more taxes. there are a lot of taxes imposed as a result of the affordable care act. there are some more people being covered, no doubt about that but there are still a lot of people who are uncovered, and the costs are going up. it is not clear that the approach we have taken the past is going to work. i am not one of these people who was going to say definitively that we know the long-term impact of the affordable care act, because we don't. i'd use it just there are three metrics are looking at it, one is cost -- i do suggest there are three metrics for looking at it. one is cost. the rate of cost increase has decreased. we will see where that goes. the second is coverage. there are more people covered, but still not everyone. even post-2019, according to cbo, we will still have 30 million plus people uninsured. i'm not sure that's what they

were talking about when they said let's cover everybody. the third metric i like to look at is if you like your health care, you can keep it. the obama promise was politically necessary to get the law across. like i was saying earlier, with the employer-sponsored health care which covers millions of americans, that number will change in the future, we don't know by how much. we already know for the people in the individual market, if you like your health care, you can keep it was not true. we know that millions are in the time will tell school. host: lancaster, california independent line. caller: happy april fools' day! i've got a women can fix all this and put american people -- a way we can fix all this, and put american people back to work. all we have to do is raise tariffs.

american people are lazy. we are -- are not lazy. we are willing to work hard. as a carpenter, i had great insurance. thank you so much for your time, and god bless the united it's of america. -- the united states of america. host: let's go next to david new york. caller: mr. troy, i was hoping you could help me make sense of the whole since -- the whole situation at hand for myself. for the last several years i had emblem health care employee -- employer-sponsored insurance. i may be used it once or twice a year for basically physicals. i recently received a letter about a month ago saying in order for home care services to be in compliance with the affordable care act, you are no longer eligible to participate in our program. it says that personal assistance working on consumer direct cases are considered common-law employees of the consumer and not the agency. they put me out of insurance

now. had i just banked that money over the course of time, i would have at least $40,000, $50,000, maybe even more in the bank, and now i have nothing. i'm without insurance. after taxes, and only take home $272 -- i only take home $272 per week. what was wrong with the insurance i had? why would the president unseat my insurance? it is almost as though they allowed my company to not help me with my insurance. i was contribute towards it, at least $150 per week out of my pay. host: thanks, david. guest: that's a terrible story and that is one of the things we are looking at about the american -- looking at at the american health policy institute, the rate at which the affordable care act is making people lose their insurance.

you have people in the individual markets whose plans are no longer deemed appropriate. because of the cost of the affordable care act -- it becomes too high. i don't know what happened. he went from an employee to a common-law employee. i'm not sure what happened. it is a terrible and unfair situation. you have someone who was in employer-sponsored care, was contributing to the system, was not a heavy user, so his contributions were effectively subsidizing other people who were heavier users, and now, he said it was a result of the affordable care act -- i don't know what happened, so i can't necessarily ascribe it to the affordable care act. now, because of changes in our system, you have this person who is no longer deemed an employee and no longer has employer-sponsored health care. host: john from texas republican line. caller: i had a massive stroke.

i was very -- i had five ruptured aneurysms in my brain. i don't care about tort reform. i don't care about the health savings plans. i wouldn't even have health insurance -- i was in texas, probably the worst state in the nation for health care. so, i'm going to be very upset if they strike down this law. host: ok. guest: let me address that. first of all i don't think any republicans are saying just strike down the law and go back to what we had before. it is just not realistic. if any republicans are saying that, then i think they are taking the wrong approach. the reason john should care about these other things i'm talking about with health savings accounts and tort reform is they are designed to help reduce the cost of insurance. the idea is that we make it

cheaper for people to purchase insurance and then you will have less need for the high subsidies, the taxes, and the regulatory structure of the affordable care act. i guess it violates the keep it simple am a stupid rule we have been talking about a couple of the matter is, you need to take -- talking about, but the fact of the matter is, you need to take steps to bring the cost down. host: tevi troy on the president of the american health policy institute, thank you very much. in our last segment, "spotlight on magazines." sam baker of "national journal" joining us for that discussion when we return. ♪

>> the most memorable moment of the week for me was hearing senator cory gardner at our lunch say you need to be firm in your principles, but flexible in the details. i think it really reflects the solutions, like the harsh polarization we are seeing across our country and the methodology that, if all the senators and congressmen and women and all the state legislatures can adopt, we can come together as a country and solve many of our pertinent issues. >> my favorite quote came from julie adams, the secretary of the senate. she said, "number to be humble and have a strong work ethic. be kind to the people you meet on the way up. you will need them out -- again on the way down." >> in congress itself oftentimes, we have a lack of true statesmen. as much as i may disagree with him, senator john mccain did something very impressive last

year. he committed to the veterans affairs reform bill. reading this in a torture report and maintaining how staying away from torture is essential to the character of our democracy, i think the point where we have people who are willing to cross the aisle, who are willing to make these decisions with people they may not often agree with, that is essentially what we need to maintain the security, the integrity of our nation as we go on. >> high school students who generally rent academically in the top -- rank academically in the top 1% of their states were in washington, d.c., as part of the senate youth program. sunday night at it a copy in eastern and pacific on c-span's -- at 8:00 eastern and pacific on c-span. >> "washington journal" continues. host: joining us for discussion sam baker of "national journal." he is a staff correspondent. what a fix in indiana would look like. where are we had as far as a fix is concerned? guest: indiana governor mike

pence gave a press conference yesterday where he sort of isolated. he said, i think the law is fine. i don't think it does any of these things that people are worried it will do, but we have a perception problem, so we are going to look for a fix. and that's about all he said. he didn't give any details about what that fix would be. you can imagine there would be a lot of different ways to approach this. you can sort of toss in some length which, oh, we didn't mean to do that -- some language, oh we didn't mean to do that. host: the essence of the law as it currently stands and what is the fixed supposed to do? ==--- the fix supposed to do? guest: the law does a lot of things that are generally noncontroversial. it would do what a lot of laws have done to protect religious freedoms for religious minorities in circumstances that most people would agree are on objectionable, but the law is written in a way that people are

concerned because of specific provisions in it and because of the way it is different from some of its predecessors. our concern is it could open the door to greater discrimination against same-sex couples and gays and lesbians. so, if there is a fix, if it is a substantive fix, it would likely address some of those specific provisions that have raised these concerns, and they could do that without jeopardizing the underlying premise and the part of this that really is very similar to other state laws and to the comparable federal. host: the governor asked for this revision by end of week. as far as mechanics go, is that possible with the legislature? guest: this seems to be the only thing going on in the state of indiana other than a little bit of basketball this weekend. i think everyone there is motivated here you seen some of the state congressional -- is motivated. you have seen some of the state congressional leaders come out

and say they want to move quickly on this. host: even as we talk -- talk, arkansas, the legislature there, they got a bill for the governor to sign dealing with the same thing. what is arkansas' law do? how similar is it indiana? -- is it to indiana's? guest: walmart is a huge employer and business interest in the state of arkansas. it came out against the bill. the governor, asa hutchinson seems likely to sign it after it got through the legislature last night. we will have this same debate all over again. host: is he hesitant? where does he stand? guest: he expressed reservations about an earlier version and has said that he is going to read this one through and make sure -- it seems like it will probably get his signature. host: our "spotlight on magazines" segment.

if you have questions, particularly the fix being searched for by the indiana legislature -- (202)748-80001, our line for republicans. democrats, (202)748-8000. (202)748-8002 four independents -- for independents. and (202) 585-3883 for arkansas residence. if you have called in the last 30 days, we would appreciate it if you would hold off. indiana, nick. good morning. caller: good morning. glad to see you. i want to say, i called my state representative the day they were supposed to vote on this, monday. and i was told by his office that the reason for this bill

was to keep people who were not served at restaurants or turned away from a church that didn't want to perform a wedding or whatever, to keep them from suing in court. and i said how can you support something like this? you are just taking away people's rights little by little. and pence is talking about raising sales taxes. it is already at 7%. i would like to just call for his resignation on the air. i mean, he is way off from the mainstream. thank you. guest: this certainly has had some pretty serious political fallout for mike pence. there were some, i guess anybody's name can come up in the 2016 presidential conversation, but it is has.

sort of the dark horse candidate. it is really not anymore. and a democrat who ran against him in 2012 has said that, because of all this, he is going to take a fresh look at a rematch the next time pence is up for reelection. that could be a tough fight. host: jasper, georgia. caller: hello. they had a meeting on sustainable population at the sierra club. they said in order to reduce the population, we need to do these things. push as many abortions as possible. promote homosexuality. and attacked christians that stand in the way -- and attack christians that stand in the way of doing this. if they plan to do this, epa and sierra club, they plan to make as many homosexuals as possible to reduce the population. they are talking about bad things with these homosexuals

yet when they talk to them, they act like they are all behind the, they are wonderful. they got an agenda against them. they think the white people and black people -- abortions and homosexuals will clear the way for them to be the main population. could you say anything about this? thank you. host: georgia was one of the states looking at these kinds of laws. where does it stand? guest: georgia has hit some snags and through its state legislature -- some snags in getting through its state legislature. this exposes the divide between the business side of the republican party and the social-issue side of the republican party. they are both traditional, conservative bases. but you have seen very clearly in indiana are really sharp divide between the ncaa and a lot of businesses that have

conferences and do tourism in indiana. you are seeing the same thing in arkansas. it is sort of an interesting divide. host: if i'm a conservative in indiana, a legislature who supported this, now i see the attempts on revision, what's going through my mind? guest: probably a couple things. which kind of conservative are you, i guess? what is your base? if you are a social conservative, how much do you -- what kind of changes do you think you can make without, you know -- if the purpose really was to prevent people from having to bake a cake for a same-sex wedding or something, do you big knowledge that in an effort -- do you acknowledge that in an effort to protect it, or do you walk away and say, this got too hot? i don't think that's a decision

they have made yet. caller: some of these laws like indiana and arkansas, if your religious beliefs are so strong that you feel you should and service a certain segment -- you should not serve a certain segment of the public, do not open approach -- a public business. open a private business. a same-sex couple would not go to a business that would not make a cake for them. it is kind of ludicrous. it is like in the state of michigan. during my lifetime, the laws were removed from the books of interracial marriages. for people to say this is religious reasons, i think we are trying to incite civil war all over again in america. most great empires were destroyed from within. that's exact we what we are doing here in the states now trying to reproduce the civil war that was several years ago. certain states -- they want to have the confederate flags on driver's licenses. they take religion as a means to say, well, this is why we oppose

it. some of these states they oppose abortion, but they have capital punishment, and they want to go to war. all of this nonsense is really crazy. that's all i have to say. guest: the caller raises a good point about the reason that these nondiscrimination laws are on the books. this is something that grew out of the civil rights movement and civil rights laws in the 1960's, when people didn't want -- restaurants didn't want to serve black customers, people didn't want to officiate interracial marriages. that's why we have these public accommodation laws that say exactly, to your point. if you want to open a public business, you have to serve the public, and you can't discriminate on the basis of race sex, some states have added sexual orientation. indiana is not one of them. but that is the progression. it is all related. host: the states that have these

types of laws are highlighted in blue. you can see them on your screen. states without those laws are in the lighter blues. is it simple to say that these types of laws give legal recourse, not necessarily legal victory, in a court situation? guest: yes, and that's an important point to note. what this does is it gives a stronger defense to someone who doesn't want to comply with some government policy, whatever it is. if you don't want to do something the government wants to make you do, usually, it is pretty easy for the government to make you do it. if you say you don't want to violate -- do it because of religion, the government has a harder time in court proving it should prevail and that its interests should outweigh yours. business owners who use this law as a basis to discriminate will still get into court and could still lose. that's appointed mike pence has made that is good -- is completely accurate.

-- that is a point that mike pence has made that is complete the accurate. as we have more and more lawsuits, the likelihood of a victory increases. but it is still a tough thing to prove. host: a definition of this law the government cannot substantially burden a person's ability to follow their religious beliefs, unless it can prove a compelling interest in imposing that burden or do so in the least restrictive way. caller: good morning. if a minister cannot be forced to perform a marriage for homosexual couples, which i assume he cannot, white is his -- why is his religion supposed to be more respected than an individual businessperson's religious beliefs? can't his beliefs be as deep and sincere as that of any

minister? why are you saying one cannot be forced to do guest: the distinction would be that the minister is performing his religion, not baking a cake or delivering flowers. these are not expressly religious activities. the distinction that the laws draw is that if you go into the public sphere, you have to serve the public. if you go narrowly into religion , that is a different story. host: we have set a sign -- set aside a line for indiana and arkansas residents. james from indianapolis. caller: good morning.

can you hear me? host: go ahead. caller: this is relatively simple. i think it was always a situation of bad timing for indiana due to the fact that some other states and federal laws are so similar. they were searching for an issue to bring up the secular, pc gaming. -- secular pc gang. it is just as simple as being able to say no. you could have a muslim t-shirt owner shop and somebody wants the prophet mohammed on a t-shirt. is he allowed? it is hard to diminish the fact that he would be really upset to do that. basically, we are setting up for society. we are making the religious

classes feel like a minority. let's set indiana up and see how many dominoes fall from their. america is changing. i guess the empty suit in the white house is getting his way. in fundamentally changing the united states. good for him. in the long run, we are ripping away at the fabric of america. guest: timing is a really important part of the reason that this law is so controversial. indiana took this up after an attempt to ban same-sex marriage in the state failed. it is a lot of the same people in the state legislature who supported that measure, who reintroduced this measure. that is part of the reason that groups like the aclu look at this latest push for religious freedom laws and say, this is about same-sex marriage. this is about gay couples. that is why you are doing this now.

absolutely the timing of this is a reason it is coming to a head in a way that it did not when the federal religious freedom lot was packed or some of the earlier state acts were passed. host: we have heard the baker and those examples. do we see those bear out in court cases prosecuted under these laws? guest: we do. there was an interesting example in 2013. it was a photographer in new mexico. new mexico has one of these laws that it did earlier. the photographer did not want to shoot a same-sex couples wedding. she went to court, she went all the way through her appeal, and she lost at every turn. that is one of the things that indiana points due to say it is a legal defense, but not a day care -- but not a guarantee that you will win. on the other side of the coin, indiana has drafted its law and

a couple of ways that if you want to do specifically avoid the outcome in the photography case these are the changes you would make. the state supreme court in new mexico said, our religious freedom law, the government is not involved. these are private people suing each other. our religious freedom while does not apply. indiana's law says that the law will apply. they are taking proactive steps that are potentially not and it probably is or might give businesses like that a better chance in court. you are seeing those cases and we will see more of them. host: sam baker with "national journal." donald, st. joseph's, majority. -- missouri. caller: this is a false argument that i keep hearing over and over again that you can compare homosexuality and jim crow laws.

there is nowhere in the bible that i can find that promotes racism or jim crow laws. it does say that homosexuality is an abomination. that is why we have this written in stone in the first amendment of the constitution. that you cannot make laws that respect and establishment of a religion or prohibit the free exercise thereof. any law that is made or written by state legislature or whatever will come down on restarting -- respecting religion or prohibiting the free exercise. the government cannot force you to do anything against your religious convictions. that is the end of the story. guest: it is an important point to note that the origin of

religious freedom laws it started with the federal law, as we have heard over and over, was to protect religious minorities from things that most of us would agree seemed like an unnecessary burden on religion. a lot of state laws have served similar purposes. there is an example that people like to use of a child in texas whose family kept their hair long for religious reasons. i believe they were native american. they said you can't come to school here unless you are here in the aclu stood up for that family and brought a case and said, this is not you are substantially burdening exercise of religion and you don't have a compelling reason to do so. certainly, this is a restrictive way of doing whatever you think your interest is. they won that case. these laws have been used in cases like that time and time again in cases that don't even

get anywhere near discrimination. host: from indiana, jeff, good morning. caller: good morning. the last gentleman has it exactly wrong. you have freedom of religion to practice and believe what you want and do that within the drawings of your church in that specific community. once you go out in the public it is a whole different deal. the gentleman from michigan was correct. that is the thing i hate to see. the discussion is only restricted to gays and lesbians in same-sex couples. it can be extended up to muslims, to blacks, to all kinds of different -- of one religion does not want to deal with another religion, jewish people. there is a whole plethora of people out there that could be discriminated against. that is where i think this discussion gets a little bit shortsighted.

in that way, it could touch a lot of people that are not even thinking about it. i think we need a lot of freedom and i think our governor has cut the backlash that he should. guest: sure. when we talk about the governor of indiana, mike pence says he wants a fix. there is an easy answer. you can look to texas for that. texas has a religious freedom law, but it specifically has a carveout and says you cannot use this as a defense in a non-discrimination case. you can challenge various government procedures and statues and ordinances, but not a civil rights law. that might be the sort of middle ground if folks in indiana are willing to go that way. that would keep these

noncontroversial cases safe, while reducing or eliminating the threat that this law could be used to promote new discrimination. host: our next call is robbie from abilene. caller: mark lavinia played audio from 22 years ago. chuck schumer, 97 senators signed this. connecticut has this law. it is crazy, man. absolutely crazy. god is going to win. that is all there is to it. guest: there are a couple of key differences between the federal law and the state laws. the state laws started off similar to the federal law. over time, they have adopted certain changes. now in indiana, there are a couple of key differences.

indiana's law specifically says that it applies to businesses. the federal law had not until the hobby lobby case. the second big difference is that indiana specifically says that its law is relevant in lawsuits when the government is not a party. under the federal version, the government has to be one of the two parties in the lawsuit where we are sorting out religious freedom versus nondiscrimination or whatever it is. those are key differences. they are substantive differences. they do take the law in a different direction than the federal law started out as. host: new jersey is next. this is connie. caller: good morning. thank you for taking my call. i am from spain. i was raised under franco, where

only the catholic religion was allowed in spain. a few days ago, i saw -- to make sure, it was the spanish inquisition. the spanish inquisition was not really all about the jews. it was the arabs who were in the south. my point is, they did nothing without consulting the bishops and the pope. the ones who carried out the inquisition was the dominican order. when i saw the picture of governor pence with all the people who were there, the nuns the rabbis, and the monks, it

was exactly like what happened in spain. they are talking a lot about the first amendment. iowa's thought that in this country, the freedom of religion is that you practice it in your house and your church, when you open a business for the public it is for the public. no matter what religion you are. otherwise, you don't open that business. these states are use the name of god so much in vain, why do they pass laws against sharia law? i don't see no difference. guest: this sort of gets to one of the central questions that we talked about when we debate these laws. whose freedom are we talking about? you can make an argument that

the compelling interest is to protect religious people's freedom to live by their believes, even if they do choose to open up a business. the argument on the other side is it is a public business and we are all free to eat where we want and shop where we want and get married or have a wedding -- whichever one we want. the law traditionally has sort of try to figure out the balance between those two. that is what is happening here. host: looking at the politics story in the washington post. is this going to be an issue? guest: you have seen a lot of the 2016 from runners come out in defense of the law of indiana. pretty unequivocally and pretty early eerie at even before mike fence -- mike pence weighed in on it.

it is a conversation that a lot of republicans probably don't want to have. they do not want to wade back into issues. there is widespread belief that the supreme court will probably make same-sex marriage legal nationwide. now, here we are. it is no longer settled. host: senator cruz sent out support for mike pence. guest: he is making a hard push for the evangelical vote. that is why he announced that -- at liberty university. our republicans a socially conservative party or are they a business conservative party. with this issue, it is tough. caller: good morning.

i really appreciate you. everybody has the right to open a business. people of religious faith are important, as well. i have a sign that says we reserve the right to refuse service to anyone. you don't want someone with a gun saying, you have to make me a cake or whatever you have to do. if you don't believe in the lifestyle of days, why should you be forced -- gays, why should you be forced to honor their request? you are not going to make me a cake or be the photographer at my wedding they have a right to go somewhere else. someone else would do it for them. that does not mean that because you are christian and you believe strongly against this type of lifestyle that you should support it. you should not have to support people who are doing drugs. you should say, we will give you

drugs. it is no difference. i feel very strongly like this. they live their life because they are christians and they want to make sure that they live a christian type life. thank you. guest: sure. the reason that the government has gotten involved in this historically and said that if you open a business, you cannot refuse customers on certain grounds, this goes back to a lot of the supreme court decisions again in the civil rights era where they said and then the congress spoke to this as well. the issue that we all learned in school of separate but equal. the case had to do with access to schools. which is a government institution. the issue is not can one guy get

a meal at one restaurant, can he not go somewhere else? it is do we treat anybody in america like they are second-class citizens not entitled to just walk down the street and live the same life. where the state stand in terms of adding sexual orientations to those laws is very much a patchwork. the city of indianapolis has added nondiscrimination for sexual orientations. host: what a fix in indiana would look like. does the fix need to satisfy the business community who has come out against this or the public at large.

guest: is there some middle ground, some language they could add in there that might still let the law serve this sort of other purpose but that would quell the political firestorm and get the ncaa off its back and not have bands canceling shows in this sort of thing. it remains to be seen whether there is just a surface fix or whether you have to go all the right. -- all the way. host: ross is in connecticut. guest: the idea that this is a war on religious people, i just want to comment that there are a lot of very strong people out there who are christians who take the view that we are all god's children, we all should be

treated with respect, and this whole idea of discrimination against somebody because of whatever they are, we are all god's children. the idea that this is a war on religious people. let's call it what it is. it is really nonsense. this is a war on extremism. this is a war on one extremist view. the main reason i am calling. i want to put in a plug for a group i have contributed to for a long time. americans united for separation of church and state. i knew that these laws were coming three or four months ago. they published a very, very newsworthy magazine that comes out once a month, if you are a contributor, and they pointed out three or four months ago that the religious right groups were devising a strategy for how to attack what was going on with

the acceptance of gay marriage. they reported this. it is all coming true. we knew that this was coming down the pipe. anyone who has strong feelings about this, go out to their website. there was a lot of stuff going on with the religious right. this is the only place to find it. the magazine called church and state has a lot of great news and it. also, the group is very strong on protecting rights. they knew that this was coming down the pipe. i knew this before it was ever reported. guest: there certainly is an element of truth to that. that this is an approach that has been coordinated to some

extent and pushed by a lot of the same groups that oppose same-sex marriage. i don't think they have made a particular effort to disguise that. this is their belief and they are looking to the various legal avenues they have to solidify it. the caller is right. that is where a lot of this push is coming from. that is a different question from the legal questions about how much discrimination, if any, a particular state's law might allow. there are ways to write these religious freedom laws without getting too close to discrimination. host: here is leave from michigan. caller: good morning. my question is about the and alanna law -- indiana law. i understand that everybody has rights. equal rights for everybody. gay and lesbians. my big thing is, when you come

in with the bisexuals. bisexual to me is just greedy. they want the best of both worlds. how would someone even think of marrying someone like that? just curiosity. thank you. guest: that is a specific that has not really come up yet in this particular debate. if you sort of takes the position that a lot of critics of the intel on -- indiana law have taken that you just serve the people who come into your business. it does not matter what sexual orientation they are. then that just would not be a factor. host: clinton, maryland. frank. caller: yes, hello. i just have a comment. i may have one question.

i would like to know why the supreme court -- it is changing civil rights laws. this case in indiana, that is just discrimination. you don't really need a degree to see what is going on. you don't need a degree. it is taking us to 60 years ago. this country should be moving forward. but we are still going back. we have these radical republicans they cannot govern. they got the house in the senate and they cannot even govern. it is all bad. that is my point. that is all i have to say. guest: we certainly do see the country, as a whole, in both institutions and public opinion moving very quickly more and more toward acceptance of same-sex marriage.

the caller referenced the supreme court. arguments are later this month on same-sex marriage. that state is expected in june. most people think that the court will probably make gay marriage legal nationwide. public opinion on it has shifted radically over the past couple of years. people support the right of gay couples to marry. that is what is being worked out in these debates how to balance that this is where the country is going, when it is not literally where everyone is going. host: the former state house speaker john gray talks about a rematch against mike pence. there may be some things surfacing. guest: here we go. i wonder what the issue and that campaign will be? host: willow springs, north

carolina. david on the independent line. caller: yes, good morning. i find this whole thing to be a direct contradiction to the teachings of the bible. the bible teaches compassion and understanding. love thy neighbor as thyself. judge not lest you be judged. he who has not sinned him a him cast the first stone. rather than refusing service to a gay or lesbian couple, that you would take an opportunity to try to expose them to the word of god. it seems the religious right you are not going to try to convert somebody who is already converted. you are not going to try to teach the bible to a christian. but it seems to be in direct con -- contradiction. the religious right seems to selectively interpret the bible as well as the constitution, to fit their goals, but the bottom

line is judgment is reserved for god and god alone. on judgment day, if you are a believer, you will stand face-to-face with god and be held accountable for your sins. i just find it to be completely contradictory to the teachings of the bible. thank you. host: linda, knoxville, tennessee. democrat line. caller: good morning. this is all in the spirit of satire. i have the legislative fix. the classic compromise position. transparency. all businesses who do not wish to serve lgbt clients must display a logo. i picture a rainbow flag with a big circle and black crossbar across it. it must be on your webpage, your yellow page ad, your facebook page, and post it on your business door if you have a storefront.

if you're advertising for employees, it must be included in the want to add post. i'm thinking of going to businesses and selling this logo and i bet i would make a killing. that is it. guest: you know, i'm not sure if you would make a killing are not. that is one of the questions indiana is grappling with. how many businesses are there really? what is the issue? what is the problem? is it that there are a lot of businesses who will not serve same-sex couples or is it that it creates an impression that indiana is not welcoming. if you are gay, don't prine -- don't bother trying to plan your wedding. and a lot of businesses, especially in cities in indiana they have joined this protest. they are advertising that we will serve everybody, we love everybody. i do know how big the market for that scarlet letter might be. host: knoxville tennessee.

caller: you just talk to me. host: thank you. republican line. misty in south carolina. caller: yes, can you hear me? hey. i just wanted to clear something up from speaking for my people here in this state. we don't have anything against gays and lesbians going into businesses i.e. retail stores or restaurants, clothing stores. that is not the issue. the issue is making someone like myself, which is a minister, marry a gay couple, which is an abomination to god. the other lady talked about judgment. do you not realize that on judgment day we have to stand there and explain to him we thought we weren't supposed to judge so we marry them, even though you said it was an abomination. this is ridiculous. people need to get out of minister's lives. we need a religious freedom

back. period. if you are trying to stop again lesbian couple from coming into walmart or chick filet, you are wrong. i agree with that other lady. if you have a business and you are trying to sell services, you need to sell everybody. if you are religious, you should not be forced to marry someone. frankly, if i was gay, i would not somebody to marry me who felt that way about me. that is all of got to say. guest: sure. i think there are two separate issues. even among a lot of people who are critical of the law in indiana and don't want to see discrimination allowed in public businesses, i think even among those people there is still pretty strong support for not requiring religious officials to preside over a ceremony that is out of step with their religious beliefs. i think that that is a safe harbor. host: leesburg, virginia.

jim. caller: yes, as a total agnostic on this and not bringing any religion, i would say this is an l bgg community poking it into society and if not the right's i. -- the right's eye. when there are tons of other businesses that would gladly do this for you, this would be like having a practicing jewish business or practicing jew come in and be mandated because a nazi party showed up and said, you will cater our lunch or even a black photographer saying, we are going to definitely go after this black photographer and go to the kkk wedding and you will not say anything about it. it is a private business. this is like the federal government saying, you cannot smoke in bars. i was so against this. if this one wants to be smoking, and this one does not want to be, then when the businesses is