>> here on c-span this morning, "newsmakers" is next with florida representative and dnc chair, debbie wasserman schultz. then a hearing talking about sexual misconduct by dea agents overseas. later, recognition of the 20th anniversary of the oklahoma city bombing. pedro: joining us on "newsmakers," representative debbie wasserman schultz hoosiers florida and is the chair of the democratic national committee. thank you for joining us. debbie: thank you for having me.

pedro: joining us in the studio, kathy kiely,. kathy: congresswoman, you are in new hampshire, what are you doing there? are you running for something we do not know about? debbie: the only thing i am running for is reelection to my district and south florida. far from here. the reason i am here is because we have a veritable circus tent of candidates here in new hampshire for the first in the nation cattle kate -- cattlecade. i thought it was important to be here to draw contrast between our candidates and what our nominee will stand for, and what the group of presidential candidates stand for. very clearly, the republicans are demonstrating that they are

all fully embracing the failed trickle-down economic policies of the past that voters have rejected repeatedly. and they have gotten us into the worst economic crisis since the great depression. finally thanks to barack obama , they are climbing out of. i am here to make sure that new hampshire voters understand if they want a candidate who will fight for the middle class, that will be the democratic candidate for president. kathy: congresswoman, it sounds like a lot of the speakers, they have already decided who your nominee will be. of course, hillary clinton is perceived as the front runner. a bloomberg poll earlier this week showed that voters, even those who support secretary of state, former secretary of state clinton think that she should be challenged. they think she would be a better candidate if she has a primary challenge, do you agree? which candidate do you think

would be the best challenger for mrs. clinton? rep. wasserman schultz: as the chair, i am not in the business of handicapping the strengths or weaknesses of any of our democratic candidates. i have to effectively manage the democratic primary. which, i expect we will have. we will have other candidates enter the race, including martin o'malley, the former governor of maryland has discussed it. the vice president is expected to decide his decision in the summer. bernie sanders, who is not a democrat, so first he would have to make that decision, but he is also thinking about running, so is jim webb. i expect the voters that believe we should have a democratic primary will get their wish.

steven: obviously hillary clinton is the only candidate we have running four year nomination. she starts out with a problem on the question of honesty and trust, we see polling showing a majority of voters in some of those states say that she is not honest and trustworthy am a what does she have to do to reverse that? does she have to reverse it at all? or is it not as important as leadership or other characteristics? rep. wasserman schultz: hillary clinton is one of the most admired women in america. i am confident that her strength as a candidate will show through because of the issues that she champions. we will have a breadth of candidates who will also champion the issues that matter the most, they want a president who will have their back. they want a president they know will create opportunities for them to reach the middle class. they want a president who will say, let's make college more affordable.

let's not cut pell grants, let's increase pell grants. let's make sure interest rates are lower so that college is more affordable. let's not repeal the affordable care act. let's make sure the 16 million people who have health care now, let's make sure it continues to work for them. that's the kind of thing our candidates will be talking about. steven: going back to this question, it is fresh polling it is national and in-state, is honesty and trustworthiness not an important characteristic in an election for president? rep. wasserman schultz: of course the polling that is done now, we are in april of the year before the election, any polling that is done now is really not that credible, beyond that, the decisions made by voters on who

they want to be the next president will be based on who they think is going to make sure if you play by the rules and work hard, you will have a fair shot. a fair shot to succeed. on major every issue that determines whether you have a fair shot, it is democrats who have stood up and made sure we pulled ourselves out of the worst economic crisis since the great recession, had 61 straight months of job growth in the private sector. we have a stock market that is booming. we have gas prices that are much lower the lowest in recent memory. those are the results of the democratic policies. contrast that with republicans who would take us backwards. anyone of the clown car candidates among the republicans would take us back to the past. that is what voters will make their decision on. steven: i will try one more time on the question of honesty and trustworthiness. when we talk to voters in iowa

the reason they almost all site are the stories about hillary clinton's e-mail server and how she has handled it or not handle it. a lot of frustration among democrats, those who supported obama or bill clinton, i want to ask you because you are the head of the national committee, do you use a personal e-mail account for anything you do politically or for government business? rep. wasserman schultz: i use both official and a personal account, yes. steven: and do you make any effort -- that is for both government business and party business? rep. wasserman schultz: i use a personal e-mail and an official e-mail. and i have a dnc e-mail as well. i have several e-mails i use for various responsibilities. on e-mail specifically, your question about e-mail, i can assure you and i am confident number one that secretary clinton followed all the rules

that were in place at the time for how she would communicate with her staff. she has made that clear. she has released 55,000 pages of e-mails. at the end of the day, american voters are not going to decide who they want to be president based on what e-mail address they use. that i am confident of. steven: for yourself, at the party and congressional office do you make an effort to make sure any business you do on a personal e-mail is copied for the records? rep. wasserman schultz: what i do's communique, depending on the issue, with my staff on official e-mail and on political e-mail with my personal e-mail address. we separate it out in the appropriate way. there are times i use my personal e-mail for official business, but as you know, when it comes to e-mails in congress, we have constitutional restrictions that are a little

bit different than how it applies to the executive branch. pedro: kathy kiely. kathy: you mentioned that hillary clinton is one of the most admired women in the country. how do you think gender plays in this election, if at all? is it an advantage or a disadvantage? as a woman, yourself in politics, do you think that there is still a bias against that? if you look at the numbers, it certainly is a far left representative than the numbers of women in the country. is that a problem for hillary clinton? rep. wasserman schultz: i don't think so at all. no. on the contrary, i think , being a woman would be an asset. i was raised to understand that

a little girl can grow up and be anything she wants to be, even president of the united states. i think it is absolutely an asset. it is an opportunity for a candidate, hillary or anyone else to talk about the issue of , families through the lens of their experience. just coming off equal payday on tuesday, it takes an extra four months for women in this country to earn what a man earned in a year doing the same work. we have women candidates across the country, whether it is women candidates for president congress, governor, who can talk about that inequity. jeb bush even said, he didn't even know what the paycheck fairness act was. marco rubio said that pursuing paycheck fairness and making sure women can earn the same amount and making sure there is legislation to hold their employers accountable was a waste of time.

rand paul has also criticized it. there is not a single republican who believes we should pass legislation to make sure women get equal pay for equal work. that is even in spite of the fact, kathy, that 40% of households with families in this country are headed by a woman. a woman loses almost half $1 million over her working life when she isn't paying the same for equal work. i think it is especially important that we have women's voices in office so that we can make sure that issues that are important to women specifically are more likely to rise. kathy: i want to ask you about the republican field. i assume, being a floridian, that you know both jeb bush and marco rubio. did you serve with rubio in the legislature? rep. wasserman schultz: i did. i was in the senate when marco was in the house. kathy: are you surprised to see the two of them as rivals? any insights as to why that happened and how that will play out in your state and beyond? rep. wasserman schultz: i served

in the legislature for the six years of eight that jeb bush was governor. i will tell you, in my 22 years in office, there was not a more inflexible, unreasonable governor or elected official that i had the chance to work with. this was someone who was the furthest, and i am not just talking about it because i disagreed with him on issues. i have disagreed with plenty of people. i served a lot of years in the minority. majority is better, but even in the minority, i found ways to be effective. jeb bush had absolutely no interest in working with anyone who didn't share his opinion. that is not a good harboring of your ability to be president and work together with people across the aisle. in addition to that, he really decimated our tax base and focused on making sure we could cut taxes almost exclusively for the wealthiest floridians. he left us in a very difficult spot when the bottom dropped out

of the economy thanks to his brother's economic policies. it was much tougher for florida. we were hit harder. marco rubio, unfortunately, is trying to market himself as a new type of republican with new ideas. he has fully embraced all of the same republican policies. the trickle-down economics cutting taxes for the wealthy increasing taxes for the middle class. he supports ending welfare as we know it. to add insult to injury, he writes a comprehensive immigration reform plan, pushes it through the senate, and as soon as the right wing tea party extremists in his party got wind of it and were opposed to it, he ran away. the last time i checked, there is a little bit of pressure on the president of the united states. if marco rubio couldn't hack pressure from the extreme right wing of his own party how will ,

he handle being president? pedro: you are watching "newsmakers" with debbie wasserman schultz. steve: just to finish up on that subject, because of your florida expertise, which one is going to win the florida primary? rep. wasserman schultz: quite frankly, it doesn't matter. no matter who the republican nominee is in the field of 19 or 22 or whatever number end up throwing their hats in the ring, they are all embracing and will present a very stark and clear contrast between our democratic nominee. the democratic nominee will continue to fight for the middle class and working families, will ensure that colleges affordable ensure that people have access to quality health care, focus on job creation, help small businesses, make sure we expand opportunities. the republicans focus on helping people who are the wealthiest

and most fortunate, give them all the breaks, and maybe the crumbs will fall on the rest of us. that has been tried. it failed. and the voters rejected it as recently as 2012. i think it doesn't much matter who they nominate, just like it didn't matter in 2012. ultimately, the voters will reject their nominee because they know they won't have their back. steven: can i bring it back down to congress and washington where we are today. as you know, congress is going to start debating trade. particularly trade with asia. this is not an automatically easy answer or question for debate with democrats. a lot of interest groups, labor unions in particular, are not in favor of free trade as the president is. i want to ask you a couple of questions. what do you see, and how would you vote on this trade partnership? and secondly, how do you think it would help wages for low income wage earners in the united states? what would it do about the wage

gap? rep. wasserman schultz: one thing i will tell you is that when it comes to negotiating a trade agreement, i have a lot more confidence in president obama handling those negotiations than i did when we had a republican as president. i voted both for and against trade agreements. i voted against cafta. i voted for columbia and south korea. i am taking a close look at tpp and tpa, and taking a look at environmental considerations and labor standards. i would give you a little pushback on your characterization that we have a lot of democrats who are against free trade. democrats are generally for fair trade. we want to make sure that when we passed a trade agreement in the united states, we are getting a good deal and that when it comes to balance, we are addressing trade deficits we have with the nations involved but at the same time, we make sure that we have labor

standards that are up to par, so that workers are treated fairly and paid a living wage. so that environmental standards are strong, that we don't have an agreement that runs roughshod over the environment, that when it comes to balance for businesses and regulations for consumers, that we have good strong rules in place. those are things that i know president obama has been meticulously negotiating. i have confidence that we have a chance to get the best possible agreement we can get and i am going to take a close look at it, as are many of my colleagues. kathy: just to follow up on steve's questions, a lot of democratic constituency groups specifically labor groups are suspicious of this because they feel burned by some of the agreements that have been supported by democrats in the past. how do you, as the head of a party that relies heavily on labor and labor has provided a lot of money and legwork for

your party, how do you -- how can you even consider it, and why is this not a third rail when it comes to labor, a very important constituency for your party? rep. wasserman schultz: if you remember, president obama as a candidate talked about how, if he had a chance to be president, he would make sure we renegotiated nafta. that is what he is doing as part of this. i think because labor was so concerned at the time about nafta and what a raw deal they thought it was, and how harmful they thought it was, that now they have an opportunity to renegotiate those standards. look, the democratic family is just like any other family. we have arguments. we have discussions. but we ultimately coalesce around the democratic nominee and our candidates up and down the ballot because we know that our candidates are best suited

and are the most likely to focus on making sure that if you work hard and play by the rules in this country, you have a chance to earn a living wage, reach the middle class, provide for your family, have a good roof over your head, and that you don't have to spend your life wringing your hands over how you are going to negotiate all of that. -- achieve all of that. republican policies have included none of those protections, have included terrible environmental standards, have not made labor protections a priority. that is the kind of conversation we are having. we are listening to our friends in the labor movement. i have had numerous meetings with labor leaders both at home and in washington. we are listening carefully to them. we know the administration is as well. kathy: have they given you any ultimatums on this? rep. wasserman schultz: no, i have not heard any ultimatums

from labor leaders that i have spoken to. they feel very strongly about certain provisions, about priorities within a trade agreement. and there are some labor unions that have said they don't support the trade agreement he negotiated now, but quite frankly we don't have a trade agreement fully negotiated to show folks. we definitely should be listening to one another and i believe we should hear them out and i'm confident if there is anyone going to bat on the issues that matter to labor when it comes to a trade agreement it's barack obama. i am cautioning them -- let's give the negotiations some time and let's take a look at the standards that come out when that matter to us, and let's judge it at that point. steven: i want to come back to politics. kathy opened with a question about challengers in the primary.

you assume there will be a multi-candidate field. how active will you be in regulating and setting debates? the republican party has stepped forward and after their debate calvacade last time and said we're going to limit the number of debates. will you do the same thing or let it be a free for all and as many as possible? rep. wasserman schultz: no. we're going to roll out a schedule for sanctioned debates. we usually do that and this election cycle will not be any different. we'll have a series of sanctioned debates that we expect our candidates will participate in. we have been having corings with -- conversations with both candidates in the race and potential candidates and talking about what that schedule will look like. steven: when and where will we see the first one? rep. wasserman schultz: we have not made that decision yet. we are still having those discussions. i'll make an announcement in the near future. pedro: generally how many do you

, think we'll have, representative? rep. wasserman schultz: like i said, we're still having those discussions. as soon as we reach a final decision, i'll make an announcement and everyone will know. pedro: more than five, less than 10? rep. wasserman schultz: like i said, we are still having those discussions. when we make a decision we will announce it and everybody will know. what we are doing is making sure we take a lot of input from our ally groups, from our candidates who are talking about running, as well as who are in the race already, and i'll make a decision on that in the very near future and we'll make an announcement. kathy: congresswoman, i have certainly picked up a theme in your remarks here about the middle class. and i just wondered, how is it possible to convince voters that that is sincere rhetoric when you talk about the middle class and when you talk about the needs of folks who are trying to make ends meet and at the same time have to go out to fundraisers whether you personally or people working on

behalf of your candidates asking people to write checks with lots of zeroes behind them. i mean, we've seen so much. we've seen so many super pacs already this year. there's already one teed up for your potential nominee, the only candidate in the race, hillary clinton. given that the candidates are going to be relying so heavily on money from big donors, either directly or indirectly, how can they stay in touch with and how can they make a priority of middle class voters and how can middle class voters trust that they're being made a priority? why should they? rep. wasserman schultz: well, as you know kathy, we as a party feel very strongly that there is too much money in politics. that we need more transparency. that the citizens united decision was one of the worst decisions as president obama has said that the supreme court has handed down. it's harmful to democracy because it makes it so that you

can have the massive, more than six or seven figure contributions that are opaque that voters can't see that where spending doesn't have to be reported. and it allows these oblique attacks against candidates that really i think poison the environment. so we believe that there should be transparency. we support the disclose act. as i heard secretary clinton say on the campaign trail the other day, she said we might need to consider amending our constitution to ensure that we can roll back some of the worst changes that occurred after citizens united. that's where our party is. but of course under the rules of engagement as they are now we're not going to unilaterally disarm. we're operating under the rules as they are now while making it clear how we feel about campaign finance reform and transparency. you know, look. our average contribution just in

2012 for example was about $ 54. you had 98% from the contributions from what i remember in 2012 that came into the obama campaign were less than $250. so we feel very good about our grassroots fundraising and how many people we've reached and who is contributing to our candidates because it's really from the grassroots. pedro: the last question. kathy: would you tell your nominee not to accept not the unlimited contributions that go to super pacs that are are reported but money that comes in via 501 c 3's would you urge your nominee repudiate that and disassociate from any of that money or advertising? rep. wasserman schultz: our position, as i said is that we need campaign finance reform. that we need to have as much transparency written into the law and in the constitution as necessary. so that we can get that poisonous environment out and we make sure that we know that voters can choose their candidates and that you don't

have donors buying their candidates as republican support but at the end of the day we'll play by the rules as they exist now and fight for the change that we know will be better for our democracy. pedro: our guest on "newsmakers" this week, representative debbie wasserman schultz. thanks for your time representative. rep. wasserman schultz: things, all of you. pedro: turning to our reporters now, most significant thing you've caught from that conversation, kathy kiely? kathy: she expects a multi-candidate primary. i think we all do to some extent but the fact that she is preparing for debates indicates to me that she thinks hillary clinton will get challenged. how significantly is the question. but that i thought was interesting and i thought the fact that she would not commit to even barring dark money. not that you can really bar third-party money from a campaign but even that which is really the money you can't trace

at all to a donor they're not going to say no. pedro: steve? steven: she would not go anywhere near any question about hillary clinton's honesty. clearly, a political challenge now. and the notion that polls a year out don't mean anything is true of horse race polls but not of questions like this about the characteristics. the same polls show people think hillary clinton has very strong leadership qualities for example. i'm sure that the chairwoman would be happy with those numbers. i think the overall impression though is this may be as good as her job gets today talking with the three of us. the bad election of last year is in the rear view mirror four or five months. she has one candidate alone running for president who despite all these challenges still polls, has an edge over any potential republican. it's going to get rocky in the next months. she'll get more candidates in

her party, particularly lincoln chafee who is going to raise uncomfortable questions in those debates and the republican party will eventually coalesce around a candidate. things will get tougher from now on. pedro: uncomfortable questions in what regard? steven: for hillary clinton. his big question in the debates and he has said tell' ask repeatedly about her iraq war vote. that helped cost her the nomination last time. kathy: i agree. i think any kind of challenge is going to be a challenge and there will be i'm sure there will be people asking about the e-mails. just as steve did. i think there will be people asking about kind of that history of lack of transparency. you heard congresswoman wassermann schultz talk about the importance of transparency and that is certainly a criticism that's been leveled at the clintons and, specifically hillary clinton. her desire to kind of keep things secret, to control information, which has gotten her into trouble again and

again. so i think anybody who is out there is going to start to raise those questions and that's going to be something that both hillary clinton and the party that i think fully expects her to be the nominee are going to have to negotiate. pedro: to the congressional side, what did she bring regarding the trade discussions especially as they've been going on the last couple days here? kathy: i got the sense that was a lot of dancing around. i think this is going to be a really tough issue for democrats and i think it'll be an issue -- an issue that'll come up on the campaign trail as well because labor is, remains a huge part of the constituency. we're not talking about just contributions although labor has produced a lot of money. but we're talking about foot soldiers and that has always been one of the things that has been an asset that the democratic party has had. i think if you have labor feeling alienated from the party, going into a presidential election, it's not a good thing.

steve: to tie it back to her conversation she brought up about the middle class and economic security. she could not answer the question of how the trade deals would raise wages or address the income gap. both political parties are talking about that a lot. it seems to me to be a question. trade in itself sounds wonderful but unless you can say it will raise wages in ohio or iowa or florida i'm not sure why they're going to push it. kathy: one thing we know about these bills is they have a huge support in the business community. big business and big money wants these bills. that's not to say that there couldn't ultimately be a benefit. but i think what labor and a lot of middle class voters feel is that past trade agreements have led to job exodus. so convincing people that it -- why would people believe it won't happen this time and how is there any guarantee that any of these laudable goals of the