magazine series features peter grier of "the christian science monitor" on how americans decide who to vote for in elections. ♪ host: good morning. it is wednesday, september 2, 2015. welcome to "washington journal." president obama returns to the nation's capital after three days in alaska. andh of washington baltimore, police are bracing for protests as pretrial motions begin in the trials of the six police officers accused of shooting freddie gray. lake, illinois, the manhunt continues for the three suspects who gunned down police officer joe glisten with - g

lissowitz. officer to bee killed by gunfire in the line of duty this year. we open up our phone lines to hear your thoughts on the shooting yesterday in the 24 deaths. what is behind it, what can be done. here is how to join the conversation. 748-8000 is the number for democrats. republicans, 202-748-8001. 48-8002.rs, 202-7 we will set aside a line for law enforcement and that line is 202-748-8003. facebook.com/ c-span. send us a tweet @cspanwj. or an e-mail. we will get to your comments momentarily. here is how folks in the chicagoland area are reading about it this morning. chicago sun-times in their front ise this morning cop's cop

murder. the killing of a veteran nearing retirement sparks a manhunt for three suspects. the chicago tribune this morning. hunt is on for officer's killing. massive search for three suspects. scoresite as night fell of police were continued to search for three people believed the few for fatally shooting a police lieutenant tuesday while residents of the small village he served more his death. despite a manhunt that besieged fox lake all day, authorities said tuesday no arrests had been made in the shooting of we mentioned this statistic say this is the 24th officer to be killed in the line of duty so far this year.

this is the arizona republic and their headline. over nine days, four officers killed. since in august when he for law enforcement officials killed, bringing the total to 24 so far in 2015 --. we want to look at the statistics from the national law enforcement officers memorial fund, keeping track of the deaths of officer so far this year. total fatalities in 2015 is 85 compared with 73 in 2014. firearms related. they had 26. 30 in 2014. that is down 13%. other deaths by police officers -- traffic related 38 in 2015. other causes 21. 24 police officers by most counts killed in the line of duty this year. your thoughts. we go to elizabethtown, kentucky. and our republican line. caller: good morning, sir.

i would like to see some more dialogue. number one, nobody shot freddie gray. he was hurt in the back of that police van. you need to correct that. last but not least, i think the media sometimes inflames the problems that we are having. it is wrong because all lives to matter, not just black lives matter. but it is also wrong for corrupt police officers to shoot unarmed people. i think the leaders of both r minorityerican and/o communities along with the leaders of the silent majority ammunity, which has taken on new meaning lately because of the media, you need to get together and hold a real dialogue. i will hang up and listen to your comments. host: we go to our democrats line. rancho cucamonga, california. good morning. you are on the air.

caller: hi. i'm calling to say that i think people are sick and tired of these jack booted bowling -- bullies killing our children industry. and then they are not held accountable -- killing our children in the street. thumbs and they are so petulant and they will not do their jobs in the streets because they are being held to account. host: do you think that that is striving police shootings in this country? caller: i do. i do, because people are afraid to speak out. they are afraid to say anything. and we are sick and tired of it. host: here is parkfield, maryland. james on our republican lie. caller: good morning. i want to address baltimore in cities like baltimore. i live in the city and i can say that there are not enough anchor

stores for these folks to get jobs and really address some of those issues as far as paying bills, paying taxes and commuting to jobs. longare commuting distances to make a living. as a strong republican, i think we need to look at how do we build or integrate anchored s into thesetarget communities so these young children have some inspiration to go out and do something within the community? that applies also to police officers. stress tostem that is the point where something is not done to address the core of the matter, it is going to explode. that is what we had. is jameson parkville, maryland. a couple of comments on twitter. here is one from jeff who says

guns other problem. end of story. richard says shooting police is wrong. so is the shooting of the unarmed. we go to bob in stevens point, wisconsin. how far are you? fox lake is just below the wisconsin border. wise i amtually mile not sure. the thing i'm calling about, concerned about why some of the black community is making martyrs out of these criminals. i've seen the reports. they're criminals. rown broke into a store and stole. they made a martyr out of him. then they burned the poor guys store down. he reported a crime. we cannot do that. and we cannot definitely martyr those who go around killing cops. i have a great respect for policeman.

me. bugs i had long hair. they called me all kinds of names because i had long hair and a beard. all that did was be quiet. i went to the police department and reported it. i they department. pardon. your host: do you think the recent shootings is driving -- caller: i'm a veteran. i do not no black person african-american because he was born in america. he is an american of african descent, just like i am an american of german descent. i resent the african-american remark. but the point is, these policemen want to go home just like anybody else. and i have watched too much wear a black person is stopped and they get right away they turn around and say, what is the matter with you? this is racist. i was pulled over and harassed. i cannot holler racist and that

is by a black cop. host: details on the shooting from usa today. p slain in nine days. more details. wide manhunt underway. law enforcement continues a massive manhunt north of the city search and for three suspects in the shooting death of a veteran police officer who had been on patrol in a quiet suburban community. the killing march the fourth incident in nine days across the usa were law enforcement officer had been slain while going about his regular duties. the northnt in chicago suburbs comes after a s, deputyunty, texa was gunned down. they write despite the spate of killings, the number of law enforcement officers killed by gunfire while on duty this year, 31 is less than 29 same period in 2014 when

law-enforcement officers died by gunfire. john, hello there. independent line. caller: yes, it is kind of collateral damage as far as the backlash. the police of been abusing people for decades. they are like hockey goons in blue uniforms. and people are fed up. there is a certain segment of the world, that's fed up. i think it is a good portion of what is going on. now, the numbers. you ought to match those numbers up with the dead police people washe shot police people shot black people. and it is hundreds every year. so the cops have to straighten themselves out. is next up in gilbert, arizona, also on independent line. caller: hello.

george washington had a great -- on our police issues. sheriff's office. there is also another historic leader -- adolf hitler. host: we lost richard. tim in toledo, ohio. democrats line. you are on air. go ahead. caller: i am watching your show here, and first of all i have lawect for police officers, enforcement across america, but is when youeeling have citizens that haven't been, i guess for lack of better words deputized to be able to go out and be a law enforcement agent

that they should not sit there and take matters into their own hands. about gettingo things solved the right way. and whenever anybody is in trouble, the first thing we do is dial 911. and then the police come and they help us. when citizens start turning on police officers, it's very disconcerting. and they are barking up the theg tree because, once police officers get themselves, um, in a situation like it ferguson, then the national guard is called in, and you have got state police, and you have, then it almost looks like a military situation. and, um, so there's, um, there has got a be aa better way to

get their point across. going out and killing police officers who protect us, i do not believe is the way. so, thank you and have a good morning. host: editorial in the winston-salem journal. their editorial says all should condemn shameful cowards who ambush police. they write that we need dialogue on police issues. what we do not need our bullets rained on the offices of all colors who hold the line and dangerous neighborhoods to keep us safe. we stand behind these officers and encourage you to do so as well. prosecutors and judges come down hard against those who fire on the thin blue line. more of us need to play our part. we need to say loud and clear we condemn violence against law enforcement officers just as much as we condemned unjust police violence against civilians. the editorial opinion of the winston-salem journal. we go to iowa and chario -- and jerry on our republican line.

caller: i want to know what hud and the obama administration built slums in iowa city and allow convicted murderers and burglars in all kinds of people to come in iowa city and commit crimes and then complain about police procedure when i told him that the city council meeting that if they did not like the police department, they can go back to the slums. host: what kind of facility did you say they built? caller: a slum. project, low income housing. you could not live here. you cannot live here on an $8.00 income. posted will that are living on low income do not work in the first place. host: was that project built under the obama administration? caller: yes. host: we go to clinton, north carolina. will, democrats line. caller: good morning. how you doing?

host: fine, thanks. want to say ijust am african-american and we support police just like anybody. when you go into the communities and plant guns on unarmed teens and dead teens, th country cannot stand for thatis. that is cause for mistrust of the police department. up.: haines, alaska is next we go to jackie on independent line. hello. caller: yes, my thing is that, like, you know, the police now are afraid to do their job. and it's really horrifying for the united states of america. yes, there are bad cops. and they need to be stopped. thethis is just crazy how police now are like not doing

their job because they are so afraid of losing their job. what the hell is wrong with this country where they're saying, oh, they kill this guy. michael brown or whatever. he was -- robbing a freaking store. wake up, people. the cops are now going to not do their job and watch the movie ," because that is what is going to happen. thank you very much. host: we are asking about the latest shooting of a police officer in the line of duty. 24 so far this year. ake,latest being in fox l illinois. police are still searching for the alleged shooters. 202-748-8000 for democrats. 202-748-8001 for republicans. for independents.

for law enforcement families, that is 202-748-8003. president obama returns to a an according tor reports. here is the front page of "the new york times." "obama closes in on votes needed for deal on iran. president obama all but clinched victory for his nuclear deal on tuesday as two democratic senators through crucial support behind it." bob casey and chris coons of delaware came before the week before the senate was going to debate a republican resolution disapproving the agreement

more news this morning from the, not particularly on deal itself, but the headline in "the new york times". " hardliners hit it -- hint at a struggle in tehran. the united states remains their country's top enemy. their remarks hinting at a struggle over domestic influence -- because of the nuclear deal and world powers." opinion piece by nicholas burns. "mr. obama should not

be content to have his veto. should committion to a policy of course of diplomacy -- major steps to keep pushon the defensive and back against his growing power in the middle east -- want to let you know as well we will be covering a speech this morning by secretary of state john kerry. he is that the constitution center in philadelphia talking about the iran deal. we have live comments this morning at 11:00 a.m. on c-span. . let's get back to your calls. our topic about the police shootings to kansas city, missouri, and rob on our democrats line. good morning. to place most of

the blame on the conservatives in the 1970's and 1980's where they were saying the democrats were weak on crime and they said let's get tougher on criminals and after ronald wrangled, -- after ronald reagan, bill clinton came up with the three strikes and you are out law. we have millions more americans in jail. we have capital punishment in states like missouri. the crime rate does not go down. reset buttont the on our criminal justice system and we look to our neighbors in canada, where the police have a much better relationship -- police are not always draw a gun when they approach somebody for a parking ticket or a minor violation person has committed. i think we just cannot blame the bad guys for all the, don't blame it on people and saying, it is wrong to kill cops or puts ons but when a cop

his blue uniform, he knows he is taking a risk. being a civilian, your life should not be at risk because you live in the wrong neighborhood. host: an earlier caller talked about a better dialogue between communities, particularly those affected by police shootings and between the officers themselves. tell us about kansas city. what is the relationship between the officers there and the citizens in kansas city? caller: we have had some civic leaders who have made an effort to help alleviate the tension between the community and the police. theit seems to not work in long run because i think the criminal justice system does not allow it to work, ok? but i think we need a top down -- yes, we need to make the effort within our communities. but we also need to reform our criminal justice system. it is way too tough for even minor offenses. and i think that gets people thinking in a different mode.

you should not have to go to jail for having a parking ticket not paid. that needs to go away. that is just -- i cannot believe that. some guy in missouri went to jail for 20 years for marijuana. that is completely wrong. it is overreach. way, if you missed our program focusing on the police department in richmond, virginia, you can find that program in our video library at c-span.org. our "washington journal" special on the richmond police department. louisiana, independents line and it's randy. caller: yes, sir. it is kind of a catch 22 situation between the cops and people looking for an excuse to shoot one. now, there are some bad cops. i have run into them. and they need to watch how they treat people. on the other hand, you can't,

like the guy in ferguson, that brown guy, i'm surprised the store owner did not shoot him. like ay to make them out hero, like the guy in new jersey that they threw on the ground, he died. they deserved to be prosecuted. as far as right now, i'm concerned, this government, not just this government, but the bush and clintons, the last 20 years, they have been looking for a racial war so they can have totally federal control. and they will probably have martial law. host: you mentioned a moment ago that you said that you had run into "bad cops." how would you define? what is a bad cop? caller: ok, they're sitting there trying to push your buttons.

one -- when i was driving a company truck and he asked if i had guns. a concealed, i have carry. all of a sudden he went on a rant. you got guns in that truck? i said no. he went off. he was doing everything he could to cause a problem. i said it is a truck. i do not have anything in there that is illegal. i said, you are welcome to search the truck. but he was just trying to push my buttons. fool a little bit of authority and watch it go to this head. host: how recently was this run and you had? caller: a couple years ago. i was speeding. aannd i was in, i was doing probably like 50 in a 45.

and he pulled me over. he had the right to. but man, he just went off. like i was some fugitive or something. and finally, he kind of calm down. he did not give me a ticket but he sat there 15 minutes give me a lecture and everything. y, it is bad on both sides. theyive somebody a badge, deserve it, not to -- use their authority to just harass people, because that is what gets people killed. host: let's take some comments on twitter. if we areays "i guess to be fair, we should include gun deaths by police officers of innocent civilians." we do not have that figure. risk when they get

the job. just like every other dangerous job." we are asking about the 24 deaths so far this year, police officer shootings in the line of duty after the shooting yesterday in fox lake, illinois. this is the inside of "the washington times." "police hunt for three suspects. less than an hour's drive from chicago, the area popular with thatrs, the chain of lakes encircles fox lake, citydwellers moved to the region for a quieter life so." newsll look at some of the out of baltimore. front page of "the baltimore sun." to beotions in gray case heard today. prosecutors and defense attorneys representing the six officers charged in the arrest and death of freddie gray are set to appear for a hearing in which the judge will hear arguments on key motions in the case." ance, missouri next up.

good morning to bill. caller: good morning. there is a new video out with a man standing with his hands raised, and they shot him down. this happens too much. in cleveland, a little 12-year-old boy. the police roll up on him and before he gets out of the car, they shoot him dead. these cops are out of control and every excuse they use is i feared for my life. goyou fear for your life, get a job at a supermarket or something where you do not have to fear for your life. i'm a 60-year-old black man and i'm going to tie something. i have been brutalized by these ande cops on many occasions usually it was nothing but a traffic file asian. -- a traffic violation. the only reason escalated is they talk to you because they talk to like they are child. most of these cops that pull you over -- these white guys are

nothing but bullies. this is blowback, like a fake war on terror. they are not terrorists. they are people seeking revenge for the dirt you have done to them. you have a great day. host: to wichita, kansas. republican line. caller: good morning, sir. listen, i want to make some comments and i will hurry and get off of here. i'm really concerned. you have police officers that serve the city. you have the sheriff's department that shares the county more or less. you have the highway patrol they do their jobs on the highways, the freeways. to know, they are there protect our country. they are there to do their job. that is what this all started --

i was born in 1960. neverince then, i have hardly heard of anything, any police shootings up until now. but i will say there are those people that need guns. there are those people that don't need guns. you have people that get out of prison and they are carrying guns. in wichita, you are allowed to they canun open where see it and walked on the street. i do not think that is right. here is the situation. mr. obama, i'm not saying anything bad about him. he does his job. the thing about it is, mr. obam he does nothing. trump wanting to run for president. i've never heard him mention

anything about protecting our country. to --ve jeb bush trying he is getting in there for president. both of them are trying to fight. that is what is wrong with our country. we have too much fighting going on. you know what i'm saying. we need somebody who will do their job. host: let's go to manassas, virginia. madeleine is on the independent line. hello. caller: hello. i listen to you every morning. i appreciate c-span. i'm really disturbed by what is going on in our country. it seems the moral decay of these cities that are run by otherats are killing each , but the thing that bothers me the most is they are blaming all this stuff on the police

officers. the police officers are here to protect us. you don't see this going on in the rural areas. the children in rural areas don't go out shooting and killing people. what has happened that there is no parents in these people's that that brought them up you don't shoot and kill people? the police department is there to protect you. we were taught that the police department is there for you. you have to treat them with respect. they are authorities. for some reason, i would like for these people that live in washington and detroit and all these big cities to tell me one thing, these people running these cities like baltimore -- why has this been blamed on the police? why don't you try to do something about your people that is out here killing people? yes, our president is the worst

we have ever had. he seems to make all of us against each other. it has only made us feel worse towards these people that live in these big cities and shoot and kill people because we have never seen people act like that. host: our question about the shooting of the police officer in illinois and the latest of the 24 so far this year shot and killed in the line of duty. (202) 748-8000, democrats. (202) 784-8001, republicans. (202) 748-8002, independents. law enforcement, (202) 748-8003. james is on the democrats line. caller: thanks for c-span.

ishink the biggest problem what we call the thin blue line of silence. a police officer kicks in the wrong door and kill somebody sitting on their couch, the good cops will participate in cover up. if they would pursue the criminals within their ranks with the same enthusiasm they n thee criminals i civilian population, we might have a little faith for them. we need something called equal justice for cop killers and killer cops. i'm a 70-year-old white man. i grew up in the inner-city. all the finger-pointing about culture, about how inner-city people are just bad people, those are the behaviors of poverty, they have nothing to do with race or culture. it certainly has nothing to do with who sits in the white house. when a cop commits a criminal

act and takes an innocent person's life and his companions cover up for it, that is where it is. host: we had an earlier caller referred to video he had seen of a police officer allegedly shooting a sense that -- suspect with his arms up. a texas deputy shooting a man. authorities in texas are examining videos recording by bystanders that show sheriff's deputies in texas shooting and killing a man. 14-minute video has been made public by a san antonio television station. it is shot from a distance and it appears to show -- i have lost that does the other video has not been released by the the police. as video is better to view an assessment on what happened, the one that has not been released.

portage, michigan. bob is on the republican line. caller: good morning. you know, your callers are obama, in -- president he interjects himself numerous times at the podium with trayvon martin and brown and all these other ones that happened, he is quick to be at the podium and talking about this and that. we have had to police officer's gunned down -- two police officers gunned down in the last few days and he has not once rushed to the podium to talk about these police officers at all. it is not his narrative. you do have that

some bad people in any profession. you can have some bad police officer's. second is the dnc endorsed the black lives matter movement. the day before they did that, they were up in minnesota saying, pigs in a blanket, fry them like bacon. there has been no condemnation at all from the white house or the attorney general. it has ratcheted up the rhetoric and it is getting out of hand. host: here is the headline in "the hill." texas widow that targeting cops is unacceptable.

east massachusetts, chris is on the independent line. caller: hello. i have spoken to the police quite a few times. the town i live in is a small town. problem that is rampant. it is unbelievable. it is unreal. the cops say that they don't care it is happening. they don't care that drugs are destroying the town. people like me just want to live and work. i'm worried that somebody will rob me for my pay that i've earned. the cops do not care. they just do not care. people are getting fed up. i'm going to read about people getting fed up with cops not caring and shooting 12-year-old kids like the kid in the playground.

they are gung ho and they have war gear on. on drugs. war fight the war on drugs with your military gear and people will start realizing that you are using the gear for the right thing and not shooting kids in the street. host: in response to the texas by the shooting, a post texas governor greg abbott on facebook. he said crimes against law enforcement will not be tolerated in the state of texas. chester, maryland. line.emocrats hello to greg. caller: good morning. point wherere at a people fear the cops more than they fear the criminals. i think the main reason for a lot of what we are seeing, we have cell phone video. we are able to watch these guys in action.

there are just too many cops. we don't need all these guys. they sit around board. they grow up watching "csi." isy find out all they are giving traffic tickets, so they overreact out of frustration when something does happen. in these suburban white counties, why are they even carrying guns? i live in a suburban maryland county. there have been two killings in the county and 40 years. we have 65 deputies, 46 state troopers, and 20 bridge cops. is there a middle-aged white person with a brand-new car, they won't pull you over. they are pulling you over if you have a little dirt on your car, they are harassing you. they don't have anything to do. this is the problem. everybody out there listening,

when you go to vote in your local and state budget, you will see a line item called "public safety." questions that. oh yeah, let's increase public safety. we don't need all these guys. they don't have anything to do in the suburban counties. i'm not talking about the metro areas. the suburban, majority white counties, they become harassment. they have to write tickets to justify their existence. the skin license tags, pulling you over for any minor infraction, see if you can search your car and find some and bigger. people are a lot of frustrated. people's lives of been ruined by law harassment officers over minor infractions. therein lies this national unhappiness with the cops. just reduce their budgets. it is just like the military. need feet on the

ground anymore? wars are fought on computers now. in this country, we have a major law harassment problem. these guys are not qualified enough. an earlier caller talked about, -- they are be hardly old enough to shave and they are carrying a gun on their head. they should have to be college-educated or go through much more rigorous -- why don't they have community policeman that drive around without a gun? we continue the conversation as the search continues and fox lake, illinois for the alleged suspects who killed the police officer yesterday. tweets from members of congress. dick durbin tweeting out, tragic news out of fox lake today. my thoughts are with the officer lost loved ones.

one from vicky hartzler, saddened to hear another police officer murdered in the line of duty in illinois. to stone mountain, georgia. lindsay is on the independent line. caller: good morning. i was just wanting to make a statement. are fairlynk people placing the blame where it should be. everybody has to take personal responsibility. i don't think people know what it is like to grow up in a black community and know what it is like to be harassed by the police. i work two jobs. i attend school. i don't fit into what you would call the general stereotype of a young black teen who may be walking around with sagging pants, has the label is a gangster, or whatever.

but i still get harassed by the police from time to time because of my skin color. at the same time, the black community has to look at it this way. we use the black lives matter is an opportunity. it should not be. i have family members who are police officer's. imagine hearing them being shot just because they are in uniform. it is not right. i think the media takes a part of it as well. they sensationalize the stories that reach out to the hearts of many americans. i think everybody needs to take personal responsibility in the situation to come to a conclusion that can satisfy everybody and not just point the finger at one group and say, it is your fault, you need to stop. host: some news on the clinton e-mail release.

she wrote and sent classified e-mails on the private server. while she was secretary of state, she wrote and sent at least six e-mails using her private server that contain classified information. according to thousands of e-mails released by the state department. they could complicate her efforts to move beyond the political fallout from the controversy. they suggest her role in distributing sensitive e-mail -- it appears to contradict earlier public statements in which she denied sending or receiving classified information. contained inmails thousands of pages of electronic correspondence that the state department stood out because of the heavy markings blocking out heavy sentences and entire messages.

from fiorina is benefiting the polls. cnn is changing their approach to the upcoming debate. as a pioneering, silicon valley executive, carly fiorina was never one to shy away from a boardroom brawl. on the campaign trail, she has proved to use her bully pulpit to force her party to change. woman in the gop presidential field and waged a public campaign, skewing cnn and the republican national committee for rules that might keep her off the next main stage, even as she was rising in the polls. on tuesday, the tactic paid off. cnn announced it was revising the criteria it lands to use for republican candidates at the second party sanctioned debate at the reagan library.

a couple of more calls. we go to maryland. democrats line. good morning. caller: hello, can you make? host: i can. caller: good morning. thanks for taking my call. cops getting killed is wrong. we should not be killing the people that are sworn in to protect us. said, we need to make sure that they are respected. , we know that 24 cops have been killed this year. if you have been following "the washington post," they have been investigating police killings. there have been close to 500 or

600 killings by police officers. i don't most of these colors getting frustrated -- callers getting frustrated. we should be equally upset about police officer's killing innocent people. host: let's hear from a former police officer. tracy in new york. welcome. caller: hi. thank you very much. i just want to make a point. my ex is a sergeant in florida. just briefly on our relationship, our first date started with him driving to pick me up and he had a glass of liquor in his hand while he was driving. that is just to say we are all people and no matter what your line of work is, what you do before you go to work and during work, you are still the same person and we are all people, we

are all family. linesall had the dna checked, somehow we are all related, whether our skin shows or not. it does not matter about numbers or statistics. ,f you want to get technical people have been killed over and over for different reasons. some of them probably deserved account of passion or whatever the moment was. some do it by accident area we are primal human beings. it is in our instinct to fight to live. we need to fight to have more peace and understanding and love for each other. host: us get a couple of final comments on twitter. this one says, respect works two ways. cops should respect youtube. open season on cops does not solve anything. everyone has their heads in the sand. there is a national epidemic.

there is no epidemics of killing of cops, but police accountability is a must. one more caller from bettendorf, iowa. caller: good morning. i've been listening to people talking. i'm a white guy. i live in iowa. it is relatively nice out here. i have only known three cops. i would not want to be friends with. one very nice guy. the last, and you are reading on -- worksrespect worth both ways, when i get pulled over by a cop, i always ask -- act with a lot of trepidation because i don't know if i've got a good cop or a bad cop i'm dealing with. i don't want to ruffle their feathers or anything. it is not out of respect.

it's just like, let's get the business taken care of. your speeding thing or whatever. host: do you think cops may be a little on edge given the proliferation of cameras, etc.? caller: of course. the cop that i knew, he used to be a neighbor of mine. very nice guy. from what he was talking about and some of the stories he would tell, i would give him 100% being worried about, and my dealing with a bad person or a good person? but still, it is the line of work they chose to be in. my gosh, some of them do act like jerks. i can understand the frustration of the folks. a lot of colors are talking about being mistreated by cops. i personally have not witnessed it. from the understand it

anecdotal accounts. it is tough both ways, for the tough for theis cops dealing with people. host: thank you, dave. thank you for all your comments on this topic. "washington journal" continues. the financial industry regulatory authority is a relatively new agency. is a fairly new independent organization in washington. we will talk to bob colby, the chief legal officer. we want to talk about the role they play in regulating the securities industry. later, we will talk about the cadillac tax under the affordable care act. it will cap the tax break employers receive for insurance plans and may cause health plans to go up. stay with us. "washington journal" is back momentarily. ♪

>> a signature feature of book .v here is our schedule. beginning this weekend, we are live from the 15th annual national book festival from our nations capital. then we will be in new york for the brooklyn book festival. in early october, the southern festival of books in nashville. the week after that, we are live from austin for the texas book

festival. we will be covering to book festivals on the same weekend, the wisconsin book festival in madison and the boston book festival back on the east coast. innovember, we will be portland oregon for wordstock. then we will be at the national book awards in new york city. then we will be at the miami book fair international. that is a few of the fairs and festivals this fall on c-span 2's book tv. >> "washington journal" continues. host: there are a number of different agencies in the nation's capital. bob colby is with the financial industry regulatory authority. he is their chief legal officer. bob colby, what is it that finra is charged to do? is a: finra

self-regulatory organization. it means it is a nongovernmental, nonprofit organization whose aim is to support the sec, the securities and exchange commission, in overseeing the activities of brokerage firms. ago,s set up eight years but it's predecessor organization -- it was created by two separate organizations that go back 75 years. they were set up under a statute in the 1930's in order to bolster the sec's efforts in overseeing the security firms. set up seven years ago. was this under. frank? dd-frank?is under do and onene was the nesd was the new york stock exchange regulatory unit and they had

overlapping functions. they got together and said, let's combine these into one. they renamed it and they combined the functions. the activities it has been doing have been going on for a very long time. give us a typical example of how you would interact with a brokerage firm on an issue. guest: every brokerage firm in the united states that sells stocks or bonds or other securities to a customer has to be registered with us. we write rules that govern how they conduct themselves. we examine them. are they abiding by the rules? if not, they bring enforcement actions.

if anyone is engaging in misconduct, we can sanction them. host: where do you typically get complaints about financial firms or brokerages, in terms of the things they are doing? with that come from an individual investor? guest: yes, it could. we have complaint processes. people contact us directly. when people bring actions or arbitrations against security firms, we monitor those. a lot of our information comes from examinations we do. we do 1500 examinations each year just as a cycle. we do 3500 examinations where we think there has something gone wrong and we go into a brokerage firm to see how they are acting. host: when you go in, is that an audit? guest: it is.

sometimes, we look comprehensively. sometimes we look for a particular form of conduct. the records are open to us. we can ask them for any records that we want. -- since they have to be registered with us -- if they won't comply with our rules , we can say that they cannot stay in the business. host: bob colby is the chief legal counsel for the financial industry regulatory authority. guest: it is a mouthful. host: finra. we are talking about its role in the markets and how it relates to the sec. , democrats.00 (202) 784-8001, republicans. and) 748-8002, independents all others.

you can also send us a tweet. as a theme setter, what finra does, it provides that every investor should receive the basic detection they deserve -- protection they deserve. finra oversees more than 50 billion market transactions every day, more than 4000 firms and 637,000 brokers. the organization expelled 18 firms from the industry in 2014. it suspended 705 brokers. it barred 481 brokers from doing business in 2014. it find firms more than 134

million dollars. where do the fines go? revenues goes to finra and it is set aside for capital projects. restitutionll get to the investor. that is what we aim for. host: so they have lost money in a deal or transaction and they get restitution? guest: very often, the firm has already compensated them. if they have not, we tried to get restitution back. host: 1100 brokers were put out of business, expelled, or suspended. what were the typical violations? guest: let me just give some dimensions for the industry. there are more than 4000 brokerage firms registered with us and more than 630,000 individual brokers. this 1100 brokers refers to individual persons.

let me just say, the vast majority of the brokers are trying to do the right thing for their customers. they are trying to help customers achieve their financial goals. sometimes they don't. we're trying to watch for instances where the broker is not doing the best that it can for its customers. would betances something they may have that is not suitable for the customer's financial condition. or it may be something that was not accurate or was misleading. host: when you are watching late-night television, you see some of these investment products, might some of those be included? guest: they might.

we have a pretty strict set of rules about how brokers advertise. the really bad products, if you look at them closely, you would that brokers are not allowed to say there is a guaranteed return. they are not allowed to project the return. if i look closely, it turns out it is not a securities product, it is retail foreign exchange trading. brokers work to do this, this would be a big problem. host: but it is not illegal. it is not a securities product. in your industry, it is illegal. guest: that's right. other products can be sold that are not subject to the same restrictions. host: we have our conversation with bob colby on finra. the headline -- the dow is off

to a rough start in september. with this change or accelerate the way that brokers operate? it more reveals how they operate. a good broker gives good advice to their customer. good advice in this uncertain world typically means that the products that they buy will be diversified. what a sharp drop in the dow shows, if a customer has sustained severe financial harm, it usually means that the broker did not advise them away from a very concentrated position. diversified portfolio would be some stocks, some cash, some fixed income products. losses, butbe some not catastrophic losses.

we have calls waiting for bob colby. let's go to ulster park, new york, the democrats line. stephen, welcome. caller: good morning. can you hear me? host: ulster park. we will move on. there we go. hello. go ahead. caller: can you hear me? host: yes, go ahead. caller: my concern is the general health of the u.s. economy and the world economy. i'm thinking the government cannot save us. right now, u.s. gdp is $15 trillion. the world gdp is $62 trillion. wall street is currently trading $168 trillion right now. when the bubble bursts sometime next year, the world does not have the capital to recover from that collapse. the government needs to start telling the people the truth. obama is praying that the

collapse does not happen on his administration. that is all i have to say. host: any thoughts on what the viewer had to say? guest: it is a little bit outside of our zone. i think that we have made a lot of progress in dealing with these derivative issues. the dodd frank act gave the banking regulators and the sec a lot of new tools to deal with derivatives. is number that stephen sites an overall number, but when you it all down, it is not as extreme as that and banks are required to have capital to offset the derivative positions. we have made a lot of progress since the 2008 crisis in dealing with this. host: what about brokers who are not banks? guest: brokers who are not banks do not have large derivative positions. the way the way -- the way the

sec net capital rules work, they have a very sharp charge against derivative positions. peter is in alaska. independent line. good morning. caller: good morning. i just have a question about the structure of finra. he said they are a nonprofit. does that mean the organization is an ngo? just listening to him speak, he says they obviously have a lot of power to go into offices. the people have to report to them. subcontractor of the federal government? i had the impression that ngos were more of a private organization. explain to be more of the -- to me more of the

structure and how they have the power to do the things they are doing. guest: peter, it is a great question. i skimmed over the complexities of it. happened is that congress, in 1934 decided that they wanted to give the sec more support in overseeing this market. bythey set up a structure which an association like finra would register with the sec and be extensively overseen by the sec and then they required all the securities and brokerage .irms to register with finra that give quasigovernmental andr to finra to examine enforce the rules. we are not a government agency, but we exercise functions like a government agency, but is subject to the careful supervision of the sec to make

sure we don't use that authority abusively. host: we saw the headline in "the wall street journal" about charles schwab. they were fined $2 million by finra. they had cash inflows that exceeded the amount that could invest with existing facilities. explain that a bit for us. secondarily, with the sec also levy a fine in this case? west: this is an sec rule were enforcing. this is an example of a situation where we are assisting the sec in making sure that the brokerage firms are complying with the rules. unitally, our examination coordinates with the sec, so we don't go in and look at the same activity and we don't bring fines on the same activity. sometimes we do when we are looking. we say there is a finra rule

aspect to this and an sec rule aspect and they want to apply the fine on the sec rule. typically, we don't go in and look at the same activity. this is a fairly complicated financial capital requirement that they highlighted. was thatce of it securities firms are required to keep their customer funds completely separate from their own. this was a situation where charles schwab did not completely distinguish the customer funds from their own proprietary fund. host: where does that find go? guest: it goes into finra. it does not go into general revenues. to overseeingtion brokerage firms, it overseas trading in the securities market. runs throughading computers that are run by finra. thee computers are in

cloud, but they are massive, massive. process 50 billion transactions per day. you mentioned that earlier. we are looking at every order that gets submitted in the stock markets. these fines might well go to pay for the computers we are using to process. it does not go to pay for ordinary operating expenses. host: are the computers looking for anomalies in trades? caller: it is. we are looking for manipulations, a front running of customer orders, or where they are not getting the best execution possible for their customers. they have developed a lot of active trading on the markets and we are looking to see people that are trying to push the prices up and then sell and then let them fall again and then buy -- the sort of trading activities. host: here is rachel in beaufort, south carolina.

democrats line. caller: hello? host: good morning. caller: i watched c-span for the last 20-some years. i'm an invalid in bed. i don't know if he can answer this question for me. 401(k) in walmart and i am months and months and months trying to get that money so that i could stay in my house. i had to move out and move into a trailer simply because the sending me myt own money. they sent me a note saying that they are taking up almost $800. could you speak on little low ladies like me and i will listen? god bless you, sir. yes, what i heard you say was that you have money in a 401(k) with i think walmart? host: yes. guest: you are having difficulty

getting them to give you the amount that you are owed. i'm very sorry to hear this. it must be very frustrating for you. this is not our area of regulation, but what i think you , if it isis contact walmart you are trying to get the payment for, contact them and don't wait for an answer just from the initial contact. you should escalated and contact higher and higher officials until you get to someone that takes her situation seriously and pays attention to you. host: we go next to woodridge, virginia. lowell is on the republican line. caller: good morning, mr. colby and bill. i have a question about mutual fund fees. i get all of the information on the percentages and the rates and all of that.

i was wondering, is there a requirement or is it my prerogative that i can ask my much i actually paid in fees? can i ask them to give me a fee statement her fund? a lot of people that have 401(k)s and mutual funds would howably be astonished at much it costs us in fees to mutual funds. i will take my answer off the air. absolutely right to be focused on the fees you pay. fees can reduce the return on investment a remarkable amount, particularly over years and years, as they accumulate. yourer you can ask

particular mutual fund, i don't know. i suggest you go to finra's website where there is a mutual fund fee cost and calculator. see if that helps you. if not, i think you will have to work your way through the documents for the mutual fund. it is definitely worth your time. host: a tweet asks, has finra n unusual options purchase for the purpose of insider trading? guest: we have.

we are watching for insider trading. traders, individual sometimes from other countries. we find patterns that look anomalous. we have patterns that have individual, nonpublic information and they are trading ahead of it. we refer the information to the sec when we get it. we make 500 or more referrals to the sec each year. there was a referral where it ended up that the sec film somebody in a parking lot handing over information and receiving bags of money and we detected the background. it was a very important insider trading case off that. host: do you have any active role in the operation of the

market in terms of overseeing all responding to things like the flame s lasch crash -- famous flash crash of a couple years ago? guest: we don't operate markets ourselves. established- nesd and built the nasdaq. that was years ago. we don't have a direct role in a market. we operate information reporting systems. we operate the trade reporting system that tracks every trade in corporate bonds and we also operate in the over-the-counter market. the less actively traded markets. we watch the trading. we join with the stock exchanges in putting on restrictions that you are referring to. over-the-counter means it is an old phrase that meant you would buy stocks from somebody across the counter.

what a refers to now are stocks that are not listed on an exchange, but maybe actively traded. let's hear from fort lauderdale, florida. caller: i would like to make three very important points, if you don't mind. the small caps are being shorted. represented that the men in any stock pink sheets , that they shorted automatically with the high-speed trading. number one, the shorting of a small cap tech and biotech. you all have no idea how much blood, sweat, and tears are put into these companies to try to make new discoveries in medicine and technology. that shortmpanies these stocks because they might be competitors.

is a company like google stole technology from max sound -- and that is a fact -- when they do the nasty stories about max sound on the street, on this one come on that one, on all the financial newspapers, to stophave got ers, thesehese trad hedge funds shorting these young ies that are going public. this is where the jobs of tomorrow are. it is not necessarily in the big pharmaceuticals. you have allowed this shorting to go on in a way that is just unbelievable. by the way, people are jumping in at 2:00 in the afternoon and selling all the stocks. these are hedge funds selling

the indexes and they are controlling a gang of hedge funds are controlling everybody else's life and everybody else's money. one day, they say it is china. the next day they say it is this, it is that, and then they change it the next day. you have got to do something to stop this crazy shorting that is going on in these markets. as a matter of fact, some companies do not allow any cap sender five dollars to be shorted. this is something that the sec does not care about. these little companies that no one cares about. they struggle and they end up failing because they have to borrow toxic loans from hedge funds because banks won't help them. host: all right, sarah. a couple of points. thanks for your call. guest: i agree with your view that the small companies are often the engine for our economy and they can be fragile when they are in a young stage.

the sec sets the short sale rules. they have gone back and forth on this. there was a short sale rule that they got rid of before the financial crisis, but then they brought it back when there were sharp declines. our role is to watch carefully for whether people are reporting the shorts and for whether they are complying with the short sale rules the sec established. we brought cases against people who failed to report their short sale activity. host: she mentioned something about hedge funds selling off at 2:00 in the afternoon. do you know what she is getting at in terms of hedge fund activity? guest: it sounds to me like sarah has had some particular trading patterns that she has observed that i'm not familiar with. be in auld finra

position to observe those sorts of activities? guest: as part of our market monitoring, we have patterns that we have designed that tried to look at anomalies in the trading to see that there is something other manipulative or abusive or is somehow distorting the trading. if we see it, we go and examine it. we either bring action or we refer to the sec. host: let's hear from senators bill, georgia. john is on the republican line. make sure you mute your television or radio and go ahead. caller: ok. , i just have two brief questions. host: mute that television john. you will confuse yourself. go ahead with the question. caller: i have two brief questions. actually, a third one. the first one is on the

republican line. , why hasn't the republican party ever supported social security? when you talk about hedge funds and the stock market, both of you gentlemen are roughly about my age or maybe a few years -- you mayould think never have bought anything made in japan when you were a teenager. if we were to use that model, could it work here? that is the second question. the third question is that george bush was the president of the united states for eight years. as a matter of fact, most journalists usually back out on

this question. it never even showed up at the republican national convention. i don't knows there is a sitting president who has ever done that. host: john, we are focusing on the financial markets. any thoughts? guest: i think john's understanding is far past mine on these topics. what about new trading markets? things like the bitcoin phenomenon. would finra be involved in monitoring those markets? financial industry regulatory authority. guest: we work very closely with the exchanges. sec.nges register at the there are some new ones in the process of trying to register. that wasone called iex designed by the people who were

the heroes of the "flashpoint" book. we are talking about them -- with them about supporting overseeing their market. there are talking about listed stocks. they believe they have a better design that will help people trade without the influence of fast, high-frequency traders jumping ahead of their trades. i don't know if they are better, but we are happy to assist them in oversight. host: bob colby's our guest. chief legal counsel of finra. we go to vermont. linda, good morning. caller: i have a question for mr. colby. actually, i was wondering what he thought about the repeal back in 2000 of glass-steagall. i think the separation of investment and commercial banks

is probably one of the biggest reasons why we are seeing this marketsoil in the because what is happening is our , half thes. companies sales are coming from overseas. our asian markets. you can't tell me that the trillions of dollars -- i mean we can't even visualize that -- moneys digitized. we cannot actually mentally see a picture of money anymore. it is basically a computer. that is why i see metal going up . oil is going down. they want to put fracking out of business in the u.s.. they want to be basically controlled by the middle east, arab oil.

i think glass-steagall needs to come back. i think president bill clinton did a bad favor by enacting the commodities modernization act in 2000, his last months in office. host: thank you, linda. tell us what glass-steagall did. glass-steagall was adopted in 1933. what it required was a complete separation of commercial banking from securities brokerage and investment banking. it was to keep those two activities completely separate. act in 2000 reversed that and said those activities could be conducted by entities that were owned by the same holding companies. it allowed for some recombination of investment

banking and commercial banking. i don't feel as strongly about this is you do because i had observed that a lot of the recombination had taken place already before it was adopted. it largely confirmed what had already been permitted by banking regulators, rather than being a sharp divergence. what is critical is that once you allow these activities to be recombined, that there be complete and adequate supervision of the activities so the nothing falls between the cracks. we have the banking agencies and the securities exchange commission overseeing different parts of this activity, so for our part, we are trying to work very hard and are we here -- and we are in very close cooperation

with the sdc. we are also trying to build lines with the bank regulators so that we make sure nothing falls between the cracks and to make sure we are not duplicating efforts in overseeing these activities. host: a piece in "the hill." a couple of george mason university professors writing about a study they are doing on finra's data collection. they write that few americans have ever heard of the financial industry regulatory authority, but the securities regulator is about to become intimately familiar with all investment portfolios. recently proposed the comprehensive automated risk data system, known by the less scary sounding shorthand cards. plans to monitor all securities accounts and transactions. they say investors should run from this kind of protection.

tell us more about the plans and what is your response to their concerns. guest: yes. in trying to oversee the way that brokers are treating their , we are a data-driven organization. was want to try to get a better and more complete data. our timing was not terrific on this. when we started floating the idea, the idea of having consolidated data, it seemed like the most efficient way to do it, but we were overtaken by some of these terrible security breaches, where people saw their data being stolen from different entities. we basically shelved the idea for now until we can be confident that if we collect the data, we can protect it and people's identities will not be

threatened anyway. one more call for you. charles is on the democrat line. caller: hi. good morning. is i don't know if i'm off the page of what is on television, what they are talking about right now, but i want to know after 35 years or whatever, why are the goods that they make in china tax-free when they come over here, but they tax us for the good they send to china? why is it still going on? host: is that in your area of purview? guest: i might have some personal views on this, but i don't have any professional insights. i do think i have anything to add. terms of foreign markets, do you monitor foreign trade or exchanges? guest: we don't.

whatole is to monitor foreign people may be doing in our markets. we try to support foreign regulators when they think there may be a problem in their markets that started here, but we don't oversee foreign market. host: are you overseeing the commodity markets? you can find out more, their twiddle -- twitter handle is @finranews. thanks for being with us this morning. washington journal ahead. we will talk about the so-called cadillac tax that will taken under the affordable care act. we will speak with julie appleby 2016 iser health news," when the cadillac tax is set to begin for the first time. employers may receive tax breaks. also later on on washington journal we will find out how

voters really choose their president. that is the question that "christian science monitor" answers in their cover story. ahead.ashington journal" >> the c-span cities tour, working with our cable affiliates to visit cities across the country. this weekend we are joined right charter communications to learn more about the history and literary life of grand junction, colorado. mineralng of a certain had a long-term importance to this part of colorado. >> especially here in mesa county, outside of grand junction, we are surrounded by morrison rock. we find a lot of dinosaur bones, we find a lot of fossils. that has really intrigues scientists for a long time. the other thing that we also rock,s a mineral, a

called carnetite. it contains radio which was radioactive and was used by marie to read to help solve cancer. it also contains a chemical that was used to strengthen steel. during world war ii that chemical was of extreme value. and it also contains uranium, which as we know is one of the best sources for atomic power and atomic weapons. colorado -- colorado congressman wayne aspinall was largely responsible for the well-being of this area of colorado. >> he fought the battle to reserve water for western colorado by making sure that we got our fair share. how did he do that? in his stateng career and then going on into his federal career, he climbed

up the ladder of seniority and was able to exercise i think more power than you might normally have, certainly in the united states congress, where he was able to make sure colorado and western colorado would be treated fairly. success was the passage of the colorado river storage project in 1956. >> see all of our programs from grand junction saturday at 7:00 p.m. eastern on c-span two booktv and sunday afternoon at 2:00 on c-span3. continues. journal" host: joining us is julie appleby who is the senior correspondent for "kaiser health news." the to talk to us about affordable care act, and particularly -- in particular the cadillac tax.

first of all tell us about the difference between "kaiser health news" and the kaiser health organization. we are not part of kaiser permanente. we are an independent branch which is a research organization. we are entirely independent. we write stories about policy. this story is starting to come into the news because congress returns next week. there is some topic congress might do something about this impending tax. first of all tell us what would this text do and why was it implemented, why was it part of the affordable care act? guest: it is called the cadillac tax because it is aimed at these expensive health plans that have generous benefits. how does it work? under the provision there will be a 40% excise tax on any health benefit that costs more than $10,200 a year for an individual worker, or $27,500 for a family plan.

remember, this is only on job-based insurance, that you get for your job. if you got an employer that is offering a family plan that costs $30,000 year, the tax on that plan, starting in 2018, , which is a tax on the amount above that threshold. that sounds a lot of money. , it is.t in perspective the average cost of a family health plan on offered by an employer right now is about $70,000 year. so the threshold is higher, but some plant can cost more. kaiser family foundation put out a report on how that is going to affect employees, employers, looking at the chart of the percent of employers who offer health plan benefits with plans that would 5%eed the limit with a premium growth, in 2018 expected of employers would exceed that limit part -- that limit.

. in 2023, 30% and in 2028 42%. what does that mean in the long run for the longevity of employer-provided health care? guest: it depends. congress gave employers about eight years. they know it was coming. it did not again until 2018 although a lot of law kicked in last year. it gave time to try to adjust their policies. the way they do that is different. remember, most employers still offer plans that do not hit that threshold, and if they do there are ways they can try to reduce the cost, what they are spending on health benefits. one way to do that is to raise deductibles. generally that lowers the premium. that has been going on even before this law, that has been a trend. employers have been shifting more costs to workers. it is one thing employers can do. the other thing is that this is not just taste on the cost -- based on the cost of the

insurance benefit. a lot of employers offer flexible spending accounts. you put dollars and and you going by glasses at the end of the year, or whenever is not necessarily covered by your insurance. they could be affected because they go into this total, health savings accounts also. all of these things added together are what reach that total. some folks say that employers are going to ratchet back some of those benefits. host: is it possible though that those benefits go away but the bottom line on one's paycheck would get higher? guest: that is a theory. that the money that is spent on your benefits is money you are not getting on your paycheck. however that is not always how it works out. we will have to see what happens, if somebody suddenly dollars00 or 5000 deductible in their health plan that did not see before will

they see this in their wages? we don't know. host: we want to bring our listeners and viewers into the conversation. we're breaking up our phone lines a little bit differently for this conversation. if you are enrolled via the affordable care act, use (202) 748-8000. if you are enrolled in a private insurance program, (202) 748-8001. and for all others (202) 748-8002. a headline here says cadillac tax -- this from u.s. news & world report -- a portion of obamacare both parties hate. unions and employers are in board -- onboard board with repealing the cadillac tax. couple of house has a bills pending. at the senate, there is a talk about putting in a repeal of the tax. there are a lot of people who are opposed to this tax on both

sides of the aisle. democrats and republicans have concerns about this tax. the democrats and the republicans have different reasons for those concerns, but the text of democrats is problematic because -- tax for democrats is problematic because labor unions are not happy with it. many labor unions have said they have negotiated lower wages in exchange for better benefits. they are worried that these more generous health funds may be ratcheted back. the democrats would like to make them happy. at the same time one of the reasons congress put this in the raiser anda revenue a way to slow health care costs going forward. if you take it out, where is the $87 billion over a decade, where is that going to come from? there is no tax on it, so that $87 billion would come. guest: so for the republicans it is a little bit more problematic because many republicans want to

repeal the entire affordable care act. the question is then, do you repeal one piece of it, and unpopular piece of it, and with that then we can the momentum towards repealing the entire thing? and according to the washington post, 26% of employers could face cadillac tax on health insurance. we hear from bill in tyler, texas, who has private insurance. welcome. caller: good morning. my question is, i am on social security disability. i am qualified for and i do have medicare. i am paying roughly $100 a month for that. i have got private insurance from my wife's -- my question is, why doesn't the rates and premiums for your private insurance go down once you have medicare? it seems to me that is medicare covers approximately 80% of the

bill, the private insurance company is getting the leftovers. why doesn't the premium go down in costa? that's my question right -- that's my question. guest: that's a very good question. i think that depends on if your medicare is primary or secondary. generally rates are set in a regional area based on the cost in that area, the labor cost, negotiations that they have made with insurers, with hospitals and with doctors in that system, and to some extent raised on the age of the person who is enrolling. remember, under the affordable care act, things change a little bit. they can no longer charge you more if you have a previous health condition, that type of thing. they can only base it on your age as a couple of other factors. that is the difference. but again, without knowing all the details i can't give you an exact answer. host: in maryland, also with

private insurance, olap --ola. caller: thank you for taking my call. just in reference with attack -- with the tax, what the company ok, weg to do is go should cut in some way somehow health care costs, and it is not going to go to everyone. you is next question for around the fact that if someone decides to go out and buy insurance and is it for -- is as rich as they could be, -- guest: so this is just for job-based insurance. it is what your employer offers you. and economist and others say that the reason that they want islook at high cost plans

because they feel that it encourages wasteful spending. if you have got a plan with all these bells and whistles that covers all kinds of things with very little on the workers -- cost-sharing on the workers part, it encourages more use of the health care system, in their minds, and this might drive up health care costs over time. in theory this would show -- slow rising health care costs if the plants were less generous and people had to spend a little bit more of their own money for health care. in theory this gets people to think twice about whether they actually need something. that is one of the reasons why this was put into law. again, this just affects job-based insurance. it does not affect the policies that are sold through the federal and state marketplaces to people who buy their own insurance because they do not get it through their jobs. host: you said it is going to affect people who have health spending account, hsa's or fsa's.

could there be an issue with people planning for next year, 2016 or 2017, deciding in advance that they do not want to put money in their because that is money that they will get taxed on in 2018? guest: remember, the tax on this is only on the insurer or the employer. it is not going to be directly on you, the worker. that what you might see happening as may be some employers are going to say you know what, our tax plan is really close to this limit, and if people put money in an fsa that could bump is over. employers might ratchet down the amount you are allowed to put in. right now you're allowed to put in up to $2500. that is pre-taxed. then you can use that money for certain medical related expenses. host: does that $2500 include what the company would provide? guest: generally workers just put money into the account. sometimes employers pop in a little bit of money to help them plate -- pay their deductible.

what employers may be doing now is looking ahead to 2018 and saying maybe we need to ratchet back some of those things. and david in florida with private insurance. go ahead. caller: good morning. my first question is why aren't they indexing that dollar amount for the cadillac tax? that would be the first question. onlyecond one is, there is so much room to increase deductibles and out-of-pocket maximum because in the affordable health care act it says you cannot pay a deductible past this amount, i think it is the00 and change for out-of-pocket, as the deductible can only go up so much. at some point we are going to run out of room to do plan to design changes, and that cadillac tax look again no matter what, because it is a space to offset the cadillac tax in the upcoming years. i would be curious, why aren't they indexing this is what

happens when we run out of design options? guest: that is one of the concerns. that is why you see in some of these surveys like the kaiser family foundation did and others have done, over time this tax is going to hit more and more plans offered through employers, because the indexing is going to grow more slowly than the cost of these plants, the cost of medical inflation in general. and because, as david mentioned, there's only so much you can do to slow premium growth. this is one of the things you can do, but it is only one of them and they can only go so far. and folks are running into more and more difficulty with some of these high deductibles, as david mentioned. the out-of-pocket max amount that you can pay every year for an individual plan, is, as he mentioned, $6,600 year. it is closer to $30,000 for a family, which is a lot of money. host: also a headline here in forbes, as obamacare cadillac looms, employers costs.

the taxes that originally written as a way to help fund subsidize benefits to the uninsured under the law. starting in 2018, employers pay a 40% tax on cost of health plans that are above $10,200 per individual and $27,500 for family coverage. nearly half of large u.s. employers have at least one health plan they offer to their workers that is considered a cadillac plan that will trigger the special exit -- excise tax if the impacted companies don't find a way to curb health costs. the only way to minimize or delay the cadillac tax is to slow the growth of the total premium, that's his cfo of national business group on health. guest: premium growth in the employer market has been fairly slow over the past few years. it has gone up more slowly than historically. some people like to take credit

with that with the affordable care act. some people say it is really not made up much of a difference. there are a lot of factors, one of which is the economy is still kind of slow. people are spending as much on health care as they would in the past. growth has been fairly slow. on the other markets we have been talking about, the one theirfolks go out and buy own coverage, that has always been a volatile market. when you buy your own insurance, year by year, rates could go all kinds of different ways. what we have seen last year was about an average of 8% increase for coverage. we are starting to see some of the numbers coming in for next year's rates, and it is all over the place. it is going to vary state-by-state, it is going to vary within the state. i saw some figures the other day, california on average said that they had a 4% increase for next year, which is fairly low historically. florida had nine and a half percent, which is a little higher, that again, historically it has buried. it will vary even within states and within plans, and what many

experts say is it that you have a plan that you are now buying on the individual market, and you like it, you should look and see what it is going to cost next year when the rates come out early this fall. it may go up, it may not. there may be other less-expensive plans. the message is, shop around. is typically the shopping season for health care, right? both private market and for employers, you get your option to change your plan. guest: many employers to open enrollment in the fall. that is coming up. and in the marketplace where people buy their own insurance they are going to open in november. november 1 people will start shopping and seeing what the cost is going to be. you need to pick a plan before the end of january. host: we are on the affordable care act, in particular the cadillac tax. if you are000 enrolled in the affordable care act. (202) 748-8001 if you have private insurance. and for all others, (202) 748-8002. carol is enrolled in obamacare,

burnsville, north carolina. good morning. caller: yes. since the beginning of the year it does not pay anything. it pays little or nothing on , is absolutely pays nothing on other medical. i was just wondering if this is because of obamacare. i called our representative here in north carolina and she sent ,e a bunch of forms to fill out which is that they want to take a look at your particular situation. when you question what is going on they say well, you signed up for this plan are in like we're going to sit here and read about inalf inch book on humana

order to know all of the little things that they are not going to pay or the fact that they just are paying nothing, which they pay very little before obamacare, now they pay practically nothing. it is just a waste of taxpayer this that they pay humana money every month when we do know it -- when we get no advantage whatsoever. come november we are going to be shopping around to find something different. i was just wondering if she could explain what is going on here with this. host: thank you carol. guest: they do so much for the call. i think what carol is talking about is that many of these plants have detectable that you have to meet before coverage kicks in. this has been one of the criticisms, not only of plants on the individual market, but plans.ingly employer

carol is exactly right in saying that she is going to shop around, and she can look on the healthcare.gov website and try to get a side-by-side comparison of. plans. what the health care act did you is it broke plans down into gold and platinum levels so you can a little bit more easily compare different insurance companies side-by-side that are going to have similar benefits. you really need to look not only at the premium amount, the amount you pay every month, and how much do you have to pay each year before your deductible is met. what is covered outside the deductible? do you get a couple of different doctor visits? do you get anything? what do you get before you have to pay them. double? oft is something that all those experts say, is that you really need to shop around during open enrollment and

compare a number of different plans and not only look at the premium cost. but what are the deductible? host: here are some of what people are saying on twitter. eight tweet from jeff who says whether a direct or indirect tax, the employee will still be negatively affected. and someone else says, the cadillac tax is nothing more than a way to reduce health care. if one wants premium coverage they should be able to have it. and a question, why not just cap the amount of employer provided benefits that are tax exempt, rather than create a separate tax rate? this is what this does attempt to do. it is a big deal because it is the first time that job-based benefits have been taxed or it currently health benefits you get for your job are not subject to income or payroll taxes. encourages employers to offer more generous benefits than they normally would. it also encourages them to offer these benefits because it is a right off. it is not a cost.

the question is, if you taxes benefits, what is to happen to employer-based coverage? a number of republicans have said -- they want to do something about the tax status of insurance, beget is -- because it is the single largest tax exclusion in the federal budget. there have been proposals to cap in some way the tax nature of health benefits. host: and what is the biggest way, what is the biggest revenue driver for the affordable care act? where is the money coming from now? guest: there are a lot of different taxes and fees in the health care laws. one of the things they did was ratchet asked the rate of growth on medicare plans to get them to be more in line with what we pay thatraditional medicare, was one big way. there are some taxes on insurance, taxes on tanning beds, taxes on a number of different things. this is one of them. it is $87 billion which is a lot

of money, but it is just one of different ways that they are bringing in revenue to pay for the cost of health care, including the subsidies for those who buy their own insurance. host: and we go to bruce who has his own private insurance. hello. caller: hi, how are you doing? host: fine. you know i think this will issue would be more clear to people if they understood that this is simply social engineering, and what we are going to do is going to take the revenue from people who are responsible and take care of themselves and take care of people who are irresponsible. you have to come to the point where you finally say that the social engineering and the actuary tables are the two things that generate this thing. on a lighter note, julie, i enjoyed your statement when you the government taxes the cadillac tax to discourage wasteful spending. i don't think they would be

qualified to discourage wasteful spending. host: ok. any commentary? he is talking a lot about how to raise our set. again it is based a lot on the experience of the groups. they look at the employer, they look at the demographics of their workforce, and rates are set in various different ways. host: and from green bay wisconsin, sandy, good morning. caller: good morning. julie talked earlier about the plans discourage use of health care by people on cadillac plans. has anything been done about people who are on public assistance, people who essentially pay nothing? what efforts are made or have been made to discourage their youth can -- usage of the health care system and that wasteful spending? guest: we are looking at job-based spending here. many employer plans, for co-pay, have this large for using emergency room's. that is what way to discourage folks from using emergency

room's when they don't need to. there is some movement in the public sector as well to discourage people from using high cost care. that is one thing they're looking at going forward, what are the ways we can reduce bending and healthcare.gov the reasons we are looking at these very expensive benefit plans as the thought that people overuse health care if they are fully covered. that is why this particular cadillac tax, looking at job-based insurance, is looking at these more expensive plants. these plants are always more expensive because they have a lot of bells and whistles. becauseir marks pensive perhaps the workforce they are covering is older and sicker, or perhaps it is a high risk occupation. her are some exceptions, there are some adjustments for that. if you have a lot of over 55 retirees there is a little bit of adjustment for this cadillac tax rate if you have a high risk profession, there is an adjustment for these employers. that is the kind of thing that might be looked at going forward if congress does attempt to make

some tweaks or changes to this particular tax. host: next up we go to joe in annapolis, also buys private insurance. good morning. caller: good morning. thanks for this program. program thatother c-span had on the affordable care act, and the comments were of two flavors. some people called in and said it was the greatest thing in the world. they were able to quit their they got insurance for 80 bucks a month and it was wonderful. other people came in and said they did not like paying for other people's insurance. i am one of those people. not only do we have to pay for other people's insurance, there is another tax that is little spoken of and perhaps little-known. it is a tax that affects people in certain tax categories on their capital gains. happen,what is going to is that the taxes are going to become so onerous that it is not going to be worth it.

and i am not sure if the kaiser foundation is left-wing or right wing, maybe your guest will comment on that, that it seems to me that president obama and the have enacted this legislation are basically punishing the employer and employee combination that has calld to have what they wasteful spending, but which is really health care. here is the contrast. somebody wants a lot of health care and they want to pay for it with their own labor, and obama is punishing that, all the while taking money from the present and giving it to people who don't or can't work and to illegal immigrants. there is a study, i hope your guest will,, it said the obama administration was not even checking the citizenship status of applicants for obamacare on the website. this type ofa said

insurance would not go to illegal immigrants, but it is in fact going to illegal immigrant. i hope your guest will adjust that issue. guest: he made a lot of points there. first of all, i work for a news organization so we are neither left nor right wing. secondly, citizenship status is checked when people are signing up to get subsidies under the health care law. you have to be a citizen, for the most part. money does not go to undocumented immigrants. he does make a point though. there are winners and losers with this law. the winners generally tended to be folks who under the old system could not get coverage for one reason or another, or were lower income and cannot afford it. they be they had a health condition and could not get the coverage. there are now covered. they're getting subsidies. about 80% of people who are purchasing coverage are getting some kind of government help, some kind of subsidy to help them purchase.

they are happier. the folks were less happy our folks, perhaps like joe, who purchase insurance and maybe have seen an increase in their rates because the insurers are now covering more people who were not covered before, perhaps a higher cost. so folks who before had a low-cost plan because they had a really good adaptable or they were younger and healthier, they have seen their rates go up. there are winners and losers. we are going to keep hearing about that. we are going to keep hearing about these kind of problems. host: politico had an article about the political fallout from this looming cadillac tax, the problem -- the headline says cadillac tax could wreck popular medical accounts. they say that tax alone could dramatically alter the political equation surrounding obamacare, eventually blindsiding the class voters who may be only vaguely aware of the cadillac tax which won't take effect until 2018. they write already it has become democratic the

presidential primaries with senator bernie sanders vowing to jump attacks the tax and hillary clinton saying she is open to changes. republicans meanwhile invoke the tax is one of the many reasons to repeal the entire afford will care act. a nevada senator says that obamacare continues to overpromise and under deliver. he is working on legislation to address the issue. this tax, he said, is devastating to over 33 million americans annually who rely on fsas and hsas. tell us a little bit about the potential to repeal. again, we have got a couple of bills pending. there is a lot of movement and discussion about hey, we've got to repeal the cadillac tax rate but again, it runs up against a couple of factors. take on anyngress of these things? publicans want to repeal the entire law. if they just pull out one piece

of it what will happen to that momentum? as it what we are hearing though, you're starting to hear some proposals from the candidates about repealing and replacing. repealing is a little bit of an easier message, that replacing is a nuanced message. both senator walker and senator rubio have introduced proposals that are replacement proposals. walker has produced more details, i will probably tell a little bit more about walker's proposal, but both replaced health care law with tax credits to purchase health insurance. they allow people to buy insurance across state lines, increased the amounts people could put in health savings accounts. those are some similarities. both are concerned that there are too many regulations and too many rules, and too much structure in the affordable care act. they would remove some of the rules governing insurance now. but as far as buying coverage, walker's plan would give these tax credits so people could buy their own coverage. but unlike the current law which is based on income, his would be

based on age. it would be a flat amount. children would get $900. older adults would get up to $3000, with a tax credit to help them by insurance. again, based on age, not income. so a self-employed millionaire would get the same amount as someone who is a part-time clerk. they would use that to then purchase coverage. those amounts are less than what insurance costs. it would be another way to get people to buy their own insurance from coverage. they have rolled out a lot of these plans. host: what is the average subsidy under the affordable care act? guest: it is around $3100 year, maybe more. fran who is on the affordable care act, she is in jacksonville, florida. caller: good morning. i would like to say that there are pros and cons to everything, and that includes the affordable care act.

i went five years without insurance after i was displaced from my job and could not afford it. i had a before -- pre-existing condition, i'm diabetic, but i paid out-of-pocket to see my doctor. i had to pay for my medication and mammograms and all. then last year i enrolled in the affordable care act, my coverage and started on march 1, and then in may i was diagnosed with breast cancer. i guess you know the affordable care act saved my life. subsidy, and28 then i paid like $329 of my own. it was a good plan. $1300 deductible. wanted to of course i keep that, but i got a memo that

that plan has been retired and they showed me what my options were. there weren't many options. if you're in florida, because you know our governor he is not into the affordable care act, i stayed with florida plan. at only plan that suited me was the platinum plan. i had to go from a gold to a platinum. $529it is costing me instead of $329 that i was paying last year, but you know, i had to take it because i need -- well, and i fortunately, in january i will be 65 so i will transition into medicare. i had to bite the bullet. i had to sacrifice. i think that $529 a month. the real problem to me with the affordable care act is the cost

of the insurance itself. regardless of whether you are getting care or not, the insurance company is getting their money. the money they are getting is the money that i would have paid with my -- the company i was displaced with. $897 insurance was like ,or me just to be in their plan which is something i definitely could not have paid. that is still the cost of the insurance now, it is just a of the subsidy of the $328, taking some of that off of me so that i can week by -- squeak by and pay for insurance. something needs to be done about the actual cost of insurance. host: thank you for sharing your story. guest: fran hits it right on the head.

that is one of the biggest challenges facing this law and employer coverage going forward, controlling costs. is getting more and more expensive. costs are going up. the lake fran are facing and increasediums deductibles. she did the right thing. she shopped around. she got subsidies -- coverage. folks who get subsidies are still expected to pay between of theiro and 9% income towards the cost of covered and it is very expensive. next up from tacoma washington, he is also in the affordable care act. caller: thank you for taking my call. the previous caller pointed out exactly what is wrong with our health care here in america, the insurance companies. and also the states that did not make the affordable care act a part of their solution to health

care. those governors who resisted buying into the system is causing havoc for those people. similar to fran with pre-existing conditions, because the insurance companies are playing games where, as she she had a plan that letter needs, but now those plans are not available in those states. i think the affordable care act is doing a great job. it is keeping all of these people that are not in any type of health care from going to the most expensive health care, the emergency room. at least you can go to a doctor using an insurance plan. fran pointedlly, out the real problem with health

care in america. host: thank you. since obamacare picked and, -- kicks in, what is the total number of enrolled? guest: about 10 or 11 million people signed up this year to buy their own coverage. just yesterday the cdc came out with new numbers on the uninsured. that rate has dropped. it is down to 9.2% in the first quarter of this year. that is down from 11% last year and down from 16% right when the health law began. so we see the uninsured numbers drop off. he made a couple of points. one of them is that the law does insurance -- companies from ejecting individuals with pre-existing conditions. host: but she did have to raise up to a platinum plan? guest: she did. we don't know exactly the reasons for that. 82 doctors were on that plan.

don't know exactly. she may have been able to stick with their plant but did not like some of the changes. nonetheless, she could switch to another plan whereas before the health care plan -- health care law she might have difficulty switching plant at all. and he also mentioned the role of the governors in the state legislators. he is talking about medicare there. the health-care law expanded medicaid which is the federal state program for low income folks to more people, basically to childless adults in most states. but the supreme court ruling in the states the option as to whether they wanted to enroll. we have 29 states and the district of columbia that have extended medicaid. to, ite still not able states that they have not expanded, and that is what he was talking about. host: this is front page of the boston globe this morning. aalth care costs set -- setback in massachusetts.

write that they drove up prices in massachusetts 4.8% a couple more calls here. henderson, kentucky, good morning to bob. caller: good morning. thanks for taking my call. first of all, i am for everyone having insurance regardless of whether it is a national plan or what it is. i am for everyone having insurance. ism 71 years old, my wife 57. we are on medicare and medicaid advantage. these insurance companies are not always truthful. 65, she which he turned started calling around because we were paying i've hundred 75 a month for her insurance. every insurance company would give you a different price on

the medicare advantage. finally she got one lady that was truthful with her, and the lowest she had got was like 270's something dollars a month with medicare advantage. this lady had a for $28 a month. i could not believe that. to get aecting her deal to next month for an enormous amount. but it works for her, and then the following year i got on it. right now we are paying $77 a month. we pay co-pays for about everything we do. you go to the emergency room, that is a $65 co-pay. you get the procedure done, there is a co-pay on it. but you know, that is better than having to pay an enormous amount each month. these insurance companies, they are not truthful. they are always out to get you.

you have got to hope and pray that you find an honest agent. is that the type of plan they have typically available across the country? guest: it is available across the country. when you sign-up there is generally a network of doctors and hospitals that you can go to, unlike conventional medicare. there is a network, you stay within the network. you pay as you go, whereas with .edicare you may a lot of health care is local. negotiating with the hospitals and doctors is local. these are based on some of the locally or answers. bob's wife on the planet with $77 a month. here is job in franklin,

georgia. good morning. caller: good morning. love the show. look here. you have tounder -- read the plan to understand what is in the plan before you vote on the plan. host: something to that effect. me about thisills plan, like the gentleman from maryland, i am 61 years old. off,y life i worked my but never have been unemployed one day. i'm working for people who haven't worked, our go to work, age never get to work. i live in georgia, i can go to alabama and by my insurance. the politicians are in bed with each other. that is the bottom line. i will take your comments. thank you for your time. host: thank you. any final comments? guest: he mentioned going across the state to buy insurance, that is a common comments.

i think we are going to hear more about this coming up as well. it is a perennial idea. the idea is that you might get more choice for insurers in a bunch of different states, and maybe you could find a lower price lan and buy it there. the difficulty is, let's say you live in new york and you want to buy a plan in alabama. how is that alabama insurer going to create a network of doctors in new york? that is a really big challenge. i think we will hear more from folks like that. is seniore appleby correspondent for "kaiser health thanks for being with us. washingtone on journal, our spotlight on magazine series. this time we turn to politics, and we are going to look at how people vote. we will discuss the august 3 cover story from the "christian

science monitor" on how voters really choose their presidential candidate. we will be right back. >> with the sudden death of president harding, vice president calvin coolidge takes office. his wife was an enormously popular first lady and influenced american women by becoming a style icon, although she married a man known as silent cal she used her office to bring attention to issues she cared about. this sundayge, night at 8:00 p.m. eastern on c-span's original series, first ladies, influence and image. examining the public and private lives of the women who kill the position of first lady and their influence on the presidency. martha washington to michelle

obama, sunday at 8:00 p.m. eastern on american history tv on c-span3. >> this sunday night on q&a, stanford law school professor sandra rhody talks about her book, "the trouble with lawyers," which takes a critical look at the legal -- profession in the united states and the high cost of law school. >> i think we need a different model of legal education. we need one with one-year program, people doing routine work. two-year programs are an option for evil -- for people who want to do something specialized in their third year, and three or four years for people who want the full, general practice legal education that we now have. but you know, it is crazy to train in the same way somebody who is doing routine divorces in a small town in the midwest and somebody who is doing mergers

and acquisitions on wall street. we have this one-size-fits-all model of legal education that is extremely expensive. the average debt level for a law student is $100,000. that you can train everybody to do everything in the same way. to practice in two states and i would not trust myself to do a routine divorce. >> sunday night at eight about eastern and pacific on c-span's q&a. >> washington journal continues. every wednesday here on washington journal we bring you our spotlight on magazine series, and this time we are throwing was spotlight on politics, presidential politics. peter grier is a senior writer with the "christian science monitor" and author of the cover story, how do voters really decide? peter grier, what

prompted you to look at how voters decide now, well ahead of next year's election? guest: i started with a simple question. i was taking to myself, how much should presidential candidates actually matter? the press covers the election like it is a giant reality show in which it is a struggle between dramatic personalities. but is that the real story, or there is the other point of view where it is something that is by fundamentals, it is much more about the economy and things like that. that the electorate is just chance on a floating stick who think they are steering. and as you mentioned, the media coverage is perhaps like a reality show. the daily, if not weekly polls that are up and down. how did you clear away that influence and focus on what voters really choose? guest: what i have done here is

really take a political viewpoint about what the election is about. i looked at a lot of books and articles written by people who study this for a living as academics as opposed to being reporters with daily deadlines. they have a very different view of what elections are about and how voters vote and why they vote than reporters do, which i found fascinating. host: in the end, what was your conclusion? is there one thing that makes voters choose a candidate that they choose? guest: i would say, my take away was three things. three point about the election that i think are quite probably true, that we don't really know for sure. one of them is that there are not as many independent as you think there are. the electorate, many of them are people who say they are independents, but they are really not.

if you are art is republican you are going to vote for the republicans. if you are a democrat you are going to vote for a democrat. that sounds simple, but it really make sense when you put that together with the fact that there are not many independents. , all of theint is gasping stuff that report is left to focus on does not really matter that much. if you put the three things together what you get is an election that is going to be much more stable as it goes towards november 10 the sort of daily up-and-down, the drama that reporters talk about. host: is that partly because the voters, the people who go into the booth, actually get more serious about the choices they are about to make? guest: they are always curious about the choice. think about how you make your own choice -- serious about the choice. think about how you make your own choice. you have a notion early on and it kind of firms up as you get close to election day. most people don't really switch back and forth between maybe it will be one or maybe it will be another.

they don't pay much attention to politics, really. they have lots of other stuff to think about. it is much more in the background, a stable choice as november approaches. host: back to your point about independents, what do you think is the number of people that say they are independents that are most of the time democratic, most of the time republican? that is trulyer independent? is a good question and i worry about this for c-span. all the independence -- independents in america are probably watching c-span. the basic breakdown is about one third of america is republican, about one third is democratic, about one third said the -- says that it is independent. but if you push the third that say they are independent about one third of them are closet

republican, about one third are closet democrats, and only one third of them are truly independent. and a lot of them don't vote. you can see they are not really fighting over a take pool of pool of swivel --swayable voters. four hour) 748-8002 independent voters. (202) 748-8000 for democrats. (202) 748-8001 four republican. and we go to our independent line. you have becky from ohio. caller: good morning, and thank you for c-span. i am an older, very conservative woman, and i am having a quandary and who to vote for for the republican. from dr.t a robo call ben carson, and i am looking seriously at him, but one of the

know who- i want to the candidate is going to get around them? who will be there advisers? who will counsel them? that, and number two i am looking for an honest man of integrity, a christian man. that is what i am going to be looking for in the coming months. excel like you are a very thoughtful voter, and that is exactly what america needs. i think your point about the advisers said they will gather around them is an excellent one. that is something that voters don't pay a lot of attention to. you don't get a lot of information about it, really, but it really shapes a lot of what the presidency is. you know, if you want to look at that kind of thing, and the primary is much more of a scrum.

it is hard to tell the people apart sometimes. if you can get an idea of who they have around them, that is an important indicator of where they might go. host: she talked about the advisers. you write about in your piece at the "christian science monitor" about political infighting. you wrote that you will see lots of stories in coming months about democrats and or republicans being internally divided because of one concertante -- contretemps or another. in a narrow sense, it's true that donald trump spewed on immigration are dividing the gop and bernie sanders is more appealing to liberals than mrs. clinton. it's just that the stuff, and the end, will have little effect on how partisan vote. host: it's because that is what all -- guest: it's because that is what all the surveys show in the end. there is a group called the american national election studies that look how people

vote over time. increasingly, 90% of republican voters will vote for the republican party. they won't say oh, you know, i'm upset about the turn in immigration so i will vote for democrats. in the end they will swallow their objections and vote for the party they are part of. host: we are talking about how voters really decide. peterest is peter grier grier from the "christian science monitor." . how do you really decide? democrats,000 for (202) 748-8001 for republicans, (202) 748-8002 for independents. caller: i agree with people forming opinions about who they are going to vote for early on. for instance, my family is democrat simply because my parents are, but i think as time has gone on and i have gotten older it has become more clear

to me that the democrats and republicans are more closely aligned than anyone really realizes. one is kind of far right, one is kind of moderate right, and the the things the party -- parties really only differ on public issues like abortion, health care, immigration, but if you look like how they want -- vote on war, defense spending, the economy, they are barely -- there he closely aligned. i was wondering if you guys could speak more to that. host: peter grier? guest: that is an interesting point the viewer makes. i figure have two things i would like to say about that. one is, it really does matter which party controls america. they do have different agendas and they do different things. if the republicans had won the oval office in 2008 we would not have the formal care act, which you just spent a great. you just spenth

a great amount of time discussing before i came on. the second is that it is true, historically, defense is a less polarizing issue in america. there has been much more of a consensus about how to handle america's role in the world and the level of defense spending since world war two. that breaks down at. the time, and i think right now we might be in one of those. host: jim in michigan, and we are talking about how you decide to vote. jim on our democrat line, go ahead. caller: thank you for taking my call. i will say i called the democrat line because i lean more democratic. in the past i was formerly a republican. what i was calling about is one of the things that we have seen in our area is we have a large farming community, so as a result everyone says, well, i'm a republican. i'm a republican.

then they don't bother to go to the polls and vote for their candidate based on his or her qualifications, and we are experiencing -- and i'm sure you've seen this in the news, and unfortunate experience with our representatives from our , which has actually been denied caucus with the republicans. he went with the idea that he was going to disrupt government and tear it apart. an as a result, we have electorate that went blindly. we have to vote for it. that is really what is wrong with our country. could careng -- i less what their affiliation is. do they have a plan?

are they going to do what they say they are going to do? they should do away with the straight ticket voting. that is my comment on it. point.an excellent oni said, most voters vote party identification. the lower down you get in the electorate, the less that holds true. for a number of congress or the house, there is more party switching. it is still largely polarized. group together? democrats live in places where there are mostly other democrats. there is still a certain amount

of intermixing and a percentage of democrats or republicans in your neighborhood. increasingly they are glomming together. host: question for you on twitter. guest: it depends what you think is significant. i am talking about large percentages. an small change can throw election. it is not like the things i am downplaying our unimportant. but there is a small percentage of people that make up your mind when they go to the polls. it can be important if you live in florida or ohio. those people are generally low-

information voters. host: montana, bob on our independent line. caller: good morning. i think your guest is really spot-on on his evaluation of the 1/3 and 1/3 and 1/3. anook at myself as independent. a have never voted for democrat in the presidential election. i very often vote for democrats in my local and state elections. i believe in the social issues and i see the problems of the cities and counties around me. them to get the money initiated by the state.

i have looked at this presidential election. i and 65 and i have been through a few elections. i am giving it a lot of looks at the democrats and where they are exceptional to me as far as allowing the states, and i see that as a personal freedom in the cities and the counties to make the choices of what we need. we do associate in groups. i was -- montana is a very diverse state. missouli, andthe now i live in roundup, montana, north of billings and it is

quite republican. i still vote democrat in my local elections because of what i just mentioned. i would like to have your opinion on my assessment. host: thank you, bob. guest: i think he is a good example of what i am writing about. he is an independent independent or not a closet partisan. he does lean partisan in the presidential election. that is what a lot of independents do. further down the ticket where there is more information about the local issues, he makes a different kind of decision. i would not say a more considered decision. it is based on information that is easier to get. --t: on twitter from karen

peg say calls.ack to the republican line. caller: hello! listen. i am a registered republican but i consider myself independent. i voted for republicans democrats. i usually vote for the person, not the party. i have never not voted in a primary or election. in california, we don't have that much choice. by the time the election gets to us, it almost has been decided. i take my grandchildren and

register them to vote. i let them decide what is going to be. i really launch who it is. i watch everything about them. y, dr. benl carson, and ted cruz. he is the only one that went to congress and voted for what they asked them to do. in thatto get someone is conservative and they do not vote the way they say they are going to do it. i am so disappointed. it breaks my heart. host: thank you for joining us. guest: good for her for all that voting. we're only talking about people who do vote.

many americans, most americans do not vote. ar politicians are chosen by plurality as opposed to a majority of voters. you cannot complain if you do not go to the polls. host: do we know the percentage of eligible voters? guest: i was afraid you were going to ask that. turnout in america runs about 50% to 60%. i could well be wrong. host: on individual issues, a comment yesterday about john kasich. he said he is fine with a hike.nable minimum wage a big republican field. in terms of how voters decide,

what difference media coverage makes? guest: i am glad you asked that question. i was mostly focusing on the general election. primaries can be a different story. the nature of the candidate matters, and voters to switch their ideas in a primary back and forth. they often do not know much about them when they begin. john kasich has low knowledge ability ratings. so as they learn more about the candidates, they often rise in the polls. host: how do voters really decide? the author of the piece, "christian science monitor" weekly and your corals

are welcome. 202-748-8000 for democrats. 202-748-8001 for republicans. let's go to our independent line to milwaukee and chris. caller: good morning. i plan on voting. i am 73. i plan on voting for whoever will keep social security and medicare intact. it comes up here and there on the news. very few and far in between. how will be an sanders -- hucklebee and sanders are the only ones who want to keep it like it is. the changesknow they are talking about will not affect me because of my age. all of my children are under 55.

it is for them i would like to detect it -- protect it. my husband has had a stroke. i am not well. if we did not have medicare, we would probably be bankrupt. the people that are younger better think about it when they go vote. that is my comment. host: thank you, chris. guest: she said she votes for candidates of both parties, and is very interested in medicare. a democraticust issue. they want to slow down the rate of immigration into the united states. you see that with donald trump. he gets positions that may be

that are not completely coherent in the past. host: bakersfield, california, bertty. caller: good morning. i am concerned about what i hear about -- the politician -- i thi i listen -- i think about the united states, and i think about the love and compassion that we have for one another. iwatch when something goes wrong as far as hurricanes and people help each other. they are willing to share -- that is what i feel about the united states. they aren and --

trying to survive. they have families. that is what it is all about, trying survive. when we think about the care, different people who do not have everyone ang -- chance at living. that should be jobs. people should be concerned about every nationalities trying to survive. fame andy is not -- wealth and fortune. people need to survive. people are supposed to care. republicans and democrats care for one another. seeing people survive. that's why crime is so high.

african american people, the jobs, they cannot get a job. they trying to do the best that they can. taken me crimes -- they commit crimes. host: we will let you go. guest: one of the primary fundamentals which determines an election is the state of the economy and whether people feel they can get jobs and support their families. when the economy gets better it helps the incumbent party. host: it satellite was looking to the appeal -- it sounded like was looking to the appeal of the economy. you write about favorability polls and how people vote in

your "christian science monitor" piece. you say there is a chicken and egg problem. maybe voters decide to back candidates because of party affiliate. and they decide that candidate seems like a nice person after all. maybe we'll do brunch. how much does this weigh in the end? guest: i think that is chicken and egg. i am not sure a favorability rating is a huge indicator. donald trump, more people decided to vote for him and said they had a favorable view of him. they decided to vote and thought, he must be a good guy. is next on the

independent line. caller: can you hear me? thank you for taking my call. give me a couple of minutes. i will talk about the fabric of america and how it has been torn. i am 73. i was drafted with rich kids, four people, whites, blacks, aesthetics. we all had -- hispanics. we all had each other's backs. do notiticians today listen to their constituents. thereafter there special interest and money to be reelected. examples, the keystone pipeline. they will not say the keystone

pipeline is a 1,000,005 legend thousand acres owned by the koch brothers. i amnother one is -- getting like governor perry. i am a little nervous. medicare, yeah. the medicare. the drug companies are allowed negotiate with everybody on the planet except medicare. eventually they go broke because of the drug. the only guy that interest you so far this year has been trying -- trump. at lease he tells the truth. he has nobody handing in money. i just wish there were more people -- it is a shame.

people in d.c. and around the belt, they just care about money. they do not care about anybody. appeal.onald trump's not party partisan. that color is a good example of that. host: maureen dowd hit trump bumb, she writes. competition between donald trump and jeb bush. he seems authentic too many americans.

host: back to calls. cedar creek, nebraska. good morning. caller: good morning. the main thing about the caller i.d.he voter they say there is no evidence of fraud. you have to check the people's i.d. you have all these people who were in dead that are voting. only have to do is take the persons name and go to the place where he polls. he can sit there and do absentee voting. i remember for the 2008 election. there was a skirmish about

different states want to clean their voter registration. eric holder was yelling about it. it must've been the 2010. eric holder was yelling about it. he also had his panic's that we -- hispanics that were here legally. they make it their own. it looks like they are american citizens. i do not know. more and more to the left. yesterday when i turned on the tv, there was obama. i cannot stand his voice. the same speech obama playing on hicspan1 and cspan1.

2. you go way back in time to criticize republicans. a hearing on irs was something, i watch. " c-span, let's see it." you never have any of the hearings that are against the democrats. host: i appreciate your feet that. it could have been yesterday you saw a portion of the president's speech. we have covered a number of hearings with the head of the irs. tampa florida to the independent s line. robert in tampa. go ahead. caller: i am interested in the candidate that is going to protect social security and

medicare for people in the early 60's. one thing i like about donald trump, he is all for detecting medicare and social security for the elderly. how people view the nation -- host: it just came out past monday in terms of how satisfied are you with the nation today? very satisfied, 2% host: in your reporting, people go to the polls, how did they feel about the country? guest: if they are dissatisfied, the throughout the incumbent party. not good news for the democratic nominee.

as we get closer to the election, we'll see how that number plays out. host: that whole from quinnipiac released earlier this month -- earlier this week. patricia. hi, there. caller: hi. i look at what they have done in their background, how they voted on different things. i am just it and getting moderates back in so they can get some done. i plan on voting for jim lamb -- webb. he is well rounded. i do not think will take us into a war. he is a moderate. there are some things i do not agree with him on. he doesn't get any air time. i follow him on facebook.

i had in aware of him for years. he was a republican, like i was. he turned democrat, like i did. he is a centrist. i think that is what we need. notll write him in if he is primaries. guest: i have covered jim webb since he was the secretary of the navy. very impressive speaker. a debate between him and hillary clinton and bernie sanders will be interesting. he is only running a 70 semi-campaign. host: how important is it for a candidate to create a groundswell leading up to election day? guest: that is a good question. for the national candidate, it

is less important than you think. the election turns much more on longer-term fundamental issues that were settled prior to the run-up to the campaign. that doesn't mean that is completely unimportant. even if you percentage points from one state can make a difference. host: c-span spend a lot of time covering the political conventions. how much of a difference do they make voters? guest: deacon ventures are a turning point -- the conventions are a turning point in the campaign that are important. they are huge infomercials. the party things it is a great thing. poll and get them to stays there.

host: patricia is on our independent line. caller: i just wanted to make the point that whoever you vote for for president is really secondary to her you send to congress. can underminess the president, can support the president, and the vice president, which i think we have 't accomplishan everything we need to have accomplished with a congress that behaves as though they were never elected. thank you. host: we go to new york city on the democrats' line. caller: hi. i am a democrat but i am going

to vote for a republican. lately the democrats are not doing a good job the people that work. like the one who paid taxes and did not get a break. making thee not united states a strong as we used to be. i used to be proud to be a new yorker. president, they just help -- the streets are broken. they are not helping. host: which one of the presidential candidates are you considering voting for? caller: yeah. right now, i do not like the ones they have. hillary clinton. fors too early to run

president. i like donald trump. i think he will bring the jobs back. they are used to having the -- nobody is doing nothing about ths. informationd to -- -- nothing to them back. host: any response? ,uest: she is disillusioned disillusionment with the current administration. we've had democrats for two terms in a row. you get a little advantage for the republicans. host: something to look for to in terms of a sign of how people might vote next year. nationte about state the and the change in the u.s. gross

domestic product. if it is going up, it would be good for the democratic candidate. guest: that is true. that is what political scientists believe. if campaigns can call attention to the economy and help them if the economy is doing well -- that is the main driver of the american presidential election. host: peter grier has the cover piece, "ho voters really decidew do." you can read more online at csmonitor.com. peter grier, thank you for being with us is morning. that will about wrap it up for this morning. have a great day. [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2015]

[captioning performed by the national captioning institute, >> here is a look at what is ahead today on c-span. coming up in an hour or so, secretary of day john kerry will take about the iran nuclear agreement. chris coons became the 33rd senator to pledge support of the deal. the administration only needs one more senator to sustain a presidential veto. we are learning california democrat judy chu has tweeted out she will support the deal. still unclear when the house will consider the agreement after they return next week. secretary of s