eastern. 2:00 there is only one bill on the schedule and that is dealing with research into dyslexia. positiona discharge with the export import bank. chair lays before the house a communication from the speaker. the clerk: the speaker's rooms, robert j. dold to act as speaker pro tempore on this day. signed, john a. boehner, speaker of the house of representatives. the speaker pro tempore: pursuant to the order of the house on january 6, 2015, the chair will recognize members from lists submitted by majority and minority leaders for morning hour debate. the chair will recognize members from alternating parties, with each member limited to phi

minutes but in no event shall debate continue beyond 1:50 p.m. the chair recognizes the gentleman from washington, mr. eck, for five minutes. the chair recognizes the gentleman from mississippi for ive minutes. >> mr. speaker, i rise today to honor the courage, sacrifice and service of members of the greatest generation from my district. mr. palazzo: mr. albert and mr. jones. mr. al-- i first met mr. albert

in the honor flight which brings them to washington to see their memorial. i had the opportunity to speak with mr. albert at the victory of japan day anniversary ceremony in hawaii. here i learned art was serving as a machinist on the u.s.s. missouri on september 2, 1945, where he witnessed the japanese formally surrender to the united states, ending world war ii. it h he would disagree, reflects not on his service but the greatness of our nation as a whole. mr. palazzo: through his service and quiet work, he's brought honor to himself, the state of mississippi and the united states of america. i am honored to have him as a constituent and to have the opportunity to know him both as a person and as an enduring example of the values that have ade america great.

last month, another of my constituents, john broundsville, celebrated his 90th birthday. beginning in october of 1943, mr. roundsville served for 28 months in the pacific theater of operations he served aboard an l.c.i. gun boat assigned to the pacific theater and participated in numerous campaigns earning his unit an impressive six battle stars for world war ii service, including the navy unit commendation award. although it has been over 70 years since his time in the pacific, mr. roundsville remembers his entire tour and speaks of it often. like the american flag that has been proudly planted in his front yard for decades, i take great pride in representing world war ii veterans like mr. roundsville who belongs to a generation who -- whose

sacrifices preserved our freedom and liberated the world from tyranny and oppression. i ask my colleagues to join me in thanking john roundsville and art albert for their courage and bravery and their service to this great nation. i wish to extend my heartfelt gratitude to both of these great americans, their families, and congratulate them on their dedicated service to the united states of america. mr. speaker, i yield back. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman yields back. he chair lays before the house an enrolled bill. the clerk: h.r. 774, an act to strengthen enforcement mechanisms to stop illegal, unreported, unregulated fishing to amend the tuna conventions act of 1950 to implement the antigua convention and for other urposes. the speaker pro tempore: pursuant to clause 12a of rule 1, the chair declares the house

in recess until 2:00 >> work on a measure dealing with research into dyslexia. also debate on a procedural matter regarding the re-authorization of the export-import bank, this maneuver would seek to bring the bill up for consideration you without going through the customary committee process. no action on effort to discharge the exic bank expected in the house until 6:30 eastern. there will be 20 minutes of debate and then vote. it could have dilatory tactics. that tweet coming from chad regarding the export-import bank debate. the senate also back today at 3:00. lawmakers set to work on judicial nomination. more debate planned on a

cybersecurity information sharing bill. you can see the senate on our companion network, c-span2. today's white house briefing gets under way at 12:45 eastern today. we are planning live coverage here on c-span. until then a discussion on this morning's "washington journal" with the concord coalition policy director, joshua gordon. he talked about whether or not lawmakers should raise the debt ceiling. the a discussion about debt ceiling with joshua gordon of the concorde coalition. he is their policy director, good morning. how do you its limited ceiling to people -- how you explain the debt ceiling to people? guest: it is the amount of money the u.s. is allowed to borrow. once we hit this limit, the treasury department can do a bunch of things to extend our time, and that it needs to be raised -- and then it needs to be raised.

the debt ceiling has actually no connection to our spending and tax policies. just because we have the ceiling, whether to raise it or not has nothing to do with the fiscal policy of the country. we have already made decisions on how to tax and spend and this just lets us pay the bills enough for we come into -- and that's where we come into some tricky situations. host: what is the current ceiling and what is being asked for the new ceiling? guest: the current ceiling is around $18 trillion. it's not entirely clear what is being asked, i'm not sure if there is being asked. you try to raise it for as much is possible to get you past a certain day. what they will probably try to do is raise the ceiling above the amount necessary to get through the next election. host: what happens if we go past the ceiling?

what's the most immediate response? guest: we are already passed it, so at this point, we are basically and the treasury department is running out of moneyo do -- to move around enough to where we can continue borrowing. the treasury department says we will reach that point where they can't do anything in the next week or so, and that's the real urgency right now. host: if a deadline is not reached, these other measures in place by the treasury department take place. what else happens? who gets affected? that: the real concern is you actually don't know the have $50 because we billion changing hands every day at this point. you could just get to the point where the treasury department just can't move the money around and we are out of options to borrow for the money that we

need to spend on a specific day. no one really knows what happens when you get to that point, because it has never happened for more than 24 hours and that was by accident 30 years ago. no one really knows what happens if you run out of space other than it looks really bad and the financial markets get very upset. then we are in uncharted waters. host: should lawmakers raise the ceiling? that is what we are talking about with joshua gordon. if you want to ask questions about how the debt ceiling works, what happens if he passes or what the implications are. (202) 748-8001 for republicans. (202) 748-8000 for democrats. (202) 748-8002 for independents. i wanted to just found some things off you and your response. you kind of reference this but i

wanted to expand, increasing the debt limit does not authorize future spending or funding programs, it merely enables us thatper obligations congress is already occurred -- incurred. guest: we have a congressional budget process and sometimes it works and sometimes it does not, but you have both parties, deciding spending and revenue decisions for the next 10 years, how much we will spend on defense, how much we spend on transportation and education, so they make those decisions through the budget process. they decide what level of taxation we will have, then they pass a bill that funds the government through the next year. in the course of making those decisions, we tend to wind up spending more than we take in. that leads to the deficit. in order to make of that money, we borrow on the open market and

that borrowing is what pushes us to the national debt and we have this very old debt ceiling that in put in place accidentally 1917. in addition to deciding what levels of taxes and spending we have, they have to occasionally raise the ceiling. the need to raise debt ceiling is depending on the taxing and spending decisions congress already made, sometimes decades ago. if we are not raising taxes to pay, we have to borrow the money and that borrowing is what causes us to bump against the debt ceiling. host: i suppose you hear the analogy of the household budget where they say -- that way tog apply the federal budget, how it does its business? guest: it takes a little bit

longer to do that. to be makingess responsible taxing and spending decisions, and not borrow more and more money every year. they have made the decision to borrow, and really what we are doing is paying the credit card bills. it would be like saying to the creditor company, i know i bought these plane tickets, but i just don't have this much money coming in and how about i just not pay you this month? wouldedit card company not look very kindly on that, and it's the same thing. u.s. government has a credit card. they raise their debt of the open market, so we can teach our creditors, or does not going to pay you this month -- we can't say to our creditors, were just not going to pay you this month. host: jack also writes about what happens after november 30. we have cash available to fund

an enterprise, not enough with our net expenditures to reach as much as $60 billion. should --e business would run itself this way and the government should be no different. guest: it is hard to disagree with that, and it's just letting the urgency of the moment come through. at what dayte sure you run out of room to make these large transactions. the real key is congress tasted just raise the limit and get us out of these dire straits, because again, as he said, you really don't want to mess with this and leave it to the last minute. even have to studies of when we approached the debt limit showed that just by getting close, we are costing the country money, just the opposite of what the people who don't want to raise the debt ceiling want to support, they don't want us to keep borrowing. we have to keep borrowing more and more through just these

crises, so it itself is very fiscally irresponsible. host: is he saying that after the deadline, the department runs cash on hand? would have to happen is right away, you would probably not be able to pay some bills. in the financial markets, if you are a company and your reach the point where you can pay some bills, you are basically considered to be defaulted. if it only happens for a day or two, we will of have -- we will of had defaulted on some payments. this is sending a signal to investors that wraps it's not as you thought and that that -- that would cost us and penalize us as a country for a long time, not just over the short span of disagreement. host: joshua gordon, talking

about the debt limit. first call is from philip, republican line. caller: i would like to see them get back to the real world like we are, living with our bills. did we have a crisis under obama when he went and close down the monuments and close down the parks? he was just trying to make it hard on the people and the media just took off, blame the republicans, blame the republicans. he did not have to close down the parks, but he wanted to hit the american people when they are going on vacation and try to hurt them. that's this whole theory. i don't believe he loves this country. that?anything from guest: there are two issues happening.

you have this debt limit, then you also have -- from the government on the basis and not funding the government, not -- is what leads to the government shutdown where the national otherclosed and nonessential functions of the government basically shut down. those are two different things. the government shutdown, happens occasionally and that is a disagreement between it or the houses of congress or congress and the president on how much we should be spending. that is actually a disagreement that is important for congress to work through. that is much more regular and something we can handle much easier than the debt limit reach -- breach which would be uncharted waters and really hurt us. host: john from south carolina, good morning.

early branch? caller: yes. ask thelike to security wassocial going to be paid? isit'll pass a debt limit, social security still been a be paid? guest: i don't think it's clear which payments we would be able to make an which payments we would not be able to make. i think ultimately, the longer a breach goes on, the longer we don't increase the debt ceiling, the greater the chances of us not being able to pay social security benefits, just like would not be able to pay any of our cash outlays. i think there is some discretion about what payments go out, but

again, it's not entirely clear what would happen. i know the treasury department has said that they are not really sure how to their computer system they would figure out what departments would go first in line. matter what happens, really, the social security payments, they are important to those people receiving them, but the crisis of but the crisis of financing these as a country would be really much worse than what would happen if social security payments were delayed for a week or two. we are talking about a real global financial uncertainty that we have experienced only in times of market crisis and recession in the past. this is something that would be kind of a on purpose in some degree and it's unclear exactly what would happen. host: in new jersey, this is bill.

caller: good morning. i'm glad you took my call. i just turned on the show a few minutes ago so i did not see anybody who called before. with respect to the national debt, a lot of people get the national debt and deficit confuted the national debt is the money we borrow to keep things going. i do not know why they want to raise the national debt. for things, why do we have to keep borrowing money every year to pay for the things to run the government? now people in congress and the president are all talking about, we are going to cut the national debt. in 10 years, we are going to cut it $1 trillion. that is ridiculous. you do not know what is going to happen in those 10 years for what you're going to have to spend money on. you should not have to borrow money on anything other than an emergency. y iscountries

acting like a person using a credit card to pay off another credit card. you can't do that. the country will fall apart. explain theu differences between debt and deficit and why this matters in the discussion? guest: sure. every year, we taken money through taxes and we put it toward spending programs. any, we spend more that we take bring in, that's the deficit. around $40as billion. when you add up all of our annual deficits throughout history, you basically get our debt. spendingr that we have more than taxes, we have to par borrow and pay for that deficit and you added up and that's the debt. we cannot borrow at the rate that we are projected to. we are projected to have

borrowing grow much higher than it is now. there borrowing out 75% of the economy. the 250% ofed to the economy, which would be doubled the largest that we have had an history. that projection is what scares people the most about our fiscal policy. i think that is the important debt to get past these ceilings and to get focused on the long-term challenge of this increasing debt over the next 30-4 years. the deficit has been cut since 2009 and percentage of gdp. as this affected the political fight over the debt limit? if it hasm not sure affected the political fight over the debt limit, but it is true that the debt has gone drowned o down dramatically since 2009, but that was when we

were borrowing more than we had in the past. that was about $1.4 trillion we borrowed in 2009 and again in 2010 and 2011 and that is because the recession was so deep that we were not collecting as much taxes from people because they were not working and spending money on their paychecks to the government. spending more during the recession to help a smooth out the path of the recession. as the economy has gotten better, we have been able to lower the deficit. the real challenge is what happens in the long-term. trend a that deficit lowering one, or do you see it in the future? guest: they say it will remain at this level in a few more years and go back at again with the more structural problems with the budget start taking hold. will have an older population and more people getting social security and medicare and we are not raising the revenue to pay

for those benefits. our deficits are going to grow because of that and not because of another recession or an increase in more spending. it's really the natural course of our budget now that will take us to larger and larger deficits unless we change our tax spending policies to bring that under control. gordon ofjoshua the concorde coalition, here is pat from new jersey. i would just like to know that given the fact that we routinely raise the debt limit every time we bump up against it, why canno can't we just repl the legislation that giv gave us the debt limit? it has no impact on her spending decisions. it's a real distraction. borrow what you need in front the money you need and eventually we are going to have to face our problems. thank you. host: robert samuel said in an op-ed today that don't the debt ceiling.

it is obvious that the federal debt ceiling has outlived it once usefulness at wha had. it does not discipline government spending and any printable waited on the contrary, it creates artificial crises with a lis possibly calamitous economic consequences and just as bad issues with the parties. guest: i agree. we need to get rid of the debt ceiling. it is risky and does not make sense and is not affects our tax policy. i would like to get rid of the debt ceiling and replace it with something that more closely ties without taxing and spending policies. that would make more sense is kind of another breaker for the political process to have to go through when contemplating their taxing and spending decisions. and there are a lot of ways that you can do that. you can tie the debt limit to the size of the economy so at least it is not only going up

and dollar amounts. you're taking into account growth in the economy and growth and inflation. or you can tie to the budget whenever they pass a budget. they would have to increase the debt ceiling enough cap the budgets it under it. -- enough so the budget fits under it. even the most conservative plan that cuts spending far beyond what we have ever done in the budget before would need an increase in the debt ceiling, so there is really no plausible way to change taxing and spending enough right now to not breach the debt ceiling. do is while they are making those taxing and spending decisions, they can add on to that decision to increase the debt by as much as they are willing to go through their budget policies. that would be much more sensible. but really, the current system is crazy and serves no purpose but to cause these crises and

the crises are not worth the risk. host: tony from capitol heights, maryland. good morning. caller: good morning. host: go ahead. caller: the problem i see is that -- the million-dollar question is the difference between money and currency. the problem is the currency does not have any substance. the currency is based on debt. you are always going to have a reserveh this federal lending system. i just went on the federal reserve website and i saw that their thing from federal reserve.org to federal reserve.gov. i am wondering if the federal reserve was nationalized. ceiling is kind of like a check because you

cannot just go spending money because you have got to pay your bills. i don't understand why you do not just declare force majeure. thanks know that they can declare force majeure if you have unpayable debt. they always talk about attacking medicare and social security instead of closing down these military bases you have a letter these places -- all over these places. and we are invading all these countries and all that. you also need to talk about your black budget. nobody messes with the black you doand all the money with these accounting tricks to fund the space programs. host: i will let him address what you brought to the table. guest: a lot was brought to the table. , as ik the basic issue said, is that the debt ceiling and our deficit is really a cash

in-cash out situation. what ever is on the budget winds up being accounted for because you have to spend the money greater than what you are taking in. , i think, with debt is that just having a government that is able to run debt is not a bad thing. the real problem is when that debt grows more quickly than the economy and then you run into problems where the debt begins to erode your economic growth in your economic potential. so that is what we are concerned about. just our ability to borrow is actually very helpful as a country along with the federal reserve. , theg our recession ability to borrow as much as we did really help smooth out the path of the recession. i know that is hard for people to believe because of the recession was really bad and lasted a really long time,

but it would've been worse if the government was not able to run debt and were not able to raise taxes on people and cut spending drastically in the middle of the recession. that would've been a bad idea and would've put us in much more dire straits than we were in. so the debt helps us have a much smoother economy than we would have otherwise. the real key is making sure we do not just let it grow faster forhan the economy 20-30-40 years like we are currently projected to do. host: this is carl from california. go ahead please. caller: mr. gordon, i was going to ask you that when they came in to office, he was going to use a 5% cut across the board for his staff and they would start saving money. o'connell said that he would do anything to fail this president. that is treasonous. why are we not going after that as well?

are they cutting back and their staff and saving money? can talk about raising the debt, but if they also play with this, we will be downgraded like we did last time. that's not good. thank you. that's my question. host: did we ever recover from that downgrade? guest: the interesting thing is because the u.s. is the safest investment in the world, our treasuries are the safest investment in the world, the downgrade from the s&p in 2011 actually lower the interest rates we have to pay on borrowing. more people were willing to loan us money in that case than they were before the downgrade because whenever people get worried around the world and in the united states and they did not know what to do with that money, they tend to invest it in the u.s. government. downgrade did not harm us from an standpoint. it actually increased borrowing from the u.s. at lower interest rates. it is very difficult to think of

the u.s. debt as the same as corporate debt where you can downgrade it or increase it. it is the safest debt instrument in the world. if you downgrade the u.s. debt, basically every other debt instrument has to be downgraded by the same amount. i think the downgrade was misinterpreted as being related to our fiscal situation, but really if you read what the s&p said at the time, and i imagine they are going to repeat this now, they were really concerned about the political consequences of the debt limit and they were concerned that we would face a debt limit breach at some point in the near term. and that is why they downgraded us, not because of our fiscal decision, but because they were we might experience a temporary shock from the political believed to increase the debt ceiling. i think that message is still very relevant today. host: there was a piece of legislation passed in the house copied the fall prevention act, which takes a look at

prioritizing payments under situations like the one we might face with the debt ceiling. one of the people coming up to speak for it is paul ryan, essentially the next speaker of the house. here's what he had to say about it and i want to get your response. [video clip] >> if you want to guarantee that the united states will never default, you should vote for this bill. if you want to protect working families from the consequences of default, you should vote for this bill. if you want to make sure that seniors get every dime of their social security, then vote for this bill. mr. speaker, this bill does not raise the debt limit, but it eliminates the threat of default. the full faith and credit of our country is too important to put at risk. what this bill says is very simple. it says that we will never fail to pay our debts. that is just it. that is all it does. it is just paying our debt. we know the consequences of default. we know it would shake the world's confidence in us.

we know that it can freeze up credit across this country and that is why, with this bill, we are taking default off the table. host: mr. gordon, what do you think about that approach? guest: i do not love that approach because i am not entirely clear on what it would accomplish because while it would have to pay our bondholders, we would have to stop paying some people that depend on our money. as soon as we cannot pay the defense department that week for what they need or social security beneficiaries what they basically is a default because you are saying that you have to give someone an i/o you cannot pay them at that point. from a market standpoint, i believe this bill is trying to calm the markets about the threat of a default when you reach the debt ceiling. but from the standpoint of markets, if you see someone that you borrowed money from unable

to pay their bills, whether it is to you or someone else that they oh money, i think you would be equally concerned. i do not think that solves anything. if they are willing to pass that, i'm not sure why they would not just increase the debt limit and not kind of threat and how financial markets see where we are. host: one of the arguments made is that the system of paying our bills is not organized enough to even prioritize. is that the case? guest: it would probably take a long time to implement this legislation. as i said, we have about a week in which to do with it. maybe if over the long-term they wanted to set up a really detailed way that the treasury department could do this and then the computer systems would be able to take that into account, maybe it would be somewhat of a mitigating factor the next time we approach the debt limit, but for right now, i think it is wholly inadequate. host: carol from lady lake,

florida, republican line. hi. carol from florida, go ahead please. let's go to richard. richard is in grandview, missouri. good morning. caller: good morning. debtestion is -- we are in and didn't i hear that we were going to give israel all this money? all this money? and then i said to myself, how is it that american people are so broke that they cannot help the children of america, but they have these big wars and they can give israel all the billions? and there's one thing i want to say for certain. keep funneling that cap from israel and you will see the destruction and america. guest: my organization goes

around the country and trusted educate the country on the federal budget and that is one that americans are concerned about -- how much we spend on foreign aid. if you look the budget, our total foreign aid budget is about $50 billion. that is about 1% of our total budgetary spending. we eliminated all of foreign aid to every country completely, as i said, our deficit this year is about $440 billion. you still are not getting very far in terms of reducing the deficit, especially if you look long-term before the budget is not projected to grow very much while our rest of the budget is to grow substantially. this is something that one of the last callers mentioned about spending on legislative staff in congress. one of the things that americans do not realize is that we reduced the amount of spending on things like foreign aid, legislative staff, all of our

perforations spending has gone down pretty dramatically. we are spending about the lowest level in history on all those spending programs and actually projected to spend even lower going forward for the next 5-10 years. that type of spending is really as a share of the economy. what we are concerned about is the spending that is growing more quickly than the economy and that is spending on programs like social security and medicare and health care programs, retirement program that spending will grow while this discretionary appropriations spending is actually shrinking. that is one of the really key pieces of budget education that we try and do. there are always areas where you can cut spending and try to spend as a lean lean as possible , but if we look at our long-term federal budget challenge, the spending on those appropriations is not an area of

concern. host: elaine from louisiana, republican line. caller: good morning and thank you for taking my call. i have a couple of comments to this gentleman. number 1 -- i had on disability for 10 years. when i first became on disability, i could actually afford to pay my prescriptions. afford to actually buy my prescriptions. i want to the prescriptions office because that makes no difference whatsoever. that's a way for the government to control us. another thing -- we get more tax dollars in the history of this country. and yet we ever did have less people working than we ever have. yet we increase giving people to do nothing. we cut medicare cost. we have to buy policies.

we have to buy secondary policies. we do not have a choice because we will not be able to go to a doctor. we will not be able to go to a hospital. we will lose everything we have. you cannot tell me that not putting a debt ceiling would solve anything but trying to get the president to work with congress. his problem is that he does not want to work with congress. congress passes the bills and then he stops them because he says it is either his way or just does not work. and that is not a way to work for the american people. you are not working for the american people. you are working for politics. thank you. i think the problem with our federal budget is that there are really crucial programs like social security and medicare that are projected to grow faster than the economy will grow for we have a lot more people who will be getting benefits from them. we have this aging of the population.

the baby boom generation is retiring and leaving the workforce, leaving less workers in the workforce to pay taxes and support those programs. that is the challenge that we would wish congress and the president would work together on. they need to figure out how with an aging population that we can pay these crucial benefits and raise enough money to do that. the other thing to realize is that programs like medicare are growing more quickly than the economy not only because of the beneficiaries, but also because our health care costs grow more quickly than the economy. a very difficult challenge, but the congress and the president need to figure out how to reduce the growth in those health care cost so that we can continue to provide medicare and disability on thece in the programs revenues that congress is willing to raise to pay for those programs. what we can't do is allow this andram to grow on autopilot not raise enough revenue to pay

for those programs. so you have to do either raising revenue or cutting those benefits or some combination because allowing the debt to grow along the way leads us to economic peril. host: our guest is the policy director for the concorde coalition. he is joshua gordon. what is the concorde coalition? guest: we are a nonpartisan organization about educating the public on federal challenges and the federal budget. we have been around for about 20 years working on this and trying to get congress and the president to really solve the problem. one of the things that we are doing now actually is that we are working in iowa and new hampshire on a project called first budget, where we are working to fix the debt organization to get presidential candidates to talk about these issues during the campaign and the primary campaign and then in the general election.

it is really important when the american people elected president that they have an idea of what the president would do about these issues. right now, they have not been talking about it say much on the campaign trail. so we have tried to get them to talk about in the first budget that they present to the american people and congress, what choices are they going to make about taxing and spending to make our fiscal path more sound for the future? host: have you reached out to the campaigns and clarified how they would pursue them? guest: we have been going to campaign events all around new hampshire and iowa, asking questions and making them answer questions on the stump. they are aware that we are there. they do answer the questions, but we are trying to press for as much detail as we can. we also have an initiative called fiscal fridays where we have a show every friday in new where we on television

have a moderator who meets with one of the candidates every friday and discusses these issues. that is part of our first budget campaign and it has been very successful. host: when it comes to later this year and congress has to do with the budget debt and limits of that nature, what do you think of the prospect of house speaker paul ryan leading a beast charges? what do you think he brings? guest: he certainly brings an understanding of the nature of the fiscal challenge. we have seen him over and over again show graphs and charts on the problem in the future with the program's growing more quickly than revenues. thato i think you can say he will help educate the republican party in congress on these issues and the importance of tackling them. is an hope he also brings understanding that no political party can solve this on their solution needs to be bipartisan because he really have to look at both areas of the budget -- spending and taxes

-- in order to solve this for the long-term. there are not enough spending cuts that you can make over the next 30-40 years to not ever have to raise a new penny and taxes. be hope that speaker to th ryan that he news to negotiate with the president and democrats in congress to reach an agreement to vote for lower spending in the long-term and make sure that we are raising enough revenue so that we are not honoring more and more money. host: from san diego, california, this is art. hello. thank you for taking my call. the concorde coalition always limit andut the debt social security together. my understanding is that social security has a trust fund that is built up. so i do not understand how the debt limit and social security

-- excuse me, trust fund ties in. limit is one thing, but social security has money in the bank. how does that affect the debt limit? thank you. guest: the debt limit is actually limiting a combination of the debt that we borrow called debt held by the public. that is about $13 trillion. that is the money that the treasury borrows on the open market and then we also have intergovernmental debt, which is where one arm of the government owes another arm of the government could the treasury holds the larger of that governmental debt. they add those two together and you have the $13 trillion in public debt and that gets you to 18 trillion. and the debt ceiling is about $18 trillion. it takes into account the debt

from the social security programs and from the debts that we borrow from the public. host: john up next from orlando, florida. morning, mr. pedro and mr. joshua. it is good to talk to you folks this morning. i just would like to add some sanity to this thing. first off, let's talk about paul ryan. what paul ryan commented on earlier -- doesn't in our constitution already have to say we pay our bills? yes. second of all, let's talk about raising taxes. would you ever take a job t if they said to you you will never get a raise? that makes no sense. at some point, we have to raise our taxes, republicans. i would like to talk about the house itself. they have a standing rule that when they shut down the government that they change that standing rule in the house so that the government could take their shutdown. stop playing political games, republicans, and stop trying to win elections.

thank you, gentlemen. i think the one thing that we do not think will ever change is one politicians try to stop winning elections. the real key is to change the to actuallyr them act responsibly on these issues. we hope that that will happen. we hope that the next president, as i said, will produce a budget that will allow whoever the president is to work with congress to make the necessary changes over the long term in our spending and revenue path. we need to raise revenues just like we need to reduce spending in order to have that path over the long term and not borrow as much as have the debt grow more quickly than the economy. host: from raising revenues, do you see that across the board no matter what income level or is there something that you endorse as far as who should be taxed? guest: there are a lot of ways

that you can do it. one of the ways that probably has the most bipartisan support right now is to raise revenues or at least make the tax code more efficient by eliminating what we call tax expenditures. these are all special provisions and deductions and loopholes in the tax code and they act very much like spending programs. so what you can do is that if you limit those or reduce them, because they are very inefficient and regressive, so they give subsidies to those with higher incomes at a much greater degree than those with lower incomes. part of theng that tax code, you have the ability to raise revenue without having to raise tax rates. something thate there is a consensus on the hill to do. last congress saw the democrat chairman of the finance committee and the republican chairman of the house in ways committee of produce tax reform plans that do very similar things in terms of limiting these deductions and special

provisions in the tax code. by making the tax code simpler in that way, you can make it raise revenue more efficiently, which helps economic growth. you can also bring in new revenue. host: people up talked on the capital for years about simple find the tax code as if those deductions -- is that the hardest thing from keeping simplification happened with the tax code or are there other issues? guest: there are two main issues. talk aboutever you limiting some of those and you go by one by one and try to limit one reduction or preference, that group being targeted is able to lobby congress to get a change and not have the go through that exercise. so really you need to probably look at these tax expenditures all in one because then you can really sweeten the pot. you are limiting these deductions, but you are also reducing tax rates. you can do that and still bring in more revenue. that is the closest thing that

where you canl actually have simplification. we had it in the 1980's and we are hoping that we have it sometime soon. host: here's herald from houston, texas, republican one. caller: good morning and thank you for taking my call. i heard a lady ask a question and she talked about cutting medicare and all that good stuff. mr. gordon commented and said that part of it was that we are losing a lot of work and they are not as many taxes being pay. id. is the government aware of all the people here in our united states illegally or whichever and are here working and not paying any taxes, plus they have families. the have a life -- they don't get married, but they live there. -- woman has two

or three children and she is getting money from the states to take care of them. we are talking food stamps and everything, medical. they get all that for free. if our government would do the immigration thing and make all these people pay taxes, don't you think that would help our economy? thank you for taking my call. in general, if you look at comprehensive immigration reform, and this is something that congressional budget office has looked at, they said that by doing copperheads of immigration reform that you can increase economic growth and increase the revenues into the federal budget. i do think it is a bit of a misconception that illegal immigration in general is costing the federal budget a huge amount of money. i do not think that is true. in fact, there is some argument that illegal immigrants, when they are working in the u.s., are actually paying taxes on their wages and they are just

not getting credited with the benefits because they are using illegal social security numbers or their employer is taking that money. it does not go anywhere because they are not going to get benefits on the backend from that program. so from a federal budget perspective, comprehensive immigration reform would be a and that is also one way to increase our workforce to make up for the aging of the population. if you add new workers and through immigration reform, you can for a wild at least an to mitigate the worst effects of having the a b boomer generation retire and leaving less work population to work and pay taxes. host: one more call from lake placid, florida. c-span,good morning, pager of, and mr. gordon. i think you are wrong and everything. all, $20 trillion in

debt and we cannot even pay the interest on it. the social security used to have a fund but then it was thrown into the general fund back into the 1960's. i think it was lbj and that money disappeared. to be 18 people paying into social security for every person drawing it. now it is about three or two to one. mr. gordon, the question i ask you this -- we are not paying interest rates at 0% minor. how they start coming up, is this government and this budget that increases every year -- there is no ceiling by the way -- going to pay the interest rate? we are looking at a failure after the dollar got off the gold and silver standard could it ha. it has gone downhill and inflation has taken over the value of our currency. guest: when you look at projections of the federal budget, there is concern that interest costs are going to be a

really problematic piece of growth. interestnext 10 years, costs are projected to grow more quickly than any program in the federal budget from about $230 overon this year to about $800 billion by 2025. that is a big concern. really, that is just what happens when you run larger and larger deficits as you spend more and did not take in enough to pay for that spending. so when you look at the problem with running larger and larger deficits and are increasing debt over the next 30-40 years, one of the biggest problem is that interest costs continue to grow. crowd that federal budget spending that can be used for more productive uses and that is one of the reasons why the economy has slowed as you have larger and larger deficits. that is a big concern and the only way to avoid that again is to reduce spending and increase taxes to have those revenue and

spending lines meet so you do not have to borrow as much and keep your interest costs under control. host: joshua gordon with the concord coalition >> live picture from the white house briefing room. and the white house briefing is expected to get under way shortly. it was set for 12:45. as you can see running late today. spokesman josh easternst will answer reporters' questions when he arrives. we'll have live coverage when it gets under way here on c-span. right now discussion on the federal budget and pending questions on military weapons systems from today's "washington journal." >> "washington journal" continues. we will look at debates going on with the federal budget, particularly how it impacts defense. joining us this morning from "defense one," marcus white

berger -- marcus weisgerber. now, a big problem is the continuing resolution is happening. the program has to continue at 2015 level. what does that mean? a plane that has been very much over budget that the pentagon says we need to buy more of to action get the price down -- you have issues like that. it is not just at 35, but the apache helicopter. the army wants to buy a round 65 in 2016. those are actually being used and afghanistan and iraq. very much needed. you have that aspect of the economy. the other big problem is acquisition reform. obama's veto last week

.- it is more of a hill thing senator mccain and representative thornberry pushed that through. host: when you say acquisition, what does that mean? guest: it means policy. how the acquisition system works at the pentagon. it has been very much for the sties from everything from being .ver budget and off schedule essentially, with a veto right now, nothing goes through, and the status quo remains in place. host: how much is the budget of the d.o.d. is comprised of that? isst: the budget as a whole $16 billion, and the budget has $600 billion.d is

ath acquisition, it is about hundred billion dollars. that is for stuff like buying claims, ships, trucks. host: they are currently being many fractured, but those that speak purchased in the future, and the ones that have to be upgraded, does the all fall in the same pot? guest: it all falls in the same pot. not having a budget right now, it hurts them. a lot of the groundwork is being laid now. it might not be that you buy an actual tank this year, but you by equipment, and it takes multiple years before you buy the full tank or full fire to -- fighter ship. host: what kind of long-term things are we talking about? guest: you want to buy new equipment to prepare for the future, but a lot of what the pentagon has been doing over the improving stuff-

it has. s, has been taking fighter jet for example, and upgrading them, putting new engines, new sensors so they can see more. host: all that depends on a long-term budget here on capitol hill. guest: right. without the budget, the pentagon says it will be forced to tread water. host: our guest will be here to talk not only about the budget, but specific projects within the program. if you want to ask questions about the process, (202) 748-8001 for republicans. (202) 748-8000 for democrats. (202) 745-8002 for independents. you can also tweet us at @cspanwj. you can also send us an e-mail at journal@c-span.org. you brought it up, the f 35. first of all, what is it and why is it a controversial project to some? guest: that of 35 is the fighter jet of the future for the military. the military, in the past, has operated all sorts of different

planes. f-15s, f-16s, f-18s. what the f 35 will do is it is basically the same plane -- there are versions being bought by the air force, navy, and marine corps. they can do different things. the marine one can take off from a very short runway and land vertically. basically this is the most complicated fighter jet ever built because of the types of sensors, cameras, and spy equipment, if you will, that are inside of it. planes that had this type of stuff bolted on, but the big problem with this one is fromthing is being built the beginning. the problem is, it has never been done before. optimisticre very rejections for this plan, and it

problems int of development. in recent years, it has gotten better. the pentagon, and people on the hill, and outside observers would say it has a long way to go. host: it is the opposite of something called "fly before you buy," can you explain that? guest: the pentagon is pushing for just that, flight before you buy it. a test drive. the air force, because they have the most expensive programs for planes, they are about to buy a new bomber. they have not bought a bomber in the 1980's. that plane, they were going to buy 100 of them, they bought 21. the into costing 20 dollars each. the new bomber, it is a

classified program. what is the price tag for the f 35 so far? guest: right now, we are looking at $400 billion -- this is an estimate, way out, projected on buying 2500 of them. at 400 billion dollars. that includes development and production of the plane. host: if there is no long-term budget deal, and a series of affecterm, does that how many get purchased? guest: it does. in 2015, there was a budget for 38 planes. to ramp it is supposed up. up, you wrap up, -- ramp

the price goes down. host: (202) 748-8000 for republicans. (202) 745-8002 for independents. weisberger talking about the budget. let's start with marianne in south carolina on the independent line. good morning, go ahead. caller: good morning. i was wondering, i had heard leak theden had plans for our new jet to china. i'm wondering if that is true. also, i'm hoping that we will build up our military because i are in a right now we cold war. i'm really worried about china, korea, and i just feel like we need more defense. host: is it your thought that we

do not have enough weapons to meet those challenges? caller: yes, i feel like everything is very old. my son was a navy man, and he had told me long ago that outdated. was so i feel it we are in great danger. i feel he can everybody knows that about us. to the point of the f 35 and the leaking of the plan, it has been acknowledge that china contractora defense to get some of those plans. you see it. the chinese are testing a fighter jet of their own that looks very much like the f 35. the big thing with china is they try to reverse engineer a lot of our stuff. a lot of corporate espionage, if you will. penetrateem trying to into the pentagon network, but getting into the contractor network. for what they are able to do very rapidly, they probably have

a lot of trouble with making engines and types of sensors. basically, what is under the jet.of the yes, they have stolen stuff, and it does very much concerned the pentagon. jason from washington, d.c.. caller: a lot of his military procurement -- recr stuff seems backwards to me. i think the idea that there are a number of people coming out every year to try and ge keep this in existence, whereas 10-15 of these would equal an advance system. do future of avionics has to with not having a man in the plane. let's be honest here.

what we could do with a $10,000 drone or a million dollars drone is really going to be the future of aviation. we are pouring money into a lot of these systems, that for all intensive purposes, you could do with robotics. a-10, you brought up the a great point. the a-10 is a 1970's vintage slow,that can fly low and close to the battlefield. it is made to get shot at. big bullets. the titanium bathtub, it has to me.scribed its main role is to help soldiers on the battlefield fly around. if they need a plane, if they are going to fire up the bad guys, the a-10 does that better than any plane out there. the controversial thing is the

air force has said, it has been around, we love this playing, but we cannot afford any more. we are under sequestration and the budget cap, so we need to take the money and invest it in the future because we have not been buying lots of new equipment. high-tech buy more equipment. congress will not let them retire the a-10. the a-10 is actually being deployed to turkey to fight against isis. it is famous being used in the current war. to the point about avionics and unmanned aircraft -- very much a big debate right now in the military. you have a navy secretary in the past who says he does not view any plane after the f 35 being manned.

you have people out there manned you still need platforms. what you will see is probably a shift towards more unmanned aircraft, and more stealthy aircrafts. you will see more stuff like that, but you will probably see aircraft for a long time. as they do the budget, how much is labor? the cost for the uniformed soldiers, future, present, and t.s what we go them if they are injured, or anything of that nature. what is the true cost? be the biggesto part of the budget -- the labor cost? guest: you are right.

the personal cost of the budget is a huge cost, about a quarter of the defense budget right now. it keeps the cost of their personnel, health care, just taking care of soldiers and troops that have been constantly deploying. that number has been going up. at the same time, the number four buying new equipment, that has been going down, particularly with the budget caps. very good point. costs keeps going up with over 10 years of constant war. host: does political infighting amendments drive-up defense and intelligent costs? guest: the reason why president obama vetoed it is because, like a set earlier, the budget control act.

congress took the money that the pentagon had requested, which the obama and had requested, s, and put itap in the war budget. the were budget is not subject to sequestration. it took this $38 billion and put it over there. obama administration said, no, you have to come up with a plan to fix the whole federal budget, not just the defense department. also, the administration was angry that they were not given legislation to actually able to close the military prison at guantanamo bay. host: malter up next from new orleans. hello. caller: hello? guest: good morning. caller: i appreciate you taking my call. my question is how about this industry, andns the fact that the united states right now, like with the f 35,

if we do not buy those planes, are they eligible to be sold to other countries? boeing, and all those companies, if we do not buy them, they can very well sell them to china, can't they? guest: they cannot sell them to china. for example, a plane like the f 35 is being bought by allies. it was designed to be exported from the beginning. our about a dozen nations already who will buy the of 35. there are not a lot of and 35's 35's around. that does not mean you can sell the stuff that you have now. the u.s. military will retire them. they're old, but they might actually come in useful for other countries. more than 30 countries around the world fly the f-16.

you could take a plane like that, and export it. the united states as a whole placessell weapons to like russia, north korea, iran, the obvious ones. host: (202) 748-8001 for republicans. (202) 748-8000, democrats. (202) 745-8002 independents. it is your money segment. the recent election in canada, does that affect the f 35 program? 35st: it will affect the f program if you go through with his pledge to cancel the of 35 buy. f 35 they have pledge to buy about 60 planes. he pledged to cancel that buy. there are countries like israel and japan and south korea were not part of the original

partners, but have signed on and said, we want this plan, and we will by this plane. you askedprobably, if my opinion, move some planes around, and it will not impact us all that much. it does impact us in the sense , withou have a key ally you from the beginning on the f 35 program, now saying it will not be the. -- not be there. host: the argument is that they could come up with a cheaper plane, the hornet, for their system. guest: canada does not do what the u.s. does, the first strike -- being the first plane to come in a war.war -- the united states uses stealthy this type of mission. canada does not do that. you do not necessarily need a stealthy plane in your air force

if you are not conducting a kind of mission. , a plane for canada like the f-18, or the f-15, that would probably even sued them better.- suit them this is justatms, a newer version of it. they will probably go with that e f-18. host: let's go with earl in missouri. caller: you brought up to very interesting things. one was the a-10. as far as combat troops go, the apache helicopter, the cobra for the marine corps, and a-10 has probably been the best planes to come from america. the reason they keep running the a-10 back is it is almost

impossible to do without it. i also wonder, is there a penalty for military cost overrun which seemed to only be happening in america, nowhere else? like you said, you have the a-10, the apache, the cobra. they are the ones that directly support the troops on the ground. they do it the best. actualir support, the ground,of troops on the can you do with other planes? you can, but they do it from much higher up a lot of the times. they have guns and they can come and do a run, but they cannot .ly as low and slow as the a-10 to the point about penalties for

cost overrun. the really are not penalties. you have to go through bureaucratic procedure if you're program goes over budget. that always happens. , and congress essentially says, you can continue with your program, and it goes on its way. estimatese the budget , and make them higher. one thing, in this acquisition of that senator mccain has say, if yourdid program is over budget, you should have to pay a penalty. what he wants to do is for the individual army services, if they have a project that is over budget, they have to pay a 3% penalty on the over budget program for every year of the

life of the program to the office of the secretary of defense, and that will go into what is called a prototyping program, so they can do advanced research for the future. ing have the prototyp been hit very hard with the budget cuts. he sees this as a way to make up for the lost time there. host: from georgia, this is harvey for our guest. go ahead. caller: how are you? my question is why isn't the pentagon audited? are upsetot of people that the pentagon cannot audit itself. it is supposed to get there soon, 2017. there have been plans to speed it up. from what i understand, it is still tracking towards that 2017 timeframe. a lot of the systems, the computer systems that they have,

cannot communicate with each other. a lot of backend bureaucratic stuff. until that is fixed, it is not able to audit itself, which a lot of lawmakers say is unacceptable. host: for republicans, (202) 748-8001. for democrats, (202) 748-8000. (202) 745-8002 for independents. speaking about the f 35, there was a hearing on the hill last week. martha mcsally asked the question, talking about concerns she has about the plane itself. i want you to listen to it and maybe expand on what she has to say. [video clip] this airplane is replacing all of our legacy fighters and the master of none. specifically, it is replacing the a-10. when we talked, in april, we had a discussion about the limitations in the replacement

of the unique capability in close air support. i will run through them, as a reminder. nightability, -- munitions, only 180 lives, time on station, only 40 minutes. dr. gilmore agreed that the f 35 would not be able to survive a can.t hit, like the a-10 host: talk about that. are there more issues with the a-10, even more than that? guest: what she is saying about the f 35 is something i alluded to earlier. it will be able to do the mission, just not as well. for instance, she was talking a lot about time on station. what does that mean? a means how long the plane can fly in circles and help people on the ground without going to

refuel. the f 35 burns fuel a lot faster than the a-10. there are more of a commercial type engine like a jetliner. it can loiter for a lot longer. the point about not being able to take a direct hit. the f 35 has not gone through a lot of these tests that she alluded to, about whether or not it could actually withstand it, but one thing is certain. it does not have the titanium that i referenced earlier to protect the pilot. there's a lot more protection for the pilot in the a-10. host: was ever discussion about an a-10 2.0? guest: the a-10 went through a lot of modernization to bring in the modern age. over the last 10 years, to be able to use smart bombs -- she was talking about this nine

lines of code. those are basically coordinates for the target on the ground. the pilot would have to take out the grease pen and draw on the canopy. modern planes, it it is like the iphone, you can pass the code through the computer system. there has been talk of an a-10 2.0, but the problem is there is no money for it. if you're going to start from scratch, the track record is they are usually over cost, over budget. we will keep it for the next few of it,and will get rid and you something else. the idea and concept remains very much alive in the military. host: austin, texas, here is gary. caller: i have a question, since the equipment is getting so expensive, happy thought about

renting the equipment? thank you. guest: there are a few things in leasilitary where it is , iff you wi -- leased you will. on the top of my head, arieerial refueling. that is all done by the u.s. air .orce and allied air forces stateside, there are old jetliners that a number of companies own, and they have a refueling apparatus that is specifically needed for the navy . one type of refueling system -- these pods that come out of the

wing and receptacles that come out of the f-18 that it can refuel from. there are not commercial operators of that right now, but to your point, yes, some stuff , and in combat, some stuff is occasionally leased. to the previous point, and a-10 type of program -- they did some tests. ,ost: a viewer on twitter asked isn't obsolescence a problem? guest: it takes a long time to get from drawing board to production. that is a huge problem. legislation that has been proposed to try to get to that. congress claims, and a lot of this is bureaucracy that is in

the way. tighter budget being like they are, and actual needing of equipment very quickly, it does not behave you -- the who view to go through these old acquisition methods to get equipment quicker. there is rapid acquisition, what is called -- it is called. there are offices that can get .round some of the bureaucracy basically it is a tailored office that gets right to it. they take a lot of the bureaucracy out. host: is there a scenario -- are there current systems being operated on? if there is a one-year budget,

does that mean there's not enough money to dance the program significantly, or does on the program? how does that work? guest: it could. it limits you. take for instance, boeing. that project grows each year. if the budget stays the way it is, there will be problems there . that program is another issue because there is a fixed price contract for. up,he air force cannot ramp they open themselves up to legal issues. host: marcus weisgerber with us. this is harry from virginia. caller: good morning. i guess my question is, or more

of a statement, when the f 35 ,as first taugh thought about it was going to be the cheapest fighter that the u.s. was going to ever made. now, it is going to be the most expensive, possibly several trillion dollars to buy and operate for the next several years. $400,000. alone costs how can we justify that? i know we need top line fighters, but you're talking to 51 for the marines, 370 for the navy -- the cost of each fighter. it is staggering. guest: you are right. it is staggering. that the pentagon likes to point out, and is probably not the best argument use, but they always say that if they were to develop an

individual plane for the air force, an individual plane for that navy, an individual plane for the marine corps, it probably would have cost more than that. experts say there is some stock in that. it was supposed to be the cheapest, why? common.upposed to be it looks the same on the outside, but inside, these are very, very different planes. host: from michigan, this is david, independent line. caller: good morning. listening to one of the designers of the f 35. he said that it is probably one of the worst aircrafts ever built. he was reputable because he designed the f-16 and f-18.

end of his comments, he said, these are your tax dollars, for junk. thank you. tost: you are referring someone who is very outspoken about the program to kill the .-18 program those views are shared by many. on the flipside, you have others who will tell you that , a bigis plane is done thing that the f 35 will be able to do, if it works, is it will be able to see other planes before they can see it. guns to view -- the top analogy. abouther thing to think aircrafts are not

getting into dogfights often. a plane the connection do that, and act as the quarterback, if you will, in the guide. it will be able to do all these things that used to take a lot of other planes to do because it will be able to process intelligence, see intelligence with the cameras, and talk to the other planes around it, and pass information around, like a router, if you will, to use the computer term. if the all works, it will probably be revolutionary. it will take a long time to get there. host: are there issues with the helmet? guest: there are. the helmet allows you to see through the plane. around theameras aircraft. with the helmet does is allows to look down. and set of seeing his legs, he

will see write-down to the ground below. the problem there is with the helmet is it is really trying to push technology that was not startedt when they building it. technology has not advanced to the point where the military had wanted it to be. it was very expensive to make, and it has problems, such as jitter, if you hit turbulence, the image would be disorienting. host: who is the contractor? isst: the prime contractor lockheed martin. .he supply chain is massive dozens and dozens of companies. other big thing is those companies are involved in lots of districts. not only in the united states, but around the world. here is bob, hello.

that, you just made about hundreds of companies around the world goes right to the issue of why these sophisticated systems are going to experience quality issues and capability issues because it seems to me that it is no different than what you see going on in the auto industry. in the auto industry, you have more recalls and the last decade value.nk, paying full cars made in the 1960's were far better than the crap they make today. my feeling is what you are witnessing is no different in the pentagon than what you see going on in the auto industry. my last comment, and i would like your thought on this, what will happen if martin marietta defenserging and these contractors keep merging, like wall street wants them to do?

how the hell is the pentagon going to get fair pricing when there our mergers and acquisitions. i would like your thought on that because that is something that wall street seems hell-bent on, and it might be at the expense of national security. guest: to your second point, that is a huge issue -- these mergers and acquisitions. basically, defense companies and the 1990's, after the end of the cold war, a lot of them merge, a lot of them went out of business. they went out of the business because there were supposed to be this deep dividend. now, you saw an expansion over the last decade of the war. now, as the budget contracts, you see stuff like mergers and acquisitions. the big one you are alluding to is lockheed martin, which is the largest defense company in the world, by revenue.

the helicopterg maker that makes the black hawk helicopter. billion deal going down. what you saw happen about a month ago, very rare, you saw undersecretary frank kendall, the number three guy at the pentagon -- he came out and said, this is starting to be a troubling trends. legally, there is nothing that can be done, particularly for this one sale. what he said is this is troubling, this trend of more more companies merging. basically, he is questioning, is it going too far? he is talking about getting some legislation and explain legislation with congress to find ways that the government can actually step in, and stop s, mergers, and acquisitions

of this magnitude. he put out a report in september and said this. guest: he put out this report, it basically grades the pentagon. he has made a number of changes, and ashton carter, he used to be the head of acquisition. they have made a number of changes over the years that , as his report shows, those changes are actually helping. the pentagon is getting more bang for its buck, essentially. they're not pushing the envelope though, possibly as much, because they are scared that if .hey push, the cost will go up

any kind of cost growth nowadays looks very, very bad. he wants to maybe look at ways that they can push the envelope a little more. from newe is chuck mexico, republican line. he is the last call. caller: this is about the army versus the air force with the a-10. i know the army wants the a-10. i have seen a demonstrated on television, and it is spectacular. the air force has always pushed it to go away. how much of this is a territorial fight between the air force and army? or, couldnow why -- they turned this airplane over to the army to fly jet go i don't think the air force wants to be subservient to the army. points.ou raise a great there is always in fighting among the services.

in this case, i have talked to a lot of senior officials. not -- , it seems it is malicious reason for this. it is purely a budgetary issue. another thing to bring up is when this decision was made, there was no air war against isis. that is now happening. it is actually, the a-10 is actually more valuable than it was 1-2 years ago. to your point of if the air force can turn this over to the .rmy, they sure can if the army really wanted it, .hey could make a play for it they haven't. they want to preserve their ground capabilities.

it is unlikely you will see the a-10 being flown by the army anytime soon. ift: rapid up, what happens a short-term deal goes through rather than a long-term deal? how is the pentagon looking at this? what are their concerns going forward? guest: the pentagon would term deal.hort but they do not want is the one year cr. for example, it cannot stop projects that it wanted to stop in 2000 16 because if it was paid in 2015, you have to keep doing it. that is probably the least efficient way that you can manage. host: marcus >> live now to the white house briefing room with white house pokesman josh earnest. yes, i'm very

excited about the royals. i see somebody up here was looking to have a good time. which i appreciate. i'm glad this was waiting for me at the podium when i walked out here. i'm glad somebody is having their fun before the series starts. i intend to have my fun after the series is over. we'll see how it goes. but that should be a fun tuesday. but today is monday. so let's eat our vegetables. josh, do you want to start? >> i want to start with the deadly earthquake in northern afghanistan that killed more than 150 people in afghanistan and also in pakistan. do you have any details on what the u.s. might be doing to assist in that effort? josh: let me start by saying we offer our deepest condolences to all those affected by the earthquake in afghanistan, including the families who died

in afghanistan and in pakistan. the u.s. government has been in touch with the governments in afghanistan and pakistan an we stand ready to provide -- and we stand ready to provide any adegreesal support that may be needed. this is an area of the globe that's plagued by these incidents. this is not the first time these governments are responding to this situation. the one thing that's relevant is there's substantial usaid presence to assist their needs. there's a number of pre-posigsed supply kits in warehouses throughout afghanistan. in pakistan, usaid has existing partners who are ready to respond if necessary. we certainly do have assets that could be helpful and we stand ready to do what we can to help the government respond to this terrible situation. >> two big deadlines coming up, speaker boehner has been pushing

to finish a two-year budget deal before he leaves in the next fedes. can you give us an update on how those negotiations are going? josh: as we've talked about, republicans over the course of this year have devoted significant time to trying to pass budgets strictly along party lines. those efforts time and time again have failed. and what we have been saying, and when i say we, i mean both the white house and democrats in congress, is that republicans need to negotiate with democrats around budget agreements. and trying to find common ground in a bipartisan way to ensure that the goth can be funded. and over the last several weeks, there have been bipartisan conversations taking place on capitol hill. the white house has been a part of many of those conversations as well. assiduously to

protect the privacy and confidentiality of those discussions. principally because they're based on this principle that nothing is agreed to in the context of the discussions until everything is agreed to. and as i stand here today, not everything has been agreed to. that means that nothing at this point has been agreed to. so we continue to urge republicans to continue to engage constructively with democrats to identify common ground and do the right thing for the country. the good news is there a template for succeeding in this endeavor. after the last government shutdown, engineered by republicans, democrats and republicans on capitol hill did engage in a process that was led by paul ryan and patty murray to find bipartisan common ground that would ensure we're making necessary investments in our economic and national security

priorities. and we're hopeful that democrats an republicans will pursue a similar template to reaching a budget agreement this time. but it's not going to be successful if republican leaders think they can do this strictly along party lines. they have tried that and it failed. the good news for them is there are democrats on capitol hill who are willing to engage in a process that would yield a budget compromise where neither side gets 100% of what they want but both sides have something they can point to. that reflects their priorities and reflects their view about the best future for the country. >> was the white house for a budget deal that raises spending for the pentagon in overseas accounts if it also finds a way to increase spending on the domestic side that the president has called for? josh: well, i don't want to

engage too much in hypotheticals but i do think there are some principles that are relevant here. the first is, the president last week vetoed the national defense authorization act. because it included what even the republicans acknowledge is a budget gimmick that would fund critically important national security, national defense priorities using this oco account. oco stands for overseas contingency operations. and were created to be temporary. they're called contingency operations because we're talking about a rather emergent situation and so these funds are, by definition, temporary and the idea that we're going to use a temporary fund to fund the ongoing, day-to-day, year-to-year needs of the department of defense is just irresponsible. the secretary of defense wrote an op-ed that ran last week that

articulated this concern. how in fact is the department of defense going to engage in prudent, responsible, not just long-term plan bug medium term planning if their funding is subjected to this temporary vehicle. so that's the first concern that the president has articulated. the other principle that's at stake here though is a commitment to ensuring that any funding above sequester levels is done on a dollar-for-dollar basis, making sure we can invest in defense priorities but also in some economic nondefense priorities. now, one thing that often gets lost in this debate, they're described as defense priorities and nondefense priorities, but in those so-called nondefense priorities are a range of programs that are critically important to our national security. including things like homeland security an funding for

veterans. something that even republicans would acknowledge are national security priorities. so that's why this administration has fought ggressively to ensure this dollar-for-dollar parity principle that's a little arcane but critically important to our national security. the reason this is important is that this budgetary gimmick cooked up by republicans to try to fund our defense priorities through oco was merely an attempt to try to increase funding for national defense for those defense priorities without a corresponding increase in nondefense priorities. and i'm not the only person who believes that. i know that this is, i want to mr. his quote from huelskamp from kansas who

expressed his concerns about the ndaa and again he described this oco funding as a gimmick he said this flawed bill once again uses budget gimmicks to get around the spending caps established by washington by adding an additional $38 billion in offbudget spending, congress is avoiding its responsibility to follow the laws it passes. this is a very rare instance where mr. huelskamp is expressing a concern that is generally shared by the obama administration. the fact is, our view is that congress should take these concerns head on. if there's a view that there are certain defense programs that are worthy of increasing spending for, then we need to stick to the dollar-for-dollar principle to ensure we're making similar investments in economic priorities but also in priorities that aren't included in the defense budget but are critically important to our national security. >> this is a negotiation you

know you won't get 100% of what you want. josh: you understand that, i hope republicans on capitol hill do. >> we shall see. you don't want to use the oco account to fund military for long-standing operations. you don't want increased pentagon spending that doesn't also have increased domestic spending you're calling for. if you get one of those two which would -- would have higher priority? josh: i think that's down the road of hypotheticals. at this point, we've been clear about what our principles are. and we have acknowledged that any sort of budget agreement is going to include, it will be a compromise, at least any budget agreement that's going to succeed in passing congress and being signed into law by the president will be a compromise. that means there will be things included in that bill that we're not very happy about. so i won't say which principle is more important than the

other. i think based on the fact that i'm willing to spend this much time talking about it should be an indication to you that both of those are critically important to this administration. >> any response to the israeli prime minister saying they're going to take another look at the status of palestinian residents in parts of eastern jerusalem that could take away residency rights of people that currently possess them? josh: i haven't actually seen those reports. someone on our national security staff has been through those reports. what i've been advised is that it is not the understanding of the u.s. government that this is a policy proposal that's actually being actively considered by the israeli overnment. if it were, it would obviously be of some concern taos. i will take this opportunity to reiterate the importance of all sides avoiding provocative actions and rhetoric and working

cooperatively to try to restore calm. julia. >> back to the budget, right before the briefing there were reports that congress was close to a two-year budget deal that would raise the debt ceiling. what you're saying sounds like the white house understands that agreement to be a little further out. can you tell us a level of involvement the white house has in these conversations? if you've heard and can confirm that there's progress being made and they're close to a deal? and also there are reports that the deal would call for cuts on medicare and social security disability, can you tell us where the white house stands on that? josh: julia, we have worked to protect the privacy and confidentiality of these discussions. and i don't have an update for you in terms of the progress that's being made in those discussions. you know, we have said all along that a budget deal will only be

yielded if democrats and republicans on capitol hill sit down and work together in good faith to try to reach a compromise. the white house has been involved in a substantial number of those conversations. both to provide some technical advice and assistance to those who are engaging in the negotiations, but also whatever minal agreement is reached will require the signature of the president of the united states before it can be enacted into law. we've got stake in the outcome and that's why white house officials have been present for many of those discussions. >> how about medicare and social security disability benefits? josh: i know there are a number of reports coming out, but aisle not going to entertain those until we have something more definitive to discuss. >> president obama's meeting with the indonesian president later today, the indonesian president's trip to the united states has been cut short. he'll still be meeting with won't go to ma but

other meetings, due to haze from fires in indonesia. will that be part of the discussion? will they discuss ways to combat deforestation in indonesia? josh: i'm aware that the president will cut short his visit to the united states. his planned itinerary is moving forward. given the significance of this issue, i anticipate it will come up in his discussion with the president today. the united states has already made a preliminary commitment of some financial assistance to the indonesian government, this is something announced earlier today by the u.s. ambassador to indonesia. but i'm confident that there'll be discussion about additional assistance that the united states could provide and we stand ready to have those

discussions. a lot of the assistance will be provided but usaid. >> josh, haven't you guys said you want a clean debt ceiling increase? if you are negotiating a resolution to these budget issues, isn't that the definition of strings attached and not clean? josh: no, it's not. what the -- the principle we have made clear is that the administration will not negotiate on a debt limit increase. the full faith and credit of the united states will not be subjected to political negotiation. congress has a fundamental responsibility to ensure that bills that they have authorized get paid fully and on time. at is, in some way the dictionary definition of fiscal responsibility. it is the expectation that the

american people have for congress, that they will fulfill this basic function. congress' failure to do so does isk significant economic volatility or increased economic volatility, not just in the united states but around the world. so the stakes are high. but our expectation is that this is something that congress understands and hopefully will cause them to fulfill their base exresponsibility to do this. jim, i think the other thing that's important to understand is that it is not at all uncommon for a debt limit increase to be attached to a piece of legislation that we know will pass congress and be signed into law by the president. that's something that president obama has done on at least two other occasions, most recently in 2013, the president signed the no budget, no pay act. this is a piece of legislation

that essentially said that congress, members of congress should not get paid if they idn't pass a budget. it also included a provision that would raise the debt limit. the president said the recovery act included a provision to raise the debt limit. in 2008, president bush signed the emergency economic stabilization act that included a provision to raise the debt limit. president clinton, the first president bush and president reagan all did similar things system of the principle here has been that it's -- can sometimes be a useful strategy to tack the debt limit onto piece of legislation we know will pass congress and be signed into law by the president. but the question of whether or not the debt limit will be raised when needed is not something that this president is willing to negotiate on.

>> i take it by the fact that you have that extensive history of debt ceiling negotiations at your fingertips -- josh: it's a big question these days. >> type that ointo google. it appears that that is the process that is playing out right now and are you hopeful that that will, that that process will play out to a resolution where you'll have this taken care of before speaker boehner leaves town? or leaves congress? josh: that presupposes that negotiations that democrats and republicans on capitol hill have been engaged in will be successful. and as i mentioned to julia, there's no agreement that's been reached at this point. >> i'm curious if you think, i know we haven't had a chance to talk to you about vice president biden's announcement in the rose

garden last week, but do you feel that his decision not to run for president and the withdrawal of two democrats in the last week has essentially cleared the path for hillary clinton to be the nominee of your party next year? josh: i think senator sanders and governor o'malley may have something to say about that. it certainly reduces the number -- it certainly reduces the size of the field but doesn't eliminate it. i think senator sanders in particular has demonstrated an ability to energize a substantial portion of the democratic electorate. and the kind of strength and energy his campaign is showing, particularly in the early states, makes him a, by all account a serious contender. i don't think that's a controversial notion. the president has, you know, has long believed that these kinds

of primary debates are not just good for the party, they're good the country. the president himself went through a highly competitive, highly contested primary process in 2007 and 2008. he acknowledged, and i think all of you act nged -- acknowledged this, that going through that process made him a better, more effective candidate. we'll see what the impact of a competitive race is this time. that's why nobody in the white house is losing sleep over the prospect of a vigorous democratic primary campaign. >> did the president have a chance to view the testimony hat secretary clinton gave before the committee last week, was there a reaction from you guys to that? josh: i haven't spoken to him about it. i know he saw some news coverage about it. our expectation was that in this kind of setting, that secretary clinton would perform quite

well. you also had republicans in the situation who, they were pretty desperate to justify their existence while at the same time try to convince everybody that it wasn't a partisan exercise. at least in the eyes of donald trump they failed. i think even he observed it seemed to be a pret by -- pretty partisan exchange of views. when you have the republican presidential frontrunner essentially defending the democratic presidential frontrunner from atabs from fellow republicans it strikes me as a situation that's not particularly favorable to republicans and doesn't speak well to the performance of republicans serving on the eighth congressional committee formed to investigate the tragic incident at benghazi. k? just calling on a fellow royals fan. >> i was tweeting about that. two questions on a related note. i think a lot of us had a chance

to read the interview, very moving. and he opened up for the first it in afeel like, about way we hadn't seen. had insight on why he decided to do it now and in that particular setting? josh: i think that what he was responding to was the genuine interest that people have in the decision that he announced last wednesday, not to run for president. and so he did this interview with major's colleague to discuss the -- his thinking behind the decision. in that regard it was timely. and he's had a thumb of other occasions to talk about the impact of his son's life and death on his own thinking about

this. and that's -- there's no doubt when the vice president has talked about this issue, it's been incredibly powerful. >> we'll break away from the briefing for just a moment, the house is coming in for what we expect will be a short session. back later for legislative business at 6:30. the speaker pro tempore:s how the -- the house will be in order. the prayer will be offered by our chaplain, father conroy. chaplain conroy: let us pray. loving god, we give you thanks for giving us another day. lord, you know there are many americans who look to the people's house as uncertainty about the future of the economy and our nation's debt hang in the balance. as well, leadership in this assembly is being considered and will be determined in this coming week. we ask that you bless the members of the people's house with the