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deo toong what st said, we get y view o.[video clip] >> there will not be any intervention in cuba by the united states armed forces. >> it is my duty to the american people to report that renewed cost elections against united states ships on the high seas and the gulf of tonkin have today required me to order the military forces of the united states to take action. >> we did not, repeat, did not trade weapons or anything else for hostages, nor will we.>> sio doubt saddam hussein now has weapons of mass distraction. >> under the reform we seek, if you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor. if you like your private health insurance plan, you can keep your plan, period. [end video clip]

brian: it is all really taken from your book. benjamin: i recognize those scenes. i always thought lyndon johnson's nose was getting longer as he spoke, but that is my imagination. well, these are excellent reminders of something that is hard for americans to remember, and that is that politicians' words have a different purpose than they do to you or me. when we talk, we exchange information. we might exchange emotion. we see that as the ordinary use of language. to a politician, words are weapons. they are the weapons of political warfare, and politicians choose their words, their ideas with a view toward capturing and exercising power. so words are often designed to persuade us of something that is in the politician's interest. now i would point viewers to the

most recent presidential election, because i thought it was an remarkable exercise in realpolitik. pretty had politicians nakedly pursuing power. right? there was a pretense at this point. they would say or do whatever seemed useful to win power. and, if that turned out not to be useful, they would shift and say something else. so for example, secretary clinton famously castigated donald trump for asserting that he might not accept the results of the election. well, that was when she thought she was going to win. different when he was going to win. those who view this election objectively rather than through their partisan lenses saw politics for what it was, the

struggle for power in in which words are weapons. in these three videos you showed us now are videos of presidents lying because it was convenient to do so. the weapons of mass destruction, nobody in the white house thought they were there. nobody. nobody in the white house thought they were there, but it did seem like a good thing to say. the "keep your doctor under the affordable care act" -- nobody thought that was true, but it seemed a good thing to say. so you know, we have all known people like that. people in organizations are like that. they can change direction at the top of a hat and show no indifference. that is why i am a cynic. i am a cynic because this is what i have observed, and i think if you are not a cynic, you are too easily taken in.

i recommend to everyone, be more cynical. we always see in the press, don't be too cynical. cyncical.e too who is more cynical than reporters? i think in order to do this in the political world, you have to understand what politicians are about. in ancient athens, they said that a citizen had to understand how to rule and be ruled. both. so, in our country when we teach children about politics, we only teach them how to be ruled. we teach them, you should vote and do your jury duty and whatnot, but we don't tell the much about what rulers do.

and the indians felt that in order to be a good citizen, you have to actually understand the arts of politics if only to protect yourself. so i think that is a lot of merit in their view. they weren't cynics, but they were realistic. brian: a lot of definitions of you online are that you are also a libertarian. is that true, and how often do you find libertarians in the academic world? benjamin: that is a very interesting question. i am a libertarian on some issues. i tell you, the guy that writes the wikipedia article about me decided i was libertarian, so there i am. i am a libertarian on many issues, but as to the -- because i feel, years ago, i took a k.e e rante n:: s otonwair

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er rules that make us more diverse. they don't. brian: why is it so hard to fire someone in the government?

benjamin: civil servant rules make it virtually impossible. they make it so cumbersome, it takes so long. brian: why is it set up this way? benjamin: to protect civil servants who wrote the rules. brian: why are they different from the united states? benjamin: you have to be cynical to answer that question. because they write the rules to protect themselves. they write different rules for us. agencies, they don't really try to fire people because it is too cumbersome. they transfer them. you have civil servants that you transferred around and finally wind up in several offices where you have the rejects that you -- that youo their, and they don't do

much during the day. brian: what are the politics of most civil servants? benjamin: most are liberal democrats. notice for example that there has been a lot of commentary about trump's cabinet and subcabinet. the number of people who were drawn from the military and from business rather than from government. the reason for that is plain simple. government agencies are will overwhelmingly liberal and democratic, and if you want to staff up with republicans, you go to the military, or you go to business. you can't recruit on the upper levels of the government. ryan: net you get into the weeds here with language that i assume -- i don't know the average person would have ever heard it before. i will just read some of this back to you. you talk about the administrative procedure act of 1946. you talk about the office of information affairs. the unified regulatory agenda. benjamin: i will tell you something, these are something we need to know. these are things people should be taught as part of it civics.

why?: benjamin: these are critical to the way we are governed. the administrative procedure act is the bible for regulatory agencies. when regulatory agencies write rules and regulations, under the terms of the administrative procedure act, they have to be published or what is called notice and commentary. they have to be published and they have to solicit comments. and this is the basis for rulemaking in the united states, and rulemaking is the basis for our governance. kids learn in school how a bill becomes a law through congress, but they don't learn how the rule or regulation is promulgated through the bureaucracy, which is important. you mentioned the office of information and regulatory assessment, oira. well, this is a very, very important office.

it isn't the white house office of management and budget. omb. it fits with the white house management of budget. it is through ira that presidents attempt to shape the regulatory agenda. oira reviews agencies and issues regulatory prompt to the agencies telling them what the president wants. again, this is part of how we are governed that students don't learn. howthey learn in civics is a bill becomes a law. now that is wrong. they learn how it used to become a law. they don't learn the basics how we and americans are actually governed. if you want to know that, these

terms i mentioned should not be a secret anymore. the ada, administrative procedure act, oira. brian: what is the 1979 paperwork reduction act? [laughter] benjamin: the name is sort of funny. small business was complaining that they were required to fill out too many forms, so congress said, ok, we will have a paperwork reduction act so they will not have to fill out as many forms. it was more paperwork as you might imagine, but it was under the paperwork reduction act that oira was created. brian: you have centralized presidential oversight of agency rulemaking. benjamin: under executive order 12291, and again, this is something people should know, what are executive orders? a lot of the government is executive orders, executive memorandums. president obama said he would not issue as many as president bush, so instead he writes memorandums. it is the same thing.

you weasel around it. executive order 12291 was issued during the reagan administration. and in that order, reagan said that henceforward, rules and regulations promulgated by the bureaucracy would have to be sent to oira for review. when clinton came in, he added one step further and said from now on oira will send proposals to the agencies, which we want them to do. now oira is the president's tool for controlling the bureaucracy, a very important presidential tool. but it does not give the president any kind of absolute control. you know, de tocqueville said, the roman emperor.

he said, his power is ferocious, but its reach is limited. the same could be said of the president and the bureaucracy. when a president wants to do something, by god, they are brian: what impact did the civil service reform act of 1978 have on this government? benjamin: creating large the number of bureaucratic officials subject to presidential appointment. the number is still small. when trump came in, there was a lot of how many appointments he could make. but the number is maybe 4000 of various sorts. i think it should be more. i think that if an election is to affect the bureaucracy, presidents should be able to appoint more top officials. i don't agree with andrew jackson. he said that any american could do any job in government, i

think that is going to far. there are more americans that could carry out the people's will as expressed in an election. i think the number of federal officials appointed by the president should be increased. brian: so if president trump said, come into the oval office, bring your book with you, but you were given a few minutes to tell him what to be wary of, what would you say? benjamin: i would tell him that in relation to the bureaucracy, that bureaucratic agencies march along their own trajectories. they march according to their own drummers. if a president interferes with them, and they regarded as interference, a president and his appointees interfere, they will roll with the punch and try

to resume the course they have set for themselves. once the bureaucracy is created, it is very hard to change it, very hard to take control of it. this is a terrible example and people will be mad at me for using this, that mao zedong decided he was going to attack the chinese bureaucracy, and here he was the absolute ruler, and he launched a cultural revolution. he is gone and they are still there. it is very difficult. my advice to any president is to try to appoint individuals who understand the agency but don't like what it is doing. change agents, as they say. and trump has done this. several of the individuals he has appointed were enemies of the agency. that is a start.

the agencies eventually wear them down. brian: there is a list of some 15 administrative agencies under the administrative procedures act. what is different about that agency than the department of state? benjamin: the department of state, the department of defense, these are important agencies, but they don't engage in rulemaking aside from internal housekeeping rules. they don't issue rules that affect you and me. whereas say the department of education, the various federal social agencies, the issue rules that have the effect of law on

you and me. for example, even noaa, the weather men, they have a jurisdiction over several pieces of federal legislation where the issue rules and regulations. for example, noaa administers something called the marine mammals protection act, which you and i have never heard of. but recently, someone was sent to prison for violating a noaa regulation under that act that prohibited harassment of marine animals. what did this person do? he ran a whale watching boat and he whistled at the whale. brian: he went to prison for that? benjamin: he did. harassment of a marine mammal.

brian: according to one study, 131 "major" rules and regulations adopted by federal agencies between 2009-2012 imposed $70 billion in new costs to the american public. how do you know that? benjamin: i didn't do the study. economists try to look at the impact of the rule on the behavior of those affected by it. in that case, i think it was a rule governing corporate behavior. what do corporations do to follow this rule? one of the things they do is to staff up. in the banking industry, one of the reasons small banks have

disappeared is because the quantity of staffing you need, accounting services, legal services that you need to comply with the the act is so substantial that only big banks can afford it. that is a cost of regulation. or, you have to use one kind of fuel rather than another. environmental regulations impose costs. the people who study these rules estimate costs. they are studied by private economists and by the congressional budget office. the cost of regulation is very high. just recently, in the context of talking about why the u.s. lost manufacturing jobs the last decade, one study suggested that about one million jobs were lost because of regulatory costs.

that became a factor in corporations shifting jobs overseas. brian: you write that perhaps the public might learn why some cynical washington observers of the department of education say that seldom in the course of human events has so little bit accomplished by so many. benjamin: that was a little bit of snark on my part. there are some agencies in washington, that being one of them, that most people who live in this town don't think they do much of anything. some agencies are extremely hard-working, no question, but there are others, i would say education, energy, commerce. the output is not that great. this is a local prejudice, no one quite knows what they do

there. brian: what would you say to somebody who is deeply involved in washington, you have absolutely no idea what you're talking about? benjamin: they tell me that all the time. washington officials. they say, you have no idea how hard-working we are, how much we do for the people of the united states. you have no idea how much we value the views of americans, to which i say, i do have an idea, and you don't care what americans think. this is the first time this is been done, we're going to make our questionnaire and results available. people can look at what we did, and hopefully people can move on from there. brian: why did 800 plus people respond? benjamin: in the polling business, when you do telephone

polling, most people don't want to respond. they don't want to waste their time. my view is that in the case of the survey, first of all, i am going to be snarky again, a lot of people don't have much to do. this was an amusement. second, people who work in washington are self-important. not unlike professors, we are self-important, too. th dk un, meto sith wa tehtle oh

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not off of whether they get elected. benjamin: there is something good about politicians working to get elected, because if you are working to get elected, you have to pay some attention to what voters think, even if all you want to do is manipulate them. you still have to pay attention to them. our federal bureaucracies are insulated from all that. they don't know what people think and they don't care what people think. again, maybe they do know more than the average american. brian: that's not every civil servant. benjamin: no, not everyone. we are not talking about individuals. we are talking about the aggregate. on the aggregate, they don't think americans know very much and don't really care, and that is what makes them different from my doctor or lawyer.

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>> if you enjoyed this week's interview with benjamin ginsberg, here is some other programs you might like. senator tom coburn talks about his career, politics and his reasons for early retirement. comptroller general david walker discusses the mission and competence of the general accountability office. and david bossie, president of citizens united and citizens united productions talks about his career in activism. you can watch these anytime or

search our entire deal library at c-span.org. c-span's washington journal, live every day with news and policy issues that impact you. coming up monday morning, white house bureau chief philip rucker will discuss what president trump is expected to do his first day in week in the white obama specifically which executive orders he could reverse. then, randy cap's from the migration policy institute will talk about president trump's possible actions on immigration. todd harrison from the center for strategic and international studies will join us to discuss what approach president trump might take when it comes to the defense department budget. watch washington journal live at 7:00 a.m. eastern monday morning. join the discussion. >> on wednesday, british prime

minister theresa may discussed a variety of domestic issues, largely centered on her brexit speech from the previous day. the prime minister also answered questions on unemployment status for u.k. citizens in e.u. countries and improving the uk's universal health care system. this is 45 minutes. >> water. questions to the prime minister. for the prime minister? hopkins. >> mister speaker. >> i have meetings with ministerial colleagues, i will have furthered such meetings today. >> often hopkins? >> thousands of babies are damaged by the alcohol consuming