tonight at 10:00 p.m. eastern on -span. >> c-span, where history unfolds daily. in 1979, c-span was created as a public service by america's cable television companies. today, we continue to bring you unfiltered coverage of congress, the white house the supreme court, and public policy events in washington, d.c. and around the country. c-span is brought to you by your cable or satellite provider. >> tomorrow, testimony from treasury secretary steven mnuchin on president trump's 2019 budget request. he'll speak before the senate finance committee. that starts live wednesday at 10:30 a.m. eastern on c-span 3. on thursday, more about the budget with veterans affairs secretary david schultz. he'll speak about the

president's 2019 request in front of the house veterans affairs committee, starting live at 8:00 a.m. eastern on c-span3. >> sunday night on afterwords. former u.s. trade negotiator and senior senate staffer ira shapiro with his book "broken: can the senate save itself and the country." he's interintride former senate majority leader tom daschle. >> politics was supposed to be about finding a way to overcome some of those differences through principle -- through extended discussion and a real legislative process thrurk principled compromise. it wasn't supposed to be about one party winning on their own. the times -- as you know, the times in history when one party has been able to do this on your own are very few. maybe 1933 and 1934. f.d.r. dealing with the epression.

l.b.j. in 1964-1965, but even l.b.j. reached out to republicans and f.d.r. had republican support the first two years. >> watch "afterwords" on c-span2's book tv. tpwh >> mark is back with us. . he served at chief economist at moody's analytics and is helpful in answering our questions about the state of economy. credit the end of last year, you wrote a column for the philadelphia inquirer at the end of last year, you said these are good economic times. guest: i think the correction in the stock market, at least so a typical garden-variety correction in the equity markets. we see that once or twice a year.

longer thane bit normal. the last correction was over two years ago but this feels very typical to me. decline, the price prices are just back to where they were at the end of last year and beginning of this so no big deal, at least so far. host: what are your criteria for good economic times? guest: i think what matters most to most people's jobs. and recruiting lots of jobs, created a couple of million last year, about the same as the year before and the year before that. the american economy has been a job machine since the economic recovery began almost nine years ago. when you are creating 2 million jobs per year, that is more of a growth of the number of people looking for work so unemployment and underemployment continue to decline for stub both are now pretty low by historical standards. the unemployment rate is just over 4%.

it will go lower because we will get a lot of growth given the deficit finance, tax cuts and a temporary boost to growth and unemployment will go into the 3's. for most people it's about jobs and recruiting lots of jobs. host: is there such a thing as too much job creation? thet: as economists say, economy could overheat. unemployment and underemployment could fall to such low levels that we start to see inflationary pressures develop. that means higher interest rates. to a large extent, the recent correction in the stock market is a result of concerns investors are now having about the economy that will overheat as they try to digest the higher interest rates. that means you could get temporarily strong growth and i would expect that this year but ultimately, the higher interest

rates will do damage and you get a weaker economy, a more up-and-down economy. that's probably a reasonable scenario. for now, we are on the up at there is a downside as we make art and way into the next decade. host: -- as we make our way into the next decade. host: the phone lines are open. do you believe this is donald trump's economy? is this still benefiting from obama era policies? guest: host: do was still the obama economy. it was not until the end of last we passed the tax cuts. other majort any

economic policy put in place in 2017 so i consider 2017 to be mostly the result of obama's policies and economy but now this is definitely the trump economy. we've got tax legislation. he's making changes on trade and immigration and regulation. going forward, this is very much a trump economy. you make a good point. there is a lot of moving parts here, a lot of forces that affect our economy of economic hollis he and the president of the united states is only a part of that. presidents generally don't matter a whole a lot in terms of how the economy is performing except, arguably, in terms of crisis. crisis,the financial president obama's policies were very important to get the economy out of that recession. normal times, economic policy matters but it's not the top of the list factor that driving with going on. host: in the past five days,

we've got to budgetary documents out, the bipartisan deal that was signed last week and we've got the president's fiscal 2019 budget request that got to congress yesterday. to those documents peyton realistic economic visions of the coming years? documents paint realistic economic visions of the coming years? guest: one of the key assumptions is growth in gdp, gross to mystic product. -- grossed to mastic product. it's a broad measure of the economy. product.estic every year for the next 10 years, we get 3% growth, that i don't think is realistic. we have been growing roughly 2% randomly. even given a tax cut in the other policies we discuss, i

expect over the next 10 years, we will get roughly 2% per annum growth. think it's very, very unlikely we will get 3% growth. it doesn't seem likely at all. chat with a few colors, first is washington, a republican, good morning. you hear consistently that the economy is doing real well. your guest commented on what his analysis is on the growth rate. , i'm not an economist, i'm self-employed in i.t. in right now i happen to be between clients. so i am on different job boards looking for clients. is let's say that back in 2007 before the economy fell out, on any given, large metropolitan area like los angeles and in my specific forum

for software, there might be 100 per day. this is an average of new job posts. the same forms, if you get 15 per week, we are lucky. i understand my industry and the medical industry are the industries that are on top of jobs being offered. value, if our industries are not hiring that much, god help the rest of the people who are welders or something that are looking for jobs. i would like your guest to comment on that. host: thank you for the question. guest: it's interesting, i'm not aware of the job posting boards you are looking at. i would say that other statistics would be counter to that. for example. six -- close to 6 million open job positions

across the country from the bureau of labor statistics. that's as high a number as there has ever been. if you take the number of open job positions as a percentage of the labor force, that's as close to record high as it's been. it's across every industry and there are some exceptions. the energy sector has struggled a bit. oiluple of years ago, prices collapsed and that did damage to the energy sector so it's a little soft there. it's a little soft and retailing. brick and mortar retailers are getting hammered by the online retailers like amazon. other than that, every other industry sector including i.t. and health care, there is a record number of open job positions. this is more anecdotal but if you listen to ceos, heads of human resource departments within large companies across the country, including in i.t.,

they are saying their biggest problem now is finding workers, finding qualified workers. whatot aware of precisely the caller is looking at with job postings and why that would be the case but that is not consistent at all with other economic data that we have about the labor market. adp which is a payroll processor, a human resource company that processes payrolls. we get data on 23 million workers across the country every month. and getook at that eta lots of information about what's going on in the labor market including wages. wage growth has picked up substantially, consistent with the idea that business cannot find workers. it's particularly in i.t. the wage growth in the i.t.

,ector is stronger, i think than any other sector in the economy at this point of professional services. so, a a little bit less lot of different occupations and back sector. i.t. is quite strong so another piece of evidence is i.t. companies try to bring in skilled workers from overseas on different types of visas. when times are tough, they don't apply asthma because they can find american workers. the h-1b visa program is oversubscribed right now. the job market is very tight particularly in i.t. i am very surprised and it's not at all consistent with the other that i'm aware of. host: chicago, a democrat, good

morning. caller: i think this discussion about jobs is the determining factor of the health of the economy. sometimes, there is a reveal but i have not heard since president trump got in, what has happened with the infusion of money in financial institutions. we is to have several minority owned banks. now there are none. there is a big glut of access to capital. putting ahe tax bill lid on textus -- reductions on real estate in terms of taxes, i think we will have a major problem for middle-class people who have these government safe jobs. i'd like your guest to talk about the kind of wage

stagnation. to theseese people go institutions with the development of the driverless car, many people might be out of work in the next two to three years. host: you have your choice of questions there. guest: those are all great questions. paint an overly upbeat picture. the economy has its problems and issues it always does. one of the concerns that the caller brought up which i think is the one with credit, the availability of credit particularly for smaller businesses. for big companies, no problem. companies like moody's analytics can go into the bond market and issue debt and banks are willing to extend credit.

big companies have lots of cash so no problem there. for smaller businesses, this has been more of an issue since the crisis. it's gotten better in the immediate wake of the crisis, nine or 10 years ago, small businesses could not get a bank loan at all but that's not the case today. bank lending has been approved but it's very much an issue and goes to the need of support for our small committee banks and smaller banking institutions. really one of the big differences between our banking system and the rest of the world and its key to supporting small business which is very important initiatingneurship, change and offering economic growth. i am very sympathetic to the point of view that was six rest because it's a very important and that goes to the banking that the banking system

can extend credit. the other point the caller is an interesting question and debate and i don't know the answer for sure. it goes to driverless car's. s and technology more broadly and what that means for jobs, particularly in the future. or is a lot of concern about technology taking her jobs and our problem is not going to be unemployment, it will be lack of jobs because of driverless cars or drones or you name it, whatever technology. if history is any guide, don't worry. technology is not going to take our jobs. in fact, i belong to a group of economists where the chief economist of google is a member emily asked hamm and he went back at looked at the new york

times back to world war ii and found an article in each decade since world war ii with the title basically saying robots will take our jobs, prepare for that. this is an age-old, never-ending concern but it does not happen. i suspect things like driverless cars and drones and other technologies, same deal, it takes a long time for them to get out there in the economy. the other thing i would say is these newwe get technologies, it actually increases our standard of living, our wealth. wealthier. we have more money to spend. as a result, we always figure out a way to spend that money on things we cannot imagine today. agoyou imagine 10 years that we would spend all this money on the phones in our hand? we will figure out how to spend that money and when we do, we

will create more jobs. i am not worried about that. i don't think driverless cars or artificial intelligence, bring it on, we need this productivity. i would not worry about them leading to a world where people don't have work and machines are doing all the work. that will not happen, not my view. mark zandi is a chief economist at moody's and is with us to answer your questions about the economy. a view from outside the united states, craig is an independent in haiti, good morning. morning, i was wondering how you factor in the $20 trillion debt and all the deficit. maybe the president and economists are not alarmed

enough about this. there was a lot of concern about deficits and the debt but not so much anymore. i think there is not enough attention being paid to this even though there has been some talk over the last couple of weeks. it seems like we are living in such an artificial economy. the interest rates of been artificially grown over the last 20 years. how do you factor that in with how well the economy is doing. we will eventually have to deal with that issue? thank you. guest: i totally agree. i am perplexed by lawmakers' willingness to run very large deficits and add to our debt load. the deficit financed tax cuts that were passed during the year

, under a reasonable set of assumptions, will add one point $2 trillion -- $1.2 trillion to our deficit over the next decade. the budget deal that was just past will increase government spending again and deficits amassed by $300 billion over the next two years. this is at the same time that the federal reserve is no longer buying treasury bonds. they are allowing the bonds they have to mature. a source oflonger demand for treasury bonds and this adds up to supply and demand. they deficits means the government will have to borrow a lot of money and issue a lot of bonds but the demand is not there to buy the bonds. interest rates are going higher and that's what's happening. it's having an impact. long-term interest rates are rising there's pressure on the federal reserve to raise rates aggressively because of the

decision to run these large deficits. when the a time economy was doing pretty well with full employment and underemployment is about as low as it gets. i completely agree with you. this is really a bad policy at the wrong time. we should be doing the exact opposite. you pick up any macro economic textbook and it would say when you have in economy like this, we should be running a load deficit are working to reduce the deficit to prepare for the next financial crisis or the next war or next natural disaster when we need the resources. instead we are doing the opposite so i totally agree, i think it's a mistake. host: yesterday we talked with viewers about the trump 2019 budget plan not including the

traditional republican hallmark of balancing over the next 10 years. today notesl times that his new plan would balance see0 years, that it would budget deficits until fiscal 2039. i want to get your thoughts on trying to plan out the fiscal -- to plan out to fiscal 2039. guest: good luck with that. we were talking about the assumption of economic growth of more than 3% and that's not happening. i fear we are not going to address these long-term fiscal problems we have. they are clear. we have long-term fiscal problems and will not do it them until there is another crisis s are up against

the proverbial wall. it will be plainly obvious to everybody that we've got to make a change here. it's unfortunate we are not taking the opportunity at this point in time when things are going well for us to really address our fiscal situation. it's a shame that we don't have anyone in congress really championing that idea. republicans were the key to that perspective. it was very therapeutic and important but it's not there today. i think that's a problem. who is to say, we are talking about other things that we are not thinking about. we should be investing in infrastructure but we're not talking about how to pay for it. more to say we will not do to our budget deficit with that? disappointing that

we don't have champions in for fiscal discipline. we need it. veronica in washington, d.c., a democrat, good morning. caller: my complaint is that i am on retirement and i get a retirement check and the social security check and on my retirement check, they take out health insurance. takes 134l security dollars out of my money for health insurance. i don't think that's fair at all. host: any thoughts? it sounds like you are on medicare. is a good program. i think most people like it. it's very costly to provide. if you think our -- about our fiscal problems in the long run,

one of the key problems is the cost of health care, the medicare and medicaid program. this is an area where we need to focus on ways of delivering better quality health care at a lower cost and a lower price. if we can't figure that one out, >> "washington journal" can be seen every day at 7:00 a.m. eastern here on c-span. we're going to leave this and take you live to the u.s. house for votes and speeches. [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2018] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] 15-minute vote. the remaining electronic vote will be conducted as a five-minute vote. the unfinished business is the vote on the motion of the gentleman from tennessee, mr. roe, to suspend the rules and pass h.r. 4533 as amended, on which the yeas and nays are ordered.