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tv   Washington Journal 02182018  CSPAN  February 18, 2018 7:00am-10:01am EST

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discuss the impact of the u.s. debt and deficit. at how thea look president's budget could affect social security and medicare with max richmond. host: good morning. house and senate off this week for the presidents' day holiday. trump waking up in south florida. today's washington post writing "people are angry." yesterday, hundreds protested at the broward county courthouse echoing chants of "enough" and "not one more." an ongoing washington post analysis has found that more than 150,000 students attending
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an hundred 70 primary schools have experienced a shooting on 1999. since columbine in our question is, should there be compromise on it gun legislation. owner, (202)gun 748-8000. .ll others, (202) 748-8001 send us a tweet or join us on facebook. good sunday morning. thank you for being with us. in a moment we will hear from vice president pence weighing in on the debate over gun legislation. we want to begin with a piece from usa today -- florida students want to be a tipping point in the gun debate. --reads as
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host: vice president pence yesterday said this. >> we will get to the bottom of what happened here. , the justiceak department is working with agencies across the government to study the intersection of mental health and criminality. when trump meets with the nation's governors in a few weeks, he will make the safety will makeety -- he the safety of our schools the top priority.
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[applause] mike pence: as the president said, no child or teacher should be in danger in an american school. no. should ever have to fear for their sons and daughters when they kissed him goodbye in the morning. not surprisingly, voices in washington and in the media are running to the predictable debates. you -- thepromise president and our administration will remain focused and we will remain focused on bringing renewed energy and keeping schools safe and taking a renewed look at looking at law enforcement and local authorities the tools they need to deal with individual struggling with dangerous mental illness. host: that was the vice president yesterday in texas. and from the express -- "we are
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children, you guys are the adults. you need to take action." a message for trump and congress. "do something to stop the killing." for compromise? larry is first up, a gun owner from tennessee. caller: i am so proud of the young people in florida. i am an army veteran. these military style weapons that are being sold to the public are ridiculous. who saythe republicans they should have them -- and the mentally ill -- they overturned the bill of obama to say that i could get the weapons. the nra needs to be held accountable. have a nice day. from let's go to bob
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wisconsin. good morning. caller: my prayers go out to all of them in florida. sir, i have owned a gun since i was a kid. i don't have one at the moment. i am military. this to turn into a political gun game. did -- obama did or bush guns have always been there and they will keep coming, no matter how many laws we passed. it is ridiculous to say it is the guns fault. if a bank i is there and he has a weapon, please don't make this political garbage. obama was the worst president in the world and he didn't do nothing. from mark stone "the local
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police knew about this kid and the school knew enough to pick it out and the fbi received to us but nobody did anything. shameful." that's from our friend, "i support sensible gun owners." manning, "there is no chance gun legislation will pass. " the new york times writes this "mr. president, it is time to do something about guns." saying this
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host: that it's from the new york post. is a gun owner joining us from maryland. is there compromise on legislation? caller: i think a lot of it is the court system. them,hen they do catch they take a plea deal and they do nothing. said mentallyhat ill people couldn't buy this and trump wants to do away with everything that obama did. so naturally, he has done away with that.
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he may have path loss of his sons could go over there and kill animals and bring back the head. he isn't going to do nothing. richard.s is from "we know that nuts should not ave guns." rick joining us from georgia. what kind of weapon do you own? regulari just own a rifle. host: what do you know about the ar-15? know much about them. i have a friends who own a couple. but other than that, i don't know much. an earlier caller said something
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about trump overturning an obama directive. that is misleading. they redefined what mental illness meant. in the old direct of, the bureaucracy of government could deem somebody who had been on social security disability or unemployed for a long time or in heavy debt as being mentally ill and that is not a reason for amebody to not be able to buy gun. i wanted to clarify that. there is misunderstanding about what trump did. host: paul has this tweet. declare schools as gun threes -- as gun free zones. it should be the other way around." demanded guncrowd
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restrictions. this is what it looks like and sounded like yesterday afternoon. [crowd chanting] >> enough is enough, enough is enough, enough is enough. hasur legislature considered gun expansion bill after gun expansion bill. [indiscernible] i am 17.
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despite being tipped off, the fbi allowed him to purchase and ar-15. killed 17 of my people. people that i know and love have died. host: that is what it looked like yesterday. again, the headline was "emotional crowd at fort lauderdale rally demanded gun restrictions." threeare an estimated into 57 million weapons in the u.s., 3% if the percentage of people who own over half of the nation's guns. for hundred thousand is the number of arms stolen each year. over 3 million is the number of times the federal, state or background checks have
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prevented someone from buying a gun. again, the full story is available online at cbs news.com. just to begin or joining us on serious xm, we are asking about gun legislation and wondering if there is room for compromise. following the shooting that killed 17. kenneth, good morning. what kind of gun do you own? caller: a 45, a handgun. military.ed i have fired an m-16 a1, a2, similar to the ar-15. -- andwould like to know no, i don't think a compromise will go on in congress. but the bottom line is, when you
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guys do your show, i know that the people in congress don't during say anything but my tenure in the military, i had a moment when one of my commanders had some little kids and they were given this drug called ritalin to settle the kid down. kids0 years later, those -- all of these kids that i see that are making those decisions to go into schools to shoot them up and all of a sudden, everyone willmental illness, someone do it on your show or bring someone in to do in effect on theseerlin has had kids, 10-15 years later since it hit the market? everyone says mental elements but i truly believe it has something to do with all the parents giving kids those
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chemicals when they were little to calm the kids down. and now it is mental illness. i guarantee you that is an effect of the mental illness they are using but over the will say nothing about that because it is a big pharmaceutical company. nobody wants to be sued for accusations towards these companies. but i guarantee all this mental illness has something to do with ritalin. i appreciate you giving a chance to talk. no official statement or tweet that we were able to discern from the nra website. this is what has looks like. in 2014, they wrote the following about rick scott. signeda gov. rick scott five pro-gun bills into law. a strong supporter of the second amendment. he has now signed more pro-gun
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term than any other governor in florida history. up next is terry. good morning. what kind of gun do you own? caller: there are a couple of different clones to this thing. the ar-15. it could sit there on a table for thousands of years and never kill a person. the same had compassion for the children that died at the hands of illegal aliens in this country. guns, the guy in florida headed pretty well close .n the ritalin and we have a social media here where every kid deems himself better than others. envy is a sin.
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family in't have a these communities. thatody said the other day our high schools and schools are just places people send their kids to babysit. they don't send in the kids lives. when i was young we carried guns to school in the back of our pickup truck. i know it is a shame and a the gunsg to do but are not what is killing people. this kid was probably bullied to death. and i feel sorry. but one thing that we did find out is that the laws that are in place today failed us.
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host: we know that the child's mother did pass away in november of last year. he is left with friends for the last three months and was kicked out of school. he has pled guilty. the question now is whether or not prosecutors will seek the death penalty. "iollow-up from mylan saying dropped my membership to nra after sandy hook. i was a 30 year member. that gunt saying worship is a religion in this country and another tweet saying "emotional teens screaming and screeching about having more gun laws don't even know what gun laws are already. stop giving them a soap rocks. and liberals always
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run on emotion and not logic." let's watch. >> even in countries that have restrictive firearm laws -- notably, the united kingdom, we carry there to. why did we do that? thankfully, we really need about. we really -- we rarely needed it. it is a tall. this is where the chasm develops. i don't think the other side is making an attempt to understand that this is a tool. fight this targeted violence in incidents like yesterday. is frustrating. i'm a parent. i have kids in school.
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you see the pictures of the parents. have you seen that? the parents? look at their faces? it is over for them. their lives will never be the same. do you think that we are not touched by that, that we don't want to fix this? it is infuriating because you have good people with type goal experience who have solid points on how to fix this kind of stuff or help prevent it and nobody is listening. it is a rush on twitter and facebook to knock down the other side. host: we are talking about compromise on gun legislation. hearing from gun owners and all others. the washington post editorial writing the following saying " the issue is not mental health. the issue is guns."
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host: read the full essay on the washington post.com. saying the issue is not mental health. the issue is guns.
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jimmy, good morning. caller: how are you doing? the last caller watches a lot of fox news. and i had a 12ge gauge but i got rid of that. i only have one gun. but no one, unless you are law enforcement or in the military do you need an ak or nar. you don't need those weapons. and the first thing -- do you remember the first legislation that trump and paul ryan signed in? to make it ok for people who are mentally disabled so they could still buy a weapon? you know. the guy is crazy. bought a make america
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and i knocked it off his head. i'm done with these people. host: steve has this point. unstablehis 18-year-old expelled 18-year-old able to pass a gun check in the first place? the number of people killed in are being put forward today in the washington post saying that the people killed in the country's largest mass shootings came from every race, religion, socio--- socioeconomic background. you can look at that chart. shooting, onehe parent who lost her daughter had this to say. >> they came into our children's
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school. what security is there? there are no metal detectors. the gunmen just walked into the the windowcks down of my child's door and started shooting her. and killed her. trump, you say, what can you do? you can stop the guns from getting into these children's hands. put metal detectors at every entrance. what can you do? you can do a lot. it isn't fair to our family and our children to school and how to get killed? i just spent the last two hours putting the beryl arrangements for my daughter's funeral and she is 14. president trump, please do
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something. something action. we need this now. these kids need safety now. host: her daughter died in the shooting on wednesday. you can watch that interview on cnn.com. this is from the new york times that says daunting -- looms. and an opinion piece from the miami herald with the headline "this time, let's turn our grief and action into action. he writes the following
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host: that is from the miami herald website and is available online. back to your calls. stan is joining us, a gun owner. good morning. caller: i am a gun owner and a work in a school district. host: what do you do in a school district? caller: i am support staff. every day ago to work.
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and basically, i walk in and i am a sitting duck like everybody else. there is nobody there to defend me and i can't defend myself because schools are gun free zones and i don't have the qualifications or skills to do that. do know that even if tomorrow they change the laws and they start to put people in the schools who were armed that i wouldn't be a good candidate because of my age. i am relatively healthy and i have decent eyesight but i'm too old for that. we need younger people to be there. whether it is teachers or support staff. if they were there as a deterrent, you wouldn't have things like this. our governor can justify money for the state fair and all the he says school security is locking your doors
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and hiding under your desk. i'm sorry to say it but this is a fact. young people and old people have access to firearms. whether it is a single shot shotgun or a semiautomatic shotgun and rifle, you still can do a lot of damage and you can see today that we live in a world where even if somebody can't get a hold of a gun, they rent a pickup truck and they run through the crowd with it. want to hurt somebody, you are going to end there is no deterrent to stop that. schools are gun free zones and there is next to nothing for security. then this will continue to happen. i'm a parent. to last thing i would want ever have to face is what these people in florida are facing.
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that if this is continues, take away all of the guns. will be knives and something else. if somebody wants to do something bad, they are going to do it. we have money for everything else but not something like this? i know there are other states where they do have people in schools who are trained and i think that is a great idea. i would like to know that there is someone who can respond. i really think common sense has to apply. you can take the guns away but you can't take the people away. host: this tweet says "the says he hasyer offered a plea deal in exchange
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for not getting the death penalty. no justice." online, ae headline prominent political donor demanded that they pass legislation to restrict guns and groupsto not support any that did not support the ban of military style firearms. lead republican fundraiser and says he would seek to marshal support among other republican donors for a renewed assault weapons ban. he said "for how many years have we been doing that? and massterrorism killings? how many years that nothing has been done? it is the end of the road for me. that is from this morning's new york times. good morning. caller: good morning. how are you?
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what i want to say is this. the technology to put somebody on the moon or send a spaceship to mars and that sort of thing. why don't we have the technology gun discharged to your own home or farm or locale? we can do that and we could create a tremendous amount of jobs for gun manufacturers to make this. pull in all of the guns that crazy people can go and kill people at random down a public highway or in theaters or places like that. gun inazy wants to own a his own home then he could only kill his neighbor. he couldn't kill other people if you make it so the gun can
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discharge only on his own property. of course, once you found somebody was crazy you might take those guns away. i believe we can stop violence and infor people that -- the neighborhoods, people know who is crazy. if you had a crazy person and extort you had a gun, you would avoid him. i believe we could solve this problem if congress would have the desire to do so. thank you. host: the voice of america website, how gun laws compare around the world. check that out online. national review has this. "gun policies will stop mass gun shootings but people can.
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gun control is not the answer. control wouldun have stopped the killings? " the shooter was able to purchase firearms legally with a background check in process. given the fact that the fbi and police both failed to look seriously into him after receiving credible warnings, it is difficult to imagine that a clerk of a sporting goods store is going to be much more effective in staging an intervention at the point-of-sale. from greensboro, north carolina. good morning. that wei wanted to say have the ability to send a man to send a rocket
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to mars and yet we don't seem to have the technology to prevent a crazy person from taking a gun and killing schoolchildren and people in theaters and that sort of thing. require people who who are sort of guns able to discharge more than one , they bullets at a time should be restricted to only their home or by gps two areas be legally authorized to operate them. nobody should be able to walk down the street with a semi automatic weapon and kill people at random. we could prevent that if we would allow people -- military and police -- to have guns that could be discharged anywhere. i don't have a reason to go down
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five miles from my property and discharge a weapon. but i do have a reason to discharge a weapon on my property if i am being invaded or someone with the loan he is intent. so i believe we could dedicate our efforts to that kind of weapon. we that kind of control and wouldn't have to worry than about crazy people going out to kill those people. because their weapons wouldn't discharge. it would discharge only on their own property. you. thank and another viewer saying compromise is not the goal of the political game. is to propose perpetual divisions and to distract people from the real issues of the day. the president and the first lady are at mar-a-lago and they did travel to a hospital where they visited several victims.
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there are more than a dozen is still injured. ken is joining us. good morning. caller: i'm not just a gun owner, i am a police officer including the military for five of the last six years. it isn't just the guns, it is the legislation associated with that. and the type of access that these people have. you have to be 21 years old to buy alcohol but you have a young person who could go and buy a rifle that shoots out a lot of ammunition and that is totally unnecessary to have that. saidf the previous caller not to politicize but he brought up barack obama. thatn previous caller said , what will you do and ban knives? if you would take a second to think about that as opposed to only thinking about what weapons
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mean to you, you don't cut a steak with a shotgun. steak with a a handgun orb rifle. that is not with the knife is intended to do. it is used to cleave or cut. it is such a sickening thought process. and -- ieople armed have worked on federal installations and all over the country. and to have to want to arm people inside the school, you have to be trained in a particular way. and if you are going up against something like this with a weapons platform, you need more than just yourself. you need a weapons platform that you can combat something with. large.hools are fairly have been a community police in new jersey and i know -- i
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have been doing this for a living. this won't work in this manner. it is now you protect the schools. the root issue is the type of weapons platforms that are being sold and that the public has access to. there's a reason why in japan and australia, it is less. in chicago, over 60 killings already. homicide deaths. the only way this changes is to start at the beginning and not at the end. i am federal. host: what advice would you give school districts in particular to better prepare a campus -- in florida it was rather large with 3000 students. and they didn't have metal detectors. they did have security on the school but obviously, one or two individuals is not enough to stop a 19-year-old gunman.
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caller: when you talk about security, it is a reactionary thing. it is prevention by nature but it is reactionary. you have to prepare for something that may or may not happen. with that said, you have to have a sufficient amount of people. local police obviously have to be training in these environments. they have to be familiar with the schools and the ins and outs of every school in the area to react quickly. to have a police car in front of the school is a large to tear it. in itself, even if it is just parked and there is no officer inside the building, and potential shooter may or may not know that. a lot of times that is just a deterrent. like when a light comes on at center house as a security light, no one may be home but it may deter someone.
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when you have to train someone, you're not training one person, it takes a force of people. typically this is where the local police need to get to work with state police and other assets to help them formulate something. you have to start with prevention. this, going after after what the child is done, it is the after step. host: thank you for weighing in. from usa today, an opposing point of view on the school shooting shows the failure of gun control. that is the view of air pratt from the gun owners of america. he wrote the following saying that killers continue to target locations where guns are not allowed. 98% of public mass shootings in this country occur in gun free zones. the florida school was one of them. everything we know, he bought his gun legally. thehows the failure of
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legislation. neighbor -- repealing the gun free zones and lifting restrictions that keep good people from carrying guns for self-defense, that will make a huge difference. that is from eric pratt from the gun owners of america. is from thomas from north carolina. good morning. welcome to the conversation. caller: it seems like most of the same.are opinions or once i first the other about taking away guns and people say that guns are and what kills people. people with mental illness kill people. but i think at the root of it it is hate. there is a level of hate where it makes triggers and people go off on something.
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how to control that? i don't have an answer. but if you waste all of your time trying to focus on the wrong issue -- in particular if you try to take the guns away owners, how gun could you even think about doing that? how would you go about doing that. if you ban assault rifles, people still have them and it to thosehigher value particular weapons. and then people want them even more. after the shooting, gun sales go up. , is speakinge about issues that are not even .ddressed reading yourare tweets including steve saying "gun rights of america is a bigger terrorist organization than the nra. a total whack job."
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this 1 -- these kids are glued to do to to watch the most violence videos. they don't have much passion for anything else. james says "i would get my life the swamp journal would blame the gun." position of the nra to me appears to be -- you just have to put up with mass shootings or we are ok with mass shootings. i would like to reiterate a point that one of the tweets just made. the nra is a domestic terrorist organization. having ars, they are self-identity that seems to be
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that nothing else -- the fuel that makes them run is the ownership of a gun. that is the crux of who they are. and they seem to be on empathetic people. it is not unlike a cold. -- a cult. they are sick membership lives in the bubble that they do. storypolitico has this based on the budget proposal. school safety money would be slashed under this trump budget. and washington post had this analyst peas. saying that there have not been 18 school shooting since 2018.
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that number is wrong. and this is from another tweet. "not only gun free zones are the system failed. like the fbi failed the kids in florida. gun free is a killing zone. face facts." good morning from michigan. caller: i would like to thank and the other 284 men and women bringing us this program as you do a great service for the nation. i was a school board member in 2008. and we bent out to taxpayers and we asked them -- we knew what the economy was like in 2009. we put in a security system and our school. i'll may have 1400 students from .-12
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but we were willing to pay the extra money it took for the 10 a security where if you come up to my school, all of my doors are locked on the outside. you have to push a buzzer. somebody looks at you and they ask you what you want before they push a button to let you in. why all ofonder these schools don't have that? we had that in 2008. people were willing to pay the extra 75-100 $25 a year to protect their kids. we didn't want to take something away from somebody, we put the money out and protected our kids. toi think we need to go back the basics. that is for the parents of the school district to get out there and spend money and protection
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kids with a buzz in system. host: how much should the whole system cost in your school district? caller: $152,000. host: was there opposition? caller: that is unbelievable. people said it was a public building and they should be a will to walk in there any time i want to go in. my response to that was, and you ever tried to get into a courthouse anyway you want? just because it is a public building doesn't mean you can go and get in any way you want. we have public roads. you can't just crash on a public road. there is always resistance but it was foolish excuses. you have to face the people. host: thank you for calling.
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pew research center in a survey from gun research. it is available on the pew website. one third of americans own a gun and 59 percent do not. they could -- say see themselves owning a gun in the future. 33% say they could never own a gun. hill,ast week on capitol a democrat from illinois had this to say about guns in america. i rise today because on a day when school children should be thinking about baseball tryouts and prom and college selection, again, they had to school with the reality that a gun may strike them down at any moment. 17 children today will never to school in florida. casualties in america's 18th shooting. parents and counselors will have to bring the comfort and
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security that this congress refuses to offer. in chicago, a decorated police officer was shot and killed. another officer lost in a disturbing trend of police shootings that we have not addressed. speaker, a teacher in that school asks when congress will do something. a student said the country needs to look in the mirror. he said that we cannot get used to this end it cannot become the norm. terror you felt as grown men on that baseball field? imagine young children at our despite yourk -- thoughts and prayers, you have proven over and over again you don't care about anyone else except for your contributions. it is sickening. shame on you. host: we are asking you whether or not there should be compromise on gun legislation. jean joins us from louisiana.
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good morning. caller: i was listening to the young person who said that the kids should not have a soapbox to speak out on. are you kidding me? they are the ones being killed. and why didn't the fbi follow-up? because he was not a black person or a person of color. mann was evil. he shot these kids. he blended in with them to get out of there. and then he had a burger and a drink. so give me a break about him being mentally ill. he was evil. thank you. host: patrick has this tweet saying "abolishing gun free zones will create war zones."
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florida students want to be a tipping point in . it reads ase follows. host: you can read the full essay online. henry joins us from south carolina as a gun owner. good morning. for taking myyou call. i wanted to make a comment about the situation with these legislatures who will not will
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e foro will not legislat gun ammunition. it is unbelievable that people ak and ammunition for an red flags don't come up. and the media isn't saying anything about that. how can you by that amount of ammunition that took place in las vegas or what just occurred in florida? red flags go up. not ammunition for hunting. this is ammunition for killing. one says anything about it. the media is reporting about 17 people shot. there were over 30 people shot. 150 rounds of ammunition. ammunition ammunition. regulate the sales of ammunition. host: a tweet saying "cow work
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."liticians -- our politicians has this saying that gun control is depriving honest citizens from defending their freedom and the lives of others. john joins us from new york. good morning. good morning. my dad was a world war ii hero. i come from a family with five boys. five sons. five brothers. we never had a gun in our house. all of the kids that i grew up playing with, hundreds, nobody had a gun. and their dads were all world war ii veterans. the greatest generation and nobody had a gun. in rural areas, guns are more part of the tradition but certainly those of us who grew up in cities, my dad and other
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dads never had guns. i want to mention with the mental health saying, just people, theirese death certificates will say that a mental youngse man had a gun. their death certificates will not say it was because he had a mental illness. it will just say because a young man had a gun. so it is about time with this country -- i support all reasonable gun control. everything i'm hearing. the ban on assault weapons. i support it. bullet clips. i support it. all of this stuff is common sense and it's one of the reasons i have trouble voting republican. because they are in the pocket of the nra. remember america.
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these kids died because of gunshots. not because of a mental illness. host: a photo of the visual that took place on the day of the shooting in parkland, florida. broward county. gun freeet saying " zones are a joke. will it criminal leave their gun when they enter a gun free zone? " last week.t this we go to chicago. then we hear from speaker paul ryan. caller: good morning. i wanted to mention. i am an rn and i wanted to talk about the mental health argument coming out of governor scott and a bunch of the proponents for preserving gun rights. you know, florida rejected obamacare. so they don't have medicaid expansion.
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are these poor mentally ill people supposed to get health care coverage for mental health services? an essentiale it benefit. governor scott rejected medicaid expansion. and florida has a very high people with zero access to mental health services. the second thing i want to say is, someone mentioned something about a truck. florida law doesn't allow you to rent a truck. you cannot rent a handgun. to buy thew him ar-15. and finally, if you want to address mental health, that's fine. say thisre a wants to is a mental health issue, ok. does that mean they are willing to subject themselves to mental rightstesting within the
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to own an arm? do you believe they would go for that? of course not. it is an argument to deflect and project. they don't want to have an argument. i feel like the nra just wants to promote fear and paranoia so that people keep buying and buying and buying. i don't think this is about the second amendment anymore. they try to frame it on mental health. but do you think the nra and other members will agree to subject themselves to mental health evaluations in a database? i highly doubt that. host: thank you for the call. the following point of view saying "i don't just believe in the second amendment but the divine president that inspired our founding fathers to included our constitution bill of
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rights. i have a concealed carry permit but in the wake of another shooting, it is time for a conversation about gun safety and protecting our children and to self-defense. are there things we could be doing that we are not that would protect life without putting lives at risk by infringing on the rights? you can read that full essay today. here is paul ryan this past week. paul ryan: mental health is big -- is a big problem underlying the issues and it may be the case based on earlier reporting. we passed legislation on mental health. we want to make sure that if someone is in the mental health system than they don't get a gun if they are not supposed to get a gun. we will find out whether or not there was a breakdown in the system later today. we also passed legislation cleaning up the background check system. that bill, with others, is sitting in the senate. so if there's someone who is not supposed to get a gun who is
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getting a gun, we have to find out why and fix that. that is legislation we have already past that is sitting in the senate. and one thing we know is that there are early indications for mental owners. and it we have to do a better job of making sure that people don't slip through the cracks. ryan that was from paul earlier this week. the new york post editorial says "mr. president, it is time to do something about guns." president, do something. america is waiting on you. viewerome back a regular and listener. we'll may have a minute, keeper, and brief but we do want to hear from you. caller: good morning to you. i would be remiss because from my heart, i do stand with love and prayers for all of the families that are affected by this. it is our whole country.
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those who fail to learn or remember history are doomed to repeat it said george santayana. augustine said, what our governments without injustice but a band of thieves? isaac hecker, who started before the civil war said that he would rather suffer the excesses of liberty than the arbitrary decisions of tyranny. the police in this case were not the first responders. schoolsdetectors in imprisons our children. i have been calling for 20 years, 20 five years, for human rights courts. capacity to uphold the truth that all are created equal. in a label -- in alienable rights -- we have rights.
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a system foreate the 21st century for all of our children and all of our men and women. i'm sorry but this country was see, whether it is the me too to movement or the black lives movement, are being put on the mental health of people, post-traumatic stress from being raped. it is not about that. , awe would respect people property owner could bring to protect acourt property in 15 days. why can't a hater you brought in? on time, butshort thank you very much. i want to spend one moment to share the faces of the 17 that died. this is from the sun sentinel website. we will look at them for just a moment.
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host: the youngest victim was 14. a football coach and a geography teacher among those killed on wednesday. their faces and stories are available at sunsentinel.com in fort lauderdale. we continue the issue of gun safety in schools in america. joining us will be amy klinger from the educator school safety network. bixby will be joining us later in the program. later is the chair of the hellish duties -- is the chair
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of the house judiciary committee bob goodlatte. >> the education secretary has made comments that congress needs to hold hearings looking into these types of issues dealing with these issues. and your leadership committee you have not chosen to go that route and hold hearings into gun violence. you think that the recommendation of mr. voss is a good one? we believe that communities need to do everything that they can to keep their school secure. myt i visit schools in congressional district i know that a lot of measures are taken today that were not taken 20 years ago when i first started visiting schools as a member of congress. each time that we have a major staffy like this, i have
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on my committee communicate with law enforcement at the fbi level and local level, gather information so that we can look at what might be done. i think that most of the things tot need to be done relate the laws that are already in .xistence obviously, we need to do more because all of the mass shootings involve an issue of mental illness. we need to do more to make sure people are getting treatment and that people in the situations are not getting access to guns. or, that when they act out, there probably reported so someone can get assistance to them rather than getting to a circumstance like we have seen. i have been a strong advocate for enforcing the hundreds of federal and thousands of state and local gun laws on the books. there has been an uptick in this administration. i commend the justice department
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for making this a higher priority. i think more can be done to make sure that when people have , when people lie on instant check forms, when people do other things to purchase firearms that they are not entitled under the law to have, whether or if they have a mental health commitment or a criminal conviction, much more can be done. the: newsmakers following washington journal. you can listen to "newsmakers" c-spane on our free radio app. joining us from toledo, ohio is amy klinger. she is a mom and the cofounder for the program educator school safety network. we will learn more about your organization in a moment. the shootings are coming to your town. we remember what happened at
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sandy hook in december of 2012. what are schools not doing that they should be doing to protect students? i think schools need additional resources. they need additional support. specifically, they need training. we are making a mistake sometimes when we are investing in lots of stuff. we are investing in metal detectors and fencing, but not the people that will be using those things. we are one mistake making, we are not investing in the educators that will be responding and preventing those events. host: you wrote in 2009 "in search of safer schools." teachers and administrators with guns, is that one answer? guest: no. there are a lot of answers and things that we can do. prevention is a huge answer. training. getting teachers to be empowered and be able to identify people
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of concern and move beyond just law enforcement orientation of school safety. those things are critical. their lists of things that we can do, but we have to start a conversation with the foundational belief that everyone has which is no kid should be dying in a school from anything. whether it is gun violence or something else. we have to start from that foundational belief that every person has and build from there. host: if you look at the case involving 19-year-old nikolas cruz, he came from a broken family, his mother passed away in november, living with friends. he was on the radar of local officials. clearly there was a breakdown between local officials in the f. -- and the fbi. where were the mistakes made? guest: so much as though coming out, but when we look historically at the incidences of violence, there were warnings that we were not necessarily picking up on because we are not coordinating and collaborating.
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law enforcement and schools sometimes work in a vacuum. often there is not an education voice in it. piece iscritical threat assessment. we are not doing threat assessment in schools the way we could because we know that it works but we have to do the hard work of training people, setting up teams, creating policies and procedures, and consistently do it all the time. host: what is involved in that? guest: a threat assessment has three key components. identifying individuals we should be concerned about that are at risk for violence against themselves and others. we identify those individuals based on behaviors and different threats and things coming to us. we assess, how concerned should we be? how bad is it? what are the indicators we see? finally, we manage. it is not a way to kick kids out
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of school, it is to provide support, intervention, thick these people up on their path to violence in her than when they are implementing the path to violence. -- violence sooner than when they are implementing their path to violence. threat assessment solves and gives schools a mechanism to pick up a lot of these individuals and provide intervention sooner. it is not the only thing that we can do, but it is a huge piece. host: after sandy hook where 20 students and six faculty members were killed, many thought that that would be the tipping point to have a conversation on gun debate. nothing changed. then the debate over bump stocks over what happened in las vegas, nevada, was part of the debate. nothing changed. regarding your area of expertise, will anything change
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on school campuses across the area? i hope so. i hope this is a moment where we have conversations that are constructive. what things can we agree on and do? guns are clearly a huge issue, wear schools are guns., they are beyond we have medical problems, we have other issues from the community. we have a the weather and severe events. those things are still safety issues. clearly, the gun concern is one of the first ones. the problem comes if we have this dichotomous conversation that the only thing we will have is no guns or all guidance and we are not going to talk about anything else. the underlying factors are investing in educators to be empowered and have them have a seat at the table. your responders to these events are the educators.
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as law enforcement does their best to be there as quickly as they can, the people dying on the front lines, the people dealing with the prevention and the response, our educators. they are receiving the least amount of training and support. our phoneare dividing lines. we will get your calls later in the program. is this your issue? what is the educator school safety network? 28 years in public education primarily as a building principal. i came to see early in the middle to thousands when i was working as the principal and my son became a volunteer fireman, the discrepancy between the amount of training he received very early in his career in emergency response and the lack of training that educators had, as a building principal, was very startling.
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i was a first responder. when something happened in my school, i need to -- i needed to respond until first responders showed up. that lack of training spurred me on that educators did not have a voice or a seat at the table. it is not fair to say that law enforcement needs to protect us and do everything for us. we have to be empowered to make decisions to prevent violence and respond. educators need to be involved in that. not just one administrator, but every person in a school from the students, teachers, to the support staff, everyone needs to be trained and empowered to respond every day to the sort of events we have. ,ot in a vigilant, scary way but empowered to respond to whatever it might be. a kid that has a seizure. a noncustodial parent that is being aggressive. in of the things that occur a school, everyone needs to be
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empowered to prevent and respond to them. that lack of training is what spurred me on to become a training organization. host: stoneman douglas high school will be closed tomorrow, tuesday, and wednesday. posted videothey from a demonstration that took place yesterday, using this as a marking point for these young people to call to action. [video clip] [chanting] enough is enough. >> our legislature has
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considered gone expansion bill after gun expansion bill, concealed weapon expansion. [indiscernible] >> he was able to legally purchase and ar-15. he took lives of people that i love and people that i know. ist: the full video available on the sun sentinel website. florida students want to be a tipping point in the gun debate. my question, where does this go next?
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guest: you certainly can see the fear and the frustration that is areected in students that coming to school and fearful of what is going to happen. some of that is because we have not provided the resources and the training that people are coming to school and saying, what are you doing to protect me? we are going to make it like a prison. that is not a school. a school is not a prison. we have to come to the tipping point where we are looking at a comprehensive solution that does not suppress one particular concern, but it dresses all of the different aspects of violent prevention, climate, and culture, all of the things that make a school a safe, supportive environment. we have students telling us they do not feel like their school is a safe, supportive environment. we have an obligation to change that. minute by minute
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breakdown on what happened. a florida judge in the child welfare court deemed him stable even though the shooter cut himself and displayed not to symbols. there had been more than a dozen times that the police had gone to his place of residence to investigate him. another breakdown of what could have been done. even when the president says if you see something, say something, some people dead and nothing happened. guest: there is a systemic failure here, but if we go back in history and look at the past events, that has happened before. we have kids that are begging us to stop them. they are engaging in behaviors of concern, saying things and doing things. we don't have a system to provide support. it is not a punitive notion of trying to catch them and do something terrible to them and punish them, it is providing necessary support and intervention.
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it goes to the patchwork of solutions of all of the different things that we need to be looking at, and the different ways we need to provide support for kids instead of one simple solution that makes us feel better because we have done this and we walk away. this is a systemic problem. it will not go away because one person gets the thing they think they need. it will be solved when we have ate the hard work of looking the different components that go into it in terms of the guns and mental health, training, research, all of the different components that have to be pieced together to form a comprehensive solution, instead of just one quick fix. this is a sustained endeavor. this is host: not a quick fix. host:our guest is a mother, educator, cofounder of the educator school safety network.
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you can find more by going to eschoolsafety.org. also an educator from myanmar, florida. caller: i am tired of hearing all of the psychobabble every time that a white male commits mass murder. , always mental illness. the white male has a psychotic obsession with guns, firearms, explosives, and a pension from mass murder. 99% of mass murders are white male. this is psychobabble. host: amy klinger? guest: we need to go back to the notion of being able to identify , assess, and manage individuals of concern. it is not always a mental health issue. there are issues that are
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disciplinary. there are issues with kids need to be responsible for what they have said, done, or the threats they have made. clearly, there is the support piecend the punitive pennies to go with this. we see so many threats were kids post something on social media that is all for threatening. then they want to say, that was a joke and i was kidding. we have to deal with that mentality. acceptables not an way to entertain yourself or at out. we have to deal with all of those components from mental health to the person that is just acting irrationally or irresponsibly. they have to be held responsible for those behaviors as well. host: headlines from the florida sun sentinel, be kind, be present. a long list of issues at school.
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the family that allowed him to live with him, this need family in south florida, opened their home to a monster. friend of nikolas cruz who asked his parents to let him stay in the home. he was there as late as wednesday, the day of the shooting. a parent,, good morning. caller: good morning. not cut me off. i would like to say that we received, all of the parents, received a letter on thursday from the superintendent trying to, i guess, quell our frustration. terrified of what happened in the news. let me summarize the letter. the letter stated, we have security measures in place. the security measures are laughable.
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what they consist of is the doors are locked. you have to be buzzed in. you have to go to the office, but you do not have to go to the office. is no police officer or resource officer at the door to make sure that you go directly to the office. that is operating on an honor system. else ind go into where the building and no one else is seeing what you are doing, what you have. this is not a proper security measure.we need increased funding for school security. i am terrified every day when i send my kids to school. host: we will get a response. amy klinger? not know that situation in your particular district, but there are a lot of
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violence prevention strategies that need to be implemented, but they do not necessarily involve purchasing more stuff. involve policies and procedures, like supervision, where we place staff and teach them to engage with visitors. how do we screen people when they are coming into the building? we have buzzer systems, but if the only thing is happening is you push the buzzer, i push the buzzer inside, that is not a screening system. it does not do us any good if we are not using those. that is part of the problem, we purchase stuff but don't train people how to use it effectively. we have an expensive buzzer system, but it is not being used correctly in many places. what does the supervision look like? people standing around in the lobby before the beginning of the school. maybe we only have one person supervising.
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we have to provide schools with resources to provide adequate supervision, have the teachers where they need to be, interacting with students. not just security like a security guard at the mall, but people that know these kids, involved with the kids, can pick up on the signs, someone that youstudents can disclose to that they are concerned about this or someone said this. that is getting better, but we have big disclosure problems in schools where kids know things and they are not telling anybody. one major reason is because they do not think we will do anything about it. we have to have policies in place. not just an anonymous tip line, but ways that kids can discuss with their seeing on social media. there are a lot of violence prevention measures that can be happening in schools, but you have to provide the training to be able to do that and the implement them.
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it is one thing to plop down money to put up a metal detector or hire a security guard, but that is not a way to systematically change safety concerns, the climate and culture in a school. that is harder. parkland shooting in began outside before the shooter moved inside. training, how do you balance the training to make it age-appropriate and not intimidating to the students while also being effective? best: the training needs to developmentally appropriate. it needs to be based on the age students, and what skills and capabilities you want them to have. it should not only be active shooter training. tragic as this is a event that has ignited the national conversation, it is not likelyically the most
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crisis event in schools. schools experience medical emergencies every day. bomb threats. all kinds of different things are happening. the training needs to be more than just active shooter training. one of my fear is in response to this event is that we will have a heavy emphasis on active shooter training. then you will have a child that goes into cardiac arrest and no one knows how to do cpr. no one knows the protocol for getting emergency responders in, because all we have done is train for an active shooter event. when you empower people with decisions on how to respond to a crisis event, you are making them safer from different events, not only an active shooter. although that is the one that has captured our attention, we have to be able to look at all of the different threats that kids face. we track threats every day in schools and they are not only gun threats.
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they are threats of violence come in from the community, bomb threats, suicide threats, assault. all of those are occurring in schools that we need to train and empower the people in the school to be able to prevent those, identify those potential vulnerabilities and risks, and respond. purchasing something might make us feel better on the surface, but it has not made us feel safer. we have to get beyond i will buy something, show to the public, and everything is good now. we go to schools with very entry, and no one knows how to use them. host: we are talking with amy safety andut school the crisis response in florida. if you want to go to the
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organization's website there is a state-by-state look at where school safety threats are. it is available on the website. of u.s. states with high rates of school-based violent threats and incidents. let's go to joseph in florida. caller: good morning. bilingualired counselor for new york city and a veteran. i would like to make a quick the great need that i see for more counselors in the schools, well trained counselors. i was able to receive a masters degree from hunter college. i think that we need emergency to train well trained counselors and get them into the school as soon as possible. also. in my
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experience administrators will use counselors. we need good counselors doing good work, groups, etc. host: is that a solution as well? guest: it can be one part, it is certainly a piece. is that we have kids that feel very separated from the school or they feel very isolated. that is a piece of it. we have to remember that counselors and those things will benefit all kids, not just the next kid we are worried about as a potential shooter. we have a lot of kids with a lot of needs that will not manifest themselves in this terrible way. their needs and suffering is still true as well.
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to that center where we are providing appropriate supports and holding, kidsand accountable and responsible for their behavior the things they do. and the things they we want to come to the center where we are looking at a comprehensive approach to school safety instead of a reactionary one. that we are trying to be more preventative instead of spending time figuring out or talking about what we will do when the worst thing happens. amounts ofend equal time, energy, and resources into inventing those things from happening and identifying vulnerabilities in the school, empowering teachers to identify those, and threat assessment to pick up on those kids that have real issues that need to be addressed. parent from indianapolis. thank you for waiting.
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caller: thank you for taking my call. my feeling is words, words, words. we have gone from thoughts and prayers to mental health. mental health is not exclusive to the united states, yet other countries don't seem to have the problem. rather than laws and what they are talking about, they might consider putting in a new amendment on the constitution banning guns in general. that is my thought. host: your response? guest: you started saying words, words, words. that is something we need to look at. who is saying those words? we do not have educators that are heavily involved in this. look at the coverage. the people on tv, the talking heads talking about and bringing up relevant points, i'm not faulting them, but you do not
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see an education voice. no one is talking about unique situations and concerns of educators and what they are trying to do. you have given them a tall order of all of the things they are supposed to do. parents, law enforcement, instructors, social and emotional support. we are not having a conversation about what do you need, what do you want, how do you think this will work? we have a lot of talking at schools, but not with schools a lot. we need to shift that focus of that educators have a seat at the table and we're listening to the needs of the educators. that is one reason why we became an organization, because there was not an education perspective. we need to look at research, what we know to be true, rather than this is my experience and this is what i believe. we are a research and training
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toanization, because we want be very objective and looking at what is really happening. what are the situations that educators are being forced to deal with? to have that be the start of the conversation. host: steve is next. also on the line for parents. caller: i have been trying to coordinate with veterans affairs , likeities, senators senator rubio, schumer, collins, angus king, and others, to put allther -- honestly, with due respect, we have returning veterans that have been under fire. teacher andake a make them be able to respond correctly under fire. most people don't know if they have it in them or not until it
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happens. for $200,000 a year you could have guys that need a good job protecting people who are trained in the use of weaponry and have been under fire, or near it, enough to know that they will not be there pants p pee there pants and dive under a table. that is what happens a lot when people are fearing for their lives. i think that we could combine these two. congress could help the schools finance it if they are not able to. i think that you have to have a monitoring system watching cameras around the school to see if anyone is coming in with something odd, or being buzzed in with a weird looking pack on the back. short term, we combine the two and we would have actual,
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trained warriors. you might not want that thought, but who would be at the school. i would send my kid to that school. host: we will get a response. you will need a lot of them, because you have a lot of schools that are very big. when you have a school with 1000 kids, you have one person empowered and trained to respond and everyone else is not, that is a recipe for disaster. i will take exception to the notion that people will rise to the level that you have trained them. if you feel that a teacher is not responding appropriately, you have not trained them appropriately. extent to understand the that educators are being asked to do things beyond their capabilities and skill sets. not because they are not capable, but because we have not trained them to do so. we're not talking about a
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response, we are talking about training people for prevention and the ability to identify threats and respond to them. you have seen in past incidences, is it a good idea to have armed law enforcement in the school? i don't have an issue with that, but to say that is the only solution and the only person that needs to be trained and empowered is ridiculous. events.had them at past you cannot expect one prison to protect 2000 people in a building. you have to empower -- one person to protect 2000 people in a building. you have to empower everyone in the building to pick up on warning signs. it might make them feel better to say we will put one person there, but you have to look at what is happening every day. who is in the school every day. given them the resources that
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they need. the resourcef, but is that they need to be able to do this tough job. it is not just that one person now because you have a trained person with a gun there are no more threats. problems.o more that is not the case will stop as much as it might make us feel better, it is not a magical solution. host: with half a minute left, is there a price tag to this nationwide? out thereould put that training people is significantly cheaper than buying a bunch of stuff that gathers dust or is used inappropriately and is not effective. invest in your people. schools are a people industry. invest in them and give them the capabilities they need to do the job they need to do in a safe
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and supportive manner. we owe that to our kids, to our educators. our kids are not even in this conversation as much as they should be asked of what is the cost to our children? we are raising a generation of kids that do not see schools as a safe and supportive place. we have to change that. host: our guest amy klinger is the cofounder and director of programs for the educators school safety network. thank you for being with us. we will shift topics and turned to their growing debt and deficit. with thes is bob bixby conference coalition looking at the $20 trillion debt increasing every minute. max richmond will be joining us, from thedent and ceo national committee. we are traveling on our city tour.
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week we travel to lynchburg, virginia. the history and life.ry on our trip was thomas jefferson's resort where they are digging for artifacts to tell more on the story of thomas jefferson. >> one of the favorite things to show visitors is this -- i will hold it up for you. riel.a silver spanish it.as a hole punched in this is a type of object that we contextsd at enslaved where african-americans were picking up reflective objects, often coins, to be used as amulets to ward off forces.
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we know in the 1930's that this was often done to place on the next of children to allow them to teeth. on this object in particular, it has 2 bite marks. child to see an insulated -- enslaved child here. states city tour, you can check out all of our program at c-span.org/citiestour. today, lynchburg, virginia. we hope that you tune in. welcome back robert bixby. let me turn your attention to what we have on the screen. .org -- the debt
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clock.org. you are familiar with these numbers. your reaction? ago when thers concorde coalition started, it was a lot less. this is going up at an unsustainable rate. no one in washington seems to care or is doing anything about it. they seem to be pushing policies in the opposite direction and pushing those up. host: i want to put up a couple of charts you have put together. the green line shows tax revenue that the u.s. is getting. trajectory of spending has increased. the purple area, for those on television and we will explain to the radio audience, is discretionary spending. interest payment in yellow grow.ues to you have social security, entitlement programs, health care, and mandatory spending that includes defense. explain this.
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guest: this was developed by the kerry danforth commission. a bipartisan pair of senators to head of a commission for president clinton in 1994-1995. they looked at the current trends and concluded that they were not sustainable. this was a bipartisan conclusion. the components of federal spending and what is growing is mostly the federal programs for health care, retirement -- they are very important, but they become more expensive as we have an aging population, as the baby boomers begin to retire. those programs on autopilot are becoming more expensive every year. programs, theary annual appropriations programs, if they are squeezed and the
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running deficits with revenue not keeping up with expenditures and running the definite interest costs gross essentially and became a bigger part of the budget. when you put those factors together and look at what is driving them, the current trends are still not sustainable. host: how much is $1 trillion? guest: it is a lot of money. it is unfathomable to many people because no one deals in that type of money. lot. it is a guest: is more than you or i will ever see. host: the congressional budget office has this chart. the trillions of dollars and it shows the trajectory. right now we are $20 trillion. 2027, wen the future,
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will be approaching $30 trillion. this is the debt held by the public. guest: that is correct. $20 trillion going to $30 trillion, and probably more, is the gross debt. that includes money that the government owes to itself in terms of the federal trust funds, primarily social security and medicare. the debt held by the public is the relevant measure for how the debt affects the economy. that is now at levels as high as they were since world war ii. down -- they were coming down at that point from world war ii when they were that high, now they are going up. debte next 10 years, the held by the public is estimated to be around 90% of gdp. it could be 100% of gdp given
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the recent legislation that was passed. host: this is in the weekly standard, rest in peace fiscal conservatism. no one wants to go after mandatory spending. bi paul ryan is defending this sayingll -- paul ryan is defending this bill saying we had to give in order to get. at what point does this need to stop? guest: if we are going to have any sort of agreement to get control of the debt, we will on the put everything table, including revenues. we will have to look at all parts of the budget, including mandatory programs, sometimes , and to as entitlements discretionary programs. discretionary programs are what is squeeze now. if you look at these things as a percentage of the economy, measured against something relevant, telling us how much you can afford.
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programs that are growing faster than the economy are medicare, social security, medicaid, health care and retirement. in order to get control, you try tove to either reduce the cost of those programs, or raise revenues to pay for them. we have not done that. host: the white house budget adds $4 trillion to the budget, $7 trillion in the foreseeable future. the treasury secretary says that the tax cuts will pay for themselves over 10 years. will they questio -- will they? guest: no. no one really thinks that. it is wishful thinking. it makes it impossible to deal with the situation because you have to have -- it takes the president to advocate hard choices and provide the political cover. andou have the president
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administration saying that the way to deal with this is something nice like tax cuts, you are not going to get congress to go along with deep spending cuts or revenue increases. that is what we are seeing now, i'm afraid. the: one fewer saying that graph of the annual debt level since 2000 should make us cringe. tweet says, how long would it take for our country to go bankrupt? to do not think we would ever go bankrupt in the sense that we could raise taxes. ultimately, that is what we need to be done. there is no tipping point where the whole thing goes belly up. you do not want to reach a crisis. there is no particular number that is a tipping point of the you are on an unsustainable track you should change course.
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host: this is from last tuesday, mick mulvaney was a fiscal hawk as a member of the house of representatives. he now manages the president's budget. this question from senator corker. [video clip] corker: over the longer-term most of us realized this will go on for some time. over the longer term, based on ing and see congress act the pressures to invest in things like infrastructure, are you more hopeful? to mesn't feel that way that we are heading in a hopeful direction as it relates to solving the nation's deficits. >> i consider myself to be an optimist. i think one of the reasons i'm a republican is that i am an optimist. there was an interesting dynamic going through the budget, it is
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more fun to spend money then reduce. it is harder to reduce funding in the long term than to spend. it is incumbent on all of us to make difficult decisions and decide together, are these deficits that we are willing to tolerate? we are not, which is why we have the curvehat bends down in the appropriate direction, and we hope the legislation will take us up on ideas that we offer. host: does it bend the curve? it makes unrealistic assumptions. i do not think that it is a realistic framework going forward. it does is cut nondefense discretionary funding substantially, makes assumptions about health care savings that congress has rejected, and with
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eyes on boy and economic growth. i would not hold the president's budget as a realistic framework and i do not think it will be adopted by congress. when you look at medicare and social security, medicaid, it is 50% of the budget now. it will be 60% in 10 years. hard choices indeed. those are really important american.or every they are also expensive and are getting more expensive because the boomers are retiring. that is the budget challenge. cutting taxes in the face of that seems fiscally responsible. that is the trade-off. where are we going to come out with paying for these programs? the alternative is running a sustainable debt or cutting the heck out of the budget. host: you can check out their
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work. is a graduate of american university and studied at the jfk school of harvard and george mason university. good morning. , bob.: good morning good morning, america. theeed to understand wealthy do the most avoiding of paying taxes. they stash trillions of dollars offshore and invent loopholes to avoid paying taxes. we need a tax on wealth. people that are wealthy can afford to pay. should be are wealthy proud of their wealth and share it with the rest of america. we need to have a tax on wealth, and a taxi yearly on the increase of wealth year-over-year. we need to stop spending so much money on military equipment we do not need. host: thank you, john. there there is a recipe
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that calls were higher revenue and less spending. i wish that members of congress would approach it in the same sense as our caller. given his priorities, how he would deal with this. the wealthy and cutting defense would not be enough to close the gap. when you're talking about trillion dollar deficits, i do not think you get $1 trillion by doing those 2 things, but it is a constructive suggestion. host: i think i read that we reached the $1 trillion debt during the reagan administration? guest: relatively, but it has been growing steadily for a couple of years. michael that from says they are into kicking the can down the road and hoping nothing will happen while they are in office.
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another tweet saying, republicans are not optimists, they are the great destroyers. everything they touch eventually goes to hell. this to bring back the sequester and double it. question, we have extremely low unemployment, please explain why social welfare programs have not decreased to show that fact? guest: the first comment i agree with. on thisiven up administration and congress in doing anything in the short term. i think it will take the american people to put the deficit and debt back on the agenda. i think when we get $1 trillion deficits in a growing economy without a major war, we are going to have -- that might get people's attention. i think it is getting attention in the financial communities, is not in the political community.
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when we are less than two years ago in iowa and new hampshire, i hope this will be more of an issue with voters. question -- host: the unemployment. guest: that is an interesting question. they have gone down from where they were during the great recession. those programs swelled and cost quite a bit. they have gone down. when you look into the future, those are projected to be relatively flat. certainly, not growing faster than the economy. maybe around 7% of the budget in total. get savings from any part of the budget, but just cutting those is a small part of the problem. host: if you could approximate,
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if i give the federal government $1, how much goes to interest on the debt? guest: about 10%. host: how much to military spending? guest: 15%. host: entitlement programs? guest: 60% or higher. host: foreign aid? guest: 1%. host: discretionary spending. guest: 30%. let's go to john in new york city. caller: good morning. bixby, i have a comment. a wall streets journal or possibly a new york times -- the new york times, who
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had done a survey of the 35 to 40 top economists in the country on the fact that one out of actuallynomists believed in the growth assumptions that were tied to the gop tax plan? secondly, can you address how the united states can address the debt and potentially higher interest rate environment that looks like we will be going into . lastly, can you provide much toion as to how the debt was added because of the iraq and afghanistan under the bush administration. i will take your comments off-line. guest: the original question about the economists, yes, most of the economists surveyed did
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not believe that the tax cut would pay for itself. enactedthe tax cut is at a time where the economy is growing and employment is at a fairly low point. the stimulative effect would be needed,y, certainly not and could even have negative consequences for juicing up the economy too much. no one thinks -- i should not sayk tha -- i should not that nobody thinks it is the right time, but whether or not a tax cut is needed to produce long-term economic growth, regardless of the deficit affect, most economists surveyed in that bipartisan poll seemed to think that it would not produce the results that were hoped for.
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raise a veryyou good question on rising interest rates. the federal government has a big break in recent years because it wrote huge amounts of money at low interest rates because of the recession. that is changing and interest rates are creeping up. that is going to have a profound effect on the federal budget, because it will be having to level of debter at higher interest rates. interest cost, from about $300 billion to $800 billion by the end of the decade, and probably -- and probably more. it looks like now that that projection will be higher because the deficit will be projected to be higher. interest rates will probably be projected to be higher. i think that this is one of the driving factors in the long-term outlook, rising interest costs.
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servicing the debt. that will be a problem. the final part of your question, i'm not sure that i remember. host: the congressional budget office emphasizes one of the four driving areas of federal spending including medicaid, the chip program, social security, medicare, followed by interest. these are cbo numbers. why do republicans complain when themocrat is adding to debt, but say nothing when a republican is, the president adding $300 billion waste on his increase for infrastructure -- based on his increase for infrastructure. guest: infrastructure is $200 billion that was not included in the recent budget deal. indid sign the increase discretionary caps which would raise $300 billion over the next
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couple of years. the question answers itself. there is a lot of hypocrisy in washington. outou find that the party of power often complains about the deficit. the party in power, which has a responsibility of doing something about it may excuses as to why it is not going away. host: independent line, good morning. caller: i think that the american people are really tired of every time something comes up that it is always goes back to social security. week off had a long that talked about social security and the waste that $350 billion he year was being paid out to people that do not deserve social security. they are 105 years old or 110
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years old. plus the fact that if you are having shortfalls with the debt as it is, we have been in afghanistan for what? 16 years? and we are no further along. just as any family who has any kind of debt or expenditures that are outweighing what they're taking in, you have to make cuts. host: are you talking about means testing for social security? west: what i am saying is are spending trillions of dollars in afghanistan and other countries, but when it comes to the government saying they want to cut taxes or programs, the first thing they do is go to social security instead of looking at the trillions of dollars we are spending in wars that we should not be in. host: thank you.
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of thethat reminds me last point of a previous caller. he asked three questions on it only answer two. his third point was of the wars in iraq and afghanistan. ofis in excess of trillions dollars. we have been there 16 years. let me address the social security point. social security right now is around $940 billion a year. somethingabout 300 million of potential waste. that is a rounding error. in terms of i think if we can find other ways and social security, i do not think there are a lot of ways and social security, but if you can find it, go for it. ofial security is an issue
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are we going to bring the and it isine in line one of the government's easiest , raise the capve on the payroll tax to bring in more money, and the reason notle -- actually, it does come much in terms of when the first said this is the place people go to talk about cuts. i do not remember social security cuts. when people talk of long-term issues for the federal budget, you cannot ignore it because it is 22% of the federal budget now. one of the few programs that is growing faster than the economy, so you cannot ignore it. even if you don't look at it as a budgetary situation, social security is a major shortfall in and of itself. it is taking in less through payroll taxes than we are paying
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and benefits now and have been since 2012. that gap will grow bigger and bigger overtime. that has to be filled in by other federal revenues. host: a few more minutes with robert bixby. you can get more information by logging onto the concord coalition website and follow them on twitter at -- @concordc. gos headline from going to only certainty in president trump's budget, oceans of red ink. we will go to pennsylvania, wayne, good morning. caller: how are you doing? what i don't understand, we have a real problem on our hands with , trillions -- unbelievable. what i am getting at is why don't we go like most industrial nations single-payer. we have to do something to get
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this down. why don't we work with -- like you said, race that .ap on social security -- raise that cap on social security. it ain't like in the 1950's and 1960's. let them pay you for their share. that is ridiculous. that is all i have to say and god be with us. god bless you all and have a dutiful day. host: another view were saying -- you have to start with a balanced budget with the constitution, that never happened. guest: i do not think a balanced budget amendment will happen. -- itof problems in that is a good idea in theory, but you think of implementation and i don't think it would work well. the problem is not the constitution and not the budget
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crisis. it is politicians unwilling to make hard choices. until the american people demand they do, they probably will not. the ultimate thing would be financial markets refusing to lend the government money at reasonable interest rates, demanding a risk premium. we are not there now, but why would we keep piling burdens on future generations? the key here is even if we could muddle through the next 10 years, the millennial generation already has huge personal debts in student loans. all this acumen nation of new debts from the government is something that will fall on their shoulders. younger people really made to get charged up and informed on this issue because it is their problem. tim: 10, from nevada, -- from nevada.
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caller: i will make us as quick as i can. i had a bunch of questions. number one, when we take off the gold standard by nexen, i think that affected the economy. was i really wanted to ask when the great bill clinton, which i am being sarcastic, and george bush, both baby boomers, and i'm 54 years old. my parents are both dead. helping the world can the people in the government that are signing baby boomers not realize 30 years down the road we were going to have this generation and guesstimate social security, medicare, medicaid, and the fraud and everything else. there was even an article in 2012 that there would be more money drawn from 2012 until 2022. we knew this was coming. we have known this 30 years but
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we did nothing about it. host: we will get a response. guest: you are absolutely right. this is not a surprise. the aging of the baby boomers and the effect it would have on the budget and economy has been known for decades, and politicians have done nothing to prepare for it. right now, when we are in the midst of this, it seems to be terrified of the problem and they are running the other way. it is likely to fall off or die off a diety, -- fall and say, i will have a triple cheeseburger with blue cheese. that is what is happening now, a failure to maintain fiscal discipline on revenue or spending sides, and the situation now is bad. not just -- we are not having an now, but theis
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problem isn't so much this year's budget and next year's. the problem is the long-term outlook and the fact that politicians have abandoned any pretense of fiscal discipline. executivert bixby is director of the concord coalition. thank you. guest: thank you much, steve. host: we will continue our conversation on medicare and medicaid and social security. our guest is max richtman, here to talk about the future of it. later, the president tweeting over the weekend about russia, issues of pollution -- collusion, and the fbi. and listeningng to c-span's "washington journal" on this february 18, 2018. we are back in a moment. ♪ this week on "the communicators," we wrap up our
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series from the consumer electronics show in las vegas with a look at the latest developments in television, phones, and virtual reality. light.nic with that refers to is the panel technology, which is different from lcd, even though the led part sounds the same in that it is a missive technology and makes its own light so it does not need a back light. n curve have this thi factor. example, a display is showing a prototype of a roll up display that it actually rolls into a storage box, you press a button, and it rises out and when you are done, it goes back in. this is a glimpse of the future of what is possible. >> watch "the communicators" monday night on c-span2.
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>> c-span's "landmark cases" season number two starts monday at 9:00 p.m. eastern, with a ink at mccullough v maryland 1819. exploring the case, an associate law professor at the university of virginia, and a law professor at the university of arkansas. cases" at 9:00 p.m. eastern, live on monday, or the same with the free c-span radio app. for background on the case, order a copy of the "landmark cases" book, available at www.c-span.org/landmarkcases. for an additional resource, there is a link on the website to the national constitution center's interactive constitution. "washington journal" continues. host: we want to welcome mike richmond -- max richtman back.
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good sunday morning. thank you for being with us. announced aan budget agreements, he said the next step is dealing with , specificallyform medicare, medicaid, and social security. what does that mean? guest: the speaker is on a mission to cut social security, medicare and medicaid proctor years. and -- for four years. and as speaker of the committee, it has been a goal of his for many years. i think he is going to make a run at it soon. he is be the last time speaker, so i think we will see a lot of effort out of the white , and and from this speaker in the senate, as well. you mentioned comments the speaker made after the budget deal was announced december 22.
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senator rubio with similar comments. this is the next shoe that will drop, and a hope it can talk about the president's budget to put it in perspective. host: what does it mean for medicare and medicaid recipients? guest: dramatic cuts in the programs important to all senior citizens. i watched the primary debates. i watched them all, i think, and there was one candidate who promised time and again that he would not cut social security, medicare, medicaid, and that was donald trump. i remember thinking, i wonder if he understands what these programs do, how important they are, how they impact families, seniors, younger people. and then we have a budget, the president's that was submitted last monday.
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all of those promises were empty promises because this week will take a cleaver in the programs so important that seniors care about social security, medicare, medicaid, and others. robertou heard from bixby a minute ago as we talk about the debt growing. what is driving government spending is medicaid and the security,am, social medicare, and interest on debt. if you buy the argument we need to bring down the debt deficit and these are areas where we see the biggest growth and spending, how do you use the words of mick mulvaney bended the curve and do so humanely? guest: humanely. that is the key. i wish i could have them here. i was watching robert bixby. some of the things he said makes sense and some do not. social security is not an
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entitlement. he said it is referred to entitlement. it is a ninth benefit. every paycheck a worker receives has withholding for social security, fica, federal insurance constitution act. that money is dedicated to the social security program. when beneficiaries reached the retirement age, they are eligible for these programs. he mentioned an interesting point that you can bring more revenue into the programs into social security and particularly, and he mentioned looking at the cap on wages subject to the fica tax. host: which is $142,000? guest: it is about $130,000 a year and after that, no more fica tax. why? why not look at either reinstituting it at some point. congressman john larson the connecticut has a good bill that would keep the cap at the current rate.
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it changes a little every year, and start collecting federal taxes at $400,000 in wages. senator sanders has a similar bill that collects payroll tax at $200,000 or $250,000. i made this point at a town hall meeting. we do a lot around the country. there is a famous and good basketball player. i will not mention his name because last time i did, i got in trouble. taxteps paying payroll halfway through the first quarter of the first game of the basketball season. the rest of that quarter and game, the season, the championship, no more payroll tax. this doesn't make sense. host: is it time to raise the retirement age for social security age? and is it time to apply means testing? guest: absolutely not. raising the retirement age is
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not cutting benefits. should not have any dispute about that. host: if you did it over a 30 year time frame -- that. we are ready did robert bixby said the government did not expect baby boomers retiring. that is wrong. in the early 1980's, we had the greenspan commission. they did anticipate what was going to happen. now, the trustees of social security say that will not be enough money to pay full benefits in 2034. that needs to be addressed. we are not a group with our heads in the sand. we need to deal with it. in the early 1980's, we talked about a six-month window and we don't want to get to that point again, but congress did anticipated. they made changes. the social security program, which was not going to have enough money to pay full benefits in six months, was
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extended to 2034 and one was raising retirement age. ands already 67 for most for everybody in a few years. it went from 65 to 67. you and dad can hopefully talk about this for many years, but there are people working in jobs where they cannot keep working after 66 or 67. i often hear, well, people can work longer. where are those jobs? are their jobs for those people? i do not see them. host: our guest is the president and ceo of national committee to preserve social security and medicare, max richtman. we have provided a link to the website at www.c-span.org. we are to fighting the phone lines differently. if you are the recipient of social security or medicare, we have one line for you. eric is joining us on the all
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others line from new york. caller: good morning. in addition to listing the caps, isn't it possible to start taxing those people who make money from things other than payroll? for example, investors who make billions of dollars? can we tax them to pay into social security? guest: there are proposals that would look at earned income, investment income and bring that to the program. i think we need to look at that, be careful about it. one thing to realize is i goieve individuals that through changes and pay more to social security should get a bump up in benefits because that is the beauty of the program. it does have a return that is in some ways related to how much a worker puts in the program. mentioned congressman john
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larson's bill pretty has over 100 cosponsors. i just re-imposing, reinstituting the payroll tax at $400,000 of wages, you could bring in enough revenue to have the program solved for the rest of the century, why it is called act.ocial security 2100 you could raise the benefit of about $70 a month. you could have -- i think your listeners know what the cost of living adjustment is, very important. it is inadequate and doesn't keep up with the real cost of inflation. that could be addressed by bringing in more revenue from those wage earners earning about $400,000 a year. host: our next call is from virginia, west virginia, good morning, recipients of social security. caller: good morning and thank you. i believe, like the speaker is saying, that social security
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should be raised probably not significantly, but enough to improve the income. and ilso on health care, find a lot of my social security people who are clients either have to make a decision now to etc. e rent, buy food, they cannot really live on what some of them are getting now. host: i was going to bring up that issue, and i would like to get your response because according to cnbc, the average retiree has $160,000 in savings for a few with 15 years to 20 years, that isn't a lot to read is that part of the problem? people use social security as a pension plan and not supplemental? guest: it is part of the problem. we are not opposed to other
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investments. a social security has been described as one leg of a two-legged school. -- stool. one is pensions and investment. , declined climb benefit pensions have largely disappeared and social security is relied on more and more by more people. goodaller, you raise a question, and state it very well. i think social security is so important now, probably more than it ever has been because of the other legs of that two-legged stole. queen -- stool. we need to pay attention to it, reinforce it and improve it trade the average benefit is about $1400 a month. can you imagine living on that a month? saysentioned the cnbc
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personal savings are $150,000. frankly, i do not believe it is that much. if you were in a nursing home for one year, most of that is gone. if you were in there for two years, it is all gone. what do you do? you have to rely on the medicaid program. the medicaid program under this budget is cut by $1.4 trillion over 10 years. medicaid is not just for poor people. it pays for 62% of nursing home care. who is in a nursing home? people,eople -- older disabled, children. they will deal with a cut of that magnitude. host: i will go back to our caller. thanks for waiting. with thees, i agree if medicare and
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social security are cut, we probably will have more deaths. is that what republicans want in this nation? well, i do not know if that is accurate or not. the budgethat when deal was agreed to on december 22, we felt that the next shoe that was going to drop was our program, social security, medicare, and medicaid rate we have seen that come to fruition in a big way -- medicaid. we have seen that come to fruition. host: for those listening, by the way, this is carried on serious xm, so we welcome those listeners. channelwatching the bbc , we are focusing on medicare and social security.
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rose, the recipient, good morning. caller: good morning. it infuriates me that most of these politicians are either lawyers, they have been in politics, he never really worked full days, hard labor in their lives. can you imagine a 70-year-old man climbing a telephone pole? her 60'sirdresser in on her feet all day? this is ridiculous what they are trying to do. you are right. a lot of people depend on social security just to pay the rent or utilities, or buy food. governmenthave other programs available. it is just they have already robbed the social security fund. we pay into that. all of our working lives. they never figured into their
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equation the fact that there is a lot of people that have died. i have several family members that have died, and never collected one dime of social security because they died when they were younger. yet, they paid in. they borrowed -- congress borrowed from the social security fund to balance their other budgets or whatever and never paid us back. itre is an iou in there, and infuriates me to no end. host: thank you. guest: that is a lot to respond to. very typical comments. let's talk about one of the myths that -- there are a lot of social security, that it is broke, not true. that there is no money, not true. that money has been taken and will not be repaid. social security -- i talked
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about what the 1983 amendments to social security did. it builds up a trust fund, said,ry to what mr. bixby politicians realized baby boomers were coming and a trust fund was built by virtue of more money being paid into the program then paid out in benefits. now there is about $2.8 trillion in the trust fund. it has grown and will continue to grow for a few more years before the trust fund is drawn down, interest on the bonds that are purchased with that money. the money is dedicated to social security. i was at a town hall meeting. i do quite a few of those. at that point, there was $2.6 trillion in the trust fund. i was trying to explain you would not want to have that much money cash. you would want to earn interest, in treasury bonds, not the best,
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but the safest investment possible. i said, you would not want to have $2.6 trillion under your mattress. back said, yes, i would. the point is the money is invested in government bonds, rolled over almost every day, and available to pay beneficiaries. all, butnnect is not many members of congress have with the reality of what these programs mean to real people. it is hard to get that point across. i was previous staff of the senate aging committee, and we were authorized which has programs like meals on wheels, which will be negatively impacted by this budget. there was a member of the senate committee at that time that was not in favor of reauthorizing the old americans act. we worked with some of his home
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state, home delivered meals books, and they invited him to get in a van, go with them one day to deliver meals, and when he saw the reaction of real people to having their only hot meal that they delivered, and having an opportunity to have some kind of interaction with a real person, he came back and supported the program. we have to figure out ways, similar ways, to connect politicians with these programs, so they do understand what they mean, what social security disability payments can mean to someone really getting by, who maybe cannot get out of the house before they start heading this -- cutting the program. social security disability, cut by $70 million in the budget. meals on wheels is negatively impacted by community
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development and social development programs. a lot of these smaller programs are not as high profile as social security, but i wish the president would get in the van, take a couple hours off of a golfing weekend and deliver meals, and see if he wants to get a budget through that will negatively impact ability for the meals on wheels program. host: we know he listens to this network rate our guest is max richmond, with the national committee to preserve social security and medicare. this is from jan -- i know how to fix medicare and medicaid, cut the budget. socials from roger -- security has become primary because the federal reserve has destroyed any savings incentive. when it bursts, social security will be the only leg left. another comments -- you should ask why the average nursing home costs $40,000 per month? can afford that?
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finally, stop giving that money to the pentagon and fund social security. problem solved. we will go to new york, a social security recipient. good morning. caller: good morning. that, i agree [indiscernible] social security. he could state them. he is a hypocrite because his family benefited from social security benefits after his father died. host: you are referring to paul ryan? caller: correct. host: please go ahead. caller: he benefited from social security himself after his father died. also, social security is an entitlement, so are the pensions that the government receives. this will test everyone else. guest: well, it is true that
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speaker ryan received survivor benefits. i know members of congress that have been in that situation. and a different impact on them. ofgressman richard neal massachusetts, who is a ranking democrat on the ways and means committee, i have heard him speak from the heart about how social security kept his family together when they needed the survivor benefits. people, ia lot of mentioned myths about social security. one is it is just for older people. that isn't right. the term fica, federal insurance contribution act, it funds disability and old age programs. one third go to non-retired workers, survivors like paul
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spouses,aker ryan, children. about 4 million children get it because social security is there for them, and they have a parent who became disabled or died young. it is insurance for families. a lot of people do not really appreciate that. host: let's go to diana from morgan. good morning. -- from oregon. caller: i am a recipient of social security and medicare. raised three children by myself. month.750 a there was no money to put away for retirement. there is nowhere for me to go. if i try to get back in a nursing home, there is no place to go. try to find some rent.
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it is at least $1000 a month. that is more money than i have. host: how old are you? caller: i am 63. host: thank you. guest: she is not alone. is higher. benefit i think it is $1300 or $1400 a month. that means a lot of people are receiving $700 to hundred dollars a month. it is difficult to live on that money and your medicare premiums are taken out of that. that may mention medicare. we talked of speaker ryan and social security. and he received survivor benefits. part of his mission has been to privatize the medicare program. he calls -- they call it the
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vouchers. premium support. instead of traditional medicare, we would end up under the speaker's plan, which is championed for many years, a medicare beneficiary would get a voucher and instead of getting your traditional faucher, you go out and buy health care. has he forgotten the reason we have the insurance program is insurance companies to not want at anure seniors affordable price? so we have medicare. we will go back in time and depend on this voucher that will not keep up with health care inflation and cost seniors more every year out of their pockets? i call it coupon care. and you will be told, good luck. i'm not even sure about the good luck part but that is the plan. nancy,ur last caller is
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a recipient of social security. good morning. caller: good morning. i wrote payroll checks. when people are working at minimum wage, the 30 centd might be going -- cents might be going to sociale, 25 cents security, and by the time they retire, like the one lady, your check is maybe $700 a month. i think what we need to do is raise minimum wage. bring back our unions and good jobs so our payroll payments are larger. i have no issue with that comment. if i could make one other well,t on the budget -- two. medicaid, some of the callers
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have talked about the high cost of nursing home care. without medicaid, those people would not able to be in a nursing home. as i said, 62% of it is covered by the medicaid program. by middle-class citizens, who maybe they have the money, but it is gone and 1.5 years, and then they need medicaid to survive. finally, one of the really troubling things in the president's budget are things that will not get a lot of attention. i hope i can get more attention paid to them this morning. the low income home energy providese program, it assistance for people who need to stay warm in the winter. over 7 million households get help through that program and
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over one third of them are 60 years old. it is eliminated in the president's budget. the program that provides counseling for medicare beneficiaries so they can navigate the complexity of the program when they become program,is that ship state health insurance help. the money for that is eliminated. finally, even though social security has a dedicated revenue stream, all the money paid in goes to social security benefits, and the cost of running the program itself. all the offices over the country and to employees that help people figure out what their benefits are, that is going to be in this budget and cut substantially, $90 million cut out of the budget of eight social security program. lines, be longer
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abbreviated office hours, and you will have to be on hold forever if you want to talk to somebody. you will have to wait now if you file a disability claim for over one year for a hearing. there is a woman in philadelphia that i read about a few weeks days foras waited 744 hearing. you will wait longer. why are we doing this? especially since the actual cost of running the program comes out of the payroll tax. it is less than 1% of the program but paid for. this money is in the bank. paid for by wage earners and they are entitled to have the service from the program. host: we hope you will come back president richtman, and ceo of the national committee to preserve social security and medicare. we appreciate your time. guest: thank you. host: i want to share a re-tweaked the president did, a
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characterization of both blitzer -- of wolf blitzer. update, we should get evidence of the russia collusion any day now. the president has been tweeting all weekend of the fbi and russia. that is our final question. our phone lines are open as the present says the 26 election was not impacted by the russians. we will take a break. we are back in the moments. ♪ tonight on "q&a," the author on his book "flashback: -- "crash back." >> there is a public shaming. it is hard for westerners to get an idea of what that means to the asian coulter, especially , proud,who is as big and long-standing as china.
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it is that never again mentality. phonetart after that cell mindset that we will will the bar may be an missile-defense forces in a way that we are never -- we never lose face like this again. >> tonight at 8:00 p.m. eastern on "q&a." >> this week on "the wrap up ours,", we series from the consumer electronic show with a look at the latest developments of television, phones, and virtual reality. imaging referst to the panel technology, which led,fferent from ltd or even though it is the same that you have this form factor where it makes its own light and it enables curves. is sister company lg display
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showing a prototype of a roll up display based on it, that it rolls up into a storage box and you press a button, it rises out and when you are done, it goes back in. this is a glimpse of the future of what is possible. >> watch "the communicators and quote monday night at -- "the communicators" at 8:00 p.m. monday on c-span2. host: the president saying the 2016 election was not impacted by the russians after the indictment on friday with 13 russians involved and it is front page of new york times. "trump quiet on a u.s. war in meddling." it reads in part as follows -- after a dozen companies at the russians were indicted for interfering in the 2016 elections, president trump's reaction was to claim personal
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vindication. no collusion he wrote on twitter. he voiced no concern a foreign power had been trying to upend american democracy. host: sydney is joining us from louisiana. good morning. caller: i would like you all to do a program on all the countries we have interfered with their elections, all down in central america, south iraq, all the countries that we meddle in their elections, and the even said barack obama meddled with israel's election and russia's election, but we never hear about what we do. thank you. host: next in indiana,
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democrat's line, good morning. caller: i think they meddled in the election. and i do believe that they sway the election their way, and it was all the gerrymandering and everything going on. that, we diden all not have any choice in who we got. host: (202)-748-8001 are line for republicans. (202)-748-8000 for democrats. -- if itdent tweeting was the goal of prussia to create chaos in the u.s., with all the committee hearings, investigations and party hatred, they have succeeded beyond their wildest dreams. they are lacking their asses often moscow, get smart america." that is from the president one hour ago. next from kentucky, good
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morning. caller: good morning. a comment. it is a no-brainer. witha margin of those three swing states, the russian topic and to campaign worked beautifully. just as a result of the reduced minority voting in those three states, well over 77,000 voters at home did not vote at all. the question is, what in the heck is washington doing about it? we need to figure it out quickly from the 2018 elections. host: marshall from kentucky. democrat's line, florida. good morning. caller: good morning. thank you. i am currently on social security because i worked all of my life and paid for it. my comment is the president insists russia did not impact the election. well, the impacted the president
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because that is all he does, talk about how wonderful it would be for him to be a good friend of mr. putin. that is my comment. the sunday taken the washington post -- indictments put pressure on trump tax. robert mueller might conclude there was no clear case of collusion between the russians and associates of president trump's campaign. that is somewhere in the future, but he has laid down a challenge to the president that he can no longer be ignored. friday's indictment laid bare in ways they had not previously done, the links to which russians went to subvert the 2016 election on, not just the chaos. it may explain the motivation of the russians was to damage hillary clinton and help donald trump as much as possible. rhonda from mt. airy, maryland,
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democrat's line, good morning. caller: i totally agree with everything the person just said. it is very sad people are sitting at home watching television, and seemed from on television -- trump on television. i never watched it, but he had this program and put himself up as god. host: the apprentice. caller: that were running. they vetted for him. he denies everything that has anything to do with russians. people need to open their eyes. straight states got into the election rules. that is incredible. to opento do something our eyes the next election. please do not let this happen again. host: john on the republican line from pennsylvania. good morning. caller: good morning. i do not believe there was russian meddling.
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was more there meddling by the clinton campaign. they spent over $1 billion on their election cycle. that is 1000 million dollars. that is way more money than the trump campaign. i think there was way more cnn, msnbc, all the networks that supported hillary, and to say the russians swayed the election is laughable. host: inside time magazine, donald trump' forgotten man, blue-collar workerss are still waiting for him to deliver. dennis is joining us from texas, independent line. good morning. caller: thank you for taking my call. i am not sure about russian collusion or trump collusion or any of that. i do think trump has a problem -- putinhiping pruden and the russian government system.
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personally, i think he likes the way putin can get rid of his enemy straight from what i have seen of the history of trump -- enemies. from what i have seen of the history of trump, i think he would like to get rid of his enemies the same. truth of and ride, on the u.s. indictments. in pennsylvania, morgan, good money. caller: good morning. i just want to say, let's get his reaction to the news. who decides in the united states, not one bad word of russia? wake up, republicans. you have elected a treasonous president. host: if you get through, make sure to turn the volume down. in the new york times, a sharp divide over election interference. there is a security conference this week in germany. among the speakers, h.r. mcmaster.
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[video clip] >> i would love to have a cyber dialogue went russia is here about curtailing its sophisticated form of espionage, what you might call this modern-day form of moscow row for -- form which is enabled by modern technology. i think that they will come because we are becoming more in depth that tracing the origins of this espionage and subversion. as you can see what the f dei indictment, the evidence is now incontrovertible and available in the public domain. president'srom the national security advisor. that is in st. petersburg, russia. that is inside this morning's washington post. it is called the internet research agency. roy in st. louis, independent line. caller: good morning. i just want to say it is obvious
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intent andwas success on the russians to meddle in our election area anybody that -- election. anybody that denies it is not paying attention. this administration has lied from the beginning. first, they said nobody talked to a russian. it turns out half the administration is in bed with them and met with them in private, and they gave secrets to them. as far as i can tell, this president is treasonous, and so is his cabinet. most of them. something needs to be done about it, but the republican congress will not do it. i guess we have to change the congress. if we don't do that, we are in a lot of trouble. host: we will go to barbara next in california, republican line. good morning. caller: good morning. this is barbara. much aw, this is very
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democratic state. it is hard conservatives to be heard. the gentleman just speaking evidently is not listening to what the viewer investigation has showed. -- you were investigation -- newer investigation has showed. there was no collusion between the russians and our president to restoration. i would like -- presidents administration. where were these people during obama's it frustration when he added a trillion dollars to the debt? nobody talks about that. also, he stripped medicare to pay for the abomination of obamacare. he stripped it. he took 100 area dollars from it and nobody speaks about it much. host: some more tweets from the president in the last hours. the third responding to general the astor.
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general mixmaster. finally, they are now blaming the obama administration for russian meddling in the 20 16th election. he is finally write about something. dida knew of the threat and nothing. also, never gotten over the fact that obama was able to spend -- incent $1.7 billion to cash iran and nobody called for an investigation. finally, general mixmaster forgot to save the results of the 2016 election were not changed by the russians and the only collusion was between russia and crooked hillary and the dnc and the dams. from -- and the dems. back to your phone calls. tom from minnesota, democrat's line. caller: hello. it affected my vote. i thought after all the propaganda against hillary that
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hillary was dirty somehow. i voted for joe stein. why didn't you put up a photo of vladimir putin sitting at the rte table in moscow at the conference next to the national security riser of the united back to theith a camera, joe stein. my dad hated commies. everyone out there who hears me knows what i am talking about. i tell you, joe stein -- jill stein was there. host: we have the picture, tom, and we have used it in the past. here it is now. caller: it astonishes me. it turned my stomach. and she came on the networks and tried to say, i did not do anything. i was there, i was supposed to do either, what a lie!
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anyway, last of all, a blue wave is coming. vote democratic and vote the red communist scum out. host: from the new york times -- therussians like facebook most. details as we learn more from the indictment, available at www.c-span.org. on the republican line, george from dallas, texas. good warning. european,s, i am a and what i see is the way these people, the democrats, cnn, the big governments, i do not say anything about this because they are not absolutely terrible. doing, his is policies are very clear. , it is a lie, three
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times live. they do not say russia anymore. they say putin. that is like calling him him or, you know -- that is like calling him hitler, you know? the secret services is trying to overrun this man, and they are continuing to do this every day. oligarchs are trying to get everything. million russians could suffer. they have been taken out to 225 concentration camps in siberia. this has not been told to american people. why is he hiding? -- why is he hiding this unbelievable crime? they attack every day russia. i am not russian, but my parents and then parents -- and
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grandparents had been deported, killed, many, friends, everything. they are doing everything with russia. ,o, it is the secret services they are propaganda machines. host: where are you from originally? caller: i am polish. host: thank you. we will go to michael in new york, independent line. caller: i just wanted to say, of course, i think russians were attempting to metal in some way, -- to meddle in the election some way, but if an american citizen had done the same, it would be ok. i think that is strange. i also think this has much to do about nothing when you look about what all the nations do, israel, where they
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can determine the outcome of elections across america to buy we row being campaign -- re-routing campaign donations with people with dual citizenship. it is legal for them to give donations to these nations and the fact that it is legal for me a new york to give donations to around theistricts country, that makes it possible for new york or other cities, with many with allegiances with foreign nations, to give donations, changing the outcome of elections. i think this is a bigger problem than russia trying to do some internet hacks. host: i will move to julia from rock port, massachusetts. good morning. caller: thank you for taking my
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call. i have an insight i have not heard expounded by the pundit talk with the whatsoever. host: what is that word? cy.ditocra caller: i read that word in the new york times -- it means -- host: sure, i will use that again. caller: they learn something new every day, as they say. hadquestion not posed is hillary been elected, there would be no special concert molar investing -- no special counsel investigating at all. it would be a topic of inquiry and there would not be this level of year-long penetrating investigation. 's modus operandi is infiltrating elections around
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the world. this time, his nemesis, hillary clinton, it was payback. never -- no one ever imagined trump to be in the oval office, including putin. however, he went about his scheme to affect the elections and in a penetrating way which is not been revealed, to pay intervention in ukraine, where she was secretary of state, in citing what he thought was a revolution. host: she wrote about that in her book what happened. we asked that of her in an interview, available at www.c-span.org. quickly from gabe in california, you get the final word. high -- caller: i just want to tell you that we are all so insecure about the email scam that my high school friends send to each other. it says elizabeth warren had a
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thing that said, order your resistance signs. even get wast to coming from elizabeth warren. that is the insecurity of thinking american public on what they read online. i appreciate what you do and god bless you and thank you for putting a guy on the air for medicare. that was enlightening. host: thank you. to all of your calls and comments, it is a presidents' day weekend. the house and senate are out this week are you tomorrow, we turn our attention to president trump and former president ronald reagan, and other american presidents. doug brinkley will join us from rice university to talk about the president's influence on the presidency and craig shirley, who has written a number of books on ronald reagan. tomorrow morning at 7:00 a.m.
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eastern and on c-span radio. "newsmakers" is next. i hope you have a great week ahead. ♪ [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2018] >> next, "newsmakers" with .ongressman bob goodlatte after that the director of national intelligence and the directors of the fbi and cia testified on a senate hearing on global threats. "newsmakers" is pleased to welcome bob goodlatte representing virginia's sixth district. after 24 years in

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