>> [applause] >> thank you. >> we love you. >> thank you. i am delighted to be with you today. that i you may have seen appeared on abc with george past sunday.s this and i said in that interview something that i have said previously for the last two on the publicmes record. and that is, no matter what happens, i will not there false witness against this president. i will not make up stories and lies in the effort to remove him. proud to see i was

a tweet from the president of the united states, who lauded me for my guts. some in the mainstream media went immediately to a host of all liberal legal analysts, who said that the president's tweet could constitute witness tampering. absurd, on the basis of the fact that i have said the exact same thing on the record, on numerous forums, for the last two years. in fact, i denied yet again on any advancead knowledge of the source or the of the wikileaks disclosures, be they allegedly hacked emails or allegedly stolen emails, the exact same thing i said on "meet the press" with chuck todd almost a year ago, which got virtually no

notice. i think most americans now understand that the russian collusion delusion is meant to be a distraction from the far more serious abuse of power in which the obama administration used the authority and the capability of the state to the use of illegal and illicit warrants to spy on donald trump's campaign for president, and use the fbi to infiltrate the trump campaign for the purposes of planting faux russian collusion. it is also a diversion from the largest treasonous financial scandal in american history, that would be the crime of uranium one. if people are looking for russian collusion, they merely

need to look at bill and hillary ofnton and their acceptance $145 million from the russian energy company while the transfer of 20% of america's enriched uranium was on hillary's desk for transfer to the russians. now, few americans, i think, could withstand the kind of icall practical -- proctolog examination i have been under for the last two-and-a-half years. i know, as the new york times reported on january 20, 2017, long before the appointment of mr. mueller as special counsel, sirs --as among three + advisers under surveillance by the previous administration. probable cause, i asked?

no, this has been two-and-a-half hell. not only was i under surveillance in 2016, but i also know that mr. mueller and his strikeforce have examined every aspect of my life. my personal life, my family life, my social life, my business life, my political life, my sex life. fbi agents have been seen rummaging through my garbage. my cleaning lady was interviewed by the federal bureau of investigation. yet, i ask this question. what does any of that have to do with russian collusion? we are at the point now where i am sure many of you heard i have elected to invoke my fifth amendment rights when it comes to the witchhunt

being conducted by the senate intelligence and senate judiciary committees. informedthe record, i through my attorneys, both of those committees that i would not be turning over three tractor-trailer loads of documents for them to root for, and i will not testify unless i am allowed to testify in public so the american people can hear every word. [applause] i insist upon this because i do not want to see a replay of my testimony before the house intelligence committee. i wanted that testimony to be in public, a right at i was denied. day, iy, i am -- to this am not even entitled to have a copy of the transcript of my testimony. it is abundantly clear that while this investigation is not

about russian collusion, it is about perjury traps and trumped up process crimes. despite the partisan claims of congressman adam schiff, a huckster and con man of the first magnitude, and others of his ilk, my submitted statement and testimony to the house intelligence committee was and is entirely accurate. i recently released text messages that absolutely establish that as i informed the , a now unemployed radio talkshow host, randy, was my source regarding the significance and the october release of the wikileaks information. the existence of which julian assange himself had teased on cnn in june 2016.

claims that i urged third parties to come forward, to whom randy confirmed his role, somehow constitute witness intimidation are ludicrous. urging people to exercise their first amendment rights and tell the truth in the face of a sunol of lieses -- a tsunami is a complete exercise of my first amendment rights and the testimony to the truth. i also entirely reject contentions that dr. jerry corsi, as suggested to him by prosecutors from the special counsel's office, that he was a source of any information pertaining to the wikileaks disclosures. in fact, his predictions

regarding the wikileaks disclosures turned out to be entirely incorrect. they were the basis of speculation. my contention that he briefed me 'n the podesta brothers lucrative business dealings in ukraine and russia prior to my 21, 2016 tweet, in which i said, let's get it right this time, the podesta brother'' ise in the barrel will come, both accurate and entirely supported by email and text message records. the contention that the memo he subsequently gave me regarding the podesta brothers' business dealings was written as some kind of cover-up both defies logic and the written record. cover-up of what? there was no controversy in the wake of my tweet for six weeks.

there was no social media chatter, there was no media coverage, there was no mueller investigation, there was no congressional investigation. there were no subpoenas. so cover-up of what? colleaguesand his are engaging in frivolous semantics, shifty word games and nonmaterial hairsplitting in a shameless bid for partisan advantage. if mr. schiff has any proof whatsoever that i had advance -- or of the source with the content of the allegedly -- hacked or stolen emails published by wikileaks, or that i received anything of the kind, i challenge him to produce it now or shut up. [applause]

just as in his previous claim to have seen substantial evidence of russian collusion with the trump campaign, producing none. the congressman is completely t.ll of shi i was extremely proud of the president's tweet but i am prouder still to stand with a president who is making america great again. four point 2 million new jobs. unemployment at the lowest point 1960 nine. african-american and hispanic unemployment at the lowest point since we began keeping those statistics. wage growth at the greatest rate in american history. read doing the giant multinational trade deals that have sucked jobs out of america, individual trading

deals with our trade partners where we both have mutual benefit. securing our borders to make our streets and neighborhoods safe again. about a week ago, i speculated that i believed it was possible that the president would choose not to run for reelection. some in the media said, well are you saying he won't be able to be reelected? or are you saying he is going to be run out of washington? no. i am saying that if the last two years are as successful as the previous two years, if the president succeeds in continuing to turbocharge our economy, to secure our borders, to revitalize the american dream, to redo the trade agreements, he could walk away from the presidency going down in history as one of the greatest presidents in our history.

trump for 40donald years. he did not run for president to be someone, he ran for president to do something. when interview he gave perhaps 30 years ago with oprah winfrey in which she said, what about public office? do you think you would ever run for president? he said no, i don't think so. iless things get so bad that have no choice. this is a president whose presidency has cost him $2 billion, unlike the clintons and the obama's, he is not getting rich off of being president of the united states. for president because he wanted a bigger house. he already had a bigger house. he didn't run for president because he wanted a bigger airplane, he already had a bigger airplane.

ofen the slings and arrows his opponents, given the attacks on him and his family day in and day out, this is not a man who needs the presidency for his own self-esteem. therefore, i pray that he runs for reelection. i believe he can be reelected as the next -- if the next two years are anything like the old -- the last two years, and i will be proud to stand with the president through thick and thin. thank you and god bless you. [applause] >> sunday on q&a -- >> i worked with for people who,

once and future presidents, jimmy carter, bill clinton, barack obama and to my surprise, donald j. trump. >> the publisher of many best-selling nonfiction books. >> i came to understand about donald trump, and this is profoundly important for the way things work now, is, donald trump in his heart of hearts believes he always wins. here is a guy who has been in new york real estate, gambling wrestling,, boxing, beauty contests, television, construction, never been the target of a criminal investigation. that is astonishing in new york city. >> a conversation with a long time journalist and publisher, sunday night at 8:00 eastern on c-span's "q&a." in half ofjim oklahoma talked to students at the national defense university

today about his priorities as chair of the armed services committee and national defense strategy. this is about one hour and 10 minutes. [applause] senator inhofe: ok. i will need this. i am going to ask you to do something very special. i'm going to ask you to trade with me, all right? will you bow your heads? the word we in the free world and each one of us in this room, we ask you that you help us to use the great american for a

model in our careers and our lives and for our country. that is our fallen hero, george h.w. bush. we ask this in jesus' name. what a great guy he was, by the way. i am sure most of you would be surprised, i am sure you would be surprised. he has had quite a career. i am glad to be here. this is the first time i have in here. i have been hanging around here for a lot of years but i haven't been out here. now i have an opportunity to talk to you. it is fitting that we are gathered here, and i say this, let me see a show of hands. all the i met students who are here. come on, i know better than that. i can see by the uniforms. anyway, you may be shy, you

won't when you get out of this thing. american know about heroes. you know about george bush, what you went through yesterday, i am sure you were watching. you know about lincoln and washington and all of our euros. there is one you probably don't know that much about and that is george marshall. he had more titles than anyone else. the chief of staff of the army, secretary of state, secretary of defense, one of america's greatest warriors and statesman. his words on the wall of this building remind us of the great responsibility placed on the shoulders of those entrusted with providing for the common defense. he said, "we are now concerned with the peace of the entire world and the peace can only be made by the strong." this is true. he was the one who, after world war ii, was saying that we

learned at that time that we would have to be involved in the whole world, not just us. onlyact that we would have , we would only be concerned about ourselves, there was a time when this actually did work , but now, at that time, we had 2 oceans separating us from our enemies. differentotally world. so we let things slide a little bit and we paid the price in world war ii. was the greatest single calamity in the history of our country. we learned that and the problem is, we are, and my message this morning, we could slip back into this. we don't have the opportunities we had at that time. marshall and his generation believed it was time for america to and the defense of the free defense to come to the

of the free world and maintain peace. in the years that followed, america rebuilt europe with a plan that was called the marshall plan. you have read about that. it was successful. he was a great american hero. we don't hear about him. we are the fortunate areas of the peace andf prosperity that marshall achieved. it is up to us to reclaim that inherited -- inheritance. it won't be easy. just like marshall did, we have the challenge of preserving peace in a dangerous world. our nation faces the most diverse and complex array of threats i can remember. , to beor everyone here aware, those of you who are senior officers, i appreciate you being here. i want to share with you, we have some problems out there. i am older than you and i can remember in all the time i was growing up, i assumed we had the

best of everything. that america always did. we knew the threats that were out there at that time, the threats are different right now than they have ever been before because this is pointed out in president trump's message when he said that we, our competitors, russia and china, we know our." competitors are out there and they are doing some things better than we are doing it. i look and i see some of the equipment they have compared to ours, they have been busy. we are going to talk about that. ,hen you go to the next group the threat we have from north korea and iran, that is another segregated area of threats we are facing. then we still have the islamist terrorists, and that is more under control than it was. for someone like me, i can remember the good old days when we had a country that was, we

had 2 superpowers and we knew what they had. they knew what we had. us, we bombed them, we all die and everyone is happy. that isn't the case now. now, it is not a superpower that we are worried about as much as it is someone who is not a superpower, who has the equipment and the ability to kill us. this is something that is different than a was before. these are the threats identified by the national defense strategy which offered a blueprint for preserving peace throughout the 21st century. it is up to us to follow it and that is what this is about today. i want to give you a few perspectives, some of which you may disagree with. i believe the decisions and it -- in preserving peace and defending our way of life in the 21st century would not be made

in beijing or moscow. those guys don't want peace. those decisions will be made by free citizens and that is you guys. john mccain believed that. when i think about picking up the torch john mccain left, to lead the armed services committee, i believe we must choose again to lead the free world. we must defend both our interests and our values and restore our military advantage against ambitious authoritarian adversaries. we must strengthen alliances and try to reach out and get new partners. that is a lot of, that is what the program is all about, to get people in here. i have to say to my friends who are part of the program who are here in the audience, we are trying to expand that. the relationships that have developed at this level, once we have these relationships, we are friends for life and this is something, if we don't do it, there is someone in the far east

that will do it. this vision will guard me and -- guide me as chairman, and let me go ahead and do something i wasn't going to do before. we have plenty of time for questions. we have a six-point program. these are my priorities as the chairman of the committee. first, we will use the national defense strategy to report as a blueprint. this is significant, if i can find it. this should be, i say this as the provost and president, this should be required reading for everybody in this room. twoad a hearing on this days ago. seen, the reports i have i was eight years on the armed services committee, 24 years on the senate armed services committee, we had countless reports coming in. this is the best and we have all said this. it was put together by democrats

and republicans. it was truly bipartisan. every person on here was appointed by either a democrat or republican or a house or senate member, so they are not raid to come out and tell the truth. everyone tarnishes the truth around this country. they don't let people know the real threat. through the last presidency, barack obama, that is when we had the problems in terms of what happened to us in , in our power with our." competitors. competitors. this talks about some of the conditions in this country. i say this to you guys in the military, attending here. this comes out of the report. the commission, this is the commission that we will use as a blueprint. it assesses unequivocally that the nds is not a resource.

strategic very near insolvency. america's military superiority is eroded to a dangerous degree. america's combat edge is diminishing or has been -- has disappeared in the last few years. here is the bad part. we knew it. we knew it was coming. this is knows a prize. you guys should have known it. not necessarily someone who comes from foreign countries, but we saw this coming back during the obama administration when we had chuck hagel, a good guy but we were never good friends. secretary of defense. he said, and this is a direct statement, when i read this out to real people in the real world and go back to my state of i didma and tell them, this back during the obama administration. chuck hagel, quote, "american

dominance on the sea, in the skies, in space can no longer be taken for granted." general dunford says "we are losing our quantitative and qualitative edge advantage over our adversaries." in terms of oklahoma, i am from that is where the artillery comes from. in terms of artillery, the army fication we can't let the navy off here. the vice c.n.o. of the navy said, admiral moran, for our entire hornet fleet, we have 62% that are not viable. so anyway. we knew this was happening. happening. problem we knew the problem was out there. and we had to start making up for it. this is where it's all found. anyway. we've got six priorities. the first priority is to use this

as our blueprint for our conduct on the committee. the second thing to make sure that we continue to get our bills out, authorization bills, that's what we did, the committee i chair, to get it out early. because quite often it doesn't get out early. we have to have it out and we're committed to getting it out before the end of the fiscal year which is october 1. now, we're going to do this, this is not a problem. because we did it last year. it's true that i didn't take over this position until just a few months ago, three months ago, i guess. but i was also doing it on an acting basis before that. we got busy and we set a record on getting our defense authorization bill out. i think it's the quickest in 40 years. so we're not going to have a problem doing that. there's a reason we have to do that. we have to get out of this mindset of c.r.'s. if we had a c.r. right now it would be a disaster. talk to any of you guys here know that. we don't want that to happen. that's the first thing.

the second thing is to rebuild our readiness. a lot of people don't -- talked about some of the problems that we're having. but we have other problems. when we stop and think about some areas where we're not as good, we're not doing as good a job as our adversaries. right now, during the -- up to two years ago, we had -- of our brigade combat teams, we only had 30% of them that were working. we couldn't deploy them for maintenance problems. same as with the army aviation brigades. we had 25% of those that were working. we had, the marines use the f-18's, only 30% of them were flyable. because the maintenance problem. i'm crit -- critical, of course, of president obama. you have to talk about these things. you -- defending america is supposed to be the number one priority. it's been my priority, it is to most americans. but then you'll get an

administration where it's not a priority. we won't through that prior to reagan coming in, back when he had the carter administration. for the eight years of the obama administration. so we had to take care of that and correct that. that's what we're doing. that's the second thing in terms of priority. the third thing is, we're going to have to modernize the forces for the great competition. we've been very busy focusing on the fight against terrorism, china and russia, they've been rapidly modernizing their militaries and unfortunately they've been doing a good job. we have a serious problem there. they're doing things better than we can do it. america's military advantage has eroded in key war-fighting areas such as power projections, cyber, space, electronic warfare, air, missile, missile defense, submarine warfare, long range ground-based fires. as a result the nonpartisan

national defense strategy commission report released this month warns america might struggle to win wars. this is a quote out of this document here that you're required to read. [laughter] is that all right? ok. that's good. we're going to do that. it says, we might struggle to win or perhaps lose a war against china or russia. and we're talking about now. there's no time to waste. we don't have any time to waste. we have to restore america's military advantage. if we fail to do so, the cost will be measured in american lives, maybe some of you here. that might have been avoided, could have been -- a conflict that could have been avoided. we need to prepare our army for high-end conflict. re-investing in areas like long-range fires, engineering, logistics, integrated air, missile and defense. we need to modernize our air force fighter and bomber fleets, increase procurement for advanced munitions and expand

our capacity and lift -- in lift and tanking and other areas. certainly intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance. we need larger and more lethal navy fleet. by the way, i was down in norfolk all damon. it's kind of disturbing -- day monday. it's kind of disturbing, they're doing a good job down there but that's the only place we can make aircraft carriers. when we see what some of the competition is doing, and i sure hope i have this here, i have a chart that shows that we're within two years of china actually passing us up in this capability. our aircraft carriers down there, we've had the guys who you're familiar with, this background, we've had for 40 years. so we decided to go with the ford class. great. ford class. better in all respects. bigger, more lethal. and it works. takeoffs, 50

landings. so we know it works. but there's a little problem. that is, the elevators that carry the weapons don't work. so right now, yeah, we can take off and land al and all, that but if you can't carry, it doesn't work. we don't see anything in the future. yet we are looking at and thinking there's a good possibility that we are going to -- yeah, yeah. this is the thing right here. it shows that we started out in year 2000, 318, the chinese may i have's ships -- navy's ships. right now the lines are crossing 271. e in 2015, we were there are 255. and they passed us in another two years. it's not as if we -- this is something the public is not aware of. i hope there's a lot of public that's watching. we're trying to communicate to them that we have to understand

that we have a problem, we're going to have to fix this problem and this is one area where we're going to do it. we need to modernize the marine corps. amphibious vehicles and the aircraft and maintenance service, proficiency and expeditionary warfare. we need to invest in advanced capabilities in space, cyber, electric warfare. we need to accelerate our investment in key technologies like artificial intelligence, quantum science, hypersonics. hypersonics, you know, a lot of people -- everyone -- this is probably the only audience i can talk to who knows what hypersonics is. the thing is, we were passed up. i know that putin lies a lot. so i don't believe this. but he said we have now passed up the united states in our hypersonics. the whole new weapons system. you talk to groups not like your group, but people who are not familiar with it. you think about what we can do. we've changed our -- how many hits per minute or per hour to a

fraction of a second. and so we have these things that are happening. in both china and russia, primarily russia. making great headway there. so, i want to underscore the significance of that to this group here today. the state of affairs is a predictable consequence of decisions made as the united states sought for years to reduce the role of nuclear weapons and to reduce the number of nuclear weapons. so that brings up another problem we have. we've been toying around for -- since the 1960's with our modernizing our nuclear weapons, our arsenal. we just quit doing it. all the time we weren't doing it, both of our peer competitors were doing it. and they are making great advancements right now. as the 2018 nuclear posture review pointed out, this is a quote from the report, it says, since 2010, no potential

adversary has reduced either the role of nuclear weapons in its national security strategy or the number of nuclear weapons it fields. rather they have moved directly in the opposite direction. russia's nuclear doctrine emphasizes the coresive and military value of both threat and actual use of nuclear weapons. russia's military thinkers apparently believe that they could de minaur escalate conflict on -- de minaur escalate conflict on favorable -- de-escalate conflict on favorable terms. if you don't believe this there's something you ought to read. it has an analysis of what our -- in the event that russia should decide to declare war on nato in western europe,

including our contribution to nato, they would win. it's there, it's real. it's not like it used to be. it's not like the old days -- old days. then there's china. if you want to be scared, look at china. it's also modernizing its nuclear arsenal, including seeking to achieve its own nuclear triad through the introduction of a nuclear-capable strategic bomber. so they're working the bombers, the submarines, icbm's. they are now saying that they are there. there's some question as to whether or not they've passed this up. i mean, china is a real force. i just got back from the south china seas. i took five members of the armed services committee. you look down there and see what china is doing. they're everywhere. the islands that they're creating down there, seven islands so far. everything down there -- they're equipped with nothing but bombs and military equipment. our allies in that part of the

world, i'm talking about the philippines, all of them over there, they think that they are preparing for world war iii. they look at all the things they're doing down there and they look at us doing very little, they're trying to decide whose side they're going to be on. anyway, you see them not just there but all over the world. i've had a mission for many, many years in africa. i'm very familiar with that. it happened that china didn't used to have, outside of its own city limit they didn't have anything out there in terms of a military operation. now look at djibouti. seven miles away from our marines in n'diaye beauty. they're there. as far south in -- djibouti. they're there. as far south in africa as tanzania. they're there. it's a scary thing. the national defense strategy commission, that's this document right here, described the combination of america's aging nuclear arsenal and our rival's vigorous modernization program disequilibrium.

russia is modernizing all three legs of its nuclear triad. china is completing its nuclear triad. to some, america's response should be to get rid -- we see this all the time. we need to get rid of our nuclear tried a and hope for the best. well -- triad and hope for the best. well, hope isn't going to do it. the united states must remain committed to a bipartisan nuclear modernization program outlined in the 2018 nuclear posture review. which is the plan is not cheap, operation eak, sustainment should consume just -- we've calculated 6.4% of our defense budget. and that's an affordable price to pay for the security we get from it. let's get back to the priorities that i have. we talked -- there's going to be six of them. we've already talked about three of them.

we talked about the defense commission report, blueprint. we talked about the ndaa. we are going to do that. we're online to do that now. we talked about the second thing, rebuilding our readiness situation. and the third, modernizing our force for great power competition. that's russia and china. so the fourth one is car -- caring for service members. d.o.d., civilians and their families. the education of kids, medical attention. this is something that they have an advantage over us, when i talk about them, i'm talking about the peer competitors that we have out there. because they don't care about people. they're expendable. this is a big cost, but it's one we have to continue to do that. or we wouldn't have a military. the fifth. the senate armed services committee will maintain its focus on defense reform. we'll conduct a rigorous oversight on the pentagon's efforts to pass an audit. we're doing that right now. we hadn't done that before. with that, i'm going to be able to and we're going to be able to

and you're going to be able to talk to the american people and let them know that we're getting the most out of our tax dollars that we're spending. to adopt to a new evolving threats we need to seek the time to award contracts and promote reforms. the big reform that we're always talking about is acquisition reform. i spent eight years in the armed services in the house. then 24 years in the armed services in the senate. i can tell you right now, i don't remember one year we didn't try to do something with acquisition reform. i'm from oklahoma. i'm pretty familiar with artillery. i remember when we were going to put together the crusader. remember the crusader? we spent billions of dollars on the crusader. wham. by the way, i have to say, as a partisan conservative republican, that was a republican president that did that one. then the future combat system. f.t.s. the same thing. so this is something that we're going to have to change. that's going to be a prime

thing. that's our fifth thing, in way of a priority, that worry going to have. -- that we're going to have in the senate armed services committee. all these priorities require resources. last but certainly not least, in fact, the most important, is to discuss the sixth priority, returning to strategy-driven defense bridges. national defense strategy commission, that's this book right here, warned unequivocally that the national defense strategy outlined by secretary mattis is not adequately resourced and that our nation is very near the point of strategic insolvency. strategic insolvency. that's kind of a scary thing. the commission has done our country a great service by courageously and clearly outlining the key defense enterprise challenges that we face. and it's very tough and uncomfortable conversation to have. but to avoid it, it's at our own

peril. so in 2009, i believe congress' mission is clear. until the v.c.a. caps -- lift v.c.a. caps, defense, eliminate the threat of sequestration. we know officers, you live through the sequestration threat that was out there in passing on-time and appropriation. we're going to do that. it's going to have to have sufficient funds to carry out our national defense strategy. it would be easy. all you have to do is make sure that everybody knows, and government knows, that our number one thing that -- priority in this country should be defense. it should be a no-brainer. people here, with your orientation toward the military, you know what i'm talking about. the general public doesn't. the general public, a lot of the media is making them believe that we don't have any threats out there. and a throft is a waste of money

-- a lot of this is a waste of money. i'll tell you right now, with the things we are doing, the priorities have not historically been there and they're going to have to be there. this parity. remember parity? we couldn't do -- the liberals in congress, both the house and the senate, say that for every -- of course this is the policy of president obama. for every dollar you put in the military, you have to put it in social programs. now that's not the kind of parity -- you know, there's an old document, nobody reads anymore, it's called a constitution. the constitution they say that there's two things that are really important in this country. we're supposed to be doing. me as a senator, what i'm supposed to be doing here in washington, we're supposed to be defending america and then infrastructure. they called them post roads back then. that's what we're supposed to be doing. that's our priority. if we had that as a priority, we're going to be able to do that. to do that we're going to have

to do what we're proposing is to remove those areas that affect the military from the restrictions that we have. caps. i'm a conservative -- conservative. i've always ranked as the top three conservative members of the senate and the house before that. but i've always made the exception in those two areas. defending america and the infrastructure. i was incredibly grateful for the partnership of our committee's top minority leader, senator jack reid, in this effort. working together as jack and i have. we should continue down the path toward a strategy-driven budget that give the troops and sustain and sufficient predictable funding that they need. it's got to be predictable. our contractors out there, it cost a lot more if they don't know from year to year what we're going to be doing. what our priorities are going to be. so we really feel that we are

working together and some good things are happening. but we've got to do is not repeat the mistake of the obama years by returning to arbitrary budget cuts. remember how much he cut in defense. by the way, of the things that i'm trying to stay within the time frame that i have, but i want to tell you that if you forget everything i've said, or if you're one who doesn't believe that what we went through, we're going to try to get out of, just remember this. that is, between the two years, using constant 2018 dollars, if you use constant 2018 dollars, between the years of 2010 and 2015, write this down, if fell, our defense spending fell from $586 illion in 2010, to billion five years later. in 2015.

that's a 24% reduction over a five-year period, you guys. i'm looking for some kind of expression out there. [laughter] there's got to be somebody concerned about that besides me. the media reports indicate the administration is instructing the pentagon to drop this down to $700 billion. by the way, when we got out of this thing in 2015 and made a commitment that we're going to start becoming competitive and start working in the right direction, things seemed to be working pretty well at that time. we were able to make some changes. and i can assure you, i spent the day before yesterday, well over, almost two hours with the president, with the vice president, with john bolton, with the administration talking about the things that we're talking about right now. that we're going to have to make -- give a priority. maybe it's something like exempting military from the budget gaps. there's a number of things that

we can do. but the main thing is to make sure that we are -- go to be in a position where we can compete primarily with our peer competitors. the president knows that. anyway. there's no strategic rationale for any cut. but i do recall the words of president reagan. he said, and this is a quote, he said, there is no logical way that we can say let's spend x billion dollars less. anyone who advocates a percentage or a specific dollar cut in defense spending should be made to say, what part of our defense would you eliminate? and he should be candid enough to acknowledge the cuts and what that would mean in terms of lives. that's what we should be doing. and that's what we're going to be doing. i know you hear these things. if there's one group that knows this and doesn't have to be told, it's you. and that is, don't trust the media. they're not going to tell you --

they'll tell you what sells media. i've heard concerns that some, and the administration, some actually in the house and the talked about a challenge, talking about reforming our entitlement programs, which is something we could do. but they're talking about doing -- with some -- with our the programs that we have in terms of our triad as an example. but the threat is out there and we can't let that -- the threat is greater than it was in the past. so, let me put in a plug before i finish up here. everybody hates trump. they do. they look at trump, they don't like -- hey, i have to admit. confession is good for the soul. every time i hear -- what do they call these, tweets? that a tweet is coming out, i cringe a little bit.

wouldn't it be nice if they changed the wording a little bit? but how else can he circumvent a media that hates him? if you look at the successes he's had, you ought to write these three down. you might even -- you're probably -- some of you in this room, among those who hate trump. well, that's all right. you but need to recognize what this guy has done. number one, the military. we are just reversing what happened to the military. that 2ds20 billion cut that was there, we're changing that -- $220 billion cut that was there, we're changing that. the judges. if you want judges. it's not just the supreme court justices that we know so much about. but how many in here are ast -- aware of the fact that he has confirmed more appellate judges, 29 of them in two years, than any president has done in a two-year period in the history of america. he's done that. and the economy. the economy's -- 4% unemployment is full employment.

if you were down there under 4%, and that's way down from where it was before. so we are really -- probably have the best economy that we've had in my lifetime. keep that in mind. didn't really fit in the presentation here. but you got to realize this guy is doing a great job. when i talk, i don't talk as a partisan, i don't talk as a member of the senate. kay and i just had our 59th wedding anniversary. we have 20 kids and grandkids and those are the ones i'm talking about. you chuckle a little bit and think things are partisan. that's fine. you can think what you want. but you look at what the statistics that i'm giving you, you got to realize that we're going to have to do this. anyway. we've made progress. our readiness recovery, we've invested in modernization for the great power competition. so i think we're doing a pretty good job at that. i'm urging president trump to consider -- look at it this way.

we went from -- after the last administration, we went into fiscal year 2018. fiscal year 2018 we had a $700 billion budget. keep in mind, that went down, that's still way below what it started out with 10 years before. we went down to -- in our fiscal year 2018, $700 billion budget. 2019, $716 billion budget. 2020, the president first nounced it was going to be $733 billion budget. if you read this book, it will draw you to the conclusion that you agree with and that is that we should continue for at least the next five years and have an increase in defense spending from 3% to 5% above inflation. if you take the $733 billion

that a lot of people think is too much for fiscal year 2020, and you take it as a percentage increase from 2016 from this ,ear -- i'm sorry, $716 billion that's 2.1% increase. that's all. that is not even -- so it's a zero-growth budget. we are entitled at least to that. i realize no matter what the budget, the congress receives from the administration, our work will have only begun. the two final years of the budget control act and no budget agreement in place. we're being told to expect the worst in the coming year. i don't believe that's going to happen. i believe that we all know that we need to -- a bipartisan budget agreement for the last two years of the b.c.a. and i think that we're going to be able to do that. forcing the department of defense to run on continuing resolutions or to endure another round of sequestration while we delay the budget agreement is

simply not a good idea. you talk to anybody -- i don't have to tell you this, because you who are senior officers here know what the cost is of a continuing resolution. we can't continue to do that. i think we're going to be able o overcome that. i hope the republicans and democrats in 2019 will spare our troops another partisan fight in defense spending. i find out a lot more when i'm in afghanistan in a mess hall or field someplace from our kids than do i from. so hearings we have here in washington. they're watching what we're -- from some of the hearings we have here in washington. they're watching what we're doing. they know all about china and russia and the threat that's being posed. so they're aware of that and we need -- anything we don't need to do is send them a message that we can't get along and agree on a reasonable budget. and we're not going to do that.

i would conclude with that and just say that we're back to george marshall again. he said, quote, we are now concerned with the peace of the entire world and the peace can only be maintained by the strong. then there's ronald reagan, we always remember what he said. he said, you know, we need to modernize our nuclear activity, modernize our missile defense. because if we don't have it, we might have to use it. he's the one who said, we want to keep a strong america and we want to have all this capability so dwonet have to use it -- so we don't have to use it. i hope that's what's going to happen to us. so with that i'll open it up and talk about whatever you want to talk about. [applause] >> like to sit here. i'll moderate the discussion for us. mr. inhofe: i'll sit there. if you've been married 59 years,

you learn to do what you're told. [laughter] >> good news, is you've all got a copy of the assessment of the strategy available to you. we've set aside some reading days for you toward the end of this month. to review that. [laughter] mr. inhofe: i really mean. that it's a great document. you'll know what i mean when you read it. it tells the hard truth about where we really are today. you don't get that just everywhere. that's why i think it's very important, particularly for people like you to be aware of it. >> that's right. i'd like to build upon a couple things you brought up. a couple of points from the commission's review. to start with the budget, one of our colleges, their focus of their curriculum is on the next resourcing the national security strategy. and the first time i talked to the students in this auditorium, i talked about a proposal to create a national defense university by george washington.

similar to what you just said, as a part of that, when president george washington addressed congress in the first budget, he said to prepare for war is one of the most effective -- eeffectual means of preserving the peace. similar to what you were saying. mr. yaeger: in the media, you've commented that $733 billion for defense spending is a floor, not a ceiling. that's been widely cited. you have also characterized past budgets as late, inadequate and shrinking. so i'd like to ask if you believe the military is on track to be fully funded in resource in fiscal year 2020? and why are you saying that $733 billion is a floor and not a ceiling? mr. inhofe: the reason is, it goes back to that report. it's set for the next five years and probably beyond. everyone's in agreement with this.

dunford is in agreement with it. certainly the secretary mattis is in agreement with it. that is, we have to have a minimum of three to -- 3% to 5% increase in the budget after inflation. we didn't really do that -- i mentioned that we went from the old figure to $700 billion, $716 billion, $733 billion. but even if we go to the $733 billion, that's no growth. because if you do the math, between $716 billion and $733 billion, that's a 2.1% increase. so i would say that everyone that we have asked in the committees that we've had, granted they're all military, agree that no growth, you can't go below no growth. that's a reason for that figure. mr. yaeger: ok. if past budgets were late, inadequate and slippinging, what are the characteristics of our

budget that would enhance rather than undermine both our readiness and national security more broadly? mr. inhofe: more broadly, i think it's the prioritizing -- prioritizing. again, i know i talked about that and maybe i talk about that too much. but it goes back to the constitution of what we're supposed to be doing. when i jokingly talk about the good old days, when we had two superpowers and we knew what they had and they knew what we had and mutual destruction and all of that, that's not the way it is anymore. these people, we need to have rogue nations like iran, this lousy thing we did with iran, did nothing but shift billions of dollars to them so they can continue being the world's leader in terrorism. if they have that capability, and they're rapidly gaining it, north korea, they've already shown clearly that they can range the united states of america mainland. so this is the kind of threat

that we have. that's why my best answer to your question is, you have to get that priority and that understanding that this is -- this is the most significant thing we can deal with today. mr. yaeger: ok. so we spend more on defense than china and russia combined. how do you determine how much we should be spending? mr. inhofe: you hear that all the time. i suspect that you don't believe. that but i do know that a lot of people are saying that. you hear that on tv every day. two things. first of all, they lie. [laughter] we don't know what they spend. why would they tell us what they spend? secondly, remember my point four of our priorities. is what we're going to do. they don't have to do any of that stuff. they don't have to take care of their people. they don't care what happens to their people. a communist country doesn't care. we don't know what that price

tag would be. thirdly, they have total control of what they do and what they report. any time you see china doing, as i mentioned, what they're doing in the south china sea, what they're doing in djibouti, what they're doing in tanzania and around the world, throughout europe and the middle east, you know that they are spending -- they're everywhere. consequently, the best answer i can give you to that question is not true. mr. yaeger: ok. the national defense strategy and past national military strategies have placed a distinctive value on the importance of our allies and partners. i want to shift to allies for a second. our student population includes wonderful representatives of those allies. given the scale, the breadth of our competitors, do you feel that the administration and congress adequately recognize ? e value of our alliances

mr. inhofe: i mentioned that two days ago, i had the opportunity to be with the president and the vice president and their cabinet. that's almost all they talked about. what we're doing -- for one thing, our allies, i mentioned this, in the south china sea, whether talking about the philippines, gaum, japan, people kind of question that we have strength to be good allies. because that's not what they see over there. they see what china's doing throughout that region. i think we've got to have the allies. if fact, i kind of like what's happening right now with the seven islands they have created in the south china sea. because people now are -- it's starting to effect our allies in that area. this is something we can't do alone. one of the big differences now, and before now, if you look at some of the european countries and other countries around the

world, they know that we don't have the resources that we had at one time. they know that we don't have the resources to participate with them. so we've got to build that up and that's one of the things that you'll see in this change in the distribution within the budget. what can we do that's going to help us in these areas? another discussion that came up last tuesday in the white house was, what are we going to be in a position to do with these allies? there's some question, how much of our funds should we take -- you know that they made a real effort in nato, for example, they're trying to get them to come up -- well, they came up a little bit and some countries did and most of them did not. so i think that -- i know the president will be criticized for some of the things he does against some of the e.u. countries. but he's doing that, we need them, we want them and they need us and they want us.

but they're going to have to come to the table, burden-sharing is comparable to -- not comparable to us, but supporting us. mr. yaeger: we are -- the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff university and one of the areas he's asked this academic year that we look at is strategic deterrence, which includes nuclear deterrence, which gets back to something you brought up with nuclear modernization. at an event in november on nuclear policy, your soon to be counterpart on house side, mr. adam smith, said, number one, on nuclear posture review, we cannot afford what they're talking about. and he goesen to cite our $22 million debt and the nuclear triad is beyond what we can afford. others are saying we need to choose between nuclear and conventional modernization. and to state the obvious, nuclear weapons are not cheap. but our nuclear weapons, driving

our national debt, and can we afford to keep the whole triad? mr. inhofe: let me say. this we're two different people. two different philosophies. mr. smith, now, he's a good man. he's someone i like personally. we've gone through several of the big four conferences to come up with defense authorization bill. in the past. we'll continue to do that. i think he made a mistake when he singled out our nuclear modernization. because as i read in that report, that report is freed to by all services, -- agreed to by all services, that that's our number one concern. our number one threat facing us right now. is what's happened to our nuclear capability. and when all of a sudden we wake up and we find out that we're dealing with something that was started in 1960's, and the vice major improvement we've made, and that was in the 1980's, the same time i don't think we're even aware of the fact that our

peer competitors were doing that. and as a result of that, that report comes out and says the number one threat facing us is the nuclear. so i think it was a bad choice. i think it's one that he and i will sit down and talk about. as far as being a conservative. yes. i've been ranked as a conservative. made it very clear in my presentation where my priorities are. i'm hoping that we will -- by the way, well, i think that we're going to see, even though the democrats have control of the house, we're going to see what it gets down to -- when it gets down to the area of defending america, that we're going to be much closer together. mr. yaeger: do you believe we need to choose between conventional -- mr. inhofe: no, we need them both. we need them both. we have to have them both. i can assure you, there isn't one senior uniform in here who doesn't agree with that. mr. yaeger: i want to shift to the great power competition which brought up the 2018

national defense strategy. prioritizes great power competition with china and russia as our highest defense priority. and the commission report that devaluated the new strategy said that in the report, that america's military superiority, the high-powered backbone of its global influence and national security, have eroded to a dangerous degree. what are the specific areas that you have with our military advantages over where russia and china have eroded? mr. inhofe: i think i'd have to go up there to the podium and get it. i have a sheet on the areas where china and russia are superior. seven mainly areas that we talk about -- major areas that we talk about. let me go and get. i want to answer you right here.

ok. now what, i -- oh, i would say areas such as ship building and maintenance. i mentioned that i spent monday down in norfolk. we don't have the capacity there. they are definitely ahead of us in that area. hypersonics. i'm inclined to think, and if this is a question we're asking six months ago, i probably wouldn't give you the same answer. now that we're seeing what they are doing in hypersonics, again, this is an evolution that gets us into another period of time. it has a huge impact on a ground war, for example. and i'm inclined to think that they're ahead of us in that. electronic warfare, we were watching what russia did in the ukraine. they are, i think, competitive or ahead of us there. our nuclear -- the triad. right now they've done more for their triads, all three of them,

i didn't take the time to give the detail as to which legs of the triad, but they're on all three legs right now. they didn't used to be. they weren't until recently. china wasn't until recently. they are right now. air defense, i think people realize that. then of course in artillery, dunford's the one that said both ina and russia have u.s. outgunned and outranked -- outranged. that's a scary thought. he knows what he's talking about. with that threat out there -- [inaudible] -- mr. yaeger: ok. i want to shift to africa. we brought up that before. you've been one of the foremost experts and leaders in congress on africa and the importance of u.s. engagement on the continent. as everyone knows e the lead architect of the creation of the u.s.-africa command.

our national defense strategy prioritizes great power competition with china and russia. both those countries are doing a lot more in africa these days. in what areas do you see chinese and russian activities on the african continent that worry you and what should we do to better compete? mr. inhofe: it's primarily china. because everywhere you go, china. there's kind of a saying there that america will tell you what you need and china build what is you need. keep in mind they don't hire anybody in africa. they bring their own labor in. that's part of their plan. they do this. there's not one, and i'm familiar with things that are happening all throughout africa, the coliseums that are being built, all the infrastructure that's being built. it's out there and they are doing it. but there's not -- there's not one that i can think of where they're not coming out ahead. either they want their oil, they want their energy they want

something that they have that we don't -- that -- or that china they wouldve, and so be the ones that i'd be most concerned about. what i thought you'd ask, because it wasn't too long ago that they were talking about -- in fact, i think it was mattis who was talking about even making some changes and bringing some of our troops out. there's some merit to that. i'd like to drop this out here because something's going to happen, i'd at least like to have my view on it. we need activity in africa. but the problem with africa is too big. you have a problem with somalia, then you have a problem in someplace you go from the east coast to the west coast and so if we had -- i've talked to them about this. an s-pad that was dedicated to africa. we wouldn't have to have necessarily the troops that are there. obviously you have to have the ones, marines primarily at the

embassies, we understand that. but if you have something so that if something happens, like in niger, we can respond to niger, zimbabwe. when we had to work down there, somalia. between those three areas, you're talking about -- it's like crossing the united states. that might be a better way of covering our interests in africa than actually trying to have it populated within africa, have he dedicated s-pad to do that. mr. yaeger: i'd like to open up some questions for the national defense university students. over here on the left. i've got a mic coming for you right here. inn if it's from another country, i'd like to have him

identify that. questioner: sir. polish armed forces. very glad to have you here, sir. 2,000 years ago, it was said that -- [speaking foreign language]. which means if you want to be prepared, to live in peace, be prepared to war. i'm grateful that you brought george marshall, which also said that you cannot compete basically by bringing more, but the same. so my question is how you see the role of the united states in not only convincing but ncouraging the alliance to spending, not only spend morgue for the defense, but to developing them and bringing new technologies. thank you. mr. inhofe: you know, it's a big

world out there. there are a lot of areas where you give a different answer to that question. some in western europe that we've already talked about, in terms of burden sharing. i was in lithuania not too long ago, where they -- in their case, in many of the former soviet union countries that are still very strongly on our side, they want to have our presence there. and our presence there is really more of a vision that they want. they want to have there -- it's fine when we go in, but they'd like to have us actually have dedicated people in those areas. some of those areas, we're doing that. john boozman is in on this issue. trying to do that. so it depends on what countries you are -- i didn't get the source of the first quote that you said, who that person was. did you hear that?

historian. a roman he lived since 59 years before our -- before christ, up to 18 before christ. he said -- [speaking foreign language] -- which means, if you want to live in peace, prepare o war. mr. inhofe: that's exactly. a more prominent quote has been ronald reagan. in order not to have to use -- during the time he was in office -- in order not to have to use, it you have to have it. if you don't have, it then you'll have to use it and it's too late. that's exactly what he is saying. it's true. a lot of wisdom there.

mr. yaeger: we need a mic down here. mr. inhofe: he's pretty loud. [laughter] questioner: good morning, sir. my name is robert lee with the state department. thank you for your comments and your service. you focus on the importance of defense in your remarks. and rightly so as the chairman of the senate armed services committee. you mentioned the need to protect the funds from -- defense from a percentage-wise budget cut in the upcoming budget. there's been -- mentioned the nuclear triad, but there's also another triad of sorts for national security and that's the three-legged stool that defense secretary mattis has talked about. in terms of defense, diplomacy and development. what are your thoughts in terms of the role that diplomacy and development should play in our national security and whether funding for those programs should also be protected? mr. inhofe: it's very important, mr. lee. i believe that my friends on the

senate foreign relations committee, we do talk to each other. we don't always agree with each other. my feeling has always been, yes, we need to try, the three legs you're talking about. but we need also be prepared if it doesn't work. what is the single thing that is most helpful when you are in a type of negotiation? it's the strength of the person with whom you're negotiating. so i think we're in agreement there. i'm in agreement with my friends in the foreign relations committee. we talk about this issue all the time. if you're in negotiations on something, it could be a peace initiative, it could be anything else, you're also -- you're always better off if you are the strength. i always remember what phil graham used to say back when he was serving. he said, we all lust for the days when the alonzo and the lamb -- lion and the lamb lie

down together, but when that happens, we want to be the lion. [laughter] mr. yaeger: air force colonel in the back. questioner: good morning, chairman. united states air force. thank you very much for coming and talking to us today. i completely agree with your comments that we need to have a robust military spending, conventional nuclear, but i'm also a little concerned about our near $22 trillion debt. how do we increase our defense spending and the appropriate spending to the correct level without adding to that debt? i think two potential answers re increasing taxes or entitlement reform. if your answer is either one of those, i was wondering if you had a plan or if the senate, your fellow senators, are working on a specific plan to address those. mr. inhofe: when i came in here,

i thought that i was going to be on for 20 minutes longer than i was. one of the things i had in there was this documented thing that if we eliminated all our defense, we would still have a deficit. there's only one way to address that and that is entitlement reform. yes. i would be very supportive of entitlement reform. there are programs that people are talking about, but that's where the money is. that's where the savings is. i don't think a tax increase is going to do that. because -- but what we can do is reprioritize. when we went into the situation that we went in to for fiscal year 2018, we had to do something. what we did is we gave a new priority. not as well as it should. because parity was still in place. we finally broke parity in fiscal year 2019. i would say two things. first of all, reprioritize where the defense is, where it has been historically in this

country. and secondly, just flat exempt the defense spending from the budget caps. until we get this corrected. to gost way to correct is after entitlement reform and i am one to support that. mr. yaeger: down here. another air force. questioner: good morning, sir. air force. so this question's going to be very similar to our previous one. almost a follow-on in a way. i'll dig a little deeper in that we've heard quite a bit about our resources against peers, iran, north korea, terrorism, that sort of thing. what concerns me more is this budget that's the foundation for all those resources we would need to fight them. so when we see statistics like

our debt is currently at 78% of our current g.d.p. and if nothing changes it will be at 152% by 2045, with those kinds of numbers and the concern that if we do get to that point, confidence in the dollar or treasury bonds and that sort of thing could erode worldwide, do you consider the status of our debt as a defense problem or just an economics problem? thank you. mr. inhofe: i'd go back and say that you're not going to resolve it without the reforms, the mandatory spending. that's where the money is. the discretionary part of our budget is very small. that's why i use the statement that if you did away with the military altogether, you still would not be in the position we want to be in. i would say, it's got to be entitlement reform. and are reprioritizing. i have to give you the same answer -- let me qualify something here. i've always been in fact, come

visit me in my office, i have pictures of where i've been the most conservative member for quite a few years in the united states senate. i am concerned about that. look, i've got 20 kids and grandkids. i'm concerned about them paying for stuff that we're doing today. that's why we -- we're going to have to get to a solution to the problem. you can't do it without entitlement reform. i'm willing to do that. that isn't my committee. there are different people working on that in the financiale committee, the budget committee -- financial committee, the budget committee. we're going to have to do that to resolve that problem. i'm glad you feel that way. we're not going to do it on the backs of our kids, risking their lives. questioner: sir, i'm from the italian navy. sir, the national security strategy, china is defined as a competitor. you're talking about china as a

threat. also -- i don't think anything has changed during numbers or trends. we know very well that china ships are increasing, more than the u.s. ships. but in terms of quality, it's another matter. they have very old ships. not very -- cannot compare with the u.s. navy. so my question is, why are we changing from a from competitor to threat? what are the assumptions, what has changed between one year ago and now? mr. inhofe: what's changing the threat from china -- from one year ago to now? questioner: no. in the national security strategy. china is not a threat. it's defined as a competitor of the united states. -- may, -- [inaudible] increasing could actually escalate in a way the tension

between the two countries? mr. inhofe: i'm not sure i understand what you're saying. on sanctions, that's another issue altogether. i'm from oklahoma. we're an ag state. we're some that have been punished by sanctions of this administration. on the other hand, it seems to be working. we over here, things are different in italy than they are here. over here we've worked on this for a long period of time. and we've been at a competitive disadvantage for quite a long period of time. with the chinese in our negotiation. i think that we can change, we can have a happy ending to that thing. in the meantime, we have to keep in mind, i don't say -- i say competitive. yeah. but i also say threat. when i was making my presentation, i talked about a threat. i'm talking about china having equipment and resources that we don't have. in terms -- some modernization.

they are in areas that are areas where they are our allies and yet our allies, such as in the china sea, they're set sithing back and wore -- wonder -- sitting back and wondering, is america really, you know, who is the threat to who in that area? all i can say is that i consider anyone who has anything better than we do militarily to be a potential threat. and my job is to try to minimize that. mr. yaeger: we've got time for one more question from the audience. mr. inhofe: this is where someone stands up with a notebook. g mr. yaeger: go ahead. army. questioner: national war college. sir, i'd like to ask you a question on the unique relationship between the senate, the sack and the military. both from general officers coming up to testify on the hill, but also staff coming out to visit us in the field.

what are your expectations, what do you recommend us as we move into our career, where we get a little bit more of that interaction? mr. inhofe: yeah, yeah. there's a program that was started, i guess it was under the first bush administration, that gives us -- people from the services, i rotate mine. i always keep one -- in fact, one is with me here in the audience today. and that is a great program. letting people in the military know how things are really run. it's a shock treatment to most of them when they get up there. but it's great. when they leave -- during the time frame they are there i'm talking about the military it fellowship program, where they'll come in for a year, you fall in love with them during that year. you defend on them during that year. when they leave, they go back and they tell the truth about what the problems are and why. for example, they'll wonder -- they'll serve in an office where

defending america is not a priority. but they get back before they can actually talk -- i can't think of anyone that will be better informed. there are probably some here in this audience that have gone through that program. we had, i won't mention his name, we had a president once that didn't like the program. didn't think it was good. and didn't think it was a good idea for the military to notice what's going on. i disagree with that. .together. isan assure you, as one who with me now and will be leaving in december, he's going back better equipped to defend america and be a good soldier than he was when he came in a year ago. timeor, thank you for your . one question before you go. very unpredictable world. like to hear your

production on the orris -- on the orange bowl. mr. inhofe: oklahoma is going to win. >> thank you. [applause] >> in her briefing today, house minority leader nancy pelosi dismissed the idea of democrats approving funding for a while on the southern border. in exchange for legislation benefiting undocumented children. she also talked about negotiations over spending bills to continue funding the .overnment >> you mentioned a meeting with the president on appropriations.

there seems to be a push on the wall. they might have trouble moving legislation on the wall. bills that fail this year on the wall. it would you be willing to support some degree of wall funding if you got a permanent solution on daca? ms. pelosi: no. they are two different subject. negotiation in this i think i can say it would not be a surprise we would like to go in and say it is december. the time we have lost, another week for a legitimate purpose but nonetheless we are getting expires to when thisr -- to when this cr expires. , we haveat two weeks before us all of the factors.

the issues that we need to make a decision. i think what we can do that pass six billsto where the members of the appropriations committee have come to terms. left to their own devices the appropriators can come to a good conclusion. for homeland a cr security as we go forward. pretty much what our position is now. >> saturday at 8:00 p.m. eastern, conversations with two retiring members of congress. lamar smith of texas retiring after 30 years in -- 32 years in the house. uano.ichael cap >> you faced a contentious primary. that that surprise you? >> i've been telling people for a while my constituents are

angry. they are angry at the democratic party for not standing up for certain things. they are angry that donald trump got elected. the way he has governed. everyone wants look at partisanship because it is a shorthanded way to say it. forget we have a republican of if not bene most of a chronic state in the country and he is one of the .ost popular he just won an overwhelming victory. the partisanship is not in. it's how you do it. my constituents are upset, want change. i knew it would be a tough primary. >> you are a mr. smith goes to washington. >> the jimmy stewart movie with that title, i have to say i played on that theme when i ran for congress in we have bumper stickers that said send mr. smith to washington.

might be ant interesting idea to try to auction off a poster from the and i called jimmy stewart, who is a republican, and he autographed a poster for me, which we auctioned off at my first or second fundraiser in san antonio. i had a friend pay $1000 for that poster, the biggest contribution we had so far. he has the autographed jimmy stewart poster at his house today. that brings back happy memories. >> representatives lamar smith o on c-span capuan and c-span.org and listen on the c-span radio app. coming up this weekend on book tv, saturday at 7:00 p.m. eastern lindsay hilson talks

about the life and death of war correspondent marie colson with her book, in extremists. the person who went in further and stay longer. always the person who is that it brave or than the rest of us and she was the person who always got the best stories and may the rest of us feel just a little bit ashamed. >> the national review's richard burr kaiser discusses his book on the career of supreme court chief justice john marshall. >> marshall was always the smartest man in the room. wereof his colleagues brilliant themselves but they all acknowledged his superiority. >> at 9:00 p.m. eastern, fox news host tucker carlson talks about his book ship of fools interviewed by chairman of the american conservative union. >> if you give everybody to vote

but only a small percentage share in the spoils everybody else is going to be angry and they are going to punish you with the political power they had and elect populist. populism is always a red alert that something is wrong in your democracy. trump, itou think of is a warning to the rest of us that this is going in the wrong direction. the population could not get the attention of fish the attention of policy makers. maybe this orange guy will get your attention. c-span2.book tv on >> now, conversation with congressman keith walked this -- he talks about the makeup of the next congress. this is 25 minutes. rothfus representing

southwest pennsylvania. defeated a month ago today for reelection by democratic congressman conor lamb. yours was one of more than 40 -- 40 seats that swung into the democratic column. what lessons should be taken from a shift that large? >> the american people like to have a balance. if they see one party getting all the attention they might say it's time to make a midterm check and i think that is what we saw. in pennsylvania we had a different situation in my district. the completely new district with this pennsylvania supreme court deciding to in pose a map outside normal constitutional procedures. substantially changed my district. , see what by district

people are talking about. many factors going into any different number of races. host: was this more of a midterm check -- more than just a midterm check? a tweet last night saying democrats national lead in houseboats surpassed 9.7 million it is now 8.6%, the largest midterm raw vote ever and the largest percentage margin since 1986. mr. rothfus: what were the democrats running on? what policy proposals were they talking about? i did not hear much so i think they were talking about a check and i think the american people see the news, the chaos they perceive coming out of meanwhile we were trying to focus on the great economy we have achieved. ,e did what we said we were due reforming the regulatory environment. significant growth over the last

year. .here's more than that people are concerned about health care, the direction of health care. we had a proposal that we were trying to get out there communicated to people. more choice over a 10 year period reducing premiums unlike the regime we have now, increased cost. chelsea clinton talking about the crushing costs associated with obamacare. how do we do health care reform? we maintain protections for people with pre-existing conditions. an important issue for every family -- host: democrats running a whole lot of ads on health care this cycle. mr. rothfus: i tried to get our message out. we did exactly that. especially in legislation we passed. you have a lot of misinformation about this legislation we worked on. .he fact remains the same

we have significant cost associated with health care in this country. .eople should have more choice the affordable care act ago way the right for people to choose a plan that works for their family . you can protect people with pre-existing conditions but going forward we have to look at a health care reform package that will give more flexibility to people. host: democrats ran a lot of ads about donald trump. how much blame should he get for losses in the house in 2018? mr. rothfus: there were not any ads really about donald trump in our district. i think we were focused on the economy, focused on the things we have done and trying to draw those differences we have between parties. host: keith rothfus with us. phone lines, republicans, (202) 748-8001. democrats, (202) 748-8000. independent, (202) 748-8002. six years in congress.

what is your biggest accomplishment? mr. rothfus: a remarkable six years. you take a look at the economic reforms over the last couple of years, significant work done on the financial services committee . very proud of the work we did. i did a piece of legislation that restored the rights for seniors to switch medicare advantage plans effective this coming year so that seniors choose the wrong plan, they have another crack at it from january 1 to march 31 to get back into a plan they would like to have, working with constituents across the district solving those cases you have with veterans, with seniors who are concerned about a benefit they learned. it's been a remarkable six years. host: is there one case in particular you remember? mr. rothfus: we got a call from a constituent having an issue with medicare and getting a prescription authorized.

this was a couple days before christmas. we were able to get it done. the patient was able to get home for christmas eve. cases getof these addressed by every congressional office. a resource the american people should know about if they have an issue with any federal benefit whether it is social security, the veterans administration, use your local representatives office as a resource. host: when is up first from birmingham, alabama. a democrat, good morning. >> my comment is i want to make a comment and i don't have a question. you were saying about the message the-- the democratic constituents because you all stopped having town halls. people were really concerned

about pre-existing conditions. you over going to court trying carereaten the affordable act. we are awoke. he's the president of the united states and i don't want to be rude with the beautiful eulogy that went on for george h w bush yesterday. donald trump has done so much with what's going on in america. look at many votes the democrats won this time. a record number that has never been done. , you all have got to talk to people. inm a black woman birmingham, alabama. we voted for doug jones because we are sick of racism, division. is america. if america falls we all fall with america. you got to talk to everybody.

mr. rothfus: the effect of the matter is we had a health care plan that didn't interest pre-existing conditions. the fact of the matter is you have skyrocketing costs in health care. i have yet to hear any solution from the democratic side of the aisle on how to deal with that. earned by our ofiors through a lifetime work and to open a program that will cost $32 trillion over a 10 years is not right. that is not the direction we should be going in. we want to mitchell sure people have access to affordable health care. -- we want to make sure people have access to affordable health care. i think history is interesting because back in 1992 you would not have heard the accolades about president bush we heard yesterday. host: you were at the state funeral? mr. rothfus: a beautiful

service. i think everybody who got up and spoke about president bush hit the nail on the head about his life of service. you have to look at what is going to unite this country. look at the 1850's and what abraham lincoln was talking about. he was adamant about going back to what was in the declaration of independence. the idea that we recognize god-given rights. he said go back to the declaration. the notion of government for the people, by the people and here we have washington, d.c. who seems to have the regulatory state that wants to micromanage american life. deciding what will be in your health care plan, what kind of energy you will use. this is a big country and you have to allow the american people to make these decisions. host: tampa, florida is next. philip, a republican. good morning.

caller: the congressman stated earlier he felt like his district was unconstitutionally redistricted. can he elaborate on that statement? on that point i would also like to know what is the path ahead for republicans. i have not heard him articulate what he sees the path ahead for republicans to getting back control of the house. mr. rothfus: great question. the federal constitution is clear. it delegates to state legislatures the responsibility for conducting congressional elections. including drawing congressional maps. there was a lawsuit filed that went up to the pennsylvania supreme court. the supreme court found the map -- rather thann giving the state legislature time to draw a new map based on that opinion they imposed

themselves a map drawn by profession -- a professor who had no appreciation for various unique issues going on with in pennsylvania. i represent johnstown, pennsylvania. in my current district. this professor decided it would be a good idea to split the community between two representatives. no state legislature would ever have done that. there's no transparency in this process. this is why state legislatures are supposed do this work, to understand what is going on in a drawing of a congressional map. host: you think gerrymandering is a problem when it comes to the drawing of these maps? mr. rothfus: you want to take a look at how maps are being drawn . you can question one line being put in one place or another. i look at the new map pennsylvania supreme court put together a predominantly

democrats into this new district i was running in and leaving other suburbs out. i think the key is to have transparency. to have open hearings so that people understand why maps are being drawn the way they are. host: philip wanted to know what the path back is. mr. rothfus: to talk about what this country is and could be. to understand what you empower the american people versus empowering washington. you take a look at challenges we have, health-care, border security. we are struggling with this opioid crisis. 90% of the heroin in our country is coming from mexico. we are to do more work focusing on what the cartels have been doing. we have to have border security. we had to know what's coming into the country. you have those drugs or in over the border. whether it is carolyn, fentanyl coming in from mexico and china,

methamphetamines. if that is not a reason to secure the borders i don't know what it. mexico has an interest in securing the border because there are southbound flow of illicit cash. host: eric is in pennsylvania. mr. rothfus: i would like to ask you a question that has a qualifying preamble. given your district being immediately south of the one i moved into and invested in about ableade ago, you might be to answer this honestly. i've been puzzled in my time in erie. given that these districts in western pennsylvania do often go for republicans i wonder if you would be willing to speculate or speak what you know on how and why that is given these areas are very high percentage social services recipients.

a lot of retirees. people living on those kinds of fixed incomes. those sorts of things. i have spoken to peers in your he for eight or nine years about how i perceived the community to be pretty racist. a clear redline segregated areas that confused me. i have not seen that in other places. to the day,r ago your he got the distinction of being the worst city in america to be black in. they rated them one through five and erie got number one. the homicide rate is setting a record. my property values have been nosediving since about 15 minutes after i bought them in 2009. it is just puzzling to me how there is a republican foothold in such places. is it that the kinds of people that should be voting are not?

is it actually that racism really does factor into people's voting and their identifying with those elements in the republican party? that are pretty overtly willing to express racist leanings -- mr. rothfus: ivo's run my campaigns about the idea of getting every american back in the game again. too many people have been sidelined. if we want this country to work. i look at the challenges we have ahead making sure we are meeting on socialobligation security and medicare. we need as many people working as possible. that means everybody. to go off the highways and byways and talk about the opportunity we need to have, that's one of the things i'm excited about. the opportunity we have in the tax bill. one of the most undersold pieces of this tax bill that will bring private sector investment into the communities.

that is what we should be focusing on. host: is that a failure of messaging that this was undersold? mr. rothfus: i get is a failure on the part of the media. the rhetoric that came out about this was some kind of give away -- we are seeing average families in pennsylvania will make 75,000 dollars a year having more than $2000 back in their pocket. the top 1% are paying a greater share of the federal tax burden after this tax bill was passed than before. you take a look at the opportunity zone program. communities that for decades have not had the kind of hybrid sector investment that washington, d.c. has. you drive across the bridge in this town and just this morning counting 16 construction cranes. this area seems to never want for economic growth. we have to have that growth back in the rest of the country.

host: west chesterfield, new hampshire is next. ron, good morning. caller: you guys rock. i love the show. representative rothfuss, i am honored to speak with you this morning. i have a comment. a question. a little bit of everything. i guess there's not a huge difference between the huge -- between the far right and the far left. you could call me the far left because i will be voting for bernie sanders again and i would like to tell you why . as far as i know he is the only candidate for potential candidate for 2020 that believes we need to invest in our general population. other countries, communist countries and socialist countries, they all invest in the population. they invest in their populations health. the general population, not the

top 15%. they can afford to go out and get the best health care and education. all of the large industrialized nations, they invest in their populations. health, education, higher education. we don't do that here. you're basically on your own. you set for health care it's a matter of being able to choose your own doctor. for a lot of us we are lucky to be able to have one doctor that we can go and see any point. mr. rothfus: a lot of people lost her choices on health care and you get one insurer. that was not supposed to happen. i appreciate you talking about bernie sanders. bernie is authentic. andays it as he sees it communicate that to people. we talk about the far right and the are left. most people are not far right or far left. people are looking for practical solutions.

talking about abraham lincoln earlier, lincoln looking to find what united this country, there are philosophical differences at play you see on the far right or far left. do we go back to this framework that was in the declaration of independence? talking about self-government, sovereignty in the people. rights given by god, not by the state. president kennedy talked about that in his inaugural address. god, nots do come from from the generosity of the state . and that within that context what can we be doing to move this country forward? host: what are you going to do on january 4? mr. rothfus: i'm taking a look at that. incredible privilege to do what i've done the last six years. and he challenges ahead. to talk about the debt we are looking at in this country.

how we get a handle on that as we look at the next generation coming up and how do we make sure that we have a growing economy that's going to give people the kind of opportunities where they can realize their god-given dreams. president reagan set never say never. there are seasons for everything. the season of my time in congress is coming to an end at this point. i'm not going to rule anything out for the future. host: nancy's, republicans, go ahead. caller: i wanted to call and give a wonderful comment in reference to the people of pennsylvania. my own father was originally from youngstown. and the family was very interested in medicine. everything my father taught me growing up, he was a world war ii veteran. he met my mom from louisiana

and. the thing is what he taught me my entire life is that there are people there that have no way of helping themselves. it was up to me to take care of those who could not speak or do for themselves. state that from a history and ic just wish everyone would look at this country as a piece of everyone from pennsylvania, the good people from louisiana and obviously still in need of a lot of help. you look at texas going through another horrible hurricane. you look at the west coast with the fires. we all live in this united states of america.

coming from baby boomer at the bottom but when my father and mother spoke about being of fair mind, my dad owned his own pharmacy. when he passed away he was owed over $50,000. he did not care. host: thanks for the call. a nice advertisement for pennsylvania. mr. rothfus: it is the keystone state. it is where america started. the signing of the declaration of independence in 1776. western pennsylvania i argue built the nation. the industry in the early 20th century. that western pennsylvania i think is a big part of rebuilding this country when you look at the groups we had whether it is financial services, manufacturing,

technology, really world-class educational institutions. world-class health care three at western pennsylvania is a unique place. host: william is waiting in georgia. caller: i would like to know what happened to the 50 or 100,000 kurds left hanging out to mr. and what happened dan quayle? . will finish and listen mr. rothfus: back to the first iraq war there was debate at the time do you go beyond liberating kuwait. there was decision made not to go into iraq. there was a no-fly zone established that was pretty much

held between the time of the end of the first gulf war and the iraq invasion in 2003 in response and part of what was happening to kurds. the kurds of been a tremendous ally to this country over the last number of years. we want to make sure they will be protected going into the future. dan quayle was at the funeral. we had the vice presidents lined .p it was interesting because someone made the point that the only vice president who has served since 1977 who was not in that lineup was president george h.w. bush. host: what happens 15 days from now when we head that next government funding deadline if this extension does get past?

mr. rothfus: we've got to get to work. the balance of the appropriations bills needs to be passed. the president has been insistent on the need for border security. i echo the concern i look from a drug perspective and what's been going into the country northbound and southbound into mexico. we had to do a better job interdicting these flows of .llicit cash and narcotics that's a thing we should be focused on. host: congressman keith rothfus. appreciate your time. >> also on washington journal this morning, democratic congressman john garamendi looks ahead at the congressional democrats take control in january. this is 25 minutes. host: democratic congressman john garamendi, joining us. au've been around congress

decade. you've been through funding sites before this funding fight before. where does this end? mr. garamendi: in a positive way. there is no appetite i can feel in congress for a government shutdown. it would take a president that simply refuses to accept anything other than his $5 billion for a wall. that being the case, we will see what happens. but there's no appetite for it. on thes there appetite democratic side of the aisle to meet the president halfway on the wall? mr. garamendi: there's always a deal to be done. host: what is a good deal in your mind? 1.6, currently what is being offered. it is for border security. a big beautiful wallpaper by mexico is not going to happen. certainly mexico is not going to pay for it. what is a wall going to do and there are many other things that could be done? , waysonic surveillance

that are much more effective than a wall. a wall or fence is important in some places. some of it needs to be repaired, some needs to be extended. we can do that. host: currently a lot of u.s. troops on the border. how long are they going to be there? mr. garamendi: not much longer. as the election is over. those troops went there for election purposes. they will be coming back to their bases. probably somewhere in the range to $100 million to send the troops there. troops need to be doing programs toilitary deal with contingencies of war and peace. host: a lot of them in california. have you visited the troops on the border? not this round. i have in the past. we've had national guard there for more than a decade. they continue to provide specific services.

host: what are they doing now? mr. garamendi: it looks to me like they are putting up wire and standing around wondering what in the world are doing their. political season is over they can come home now. host: if you want to join the conversation, republicans, (202) 748-8001. democrats, (202) 748-8000. independent, (202) 748-8002. want to talk about another issue you you have talked about before, the lead story on today's washington post and several other papers, the new report about global carbon emissions pitching the heart -- the highest levels on record according to projections by scientists that came out yesterday. this is after two years in which global emissions were largely flat and now rising again. mr. garamendi: what does mr. trump want to do? he thinks coal is beautiful. when all of this is over two generations from now, the sea

level has risen three feet and cities around the world are continued crisis of hurricanes and fires are decimating a population of millions -- hundreds of millions are forced to move because of climate change they will look back on the president trump era and say why did you do this to us. .hat you do this to us future generations will vilify this president not because of all of the obnoxious and incredible things he's doing with tweets but rather what he did in removing the united states from leadership on the climate crisis it is horrendous problem. problemsdency has many but no problem reaches the height of his refusal to deal with the climate crisis. host: what can you do in the new congress to solve this problem?

mr. garamendi: hammer away at the issue. i've been doing this since 1978. this is a huge on growing crisis. the united states has to be a leader. we can't lead when we have a president that refuses to acknowledge that this is an issue. host: what are your thoughts on the lead editorial in usa today saint to save the planet create a super lobby on this issue. say what you will about the national rifle association's approach to gun control it has been ruthlessly successful, they write. it is time for climate activists , businesses and everyone else who cares about the fate of the earth to take a page from the nra playbook. mr. garamendi: whatever is necessary. lobbyingkind of is necessary. usually they have different solutions. what we need to do in congress is to coalesce around this issue

and develop a specific set of solutions. we know we need to change the energy economy of this nation away from carbon fuels that means tax policy that means investment, research that means the united states needs to do what it did when it built the interstate highway program and decided to take on world war ii. it is the coalition of america's greatness around solving this problem. you've got to go to renewables. move away from carbon. have a tax policy that it can't push is that. yet to have incentives to do the green economy that takes congress to lead. the democrats in the house of representatives will lead. we were elected to lead in a different direction and we will do so. when we talk about infrastructure we will be talking about infrastructure that is green infrastructure.

we will not be talking about enhancing the coal industry. a greenbe talking about economy and investing in ways to do that. electric cars and the rest. the line for democrats, go-ahead. , i heard agressman report the other day on npr, september 10, one day before 9/11, donald rumsfeld went on the air and made a speech about the waste and fraud in the pentagon. he said he -- he said there was $2.3 trillion missing from the back one the pentagon day before. the next day 9/11 happened. not that story off the headlines. i'm wondering if you guys in congress ever discovered where that money is. we're spending enormous amounts of money on defense budget.

i understand we spend more than the next eight countries combined. mr. garamendi: he raised it critical issue. one that has been plaguing the pentagon in the military for decades. auditis yet to be a full of where the money is spent on a yearly basis by the military $700 billion. almost three quarters of a trillion dollars annually for the department of defense. about 50 or 60 of that goes to support the wars in iraq and afghanistan where we have spent over a trillion dollars on those wars. host: they tried to do that audit recently and failed. what is a going to take for the pentagon to pass an audit? mr. garamendi: it's going to take congress to continue to hammer them which we will continue to do. give the republicans credit. they went after them together with the democrats. we will

continue to do that. there's 700 plus billion dollars flowing into the pentagon. how is it spent? clearly some of it is misspent or not used. we need to continue to go after this. the new democratic leadership on the house armed services , we will hold the pentagon accountable. are they spending the money wisely? are we giving them the direction they need. host: president trump wants to see if i percent cut from the pentagon's budget. is there room to cut? mr. garamendi: probably. let's start with the new nuclear arms race that we are now engaged in with russia and china . well over a trillion and-a-half

dollars over the next 15 years or so that we will spend on building new new their weapons and delivery systems for each one of those bombs. a very dangerous world in the decades ahead. host: carl, independent, good morning. congressman, i am a retired military i travel all around the world. i see global warming is an issue. road --hey have a soap a silk road. you go down to africa. you don't have a lot of vegetation in those areas. what is happened in the last 40 cuts, a lot of countries the timber and trees so we've got to what vegetation back on the earth so it can absorb the heat from killing everybody. mr. garamendi: thank you for your service in the military and in those particular wars.

you correctly observed that we , expansionification of deserts around the world and the abuse of the environment in many countries. you are seeing this in africa. the deserts are moving south displacing millions of people. , saidntagon, 20 years ago that the wars of the future will involve the migration of people because of climate change and that is definitely happening in many parts of the world. we see some of that happening in varioused dates as parts of the country are drying out and burning out as they have in california over the last month. it is a very real problem and will lead to conflicts and war in many parts of the world. host: william, oklahoma. democrat, good morning. caller: good talking to you.

thank you for speaking with us. i'm 74 years old and i've always voted. witheally having a problem the definition of democracy. i'm not sure now i even know what democracy is. at the federal level i can vote on any issues or any problem. vote may be nullified by the electoral college. i can vote for my representative or senator but actually he may not be mine. he may represent the opposite party. he will support those that support him or her. i'm having a problem trying to figure out where is this democracy. mr. garamendi: you have raised an important set of issues and that has to do with the way in

which we conduct our democracy here in america. presumably every vote counts and every eligible citizen that is 18 years of age and a citizen of the united states should be able to vote. what we've seen in the last elections, particularly this one in november, that is not the case. in many parts of the country the state governments, local governments, are enacting specific programs to reach strict voting. more than 100,000 people removed from the rolls in georgia. polling places shut down so that people had to line up for hours to vote or could not get to the polling places. the very first bill that the democrats are going to introduce , dealingy 3 is hr one with voting rights across this nation. we will do everything we can to

stop the activities of those who are repressing and stopping people from the ability to vote. we've seen what's going on in north carolina right now. hr one. that. it also deals with corruption. requires that there be light shined upon every contribution. tax or black contribution will be allowed. every person, every corporation that is involved in election will be required to report where their money comes from and to whom it is going. we think this is one of the most important reforms so that our democracy can actually work. thank you for your concern. host: i think the caller was talking about being a democrat in a red state. what do you do about the stark

division between red states and blue states? people going to their separate camps and not talking to anyone in the other camp. mr. garamendi: get involved in the electoral process. get involved in running for office. support candidates. win or lose, it is the process. you are not going to win all the time. .'ve lost a couple of races i've been in 34 and lost two. that is ok. it's when people attempt to get involved and attempt to get -- attempted to vote and they cannot is when democracy fails. host: kathy, independent, go ahead. caller: good morning. i was really disappointed in the opening statement about the border. -- i'm sorry, i was watching on tv.

the people's position has never changed. in california there's a lot of problems with voting. i don't think it's right that you can only vote for one of two democrats and a lot of the positions on the alleged in's -- in the elections. the people's positions have not changed. i remember when governor brown sued the federal government to close the border. it is all of you that have changed. you have been one democrat that i've supported over the years and it was sad to hear you say this. 30 years and decades of people wanting this. politicians running on closed borders and now we have a president that is doing it. i want you to know how disappointed i am. mr. garamendi: i did not say no border security. i said be smart about how we spend the money for border

security. a big beautiful wall is not going to solve the problems in many parts. there is a necessity to use modern technology to be able to secure the border. and youro do it wisely tax money and my tax money spent wisely. with regard to the top two going forward in california, it is wrong. the previous caller talked about being able to vote. that was a direct democracy. the people vote for laws. california voted for the top two going forward and it is wrong. wrong for the republicans, the democrats, wrong for the process and i seriously oppose it and have since its institution which incidentally was put in place by my colleague arnold schwarzenegger when i was lieutenant governor. we disagreed on this issue. host: do you want to focus on

the third congressional district and the impact of wildfires. mr. garamendi: we've seen the impact of climate change. we see the fire season in california is granted 65 days. effects of a very warm climate. climate. winter rain, rapid growth of vegetation and the heat comes in and things get dry. we are also building our communities into the wildland urban interface. that is what happened in paradise. host: how far away is paradise from the third congressional district? mr. garamendi: maybe 15 miles. many of the refugees and survivors of the fire wound up in my district in yuba city at the fairgrounds. it is a horrible situation. a community of 26,000 essentially gone. host: steve, democrat, good morning. caller: good morning.

mr. garamendi, i would like to a wall thatsupport trump.lease double let's build him a wall that he can fit in. something like a chimney. mr. garamendi: there have been political cartoons that would be along that line. standality is we have to -- we have to spend tax money wisely and effectively. the previous caller talked about border security. the democrats want border security is much as republicans. the republicans are not thrilled by building a 2000 mile or 1600 mile border wall. you want to spend the money wisely as we do. host: tony, republican, good morning. caller: good morning. please bear with me. i'm an old man.

i have important stuff to say. the problem with our government, you are all crooks. about everything. please don't cut me off. america is in trouble. you are taking over the white house and killing people for no good reason and lying. not one thing have you all done that helps the american people. killing us and destroying the world. host: what specific thing are they lying about? hell are we the doing in yemen killing four innocent people when we are not supposed to be in war? opium froming the afghanistan and bringing into the united states -- mr. garamendi: let's start with yemen.

we ought not be supporting saudi arabia and yemen. it's an undeclared war. congress has the authority to wage war. has to come from congress. congress and to take control back and we need to put a stop to the yemen war. host: what does congress say to getting a bill on the floor mr. garamendi:? it looks like the senate may actually do it. will he be able to come to an agreement that will reign in the current activities of the trump administration in supporting saudi arabia? i think the answer is yes. the terribleuse results of the yemen war, tens of thousands of people that have been killed in that war. also a very strong message to saudi arabia. and we be able to go to mbs hold the crown prince

?ccountable probably not but we can hold the saudi government accountable. the opium trade, it is an ongoing issue with afghanistan. it has been there forever. talibanous were loads, for sure. probably focus we have supported that are profiting from the opium trade continuing to use areas kindso wage of war and conflicts that have disrupted that country and killed hundreds of thousands of people. almost 6000 americans. host: time for a couple more calls. california member of the armed service committee and transportation committee as well. morning i have a comment on immigration and a couple questions on hr one.

it relates to immigration the only reason people don't want immigration from these latin american countries is because they don't want them to come in and vote for democrats. we don't have a problem with the border. peoplet have droves of coming across the border but ultimately that is what the opposition is. is publicons i have, financing in hr one? one?bbying reform in hr ending and a including this proliferation of lobbying efforts once people leave office. is there runoff voting? is mail in balloting in hr one? mr. garamendi: yes yes yes and yes. all of those things are included. you have to get into the details on some of it. parts of hr one deal with early balloting. ability to get to the polls.

there's money to help the states and the polling places mail-in ballots and all of those things are in hr one. we don't have time to go into all of the details. with regard to the other questions he raised him trying to recall. hr one is comprehensive in that it deals with corruption, openness in government, campaign-finance reform. i believe there are some lobby restrictions in hr one. i don't have the details with me -- i'm notegard to sure i got all the questions you raise. financing for strategic i tell you what i would like. change the election day from tuesday to saturday and sundays of people have time to get to look at their

ballots. right now it is tough for people to vote. if they cannot and do not do the mail-in ballots how can they get there? polls open at 8:00 or 6:00, two hour commute. let's go saturday and sunday. host: carol, west virginia, independent. caller: he was talking about dark money and stuff. i would hope they would put in and what the lobbyists congressman and senators get money from the lobbyists and how much the lobbyists get. mr. garamendi: excuse me for interrupting. actually as part of the law today. it may need to be expanded. but all the campaign receipts and contributions members of congress and people that are running for congress, we do have to report all of that.

the problem lies on the other side. the independent expenditure committees. frankly, there is more money coming into congressional and senatorial elections from these independent committees and there is directly contributed to the candidates. that is what hr one will deal with. host: wayne in reidsville, georgia. go ahead. caller: america is supposed to be the land of democracy. to carrye trying democracy at the end of a gun barrel to the rest of the world? mr. garamendi: unsuccessfully. what we've seen is a movement away from one of our or values of human rights, democracy, that is not part of the trump administration or the president's ethics. we need to reinstall that as part of the american symbol. we cannot create democracy at

the end of a gun. many more things involved in that. support for countries that are trying to move up in their economy and democracy and we need to make sure we use diplomacy. if we are going to use a gun you have to have diplomacy with it. host: congressman john garamendi, always appreciate your time. >> c-span's washington journal. live every day with news and policy issues that impact you. hudson institutes michael pillsbury talks about u.s. china trade policy and last week's g20 meeting. then, discuss the >> strategic studies. be sure to watch washington journal. discussion.

-- join the discussion. >> when the new congress takes office in generic, it the youngest most recent class in recent history. startinglive on c-span january 3. today, president george h.w. bush's remain were flown from washington to texas for his funeral service at a houston church. as remains then traveled by train to his final resting place . at the george bush presidential library museum and college station, texas. eventse today's beginning with the funeral at saint martin's episcopal church where he was eulogized by james baker and his grandson george p. bush. ♪