information needs to be capped with the with -- kept federal employees. i will make sure i look at that. otherwise, of course, i will be happy to be contacted, and asked >> "washington journal" continues. me, governorg michael leavitt, a former hhs secretary of the bush administration. governor leavitt, you have worn many hats. ae of them also helming transition. you did that for mitt romney. he did not win that election, for whenin the process these campaigns start thinking about a possible transition of power.

it's interesting. in 2010, it provided that there acts and it was majorndidates organizing transitions. it starts as early as april, certainly by may because there's , organizingh to do , so it'snal government quite a sophisticated operation, and large. host: what do they do? thet: they have to appoint

positions. getting that cleared is important. then there's the first 100, 200 days of the administration to fulfill campaign promises that campaign represented to the public. that gets down to riding executive orders. the third is to organize , and lastly, it is what we are seeing with the president-elect today where he is supported by his transition. ory don't have the trappings the normal organization that would go through. how much money has been

involved in this? we just read for our viewers the headline the president-elect is crowdfunding his transition costs, raising $10 million already. guest: the transition begins in the spring and it is funded through private sources. it's regulated, if you will, by the gsa, the general services administration, with a maximum of $5,000 from any one person and i think the biden administration raised $10 million. there is an appropriation of money that is made. i don't know exactly what it is today. it was about $6 million. i think it's more than that now. ascertainment,

which is what the gsa does, they are to transfer that money. because they have not declared the former vice president, now president-elect as the successful candidate, that's not happening and they are appealing to the public in that way. i am confident they are raising lots of money. governor leavitt ran the team for governor mitt romney. you wrote a book about that. what were the lessons learned? a transitionuth is had never been organized under transition act prior to 2012. after that point, most transitions have been done in a much less formal way. , the governments

agenciesess to federal . this is the process that we came to understand. mostly it's about how do you soanize a standup in advance you hit the ground running? tos a real relay as opposed how people describe stopping to hand the baton off. you were to walk the transition, you would see a room at the department of state, the department of the interior, the department of the treasury and there would be people who worked who understood how things worked and you are essentially creating a federal government in miniature where

you can begin to get a running start. leavittvernor michael is our guest. if you live in the eastern part ,f the country, 202-748-8000 the mountain area of the country, 202-748-8001. medical providers you can call 2. 202-748-800 governor leavitt, with your health and human services secretary had one as well, what kind of problems can this delay to the for responding pandemic, whether that is distribution of the vaccine or other areas? area thatink the people are concerned most about at the moment is the handoff of

vaccine distribution. i think it would be vastly if there was a handoff between the outgoing and incoming administration. however we can not to see this as a complete collapse if you are a medical provider. behink much of this will conducted by private sector distributorsbig who are going to every doctor's office on a regular basis to deliver this. i think that it would be better if there was conversation, but i'm confident they are having conversations and there will at

least be a degree of assistance they will provide. up first., you are good morning. caller: hey, greta. it's been a long time since i got your voice. there is a doctor i think you should get on as a guest, michael mina, he just had an article published in "new york he's amagazine and proponent of the rapid antigen test, for the government to give a whole bunch to each country and these are almost like home pregnancy tests where you can use them daily. he is saying that she is an epidemiologist among other things, he says to use them at least twice a day for every get them the family, out to at least 50% of the ,opulation and statistically the infection would decline, the transmission would decline rapidly. that's part one of my question.

number two, you need to get alan dershowitz on and this letter basically is called trump's only road to victory which he is expressing the concept that trump has an actual strategy behind what he's doing and that he is not intending for the electors to get to the electoral college and it mimics a situation he says happened twice in the 19th century which was, the example dershowitz used is the rutherford b. hayes electoral vote where the the houseere actually of representatives. i know that may be outside the skill set. that's why think it would be good to get al-anon to elaborate more in detail.

host: ok. question,an's first -- ok. guest: to take alan's first question, this testing is relatively accurate and easy and inexpensive. what he is describing is inexpensive and he mentioned a pregnancy test is an example where, the level we are having with antigen test generally as they have not proven to be as accurate. there are lots of different tests. i don't mean to characterize all of them in that way. rapid testing, abundant testing. .e might get a lot better i'm thinking would never be test if we have the home and a member of our family tested every morning.

would be worth it in certain circumstances and it would be very helpful. with respect to the electoral college, i've actually been an electoral or at one point in time and i know that process reasonably well. i do not see any to killer or trump effort that can succeed, and speaking i find that if we were , ifisrupt that in some way that were not to reflect what happens in those states at the ballot box, that would be a disruption to a critical american institution. i feel quite confident it will work its way out. host: do you think, governor leavitt, the president should concede? guest: i think the president does have the right to pursue whatever remedy is available

under the law. a concession is a nicety. i do think it would be better if he did transition activities. there's no reason they can't coexist. oregon.an in hermiston, go ahead and talk through your phone. brian, you got to turn the television down. caller: ok, just a second. host: all right, go ahead please. caller: yeah, i'm a republican and i'm a little disheartened by president trump, not allowing the transition to proceed because he is putting our country in danger. joe biden won the election. the people voted. i voted for trump. i think he needs to be responsible and allow the

transition to proceed because it , andour country at danger he is continuing to challenge tod there's for him win. i do not understand why he does not proceed and let joe biden have his transition. host: ok, brian. nancy in houston. hi, i have been following on the pandemic and talking about the vaccines and they were saying the transition may not be as hard because the corps of engineers are the ones that will be working on that, so it will not be -- it is not as fact -- affected as much. is that true? guest: i am not aware of the role the core of engineer will

play. it's possible, i suppose there will be certain government assets. i think what they are going to that there'sy have already an infrastructure in place that has distributed the vaccine, these are the , mckesson or cardinal health -- i'm just using those as examples -- who every day have trucks full of supplies. they are part of the supply chain that goes from the warehouse right into the practitioner's office or the hospital and they have been doing that every day now. i think they will harness that thert to say let's use existing distribution and that would be the natural way, the most effective way in my own judgment and they have have

those contracts in place for quite a while. governor, what did you learn after the avian flu outbreak? guest: the first thing we learned was we were not prepared. most of our capacity was on contracts outside of the united now.s. you could see that if the only place we could get it manufactured was outside the united states, there would be -- so, we went to a pandemic, said, it may be another one. .e are not well prepared

this was a good piece of insight by president bush. we spent a lot of time and effort developing what is now reflected as the national pandemic plan. is aof what has happened reflection of that work. host: what is in place to respond to the current pandemic that you saw, that you outlined in your work in 2005? the vaccine manufacturing capacity, we are seeing the benefit of that. if we had not done that and other things that affected it -- the tech knowledge he is that the manufacturers, the type of virus it is as affected that -- we put a lot of work in having the capacity to manufacture vaccines and it has become a modern miracle in getting to see vaccines

manufactured, tested, distributed in just a remarkably short time. we spent a lot of our effort developing laboratories around the world.

learned was this was a public health issue. it's all about cleaning air and health.ng human i think the agency will be celebrating its 50th anniversary next week. that is what i learned. judy in massachusetts.

caller: donald trump does not want to concede for the simple fact that when they were to remain -- doing the investigation on him with the mueller case they said they would indict him when he becomes a normal citizen and he is afraid to leave the white house because he knows he's going to get indicted. host: all right, we will go to susan and fort myers, florida. susan? .aller: yes i have a couple points. i would like to remind all of the politicians all the way up to the white house and the supreme court, they are all employees, not employers and the money that they utilize and throw it here and there does not belong to them. whoelongs to we the people pay all the taxes and pay zero wages and as far as the covid

goes, i was around for the polio vaccine. i grew up in the alleys of , ohio.nd we would be rounded up and get injected. nobody knew why. the other thing you need to understand is this does not happen overnight and the people who do not believe in at least wearing a mask and following the basic request for social distancing, handwashing, these kinds of things, these are common sense. these are people who do not believe in science. my --i am going to have i'm going to have the governor jump in. guest: she makes a very good point. when we say we are a public

servant, that's exactly what we were and are, public servants. with respect to the need for us as citizens to keep the basic rules, it comes down to the government can do many things. it will will go to our willingness as individuals to do what is necessary to fight this virus. john in beaverton, oregon. me, it is ato transfer of power to govern and to serve. governor leavitt, what effect will this have on the agent these to be able to meet their missions and serve the public? guest: i think the most havingcant problem, not access to the agencies is more

of a relationship issue then illegal or logistical issue. people who are running the department's day-to-day have apprehensions. they don't know what is going to , and you can look them in the eye and talk to them. and thesee transition are human beings that want to do the same things that they do and the begin to take it out of political and put it into the more practical and i think that's a very important part of the transition. ohio.elise in vincent, yes, i was wondering how common is it for senators to join, like they just joined

pretrial of pfizer 4 -- joined the trial for pfizer for the vaccine. was interesting because it seemed it was after it was proven it was 95% efficacy. how common is that? you were talking about distribution and i am a senior citizen and have underlying conditions and i would love to have the vaccine right away. for senators to just joined the trials after knowing how effective they are. guest: i am not aware of any direct report your referencing, but i will comment more generally. one of the important things that the federal government must do in the distribution of a vaccine is to determine how to prioritize a limited supply.

we are going to be manufacturing hundreds of millions of doses, but who gets it first. that thety evident first people to get it are the heroic health care workers who put themselves in harm's way. likely the next group will be people who are in special categories and you will be one of them if you have an underlying health condition. the group ofely be those who receive it -- so help is on the way. but there are other groups who have special significance and, again, i don't know any particular thing that has comment, but it

would be a very bad thing for the united states if congress could not function because of the pandemic, so it's not keyrising to me if the government officials, whose performance is required, what possibly that could be. set of priorities. it will happen in phases. governor, she is referring to headlines like this 1 -- republican governor steve daines has antibodies after participating in a vaccine trial. i think senator rob portman as well. guest: they probably volunteered. host: hey, jeff. caller: hey, thank you, greta.

thank you for taking my call. i want to refer to a point you made about the need to always be anpared, even though it was insurance policy to be prepared and to invest in pandemic preparedness and we have seen there's investment and we become vulnerable and it is an existential threats. back in 1913, congress have the wisdom to realize that existential threats are realized with the federal reserve. i am proposing that we amend the federal reserve -- host: governor leavitt, what do you think?

the federal reserve -- i am not acquainted well enough with the federal reserve, the statutes around the federal reserve to know what we need to do, but it's worth reflecting that the federal reserve jumped , and the big way has putgovernment forward a quite dramatic effort , andep the economy going so i have to know more about that. something that is worth commenting on for us as a theration, it reflects effort to prepare the country and you asked what i learned. what i learned is anything you say in advance of a pandemic

sounds alarmist. people can't conceive of it. but anything you have done after it starts to prepare for it seems inadequate. that is the dilemma. when you are dealing with so disciplineving the is a very significant discipline and that is a lesson that i hope will come from what we experience in 2000 and 2001. host: governor, what are your thoughts on the hospital capacity being stretched across the country and in rural areas? it's a matter of eventuality. it's going to happen. -- in march,gh april, and may -- what we

thought was a very complicated and difficult time. in some places it was catastrophic, like in new york and other major cities. but the history of pandemics, almost always there is a second wave and very often it's more widespread and virulent than the first wave. experiencing that. we are in the midst of the second wave and you have to ask the question. what is it that is going to cause it to begin to stop? the only things that will allow there havebecause been people who have not been infected and this virus has an insatiable need to replicate itself -- what will stop it? our behavior. we can stop it by doing the things we're told by public health officials over and over to do. the second is the vaccine. it's on the way. it will take

time for that to occur. and so in the course of that toe, we have got to begin continue to work our way through . headline out of utah, local leaders urge people not to gather for thanksgiving as utah again smashes local record. doublewe are seeing this every two or three weeks and if it were to double again, it would clearly exceed our capacity. we are right at the breaking point now. so i'm asking the question, as i .id before

inc.'s. the state has asked that citizens not rather because the places where it is spreading the fastest is at informal gatherings in homes and that causes a little bit of controversy. people are telling me -- you are telling me what i can do in -- under my own roof? i don't like that. none of us like this. but they're pointing out that this is the reality of that is spreading.isease is all that will allow this to stop is our own behavior. we will beat this. we will get through this. but the degree to which we have damage and pain will be determined, in large measure

cover-up by the way we react. host: >> you are watching c-span, your unfiltered view of government, created by america's cable television companies as a public service and brought to you today by your television provider. >> a conversation on the history and future of the organization for security and cooperation in europe. it was created in the early protection andde human rights.